Ember Hollow, North Carolina
October 29
“Helen, a few weeks ago, the empty field you see behind me was home to roughly twenty-five thousand Autumn’s Pride pumpkins,” pronounced local reporter Kit Calloway. “They’re all gone now, on their way to markets and homes around the country. But a good many are staying right here in Ember Hollow, where they will be carved and decorated for the town’s annual Pumpkin Parade on Halloween night.”
Viewers were treated to stock footage of parades past, with costumed bystanders hooting and clapping while spooky floats crawled by with more elaborately costumed performers aboard.
“For, you see, come Halloween, Ember Hollow becomes Haunted Hollow, Halloween Capital of the World.” The handsome reporter gave a charming raise of his eyebrow. “And this year promises a little something extra, as the town’s very own homegrown rock band The Chalk Outlines takes the stage above The Grand Illusion cinemas to play a full set. Now the band has taken the local club scene by storm, but this year, with their performance at the theater, they hope to garner the attention of a special guest.”
“Kerwin Stuyvesant—Talent Manager” read the screen caption under a man in his fifties who wore a bright green suit and funny-looking little hexagonal spectacles. He smiled into the camera with huge teeth that made the tiny glasses seem like toys. “The kids have been rehearsing and hitting the gigs hard, and if I didn’t believe they had what it takes to make it to the top, I wouldn’t have signed on to manage ’em!”
A quick snip of the trio of Halloween-themed punk rockers, awash in strobe-lit fog at some dive club, flashed on the screen before a cut back to Calloway, who concluded the report with a graceful nod. “Helen, as always, I’ll be right here in Ember Hollow covering the parade and enjoying the company of these great citizens! Back to you!”
* * * *
Thirteen-year-old Stuart Barcroft woke to the sound of his mother’s low humming as she breezed past his door to the room of his older brother, Dennis. He hopped from his bed and hurried into his clothes, eavesdropping on the conversation between mother and brother.
Ma—Elaine Barcroft to you and me—exclaimed, “Oh my word, Dennis! Is that going to wash out of my sheets?”
And he knew Dennis had blood on him again.
As Stuart headed toward Dennis’s room, he saw a sheet of sunlight spill onto the hallway floor from the doorway—Ma opening the curtains on his poor brother.
“That makeup is a mess,” she huffed, but was not really that sore about it.
At the doorway, Stuart looked his big brother over to make sure he was okay. Dennis, taking a long drink of water from the glass he kept at his bedside, was still in performance attire. His hair, already way too long on top, was disheveled and sticky. Surely exhausted, he hadn’t changed out of his stage attire of torn black denim pants and a hospital scrub top spritzed with the offending stage blood, over a black long-sleeve T-shirt with bones printed on the arms.
“Oh yeah, Ma. I checked the package. Washes right out.” Despite his exhaustion, he was as patient and respectful with his mother as always.
Spotting Stuart, Dennis raised the glass. “Hey, dude.”
“Why didn’t you clean it off?” groused their mother. “And you’re still dressed!”
When Dennis had moved back in (at the ripe old age of twenty-six) it was into a room his mother had kept essentially as he had left it when he moved out at eighteen. The walls remained plastered with punk posters: Misfits, Black Flag, The Addicts, Sex Pistols, Order of the Fly, Nekromantix, and, of course, Elvis.
“Our gig went over,” Dennis explained in a scratchy voice. “Had three encores.”
“You’re sure that’s all?” probed Ma.
“Ma!” Stuart called. When she spun with a quick squeal, Dennis and Stuart broke out laughing. Stuart was just trying to get her off Dennis’s case. Giving her a start was a bonus.
Ma was a good sport about it. “Just how many scares can I expect this Halloween?”
Dennis gave her a tight hug and a kiss on top of her head. “All of ’em.”
Ma took his wrist and pushed up the long sleeves of his black undershirt. “Let me see something.”
She turned over his heavily tattooed arm and examined his inner elbow. Dennis pulled away. “ What the hell?”
“I hear so many things about punk music people,” she said in a grim tone. “Promise me you’re not using any hard drugs?”
“Ma!” Dennis and Stuart rebuked in harmony.
Ma clapped once, holding her hands together as she gave a satisfied chuckle. “Guess your ol’ Ma can still pull off a Halloween prank herself every now and again, huh?”
Dennis walked to his dresser, picked up a crumpled orange flyer, and handed it to Stuart. “I’m a drunk. Not a junkie. There’s a diff.”
“Don’t say that!” she rebuked. “You’re not either one! Not anymore.”
Stuart read the flyer and grinned.
Ma sniffed at Dennis’s water glass.
the chalk outlines! on stage tonight! read the flyer. It was a rough, old-school mimeograph job, featuring a grainy photo of Dennis with his bandmates, a muscular Hispanic and a petite sneering alt chick, all of them dressed in campy Halloween-inspired rockabilly gear.
“Once a drunk, always a drunk, Ma. That’s the deal.” Even this sounded cool coming from Dennis.
She patted his back. “You’re doing so well, Dennis. I’m proud of you.”
Stuart offered an agreeing smile, not sure if he should say anything.
“Now hurry!” Ma squealed. “You shouldn’t keep Reverend McGlazer waiting.”
She kissed him and turned to leave. “Oh! Can you drop Stuart at school? You want to hear how Dennis’s jig went, don’t you, Stuart?”
Stuart and Dennis snickered at her word choice. “Sure, Ma. No prob.”
* * * *
Beaming, Stuart raised the luchador mask off his face and amped up the volume. His favorite part of autumn mornings was this: riding in his brother’s tricked-out hearse as leaves blew across the tree-lined streets and swirled in mini twisters, chasing each other under an umber haze.
The trees, fences, and mailboxes along the street all wore such elaborate Halloween decorations, it was like a high-stakes contest. Nylon witches and ghosts floated in the trees, wooden black cat cutouts stood in the flowerbeds, wittily inscribed Styrofoam tombstones jutted from front-yard displays.
Dennis’s 1970 Cadillac hearse was a mobile advertisement for his band, with flames painted on the hood, cartoonish chalk outlines of a voluptuous woman’s corpse stickered on the doors, and a V8 472 cc engine that could roar like an enraged lion. Stuart loved to ride in it, especially to school.
The familiar punkabilly music emanating from the speakers had Stuart bobbing his head, tapping his fingers on his thigh.
Dennis looked at him, pleased. “You really dig that track, huh?”
“I think it’s your best ever.”
“Let’s hope the record company suit agrees.”
“She will, dude!” Stuart insisted. “I’d bet on it!”
The chorus began, and Stuart sang along with appropriate facial contortions.
“I better watch you, man,” Dennis said. “You’ll end up replacing me.”
“Yeah, right,” Stuart said and scoffed with a sideways glance at his brother. “Maybe I can be in the band one day though. Keyboards or something.”
“No way, daddy-o.” Dennis shook his head, as he always did when Stuart raised the topic. “College. Then some more college! After that, college. You’ll be going to college—beyond the grave!” Dennis goosed his brother, right in that spot under his ribs that made him giggle like a baby. But for Stuart, the appeal of one day being like his brother was near irresistible. “We’ll see.”
“For real, Stuart. Mom’s had plenty of guff outta me. She doesn’t need it from her widdle baby bubby.”
“Shut up. You’re doing okay. Pretty good, actually.”
“Maybe.” Dennis took his eyes from the road to give Stuart an earnest, penetrating gaze. “But you’re gonna do better.”
A dozen yards ahead, burly Mister Dukes cast a scowl at them, which seemed reasonable given that he was in the midst of unwinding moist toilet paper from his mailbox. His morning’s labor was only beginning; more of the soggy bands lay draped across his shrubs.
Dennis slowed the hearse and rolled down the window. “Morning, Mister Dukes. Ya got hit?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Dukes waved to Stuart as he wadded the tissue into a handful. “Hey, it wasn’t you, was it, boys? Be honest.”
“Come on, Mr. Dukes.” Dennis stayed cool, as always.
“Aaah I’m sorry. It’s just … that weird music, and whatnot.” Dukes squinted like the concept was a literal indecipherable blur to him. “What d’ya call it? Junkabilly?”
Before Stuart could stop himself, he explained, “It’s called horror punk!”
Dennis nudged him. “Easy.”
“No offense, boys.” Dukes frowned at all the unpapered yards surrounding his. “Guess I’m just too old for all this Halloween crap.”
“Never too old for Halloween, Mr. Dukes!” Dennis called, waving. “Hope you make it to the Pumpkin Parade!”
“Maybe.” Dukes waved, mumbling something they couldn’t hear.
As they pulled away, Dennis gave Stuart a reproachful glare. “Gotta build good rapport with the public, Stuart.”
“He doesn’t respect our music!”
“Nobody does. That’s why it’s called punk, genius.”
Stuart had this thought and the music to fill his mind for the rest of the ride to Ember Hollow Junior High. If they had stayed at Mr. Dukes’s place longer, they would have seen him open his mailbox and find a single piece of orange-and-black-wrapped candy.