A Long Halloween.
This is a story I pulled from the archives specifically for the spooky season. It’s a little dusty but I love it even though it’s not perfect. I hope you enjoy it!
It’s Friday, October 28th and there is an empty table at the A.M. Café. On the table are two black accordion folders. Folders filled with paper that smell like an old library you could escape to. Half-eaten meals sit on either side of these folders. The coffee is still hot.
Divina Vargas is nine years old, a little chubby, but too young to care, and is staring at the table. She’s stopped coloring the grim reaper on her Halloween kids menu. The empty table holds her interest but she doesn’t know why. Through the large window next to the table Divina can see the avenue just outside filled with Children in masks.
Halloween is on Monday. Día de Muertos ends on Wednesday, so the dead get to party in the masks of la gente for six whole days. Something the teenagers, like Divina’s brother, Ray, are taking to their full advantage. She was looking for him from her seat when she noticed the table.
Weren’t there four pancakes stacked on that plate a moment ago? Now there are only three and a half. Why are the plates, full of hot food, just sitting there if nobody’s at the table? Lila, the waitress walks over to the table and pours more coffee in the cup without a drinker. Divina stares harder. She lets the giggles and screams that can be heard through vampire and werewolf masks slip from her mind. For a second she’s not jealous that her brother get’s to play outside the diner among the hectic preparations for the Halloween parade. She’s happy that she’s stuck in here with her mother. That way she can figure out what is so wrong with this table.
“The bambina over there is staring,” says one of the men at the table. “It’s hard enough to enjoy this American food without onlookers.”
“I don’t mind. If she wants to look, then she can look. That’s the beauty of it. She’ll forget when her smiley pancakes come, anyway.” The other man at the table says, trying to smile. It’s a hard day for him and his partner and the breakfast feast was supposed to boost their morale. They speak in Italian accents that no one at the diner can hear. They smack their lips and burp. They laugh too loud. It doesn’t matter, though. They belong to the Malebranche, the criminals of the mind. It doesn’t matter what the eye sees if the mind is made to forget it. And in this way, they make themselves invisible.
The first man looks at the little gordita staring at him, not realizing she is staring at him. His sadness takes him to angry thoughts, but her face looks hypnotized as if by a bright television. It’s the bit of dried orange juice on her huge cheeks that bring his kindness back and he smiles as he pulls at his dark, curly beard. It is thick and unkempt compared to his tight suit jacket and his tie. His partner and the rest of the Malebranche call him Barbariccia: Crazy Beard. He plays with this beard when he is sad, or needs to concentrate. At this moment, it’s both. He is reaching into the mind of Divina’s mother.
“My queen, what a beautiful coloring you are doing!” Says Divina’s mother. Normally, she’s too busy yelling at her son to acknowledge Divina, let alone compliment her. Divina’s little heart begins to race at the sudden and unexpected praise. “Why don't you finish up and we can put this scary guy on our fridge? Hurry up before your pancakes get here!”
Divina suddenly finds a collected creative center rare among artists. She devotes herself to her black crayon. Maybe one day this small interruption into the mnd of her mother will be enough of a push to make a great painter out of her. For now, she forgets the table and focuses on her coloring of Death with crayons: black and red and grey. She glances back to the table only once, maybe as an unknowing “thank you”. It’s enough to allow Crazy Beard some peace of mind. He can focus on his pancakes and his coffee and how much he misses his dead friend.
American coffee tastes like water and beans, their late partner, Ciriatto would always complain in the messages he sent from California back to Italy. That was before the messages stopped coming. The Wild Hog, as they called him, was sent on a simple extraction task before he was taken from them. His target was as a small, lonely American man who had a powerful mind that he did not know how to use. He was wasting it, and Wild Hog was sent to relieve him of it, to take it from him. But the little American man was protected, and before it was all over Ciriatto was hollowed out. Left for nothing. A vegetable on the street.
The life of this little American man was filed in the two accordion folders on the table. His complete history, anything worth having, they had. If it weren’t for this protector, a defector for the Malebranche, the American’s body would have met Ciriatto’s fate instead: Alive but mindless in the street, his power put toward greater uses. But the Lion, the protector/defector, and their old friend was a turncoat. He abandoned the Malebranche to protect people from the crimes of his former comrades and telepathic criminals. This is something both Crazy Beard and his partner find hypocritical. The Lion had hollowed out more victims than the rest of them combined before his change of heart.
“I would like to add something to the pile,” says Crazy Bead, “Knowing what we know now.” He pulls out another small folder and puts it on the table, next to the pile of two and a half pancakes. “It’s for you.”
The second man opens the file and frowns. “You hate me. It is too sad a day for jokes, Barbariccia.”
“My friend, I do not hate you. I am trying to look at the problem from a new angle. Please listen so that we can catch this pezzo di merda.” Crazy Beard pleads.
“You do hate me, but I will listen. First, I need more water-coffee.” The second man plays with his ring, he does this when he is thinking. The ring has the face of a lizard with two stones for eyes, inscribed on the inside is the word Draghignazzo: Nasty Dragon. As he fingers his ring, Lila the waitress walks over to the table and fills up his coffee, just as he silently commanded her to do. She doesn’t realize she’s doing this and nobody at the Diner notices either. Not even Divina. Lila will forget she’s been here the second she leaves the table. After seeing the Batman comic that is now lying on the table, she will keep this image in the back of her mind. She won’t know why, but she will think to call her younger brother, a comic enthusiast who lives far away, in a town less strange than this one.
“So, tell me about this fucking Batman.” Nasty Dragon is scared, and when he is scared his appetite also increases. He finishes off the pancakes while his partner talks. “Why do you bring me a children’s story, Barbariccia?”
“For Americans, this is high art, Nazzo!” All Crazy Beard gets is an angry smile, but it’s enough for him to press on. “Humor me. This is an action story no? Well, flip through the pages and stop the first time you see someone throw a punch.”
“Nasty dragon does as he’s told and stops a few pages before the comic ends. “He’s just spying on people from dark corners most of the time,” says the ringed man, surprised.
“That’s because he’s a detective first and a soldier second. The Lion we knew in the old country earned his name for a reason. He was not subtle. But here in America, he has learned to be small, maybe because he has to be. My point is, Wild Hog came here trying to catch a bat with a lion’s cage, so of course he slipped through the bars. Bit him in the night while he was sleeping.”
“And now we’re in a town where everyone will be masked for a week. We can’t stop the Lion if we can’t see his face. I can’t get into his mind if I can’t see his face, and my body is no match for his.” Nasty Dragon spoke calmly, but he cut his sausages a bit too harshly. He wouldn’t meet Crazy Beard’s eye either. “He could kill me with his bare hands, and all it would take is a fucking Batman mask!”
The face of a monster slams against the window. It screeches over the two seated men, who both yell out in a startled fear. The entire diner, which is under their control, jumps as well. Every patron, including the monster’s mother, feels the mind-mobster's fear coursing through their blood. The hair on the backs of a dozen necks stands up and several people scream.
“Ray! Cállate! Come in and eat your food!” Divina’s mother screams out. Divina cries, feeling the fear of two grown men being pumped into her mind. But she stops when she notices the comic below her brother on the table, just inside the window. He probably wanted to steal it, she thinks.
Divina's brother takes off his swamp-thing mask and trudges inside, but he doesn’t see the two men sitting inches below him on the other side of the large glass window, and he never wil. Nasty Dragon knows he was only trying to frighten Divina, something he does far too often. This brat doesn’t know what it’s truly like to be afraid for your life. As punishment for his disrespect, both to Nasty Dragon and his own sister, Ray will know this fear tonight in his dreams. He will be tormented by a vision of his own mask eating his face from the inside and slowly overtaking his body and then his soul. Ray will choose to stay in on Halloween night.
“I think you should focus your energy on the real danger, Nazo. And not meddle with this child’s scheduled wet dreams.”
Nasty Dragon scarfs down another forkful of pancake and says “The Lion knows so much about us. Things a detective could use far better than a soldier. And now you’re saying he’s both, so how do we … not die? Do we leave the little American?”
Crazy Beard felt dishonored at the suggestion. He wouldn’t have survived in his line of work if he was a coward in the way Nasty Dragon was. He required absolute rigidity of mind, he couldn’t dally the way Nasty Dragon did, never sure of his own morality and always dancing around certain gray areas. He quickly forgave his partner, though. He had been raised less civilized and taught to think only of himself rather than his clan and family. That’s why Crazy Beard was his partner. Malacoda, their leader, was smart to put them together. The Dragon’s ingenuity was matched by Crazy Beard’s patience. “There’s a reason the American doesn’t know he’s protected.”
Nasty dragon smiles. “You’re right, the only thing more dangerous than a man who can do whatever he wants, is the man who doesn’t know he can do it,” the dragon muses “He knows he can’t get too close either, this little man could hollow out the Lion if he’s frightened.”
“Yes, he’s like a baby snake. So much venom he doesn’t know what to do with.”
Nasty Dragon laughs loudly, with a full mouth. “I’m going to call him Little Snake from now on.” Crazy Beard doesn’t smile, but he doesn't protest either. “So we’re in a stalemate then? Neither of us can touch him?”
“We don’t have to be the ones to touch him. If he’s distracted enough by something else…” Crazy Beard taps the window indicating the hectic preparations for the death parade outside. “It’s going to be a more precise operation than you are used to. I’ll be in the field running the game, you need to stay patient enough and be invisible through it all. So, just keep an eye on me and do nothing else.”
“Alright, fine, no problem my friend, I’ll stay patient.” He shoves a bit of toast in his mouth, but after a prolonged suspicious look from his partner he slams the table and says: “I said I’ll stay fucking patient! How are you going to pull it off?”
Crazy beard places his hands on one of the accordion folders. For a man of 35, Little Snake’s files are rather sparse. He’s been a psychiatrist at the same hospital for eighteen years. There are no records of him belonging to many clubs, no marriage certificates, or dependents on his taxes. Then he looks over at little Divina again. “He’s lonely. And it’s hard to say no to trick-or-treaters.”
Divina’s mother only stopped kissing her once to swat Ray on the back for frightening the whole diner and embarrassing her like that. The little girl was being praised for her use of white on grey crayon to make the scythe of the reaper shine and reflect. She tells her daughter she is going to frame it when they get home. Divina cannot enjoy this moment entirely though, she’s too curious about the table that is now, truly empty. Whatever she was looking for before has evaded her forever.
On their way out she walks by the table to look. The pancakes are gone! There are bits of food on the table and the seat, along with a coffee stained comic. Divina doesn’t care much for superheroes, but her brother Ray does. She knows he would love to have this and that’s why she rolls it up and keeps it for herself. As they leave, Ray pulls on Divina’s hair when she isn’t looking.
“Rayaa! I’m gonna tella! Stopa!” she yells, already exhausted by his overstocked testosterone.
“It wasn’t me Vivi, it was the invisible man.”
“No! I met him already and he gave me a present. Not you!” and she sticks her tongue out at her brother and he laughs with pity at his little sister. He feels guilty. He puts his monster mask back on and holds her hand as they walk across the street to the car. “I’m sorry gordita. Must have been a different invisible man.”
It’s October 31st and this is the plan: Little Snake is walking home from the hospital. He is walking down Willow Street, which has been closed to cars due to the parade. Because of this, the walk is unusually quiet. He is going to intersect with the parade he doesn’t yet know exists. To his right, a man in a suit, a tie, and a mask of lucifer. To his left, a 1973 Karmann Ghia, VolksWagen. The exhaust of the bright red car is loud. The brakes squeak as the car scoots along the sidewalk. The Driver wears a monkey mask with a rubber smile that he yells and curses through to the man in the Lucifer mask across from Little Snake. Divina Vargas is walking to meet her friends on Fern street, perpendicular to Willow street. Little Snake will pass Divina’s friends first, where they will give him a gift. Little Snake doesn’t know any of this.
“Say Trick’r’Treat!” Yells a voice too young to discern much from.
“Um… trick or treat,” says Little Snake, softly, as he turns around to meet the voice. He says it nervously. He’s angry at himself for being too eager to please, feeling compelled to the will of even children. Looking at them now, he sees a raven, the moon, a cat, and a pumpkin. There is a small white box in the moon’s hands. The raven takes it and walks it over to Little Snake, holding it out like an early Christmas present. This is when he hears a noise behind him.
A tiny robe and paper skull mask containing Divina Vargas runs up to meet her friends. She stops when she sees Little Snake turn around to look at her, startled.
“You’re the invisible man I saw today with my mom!” She says to Little Snake.
“What?” He says.
“I took your comic. You can have it back if you want.” She reaches in her sack and pulls out a folded Batman comic. She holds it out to him, Little Snake has no idea what to do. Crazy Beard, Invisible and standing less than a breath away from the small man looked at his partner in the car, which was close enough for Nasty Dragon to open the door and for Crazy Beard to push him in. But Little Snake, with all that venom he didn’t know how to use, was a time bomb, and extracting him required sensitivity, particularity, and no variables.
Divina is a variable, holding an artifact with a lot of stored emotional information. Batman Annual #14 had touched both Crazy Beard and Nasty Dragon and it might make them both visible to him the moment he touches it.
In an emergency reaction, the men slow down time by speeding up their perception of it in unison. Little Snake and Divina freeze, unable to finish their conversation. The autumnal leaves almost float as they fall, serving as a marker of how much real-time has passed. If they were to get sloppy, to lose their focus, they could spend years trapped within a millisecond.
“What do I do!?” Whispered Crazy Beard over Little Snakes’ shoulder. He didn’t need to whisper, but he did it anyway. Nasty Dragon gave his response in silence. Wait. Little Snake was a walking telekinetic nuclear bomb, and Divina Vargas was about to hand him the launch codes.
Crazy Beard had butterflies in his stomach. It reminded him of his days as an athlete. That feeling of being sick to the stomach before jumping in the water and racing like hell. It is a dreadful feeling and one he lives for. This is a feeling that men of his age didn’t often get and he is grateful for the terror he feels.
The comic book floats in front of her from behind her grim reaper robes. The monsters allow time to go back to it’s normal flow, waiting anxiously.
“You can keep it,” Little Snake says, confused but trying not to appear so.
“Thanks.” She twists her hips, letting them throw her arms up as she turns. Her mother always said she fidgeted too much. Crazy Beard sighs a sigh of relief. He didn’t make contact, the mission is still ago. Then, he plays with his beard a little, reaching into the mind of the little girl in the raven costume.
“Hey, Mister! Trick’r’Treat! It’s for you!” the Raven says, holding out the box even further. Little snake turns around, feeling compelled by Crazy Beard’s invisible whispers to take the box. And the Raven feels compelled to give it. Divina looks to the right and notices something she hasn’t before.
“Nevermind… YOU’RE the invisible man, aren’t you?” Divina is pointing at Crazy Beard.
“Looks like we have another Little Snake on our hands,” says Nasty Dragon in a doomed but amazed laugh. Divina sees the would-be kidnappers. Really sees them. This can only mean one thing: she has the same power and when she points her finger at them, she exposes them, ripping them out of their invisibility for all the world to see.
The bright red paint of the car is just as loud as the aging engine, Nasty Dragon doesn’t exactly blend in with the monkey mask he’s wearing. Their mission seems to be a bust, but just before all is lost, they are saved by the cataclysm of noise that comes marching down the street.
Drums clang. Trumpets explode. The death parade marches down an empty Avenue. As a distraction, they have been programmed to play extra verbose. Every tuba, every glockenspiel, plays earnestly for the attention of one man, hoping to trap him.
Nasty Dragon knows he is a coward when he throws the door open and reaches for Divina. After that, he stops thinking, he acts only in self-preservation. Hundreds of bright butterflies fly out of the eyes and teeth of his monkey mask. They head in an orange cloud toward Divina. There’s so many butterflies that she thinks she actually hears their wings flapping. To her, they are beautiful. She smiles as they surround her in spirals.
“Wait!” Says Crazy Beard. Everyone freezes, except the slowed flaps of orange monarch wings. Divina is a Little Snake, more valuable to Malacoda than the man he sent them here for, surely since she was able to spot them. He doubts that his impulsive friend is thinking about that though as he sends his mental death disguised as a cloud of butterflies toward her. In the timeless moment he has captured them in, flutes are stuck in mid-scream. Floats of deep greens and reds and haunted whites are scooting almost to a standstill. The masks the marchers are wearing take on life in this stillness. It’s in this same timeless moment that Crazy Beard has to decide what kind of a man he is. Does he save the little girl from the brain-death his partner is sending at her and protect himself, or does he stop his partner and sign his own death warrant?
Crazy Beard stretches this moment out as long as he possibly can, but he knows what he is going to do almost instantly. He hops in the driver's seat of the car and pulls Nasty Dragon inside by the throat. The killer butterflies disappear, the death parade marches on, and the children and Little Snake watch as the red little Italian car speeds away.
“He’s seen us. It won’t be long until the Lion reads his mind and finds us!.”
“Bastardo! What will that matter so long as I saved you from killing a little girl? From hollowing out an innocent?”
“She was so strong! The Little Snake saw us! It was us or her!”
“Then I choose her, you bastard!”
The tiny car screeches away and the two men leave the scene of their botched extraction. They are too distracted and too scared to realize that the little brown girl in a death mask is missing from the crowd. The fact that she could see them terrifies them both, they are not used to being seen when they don’t want to be.
“Wait, what do you want me to say again? I keep forgetting, sorry.” Divina Vargas asks the Lion from the back seat of the old car. She’s nervous because it’s her first time being invisible. She doesn’t want to mess it up. Her companion, who is also unseen, reasures her.
“You’re a natural my dear, don’t worry! You’re as good of an actress as you are an artist! They can see you now, so say your line and we can both go be invisible somewhere more fun.”
“Can we go to a store? I want a princess ring like his.” She points at the man screaming at his partner in Italian. The one with flailing hands that made the jewels on his snake ring shine.
“If you do a good job, you can have his.”
“Ok, thanks mister Lion!” She says loudly. Divina is no longer invisible and both monsters up front have already heard her, and the car has slammed to a halt. “Oh right, Hello Crazy Beard and Nasty Dragon! You’re in a loooooot of trouble.”
To Nasty Dragon, Divina looks like a ghost sitting in the backseat by herself. He knows the Lion is in the car with them, but using a vessel is an effective scare tactic. One that was fun to watch when the Lion used it on their mutual enemies, not so much fun now. He tries to run out of the car, but he couldn’t get his hands to properly land on the handle, they flop and go limp any time he tries to grab them. He is trapped in the car with the Lion.
“Thanks for making my mom like my drawing more, and not just forcing me to draw better.”
“Little girl, he is going to kill me.” Says crazy beard.”
“I know, but you’re friend was going to kill me. So, I’m sorry. But thanks for the comic.”
Nasty Dragon is crying and praying the Hail Mary loudly in Italian. Crazy Beard puts his hand toward the back seat for a high-five. “I just made your mama notice you, she like it all on her own. Good job.” He holds out his hand for a high-five and Divina slaps it with true pride and joy. She forgets what happens next.
It’s October 31st and the death parade has just left Willow Street. Half a block away a Red 1973 Volkwagen Kharmanghia is parked with two warm and breathing bodies who have lost their minds sitting inside. Divina is back on the sidewalk, huddled with her friends. They stare at Little Snake. “Why did you take my box?” asks the Raven.
“I…didn’t.” Little Snake is confused as to why he has the box and feels bullied by the little Raven.
“It’s for my friend. Can I have it back?” Little Snake gives a silent frown and hands the box back to the terrifying child. He apologizes, says happy Halloween, and leaves as quickly as he can.
“Be safe!” Divina yells at him from a paper skull, with teeth she has painted gold. Little snake is confused. The well-dressed man walking next to him is invisible to everyone except Divina. He has just dropped her off from a field trip. He let her see what the whole town looks like at exacly 5:20:00:13PM.
“He’ll be alright, I’ve got my eye on him,” says the Lion, invisible to everyone but Divina. “Now, Open the box, it’s for you.”
She opens her present from her Halloween Santa Clause. Inside the box is a ring tied to a chain. It’s got dazzling stones as the eyes of a Lizard. Inside, Draghignazzo is inscribed. She screams “Thank you, thank you!!” and puts the necklace over her neck.
“You’re welcome!” Says the Raven with a smug smile. It’s just the kids on the street now, and the Lion has left and taken Divina’s memory of him with her. The Raven is proud of herself for thinking of her friend long enough to get her a present. Not on her birthday or anything, but just because they were friends. The gift made her feel very grown-up, but she couldn’t remember exactly what it was that she had given.
