JACK KETCHUM

Gone

Seven-thirty and nobody at the door. No knock, no doorbell.

What am I? The wicked old witch from Hansel and Gretel.

The jack-o-lantern flickered out into the world from the window ledge, the jointed cardboard skeleton swayed dangling from the transform. Both there by way of invitation, which so far had been ignored. In a wooden salad bowl on the coffee table in front of her bite-sized Milky Ways and Mars Bars and Nestle’s Crunch winked at her reassuringly—crinkly gleaming foil-wrap and smooth shiny paper.

Buy candy, and they will come.

Don’t worry, she thought. Someone’ll show. It’s early yet. But it wasn’t.

Not these days. At least that’s what she’d gathered from her window on Halloweens previous. By dark it was pretty much over on her block. When she was a kid they’d stayed out till eleven—twelve even. Roamed where they pleased. Nobody was afraid of strangers or razored apples or poisoned candy. Nobody’s mother or father lurked in attendance either. For everybody but the real toddlers, having mom and dad around was ludicrous, unthinkable.

But by today’s standards, seven-thirty was late.

Somebody’ll come by. Don’t worry.

ET was over and NBC was doing a marathon Third Rock every half hour from now till ten. What Third Rock had to do with Halloween she didn’t know. Maybe there was a clue in the Mars Bars. But Third Rock was usually okay for a laugh now and then so she padded barefoot to the kitchen and poured herself a second dirty Stoli martini from the shaker in the fridge and lay back on the couch and picked at the olives and tried to settle in.

The waiting made her anxious, though. Thoughts nagged like scolding parents.

Why’d you let yourself in for this, idiot?

You knew it would hurt if they didn’t come.

You knew it would hurt if they did.

“You’ve got a no-win situation here,” she said.

She was talking to herself out loud now. Great.

It was a damn good question, though.

Years past, she’d avoided this. Turned off the porch light and the lights in the living room. Nobody home. Watched TV in the bedroom.

Maybe she should have done the same tonight.

But for her, holidays were all about children. Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve being the exceptions. Labor Day and the President’s days and the rest didn’t even count—they weren’t real holidays. Christmas. That was Santa. Easter. The Easter Bunny. The Fourth of July. Firecrackers, sparklers, fireworks in the night sky. And none was more about kids than Halloween. Halloween was about dress—up and trick or treat. And trick or treat was children.

She’d shut out children for a very long time now.

She was trying to let them in.

It looked like they weren’t buying.

She didn’t know whether to be angry, laugh or cry.

She knew it was partly her fault. She’d been such a goddamn mess.

People still talked about it. Talked about her. She knew they did. Was that why her house seemed to have PLAGUE painted on the door? Parents talking to their kids about the lady down the block? She could still walk by in a supermarket and stop somebody’s conversation dead in its tracks. Almost five years later and she still got that from time to time.

Five years—shy three months, really, because the afternoon had been in August—over which time the MISSING posters gradually came down off the store windows and trees and phone poles, the police had stopped coming around long before, her mother had gone from calling her over twice a day to only once a week—she could be glad of some things, anyhow—and long-suffering Stephen, sick of her sullenness, sick of her brooding, sick of her rages, had finally moved in with his dental assistant, a pretty little strawberry blonde named Shirley who reminded them both of the actress Shirley Jones.

The car was hers, the house was hers.

The house was empty.

Five years since the less than three minutes that changed everything.

All she’d done was forget the newspaper—a simple event, an inconsequential event, everybody did it once in a while—and then go back for it and come out of the 7-Eleven and the car was there with the passenger door open and Alice

wasn’t. It had occurred with all the impact of a bullet or head-on collision and nearly that fast.

Her three-year-old daughter, gone. Vanished. Not a soul in the lot. And she, Helen Teal, nee Mazik, went from pre-school teacher, homemaker, wife and mother to the three p ‘s—psychoanalysis, Prozac and paralysis.

She took another sip of her martini. Not too much.

Just in case they came.

By nine-twenty-five Third Rock was wearing thin and she was considering a fourth and final dirty martini and then putting it to bed.

At nine-thirty a Ford commercial brought her close to tears.

There was this family, two kids in the back and mom and dad in front and they were going somewhere with mom looking at the map and the kids peering over her shoulder and though she always clicked the MUTE button during the commercials and couldn’t tell what they were saying they were a happy family and you knew that.

To hell with it, she thought, one more, the goddamn night was practically breaking her heart here, and got up and went to the refrigerator.

She’d set the martini down and was headed for the hall to turn out the porch light, to give up the vigil, the night depressing her, the night a total loss finally, a total waste, when the doorbell rang.

She stepped back.

Teenagers, she thought. Uh-oh. They’d probably be the only ones out this late. With teenagers these days you never knew. Teens could be trouble. She turned and went to the window. The jack-o-lantern’s jagged carved top was caving slowly down into its body. It gave off a half-cooked musky aroma that pleased her. She felt excited and a little scared. She leaned over the windowsill and looked outside.

On the porch stood a witch in a short black cloak, a werewolf in plaid shirt and jeans, and a bug-eyed alien. All wearing rubber masks. The alien standing in front by the doorbell.

Not teenagers.

Ten or eleven, tops.

Not the little ones she’d been hoping for all night long in their ghost-sheets and ballerina costumes. But kids. Children.

And the night’s thrill—the enchantment even—was suddenly there for her.

She went to the door and opened it and her smile was wide and very real.

“Trick or treat!”

Two boys and a girl. She hadn’t been sure of the alien.

“Happy Halloween!” she said.

“Happy Halloween,” they chorused back.

The witch was giggling. The werewolf elbowed her in the ribs.

“Ow!” she said and hit him with her black plastic broom.

“Wait right here, kids,” she said.

She knew they wouldn’t come in. Nobody came in anymore. The days of bobbing for apples were long over.

She wondered where their parents were. Usually there were parents around. She hadn’t seen them on the lawn or in the street.

She took the bowl of candy off the coffee table and returned to them standing silent and expectant at the door. She was going to be generous with them, she’d decided that immediately. They were the first kids to show, for one thing. Possibly they’d be the only ones to show. But these also weren’t kids who came from money. You only had to take one look to see that. Not only were the three of them mostly skin and bones but the costumes were cheap-looking mass—market affairs—the kind you see in generic cardboard packages at Walgreen’s. In the werewolf’s case, not even a proper costume at all. Just a shirt and jeans and a mask with some fake fur attached.

“Anybody have any preferences, candy-wise?”

They shook their heads. She began digging into the candy and dropping fist—fuls into their black plastic shopping bags.

“Are you guys all related?”

Nods.

“Brothers and sister?”

More nods.

The shy type, she guessed. But that was okay. Doing this felt just right. Doing this was fine. She felt a kind of weight lifted off her, sailing away through the clear night sky. If nobody else came by for the rest of the night that was fine too. Next year would be even better.

Somehow she knew that.

“Do you live around here? Do I know you, or your mom and dad maybe?”

“No, ma’am,” said the alien.

She waited for more but more evidently wasn’t forthcoming.

They really were shy.

“Well, I love your costumes,” she lied. “Very scary. You have a Happy Halloween now, okay?”

“Thank you.” A murmured chorus.

She emptied the bowl. Why not? she thought. She had more in the refrigerator just in case. Lots more. She smiled and said Happy Halloween again and stepped back and was about to close the door when she realized that instead of tumbling down the stairs on their way to the next house the way she figured kids would always do, all three of them were still standing there.

Could they possibly want more? She almost laughed. Little gluttons.

“You’re her, right, ma’am?” said the alien.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re her?”

“Who?”

“The lady who lost her baby? The little girl?”

And of course she’d heard it in her head before he even said it, heard it from the first question, knew it could be nothing else. She just needed to hear him say it, hear the way he said it and determine what was there, mockery or pity or morbid curiosity but his voice held none of that, it was flat and indeterminate as a newly washed chalkboard. Yet she felt as if he’d hit her anyhow, as though they all had. As though the clear blue eyes gazing up at her from behind the masks were not so much awaiting her answer as awaiting an execution.

She turned away a moment and swiped at the tears with the back of her hand and cleared her throat and then turned back to them.

“Yes,” she said.

“Thought so,” he said. “We’re sorry. G’night, ma’am. Happy Halloween.” They turned away and headed slowly down the stairs and she almost asked them to wait, to stay a moment, for what reason and to what end she didn’t know but that would be silly and awful too, no reason to put them through her pain, they were just kids, children, they were just asking a question the way children did sometimes, oblivious to its consequences and it would be wrong to say anything further, so she began to close the door and almost didn’t hear him turn to his sister and say, too bad they wouldn’t let her out tonight, huh? too bad they never do in a low voice but loud enough to register but at first it didn’t register, not quite, as though the words held no meaning, as though the words were some strange rebus she could not immediately master, not until after she’d closed the door and then when finally they impacted her like grapeshot, she flung open the door and ran screaming down the stairs into the empty street.

She thought when she was able to think at all of what she might say to the police.

Witch, werewolf, alien. Of this age and that height and weight.

Out of nowhere, vanished back into nowhere.

Carrying along what was left of her.

Gone.