The Beastly Bride

ONE THIN DIME Stewart Moore

It had to be a great house for candy. Anyone who decorated their house that much for Halloween must have great candy, and lots of it. Old-style carnival posters filled the yard, proclaiming the wonders of Doug the Dinosaur Boy, the Real Jack Pumpkinhead, the Mysterious Black Widow, and Kate the Lion-Tailed Girl. Each poster was carefully framed, its yellowing paper sealed behind glass. Each one hung from a stake driven deep into the dew-damp grass. They stood, arrayed like a band of goblins, guarding the house. That house itself — so white and plain by daylight — was draped in shadows that dripped from the branched fingers of old oak trees. A simple, single-toothed jack-o’-lantern grinned its candlelit grin from the porch, and right at the top of the steps, a real, honest-to-goodness, enormous witch’s cauldron smoked and steamed. There had to be great candy in there.

The problem was that there were no lights on in the house, no lights at all, and so the little pirate stood on the sidewalk, shifting from foot to foot, trying to decide whether to go up and knock. In the glass frame of every poster, his reflection danced nervously.

The little pirate’s mother had warned him not to go up to any house that didn’t have its lights on — and especially not to go up to this house. This house had been empty for years and years, but just last month someone had moved in. Grown-ups never talked about the new owner except in whispers. The little pirate watched the cauldron steam. He was sure he had heard his mother whisper the word witch.

It didn’t help that the moon was full, that the last dry leaves on the trees rattled like tiny bones in the cold wind, and that somewhere in the darkness, an owl was hooting. These things didn’t help at all.

Finally, the little pirate decided not to try it. As he turned to go to the next, friendly, well-lit house, a shadow moved among the deeper shadows of the porch, and a smooth, clear voice spoke: “And what are you tonight, my dear little monster?”

The trick-or-treater froze. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman’s voice: younger than his mother, older than his babysitter. The voice spoke quietly, but still he could hear it clearly over the soft bubbling of the cauldron. “Well?”

The trick-or-treater began his shuffling dance again. He looked down at his costume, as if to be sure: at his oversize white shirt, his black pants, his buckled shoes; at the shiny plastic hook that hid his left hand. He felt the eye patch and the bandanna he wore on his head. Finally, uncertainly, he croaked an answer. “I’m a pirate?”

The woman in the shadows laughed. It was a friendly laugh, not the sort of gurgling chuckle you might expect to hear from a darkened porch on Halloween night.

“That I can see,” the voice said. “But which one? Are you that Blackbeard, Edward Teach, who died with twenty-six bullets in his body and his beard full of other men’s blood? Or perhaps you’re Jean Lafitte, the voodoo master of New Or-leans, who used his own dead sailors to guard his treasures? Or even — no, you couldn’t be — so bloody a man as Captain William Davey, a man so evil he named his ship The Devil? They say that before he was caught and dangled, he made his crew swallow his gold and jump overboard, so that they could bring his treasure back to him in Hell, ten thousand doubloons clinking in their bellies. Are you such a man as that?”

The trick-or-treater’s ideas concerning pirates came mostly from Scooby-Doo. The names the shadowy woman had rolled out to him spoke of blood, and he didn’t like them. He tried, quickly, to think of a name for himself, a good piratical name, but now all the names he could think of sounded like they belonged to very, very bad men. At a loss, he looked down at his feet and mumbled, “I’m a pirate.”

“And a fine one you are, too. But you weren’t going to pass me by, were you?”

“Your light’s a-pposed to be on.” The little pirate felt that on this point the Halloween rules, as they had been explained to him by his mother, were quite clear, and he felt confident enough to assume a reproachful tone.

“I know,” said the voice, unfazed even by this clear admission of rule breaking. “It burned out. Don’t you want a trick-or-treat?”

The little pirate’s father was fond of this exact same trick question, and so he knew the proper follow-up: “Which one?”

The voice laughed again. “A treat. For you — most certainly a treat. All you have to do. ” The voice paused for a very long time, as if waiting for an owl to hoot eerily in the silence — which, at last, one did. “All you have to do is reach into the pot.”

The cauldron still bubbled and steamed but did not choose this moment to do anything threatening, like spitting out a shower of multicolored sparks or allowing a greasy gray tentacle to slither briefly over its lip. Uncertain, but drawn on by the promise of treats, the little pirate began inching his way up the walkway. “What’s your name?” he asked. With a name, he would at least be on firmer ground.

“Oh, no,” the voice purred. “You’re not supposed to tell names on Halloween. It’s dangerous. You don’t know what might be listening. Do you?”

The shadow that spoke from the shadows finally stirred and stepped forward into the light. A young woman appeared, with long golden hair and tawny skin, wearing a red lion-tamer’s jacket and a black top hat. She also had a long, golden-furred tail that swished idly back and forth behind her.

“But Long John Silver,” she said, “where’s your parrot?”

The little pirate looked at the poster nearest the house: Kate the Lion-Tailed Girl looked exactly like the coolly smiling woman standing over the cauldron.

“You’re in the poster,” he said.

“Yes. ” Kate winked. “Well, don’t you have something to say?”

The pirate only looked down at his hook.

“Trick. ” Kate prompted.

“. or treat?”

“And which would you prefer?”

“Treat, please,” said the pirate quickly.

“Of course!” Kate opened her arms in a wide gesture of welcome. “Go ahead. I’ve got very good candy. Reach in. I won’t move a muscle.”

The little pirate climbed the steps to the porch, much more slowly than many a real pirate had climbed the stairs to the gallows. He stopped on the last step, refusing actually to stand on the same porch as the lion-tailed girl. Her tail, he saw, was twitching much faster now. He tried to look into the cauldron, but all he could see was white smoke bubbling inside it.

“You said. good candy?”

“Very good, I said.” Kate grinned.

The white cloud inside the cauldron spat out a tendril of mist, and the pirate shrank back. The candy he’d already collected rattled inside his plastic pumpkin: not very much so far. And the cauldron was very, very big. There was a lot of room for a lot of candy. Finally, he screwed his courage to the sticking place and, squinting his eyes tightly, reached into the pot. His hand sank beneath the surface of a cold liquid. He’d expected heat and snatched his hand back. It was covered in strawberry syrup, but it wasn’t strawberry syrup. He knew what it was. He knew what it was, it was—

“Oh, how silly!” Kate laughed. “You said treat, didn’t you?” Cat-quick, she reached into the cauldron herself, and her hand came out, not scarlet, but clutching a crinkling mass of candy bars. She held it out, patiently waiting for the little pirate to hold up his pumpkin. Trembling, he did. But before she dropped the treasure, she tilted her head and asked, “But are you sure you wouldn’t like to see what the real trick is?”

He shook his head so violently his eye patch slid down to his cheek. Kate laughed and dropped the candy into his pumpkin. On the instant, the pirate ran off like a cannon shot for saner quarters. She called after him, “I hope you find your parrot!”

A little ways down the road, under a streetlight, an old, old man was watching, his hands buried deep in the pockets of a coat that might have fought at Verdun. As the boy ran off, the old man walked nearer, stopping at the same spot where the little pirate had stood for so long before his fateful decision to go up the walkway. The old man tipped his hat. “You set to bothering the young ones there?” he asked.

“Can I help you?” Kate asked, stepping back slightly toward her shadows.

The old man took off his hat. His wisps of white hair shivered in the wind. He held his hat like a bowl. “Trick or treat?”

“Where’s your costume?” Kate took a half step back toward the light.

“Right on my face!” the old man said. “I’m a genuine Egyptian mummy, ten thousand years old and falling to pieces right before your eyes. You got any magic tannis root in that pot there?”

Kate regarded him sidelong, her arms crossed. “Reach in and see.”

“Oh, no. Not after what I just saw. My heart couldn’t take the strain, I’m afraid.”

“That is a pity,” Kate said, and tossed him a candy bar. He caught it in his hat and slipped it in his pocket.

“Much obliged, Miss Kate,” he said as he put his hat back on.

“That’s trouble,” she said. “How do you know my name?”

“Well, there’s the convenience of putting it on that poster there.”

“That poster,” she said, “is older than you are.”

“And besides that, you’re about the only thing this town has talked about since you moved in last month. It’s behavior like this — plus having a tail, I suppose — that’s done it all, you know.”

Kate half-smiled. “So it’s Halloween night, and you know my name. That gives you quite an advantage. But who are you?”

The old man tipped his hat once more, and said, “Name’s William Wildhawk.”

Kate laughed, surprised, delighted. “No, it isn’t!”

“Of course not. But it sounds like the sort of name a fellow ought to have when the woman he’s talking to has a tail, doesn’t it?”

“It does indeed,” she said, and her tail arched upward with pleasure. “But what brings a man named William Wildhawk to my doorstep on such a night as this? Surely not free candy bars. With a name like that, you need dragons to slay.”

The old man looked around, as if Kate might have a dragon waiting in the shadows on a leash. “No, not me,” he said. “I doubt I have anything that would slay a dragon. Why, do you know where one might be found?”

“I used to,” Kate said, a faraway look coming over her face. William glanced at the poster of Doug the Dinosaur Boy, a tyrannosaurus in a schoolboy’s tie and short pants. Would he be the sort of thing that counted for a dragon in this mechanized day and age? he thought.

Kate shook her head. “But I think he’s most likely moved on by now.” Far away, something howled. It was certainly a dog. It couldn’t possibly be a wolf. It couldn’t possibly be a lonely timber wolf keening over its empty belly. The wind cut through the thin places in the old man’s coat. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself.

Kate forced a smile. “You should think about getting yourself home soon, William. It’s Halloween, and things will be coming out to play soon. This is a night for haunts and fairies.”

William winked. “Goblins, too?”

“What!” gasped Kate, in tones of deepest mortification. “A goblin, me?”

“And where else would a tail like that come from?”

Kate huffed. Her tail flicked indignantly. “From my mother’s side of the family. And you watch your mouth, or you’ll be a toad come morning.”

“Your mother had a tail, too?” William asked.

“She had a nicer tail than I, but she took better care of it. French shampoo, German vitamins, and plenty of exercise.”

“And what about her mother?”

Kate looked down at William for a long time. Her tail was stiff and still. “My grandmother’s tail was the world champion. She could serve tea with it. She even traveled around with a carnival for a while. That’s where all the posters come from.” She stepped down off the porch, standing on the first stair, her hands on her hips, her tail slowly arching. “You knew her, didn’t you?”

William shook his head. “No. But I saw her once, just once, when her circus passed through. I must have been, oh, twelve. Around there. That was the last year before I was too old to let my friends know that I still liked circuses and too young to know that they all felt the same way. In fact, that was the last circus I ever went to, till I had kids of my own and a good excuse. And I was just on my way home that night, licking the cotton candy off my fingers, when I saw the Lion-Tailed Girl herself in front of the old freak show tent, working the crowd for their last dimes.”

Kate jumped down onto the grass in the midst of her posters, landing on her feet without a sound. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she called out to an invisible crowd, and though she did not shout, still every word rang down the street and around the corner. Her voice circled around William’s ears and would not be ignored. “Ladies and gentlemen! Every one of you knows the wonders that God made in the six days of Genesis. But have you seen what his hands made in those same six nights, in the dark, when no one was looking?”

She strode over to a poster filled entirely by a mass of swirling darkness, with two large eyes in the midst of it. “Have you seen our famous Black Widow, the most horrifying perversion of nature in history? She’s inside, just a dime away.”

Kate’s fingers slipped into a jacket pocket and came back up with a thin dime flashing, rolling over her knuckles. “Have you seen the real refugee from Oz, our own Jack Pumpkinhead?” She pointed to a poster of a huge, smiling, orange, empty-eyed face. It must have been a mask, because it looked exactly like a tall, thin man with a pumpkin for a head.

“They’re all inside, and it only takes a dime to see them, just the skinniest coin of all, slap it down and walk on in.” Kate hopped back onto her porch and flung her front door open wide. Darkness gaped inside. “If you walk away now, you’ll wake up in the night, in the dark, and wonder what it was you missed. But you can see it now. For one dime. Just one — thin — dime!”

Kate froze in a theatrical pose, both hands pointing into the darkness inside her house. William had watched it all with misty eyes. He shook his head.

“You are her spirit and image,” he said. “You are that.”

Kate relaxed and leaned against her porch railing. “So I’m told.” She shrugged. Her tail drooped.

“You know,” William said, “I always wondered what was that Black Widow’s ‘perversion of nature’ that was so horrifying.”

“You mean you didn’t go in?”

“No. I spent my last dime on one of the games. Throwing baseballs at milk bottles.” He reached into one of his deep pockets and pulled an ancient flattened rag doll into the light: a lion with a mangy mane and a windup key in its back. “I won this for knocking them over three times in a row. I named him Raleigh. He used to play a little song when you wound him up.”

“What was the song?” Kate asked.

“I don’t really remember anymore. It was. ” He closed his eyes, and, after a moment, began to hum. He hummed a tune that was somehow melancholy and jaunty at the same time: the sort of tune you might want to hear after a long, bad night, in the blue, foggy light, just before the sun rose. Finally, he gave up. “But it wasn’t really like that at all. Oh, well. It’s a funny thing about music, isn’t it? You can still feel what it sounded like, years and years ago, even if you can’t really remember how it went.”

“And what happened to Raleigh?” Kate sat down on her top step, her chin in her hands, her tail curled around her side. “One day you wound him up too tight, and something deep down inside of him snapped?”

“No, no. Truth to tell, I just set him down one day and forgot all about him. I found him in a box, years later. And he just wouldn’t play anymore. I turned the key, and nothing happened. I kept him around, ever since, but. nothing, of course. I took him to a toy shop once, to see if I could get him fixed, but the man said he’d have to cut Raleigh open, and I couldn’t do that.”

“May I see him?” Kate asked. William slowly walked forward, through the midst of the faded carnival posters, and gently laid the little lion in her hands.

“You know,” he said, “I thought, that night, I might give him to your grandmother. But she’d already gone inside the tent. I’m sure she could have gotten one of her own, of course, but. ” He shrugged. “I was twelve.”

Kate gently turned Raleigh over and over in her hands. “Those carnival games were all rigged,” she said softly. “Grandmother told me. The balls were full of sawdust, and the bottles were nailed down.”

“Maybe I really wanted that lion.” William chuckled. “Maybe I just believed I could do it.” He reached into yet another pocket and brought an ancient yellow baseball up into the light. He tossed it from one hand to the other. “Maybe I switched the balls. This one has lug nuts in the middle.”

“What don’t you have in that coat?” Kate asked.

“The devil’s three golden hairs and a cure for cancer. I’ve got just about everything else, though.”

Kate smiled and held Raleigh out for William to take back. William shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He’s most of why I came by. He’s always been your grandmother’s, really, at least to my mind. So that pretty much makes him yours.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, and she hugged the little lion tightly.

“Not at all,” said William. He touched the brim of his hat, and turned away.

“Black Widow’s act,” she said, and he stopped. “It was pretty simple. She could swallow a four-inch-long tarantula and bring it up again, alive.”

William shuddered. “That’s it?”

“Well, she could do some other things, too, but they were too much for the show. And you don’t want to know, even if you think you do.”

“Ah, well. I suppose that’s what I get for spending my dime on milk bottles instead of on the show.” He walked back down the walkway, but stopped on the curb. He half-turned back. “So your grandmother’s name was Kate, too, then?”

Kate’s tail twitched. “And my mother’s. It’s a popular name in the family.”

William tipped his hat one last time. “You have a good rest of your Halloween, Miss Kate.”

As quick as a big cat pouncing, Kate jumped down from the porch and ran up to William. She pressed her dime into his palm and whispered, “One more ticket to see the show.” She smiled. “Save it this time.”

“Thank you much,” said William, closing his hand tightly around the little coin.

“Good night to you, William Wildhawk,” said Kate over her shoulder as she walked back to her house, her tail swishing.

“Good-bye,” said William Wildhawk. Kate ran lightly up the stairs and inside, shutting the door behind her.

For a long time, the old, old man did not walk down the road. He stood beneath the streetlight, looking at the dime flashing in his hand: purple-white, when it reflected the halogen lamp above his head; blue, when he tilted it to catch the moonlight. And then there was another light caught in the coin’s face, a warm and golden light that he hadn’t seen in years, the kind of light you could only get from old, old bulbs, like the ones over a carnival midway. He looked up and saw that warm light flashing inside Kate’s house. She passed by a window, and she waved to him, a flourish of fingers matched by a flourish of her tail, and then the curtains fell closed, and the lights went off.

As William turned away, he thought he could hear music playing from somewhere far away: a simple music-box tune, somehow both jaunty and sad, the sort of tune you might hear at the end of a long, cold night as the sky grows blue, just before the sun rises.

He held the dime tightly, and shoved both hands deep into his pockets. “Just one thin dime”—he chuckled—“to see the show.” And he walked slowly toward home, humming the little tune to himself as he stepped into the shadows.

STEWART MOORE has spent more time onstage than is really good for him, as Kate the Lion-Tailed Girl could tell you. He has worked as an actor, a lighting designer, a director, and a playwright. He has also been a legal proofreader, which is a good deal less interesting, and is a husband and father, which is considerably more interesting. His work has been published in Palimpsest and The Encyclopedia of Early Judaism.

Currently, he is pursuing a doctorate in the study of the Hebrew Bible, but no, he doesn’t know the meaning of life — yet.

When I lived in Manhattan, I worked nights and would often walk home in the early morning hours through Central Park. One of my routes would take me through the zoo when the only things moving would be the seals, swimming around and around and around in their tank. and, if I arrived just in time, there was the Delacorte Music Clock. At 8:00 A.M. precisely, a bronze penguin would chase a kangaroo chasing a goat chasing a hippo chasing a bear. All the while, a calliope would play — usually a treacly, tinkly round of “Frère Jacques” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

One morning, the little windup animals started up their round as I passed by, and they played the saddest song I’d ever heard. I have no idea what the tune was, and though I can almost hear it again now, it slips away from me. Being at that time young enough to think myself old, I imagined an old, old man, holding a windup toy that once, long ago, had played a sad, sad song, but now only sat in silence. It was the sort of tune I associated with the carnivals of my youth (even then a dying breed): cotton candy, carousels, and freak shows.

Kate leaped up onto the stage immediately. After that, it was only a matter of typing.