Like a bad omen, storm clouds roll over us the minute I see the changes in my mural. It’s five fifteen, so dusk is settling in, yet it’s as dark as if it were midnight. Fuzzy gray fog weighs so heavy on the greenhouse roof that Juniper has to turn on all the courtyard lights to help me see while I try to fix everything on my piece.
I appreciate her attempt to assure me that I’m not losing it—that it makes sense I’d include my sister in my painting subconsciously, since Lark is on my mind so much this time of year. I appreciate, too, that Clarey says he probably just didn’t notice the minutiae of the scene when I first brought it over. But as soon as his aunt leaves the courtyard to call the bakery, he grills me about my entire day. I spare no details, then hand him Goblin Market from my duffel and pull out my paints and brushes.
“Could be a mouse,” Clarey offers as we sit, legs crisscrossed, opposite each other on the tarp. He angles the book in a strand of light that streams down from one of Juniper’s upcycled streetlamps—studying the pages that are half-dried, bloated, and scented with lavender. He has it open to the masticated text and his thumb trails the bite marks.
My mural is centered between us, facing me. Lark’s eyes glare back with a hint of disdain. I concentrate on unscrewing the lids from the miniature aluminum containers I use for touch-ups. The sharp scent of latex paint overpowers the fresh greenery and blossoms surrounding us.
“A mouse,” I answer as Clarey leans over to help me choose the palette I’ll need to change Lark’s likeness back to mine.
“This one … coppery gold for the piercings,” he says.
I nod, coating a round brush and dabbing the excess on a towel. “So, a rodent opened my book to a verse I was dreaming about?”
“Well, it’s either that or grimalkins popped out of one of your sketches and opened it,” Clarey says, a hint of teasing returned to his voice.
“Or my sister’s haunting me through a pair of dentures,” I pretend to joke back. I’m actually starting to believe it … that somehow, she’s reaching out from beyond the grave, that it really is her face I keep seeing in the mirror instead of my own.
Clarey frowns, knowing me well enough to call me out on my half-hearted attempt at sarcasm. “Why would Lark haunt you?”
I bite my inner cheek to silence my answer: Because I didn’t save her, and now I’m stealing pieces of her life. I begin to add a lip ring on the girl in the mural. The sooner I get Lark out of my sight, the sooner she’ll be out of my mind—at least for a little while.
“I’m sorry, Lark.” I allow the confession to slip, hoping at least my mural-sister might forgive me. “I let you down again.”
Clarey’s jaw muscles twitch, causing the shimmering scales along his temples to catch the overhead lights. He turns pages, taking care not to tear the damp paper. “Why do you always blame yourself?”
“Because sisters are supposed to look out for each other.” I jab my brush toward the bloated book. “Our mom gave us this, to teach us that. If our places had been switched, Lark would’ve saved me that night. And she wouldn’t have ruined the one thing our mom left behind.”
Clarey’s expression hardens. “I think it’s time you give me the Cliff Notes.”
Over the past couple of years, he’s had plenty of chances to read Christina Rossetti’s nineteenth-century masterpiece, but other than admiring the watercolor illustrations—showcasing scenes with stumpy, beak-nosed goblins and anthropomorphized animals alongside two Alice-in-Wonderland-esque girls—he’s barely skimmed the verses, claiming they’re too “poetic and flowery.” You’d think a guy who thrives on the fashion and diction of the sixties’ era could make allowances for antiquated writing.
I lean across the mural to complete the jagged edges of my eyebrow ring, and let the book’s details unwind as prosaically as possible. “Night after night, two sisters would walk through a forest outside their cottage. One time, while peering through the trees, they noticed an enchanted market run by goblin men on the other side. The goblins noticed the girls, too, and called out from behind their baskets: ‘Come buy our fruits … blah-blah-blah.’ ”
Clarey riffles through the pages. “Ummm … I don’t see that blah-blah verse in here.”
“Ha.” I coat my brush with more paint. “I’m paraphrasing the Victorian lingo, to hold your feeble twenty-first-century attention.”
He grins, his dimples deepening. “It’s working … but the original reads pretty saucy for a kids’ story. Check this out: ‘We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry, thirsty roots?’ ”
“ ‘Come buy,’ call the goblins hobbling down the glen,” I recite the next lines from memory. “ ‘Oh,’ cried Lizzie, ‘Laura, Laura, you should not peep at goblin men.’ ”
Clarey meets my gaze. “Innuendo much?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty sensual. Even the fruit descriptions. I don’t think the author wrote it for kids. It’s about the conflict between sisterly love and dangerous passions.” I point to the illustration opposite the title page where one sister, having no money for fruit, clips off a lock of her hair to trade. “See, this is Laura. She gives away a piece of herself because she can’t resist the goblin’s call, even though they had a friend who’d already been lost to them.” I find the relevant verse and nod for Clarey to read it aloud:
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the noonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
Clarey leans back with his forehead crimped thoughtfully. It’s my favorite expression to sketch, and although I always show him the finished products, I’ve never admitted how many hours it takes to capture that tiny indention where his scar slices through his eyebrow.
“Okay,” he says. “Some friend of theirs ate the magic fruits and then fell prey to goblin enchantments.”
I nod.
“And this one sister … Laura … she still sneaks out to visit the market.”
“Right. Despite Lizzie’s warning that the goblin men will come between them.”
“So this poem is the foundation for the ‘sisters before misters’ movement.” Flashing a mischievous smirk, Clarey flips to the front of the book.
“Something like that.” I nibble on the brush’s handle to hide my discomfort at another secret reason why Lark would haunt me … because I’m losing the battle against my feelings for her first and only love.
As if drawn by the clicking of my teeth against the wood, Clarey focuses on my mouth. My cheeks threaten to overheat again, and I point at another illustration, steering his attention back to the book.
“Here, Lizzie goes in search of the market because her sister’s addiction to the fruit is killing her. Laura tried to find the market again herself, but the goblins are hiding from her now that they got what they wanted.”
“Typical misogynistic pigs.” Clarey shakes his head. Having watched his father abandon his mother, he harbors strong opinions on “misogynistic pig” syndrome.
“Right?” I resume painting my piercings on the mural. “So Laura lies around in bed, her cheeks growing gaunt and her eyes hollowing out.” The image of Lark in the moonlight on her final night flashes through my mind; I clear my throat to steady my voice. “Somehow, the fruit drained her instead of filling her up.”
“Huh.” Clarey concentrates on the illustration of Lizzie standing by a tree while spindly goblins offer fruits and climb on and around her like monkeys. “You sure this poem wasn’t written about Halloween? A piece of fruit sucking the life out of someone. That’s like a Twix bar growing arms and cracking a person in half … the ultimate trick-or-treat prank.”
I inhale slowly, uneasy with the turn of conversation. I’ve considered that before. The author mentions cooling weather and that it’s harvest time. It could definitely be set in the fall.
I swirl my brush in turpentine to rinse it, choosing to skate past Clarey’s comment. “Anyway, the goblins appear to Lizzie and tempt her with their baskets of fruit. She wants to be strong for her sister, so she refuses to taste anything. They try to force her—shoving food in her face. She closes her mouth so nothing can get by, and lets the juices cover her lips and chin. Then she runs home and cures Laura with a sticky, dripping kiss. Years later, they share the memory with their kids around the fireplace … to warn them about goblin men, and to remind them of the power of sisterly love.”
Clarey turns to the back flap where the author and artist bios are. “Man. That’s some twisted hokum. What would make her write a story like that?”
Blotting the brush bristles dry on a rag, I shrug. “I read somewhere that she had a nervous breakdown when she was a teen. She pasted strips of paper over passages in other poetry books to censor them. I’ve always wondered if whatever caused her trauma inspired this poem. She dedicated it to her own sister, after all.”
“Ah,” he responds quietly, and it’s obvious his mind is going to his own breakdown in Chicago. I’ve asked about the experience only once. When he said he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, I told him I’d trust him to tell me when he is, because that’s what friends do. They wait as long as it takes.
Clarey lets out a breath and returns the book to my bag, pausing to rub the pocket watch at the corner. “As Aunt Juni would say: That was a ripping good yarn.”
However adorable his flawless British imitation is, I still can’t muster a smile.
“But,” he resumes in his natural northwestern vernacular, “your family’s tragedies aren’t lifted from a fictional poem. Goblins and magic played no part. Your parents had an accident. Lark had a medical condition. And you couldn’t have stopped either of those things.”
Despair knots in my windpipe. My brain gets it, but not my heart. Dipping the brush in a pigment so dark it can only be black, I begin the process of adding in my widow’s peak.
Clarey cups a hand over the toe of my boot, stalling me. “You know what I think? Your uncle saw the book on your nightstand and found that chewed-up page. He took it from your room so you wouldn’t see it and be upset until he could get some mousetraps.”
I drum my knee with the brush’s wooden end. “We already have traps in a box in the garage. And it still doesn’t explain the doll’s head. And if something’s not wrong, why hasn’t he called?”
“His phone battery died, and there’s nowhere to recharge it at the beach?”
I clench the brush, struggling to keep my hand from shaking. “Sure, we can make pieces fit the puzzle. But we have to cut them into shapes to make them fit. It feels forced … it’s not organic, you know?”
“Organic, like the bakery next door … that my aunt is calling now.”
“What if they haven’t heard from him either?” I whisper. “I can’t lose my uncle, too. He’s all I have left.”
Clarey leans in and squeezes my shoulder. “Not so. It sucks you’ve been alone today, that you had to get out and ride over by yourself. But that took some platinum guts. Especially with the way this date shakes you up. You proved you could do it, and now you’re not alone anymore. I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”
I meet his thick-lashed gaze, feeling even more off balance under its gentle scrutiny. The warmth of his fingers around my shoulder blade seeps along my neck and into my ears. It’s overwhelming—this bond. After losing Lark, I never expected to find someone else who could see inside me. Someone who knows exactly what I need to hear at any given moment.
The only drawback is that this someone’s empathy and kindness make me want things from him that I shouldn’t even contemplate.
“Thanks.” I force my attention back to my work in an effort to slow my stomach’s somersaults.
Clarey pauses, as if waiting for more. He’s still way too close, and his warm breath—scented with sugar and citrus from the cider—tufts my hair where it hangs across one ear. I keep my jaw hinged tight, forcing myself not to look up. I’m not strong enough right now. If I see those beautiful eyes, those soft lips, inches from mine … it’ll be my undoing.
Finally, he stands, and the tension snaps free. “I’m going to find out if Aunt Juni’s heard anything yet.”
I nod in relief, telling myself the hoarse quality to his voice isn’t disappointment; that being around the latex paint and turpentine affected his allergies, even though it never has before.
After he leaves, I use white paint to fill in Lark’s teeth so there’s no longer a gap, resisting the urge to apologize to her as I’m doing it. With the last of her attributes gone, I trade the round brush for an angled one. Dipping it in swirls of dark purple and gray that Clarey blended for me, I shade the edges of the glittery lettering at the top left of the mural:
On All Hallows’ Eve,
You can hear the goblins cry:
“Visit Eveningside Delights,
Come buy, come buy!”
I finish the goblin’s mechanical elbow, then turn it on and lean back to examine the scene. The forearm makes rotary-whirring sounds as it slants to the side of the mural, as though pointing toward my painted forest. I hunch close, noticing something between the branches: swirling eyes in the shadow of the trees … two pairs. Barely discernible at first, but the longer I stare the more brilliantly they glow—until they’re suddenly crystal clear, in full color.
I inhale a sharp breath. A grimalkin’s eyes, appearing more vivid than the world around me. But I didn’t put them there, any more than I added Lark.
Flannie trounces into the room, wearing her emotional-support vest. My effort to keep her from toppling the paints or stepping on my touch-ups distracts me from the mural for an instant. When I look at the scene again, those brilliant eyes have disappeared and I’m faced with sepia and grayscale once more.
Clarey comes in carrying his SFX organizer—a large, repurposed metal tackle box. His eyebrows furrow.
The worry in his expression capsizes the fear and disbelief fluttering in my chest. “What?” I ask, hugging Flannie’s neck, both to hold her still and for solace.
He puts his box down with a thud, calls Flannie over, then holds the store’s key ring under her muzzle. “Go find my car keys, okay Sherlock?”
She sniffs the keys, shakes her floppy ears until her collar jingles, then trots into the boutique—her bionic limb clacking in time with her nails.
Clarey opens the box’s lid. He takes out the top two inserts with dividers loaded down by makeup, then sorts through the sculpted prosthetics stored in cloth sacks in the spacious bottom compartment.
“Your uncle called the bakery earlier, on his way over to the beach. To fill them in on Dahlia and Carl.” Clarey pulls out an emaciated mask he designed last year—a twisted mix between a skull and a jack-o’-lantern. I imprint the color orange from my memory. “He told them he’d be back around four to pick up the macarons and cupcakes, since he’d be getting your mural. That’s the last anyone at the bakery heard from him.”
My stomach plummets into my feet. “Then he must still be at Cannon Beach, right?”
Clarey’s frown deepens. “Aunt Juni called the PTA president for an update. She says his car is still there, but she hasn’t seen him since he set up the bakery booth. She figures someone must’ve convinced him to help set up stalls or game booths in one of the other tents.”
An icy rush chills my body. “I have to go with your aunt.” I start to stand.
“Hang on,” Clarey says, coaxing me to stay seated. “Aunt Juni’s got to get stuff together here and stop at the bakery. You and I can leave now. We’ll load your mural in my Subaru; it can dry on the way. We’ll take Flannie to help us search, in case your uncle’s not where he should be once we get there.”
“I—I don’t get it. You’re going in with me?” The ivy-coated heirloom grandfather clock in the center of the courtyard shows it’s a quarter to six. Depending on traffic and weather conditions, it can take over an hour to drive to Cannon Beach; by the time we get there, the festivities will be well under way. It’s a dizzying seesaw, teetering between concern for Uncle and shock at Clarey’s willingness to brave a sea of carnival-goers, many of whom we won’t know.
“Just let me do one thing first …” Clarey kneels. Utilizing the mirror welded on the inner lid of the tackle box, he peels off the scales from around his eyes. He then covers his eyelids and skin with thick black makeup until his irises stand out like achromatic gemstones embedded in an onyx setting. Next, he dabs spots on his face with spirit gum adhesive, waits for it to get tacky, then pulls the mask into place—taking care not to dislodge his BAHA—until his forehead, high cheekbones, and chin disappear beneath the cadaverous pumpkin’s ridges.
Clarey once told me that ever since Chicago, he often wishes he could wear a mask all the time; that the shaped features and their unchanging expressions feel like armor. An impenetrable wall to hide any panic he might feel. So of course, to face the crowds tonight, he needs some refuge for control.
Thinking of the shiny surfaces that will be in abundance at the event—aluminum food trucks, reflective carousels, and fun house mirrors to name a few—I wouldn’t mind having some protection myself. I want to look as different from Lark as humanly possible … inhumanly would be even better.
I dig out some white makeup to go with the black tube already on the floor, and find a piece of white zipper tape and a tube of lipstick marked Ruby Red. “When you’re done, I want some metal.”
His eyes glitter bright within the mask’s triangular eyeholes. “One zombie rag doll, coming up.”
The pumpkin’s ridges cave in on one side of his head, as if dented. There’s a stem and circular top that attach with Velcro to the skullcap that covers his hair. The prosthetic topper is shaped and painted to resemble a gash around the stem that gapes open, revealing stringy guts and goopy seeds. Paired with the face mask, it forms the illusion of a smashed pumpkin.
Two long nostril holes and fat lips carved into the face’s surface complete the effect. The result is so realistic, all Clary needs is to don the brown withered-leaf cloak and the gloves with gnarled-vine fingers, and he’ll be every inch a demented jack-o’-lantern goblin.
Dread prickles around the edges of my heart—not because of his costume, but because of Uncle’s absence, Mom’s picture book, the mural, and the unshakable sense that something bad is in the works.
Clarey’s earlier observation rattles through my head like a deadly toss of dice: the ultimate trick-or-treat prank …
I was right all along. Halloween hasn’t finished with my family yet.