Chapter 4
FOUR
EARTH ANGEL
CASSIDY
It’s not even Halloween yet—that’s tomorrow—but the diner was a ghost town tonight.
When I relieved Lee earlier today, she warned me to expect it.
There are at least four pre-holiday shindigs going down tonight.
Lee and her boyfriend are going to a rave in Shadowvale Cemetery, one that will last from sundown until sun-up tomorrow.
The community center is hosting a fall festival for the local kiddies.
The church is hosting an outdoor drive-in of the only ‘non-Satanic’ Halloween films they could find.
Oh, and there was also a parade around dinnertime, and a part of Main was blocked off for it, leaving us little foot traffic since customers couldn’t come our way even if they wanted to.
Main Street, Shadowvale is the place to be.
All the stores shut down by four—including The Pie Chart which sucks if I can’t stop by before work—but they’re busy from open to close.
We’re two cross streets away, tucked in a quieter corner of the town.
On the one hand, that gives us a parking lot.
On the other, it’s not as easy as doing your downtown shopping and deciding to stop by for a milkshake or a tuna melt.
I had six tables all shift. That meant clean-up was easy after close because I did all of my other work as I was waiting for customers.
While Em counted the money in the til, reconciling it with the day’s receipts, I pulled the crumpled bills and coins out of my apron pocket. Thirty-four dollars and eighteen cents.
Happy Halloween Eve, Cassidy.
Ugh.
I would’ve been better off calling out and hosting a Halloweentown marathon for one (but only the first three movies because that fourth one after the recast…
we stan an OG Marnie here) than going to work.
Only my lifelong work ethic that says I don’t call out unless it’s spewing from one end or the other had me tugging on my waitress uniform earlier today, and I just hope that Halloween itself won’t be as dead tomorrow.
Em already sent Derek home. Since she didn’t include me in the playful ‘get out of here’ order, I hung around, not so sure if I should be doing anything. To keep busy, I count my tips again. Nope. Still thirty-four dollars and eighteen cents.
I doubt the diner did any better. It doesn’t take Emily long to get the deposit together, and when she slides it in the safe, I expect her to let me off for the night.
Only that’s not what happens.
Em hits the service bell that is kept on the ledge of the order-up window. Cookie bangs on it whenever food is ready to be delivered, but when she wants his attention and he might be too busy to hear her, she rings it for him.
His head pops into the window. “Yeah, hon?”
“I have to grab something from the back for Cassidy. I’m ready to lock up after that so whenever you’re good, let me know.”
Cookie salutes his wife. “You got it.”
Emily turns to me, holding up her pointer finger. “Give me a second, sugar. Okay?”
Um. Sure. “Okay.”
She hustles behind the counter, taking the door that leads through the kitchen and into the hall. We have storage back there, plus a break room and the manager’s office. That belongs to Em. She’s probably gone there, but when she comes back a minute later, she’s carrying a bundle in her arms.
She offers it to me. “For you.”
Really? “What is it?”
She nods at me, gesturing for me to take the bundle first.
I do. I accept it, then plop it on the counter before going through it.
The white fabric on top is a thin white sweater with tiny pearl buttons on the front, embroidered with a large ‘C’ in black thread on the upper left side.
A soft pink scarf, as thin as gauze, followed by a heavier skirt in a darker shade of the color with an honest-to-God poodle design attached near the bottom.
A poodle skirt, sweater, and scarf. It’s an outfit right out of the 1950s, and it looks to be just my size.
I frown over at Emily. “I don’t get it.”
“Derek told me that you don’t have any plans for Halloween. It hit me the other day that that probably meant you didn’t have a costume.”
Oh, no… “Costume?” I squeak.
She nods. “It’s a tradition at the diner. I’ve got one like it. So do the other girls. Instead of our uniforms tomorrow, we all wear something similar. Derek’s going to be a milkman.”
My eyes flickers to the service window.
“Gonna be a grease cook,” Cookie calls out.
Emily’s smile is an indulgent one meant only for her husband.
“Customers don’t have to interact with him.
But for the rest of us, they get a kick out of seeing us turn the diner into what it might’ve been like in a long-ago era.
We draw the line at doing carhop service, but it’s just a bit of fun for those of us at work. ”
When she puts it like that, how can I refuse?
“Thanks. I… yeah. No problem.” I gather the material back up in my arms. “Sure. I’ll wear it tomorrow.”
That settled, it’s time for us to leave.
I make sure I have my purse. Cookie washes his hands and tugs on a windbreaker.
Emily removes her apron, grabs her jacket, and presses a button by the register.
The pink neon ‘open’ sign switches to a bright blue ‘closed’.
Cookie slaps a hand over the light panel, turning them all off except for the emergency lights dotting the ceiling.
Something weird happens, though. The overhead lights go out, but the vivid white light rimming the old jukebox turns green before switching to red.
I’ve seen that a hundred times before. When a customer pays the fifty-cents to play a song after the jukebox went dead, it takes a second for the old girl to boot up and start the music.
The red pales to pink, then white before the opening chords to a song that was popular before my grandmother was born filters throughout the empty diner.
A long-dead man begins to croon, “Earth angel, earth angel…”
I turn to the Langs, clutching the costume Emily gave me to my chest. “Real funny, guys. How did you do it? There some kind of timer on the jukebox? Or a switch I didn’t know about?”
Cookie is frowning. “It must be glitching. I’ve never seen it start playing a song on its own before. You, hon?”
Emily doesn’t answer him. She’s already marching over to the jukebox, squatting down behind it. One arm reaches behind the big box, and when she yanks, tugging the plug from the wall, the song stops dead.
“...just a fool—”
She rises up, wiping her hands on her skirt. “We’ll have to get a repairman in after the holiday tomorrow. It shouldn’t be doing that.”
“Like I said. Just a glitch.”
I guess that makes sense. At least, that’s better than what I thought. For a second there, I believed my bosses were pranking me, trying to make me feel like the diner is haunted.
My fault. I mentioned to Derek the other day that the Shadowvale Diner seems just as spooky as the rest of the town.
Em had been taking inventory in the back and I hadn’t thought she overheard the conversation, especially when Derek smiled and proudly said, “Yup, I’ve seen ghosts here before,” and I was the one who quickly changed the topic of our chat.
I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me. Possibly. A prank where the jukebox starts playing an old song… yeah. That would be his style.
But not Em or Cookie’s.
Glitch.
Yeah.
It has to be.
Right?
Outside the diner, far enough away from the scent of stale grease and overpowering onions, the air smells like woodsmoke and sugar.
Mischief Night in New Jersey meant toilet paper in trees and shaving cream on windshields, but I’m not in New Jersey anymore.
I’m in Shadowvale and, true to its name, the shadows seem thicker.
Darker. Slower. Almost like they’re reaching for me…
I walk fast, cutting through backstreets and dashing down alleyways to avoid running into anyone else outside tonight.
In Shadowvale, Derek said they call it Devil’s Night, and that made me nervous for reasons I couldn’t quite understand.
I blame Ryan, and how every man-shaped silhouette I pass tonight could be him.
No surprise, then, that by the time I finally get home, my nerves are fried.
I keep thinking about the eerie song filling the diner right as we were leaving.
It almost seemed like a message, and if Derek was right…
if ghosts are real in Shadowvale… that would explain the continued sensation that I’m never alone.
Is it paranoia? Is it Halloween fun?
Am I losing my fucking mind?
I don’t know, but one thing for sure: I’ll be glad when Halloween is finally over and I can put October—with its pumpkins and its witches and its ghosts—far behind me in favor of looking toward another Thanksgiving and Christmas alone.
It doesn’t help that, three flights up, the apartment is… different. Like it’s still. Too still.
I try not to notice it. I kick the door shut with my foot and drop the costume Em gave me on the couch, before kicking off my sneakers, trying to pretend like nothing is wrong.
That the air doesn’t feel as thick as the shadows outside did.
That my skin isn’t prickling with awareness—and not similar to the other day when I felt like, if I didn’t come, I’d die. This is different.
This is me feeling like I’m in danger.
Like I really could die.
I shiver, blaming it on the chill in my bones.
It’s my fault. So much of October was unseasonably warm that I got used to heading out without any kind of coat.
The temperature dropped earlier today, and by the time I got out of work, it was in the mid-fifties.
Like always, I politely shrugged off Cookie’s gruff offer to give me a ride with him and Em, though I started to regret it when the goosebumps erupted on my arms halfway home.
Once inside, I trade my uniform for something much comfier: a pair of black leggings and my favorite Halloween sweatshirt. It’s heavy and it’s orange and it features the witches from Hocus Pocus on it.
There. Much warmer.
At least, it was. Almost as soon as I pulled the sweatshirt out of my drawer and shrugged it on, a gentle breeze brushes over me again, bringing a renewed chill with it.
What the hell? I know I opened the window up the other night, but I purposely closed it once I was able to give my boneless body the order to move. I haven’t opened it since, but if I didn’t, where did that whisper of wind come from?
Earl has keys to my place, but the month-to-month lease I signed said that he has to give me notice before he lets himself into the apartment. It couldn’t be him, and my habitual check after I return home told me that no one is in the apartment now.
And yet… when I yank on the curtain covering my window, I notice two things: a single rose petal sitting on my window sill—and a window that’s been cracked open a good inch.
Not me. There’s a screen on the window so I have no idea where the rose petal came from since I certainly haven’t gotten flowers in a while. It’s not the first time I’ve found one in my apartment, either, and once or twice I joked that it was the ghost haunting my place.
Now there’s another one, my window is open, and an ominous chill skitters down my back.
What is going on here?
Grabbing the edge of the window pane, ready to jam it shut, I freeze.
Wait.
Shit.
Now I’ve noticed three things.
A red rose petal. A barely open window.
And a shadow lurking beneath the street lamp just under my house.