In These Loving Arms

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Man, I loved Halloween. I loved it as a kid and a teenager, and now, even in my mid-twenties, it still has a place in my heart.

I was usually a pretty happy guy, always quick with a joke, and the elaborate pranks I'd pulled for Halloween were talked about for years. Most of them were planned like military campaigns, and some were happy accidents, like the night I fell through the ceiling of an old house dressed as an axe murderer, complete with a double-headed ax, right into the middle of a group of teenagers. I landed with a scream because it scared the shit out of me, but the sight of a man dressed in a long coat with a white face holding an ax dropping out of the sky among them made their screams a lot louder.

We were in an old abandoned house that had to be a hundred years old, so it wasn't in the greatest shape, hence the fall. My partner in crime almost got trampled as they ran down the stairs and out the door. He came up to see me sitting on the floor, laughing my ass off.

Then, I got married and drifted away from my old crowd. We were too young to be married and too dumb to realize it, and it cratered when I took my niece's trick or treating, and my wife took the opportunity to start the party a little early. Her costume for that night was as a Can-Can girl, complete with fishnet stockings. That and a feather boa was all she had on when I found her underneath one of my friends. I could have gotten over that, but I beat the shit out of the guy, and he made sure I knew he'd been 'bangin' the bitch' for two months.

We didn't have shit to divide, and we walked away as broke as we were when we got married. Bev tried to get back together for a few months but gave up when I refused all contact. She ended up marrying the asshole as soon as the divorce came through. I thought she used abysmal judgment; if he wasn't above having sex with her while she was married, what was going to stop him from having sex with some other married slut? It didn't last a year.

I was sitting at McDonalds with my nieces, treating them to happy meals and milkshakes, as they rambled on about the route they wanted to take Halloween night, still three weeks away. The plan was to get them at five and have them home by seven. We discussed it when I heard a voice I hadn't heard in a few years.

"Flash?"

Nobody had called me that in four years or more, and I looked up into the grinning face of Jake, one of my best friends and partner in crimes from my late teens until I was about twenty. He always liked to push the envelope, and one day, when he was nineteen, he went a little too far, got caught, convicted, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison across the state. I drove out to see him twice before he told me he was getting out next month, so not to bother. Five more months before they let him out, and he disappeared. I hadn't seen him since I last visited him in jail.

I stood up and hugged him. "Man, it's good to see you. How long have you been back?"

His cocky grin was still there. "About four months. I was going to look you up soon. It took a little while to get my feet back under me. These your kids?"

He knew they weren't but wanted to needle me a little because he knew I always wanted a big family. "They might as well be, the way they saw 'I want' so much."

That got a few angry looks from the girls, but I grinned at them, and they relaxed. Jake and I exchanged phone numbers, and he left with his friends.

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"Guess who I saw?"

"Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, an honest politician, a billionaire that pays taxes? You realize none of them are real, right?"

"Worse. Jake."

Camille's face darkened. She'd never liked him and made no pretense about it. "Really? The low life is out of jail?"

"He's been out, he just hasn't been around."

She shrugged. "Well, he's your friend. Just be careful around him. I remember how you used to egg each other on."

"Gee, Cam, I'm like all growed up and ever'thin'. I can find my way to work and back every day.

She grinned. "Yes, the wonders of GPS. Seriously, brother, be careful."

I kissed her and the girls. "I will. Promise."

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A few days later, he called me, wanting me to meet him at the bar where we used to hang out. It wasn't a dive, and it didn't get glowing reviews from the local paper either. However, the beer was cold, and the staff was friendly primarily after they got to know you. I hadn't been there in two years, but Gail grinned and poured my draft.

"Long time no see. How have you been?"

"I'm Divorced and pining away for you. That's why I haven't been around; it hurts too much to see you."

Gail was ten years or better older, but she was still a good-looking woman in the prime of her life. She and her husband owned the bar. She was trying to figure out if I was yanking her chain when her husband grinned. "He's lying, honey. You can always tell when he looks you in the eyes, acting all sincere; you know nothing coming out of his mouth is true. If he fidgets, he won't look you in the eye; he's telling the truth."

"You have been behind that bar too long, Benny. You should give it up and take up psychology. You'd be good at it."

Gail surprised me. "He's got three more semesters before he gets his degree in Sociology. His minor is psychology."

"Well then, Dr. Benny, pencil me in when you get your degree. I got some things I need to get off my chest. It is covered under doctor/client privilege, right?"

Benny laughed. "I don't think I could bear your secrets. It's good to see you in here again."

"I should have come back sooner, but the ex and her asshole like to hang here, and I don't need to be barred for life for kicking his ass every time I saw him."

Gail's face darkened. "No worries there, Chan. We barred them better than a year ago. Their behavior was getting out of hand."

Wow. This place was pretty liberal. It had to be bad if they did something that warranted throwing them out. "Good to know. I'm here to meet with an old friend. You remember Jake?"

A mask descended over Benny's face. "Damn, Flash, I thought you had better sense."

"You're just pissed because his fake ID fooled you enough to serve him beer. I had no idea he'd get into a fight, and the cops would have to come out."

"Damn, near lost my license over that. I hope jail straightened his ass out. When you start stupid, it can go either way." We talked for a few more minutes between customers until Jake showed up. I hustled him to a booth as fast as possible, ordering a pitcher to minimize contact between him and Gail.

He drank most of the pitcher and noticed it. "Drink up, Flash!"

"I'm fine. I got stupid when I and the wife split up and got pulled over, almost knee-walking drunk. The only thing that saved me from driving while impaired ticket was that the cop was my brother-in-law. He shoved me in his cruiser and drove me home, ranting the whole way. I promised him and my sister I'd never do it again."

"Pussy."

"Maybe, but I'm a pussy with a license."

I didn't know it, but that one stung. He still had three years before being eligible for a driver's license again. As we left that night, I thought about that as I watched him get behind the wheel of a beat-up old truck.

I mulled things over as I went home. Most of us have had a 'toxic' friend at one time or another, someone who could talk us into doing things we usually wouldn't. Sometimes, it was symbiotic; you seemed to feed off each other as things spiraled out of control. That was me and Jake.

By the time I reached twenty, I had tired of the whole adventure and was looking for stability. That led me to get married, and that was a screaming disaster. She would have been better suited to Jake than me. He called a week later, needing a favor. He needed a job, or he'd violate probation.

"I thought you had a job?"

"Didn't work out."

"By that, you mean you didn't go to work or mouthed off one too many times and got fired. If I helped you, how would it end up any different?"

"Man, I need a job. Please."

After I hung up, I thought about it, noting that he never answered my questions. One of my newer friends was a construction company foreman who always complained about being shorthanded. I gave him a call and made my pitch.

"I remember he used to help his uncle Derrick during the summers by doing remodeling jobs. He needs the job. Can I send him over?"

"Sure, brother. I'll likely hire him because we're shorthanded. If he doesn't work out, I'll send him down the road and not bring it up in conversation. If he does, I'll buy the beer next time."

"I owe you."

He grinned. "I'll collect one day."

Jake seemed happy when I told him to see Eric, and Eric called after a week and thanked me. Jake seemed good at what he had him doing. We got together at the end of the second week. He was grinning and waving his check. "I'm buying!"

"I'll let you. Eric says you're doing good."

"You know me, I can't stand small spaces or many people; it's why I was never good in factories. Or prison. We're spread out, and a lot of time, I work by myself, so I'm not wound tight at the end of the day."

We started talking about our childhood, especially our childhood adventures. I reminded him of when we were twelve, and he got caught trying to blow up a pumpkin with a Cherry Bomb. The woman opened the door with a shotgun just as he put his hand in.

"Were you going to blow up my pumpkin?" I didn't know it, but this was the third year he had done it.

"N..No ma'am. My lighter died, and I just wanted to light my firecracker."

"I suggest you go somewhere else to light your fireworks. NOW GET OFF MY PORCH!"

Jake was shaking so badly that he dropped the firecracker into the pumpkin. He took one look at the woman and started running. I was pretty young but old enough to realize she was mad at him, not me. I was probably safe if I ran in a different direction because the shotgun was an old single shot.

Jake went one way, and I went the other. We were beating feet when the shotgun went off, and I heard Jake scream. I thought she had killed him. We hooked up later, and I found out she had loaded the shell with rock salt and bacon. It went through his tee shirt, and he had a couple of minor burns and more than a few dimples. I didn't get a scratch, and we never went near that woman again. He was laughing as he said. "It ain't funny, dude! I still got scars."

"At least she didn't hit your ass." We talked some more, and I left feeling pretty good. It seemed he was finally turning his life around.

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The next day, Saturday, he was at my door. "Man, come on! You have to see this."

He came over in his old truck, and I got on him for driving without a license. "One license check, and you're screwed."

"I'm careful, and I hardly ever drive on weekends and mostly go straight to work and back during the week."

"And yet here you are."

He got a little red and then even redder when I wouldn't let him drive. We drove to his grandmother's house, which was now his house. His grandmother had to go into assisted living, and she let Jake live there rent-free. To his credit, the yard was freshly mown and neat, and while you could tell a single guy lived there, it wasn't a pigpen.

The house sat on thirty acres, most of it wooded. He led me into a thick stand of old pines, about as deep into the woods as you could go and still be on the property. We stopped in a clearing, and the first thing I saw was the tombstone. It was the only one in the graveyard, but seven large rocks were grouped in a semicircle in front of it. Most people couldn't afford grave markers back then, so they'd put up a wooden cross with their names and an enormous rock they could move for when the cross rotted. Her name was Elizabeth Ferrer, and she died at twenty in 1859.

Jake was bubbling. "I never knew this existed until the other day. I was getting a little stir-crazy, so I decided to walk through the woods and found it."

"Well, it's neat. Is she an ancestor?"

"Fuck if I know. Look here." We were in a pine thicket, but the clearing was ringed with old oaks, and the leaves were pretty thick. He brushed away most of the leaves from her grave, and I noticed the indentation. "What's that?"

"I had to look it up. Back then, there was no vault. You got a plain pine box or something fancier if you had a little money, and over time, as the body rotted, so did the wood, leaving this indentation. Let me tell you what I got in mind."

Just before we left, I brushed a few more leaves back to see how deep it was and saw a glint of something shining. A few brushes later, I held a medium-sized medallion in my hand. It was gold; from that time, gold had no other metals mixed with it, so it would wear away as time passed. It had indescribable writing at one time, but it was mostly smooth and shaped like a sun. I showed it to Jake, then laid it back down and covered it. "What did you do that for?"

I shrugged. "It wasn't mine. It probably belonged to the poor girl lying here. She might have set store by it, at least enough to be buried with it. Let's leave it here out of respect."

He wasn't keen on the idea but didn't fight me. Then, as we returned to his house, he laid out his grand plan. As Halloween pranks went, this was exceptional.

He would get a group of our old friends together and invite them down to the graveyard at midnight on Halloween for a seance. He and Bud, another old partner in crime, would make sure they had the only flashlights, and they were going to record some screams on an old boom box he had, after fifteen minutes of silence, timing it to go off at the height of the seance. That would be my cue to sit out of the grave in dark clothes, a white face, and a wig. All I had to do was lie down in the indention, let Jake cover me in leaves, and listen for the screams.

In the end, fourteen would be there, including two fourteen-year-olds and a sixteen-year-old, and the rest would be nineteen and up to mid-thirties. I wasn't keen on the kids, but they'd be with their parents.

Out of curiosity, I looked Elizabeth Ferrer up. I was surprised there were such good records, but she was young and died under mysterious circumstances. Her parents were wealthy, and there was even a picture of a portrait done weeks before she passed. Elizabeth was a beautiful woman. I wondered why she hadn't married. It was the norm in that period to marry early, especially women.

The writer of the book on local history said the speculation ran rampant over her death. Some said she died of betrayal and a broken heart from a jilted lover; others thought she might have been poisoned, but there was no evidence pointing to any one cause. The writer did find it odd that even though her parents were huge supporters of the local church, going as far as donating land for it, they opted to bury her in a new family graveyard, and as far as he could ascertain, she was the only one buried there and no one was quite sure where it was. It made me wonder who was buried under the seven stones.

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Just on a whim, I drove out to Jake's house. He wasn't home, which made me revisit his whole 'I don't drive unless it's essential' resolution. I decided to walk down into the woods to visit the future scene of the crime. I thought about it as I walked. Yes, it would be a hoot. And yes, we'd probably scare some people, but that was the point, and most of them had been around Jake long enough to suspect something would happen.

Ultimately, we were walking on the ground, which should have been avoided. I stood for a moment, looking at her tombstone. As I walked, I'd picked some wildflowers from the fields and laid them on her tombstone. "Hello, Elizabeth. I'm Chandler Mathews, but most people call me Chan or Flash. I hope you like the flowers. I looked you up, and excuse me for saying so, but you were gorgeous, and pretty girls deserve flowers occasionally for no reason whatsoever. You're long gone and have no idea what we're about to do, but I have to tell you I'm not all warm and fuzzy thinking about it. It seems... disrespectful somehow."

Something about the atmosphere where I was made me nervous, but as I talked, it seemed the sun was a little brighter, and the wildflowers were much more fragrant than I remembered. At least while I was standing by her grave, the perimeter seemed shrouded and disapproving. Man, I needed to stop binging on horror movies.

I sat beside her headstone and talked to a woman long dead, surprised at how easy it was to bare my soul once I got started. Forty-five minutes later, I stood, dusting my pants. "Sorry, Liz, I didn't mean to get carried away. I bet you would be bored to tears if you could hear me. I'll have to rethink the prank, but if I do go through with it and lay down, it'll be the closest I've been to a woman in months. I hope you still respect me when it's over."

I did so from behind her grave, away from the others when I left. I couldn't tell you why I did it.

I visited twice before the following weekend, talking the whole time there. "Did you ever want kids? I know you died single and never experienced motherhood. I bet you would have been a good mother. If I ever find another woman I care enough to marry, I will clarify that I want children. The world has changed a lot since you left it; Lizzy and many women have decided never to start a family. It makes me sad sometimes, but then I think, if that's how they feel, maybe they were right. Let their line end with them. I think it's wrong. A child is the only type of immortality parents will ever experience."

Another time, I talked about mortality. "I know, the old joke about how no one gets out of life alive is pretty on point. Most people, especially my age, don't think about it much. But in the end, death gets us all. I've considered it a few times, once when I nearly died in a car crash and another when I almost drowned. Both those experiences taught me that you never know if your next breath will be your last, so enjoy life while you're still in it and hope when you go, people will think highly of you for leading a good life. I'm truly sorry your life was so short, Lizzy. I bet you had a lot to offer."

This time felt a little different as if someone was uneasy, and the vibe from the rocks seemed harder. I stood up and touched the top of the tombstone, which felt warm. It was odd since it was in the mid-forties and threatening rain, a rare cold spell for our part of the world this time of year.

Jake seemed to be acting 'off,' even for him. I asked him what was happening, and he laughed it off. "Nothin' man, just going through some shit. Cassie's back and wants to get back together."

"You think that's a good idea? She almost got you hooked the last time you guys were together. I believe that going to jail saved you; you might have ended up just another skeletal meth head with rotten teeth if you hadn't."

He snorted. "Yeah, tough love and all that shit. I did go to some sessions and admit they helped, and it's one of the reasons I'm getting my life back on track."

I didn't believe him as I looked at his pale, sweaty face and jerky movements.

Eric called me on Thursday and got right to the point. "Ain't seen your boy in three days. No call, no show. Normally, I'd fire him right away, but up until last week, he was doing well. You get hold of him and tell him, I don't hear from him by nine tomorrow mornin', I'll mail him his last check."