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"Cul-de-Sac"

By Terry Echoes

Zeke Pulanski admired himself in the mirror. Yeah. This Halloween, he was good enough to eat. He flexed a bicep and kissed it, then rolled his abdomen. Truth be told, it wasn't much in the way of a six-pack, but Zeke's friends wouldn't tell him that. If they still wanted to speak with him. He sort of lost touch so he could focus the summer on his new daily regimen. The Halloween party would be the first time most of them saw him again. Boy would they be surprised. Maybe a little envious, even. And nothing would be as bold as his costume. Let women have their sexy cats and sexy witches and sexy chartered accountants, or whatever costumes were marketed to women.

Zeke was going as a sexy cow. He'd bought some bronzer, got out his tight brown corduroy pants, and had found a minotaur headpiece at the Marshal's across town. The jaw worked when he wore it, though he was having some buyer's remorse. His entire head was covered, and it was difficult to see through the eyes, and it hid his face, but he'd already gone as a sexy nurse last Halloween.

"You're a stud, Zeke," Zeke said to his reflection. Mimicking a deeper voice, he manufactured a response on his reflection's behalf. "You got that right, handsome."

Down the hall was the bedroom of Zeke's older sister. Stephanie (Stephie to her friends) was finishing dabbing on some green lipstick. She wanted to go as the Wicked Witch of the West, but didn't want to cover her face in green. She did find some green finger gloves, and deliberately neglected to style her hair. She and Zeke were headed to the same party, and she was driving. Soon as she showed up, she knew what she was going to do. She was going to head upstairs and watch some gory movies with friends from her age group. Let her kid brother hang around downstairs with his weirdo friends, snacking and making uncomfortable passes at one another.

She said only two things to him by the time she had to steer a sharp curve onto Orchard Lane. The first before they'd even left was, "Yo. Heading out now." The second was during the car ride there. "You know you're gonna freeze like that, right?"

Zeke was dressed in a purple flannel jacket with no shirt on underneath, along with the aforementioned corduroys, socks, a pair of sneakers...underpants sewn in a sweatshop halfway up Mt. Kilimanjaro and blessed by the Dalai Lama himself. His minotaur head sat in his lap while he laughed oafishly at his cell phone. He didn't hear his sister at all. He didn't even hear the car shut off when they arrived. Who needed Halloween with the magnificent entertainment of a pocket-sized screen?

He did hear the car door slam, however, and following a great internal struggle, Zeke managed to exit the vehicle and strut in through the front door to Mikaela Wanamaker's house.

"Oh my god!" Mikaela screeched happily. "Where have you been, Zeke?" Mikaela was dressed as a surgeon with blood all over herself. "I haven't seen you since my brother's heart transplant!" She was a grade older than him and "the gang", but hung out with the younger crowd since high school.

"I've been around!" Zeke had a wide, smug smile on his face as he entered the living room. He was dimly aware of the smorgasbord of people occupying the standing-room-only living area. The television was on, but nobody seemed to be watching the prairie dog documentary that was playing. At first, people had been talking over the TV. Then they had been talking over each other, which created a feedback loop of loudening yakety yak.

"Zeke!"

"Zeke, what up?"

"Haven't seen you in a dog's age, Zeke."

Zeke smiled at the few faces he recognized. He spotted Hannah Kleinberg and proceeded in a beeline toward her. She was a short, mousy sort of a girl who could draw real well and who liked to shadow him around back in their high school days. She had straight, dark hair running down to the middle of her back. He didn't look at her. "Hey, Han."

Hannah stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. "Hey yourself, Zeke." She was dressed like Pablo Picasso, which only one person recognized.

"Who the heck are you supposed to be?" Zeke laughed.

Hannah tweaked her long, thin, angular mustache. It was a bit exaggerated. "I'm Pablo Picasso. Where've you been all this time? I haven't heard from you all summer."

Zeke shrugged, still peering around the room. No other guy seemed to be showing off any skin. "I've been busy." He caught a look from someone standing against the wall at the far corner. Someone he hadn't recognized straightaway.

Hannah was in the midst of a sentence Zeke didn't hear when he ran up to this person and tickled him in the ribs. Clay Maven flinched from one side to the other, but couldn't evade this treatment. He'd been admiring the bright color of the punch in his glass and eyeing the household collection of video games stacked on the shelves nearby, wondering if he could cajole anyone into playing them. After all, the television wasn't even showing anything Halloween-y.

"Um, hi," Clay said. He was dressed in a blue flannel jacket over a dark black shirt and a pair of black khakis. He readjusted his small glasses which had slipped down his Romanesque nose. He had big rings under his eyes as if he hadn't slept since before he was born. "Uh, long time no see."

"Hey, Clay. Nice hobo costume," Zeke said.

Hannah had followed Zeke over. "Clay isn't in costume, but he still gets points for actually knowing who Pablo Picasso is."

"Yeah..." Clay stared at her with this pithed look in his eyes.

"You didn't wear a costume to a Halloween party?" Zeke chuckled and made a face.

Clay stared at the floor. "I didn't know if anybody else would be wearing one. I didn't wanna look foolish."

"It's a Halloween party!"

Clay shrugged. "Then I'm a werewolf."

"Where are the wolf parts?"

"It's not a full moon." Clay noticed Zeke's new physique now, and once more lowered his eyes to the floor.

"Zeke's been working out," Hannah said.

"I see," was all Clay said.

"Is that why we haven't seen you all summer?" Hannah asked Zeke.

"It's my new regimen," Zeke said. "One hundred sit-ups, one hundred push-ups, one hundred squats, daily."

Still Clay averted his gaze, struggling in order to do so. "Were you worried about your weight before?"

"Uh, it's college. I'm gonna get laid!" said Zeke. "Can't get a guy with a keg, know what I'm saying?"

Clay once again deferred to a devoid, one-word utterance: "Right." Shutting his eyes tight for a second, he then addressed Hannah. "Do you think anyone would object to some Smash Bros.? It's a video game."

Hannah screwed up her mouth as though holding back a laugh. "You'd need to find Mikaela."

As Clay hitched up his shoulders and sauntered away, Zeke said to Hannah, "Time to grab some punch and do a little dancing!"

The party continued with only the occasional scream from upstairs. In the dining room, the table had been pushed against the wall to make room for bizarre gesticulation to the noise of music, and to avoid congestion when grabbing snacks. Either Mikaela or her sister would tend to the door whenever trick-or-treaters happened by. Clay managed to squeeze through the crowd and offer his suggestion to her, which she thought was a good idea. Anything to keep people entertained and keep their options open.

She clapped her hands together. "Hey, guys, who wants to play some Smash Bros.!?" This was met with little to no acknowledgment, so she shrugged, but Clay had already skulked back to the corner of the room. Somebody switched the TV over to The Simpsons. His forehead swam with misgivings. Maybe he should just leave. Just duck out and make some excuse. The punch was making his mouth sticky, and the coldness rushed his stomach with nausea. All he could see were elbows flailing about, and he imagined them accidentally swinging into his face, maybe his eyes. Such pointy, interjecting elbows.

"We gonna play Smash Bros. or what?" cried some guy's voice in the crowd. Mikaela heard this and shrugged, then shouted back to go ahead and play if they wanted. She'd already given up. So it was that the console was primed, which renewed Clay's interest in staying. Such as it was, there were only four controllers to go around, and four people had already taken hold of them.

Clay chugged the rest of his glass of punch. He awkwardly dipped back into the crowd to politely inquire where to put the empty cup to no avail. He managed to fight his way into the unfamiliar kitchen, but ultimately placed the glass neatly onto a counter top, at a loss for what else to do. Fearing the glass might leap up of its own accord and roll off the counter and shatter, he set it farther back and turned it. Then he made his surreptitious way to the front door and haunted the spot, looking for an opening during which nobody he knew the name of might notice. As he passed, the chatter of partygoers interjected itself like daggers into his ears, with snippets such as, "All I have to do is breathe, and I make money," or, "I don't want to say what my costume is because I don't want anyone to copy my ocelot."

It didn't take long for him to bump into Zeke yet again. Clay was feeling like he was in a tilt-a-whirl at this point. Zeke was already on his way out the door. He paused long enough throw Clay a "Bye!" which was long enough for him to be caught red-handed.

"Zeke! Are you leaving already? You just got here!" Mikaela was still playing doorman.

"I've got to be up early in the morning!" Zeke smiled and rolled his eyes. "You'll have to get by with just this!"

Mikaela looked taken aback, which was not a well-worn look for her. However melodramatic she could be, she would say what needed to be said. "'Get by'? Zeke, there are twenty other people here at this party, not counting those upstairs. We're here 'cause we don't like losing our friends after high school. Why can't you stay a little longer?"

Clay, ordinarily reticent about anything that might rub Zeke the wrong way, leaned inward. "Even for you, that's a bit prima donna." His stomach tightened. He could feel the October wind wheezing in through the doorway, but the back of his neck tickled as though he was perspiring.

Zeke smiled and looked at the wall as Hannah approached with one eyebrow cocked.

Mikaela clapped her hands. "Hey! Why don't we drive around, go trick-or-treating?"

"I think we're a bit old for trick-or-treating," Zeke said.

"It won't be weird if there's four of us!" said Mikaela with no justification to back up her claim.

Clay was remiss. "Uh, I don't want to risk running down people's wayward scamps. Can't we just walk?"

Mikaela pinched the bridge of her nose. "Uh, okay. Okay, yeah. That's a better idea." They hadn't even set one foot outside the house before she was groaning in complaint.

When the four of them strolled onto the thick, cool front lawn, Hannah asked Zeke, "So you're coming with us?"

Zeke's lips were taut. "Yeah," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, nodding for emphasis. Not totally dense, he attempted to allay the vestige of his own preoccupation by screwing up his fingers as if he was doing shadow puppets for Hannah. She smiled and did the same back to him. Clay did not join their simple reverie; Zeke had set a tone, and he was not privy to their secret hand language. He walked in back of them, forcing himself to take shorter strides, so that they couldn't ditch him easily.

The night was cold. All Zeke could smell was the cold air. Mikaela could smell car fumes. Hannah could smell pumpkin spice. Clay could smell the autumn in the air, and the slight dampness of dry leaves. Dead leaves rustled across the pavement, overpowered by the shrill squeals of children running pell-mell across lawn after lawn.

The quartet came upon a steep hill no houses had been built upon, but it remained part of the long, winding Orchard Lane. They were now treading upon a section of the street sometimes referred to as "Old Orchard Lane". Gravity sped them down the hill past tall, wavering trees, with a gust of wind pushing them in the opposite direction. The sky was getting darker, but not so dark Clay couldn't spot small shapes flitting back and forth across the sky from tree to tree. He raised an arm to point and asked, "What's that?"

"Those are bats," Mikaela said.

A bat swooped maybe an inch away from Clay's finger. He let out a yelp of surprise that startled Mikaela and Hannah. With a shriek, all four of them tore off running at top speed, not stopping until they reached a cul-de-sac around the bend.

"Well, that was fun," Hannah quipped.

"What are we doing here? I thought we were trick-or-treating," said Zeke.

"So like, this old woman who's a witch lives in the only occupied house at the cul-de-sac at the far end of the street, right? And if you go trick-or-treating, she steals your eyeballs. But if you ask for a treat, she'll give you the eyeballs of the kids who played tricks on her," Mikaela said with all the conviction of a swamp seller in Florida.

"That's gross!" said Hannah.

"That's just wrong," said Clay. "She's just some elderly woman who doesn't want to be bothered, and the reason nobody else lives around is because realtors are the scum of the earth who'll charge you $500 a month for a three-walled shack up in North Dell. She's probably exceptionally standoffish because some people, rather than oppose the unflattering images placed upon them by ignorant strangers, choose instead to lessen themselves by embracing those stereotypes. Like Onion Town."

The others stared in rapt attention during Clay's diatribe. Rather than feel offended by Clay's use of the word "ignorant", Mikaela simply said, "That's so boring!"

The house was irregular, all right. The other houses were kept in somewhat trim fashion by whatever housing council was presumably responsible, but the old woman's lawn was overgrown with weeds and grass and daffodils and her shrubberies were lumpy and misshapen like green mashed potatoes. A short, scraggly, bare tree had died, falling over sideways onto her lawn, but had been neglected in this state for so long that grass had already grown back over the roots. The house itself was a miserable sight. Dark and foreboding, it was almost indistinguishable from the night sky, but it was definitely a dark brown color, with light brown patches where the paint had peeled. All the other houses in the cul-de-sac had had aluminum siding and looked the same dull shade of grey. Her roof had been spared the ravages of time, being covered in mud-brown shingles and not in a state of disrepair. There were two wide windows on the front of her house, on either side of her heavy-looking tan front door. The left one had its light off, rendering the room nothing but a gaping void of blackness, save for what trickled in from the moon through another window, but only an unidentifiable silhouette was discernible.

The other window had an orange light within. From this vantage point, onlookers could only see the ceiling and upper wall, a doorway to darkness on one side, and the upper portion of a floor lamp that was off. There was the top of a television set, but there was no telling what was playing, if anything.

The house was older than any of them (even Mikaela). Thirty years ago, developers had bulldozed the untouched woods into a measured oval shape when the mayor back then was obsessed with expanding the town and increasing his revenue. He only lasted for two more terms for a total of fifteen, which was short for the standards set by the next and current mayor. Before all that, the land had been wilderness for a couple hundred years, and before that, it was the territory of a tribe of native Americans.

The house had sold almost immediately, and back then, its paint was fresh and bright. It was a small, elevated bungalow of sorts, though it had an attic and a basement. All the houses had sold, and a family of four bought this particular home. The father kept a workshop in the basement. The mother was an extensive gardener and submitted articles to periodicals. The father managed to earn a promotion to a lucrative civil engineering position, part of a team researching innovations in masonry, and because the kids were still young, and the wife's job didn't require a strict address, they had moved up and on in the world.

The house then remained empty, void and stagnant for six whole years. There was some economic bounce-back, and the property could be let go for cheap, and that was presumably when the old woman had moved in, but more on her much later. In those six years, the property had been left alone, the only one empty on the cul-de-sac, and children were reprimanded for cutting across its lawn. Defiling the sanctity of this empty house had been averted throughout those years, save for one break-in nobody in the neighborhood had noticed, when two teens snuck in to drink and smoke and ingratiate themselves to self-destructive vices to "build character".

The roses were gone, the furniture depleted, and the bedrooms on the ground floor and the converted room in the basement no longer offered rest. For a time, the house maintained a rustic charm, but after about seven years, it grew decrepit and wizened and its upkeep had been neglected. The house no longer played host to Halloween, and it was likely around this time that the rumors of witchcraft started. Rumors told by ignorant children, inspired by copious amounts of television and filling in the blanks for R-rated movies seen in advertisements.

She'll grab you and stick you in a cauldron. She'll eat your eyeballs, and give them out to scare kids. She consorts with devils using Milton Bradley's sacrilegious Oujiia board. She kept zombies in the basement and "Draculas" in the attic. She delighted in misfortune and would kill you so much as look at you if you set even one shoe on her snaring lawn. She had a cleaver, or an ax, or she was Lizzie Borden, or Bloody Mary Hartman. The teenagers, naturally, had far less appropriate rumors they liked to traumatize younger children with, and none of them are worth mentioning.

So the four of them stood there at the edge of the lawn, until two were marching proudly on that October night, its refreshing chill slithering its way down the backs of their shirts. Only Zeke had the confidence to trespass on the cracked and overgrown sidewalk leading up to the front door. Clay wasn't about to let Zeke trail up to the old woman's house on his own, and so after rolling his eyes for about the eightieth time that night, he begrudged himself to follow. Hannah was having none of it, and Mikaela wanted to live vicariously through anyone stupid enough to bear the brunt of her slapdash decisions.

"Dude, let's just turn around," Clay said to Zeke.

"Don't be chicken!"

Zeke, confident in his unilateral process, perhaps thinking he was being funny and courageous, pressed a finger into the doorbell. It let out a raspy bong-bong, and there was a vague stab of activity past the window. Clay felt his soul jump in his prickly throat, but before either of them could make a move, the door wrenched open. A cold wind blew out over them, colder than the air outside.

The woman standing on the other side did not have a flattering appearance. Her back was bent forward. Her skin was pale and wrinkled like a moldy pumpkin, with discolored spots and sagging jowls. Her scowling eyes were dark and shiny as she sized them up. Her paper-white hair was a frizzled mess and hung down straight, framing her face, before being pulled back in a tight bun. She had a stream of something wet running down from the corner of her mouth--some kind of chowder--and she was adorned in a loose, frayed shawl, each knitted hole stretched open, over an ABBA t-shirt and a low skirt. When she deigned to speak, her voice was a raspy, medium-timbre, like a snarling wild cat, and her teeth were yellowed and brown.

"No trick-or-treaters!" she growled.

"We're carolers," Clay blurted out.

Zeke turned his eyes toward Clay and lapsed into an awkward attempt. "Doe, a deer, a female deer," he sang off-kilter.

"No carolers! It's September!" The way she spoke, both Clay and Zeke thought she might cane them with something. Like a cane.

This declaration stung Zeke through his fear, impaling it. It dispersed, only for confusion to fill the void. "What? It's October."

Clay was similarly perplexed, but now that he'd had a moment to wrestle with his mental panic, he leaned in to make an attempt for damage control. "Ma'am, I am so sorry. We didn't realize. We'll get out of your hair now. I mean, we'll just go. Away. We'll leave."

"Shut it, ya little punk!" the old woman screeched. Clay visibly recoiled, his entire body springing back a step and stretching upright. He stopped babbling, of course.

Zeke waved both arms. "Whoa, we're just trying to apologize here. It was an accident, you old crone."

Clay squinted at Zeke. "Oh, now? Now you defend me?"

The old woman brandished an umbrella, pointing the curved handle toward them, and began to advance, step by step. As she did, she began to chant some nonsensical syllables, which Zeke and Clay initially mistook for actual words, but no, now she was the one babbling incoherently. Both men stepped back, step by step, allowing her to continue her advance.

Behind them, hiding across the street since the door had been opened, Mikaela was covering her mouth and giggling stupidly at everything the old woman did. Hannah stood by her side, stunned and wondering if the police would soon be involved.

There was a crack of light, like a brief lightning storm shrunk down and localized between the old woman and the two men. Clay fell sideways, in the direction of the dead tree, and slumped to a heap behind it. Zeke stumbled backwards, fell on his keister, then slammed flat on his back as though crushed under a heavy weight. All this went on as Hannah let loose a shriek, and Mikaela covered her mouth in response. It mattered not; the old witch ignored them and hobbled back to her home. Seeing this, Mikaela followed as Hannah raced across the pavement.

"What did you do, you crazy old witch? Did you shoot them?" Mikaela screamed. She was a natural yeller.

Hannah hunched over the supine form of Zeke who let out a helpless groan. She was horrified to see the state of him, and the darkness didn't help. He looked as if his entire body was swollen. His stupid costume headpiece better have protected his head! she thought to herself. She looked up at the old woman with a scathing, accusatory glare. The old woman was hideous up close, with a warty, hairy face, a sallow nose, and pale cataracts in her dull, unblinking eyes. The ghastly sight of her ghoulish face made Hannah blanch, and she just watched as the old woman hobbled shakily back into her house.

"Where's he shot?" Mikaela asked, fighting with the process of unlocking her cell phone.

Hannah, still panicky, prodded at Zeke's abdomen and chest with her hands. "He's not." She couldn't see any blood on her hands.

"Grraahh!" Zeke batted an arm at the air, and both women gave him a berth. He pulled himself to stand up with a thud and began pushing at his chin and blindly hitting his horns.

"Take off that stupid mask, and let's see if you're alright," said Mikaela.

Hannah stared at Zeke, a look of horror dawning on her face. Zeke was looking much taller than before. Now he was twice her size. "Zeke?"

"I can't get it off! It's not a mask, it's...it's real!" Zeke stared at his large hands in potent disbelief, flexing each digit in tumultuous awe. His body was larger, covered in dark brown fur, and the horns atop his head were very real. He had become his mask, a raging bull on two hooves, a minotaur in flesh and bone. He tipped his head back, flexed his muscular arms, and let out a terrifying bray to the cold and heartless night sky.

Mikaela and Hannah recoiled in shock at this maddened display of raw confusion. They could scarcely stand in this presence, this non-human entity that had once been their friends, this paradigm shift in the evolution of the world that proved to them as real as hunger or thirst that magic was real, that curses could come true, that Earth could harbor sapient life beyond humans. The evidence stood before them, huffing for breath, peering about with its moist, bulging eyes.

It took a while for any of them to remember Clay.

"Oh God. Clay! Clay, where are you? Are you alright?" Hannah shouted. A few moments passed as she watched Zeke wring his head in his hands and tug with futility at the jutting protrusions of bone from his head. Eventually, she realized she was going to have to head over to that tree herself. She stepped with care onto the grass as though it was thin ice above a freezing pond, and advanced upon the crooked, dead tree. She could see a lump behind it, and knew this must be him.

Or so she believed. She braved the short distance and realized that what she saw was a pile of Clay's discarded clothing. But no Clay.

Clay was gone.