I was trying to be careful as I carried the brimming pitcher of dark brown beer to the table in the corner. Jack had managed to arrive with only three-quarters of one after his trip to the bar. I was limiting my intake, and so was a bit steadier, but I was also trying to stay out from in front of the projector. The pitcher finally sat safely on the table. Helen carelessly sloshed the nutty brew into her pilsner and took a long draught.
"So, guys, what's going down this weekend? You gonna top last year?"
This weekend was Halloween weekend. The USC campus had been preparing for a month with decorations in all the shops and bars, and with the annual frat monster contest. The Deltas were in the apparent lead with Zrobortha. The picture in the special section of the campus newspaper was appropriately gross, and the caption said Zrobortha was purported to exist on a diet of young children and small furry animals.
The Turk's Head Ale House, our present location, was not to be outdone by the more elite bars of the area. The Turk's Head was the basement and first floor of an ancient house that had somehow survived the wrecking ball, and had been converted into a reasonable facsimile of an English pub. Decorating for Halloween was simple in a place like the Turk's Head. A little white spray flocking to accent the existing cobwebs, the addition of a fake guillotine on the porch, and a projector showing old Frankenstein and Dracula movies against one wall did the job quite nicely. It was a quiet place on weeknights, and we had met for our traditional Wednesday evening philosophy discussion, as we called it.
Jack, Cindy, Tony, Helen, and Trixie were much like me, and that probably explains why we enjoyed being together. None of us could afford the fraternity or sorority life, and probably wouldn't have enjoyed the image anyway. That didn't stop us from having the time of our life, and last year's Halloween had set a milestone that would be talked about on campus for years. We never publicly admitted responsibility. Dean Summers' wife had been out for blood after catching us peering through her upper bathroom windowpane. Of course, our masks may have had something to do with that. It's amazing what an art student like Helen can do with two pounds of bloody beef roast, some plastic teeth and a working knowledge of human facial muscles. The three photographs I snapped of Judy Summers stepping from the shower and seeing the rotting corpses in the window were cherished souvenirs of the moment. It was not our fault they'd been posted on every bulletin board on campus.
Jack's opinion of Mrs. Summers was that she was sexy in a mature sort of way. Tony and I agreed we wouldn't kick her out of bed, and that she had great tits. The girls thought she needed to lose some of the ass and trim her bush.
Jack belched and grinned at Cindy. "Uh, I think we better lay low, this year. Those campus cops almost caught us. Everybody'll be lookin' for something like that again, and I don't wanna press my luck. I graduate this spring, remember?"
Cindy used a red-painted fingernail to trace a line from Jack's shoulder to his crotch. "You better graduate, lover. I'm tired of you leaving me all hot and horny so you can study."
Trixie giggled. "God, Cindy, is there anything about your personal life you wouldn't share?"
"I dunno. Would you like to hear what we did last weekend? See, I have this dildo, for when Jack has to study..., oh, that's right, I already told you about Mr. Mike, didn't I? Well, Jack asked me what it felt like, so I lubed Mr. Mike up really good and - "
"Cindy! You don't have to tell everything you know."
"Well, Jack, she did ask. Besides, I thought you liked it."
Jack's red face told the rest of the story, and we all burst into laughter. When the belly laughs had slowed to giggles, Tony raised his hand.
"Why don't we just spend the night by ourselves? We can get some wine and stuff, and watch movies at my apartment."
The suggestion was met with boos and hisses that continued until Helen piped up.
"Why don't we drive out to Blackburn House?"
Blackburn House was a huge, turn of the century, Victorian three story house with typical round rooms at the corners and tons of gingerbread trim. What made Blackburn House atypical was it's location and it's history. In 1902, a Scottish peasant left his fiancee and immigrated to this area. He was a thrifty soul, and over the course of five years, saved enough of his meager wages to buy a hundred acres of farmland. He sent for his fiancee, and started building the house in the middle of the farm. Everything went according to plan; they were married in 1903, and moved into the new house. The next summer, she was stricken with cholera and died. The Scotsman was devastated. He closed up the house and disappeared from the area. Eventually, a brother claimed the place and leased out the farmland, but could not bring himself to sell the house or tear it down.
Unlike most old abandoned houses, Blackburn House had no resident ghost, or at least had none that anyone had ever seen. Since there was no attraction to see, few people ever attempted to brave the faint track of potholes that passed for the road out to the place. The house itself was scary enough that most girls wouldn't go there, so it was spared the role of trysting place. With no specific attraction, Blackburn House was just another moldering old building, and was much the same as it was in 1904. The old barn behind the house was in worse shape.
"What's the fun in Blackburn House?", I asked. "There's no ghosts, and it's so fucking hard to get there."
"We can call our own ghosts."
"And just how do we do that?"
"I read the spell in a book on Wiccan. We'll call succubusses for the guys and incubusses for us girls."
Tony, the English major of the group, corrected her.
"That's succubi and incubi, my little mattress muffin, and I don't think you'd like an incubus. They favor, shall we say, the rougher side of sex. Much different than me, I think you'd agree. The succubus idea isn't all that bad though. According to myth, they're supposed to give you the screw of a lifetime."
Helen blushed. "I know. I just had this, you know, fantasy after I read it, Maybe I need to borrow Mr. Mike." She smiled at Tony and giggled. "As for that succudick lady, I'm better than any nympho spirit any day. If I can ever find that little thing between your legs, I'll show you.".
It was Tony's turn to turn red and sputter. The table erupted in guffaws and giggles again.
The plan was laid that night with much quenching of thirst and the resultant silly musings of what might happen if the spell actually did work. I figured we'd be lucky to get there and back without calling a wrecker.
On Thursday afternoon, Trixie called me.
"Gary, I can't go this weekend."
"Crap, why not?"
"My Mom's decided she ought to come see me. You know how Mom is. She never plans anything until the last second, and then expects the world to stop so she can do what she wants."
I'd never met Trixie's mother, but I felt I knew her from Trixie's lengthy descriptions.
Her name was Martha, but she went by her middle name, Katie. Katie was a child of the sixty's, and Trixie thought she'd probably smoked away a few too many brain cells during her days in the Oregon commune. Katie believed totally in the philosophy of free love, and didn't truly know who had fathered Trixie. I silently thanked Katie when I heard this story, because she had passed on her love of sex to Trixie. Trixie wasn't into the group thing, but she was into me in a big way. I was into Trixie as often as possible.
The commune disbanded when Trixie was three, and Katie moved to California with Tim Mason, the founder of the commune. Tim was the man Trixie called "Dad". They had divorced the year after Trixie started college, but the divorce was amicable, and the three were still very close.
Katie apparently hadn't changed much from her twenties, even though she had given in to convention and married Tim. She was, according to Trixie, still concerned with all the old hippie causes of the environment, world peace, and freedom to be different. She believed God was a woman, practiced some little known eastern religion, and was an active nudist. After leaving her lover, she had given up tie-dye for more socially-accepted colors and designs, and made her living as a stress counselor. She was given to spur of the moment decisions about anything.
"Well, hell. Why did she have to pick this weekend?"
"I didn't understand everything she said, but it has something to do with both our signs being in the right house for visiting relatives. Since I'm the only one she has left, she's coming to see me. Gary..., I couldn't say no. She's my Mom."
"I know, I know. I'll just have to cancel on the party. We'll do something together when she goes home."
My Halloween was shaping up to be the ultimate anti-climax. I couldn't go to Blackburn House by myself. I knew the likely outcome of the evening, and didn't want to sit by myself drinking wine and listening to the moans coming from Cindy and Helen. I couldn't very well show up at Trixie's place. Her mother would be there, and I didn't want to interfere. It was on my way to the video store that I thought of the solution.
If they wanted spirits, I would give them spirits. I wasn't a senior engineering student for nothing. I could cut my Friday classes and do some inventive rigging out at Blackburn House, and then sneak back out on Saturday night. I called Jack to tell him the bad news, and called Trixie with my idea. She promised to keep the secret if I brought her a videotape of the evening.
On Friday morning, I went shopping and then drove to Blackburn House. The lane was as bad as I remembered, but Jack's old crew-cab truck wouldn't have much trouble. At least I wouldn't have to worry about them not showing.
The house had register grates in the ceiling to let heat from the lower levels to the upper, and it was easy to rig a couple of doors with light-weight nylon fishing line to the second level. I'd leave them slightly ajar, and a slow pull on the line would open them. A hard jerk would break the line and leave no trace. I did the same with the chandeliers in the two largest rooms.
I'd picked up a CD of screams, screeches, and other ghostly sound effects, and I strung speaker cables from my portable player to a small speaker at each grate. Because of the echoes in the large rooms, it would be hard to find the source of the sound. At low volume, even though I knew it was coming, it still gave me the creeps.
My crowning achievement would be the cold feeling that supposedly accompanies a visitor from the beyond. I used cardboard boxes and a few salvaged computer fans to make cold generators. The fans would run for a while on batteries, and blow through the box and out a hole to the floor grates. On Saturday morning, I would pick up some blocks of dry ice, and keep them in an ice chest until that night. The cold and the white vapor should be pretty convincing, especially since I would wait until my buddies had finished a bottle or two of wine.
That night, I called Trixie to tell her how my plan was working. Her mother had arrived, and they were having dinner.
"Damn, Gary. I wish you were here. You could help me polish off the rest of the veggie burgers and soy chips. Mom went vegan on me after school started. Tomorrow night, we're having tofu pizza. She says all that meat and starch is poisoning our systems."
"Well, Sweetie, your system always felt pretty good to me."
"You just keep thinking that, 'cause I'm gonna need some feeling when she goes home..., after I get some real food, that is. By the way, Mom wants to meet you. I told her you're busy tomorrow night, but that you'd make dinner on Sunday. Was that OK?"
"Depends on what you're having. I'm not much for the nuts and berries thing."
"I don't know what she's got in mind, but if I can eat this shit all weekend, you can eat it for one meal. If it helps you decide, just remember that you can be replaced by a cucumber."
"A cucumber?"
