Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (40 page)

neat, and the whole place smelled like wood chips. Clean. Tomorrow there’d be hot dogs cooking and lemonade stands and pumpkin ice

cream and a myriad of other smells, but for now there was only the new sawdust.

In the early years, they’d had to spread the stuff over mud. Now a company spread it over concrete.

Jack stayed to help Mel slide the fragile lawn ornaments onto

the rebar and set each piece into the holder Mel had fashioned from strong metal grating years ago. “Is opening for the holidays going to help?” Jack asked.

“I don’t much like the holidays.”

“Not even Halloween?” Jack asked.

Mel frowned. “Not really, and besides, I’m not having Halloween.

I’m busy setting up.” He sounded like an old grouch. “Something’s

gotta help. I’m more than halfway through last summer’s earnings.”

Jack stopped, his big hand holding a bright yellow flower.

“Already?”

“Medical bills.” Mel looked away so Jack wouldn’t see that it

bothered him. He jammed a blue butterfly down too hard on the

rebar, cracking off a glass wing. He cursed under his breath. “That was my favorite piece for this season.” Mel held up the broken part.

“See how this line of gold shoots all the way through the wing? That was pure serendipity.”

“It is a pretty one. I’m sure you’ll do more that are as nice.”

“If I’m around for it. I’m going to die in my traces soon.” As far as he knew, Mel was the last artist alive from the first year of the festival in 1965. After Justine of the long blond hair and bellbottoms had

disappeared last year—her hair gray but still swinging in a long braid past her butt—there was no one else left of the old founders.

“Not yet, I think,” Jack said.

Mel put the last bird onto the last rebar and cradled it in an open spot on the stand.

“The booth looks good.”

“Lately, it hurts to hold the blowpipe up long enough to make

these.” Mel assessed the impression his booth would leave. Not bad.

It was sandwiched between ornate house-cats fashioned of multi-

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colored wood on one side and mirrors decorated with bronze and

beads on the other. The cats would draw a crowd. “At least there’s no Christmas decorations up.”

“Yet. Committee won’t allow them before Thanksgiving.”

Mel snorted. “But we are opening the day after Halloween.”

“You could have been on the committee.”

“They kicked me off ten years ago for being a curmudgeon.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Mel looked at the broken butterfly. “I should take this back to the studio and fix it.”

Jack offered a slow smile, his eyes catching the last bit of daylight.

“Meet you at the waterfall.” He practically sprinted off, leaving Mel to limp after him with a broken bit of blue butterfly in each hand. The place looked a bit eerie as the long shadows of dusk faded into each other and became part of the approaching night. Only the safety

lights were on, small yellow sun-globes lining the paths somewhat

irregularly.

Brighter light beckoned around the last turn, and Mel emerged

just as the waterfall started flowing. Strings of tiny blue and pink lights had been embedded in the rock behind the water at each edge.

The waterfall was about ten feet wide and seven feet high. It flowed down a rock face into a shallow pool where the water slid down a

drain to be pumped back up to the top to start falling all over again.

“Do you like it?” Jack asked.

“They look like fairy lights.”

Jack thrust a glass into Mel’s hand. “Come on, have a drink.”

Mel sniffed. “Bourbon?”

“You can spend the night here. After all, it’s a holiday.”

Mel had drank himself through the whole night here before. “I’ve

got a blanket in the truck.” He took an experimental sip and sighed with pleasure.

Jack disappeared for a moment and came back with a bag of

potato chips, two apples, and a half-finished round of mixed nuts.

The salt on the nuts tasted like heaven, and went with the next sip of bourbon.

They drank in companionable silence. Food and a stiff drink and

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the quiet of his favorite place mellowed Mel. Jack poured water into the empty cups. “You know this is a magical night.”

Great. Jack’s mystical side. Mel had heard tales of nighttime

séances and late-night parties inside the festival grounds that included some of the less-wrapped denizens of the small beach town. Well,

big beach town these days. He could play along. “All Hallows Eve.”

“And you know this is a magical place. You helped create it.”

“Yeah.” No point in disagreeing.

“Care to come with me to a better place to fix up your

butterfly?”

Mel narrowed his eyes. “I shouldn’t be driving.”

Jack looked positively full of mischief. “And I can’t leave the

grounds.”

“Well. Where’s the glue?” Not that glue would fix it.

“Do you trust me?” Jack went all serious. Or as serious as anybody who’d just downed two fifths of good bourbon ever looked.

Mel’s stomach knotted up and his head felt light and odd, but he

nodded.

Jack picked up the bigger piece of broken butterfly and took Mel’s hand in his. “I think this going to work for you.”

The gesture scraped Mel the tiniest bit raw, and he stiffened. “I

don’t like men.”

“Don’t blame you. Girls are curvier.”

Jack’s hand was warm and firm. Mel couldn’t remember holding

another man’s hand as an adult, but he let it be and let Jack lead him toward the waterfall.

Into the waterfall.

The bourbon must have been stronger than he’d thought. Jack

disappeared, although Mel would swear there was no opening

behind the water. You could see the whole rock face the water fell down when the pump was turned off, and it was mostly smooth.

If it weren’t for the pull of Jack’s hand—and to be honest, for the bourbon—Mel would have stopped.

Instead, he closed his eyes and put one foot in front of the other.

Just as he started to flinch away, sure he was about to get soaked, he felt the cool stream of water for just a second, and then a soft push as

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if he were moving through a wall of blankets. The push and the pull of Jack’s hand, and the swaying dizziness of standing after eating and drinking and walking through a waterfall as if he were dreaming—

Mel doubled over.

He opened his eyes, in full possession of both his hands and in a

place he had never seen before. He closed his eyes, and tried again.

Same result.

He and Jack stood side by side with a small cliff-face behind

them, the kind that’s really just a flat area in an otherwise rolling hill.

A path wound from under their feet along a cleared meadow, over

a wooden bridge, and west into scrub oak, directly toward a sunset that hadn’t finished yet here.

Jack let him take it all in for a bit, and then he said, “This is my home.”

“No shit.”

“I’m glad the waterfall door worked for you.”

“You didn’t know it would work?”

“Even when it’s working, it doesn’t open for everybody. If you try all by yourself, you might scratch your nose.”

“How does it work?”

Jack merely shrugged.

“You come here a lot?”

“Some years I winter here.”

The conversation seemed way too normal for what had just

happened, but Mel couldn’t think of anything else to do but go on the same way. It was that or scream or pass out or ask to go back, and he didn’t want to do any of those things. “Do they trick-or-treat here?”

“Tricks might be . . . interesting . . . over here.” Jack smiled.

“There’s a bit of magic in the High Hills.”

“I don’t believe in magic.”

Jack laughed. “Come on, old man. Want to go to the beach?”

“There’s an ocean?”

“The High Hills and the town of Laguna Beach used to be the

same. Mostly the directions and the main physical landmarks are the same, except of course the modern one has decapitated some of the

hills and built roads where we have paths.”

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“That must explain why Laguna’s so New Age.”

“California. Shasta is here, too. I think maybe everything, but I’m a west coast kinda guy.”

“So you don’t lie when you say you winter at Shasta, huh?”

“I never lie.” He grinned. “I like the modern Shasta better. There’s a ski lift.”

“Did you bring the bourbon bottle over?”

“No.” Jack started down the path, and Mel followed, both men

still carrying bits of blue glass. At least this time they weren’t holding hands.

The spears of setting sunlight made it hard to see, but mostly the hills seemed to be yellow with fall grass going to seed, and most of the trees were dark green and low scrub oaks. Here and there, the red branches of Manzanita bushes added color. Rabbits hopped through

brush at the edge of the meadow, and hawks circled overhead.

The path wound through a small, empty town. “Do people live

here?” Mel asked.

“Of course. They’re all where we’re going.”

Mel’s knee hurt, but he didn’t want to admit to Jack that he

couldn’t go much farther.

After two smaller rises Mel had to struggle up, and a gentle turn, they met up with the beach just as the orb of the sun fell into the water. High clouds cherished the last bits of sunfire, just a bit less crisp than the yellow-white of a bonfire a few hundred yards down

the beach. They stood right in the middle of Main Beach, although

there were no parking lots or tall swings or lifeguard towers, and also no boardwalk. But the open beach gave way to hills and wave-worn

low cliffs just like at home.

Horses and wagons and a few modern bicycles were scattered to

the foreside of the fire, watched over by a pair of young women in tattered jeans and Death Cab for Cutie T-shirts. Five women and a

man busied themselves at wooden tables, setting out food and drink.

Closer to the fire, at least thirty people stood talking or lounged in groups on rocks or driftwood. The real Main Beach never looked this natural or wild.

He liked it this way.

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Mel collapsed on the first rock he came across that had a wide

enough space for him, letting out a sigh of relief to have his weight off of his knee. “Stay here,” Jack said. “I’ll come back for you.”

Mel hadn’t been willing to follow up on Jack’s reference to magic

with a question earlier, but now that he didn’t hurt as much, he looked around. The people looked pretty normal. No Tolkien elves or vampires or Mr. Spock ears. Although Spock wasn’t really fantasy, was he?

Half the people were dressed in modern clothes and half in a mix

of more handmade looking stuff. They seemed to like bright colors.

He counted five or six kids.

No one appeared to be wearing Halloween costumes.

Then he saw her.

Justine of the long hair and bell bottoms.

He blinked, sure again that he dreamed. Then the wind carried

her laughter to him and he knew it was her. He sat and watched

Justine talking in a small circle of other old women, her face glowing in the firelight.

A smile broke unbidden across his face.

They’d never been lovers, but they’d been friends for years. She’d cried on Mel’s shoulder through at least three break-ups and helped him rebuild his studio after a fire in 1987. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed her until her laughter made him feel light again.

He’d wait. His knee still throbbed, and besides, he’d told Jack he’d wait.

Maybe he was a little scared.

It felt like if he did or said the wrong thing, he’d wake up and he’d be in a dream and he’d lose the fire and the clean beach and Justine of the long hair.

Jack worked the crowd, stopping from time to time for a hug or

a short whispered conversation. The last of the light faded just as he came up to Justine and planted a kiss on her cheek and pointed at

Mel.

She sat so the firelight illuminated half her face as she followed the direction of Jack’s finger. To his utter delight, she appeared as pleased to see him as he had been to hear her laughter, and then she was up and sprinting across the still-warm sand. She smelled of smoke and BRENDA COOPER [307]

sea air. Her blue eyes were wreathed in wrinkles, and there was more vitality to her than he remembered. “I never imagined,” she said.

He held at a bit of distance, confused, but still ecstatic to see her.

“What?”

“That you’d come here. That you could get through the gate at all.

You always made such fun of me when I talked about seeing things

you couldn’t see.”

“I don’t remember that.”

She frowned and then wiped the frown away and touched his

cheek. “I’m glad to see you.”

“We all worried about you. Thought we’d find you someday.”

“Dead?”

He swallowed. “What else was there to think? You left all your

weaving behind.”

“I just decided to stay here. I love the peace here. It’s so quiet.”

It wasn’t. Not at the moment. Someone had started to sing, and

three kids were laughing and skipping stones into the dark ocean and squealing from time to time. But there weren’t any horns honking or sirens fading into the distance. He swallowed, off balance again at the strangeness of seeing Justine and at the roaring fire and the time shift. “I don’t understand any of this.”

She reached down and took the broken bit of butterfly from him.

“Gisele can fix this.”

“Who’s Gisele?”

“I was just talking to her. Want to meet her?”

He swallowed. “Not yet. I’m not ready to move yet.”

She smiled and put a hand on his knee. He could feel her warmth