Halloween and Other Seasons

“The same one?” I asked, turning to look at my son.

He nodded, his face pale.

The car was gone, far ahead.

I turned my attention back to the still-empty road and carefully pulled out into the right lane.

“Park, here we come!” I said, with the heartiest of false cheer.

“Yayyyy!” Mona shouted, too loudly, making me wince.

Debra was staring out through the windshield again, her statuesque mode complete, even the throbbing vein in her neck absent.

I pushed at the accelerator with my foot, and we passed a sign that said, PARK, ONE MILE.

“Yayyyyyyyyyy!” Mona said, and I recoiled at the way her shout assaulted my ears.

“Dad!” Rusty screeched suddenly, making me jump, and I reflexively turned to hit him but he was pointing to the right and ahead of us. “Look!”

I turned my head forward and saw the car with the cheap chrome grille parked in the service lane, it’s doors open, its emergency blinkers flashing.

“It’s—!” Rusty began.

“I know,” I replied.

I slowed down, hearing the tires hiss quietly on the roadway, and as we glided by I stared at my car, at the man who was killing his wife and two children on the side of the road.

So I pulled off the highway and did.

Hedges

By Al Sarrantonio

I thought, Will I finally belong?

I passed the boy at dawn on my bicycle. He was standing in the middle of the road, his backpack slung over one shoulder, the way students do. He was reed-thin and tall, a little hunched at the shoulders, with a cranberry colored baseball cap on backwards. Grinning slightly, ironically—again, the way students do.

There was no danger of hitting him, but I wondered why he was standing in the middle of the street. Then I saw the school far ahead on the left, set back off the road, in the middle of a cleared field. There were lights on in the windows that looked like they had burned all night. They may have been bright in the darkness but now, with the sun rising behind the school, they looked defeated and dim. After giving me a smirk as I passed, the boy slouched toward the school.

I peddled on.

Before the school on either side was a short packed line of small houses, bordered by a thick hedge. Suddenly the dawn was banished back to night. Overhead were crouching, overarching oak trees, their branches brushing like the fingertips of lovers.

The hedges grew thicker to either side, a wall of April green buds on winter-sharp branches. It was dark gray as midnight, and the air had cooled. I was suddenly tired, and I slowed, and then the bicycle, urged by my slowing, tilted to the right and leaned me over against the hedge.

It held me pricking, a wall of sharp sticks and tiny faintly perfumed wet buds, and I heard a faint voice I could not make out. It sounded like it said, Yes. The voice was very close. I pushed myself away from the hedge, my hands sinking momentarily into it, branches scratching, and something else, something that felt almost liquid and very cold, drew over my hand and then away.

I pulled my body back in disgust and fumbled at the bicycle, which caught against my straddling leg and again moved me over into the hedge.

The voice was right next to my ear, whispering, Yessss.

I flailed back, pushing my left foot against the bicycle pedal as I straightened the machine with a scrape and pushed off, back out into the road—

A car passed, close by in the gray darkness, horn bleating. It’s lights were dimmed, swallowed by the encroaching gray, and a pale oval face, hairless, lit with a green inner light, peered out at me from the rear window as it drew roaring away.

The hedge was next to me again.

I heard the whisper and felt cold pushing toward me and lurched back, dragging the bike sideways, making its tires scrape with complaint. My feet fumbled and found the pedal and then I was off again, straightening the front wheel.

But now in the grayness I saw the hedge narrowing in front of me.

I began to fight for breath.

The oaks had disappeared overhead and the hedge had grown up around into a crowning arbor. The air was chilled, damp, sick-sweet smelling.

The hedge narrowed into a closing dead end; I heard beyond it the fading roar of the car I had seen with the pale green face staring—

I thrust my feet backwards against the pedals, making the bike stop with a screech, then forced it around. Already the hedge had grown down from above, almost touching my head.

It was narrowing on all sides ahead of me, like a closing wedge.

With a shout I hit the pedals hard, keeping low, and shot through the narrowing opening even as it closed. I felt the scrape of budding branches like grasping bony fingers on me, and smelled something wet and lush and fetid, and heard what sounded like a sigh—

Gasping for breath I tore ahead, blinded by sudden sunlight. Ahead of me on the left was the school, its windows filled with rising sunlight now, the field in front of it full of milling students.

The loud blare of a horn made me stop short; in front of me was a school bus grinding to a halt, its brakes squealing. The driver was shouting at me behind the huge windshield set into the massive yellow front.

In a daze, I moved the bicycle off to the curb as the school bus ground into gear again. The driver glared at me as he drove past, then pulled into the long driveway toward the front entrance of the school.

I looked behind me.

The street, dappled in tree-shaded new morning sun, stretched straight behind me, lined to either side by a row of neat houses, cape cods and cute ranches. There was no sign of a hedge as far as the eye could see.

In the far distance was a cross street, a busy one by the look of the traffic at the intersection.

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Wha—”

An equally startled face peered back at me: a crossing guard, an older woman with a white cloth bandolier across her jacket holding a small red stop sign.

“I’m sorry,” I began. “I’m new here, a Chemistry teacher, I start today—”

“You could have been hit by that bus,” she said, concern and scolding in her voice. “You were tearing along in the middle of the street—”

“Can I ask you something?” I interrupted. “Has there ever been a long row of hedges in the street back there?” I pointed to the spot from which I had come.

“Hedges?” She looked confused.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and began to pedal away, turning in toward the school. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Do that,” she said, the scolding tone coming back into her voice. “There are children around here, you know…”

~ * ~

“So how did it go?” Jacqueline asked, with, as always, neither concern nor interest in her tone. A fresh vodka tonic in a clear tall glass lay on the kitchen table before her. Beads of cool perspiration freckled the glass. She did not offer me one but instead sipped her own, looking out the kitchen window to the backyard, a riot of green trees and untended bushes.