VELVETEEN vs. A Disturbing Number of Crows #2
“Sure you’re running a flophouse,” said Hailey cheerily. “You have no bones; you live here for right now; you’re floppy; ergo, this is a flophouse.”
Velveteen stared at her. “That’s…that’s not how words work,” she said finally. “The language police are going to come and take you away, and I’m not going to say a damn thing in your defense.”
“Au contraire, my rag doll fair: you’re in Halloween now, and this is exactly how words work on this side of the graveyard gate.
” Hailey slid nimbly down from her tombstone perch, pausing to smooth her green and orange tulle skirt with the heels of her hands before trotting across the yard to where Velveteen waited.
She stopped at the base of the porch steps, offering a shy smile upward.
For the first time, Velveteen—who had first met Hailey Ween when sixteen was a foreign country, far away, exotic, and filled with promises she hoped puberty was intending to keep—was struck by how young she was.
Hailey had been sixteen, or maybe even younger, when she had climbed out of her bedroom window and followed an avatar of Halloween into metaphor, and further onward, into eternity.
She had never grown all the way up, never loved someone enough to hold their hands under a harvest moon, never known what she was giving away.
Or maybe she had, and she just hadn’t seen it as important enough to mourn for.
“What?” demanded Velveteen, more harshly than she intended. She didn’t want to be feeling sorry for Hailey. She couldn’t afford to start feeling sorry for Hailey. This was her last Season, and she. Was going. Home.
“Trick or treat,” said Hailey, voice sweet as Halloween candy and twice as likely to conceal a razor blade.
“What do you think I am, stupid?” asked Velveteen. “Treat.”
“Wonderful,” said Hailey, smiling that too-white, too-sharp smile of hers before spinning on her heel and striking out across the graveyard, beckoning for Velveteen to follow. “Hurry, hurry! There’s much to do before the sun goes down, and you don’t want to make Scream Queen angry!”
Velveteen didn’t remember much about her brief encounter with Halloween’s guardian spirit, but what little she did remember made her certain that Hailey was telling nothing but the truth.
Repressing the urge to swear, she jumped down from the porch, her fabric knees absorbing the impact with ease, and ran after the Halloween Princess, into the cornfield beyond the yard.
Scaredy stayed where he was, and reached for another fistful of candy. His part would come soon enough. No point in wasting a good picnic on something that he didn’t need to do.
* * *
On the other side of the graveyard was a crumbling country road, the sort of thing that’s made an appearance in a hundred horror movies and a few thousand American gothic novels.
It was a Stephen King road, a Ray Bradbury road, and the second Velveteen saw it, she knew that she was not going to enjoy what came next.
She stopped at the edge of the road. Hailey continued on, to the ditch on the other side, where she began unearthing a bicycle from the weeds.
She looked back when she realized that Vel was no longer following her.
“Well?” she asked. “Come on.”
“No, thanks,” said Velveteen. “I’m good here.”
Hailey sighed and rolled her eyes, the very picture of a Halloween babysitter trying to cajole her charges into going on a fun adventure.
Everything she’d said about being the cool kid who still went out into the graveyards was starting to make sense.
“You’re here to serve the Season, Velveteen, or do you need Scream Queen to give you a little reminder?
Just come with me. I’m not going to hurt you. We’re on the same team this time.”
“You’ve tried to trap me in Halloween before,” said Velveteen, finally taking a cautious step out onto the road. It held her weight. Roads usually did, but after three Seasons in a row, she wasn’t feeling very trustful about that sort of thing.
“Well, sure,” said Hailey. She pulled the bike out of the ditch and brushed the last of the grass off of it.
The frame was rusty and the handlebars looked like a tetanus shot waiting to happen, but the tires were sound and fully inflated.
“I wanted to keep you, you didn’t want to stay.
But this time, the rules are different. This time, you might choose us.
So I’ve been ordered to play nicely, and I’m your best friend until the clock strikes twelve and you have to pick a side. ”
“What happens if I don’t pick you?” Velveteen peered into the ditch, and was unsurprised to find a second bike there, caught in the weeds. She leaned over and began excavating it, grimacing as the briars snagged in the fabric of her hands.
“No clue,” said Hailey. “Hopefully, we’re not going to find out.”
She was smiling that toothy, too-white smile when Velveteen looked over at her. Vel shuddered and went back to digging out her bike.
Once she had it free, and reasonably denuded of weeds, she propped it up and slung her leg over the seat.
Hailey nodded approvingly and pushed off; Vel did the same, and together they rode down the long, pothole-spotted country road, with fields of wheat and corn waving gently at them from either side.
The landscape of Halloween changed to suit its current needs, from the Gothic to the pastoral and back again.
It was not the sort of place that could be accused of being static, or boring.
It was just itself, whatever that entailed at the time.
They rode until the shadows stretched long around them. Velveteen was pleased to discover that the changes to her body—and her current lack of a skeletal system—didn’t interfere with her riding a bike. Some skills, it seemed, just crossed over.
Hailey pulled off to the side of the road and stopped her bike, prompting Velveteen to do the same. Then Hailey waved a hand grandly at the large cornfield in front of them. “Ta-da,” she said.
Velveteen frowned. “Congratulations,” she said, after a moment.
“You’ve found corn. I don’t think that’s hard around here.
Halloween seems to have a weird corn fetish, and to be honest, I find it all a little bit disturbing.
Which hell, may be what you were going for in the first place. Who am I to judge?”
“We like corn because corn is a symbol, and also because corn is fucking delicious,” said Hailey.
“Corn is awesome. But cornfields…there’s power in cornfields.
They’re a whole different sort of symbol.
Every cornfield we have means something else.
There are cornfields people get wished into and cornfields that people run away in.
There are cornfields haunted by slasher killers, and cornfields with bad infestations of children with hair like silk and eyes like a crime scene.
This cornfield is one of the symbolic ones.
Every ear of corn that grows here represents a good Halloween experience a child had the last time our holiday actually rolled around. ”
“Huh,” said Velveteen. She gave the cornfield another, longer look. “That’s a lot of corn.”
“Halloween is important to a lot of people. Good adult experiences go into one of our apple orchards. They make the sweetest cider that you’ve ever tasted.
But see, harvest happens after a year’s growth, regardless of age.
Can’t have the really good memories of a holiday until that holiday comes around again.
And we’ve got a problem.” Hailey’s expression hardened. “There are crows in the corn.”
“Crows.”
“Yes.”
“Crows in the corn.”
“Yes.”
“So you brought me, a woman made of fabric, to scare the crows that are eating your good memory corn. Wow. It’s like I’m some sort of…huh. There must be a word for something shaped like a human that you use to scare the crows.” Velveteen folded her arms and glared at Hailey.
Hailey rolled her eyes. “Oh no, you came to a world that flat-out refers to itself as a metaphor and somehow things have gotten all symbolic. How did that happen? I do not know. Look, I can be as sarcastic as you. Doesn’t change what we’re here to do, so maybe let’s stop, okay? I have shit to do. So do you.”
“Because you need me to fight the crows that are in your corn,” said Velveteen.
“Yup,” said Hailey. “See, bad Halloween memories have wings. They’re here to eat what they can’t become, and the more they eat, the more people forget what they love about Halloween.
We need kids to keep loving Halloween when they’re young, because that’s what powers the less likely to murder everybody on sight aspects of our holiday. You’re really doing a public service.”
“By fighting the crows that are in your corn.”
“Precisely.” Hailey’s expression turned grave.
“This is part of how the servants of this Season work to protect us all. I’d like to stay here and enjoy more of your pathetic attempts to make me feel bad about our metaphors, but I need to go chase the owls out of the orchard.
The crows are your concern, at least for tonight. ”
“But I don’t know how to fight crows,” said Velveteen helplessly. “What do you want me to do, shout ‘boo’ and hope they’ll scatter?”
“No,” said Hailey. “I want you to kill them.”
* * *