Search for the Dead Page 23

  Abby went back to what she was now calling Ellie’s Room to assess the state of the paint job. Not that they’d be painting today, but the days were rapidly growing shorter, and finer detail painting like for the multi-pane windows required good light, so she was fast running out of time. Ellie could help her finish the doors on Thursday, and they’d be ready for curtains and such. She took the jacket and some other odds and ends downstairs and left them on the big table in the dining room, then hunted down her sewing box—sadly limited, but at least she had the basics like scissors and needles and thread in various colors. Then she went back upstairs to paint the window sashes—that should take just about the right amount of time.

  Once again she let her mind roam while she painted with a small brush. She was looking forward to the moment when Ellie realized that her abilities had returned, but she wouldn’t say anything until Ellie noticed herself. Was that fair? Another test? Abby was pretty sure that Ellie would pick up on it quickly. She wondered if there was any truth in the aura theory—could some people “see” or even interpret a visual cloud around others? It seemed far-fetched, but Abby wasn’t about to reject any theories. And Kevin had seen sparks pass between her and Ned, which was basically the same thing—a visual manifestation. Maybe Ellie could see auras. Or she was merely an observant and sensitive kid who paid attention to people—far more than most kids her age.

  The last window finished, Abby scrubbed the paint off her hands and changed into clean jeans, then set off for the market.

  After lunch, Abby had dismantled the jacket and decided that big stitches with coarse thread would be fine for a costume that had to survive only the one night. The “head” was drying on the counter in the kitchen—in the end she’d bought some large balloons and molded the papier mâché over one, and it seemed to have worked just fine. Some orange paint and black features and that would be done.

  She heard the sound of Ned’s car pulling into the driveway, and half a minute later Ellie came bounding up the porch stairs and opened the door. She found Abby quickly in the dining room. “Hey, Abby. We’re making the costume today, right?” she said breathlessly.

  “Yes, we are. I’ve been working on the jacket, but you’ll have to try it on for me. And I’ve started the head—it’s in the kitchen.”

  Ellie darted into the kitchen and returned quickly. “Cool. We’re going to paint the head, right?”

  “Of course we are. And then we’re going to carve the pumpkins. Think about what kind of face you want to put on yours.”

  “Mine? We each get one?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I make it anything I want?” Ellie asked slyly.

  “Sure you can—it’s yours. Here, let’s try on the jacket.” Abby gathered it up and held it out for Ellie to slip her arms into, then stepped back to look at the general affect. Sloppy, at the moment, but nothing she couldn’t fix. “Can you get it over your head?”

  Ellie grabbed the back collar and pulled, and Abby found herself looking at Ellie’s face peering out from between the front bands. She couldn’t help laughing.

  “Do I look stupid?” Ellie asked.

  “No, it looks great. You want to leave the front open like that, or wear a dark T-shirt that no one will see in the dark, and cut a couple of eye holes in that?”

  Ellie considered. “Yeah, that could work.” She started wriggling out of the jacket, and Abby reached out to help her. Then their hands touched.

  Ellie slipped out of the jacket, and turned to face Abby, her expression filled with hope. “It’s back, isn’t it?”

  Abby nodded, smiling—and was almost knocked over when Ellie flung both arms around her.

  “How’d you do it?” Ellie demanded.

  “There’s a woman I met here in Lexington—she’s a medium, and we discovered we had some sort of connection, different from ours. So I asked her to come over so I could touch her—and it worked.”

  Ellie nodded. “But Ned and me, we couldn’t do it?”

  “Apparently not. Christine’s ability is kind of different. Does it feel the same now, when you touch me?”

  “Pretty much. Did something change?”

  “I’m not sure yet—we can talk about that later. But I’m not complaining. Come on—let’s get this costume finished up and get to work on the pumpkins.”

  Abby had bought some orange tempera paint, so they finished painting the “head” quickly, and in a few minutes Ellie added features with a broad black marker. “Can it light up?” she asked.

  “I guess if we cut out eye holes. I got a batch of battery-powered tea lights, so you could just stick one inside.”

  “Just the eyes. Right.” Ellie went back to adding a leering mouth.

  Abby started cutting the tops off the pumpkins. Without looking up, she asked, “Why’d you pick this character, Ellie? What are other people doing?”

  “Movie princesses. Kittens. That kind of dumb thing.”

  “This will certainly be different. You know where the story of the Headless Horseman comes from?”

  “Yeah, our English teacher told us about it. Some guy wrote a story about it. There was this geeky guy, Ichabod Crane, and this other guy named Brom something-or-other who just wanted to scare him.”

  “Not a very nice message, is it?”

  “Well, Ichabod was a wimp. Not that the other guy was so great—what he did was mean, and sneaky.”

  “So why do you want to be him?”

  Ellie took her time answering, as she studied her “head’s” face. “Because, well . . . people kind of believed then that people could come back from the dead, which was why Ichabod thought he was seeing a ghost and was scared. But the other guy, he knew that he could pretend and scare Ichabod, and it worked. And he got what he wanted.”

  Abby tried to figure out how she should respond to Ellie’s interpretation. As she remembered the story, the bully, Abraham something or other, known as Brom, had wanted to scare Ichabod so he would scuttle away in terror and Brom could get the girl they both wanted. And Brom won. Somehow along the way the story had gotten tangled up with Halloween—that pumpkin head thing. Brom had been carrying the “head” in front of him on the horse he was riding, and then he threw it at Ichabod, who left the scene and then the town in a hurry. It wasn’t until daylight that the head was found to be a pumpkin. A spooky story, but kind of an unpleasant one.

  Abby gave up trying to find a way to sugarcoat the moral of the story for Ellie, so she gave up. “Ellie, you know it’s not a nice story, don’t you?”

  Ellie nodded. “You sound like my teacher now.”

  “I understand why you like it, but I want you to promise that you won’t scare littler kids when you’re out trick-or-treating. Promise?”

  “I wasn’t going to anyway. That’s just mean. For kids, this is supposed to be fun, right? With only a little scary stuff.”

  “Good. And whatever you do, don’t throw things at other people!”

  Ellie was getting impatient. “I don’t do that kind of stuff.”

  Ned came downstairs, dressed in grubby jeans and a sweatshirt. “Looks great, kid.”

  Abby handed him the biggest pumpkin. “You know what to do with this, right?”

  “Of course I do. My mother raised me right. Hand me that carving knife.” He settled himself cross-legged on the kitchen floor next to Ellie, spread out some newspapers, and cut the top off his pumpkin. “Are we going to eat?” he asked as he worked.

  “You mean, apart from candy? Maybe after you get back from demanding extortion candy. How long do things usually last in this neighborhood?”

  “I haven’t really paid attention, but I’d guess eight, eight thirty. For the littler kids, that is. After that it’s pretty much high school kids goofing. You can shut down before that.”

  Ellie asked suddenly, “Why do we do Halloween?”

  “Nobody at school has explained it?” Abby asked her.

  Ellie shook her head. “I think it star
ted out with some kind of religion, and we don’t talk about religion at school.”

  “Ah.” Abby thought a moment. “It goes back a long way, before this country was even settled. Most people think it started with the Celts in Ireland and England and France. It’s kind of a harvest festival, and a few centuries later the pope decided he’d borrow it for a Christian festival, All Saints’ Day. That’s the first day of November, and Halloween is the night before. But I guess the thing that matters to you and me is that Halloween is supposed to be when the souls of the dead return to the earth, and to where they lived. It’s the one day of the year they can do that.”

  “But why do people celebrate it now? I mean, apart from getting lots of candy?”

  “Good question. It’s a very old celebration, with deep roots. It’s kind of the dying of the year, when winter arrives. The candy’s a much later addition, but the old holiday still seems to appeal to people. I know, that’s a pretty lame description, at least for how most people see it now.”

  “We know different, right?” Ellie asked.

  “That the dead come back to visit?” Abby said, looking at Ned, hoping he’d jump in. He ignored her. “Yes, I guess we do. Except for us it can happen any time. The spirits or ghosts or whatever they are don’t all go away and get put in a box and let out only one day a year. They’re always there somewhere. Does that scare you?”

  “No. We’ve talked about this, right? They don’t want to hurt us. A lot of ’em don’t even see us. They’re dead, but they’re not, kind of. I don’t get why people are scared of them.”

  “I can’t answer that. For me, it’s the fact that I’m seeing them at all, not whoever they are, that scared me in the beginning. Now I understand, and I’m used to it. But a lot of people, they don’t like things they don’t understand, so they pretend it’s not happening, or they get scared.”

  “People are dumb,” Ellie said.

  “Sometimes,” Abby agreed. “But please don’t tell them.”

  “Yeah, I know. I figured that out a while ago.”

  “Good for you, Ellie,” Ned said.

  The pumpkin carving took the better part of an hour, and they needed to pick up the pace. “Ellie, I’ve got some high boots that should fit you, but you might need extra socks. Anything else you can think of?”

  “That T-shirt, so I can see out without people seeing me,” Ellie reminded her.

  “Oh, right. Is your mom making Petey’s costume?”

  “No, she just bought something at the store. He doesn’t care.”

  Thinking back over comments Ellie had made about her mother, it sounded to Abby like Ellie and her mother were still clashing. To some extent that was normal, especially when there was a younger sibling in the picture, and Ellie was not an openly rebellious child, but it could lead to problems down the line. Maybe she should talk to Ellie after all the Halloween fuss died down.

  They shared the cleanup chores in the kitchen—why was it that those slippery pumpkin seeds managed to scatter so far? Abby inserted the lights in the carved pumpkins, and they carried them out to the front steps and lined them up, Ned’s on the top step, then Abby’s, and finally Ellie’s on the lowest step. The sun was sinking rapidly, and Abby could see a few parents escorting very short goblins or princesses along the sidewalks.

  “I’d better go get the candy ready.”

  “And I’m gonna get my costume on,” Ellie replied.

  Chapter 33

  There were bowls and bags of candy on the kitchen table, and Abby was trying to calculate how much to put in each bowl so they wouldn’t run out that evening. “Ned, how many kids did you say we might get tonight?”

  “I’ve never done an official count, but I’d guess about a hundred, mostly young ones, but a few Ellie’s age and up—people around here look at this as a safe neighborhood for kids to roam, and sometimes they bring them here from other neighborhoods.”

  “In spite of the cemetery out back?” Abby asked. “Nobody tries to scare kids with spooky lights or anything back that way, do they?”

  “No. The local police make the rounds during the evening, and make sure they’re visible. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Great, so I can go back to worrying if I have enough candy for the hordes of Lexington.”

  “It’s no big deal, Abby. If you run out, just turn off the lights and close the door. And turn off the pumpkins.”

  “Your costume looks great, Ellie,” Abby told her. “Even if I do say so myself. Wait—let’s get a picture of it for your parents, okay?” Maybe the costume wasn’t perfect, and it certainly looked homemade. But then, who cared? It certainly conveyed the spirit of the Headless Horseman, whatever the girls in pink ruffles—or neon spandex—might think. Ellie was marching to her own drummer. And any little glitches would be concealed by darkness, although she and Ned wrestled to fill out the hair on Brom’s pumpkin head, and ended up with a weird mix of steel wool and broom bristles. Close enough, Abby thought.

  Ellie was obviously itching to start her candy hunt, but she stood still long enough for Abby to snap a couple of pictures on her cell phone. “Can we go now?”

  “One sec,” Ned said. “Abby, Leslie said either she or George could pick up Ellie later, around nine. Petey should be exhausted by then.”

  “I hope I survive until nine. I haven’t done the whole candy thing for years, so I’m out of practice.” She’d lived in apartments for several years, and nobody ever came to her door then.

  “Just have fun, okay?” Ned said.

  “I’m trying,” Abby told him. “You have fun too. How long do you think you’ll be out?”

  “Depends on how energetic we feel. Right, Ellie?”

  “Yeah. You know the good places to go, right?”

  “Well, I can’t say I’ve gone looking for candy lately, but I think I can guess the best places to find it. Your mom said she or your dad would pick you up by nine, so we’ll have to be back before that. But I think two hours is plenty.”

  It was just past twilight when Abby waved good-bye to Ned and Ellie. As they disappeared into the dusk, Abby had to admit that Ellie’s costume was appropriately spooky. At their own house, they’d already fielded quite a few little kids, accompanied by parents, and as Ellie had predicted, many of the little girls had opted for tiaras and sparkles, while a lot of the little boys thought throwing on a Tom Brady football jersey was enough. But Abby smiled at everyone, and handed out candy in limited amounts—no scrabbling in the bowl themselves! In between waves of kids, she looked out over the neighborhood, which was suddenly populated by a lot of small and larger people moving along sidewalks. All the houses sported carved pumpkins with flickering lights, except the few houses that were conspicuously dark—no children welcome there. Battery-operated tea lights these days, Abby thought, not the candles from her childhood days. Probably safer, and guaranteed to stay lit longer.

  She had taken a moment to look out the back, checking for activity in the cemetery. Nothing she could see, mortal or otherwise, which was a relief. She hoped the police presence could keep teenage vandals away—there were some great old tombstones back there. Why did rowdy teens get such pleasure in trashing memorials to the past?

  It was close to eight thirty when Ned and Ellie returned. Ellie was talking a mile a minute, and Abby suspected she’d sampled some of the candy. Abby was down to the last bowl of candy—the kinds nobody seemed to like—and would be happy to call it a night. “Good hunting?” she asked, as Ellie ran up the steps and Ned followed more slowly.

  “Yeah, lots of the good kinds,” Ellie said. “You aren’t going to make me save half of it or anything?” she added more darkly.

  “Is that what your mom does? If you’re worried, you can leave some of it here. I promise we won’t eat any of it. Right, Ned?”

  “Who, me?” He grinned.

  There weren’t many people left on the street. “Want to sit down for a few minutes?” Abby gestured toward the wicker chairs she’d left
on the porch.

  “Okay,” Ellie said, and sat in the nearest chair.

  “What did people say about your costume?” Abby asked.

  “A lot of people didn’t get it. Mostly the grown-ups did, though.”

  Abby wasn’t surprised. Washington Irving must seem pretty tame to most of today’s kids, accustomed to monsters and aliens and cartoon characters with superpowers. She sat in the chair next to Ellie’s and watched the pumpkin lights wink out erratically up and down the street. Nice night—not too cold, and it hadn’t rained. And now peace was returning.

  Out of the corner of her eye Abby noticed Ellie perk up like a cat that had spotted a mouse. Ellie was staring out at the street. “Do you see them?” she whispered.

  “See what?” Abby followed Ellie’s gaze. At first she saw nothing, but then . . . she went still. “Yes.”

  Ned was looking at them in confusion. “What?”

  “I think it’s our neighbors. From out back.”

  Comprehension dawned on Ned’s face. “Ah.” He turned to look. “I don’t see them. Relatives, do you think?”

  “I can’t exactly say, since I haven’t seen much of them. But there are quite a few. Right, Ellie?”

  Ellie nodded, her eyes not leaving the street.

  Halloween, and the dead were walking. They looked like ordinary people, only fainter. They wore what they would have worn during their lives. Men, women, children. Singly or in groups. Family groups. Ghosts.

  If the stories about ghosts had persisted so long, how many people had to have seen what she was seeing? Abby wondered. There they were. They weren’t threatening, or sad. Nor were they frolicking about, as if they believed this was their only annual excursion into the “real” here-and-now world. They were simply strolling in the dark. Did they see each other? Recognize each other?