Halloween,  2006 

Part I

The day before Halloween

I don’t scare easy.  I’m pretty fearless.  I can’t even remember the last time I’d really been afraid.  Of course, The Exorcist was scary, Carrie was pretty good, and Omega Man and I Am Legend were good because they were possible; involving deadly viruses or nightmares, which are scary no matter who you are.

Maybe it was being too fat in high school, and having bad skin that made me tough; I never knew when or where my books would be kicked out of my hands, or when there’d be a note on my locker with a heart or flower on the outside, but mean words on the inside.  Maybe I got tough having to face school every day, knowing I was going to have to live through a day that was going to be nasty.  Or, maybe I got strong being wife to a crack addict, having people that I thought were friends coming in and out, and waking up the next day finding stuff missing from my house.  

Or, maybe it was facing into a new future that did it: walking out and starting life over with no money, no social skills, a broke-down car, and no education; maybe that’s what makes a person fearless. 

Anyway, eventually you lose weight, somebody gives you a chance at a job, and you move out of the hood. You buy some better clothes. You go to college and make yourself deal with the kind of people who have always intimidated you.  You face the effort of getting over your nervousness and low self-esteem. You make yourself stand up straight and speak properly every day, and not use slang and don’t get angry. You try not to feel scared you’ll get hit if you say something somebody doesn’t like. You make the effort to not stare at gold jewelry that’s probably real all the way through, and you get used to walking right on up  to people whose parents are doctors, or scientists, or presidents of companies, and who live in places you’ve only seen in the movies.

It could be the constant practice of being courageous that makes you tough, or maybe it’s one particular incident; it’s hard to know for sure.

Anyway, it’s nice to have the fearlessness; it stays with you even when you don’t need it.  In fact, now that I’m finally living a semi-privileged life, nearly married into a family that owns an engineering firm, and my acquaintances have horses, imported cars, speed boats, and cabins in the woods, your life never even approaches scary.  Never.  My biggest worry is about if I should wear pearls or gold when I go to dinner at my future in-laws’.  Or how long it would take to fall from the family hot air balloon into the multicolored treetops in the autumn, in case the balloon springs a leak.

Then, there was Halloween of 2006.  It started, actually, on the day before Halloween, when we went in to the city for a costume party.  Driving around looking for parking put us in the midst of zombies and vampires, ax murderers and witches and psychopath escapees from the asylum, wandering around all over the place- in the gas stations, in the Wawa- like they’d just crawled up from hell, they populated the city like it was perfectly normal. 

It was eerie, driving around in Kill-adelphia and not seeing any real people at all, only figures with scary faces and bloody hands, and dark clothes, walking hunched over because it was cold, and stumbling around because of the big boots most of them were wearing.  You couldn’t tell who anybody was, or what was going on under all those clothes. Luckily, the guy in the devil mask on the street in front of the parking lot was yelling, “Come on in, we got space!  It’s close to the party!  Put it here! Come on in, we got space!”  So, he wasn’t scary, though the mask was hideous.  His buddy in the parking lot taking the money and giving the parking receipts had a Jason mask on, but was talking to people about making change, and leaving the keys, so, he wasn’t too scary, either.

So, we parked and gave him our tenner and got our receipt, and turned around to face the street. Honey gave me a kiss, and took hold of my hand, tight, and we walked across the boulevard and away from the lights of the car lot.

We knew which direction we were going, but, as we walked farther in to the dark, honey squeezed my fingers tighter.  He gets nervous a lot quicker than I do, and frightens a lot easier, too: when we’re in a situation that makes me a feel like being a little vigilant, I start paying attention; but he’s actually breathing hard and breaking a sweat. 

I did start to think though, about how we were out there with no weapons between us, walking amongst the weirdos and monsters and living dead, passing fatally close to men in cop outfits that might be holding real guns, and big men in slasher outfits, or Deliverance costumes, that might have had real machetes and hatchets in those holsters, you don’t know.  And behind those masks, you can’t see their faces. 

It was the quiet ones in the grim reaper, or warlock outfits that really worried me the most: they brush by you and stare, and don’t say a thing, and you wonder if they actually did just come from murdering somebody. 

Closer to the party, we started seeing more girls, and sparkly outfits, and people who had wigs on, but whose faces were showing.  Honey loosened his grip on my fingers a little, so that was good. I felt better that he felt better.  Anyway, there were faeries hanging out next to the building smoking, and talking to the dominos, and the Martians were talking to the Hello Kittys, and there were some other pretty good costumes.  Inside, we saw more vampires and witches, and even a goblin like the one in that hobbit movie.  There was a Siamese twin with 3 legs, and a very good Edward Scissorhands that actually did look like him.  There were some ax murderers too, and a couple of Freddy Kruegers, and a Michael Myers, and some skeletons and some other scary things, but when they have a fruity drink in their hand and they’re dancing, it takes quite a bit of the fright out of it.  It’s a freaky sight for sure, but we had a pretty good time.

On the walk back to the car, we were moving pretty fast because it was so cold!  Honey was all involved with talking about the party, so I don’t think he noticed the silent grim reaper that passed by me again.  Maybe he did notice, but he didn’t pause, or slow down, he didn’t stop talking, and he never took his eyes off me.

I actually felt the grim reaper walking close behind us for a while, and I tried to look over my shoulder to see for sure, but honey had his arm around me so tightly, that I really couldn’t move.  It was kind of pissing me off that someone was that close behind us without me being able to see who it was or what they wanted, and I started getting kind of squirmy so that I could get a look, just a look, to make sure we weren’t going to be stabbed or mugged and shot, but honey kept talking, and walking faster, so I grabbed on to my skirts and start to worry about tripping on my long dress if honey kept going that fast.  If I fell, then we would be in a vulnerable position with me on the ground and us not moving, so I held my skirts up, and tried to turn my head to look over honey’s shoulder, but he kept me close to him and started walking faster.  When we got to the boulevard, before I could think, he took his arm from around me, grabbed my hand, and started running.

My fiancé is taller than me, and faster, with longer legs, so I grabbed up more of my skirts, and started running, too.  He was shouting something back to me, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying, and I was trying to listen to whether the footsteps were closer behind us, but my dress was swishing, and the wind was blowing and I couldn’t hear behind me either, and we were moving so fast that I knew that I couldn’t turn around because my clothes were getting caught around my legs; it was hard not to fall with him pulling me that hard, but I held my fiancé’s hand tighter and ran as fast as I could, and when we got to the shed at the car lot, honey finally dropped my hand, and I turned around, but no one was there. 

Part II

Halloween

The next day, we slept until Spongebob came on. Spongebob is a very mentally gentle way of waking up after a late Halloween party.

Rob got up all excited, and dressed to go help his friends set up for their speedboat show blowout bash in the main barn on their 50-acre property by the lake.  The speedboat brothers had made some secret and high-tech modifications to the motor and the body of their prize speed boat, which was supposed to make it unbelievably fast and stable.  Every motorhead, gearhead, challenger, and speedboat freak in the area had been waiting all year for the big unveiling, and so the speedboat brothers had planned a huge Halloween night bonfire/party/unveiling bash and invited half the county to come. 

There were going to be hay bales, a corn maze, pickup trucks, hollow logs, people in costumes, bikers and motorcycles, old wood furniture and a big fire, beer, wine and liquor of all descriptions, and some other stuff too that I won’t mention here.  They had been setting up all week, but the finishing touches were going in now, before the party started in the barn at nightfall between the woods and the lake.

Personally, I was looking forward to taking a nice fast run in my new electric blue Lycra pants and my blue and silver running shoes.  The next weekend was my last race of my running season- my favorite ten-miler at the Pentagon in D.C., so I was really looking forward to a really pretty, last-week-of-the-season training run. 

The sky was clear and the weather was perfect for the new longsleeved gear I’d bought for the race so, I was going to try it out on the secluded 7 ½ mile trail through the woods from Rob’s house to the speedboat brothers’ place where the party was going to be.  I strapped on my sneakers, and watched honey happily load tools and wood and junk into the back of his sky blue F-350.

The day was starting out great. The night was going to be even better.