by B.B. Garin
Last night, it came from the woods. Matted and musty with sour dog breath. Talia’s as prepared as she can be for it. It’s been dragging sticky, licorice-black shadows through the house for months. She’d almost feel sorry for it, like the bear she saw caught in a torn, steel-wire fence on a nature documentary, but she can’t quite. That’s not how these things work. Talia is seven, and she knows the rules.
Rule #1: Tips of toes only in the morning, Momma is sleeping.
Rule #2: Wednesdays are red. Which means last year’s corduroy jumper. More a bruised pink, but it’ll have to do.
Rule #3: Bad things come from the woods. They creep out when your eyes are closed.
Talia’s biggest brother walks her to the bus stop, even though she tried to explain three weeks ago, when school started, that she’s seven now, and Rule #4 is: Don’t be a baby. He says if he doesn’t walk with her first thing in the morning, he’ll wind up sitting on the back step smoking. He doesn’t want to be a smoke monster anymore. Talia has a vague idea that smoking kills and a clear idea that monsters do, so she lets him walk with her. It’s for his own protection.
“Did you sleep alright?” he asks. He’s careful, her biggest brother. He never talks about the woods directly.
She wants to be quiet and clever when she gets bigger too, so she nods. She did sleep for a teensy bit, so it’s not a lie (Rule #7: No lies), and she feels proud and important when he smiles at her, his shoulders relaxing, straightening his tall body from the invisible threads that pull him down.
“Can we have nuggies for dinner?” she asks. Her brother has pink spots on his wrists from the friers at McDonald’s—little freckle burns. He let her play connect the dots with them once, but the permanent marker didn’t wash off right away, and his boss was angry when he came to work all scribbly the next day.
“No,” Trev tells her, like he always does.
“Please?”
“Un-uh. You know the rules.”
Rule #6: Never, ever, until the universe is imploding, eat at McDonald’s.
Trev’s been inside the golden arches, and he knows things, but Talia still thinks it’s the worst rule.
“Besides,” he says, too brightly now, so Talia knows to hold her breath for what’s coming. “Mom said she’d cook tonight.”
Talia keeps holding her breath, letting her eyes fill with fuzzy, white balloons until the bus stop swims into view, and she lets it all out with a just-passed-the-graveyard woosh.
Ms. Winters hands back their spelling tests as soon as their allegiance has been pledged. There’s a big smiley face and the number 10 circled three times at the top, even though Talia spelled “science” wrong. She did it on purpose, to test Ms. Winters. Talia’s second grade teacher always gets a sad mouth when she looks at her, the corners of her lips buckling, revealing the cracks where the pink lipstick doesn’t reach. Talia has yet, in three weeks of learning, to be marked down for anything. She suspects there’s a rule against this, but she doesn’t know which one, so she can’t tell Ms. Winters.
Her second-best friend, Missy, peers over her shoulder, then snaps the strap of Talia’s jumper.
“No fair,” she whispers.
A quick glance reveals Missy has earned an 8 (no smiley face). But her red’s impeccable from her ladybug headband down to her Keds—all shiny-apple new. That’s why they have to stick together: Missy has the style, and Talia has the smarts.
“She’s cheating,” Talia whispers back.
Missy swivel-eyes the room. “Who?”
“Ms. Winters.”
“But it’s her test?”
“Exactly.” Talia nods and faces forward again because Ms. Winters is clapping her hands three times, and while she won’t make Talia sit in the quiet corner, she will make Missy, and Talia doesn’t want Missy to get in trouble.
Talia likes school, but she liked it better last year before the woods and the sad lips and the unearned smiley faces. She’s relieved when Ms. Winters asks her to wait in the classroom while the other kids line up for lunch in the hall. She thinks Ms. Winters might admit she made a mistake and at least subtract a circle from the top of Talia’s test. Then, things would be right and fair again.
But instead, she asks Talia what time she goes to bed, and when she gets up, and if she has scary dreams. She asks if her mother is coming to parent-teacher night next week. Talia twists her fingers in her jumper and follows Rule #7.
“My brother’s coming.”
Ms. Winters pulls back, eyes smacked wide. Then she gives a sputtering, high laugh, like rain tickling a broken window. “Yes. Of course, your brother. You have an older one, don’t you?”
“My biggest,” Talia confirms.
“Good. That’s good,” Ms. Winters says, but she’s staring over Talia’s head at the back of the classroom, which Talia knows is empty. She knows this because she’s not asleep, and the woods are a whole bus ride away. The only things in the back of the classroom are the giant world map, the fake fruit stand where they’re going to learn about buying things, and the stacks of brown and orange construction paper waiting to become pumpkins when the time is right.
“Can I go to lunch now?” Talia asks.
“Yes. Of course. Thank you, Talia.”
Ms. Winters smiles without smiling and moves to let Talia slip out from between her desk and chair. Talia is weedy and doesn’t really need much room, but Ms. Winters gives her lots. Talia pretends this is because she’s a princess, and royal personages must not be crowded. Not because she lives in a house that reeks of the woods. If she only thinks it in her head, it’s not a lie. It’s not breaking the rules to pretend.
Talia holds her breath in five long stretches after school while the buses pull away, and the other kids dash to the stream of waiting cars. When her mother doesn’t appear in the pick-up line, Talia gets in Missy’s mother’s Subaru. Missy’s mother always cycles through the pick-up line twice—once for Missy, once for Talia. Sometimes, Talia’s mother will be there, and Missy’s mother will have wasted her time, but she never complains about that. She never asks Talia to get in the first time, either. She always lets Talia wait until the end, even when there are only a few cars left behind Missy’s and Talia can already see that none of them are coming for her. Talia suspects—though she doesn’t know for sure yet—that the world needs a lot more Missy mothers. Like a whole army load.
Missy lives two corners from Talia, with the same tangle of trees behind her house. Missy’s house is smaller, which makes it less empty. Talia wonders sometimes if that’s why Missy’s family doesn’t have trouble from the woods. All those half-played boardgames and funny pillows and muddy paw prints block up the paths, so nothing can creep through the in-between places.
Two big trees stand guard out back before the real woods solidify at the edge of the yard. Slashes of red show through like scabbed scratches. Brown leaves crinkle in the wind from the big oak with the tire swing. The tree’s not part of the woods, so it’s safe, though Talia thinks it must be lonely standing close enough to smell all the other trees and not close enough to touch them.
Talia takes care not to step on any of the oak’s leaves, she doesn’t want to insult the poor thing, but Missy crunches across and threads herself through the tire, hanging by her stomach so her hair flops in a mess. Talia sits by the trunk, chewing an apple slice. Missy just licks the peanut butter off hers and leaves the fruit for the squirrels, and while Talia approves of feeding homeless animals, she likes to savor the sharp juice against her tongue more. The apples come from a store in a big red barn on the edge of town. They’re never squishy or spotted like the ones Trev brings home.
“Do you really think Ms. Winters cheats?” Missy asks, dragging her toes in the rut beneath the swing, dusting her red shoes.
“I know so.”
“What are you going to do?”
Talia shrugs, snapping through her last apple slice. She knows there’s nothing she can do, not really. She’s seven, and she knows the rules.
Rule # 8: Grown-ups get their own rules.
Rule #9: Never go barefoot. The grass is sharper than it looks, even though Ty always dug his naked toes in deep.
Rule #10: Don’t talk about Ty.
“What do you want to play?” Missy asks. She’s flipped over in the swing, staring at the sky now as she kicks in a circle, twisting the rope.
Talia considers it seriously because it’s a serious question. At school, everyone thinks Missy is the leader, but really, it’s Talia who has the ideas. She doesn’t mind that no one knows this. It feels like a secret between her and Missy, and it’s necessary to have secrets with a best friend. Besides, only Missy knows that most of Talia’s ideas were Ty’s first.
Missy picks her feet up, and the rope unfurls, sending her spinning with a whirly shriek. The branch grunts, but it doesn’t bend. Talia asks for a turn, and Missy helps her push the swing around and around, sky braiding above her. But when they let go, the tire swoops and judders, shaking Talia out on the ground. She feels the earth pulling her down, dirt grainy and warm in her ear. Then, Missy is tugging her up, brushing leaves from her jumper, asking if she saw any stars and if she wants to try again. Talia shakes her head.
The wind picks up, and all the reaching trees at the edge of the yard make a noise, like a hundred spelling tests being balled up and tossed in the air. The spaces between the branches shift, cutting new shapes out of the shadows beyond. For a minute, Talia lets herself pretend she’s a brave girl. Or maybe just a bigger one. Someone who knows all the rules. And isn’t afraid to break them.
Here are the things Talia does before bed: She kisses her mother’s cheek. Sometimes, her mom even smiles. She brushes her teeth. She reads to Trev; he won’t sleep if she doesn’t. She checks that her window is locked. She takes out the nightlight Trev plugged in; it won’t make a difference, and she doesn’t like Snow White. (Everyone knows to only eat apples from trusted sources.) She opens Ty’s pocket knife and slides it under her pillow next to the flashlight.
It comes after midnight with thick, clomping steps. The room fills with the smell of leaves and rot. Talia used to like that smell, the prickles of fall and Trick or Treat. Now, she wrinkles her nose and curls her fingers around the knife. Her thumb feels small in the groove Ty left behind.
It lingers in the doorway. It knows the window is locked, so it has to creep through the house, bottom to top, kitchen to den to stairs, then inch by inch down the hall, pausing to breathe beneath each door. Talia’s room is where it always stops. Ty’s room is past hers, but it never goes there. Ty left a lot of empty places in the house, soft spots where Talia can feel the ground sucking at her heels, but Ty’s room is the black hole threatening to swallow girls and monsters alike.
Talia’s door whispers open an inch as if teased by a draft. She curls her whole body into a fist, waiting, but nothing happens: A long breath, heavy with musk, a small sound like a bird tangled in the underbrush, and then, nothing.
The door is still an inch too open when Talia beams the flashlight at it, so she knows she wasn’t dreaming. But it’s gone. There’s only the plain shadows of the hall and the blood rivering down her thumb from where it slipped on the knife.
Trev comes back from parent-teacher night with a new speckle of burns on his wrist and a tub of ice cream. It’s chocolate with thick veins of peanut butter that have gone gooey. Talia stirs it down to soup and drinks it one spoonful at a time. Trev swirls his own bowl, but he doesn’t eat much.
“Tal, do you like your teacher?” Trev asks, slowly.
It’s against the rules to lie, so Talia takes a really big slurp of melty, sweet ice cream and gums her mouth shut with peanut butter.
Trev nods, as if she answered anyway. He’s staring out the window over the sink. They can’t see the woods from their angle at the table and it’s too dark besides, early autumn night stealing up. But the trees still fill his eyes.
“What did she say about me?” Talia asks.
“That you’re smart and polite, and…” Trev tilts his head, biting his lip.
His hair falls across his eyes, disguising him. For a sliver, he’s someone else, someone younger who slinks in the backdoor way past his bedtime and never lets his littlest sister in his room. She never finds out what else Ms. Winters had to say about her, because the front door smacks, and the hall creaks, and they both twist around to see if their mother will appear.
She does, sag-shouldered and thin. She doesn’t smile at her children, and they don’t smile at her. She seems to be deciding if she knows who they are or if this is the right house. Talia wonders if she’s ever done that, pushed open their neighbor’s door by mistake and curled up in Mr. Humphrey’s bed with Salamander the cat. She wonders if her mother was disappointed to be Goldilocksed out the door, back to sticky-faced children with melting ice cream instead of just-right porridge and a warm tabby.
“You’re dressed up?” she says to Trev, words dropping slowly from her mouth.
He tugs at the fat knot in his tie, dragging it halfway down his chest. It’s the same one he wore to prom two years ago—a bright, eye-smacking blue. The same one he wore to Ty’s funeral. It’s the only one he owns, and Talia knows he only put it on again for her, so he’d look like the sort of person who’s supposed to be at a parent-teacher night. He hates that tie. “Nothing good has ever happened to me while wearing a tie,” he once told her. That was the day they had to go to the big, bug-eyed building downtown and tell the lady with wiry hair and pudgy fingers that they wanted to live with Momma. Just Momma.
“Talia had a thing at school,” Trev says now, a careful dance around the word “parent.”
“Oh.” Their mother surveys the bowls, the drippy spoons, the light fixture above their heads. “Was it nice?”
“It was good.” Trev aims half a smile at Talia. “Everything’s good.”
“Good.”
“Do you want some dinner, Mom?”
“No. That’s alright.”
“I already made you a plate.”
“Thanks, honey. Maybe later.”
Talia lets her spine untwist. It feels good, all the kinks popping loose as she spins back to her dessert. She scrapes her spoon around the bowl, collecting a last drizzle of chocolate. She doesn’t want it, but she licks it off anyway, tasting more metal than sweet. Behind her, Momma doesn’t move.
All her mother’s bits and bobs have gone wonky inside, she doesn’t tick along all well-oiled and planned like she used to. Talia knows she’s supposed to be nice and pretend not to notice. But mostly, she wants to be somewhere else. When Trev gets up and puts their mother in his chair while he pulls a plate from the fridge, Talia scoots forward until her toes tip against the floor. And when her mom pats Talia’s hand in time to the microwave beeps, she slithers out and away, creeping like she came from the woods.
*
Trev asks Talia three bus walks in a row what she wants to be for Halloween. She shrugs each time. She doesn’t feel like a princess or a pirate or a witch. Last year, she was a ghost in swirly gray with white paint on her face. Ty was a ghost hunter stalking her with a cardboard cross and silver chains. But now, Ty’s the ghost, and his black coat’s too big, the boots with the ectoplasm slime too heavy. She can’t be his hunter. She’d never find him.
“It’s alright. I’ll help you hand out the candy,” she tells her biggest brother.
Trev frowns. “Don’t you want to go with Missy? What’s she going to be?”
Missy is going to be Ellie from Jurassic Park, because girls can be blonde and know things and still kick a raptor’s butt. Talia thought about being a T-rex because she imagines it’s satisfying to bite tires off a jeep, but it also seems like it might hurt her teeth. Besides, she doesn’t want to be abandoned at the end.
“Missy’s going to her cousin’s neighborhood.” Talia says this like it means she can’t go too, which it doesn’t. Missy invited her weeks ago. But it’s not a lie. She’s stuck to the facts.
Trev narrows his eyes like he has doubts about her veracity. “Well, I’ll take you.”
“What about our candy?”
“Mom can—We’ll leave a bowl on the step. We won’t go far.”
“Someone will take it.”
“No, they won’t.” He bumps her shoulder. “That’s against the rules.”
Talia musters a small smile. Trev smiles back, but he puts a hand on her arm, stopping her before they reach the knot of bus waiters.
“Seriously, Tal. We should go out. It’s right.”
He’s saying a lot of things without saying them, her biggest brother.
He’s saying, Halloween was Ty’s favorite holiday.
He’s saying, It’s the day before Ty would’ve turned fourteen.
He’s saying he knows how much Talia misses her middlest brother who was also her first-best friend, even though he was a boy and too old and should’ve been disqualified.
He’s saying he knows this was supposed to be their lucky year—Talia seven, Ty double sevens. And Ty would still want it to be lucky for her.
Trev’s saying he’s sorry Ty followed him to the woods. He’s sorry Ty thought the pills were cool. He’s sorry it wasn’t him.
He says all this without a word, standing on the sidewalk in the bright October sun while the bus coughs past leaving a trail of black smoke. It tastes bitter and sooty.
“Come on,” Talia says, tugging Trev’s hand. “I’ll miss it.”
Trev sighs and follows her. Talia squeezes his hand before letting go, and he squeezes back.
So, the Eve of All Hallows. Ty’s fourteenth birthday eve. Except Ty’s stuck at thirteen. Forever unlucky.
Talia’s a ghost again. She’s decided to be a ghost forever. When she gets too big for the dress Ty helped her tatter and gray, she’ll get another, and every year on this day of days, she’ll paint her face to match. Then, if Ty comes looking for her, she’ll be easy to find.
Trev has painted his face too, icing white with big black rings around the eyes. He’s cut some holes in an old t-shirt, shrugged into a loose suit jacket and clumsily knotted his evil tie. So there they are, dressed for a party that’s lasted too long and will never end.
Their mother doesn’t see them as they leave. She hasn’t come out of her room today. Trev sets a plate outside her door and a bowl of candy on the front step. Offerings for unhappy spirits.
They circle the neighborhood, Talia’s bag growing fat. Dressed and painted, no one’s lips waver when they see Talia. Grownups don’t shake their heads and frown at Trev. No one asks about their mother. They’re one with the roving carnival, the shouts and squeals and imagined terrors of the night. Even Ms. Winters doesn’t sag smile when Talia rings her doorbell. Tonight, Talia’s just another girl playing pretend with grief.
The rules are bendy on Halloween night. Everyone wearing someone else’s face. The night louder than the day. Trev even brought home chicken nuggies for dinner. And Talia begins to wonder what else might bend on this night of nights, when the world feels most true.
“I’m cold,” she says.
Trev shakes his head, smiling through his paint. “I told you to wear a coat.”
“Ghosts don’t wear coats.”
“Ghosts don’t get cold.”
But he shrugs off his jacket and gives it to her. The sleeves dangle past her fingers like empty sock puppets. It doesn’t smell like frier grease and shaving cream, but like the smoke monster Trev used to be.
“Thanks, Trev.”
“No problem.”
“I mean thanks.” She waves her arms, sleeves flapping, taking in the night alive with death. “This was right.”
She’s learning how to say things back to her biggest brother without saying them. She’s saying, Thank you for not disappearing, too. She’s saying, I know you’re scared and sad and angry at yourself. I wish there were take-backs too, but not trades.
She’s saying, I forgive you.
Trev nods, a tight bob in his throat. “Are you ready to go home?”
Yes, yes she is. Her limbs are soft and heavy. And the night’s not done.
“Yeah,” she grins. “This is a lot of candy.”
At home, the bowl still holds a few handfuls of chocolates. The rule hasn’t been broken. Talia’s glad to see it. Trev brings it inside with them but leaves the light on, a gentle, moth-call yellow. Talia starts to go tips of toes but Trev frowns and waves her down.
He calls up the stairs, “We’re back! You won’t believe the haul Talia got.”
“Trev!” Talia whispers. “She might be sleeping.”
He shrugs. “She needs to wake up.”
There’s noise upstairs. Talia holds her breath. The noise stops. Their mother does not appear. Trev rubs the back of his neck. His fingers come away smudged white. Talia holds up her bag, gripping it with both hands through the sleeves of Trev’s jacket.
“Will you help me count it?”
Ty had a system. If followed correctly, candy could be rationed till Christmas.
“You bet,” Trev says. “But, I get a Reese’s percentage.”
Talia nods. It seems only fair. He braved the night with her.
It comes from the woods. But tonight—Hallow Night, Ty’s night—Talia goes to meet it.
There’s no way around it, she’s breaking the rules.
Rule #5: Stay away from the woods.
It’s not a rule that can be bent, even when everything else ribbons and turns. It can only be snapped in two—clean, sharp, and true.
She’s still a ghost, trailing her brother’s smoke. Maybe, that will make her harder to see. Maybe she’ll be mistaken for something that belongs here in the trees. In the dark, with the rustle of leaves and the smell of frost wrapped close about her, she almost thinks she could belong.
Something is following her. She feels it in the weight of her chest and the prickle of her skin. There are old things here. Old and mean—sap hard and bitter in their veins. They’re hungry for the young and tender, a mouthful of spring to remind them of how the world used to be.
Talia keeps going. She doesn’t quite know what she’s looking for, but she knows she has to be brave to find it. And then, she’s there. In the lair of the thing that comes from here. Bones of glass and plastic litter the trampled clearing around a gnarled tree, the kind that wants to trap the moon between its boughs. Its skin is scared. Cut with dozens of knives like the one in Talia’s pocket, leaving the flesh to weather and gray.
Talia shakes back her sleeves and presses both palms to the ancient bark. This is where it sleeps. But it’s not here now. The clock has ticked past midnight. The Eve of All Hallows is done. Ty’s never-birthday has begun.
It’s dangerous to wait in the woods while spirits make their long way home. It’s dangerous to go back where the thing may be peering through doors. But Talia’s been following the rules for long enough. It hasn’t saved her from danger. It hasn’t saved her from a broken heart.
She takes a deep, chest-shuddery breath, pressing her hands against the tree until her skin crackles.
She shouts, “Leave my family alone!”
Her voice swells through the woods and is snatched away. The night stretches, absorbing her heat. The wind pulls, begging her to disintegrate. She could circle the earth, nothing more than ashes and smoke. She rises on her toes, fingers scraping bark. Another inch, and she’ll lose all her gravity. The wind will have her, and she’ll spin forever. Then, she remembers Trev’s hand squeezing hers. His ghost grin, dashing with her from porch light to porch light. She plants her feet and shakes her head, hair whipping over her eyes.
The wind gives a final tug and flies on. The night settles in place. Something scurries through the underbrush. Birds remind her they were sleeping. Talia feels sorry and a little silly now, in her pale face with her loud words.
“Time to go home,” she mutters, dropping her hands. Her sleeves flop back. She’s starting to like the jacket, smoke monster breath and all. She may see how long Trev will let her keep it. If they’ll both forget it belongs to him at all.
She goes back faster than she came. The woods don’t seem so deep. Twigs don’t snag, and the leaves don’t crowd her ankles. Maybe she’s lighter, a piece of something twisty and tangled left behind. Maybe a moon-washed, brotherly hand helps her along.
In the morning, traces of white still clinging to her cheeks and Trev’s jacket over her pajamas, she tips of toes out her bedroom door. But, instead of turning right toward the stairs, she turns left, where she hasn’t even looked for months and months. Trev is already there outside Ty’s room, as if they’d planned it.
He shuffles his feet, looking sheepish. “I know it’s dumb, but I brought him a cupcake.”
He holds up a plastic container with a confetti-sprinkled cupcake inside. He’s clutching a blue-spiraled candle and a lighter in the other hand. Talia rolls back a sleeve to show the fistful of chewy candies carefully picked from her hoard—Ty’s favorites.
“Good,” Trev says. He sounds relieved, and Talia suddenly feels it too, a great sweep of a thing. “That’s perfect.”
“It’s right,” she says.
Trev’s fingers shake a bit on the doorknob, so she puts her hand over his and helps. The door opens. They go in.
Talia’s seven, and her brother is not fourteen today. She’s brought him thirteen pieces of candy anyway, because she knows the rules. And now, she knows how to break them.
B. B. Garin is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. Her chapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. She is a recipient of the Sara Patton Fiction Stipend from The Writer’s Hotel. Her work has appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Westchester Review, Luna Station Quarterly, and more. She earned a B.F.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, and continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels.