Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

6

If you failed to place strip sets together before cutting, place two segments right sides together, checking to be sure the colors and seam allowances oppose each other, and sew into a four-patch.

* * *

Boots opened her front door and Marian, without saying a word, dashed past her and into the safety of the bright living room.

“Marian, honey...what is it?”

It all came out in a rapid, deadly cadence (except for the part about the back of Alan’s skull; Marian still couldn’t bring herself to believe it and didn’t want to sound crazy), broken only by a swallow here or a breath there to steady the beating of her heart.

Boots put her arm around Marian’s shoulder and guided her to a chair. “You sit right here and calm yourself down some more. I’ll go fetch some stuff to take care of that wrist of yours.”

Marian leaned forward and pressed her head against her knees, breathing deeply. Boots returned with a legion of medical supplies and two cups of cinnamon tea sprinkled with peppermint schnapps. Marian took three swallows, not minding that it burned her throat, then sat in silence as Boots cleaned and bandaged her wound.

Afterward, she began to cry. God, how she hated crying in front of someone else! “I’m sorry, Aunt Boots.”

“No need to apologize, honey. I had a nice crying jag myself after I saw your brother a couple of days ago. He and that house just seem to have that effect on people.”

Marian smiled at her. Good old Boots. It seemed like everyone eventually turned to her. Fifty-seven and didn’t look a day over forty-five, provided you didn’t stare too closely at the amount of pancake she wore to cover the thin, jagged scar that ran from the left corner of her mouth and down her chin, only to curve back and go halfway up her jaw. Marian never knew how Boots had come by that scar, but she suspected that, like the marks on Dad’s back, it was courtesy of their mother.

As she let go of her aunt’s hands, it occurred to Marian there was a lot about Boots she didn’t know, save that she used to play the organ at her church every Christmas, had never married, and always made sure no visitor to her home left without something hot in their stomach.

“Now,” said Boots, brushing back a strand of her brilliant white hair, “tell me the whole thing one more time, from the beginning. I want to make sure I got it right.” “This is going to sound silly,” whispered Marian, “but could you answer a question for me?” “If I can, hon, sure.” “Why do we call you ‘Boots,’ Lucille?” She laughed rather loudly at first, the quickly silenced herself. “I shouldn’t make so much noise. I don’t want to wake Laura—” “Laura’s here?” “Uh-huh. Said she talked to you on the phone last week.” “Can I see her?” “When she wakes up. Now, take another sip of tea and tell me everything again, just a bit slower this time, okay?”

Marian did, hitting on more details. Boots considered everything with an even, unreadable expression, her eyes never looking away, tilting her head to hear better, and asking all the right questions when Marian fell into confused and frightened silence.

When she saw that her niece was finished, Boots half-smiled, rose to her feet, and walked to her front window; pulling back the curtain, she watched as a few costumed children ran down the street, then let the curtain drop back into place. “Honey, I think your brother has made you a part of his craziness. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s made himself some kinda scarecrow and is calling it ‘Jack’; I don’t doubt that for a second. He’s alone there with some pretty powerful grief.”

“I know,” whispered Marian. “And I feel awful about it. I know that I should’ve come back the minute I received the telegram, but —”

Boots raised a hand. “You don’t owe me any explanation. I don’t blame you at all for not wanting to be here. I saw your father during that last week. He wasn’t nothing more than a skeleton with a bit of skin on him. Scared me so much I could hardly look at him. I’ve been having bad dreams ever since. A death like that isn’t something a parent would want their child to see, so don’t feel guilty about not getting back here. A human being’s expected to take only so much.”

“But Jack...that thing...it spoke to me! I saw it at the cemetery!” She held out her bandaged wrist. “It cut me.”

“I’ll say it again, Marian. Grief can do things to a person, make them see things that aren’t there. Maybe you cut yourself on a busted pop bottle or something that was on the ground near your parents’ graves and didn’t notice. You said yourself that you’d been thinking about how your mom used to read to you when you was a kid, how you used to think Jack Pumpkinhead was your secret friend. Please don’t look at me like that. I know something terrible’s happened to you, I’m just trying to make some sense of things. Come on in the kitchen with me. I got a craving for some more of this nasty-ass tea.”

When they were both seated at the kitchen table with a fresh hot cup, Boots lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl around her. Her face tensed as she thought of something, then she spoke up. “When the funeral was over, a bunch of folks came to the house with food and stuff for Alan. I hung around to help him clean up after they all left. He wasn’t in no condition to do housework, so I told him to go take a nap. ’Bout twenty minutes later I’m in the front room emptying ashtrays and hear Alan upstairs talking to himself. It was the damnedest thing. I swear that I could feel his heartbreak all around me, like it was as real as I was; I half-expected it to come through the front door and ask me where its supper was.

“Then I heard another voice — sounded enough like your dad’s to give me the heebie-jeebies. So I left. Didn’t bother to say good-bye or put away the cleaning supplies or nothing. I just wanted to get away from your brother and his grief and that house as fast as I could. I think there’s a kind of sadness that gets to be so terrible a person can’t be around it for too long without going a little crazy themselves. I got enough people who think I’m batty. I don’t need to go hearing a dead man’s voice.”

Marian inhaled the peppermint fumes from her fresh cup of tea. “How bad was it for Dad near the end? Did he really feel that...forgotten?”

Boots took a deep drag from her cigarette, coughed, then sipped her tea. “Let me tell you something about your dad. When him and me were growing up, he was always made to feel like a failure by the other kids in the family. Our parents weren’t the kindest folks in the world, they never had much money and even less patience. Pop wasn’t too bad but our mama was one mean-tempered gal. She used to take off her one of her high-heeled shoes whenever she got mad and beat your dad on the back with it, making little holes until you couldn’t see his skin for the blood. Well, I saved up a bunch of money from collecting pop bottles and scrap metal and newspapers and such, and I bought Mama a new pair of boots. They fit her just right and she said they were comfortable. She took to wearing them quite a lot. So I either hid or threw away all her high-heeled shoes, that way, when she got the hankering to pound on your dad, she never made him bleed. Oh, she left some nasty bruises, but never again did she leave him scarred and bleeding. He was so grateful that he hugged me and said, ‘Thanks for the boots.’ That’s how I got my nickname.”

Marian remembered how she used to giggle at those marks on her father’s back when she was a child: What’s all them funny things, Daddy? — Why, those’re dots, honey, so you can play at connect-the-dots and see what kind of picture they make.

“The one thing he kept saying to me,” whispered Boots, wiping something from her eye, “was that someday he was gonna do something great, something that would make mama and the rest of the kids who used to call him a dummy feel sorry they’d ever been bad to him and me.

“He used to ask me if he bored me with all of his talking, his out-loud daydreaming. I thought he was the greatest thing since Errol Flynn. He’d always stand in front of me when mama would go off on one of her pounding fits. Most of the time, he wound up taking my beatings for me.” She touched the scar on her chin. “When he was there, that is. He was a fine boy and an even better man, your dad. You should’ve known him back then, back when you could see his greatness instead of just hearing about it the way others remembered it. I’m gonna miss him so much — oh, goddammit!” She turned away and wept quietly.

Marian reached over and took Boots’s hand. “Please tell me?”

“Oh, honey ... it was terrible for him at the end. I wish I had it in me to lie and spare your feelings but I can’t and I’m sorry. He kept...crying all the time, going on about how he’d never get to build his masterpiece. He figured that his life had been one big waste. There was no feeling sorry for himself, though. He had no sympathy for himself at all — he even said it’d make more sense if he did feel sorry for himself, ’cause that’d at least explain why he couldn’t stop crying. He never got to do any of the things he wanted to do, only the things he had to do. I just couldn’t stand it. He was so miserable. The cancer pain was too much. He needed...I don’t know...something so much and none of us could give it to him. It was terrible. He started drinking, to help kill some of the pain, he said. I knew that he shouldn’t have been pouring booze down his throat but when I said something to Alan, he only said —” “‘I can’t deny him a drink when he needs one.’” “That’s right.” Marian got up and put her arms around Boots, holding her as tightly as she could.

“I’m fine, honey,” said Boots, “thank you. I’m always fine. Don’t know why I had to go and blubber like this. Not my way. Let’s put ourselves back together now, whatta you say?”

Marian kissed Boots’s cheek. “You were always my favorite aunt.”

“Glad to know someone in this family was born with good taste. Listen, now; I’m gonna get myself freshened up. Why don’t you go on and stick your head in the guest room down here and wake Laura? She’d throw a fit if she knew you’d been here and I didn’t let you wake her to say hello. You go do that, I’ll make myself presentable, then I’ll drive us back over to the house. I want to see this thing your brother made.”

Boots went upstairs and Marian— after another shot of doctored tea— went to the door of the guest room and knocked. “Laura? Laura, it’s me. Can I come in?”

“M-Marian?” She sounded half-asleep still. “Hell, yes...come in.”

For a while there were no words exchanged between them, there was no need. Marian sat next to her ex-sister-in-law’s bed, holding her hand and trying not to give in to the fear that was clawing at the lining of her stomach.

Laura was pregnant and—judging from her size—in the last month.

Marian wished she could smile and make herself believe that Laura had found someone new, a man who loved and cared for her and wanted a family, but the look of helplessness on Laura’s face, one composed of fear and more than a little hatred, kept her nailed in the moment.

“I don’t feel very good,” said Laura, her voice thin, hollow, “so please j-just listen to what I have to say.” As she spoke the color drained from her face until she looked ashen, a bloated greying corpse. Marian felt herself shaking as she watched the sweat pour down Laura’s face.

“I left your brother over nine months ago, and I haven’t slept with any man since then. I’ve been tested, Marian, and I there’s a...baby in me. I feel it kicking, I feel its hunger...it’s there. And its Alan’s. I don’t know how or why he did this to me, but I know.

“Early on, I tried three times to have an abortion, but when they got inside me there was... there was nothing there.”

The sweating was worse now and she was shaking badly— as was Marian.

“I never really wanted kids,” said Laura. “All I ever wanted was a man who would love me, who would support me, and who knew that I came first once he’d left the family. But Alan could never leave your family behind. Was that so much to ask? Was it? To have a home all my own? A home that had no trace of whatever it was that happened to him when you guys were kids? I still love him, Marian, but this thing in me is moving and I don’t want it! I just want to... to have my job and my husband back, I want to read in bed at night and feel him beside me, I want to go to movies and drive him crazy because I insist on sitting through all the credits, I want him to wake me up and send me to bed because I feel asleep watching some late night talk show again, I want him to crack bad jokes when our friends come over....” She leaned back and started taking deep breaths. Marian looked at Laura’s middle. It rippled. A quick movement, a thin hissing sound, and Laura’s water broke. Marian jumped to her feet and called out for Boots. “Press the ‘O’ key on the phone,” called her aunt from upstairs. “That’s 911.”

Marian snatched up the phone and made the call. Four minutes later she and Boots watched as the EMTs loaded Laura into the ambulance. Boots kissed Laura’s forehead and told her they’d follow in her car. The ambulance pulled away and Marian followed her aunt into the garage.

The garage was dark but Boots was able to guide Marian to the car without either of them banging a shin. Once inside the car, under the harsh glow of the dome light, the strain on Boots was evident; she suddenly looked much older than her years. She caught Marian staring at her and smiled. “You are a pretty thing. Won’t be much longer now and I’ll be paying good money to see your face up on a movie screen.”

“That’s right. You’re sharing space with the next Katherine Hepburn, so show the proper respect.”

“And humble, to boot,” said Boots, laughing, then closed the car door, plunging them both into darkness. “Lord, I hope they take 21^st Street to the hospital, it’s the quickest way.”

Marian suddenly did not want to leave. Out there, Alan was waiting. And maybe something else. But behind her, just through the door, was a warm and bright house, a place of safety where two women could sit down with a cup of nasty-ass tea and have a good cry over a death in the family, a place where grief would eventually ease, not grow to become so strong it walked on two spindly legs and spoke in a voice teeming with coffin beetles. “...all right,” said Boots. “H-huh?” “I said you shouldn’t worry, things’ll be all right. One disaster at a time. Laura and the baby first, then your brother.” “Laura told me—”

“I know what she told you. She’s been telling me the same thing for weeks.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I don’t know what to believe half the time anymore.” Boots started the car, raised the garage door, turned on the headlights, and slowly backed out into the street. “Can’t say I’m much looking forward to this.”

“I don’t think Alan’s really dangerous. Besides, he cut himself worse than I did. He must be pretty weak by now and there’s two of us.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Boots. “I’m probably gonna come back to find that the neighborhood kids have soaped every last one of my goddamn windows.” The two women looked at each other and laughed. Marian promised herself to take the time to get to know Aunt Boots better. Wasted time. Lost opportunities. Regrets. Nothing was ever accomplished by dwelling on them.

“You know, don’t you, that we’re gonna have to drive by the cemetery on the way from the hospital back to your folks’s house, right? It’s the quickest way.”

Marian glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure nothing was following them. Going paranoid’s good.

Nothing but shadows and the glowing faces of pumpkins in windows, a few groups of costumed children heading home, stomachs ready for sweet treats.

Only these things.

And the wind. Blowing harder. Whistling. Drawing the tree branches down like arms reaching—

She blinked, forcing the chill away. Boots reached over and snapped on the heat. “Not gonna have you catch your death on top of everything else.”

“Thanks. I guess I’m just tired.”

They rounded a corner. Then another. And one more.

The taillights of the ambulance—as well as its whirling visibar lights—came into view. Boots accelerated slightly in order to keep it in sight. Marian sat up straight, her heart suddenly pounding so hard and fast she expected to blink and see it lying there on the dashboard, pumping blood all over the windshield, blinding her, panicking her, sending her off the road and into a guardrail, over the side and —

— the ambulance’s siren cut off as it began to weave; only slightly at first, then much more erratic and violently.

Dear God, thought Marian.

It’s happening.

Though the car was a good quarter-mile from the ambulance, Marian could clearly see what was going on. The ambulance tried slowing to a normal speed, couldn’t, then veered right and ran up on the curve, crashing into and then plowing over a mailbox before slamming into the side of brick building, shattering the windshield and popping open one of the rear doors, fumes from the engine obscuring everything in smoke and steam.

Boots yelled, “Oh, Holy Mother!” and braked quickly, throwing both herself and Marian forward into the dash. Once they’d recovered, Marian pushed open her door and jumped out of the car just as one of the attendants came out of the back, his uniform covered in blood, and collapsed to the ground. Marian felt her legs go weak as she ran toward the ambulance. The windows were smeared with dripping darkness from inside. The driver scrambled out, his back drenched in blood, and dropped to his knees, softly laughing.

Boots was now beside Marian. “Oh, Dear God—Laura!” She ran from Marian, who quickly followed her aunt to the opened door in back and looked inside and saw—

—blood, a lot of blood and tissue, but no Laura and no baby, only the blood and tissue and something that looked like deep scratch marks on the inside roof—

“—do now?” shouted Boots.

Marian ran over to the driver and tried to bring him back, but his laugh and the hollowed look of his eyes told her in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t coming home for a while, so she ran to the other EMT and rolled him over—

—a deep gash along the side of neck was still spurting blood, albeit slowly now, the artery severed, his life gone, gone, gone.

Keep it together, for chrissakes!

She jumped in the front seat of the ambulance and grabbed the mic from the radio unit, pressed down on the button, and said, “Hello? Hello? Listen, I’m calling from inside the ambulance that was dispatched about ten minutes ago. There’s been a wreck and—” Her thumb slipped off the button. “—shit!”

The radio hissed and crackled, and buried somewhere in the noise she heard the sound of singing: “A goblin lives in OUR house, in OUR house, in OUR house...”

“Hello!” she shouted into the mic once again.

“...goblin lives in OUR house, all the year ‘round!”

Then Boots was there, grabbing her arm and pulling her from the ambulance. “C’mon, hon, let’s get back in the car and get to a phone, okay? There’s nothing we can do here.”

She didn’t so much guide as almost toss Marian toward the car. In moments both were in and doors were closed and Boots was turning around and then they were moving again.

Too much, Marian thought, pressing closed her eyes as if wishing alone would make it all a dream. Too much, too fast, dearGod make it slow down, make it stop, anything!

“Hang in there with me, hon,” said Boots, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “We’ll get through this somehow.”

Marian opened her eyes as Boots tore around the next corner and accelerated.

Marian saw it first. The street was blocked, filled with dozens, maybe hundreds of people; children, adults, old folks, all of them carrying pumpkins that glowed with a deep, otherwordly light.

Boots jerked the steering wheel to the left and stood on the brake but it was too late; the car fishtailed over the curb, spun sideways, and smashed into a section of Cedar Hill Cemetery’s iron gate, slamming Marian against the dashboard as the windshield exploded.

It took less than five seconds.

Later—she had no idea how much later, but it was later, nonetheless—Marian pulled herself up and wiped the blood out of her eyes. A low pressure in the back of her head swam forward. She felt like she was going to pass out again. She hoped she didn’t have a concussion. Her door was wrenched open. She turned and saw Jack Pumpkinhead. And next to him, wearing her favorite old housecoat, his pumpkinhead wife. Marian began tumbling back toward darkness. “Everything’s going to be fine,” said Jack, reaching for her. “Just fine,” said Mom. Then darkness took her.