Halloween and Other Seasons

“It’s all right to be scared. Just do what I say.”

Adam pulled at his door handle, moving the door open a bare inch.

The dust swirled in at him—there was silt nearly up to the floorboards.

Sucking in a breath, Adam stepped out into it.

The viscous dust, like quicksand, took hold, tried to drive him subtly forward toward the precipice.

He put both feet firmly into the silty mass, sliding them back away from the softly insistent pull. It was like the waves they’d played in at the Massachusetts shore, a gentle but strong undertow. Calmly, with light, constant pressure, he pulled open the passenger compartment door of the van, sliding it back on its rail. He tried to keep all pressure out of his hold on the handle; he had the distinct feeling that any slight push from him on the side of the vehicle would send it tumbling off into the valley below.

“Come on, kids,” he said evenly.

“I want to bring my Harry doll!” Lucy said, straining to reach under the seat for a floppy thing made of felt and buttons.

“Leave Harry, we’ll get him later,” Adam said. He reached in and pulled gently on her arm. She resisted for a moment and then stepped out into the mud.

“Yuck,” she said, as her little sister, crying, followed.

Adam turned back to help Mary out of the front seat.

“My God,” she exclaimed, stepping into the silt and suddenly seeing where the front of the car was. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

The car tipped forward, halted.

“Lucy!” Mary screeched.

Lucy had crawled back into the van and was reaching for her Harry doll.

The van began to move again and this time it wasn’t going to stop.

Pushing Cindy down into the dust out of the way, Adam lurched into the back seat, catching Lucy by the back of her light jacket and yanking her out before she could get to the doll.

“My Harry doll!”

For a moment Adam lost his footing in the slippery dust and fell forward, half in the van and half out, still holding the child.

With Mary screaming hysterically, he felt the two of them being pulled over the cliff along with the vehicle. But then his dragging foot miraculously found a rock under the dust and he pulled himself backward, out of the van, bearing his daughter with him.

As he fell to his knees in the dust the van, with agonizing inevitability, slipped over the cliff and was gone. They watched its tail lights disappear like angry red eyes into the surging storm.

“Oh, Adam,” Mary sobbed.

“It’s all right,” Adam answered. As he stood, his hand brushed against something in the mass of dust and he grabbing it; it vaguely resembled a chicken bone but then disintegrated in his hand. He pulled Lucy up after him. She stood unsteadily, crying over the loss of her doll.

He looked into his wife’s eyes, but said nothing.

“Okay, kids,” Adam said, “it’s time to walk.”

As they began to work their way through the silty dust to the lee side of the road, the wind came again, and the dust began to blow.

~ * ~

A flash of lightning, without thunder.

Ahead of them, down in a little hollow, in the midst of the roaring storm, stood a small cottage. Lightning came again, and in this second flash Adam grabbed Mary’s arm and pointed the dwelling out to her.

“I don’t remember anything like that being there,” she said.

“Well, it’s here now. Let’s get the kids down,” Adam answered, peering unsteadily through the whorls of dust.

Mary nodded, and then, in the next lightning illumination, looked behind them.

“Oh, sweet Jesus.”

A solid wall of silt was flowing down the mountainside toward them. There was no hint now that there had ever been a road where they stood. It was as if some mammoth volcano had reared up within the mountain and spewed a hundred thousand tons of ash down on itself, obliterating everything. They could see, up the mountainside, by the light of now almost continual, thunderless lightning, a few weather-beaten tips of pine trees, but nothing else. The dust, like liquid, flowed with silent determination down the mountain, toward what had once been the road.

“Quickly,” Adam said, and this time he couldn’t hide the fear in his voice.

There was a broken stone path down the hollow to the cabin, already slicked with viscous silt. They half walked, half slid their way down.

When they reached the front porch Adam saw with sinking hope how delicate and vulnerable the structure was. It was painted an odd dark color that might have looked quaint in summer sunshine but couldn’t hide the fragility of the place.

Above and around it loomed most of the mountain.

The door opened easily. Inside, it looked like some sort of summer weekend place, one large room outfitted with the barest of necessities: a wash sink, cupboard, a few sticks of furniture including a small table with four chairs. Everything was painted in dark colors. There was a low ceiling of unpainted boards, and a picture window that looked out on the mountain and where the road had been.

Mary closed the door, took hold of Adam’s arm and pointed through the window. There was awe and fear in her voice.

“Look.”

Where the wall of dust had been flowing determinedly toward them, covering everything, it had stopped short of the hollow they were in.

“There wasn’t any wall up there,” Adam stated.

“It’s almost as it if’s waiting,” Mary whispered.

They heard a loud creak and felt the cottage shudder.

~ * ~

Night came on, and stayed. The dust storm beat without mercy against the cliffs, drove in whistling tornados around the hollow. Intermittently, lightning flashed, without sound. By its light, they could see the wall of dust at the base of the mountain, hanging over them.

Inside, the small family, in the half-light of candles Mary had found in a cupboard, waited for sunrise.

“It sounds like it won’t ever end,” Adam said. He glanced furtively out the front picture window.

Mary stared at him without speaking.

The wind picked up with renewed fury, blowing its dry, moaning burden of dust against the fragile structure.

“I wish to hell daylight would come,” Adam said.

His wife moved the blankets closer around the two children, who lay side by side on the cabin’s single bed. They slept fitfully, their young minds drifting in and out of reality. “Mommee…” Cindy said suddenly, half asleep, then sank back into unconsciousness with a fitful breath.

For a few moments, there was only the moaning of the wind, the dry sound of ash washing against the front window.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have stayed outside?” Mary asked abruptly. “I keep thinking of that mass of dust above us. If it comes down…”

Adam took a shuddering breath. “We did the right thing.”

“But—”

“I said we did the right thing!” He covered his face with his hands. “God, I hope we did…”

Outside, the wind and dust lashed mightily.

With a great rending groan, something above the ceiling was torn away.

The children awoke, screaming.