The Mall Page 39

  In the real world, the horror wasn’t always so obvious.

  Chapter 3 (Sunday, September 27th)

  Turned out Claudia didn’t always wear black.

  She showed up at our house wearing jeans and a faded dark blue shirt with a caption which read: “Brucie’s Drive-Thru Mortuary.” And on the back: “Eternal Rest Shouldn’t Take All Damn Day.”

  Mom squinted at the shirt. No reaction. She then looked Claudia in the eye and actually asked, “That’s not a real place, is it? It’s a joke shirt, right?”

  Claudia looked at me and said, “I don’t care what you say. Your mom has not lost her sense of humor.”

  While I protested my innocence, Mom gave me a shove. “Now see. That’s the Claudia I remember. Always instigating.”

  Mom gave Claudia a fierce hug and Claudia seemed to hold on a minute longer after Mom loosened her grip. I thought I actually saw Mom drag a heel across her face as she turned back to unloading the dishwasher. Claudia chose to ignore it.

  “Mother told me that you were working at the bank? How’s that going?”

  “It has its days. Good and better.” That was my mom, ranging from positive to manic. She had worked at Haven Secure Savings and Loan for the past four years as a loan officer. Both she and Dad had been raised to assume that a mother stays home with her children. Once I started school, she had made the decision to go back to work.

  Only recently had the concept of daycare become a reality in Haven. I’d once heard Old man Barrett tell my Dad, “We never needed any of that hippie crap until the summer of sixty-nine.” He then spat out the word, “Woodstock!” with the kind of revulsion reserved for the truly profane.

  Mom had eventually taken a job from friends of the family that owned the bank when the stresses of Dad’s job and being alone in the house had become too much to bear. Raising a son like me must have been tough, but being alone was a much harder chore. Ironically, now that Dad had retired, he was the one alone most of the day while Mom worked, but somehow he didn’t seem to have as much of a problem finding things to do around the house. Maybe it was that inherently male thing that allows us to get along autonomously without social interaction that kept Dad busy.

  Or maybe it was the long “honey-do” lists that Mom gave Dad every week.

  “So where’s Dad?” Claudia then asked Mom.

  Though Dad owned two trucks, he spent more time with the least reliable of the two, a 1975 Ford Wrangler. In Texas there are two kinds of men. Chevy lovers and Ford lovers. Leave it up to Dad to come up with a third option: A Chevy lover who nonetheless owns a Ford as well, just so he can prove to Ford owners just how screwed-up their trucks really are.

  One of the favorite pastimes we shared as father and son was coming up with new and more creative acronyms, which included such gems as: Fix Or Repair Daily; Fast Only Rolling Downhill; Fails On Race Day; Found On Road Dead; and his personal favorite lately has become: Foulin’ up Our Retirement Daily.

  He wore his martyrdom like a badge of honor and worshipped in the two-car temple of oil-stains every Saturday and Sunday morning, cursing at the top of his lungs every time someone within earshot passed on the street just to get his point across. This morning I believe he was completing air-intake manifold transplant surgery and was just closing up.

  Claudia folded her arms and watched him for a good sixty seconds before he noticed that he had an audience. “Laudie Laudie, it’s Claudie.” He scooped her up in his arms and, after he’d set her down, gave a single swat to her bottom for good measure. After he had done it, he must have realized from the blush on her face that such displays were past the age of acceptability for a sixteen year old girl, because that was when he really started in on her. He asked her about the boy situation in DFW and about whether or not she had a boyfriend yet, etc. etc.

  Dad was never the type to alter his personality for appearances sake. He would have said, “I am who I am and who my father was before that. If someone doesn’t get me, then the hell with them.”

  Just the same, the spectacle of my father teasing a teenage girl just because he knew her well enough to know what bugged her embarrassed me, so I decided to go spot-clean my car.

  A 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix. Cadillac Green. V-6. A/C. Power windows. AM/FM Cassette. Oh, I even had a 10 CD changer installed in the trunk in July. My baby. My first car.

  “What the hell is this?”

  I turned to find Claudia scowling at me.

  “This is how you’re getting to Austin and, if you stop right now, how you’ll be getting back home.”

  Claudia stuck her head inside the cab and wrinkled her pointy little witch nose. “What’s that smell? Is that hot sauce?”

  “I’m getting it. Just hold your horses.” I grabbed up a handful of taco wrappers and shoved them into the garbage bag I was carrying.

  Before I could stop her, Claudia sprayed something into the seat cushions.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  She held up the can to me. “Strong enough for a man but made for a woman.”

  I stuck my nose into the headrest of my imitation velour seat. One whiff and I cringed. “Oh yeah. This is much better.”

  “It stinks! I’m not riding in a stinky car!”

  I begrudgingly collapsed behind the wheel, making a conscious effort to breathe through my mouth. I lowered the windows. “I guess you know that we’re going to have to ride all the way to Austin with the windows down now.”

  As we drove away, I glanced up in my rear-view mirror and caught a parting glimpse of Mom and Dad standing just inside the shadow of the garage, arms linked around each other’s waists with enormous smiles on their faces.

  Parents.

  ***

  Very little conversation took place on the way to Eerie’s. After perusing my CD collection and finding it severely lacking, Claudia cranked up the hard rock station out of Austin, playing groups with names like “Ludicrous Confusion” and “Toxic Dogs”-- the ones that were more concerned with the volume of the distortion than with lyrics. It was clear she didn’t want to make small talk.

  When we got there, she leapt from the car like a kid at the gates of an amusement park and disappeared inside. I didn’t see her again for another fifteen minutes. In that time, I made my way methodically up one side of the first aisle, turned and went down the opposite side of the same aisle. After I was sure I didn’t miss anything, I started on the second aisle. Such is my way. Not only do I have to look over the whole store item by item, but I have to do it completely before I even start selecting my purchases. I’d brought a notebook along just to make sure I wouldn’t forget anything, making a note of the price in the margin when I found a close match.

  The items get pricier as you get deeper into the store. The first aisle was mostly the cheap stuff, mostly because it was the closest to the door and most at risk of being shoplifted. Make-up kits. Individual pieces of costumes. Hats and stockings and wigs. There was a complete aisle dedicated to plastic hand-held accessories: swords, axes, maces, spiky balls on chains, broomsticks, scepters, plastic crucifixes. The bulk of the warehouse is made up of costumes. Kids costumes. Adult costumes. Funny costumes. Scary costumes. Sexy costumes.

  The latex masks were behind a manned counter along the rear wall of the store. The yard decorations including the smoke machines (which I spent a little time comparing) and the plastic caldrons were toward the left hand wall. The coffins and the electronic gizmos that creaked and screamed and leapt out at you down the right hand wall. These have riveted me since childhood. I found it physiologically impossible to pass a label marked “press me” without following the instruction. I was such a sucker for a welcoming red button that they could’ve put one on the far side of a guillotine and I would have reached through the frame just to press the damn thing.

  But the things that have always fascinated me the most are the dioramas with the moving parts, the little miniature towns with ghosts hovering over graveyards and witches riding brooms
over haunted castles and the little lights going off and on behind windows and the cheesy sound effects.

  Oddly enough, this was where I found Claudia.

  She had that glassy-eyed intensity that I suppose I must have, like she was trying to solve some sort of mystery the scene had posed.

  She straightened visibly when I sidled up beside her and that brief evidence of a childlike sparkle in her eye disappeared. Her eyes seized on my notebook.

  “What’s that?”

  “My shopping list.”

  She grabbed it out of my hand and glanced through it. “You have got to be kidding me? You drew a blueprint of your house and yard? And I have the reputation of being the weird one. Life has a certain irony.”

  She started away with my notebook in her hand.

  I raced after and snagged it back.

  “What are you planning to do with all of this?”

  “Decorating for Mom’s Halloween party. She has one for all the neighborhood kids every year.”

  “When you say ‘kids,’ do you mean those young enough to get nightmares from the Disney version of ‘Legend of Sleepy Hallow’?”

  “Kids. Yeah. Little kids. It’s a tradition with her. She always thought that there weren’t enough kid-friendly activities for them to do, so ...”

  Claudia grabbed an unattended basket that was sitting at the end of an aisle. “And this is what you do every year?”

  “Well, yeah, since I can’t trick or treat anymore, I’ve poured my energies into scaring the crap out of the newbies. It’s how I give back.”

  Claudia shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  “I’m going to a séance.”

  “Yeah right! Your mother would never let you…”

  Claudia swung around and nearly collided with me. “She doesn’t know, so the story is I’m going to be with you and your family at this thing.”

  “Hey, it’s your funeral, but if she comes calling over there, don’t think I’m going to lie for you or anything.” I scoffed and started past her down the next aisle. “I’m going to be at the party witnessing the fruits of my labor.”

  “What a way to spend Halloween!” she replied, running with the basket and hopping up on the bottom rail and sailing past me. “Fine, but what are you doing after this blowout party?”

  I reached out and jerked the basket to a stop, before it hit a couple of ten year olds dashing around the corner. “Scaring the daylights out the kids who show up at the door,” I told her proudly. “Though, I haven’t figured out if I’m going to reprise my vampire from last year or go with zombie makeup.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” When I didn’t answer, she just shook her head at me and started up the next aisle. “Okay, I’m not promising you anything, but maybe I can talk the others into letting you come to the séance. That way it wouldn’t be total bullshit when I tell her that I’m with you.”

  I looked up at her to gauge her sincerity. “Back it up. What makes you think I’d go along with this?”

  Claudia leveled her dark eyes at me. I felt a momentary weakness that I’d never felt before.

  “You don’t seem totally hopeless, Paul. I figure you could hang with me and my friends.”

  “What friends?”

  “Friends.” She started away again.

  I pushed the basket after her. “From Dallas?”

  “Of course. Where else would I find cool people? The village of Haven?” She gave an ironic laugh of dismissal. She stopped at the smoke machine display and chose the one I’d already decided to get. “This one has a timer and a remote.” She set it in the basket and snagged the list from me again. “What else you got here?”

  I moved on, pushing the basket in front of me and wondered if I was going to cave in or stand my ground. I was curious, I had to admit. A séance. What went on at those things?

  Claudia followed behind, making little mewing sounds when she approved of something on the list and blowing raspberries when she didn’t.

  “Okay Okay. Give me the damn thing.”

  “You’re going to need my help if you want this thing to kick ass.”

  “What are you talking about? My vision is perfect. I’ve had years of experience.”

  “See, this is your problem. You’ve got this thing too fixed in your mind. Anybody who’s been over on previous years will know where to expect the scares. Just like a bad horror movie that telegraphs exactly where the cat will jump out.”

  She was starting to make sense.

  “First of all, I don’t see anything for the entryway. You’ve got to punch up the entryway because it’s the first thing they’ll see when they enter. It sets the whole tone of the evening.”

  “I figured the porch and the yard…”

  “The porch and the yard should be the appetizer. Something to whet their appetites. The main course will be the living room. You guys have that amazing chandelier that we could play with and tons of electrical outlets.” It was the first time I recognized excitement on her face. For a moment, she looked nothing like the girl I saw writing elegies in the stadium bleachers a week ago. She looked like an excited teenage girl. I felt that peculiar weakness in the pit of my stomach again and chalked it up to hunger pangs.

  “This might turn out to be fun after all,” she said, punching me on the arm. “Let’s go shopping.”

  When we left the store, we were two hundred and sixteen dollars lighter. Mom had contributed one hundred. I added another. Claudia was good enough to fork over the change.

  On the way home, we didn’t need the CD’s. Our plans for Halloween were all we could talk about. The way Claudia was tossing around ideas, I had little doubt that she had thought about this before.

  “I’ve always wanted to open up a private Spook House maze,” I confessed enthusiastically.

  “It’s called a Haunt,” she corrected. “If I ever designed one, mine wouldn’t be the ridiculous one-size fits all maze where lines of people are packed into narrow hallways like cattle into a chute. Those things never scared me beyond the age of five because I could always tell behind which corner the idiot in the costume would be hiding.”

  I had to agree there. “Yeah, those things never work.”

  “Not the way they have them set up. If you want a maze to work, you have to think outside the box. You have to make it interactive.”

  “It’s been done, y’know.”

  She gave me a look consisting of one part interested, one part leery. “What? Don’t tell me you know someone who’s done it?”

  “Not personally, but I heard about this millionaire guy in Austin, who throws this big private party every other Halloween at his mansion,” I told her. “It’s all interactive, y’know, like Dungeons and Dragons. Only thing is, you can’t buy your way in. You have to be invited. Some people wait in line for weeks just to get a chance.”

  Her eyes went out of focus and she stared out into space. Oddly enough, she started humming some familiar tune in the back of her throat.

  “Yeah, getting an invite is like finding the golden ticket in a Wonka bar,” I murmured, scrutinizing her carefully. Finally, I gave up trying to ignore her and asked, “Is that the bass line of ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper?’”

  She picked up the string of the previous conversation, completely ignoring my question, “But for a Haunt like that to work, there has to be the threat that you could be hurt. Everybody knows that in those typical Haunts those idiots with the costumes aren’t allowed to touch the customers.”

  “Yeah, but now you’re edging out into actual reality. If you can be hurt, then it’s no longer a game. It’s life.”

  “Bingo.”

  “That’s hair-brained. Do you have any idea what insurance for a type of operation like that would cost, if you could find anyone at all to back it, that is?”

  “But see, you’re missing the point. Nothing would actually happen, but they have to believe that it might. Just like that old B-movie ‘the Shocker.’ The producers wired s
ome of the theater seats up to a small electric current…”

  “No way!”

  “…Then started the rumor that there was a creature loose in the audience. Can you imagine the buzz a movie like that would generate nowadays?”

  “Hell, the lawyers wouldn’t let a producer get away with that now.”

  Claudia sat in silent contemplation for a few moments before asking, “Who is this millionaire guy?”

  “Oh, Folliott? He’s the guy who designed that video game Oberon. Not even thirty yet, he’s like one of richest people in Texas, and he’s not even in the oil business.”

  “And he still does this every other Halloween?”

  “No, he stopped it after 2001,” I said with melancholy in my voice.

  “Nine-eleven ruined everything,” Claudia agreed.

  ***

  When we got home, it was all I could do to keep Claudia from cracking open the boxes and start setting everything up that very evening. I convinced her that it would be more prudent to start next Saturday, so we could have the whole day. To my surprise, she suggested that we get together to discuss the plans on Friday night. When I explained that I was playing varsity games with the band every Friday night, she threw up her hands. “You over-achievers really piss me off,” she exclaimed. We agreed on Thursday night, since I wasn’t scheduled to work at the grocery that week.

  Mom invited Claudia to stay for dinner and let drop that she was preparing lasagna on Saturday, which happened to be Claudia’s favorite.

  The atmosphere during the meal was peculiar. I didn’t care for the way Mom was assessing Claudia and I, almost as if she were trying to catch us at something. Dad, on the other hand, seemed his same indifferent self.