The Thief of Always

  It would not be a long season, Harvey guessed. If the spring had been over in a morning, then most likely this perfect summer would not outlast the afternoon.

  I’d better make the most of it, he thought, and hurried in search of Wendell. He finally discovered his friend sitting in the shade of the trees, with a pile of comics at his side.

  “Wanna sit down and read?” he asked.

  “Maybe later,” said Harvey. “First I want to go look at this lake you were talking about. Are you going to come?”

  “What for? I told you it’s no fun.”

  “All right, I’ll go on my own.”

  “You won’t stay long,” Wendell remarked, and went back to his reading.

  Though Harvey had a good idea of the lake’s general whereabouts, the bushes on that side of the House were thick and thorny, and it took him several minutes to find a way through them. By the time he caught sight of the lake itself the sweat on his face and back was clammy, and his arms had been scratched and bloodied by barbs.

  As Wendell had predicted, the lake wasn’t worth the trouble. It was large—so large that the far side was barely visible—but gloomy and dreary both the lake and the dark stones around it covered with a film of green scum. There was a legion of flies buzzing around in search of something rotten to feed on, and Harvey guessed they’d have no trouble finding a feast. This was a place where dead things belonged.

  He was about to leave when a movement in the shadows caught his eye. Somebody was standing further along the bank, almost eclipsed by the mesh of thicket. He moved a few paces closer to the lake, and saw that it was Lulu. She was perched on the slimy stones at the very edge of the water, gazing into their depths.

  Speaking in a near whisper for fear he’d startle her, Harvey said:

  “It looks cold.”

  She glanced up at him, her face full of confusion, and then without a word of reply—turned and bounded away through the bushes.

  “Wait!” Harvey called, hurrying toward the lake.

  Lulu had already disappeared, however, leaving the thicket shaking. He might have gone in pursuit of her, but the sound of bubbles breaking in the lake took his gaze to the waters, and there, moving just below the coating of scum, he saw the fish. They were almost as large as he was, their gray scales stained and encrusted, their bulbous eyes turned up toward the surface like the eyes of prisoners in a watery pit.

  They were watching him, he was certain of that, and their scrutiny made him shudder. Were they hungry, he wondered, and praying to their fishy gods that he’d slip on the stones and tumble in? Or were they wishing he’d come with a rod and a line, so that they could be hauled from the depths and put out of their misery?

  What a life, he thought. No sun to warm them; no flowers to sniff at or games to play. Just the deep, dark waters to circle in; and circle, and circle, and circle.

  It made him dizzy just watching, and he feared that if he lingered much longer he’d lose his balance and join them. Gasping with relief he turned his back on the sight, and returned into the sunlight as fast as the barbs would allow.

  Wendell was still sitting underneath the tree. He had two bottles of ice-cold soda in the grass beside him, and lobbed one to Harvey as he approached.

  “Well?” he said.

  “You were right,” Harvey replied.

  “Nobody in their right minds ever goes there.”

  “I saw Lulu.”

  “What did I tell you?” Wendell crowed. “Nobody in their right minds.”

  “And those fish—”

  “—yeah, I know,” Wendell said, pulling a face. “Ugly boogers, aren’t they?”

  “Why would Mr. Hood have fish like that? I mean, everything else is so beautiful. The lawns, the House, the orchard…”

  “Who cares?” said Wendell.

  “I do,” said Harvey. “I want to know everything there is to know about this place.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can tell my mom and dad about it when I go home.”

  “Home?” said Wendell. “Who needs it? We’ve got everything we need here.”

  “I’d still like to know how all this works. Is there some kind of machine making the seasons change?”

  Wendell pointed up through the branches at the sun. “Does that look mechanical to you?” he said. “Don’t be a dope, Harvey. This is all real. It’s magic, but it’s real.”

  “You think so?”

  “It’s too hot to think,” Wendell replied. “Now sit down and shut up.” He tossed a few comics in Harvey’s direction. “Look through these. Find yourself a monster for tonight.”

  “What’s happening tonight?”

  “Halloween, of course,” Wendell said. “It happens every night.”

  Harvey plunked himself down beside Wendell, opened his soda, and began to leaf through the comics, thinking as he leafed and sipped that maybe Wendell was right, and it was too hot to think. However this miraculous place worked, it seemed real enough. The sun was hot, the soda was cold, the sky was blue, the grass was green. What more did he need to know?

  Somewhere in the middle of these musings he must have dozed off, because he woke with a start to find that the sun was no longer dappling the ground around him, and Wendell was no longer reading at his side.

  He reached for his soda, but the bottle had fallen over, and the scent of sweet cherry had attracted hundreds of ants. They were crawling over it and into it, many drowning for their greed.

  As he got to his feet the first real breeze he’d felt since noon blew, and a leaf, its edges sere, spiraled down to land at his feet.

  “Autumn…” he murmured to himself.

  Until this moment, standing beneath the creaking boughs watching the wind shake down the leaves, autumn had always seemed to him the saddest of seasons. It meant that summer was over, and the nights would be growing long and cold. But now, as the drizzle of leaves became a deluge, and the patter of acorns and chestnuts a drumming, he laughed to see and hear its coming. By the time he was out from under the trees he had leaves in his hair, and down his back, and was kicking them up with every racing step.

  As he reached the porch, the first clouds he’d seen all afternoon crept over the sun, and their shadow made the House, which had wavered in the heat of the afternoon like a mirage, suddenly loom, dark and solid.

  “You’re real,” he said, as he stood panting on the porch. “You are, aren’t you?”

  He started to laugh at the foolishness of talking to a House, but the smile went from his face as a voice, so soft he was barely certain he heard it, said:

  “What do you think, child?”

  He looked for the speaker, but there was nobody at the threshold, nor out on the porch, nor on the steps behind him.

  “Who said that?” he demanded.

  There was no answer, which he was glad of. It hadn’t been a voice at all, he told himself. It had been a creak of the boards underfoot, or the rustling of dry leaves in the grass. But he stepped into the House with his heart beating a little faster, reminding himself as he went that questions weren’t welcome here.

  What did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether this was a real place or a dream? It felt real, and that was all that mattered.

  Satisfied with this, he raced through the House into the kitchen where Mrs. Griffin was weighing the table down with treats.

  VI. Seen and Unseen

  “Well,” said Wendell as they ate, “what are you going to be tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” Harvey said. “What are you going to be?”

  “A hangman,” he said, with a spaghetti grin. “I’ve been learning how to tie nooses. Now all I’ve got to do is find someone to hang.” He eyed Mrs. Griffin. “It’s quick,” he said. “You just drop ‘em and—snap!—their necks break!”

  “That’s horrible!” Mrs. Griffin said. “Why do boys always love talking about ghosts and murders and hangings?”

  “Because it’s exciting,” Wendell said.


  “You’re monsters,” she replied, with a hint of a smile. “That’s what you are. Monsters.”

  “Harvey is,” Wendell said. “I’ve seen him filing down his teeth.”

  “Is it a full moon?” Harvey said, smearing ketchup around his mouth and putting on a twitch. “I hope so. I need blood…fresh blood.”

  “Good,” said Wendell. “You can be a vampire. I’ll hang’em and you can suck their blood.”

  “Horrible,” Mrs. Griffin said again, “just horrible.”

  Perhaps the House had heard Harvey wishing for a full moon, because when he and Wendell traipsed upstairs and looked out the landing window, there—hanging between the bare branches of the trees—was a moon as wide and as white as a dead man’s smile.

  “Look at it!” Harvey said. “I can see every crater. It’s perfect.”

  “Oh that’s just the start,” Wendell promised, and led Harvey to a large, musty room which had been filled with clothes of every description. Some were hung on hooks and coat hangers. Some were in baskets, like actors’ costumes. Still more were heaped at the far end of the room on the dusty floor. And, half-hidden until Wendell cleared the way, was a sight that made Harvey gasp: a wall covered from floor to ceiling with masks.

  “Where did they all come from?” Harvey said as he gaped at this spectacle.

  “Mr. Hood collects them,” Wendell explained. “And the clothes are just stuff that kids who visited here left behind.”

  Harvey wasn’t interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they’d been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.

  “Take your pick” said Wendell. “There’s bound to be a vampire somewhere. Whatever I come in here wanting to find, I find it sooner or later.”

  Harvey decided to leave the pleasure of choosing a mask until last, and concentrated instead on digging up something suitably batlike to wear. As he worked through the piles of clothes he found himself wondering about the children who’d left them here. Though he’d always hated history lessons, he knew some of the jackets and shoes and shirts and belts had been out of fashion for many, many years. Where were their owners now? Dead, he presumed, or so old it made no difference.

  The thought of these garments belonging to dead folk brought a little shudder to his spine, which was only right. This was Halloween, after all, and what was Halloween without a few chills?

  After a few minutes of searching he found along black coat with a collar he could turn up, which Wendell pronounced very vampiric. Well satisfied with his choice, he went back to the wall of faces, and his eyes almost immediately alighted upon a mask he hadn’t previously seen, with the pallor and deep sockets of a soul just risen from the tomb. He took it down and put it on. It fitted perfectly.

  “What do I look like?” Harvey asked, turning to face Wendell, who had found an executioner’s mask which fitted him just as well.

  “Ugly as sin.”

  “Good”

  There was a flickering family of pumpkin heads lined up on the porch when they stepped outside, and the misty air smelled of wood smoke.

  “Where do we go trick-or-treating?” Harvey wanted to know. “Out in the street?”

  “No,” said Wendell, “it’s not Halloween out in the real world, remember? We’re going to go around to the back of the House.”

  “That’s not very far,” Harvey remarked, disappointed.

  “It is at this time of night,” Wendell said creepily. “This House is full of surprises. You’ll see.”

  Harvey looked up at the House through the tiny eyeholes of his mask. It loomed as large as a thunderhead, its weathervane sharp enough to stab the stars.

  “Come on,” said Wendell, “we’ve got a long trip ahead.”

  A long trip? Harvey thought; how could it be a long trip from the front of the House to the back? But once again Wendell was right: The House was full of surprises. The trip which would have been a two-minute walk in the bright afternoon—soon became a trek that had Harvey wishing he’d brought a flashlight and a map. The leaves rustled underfoot as though snakes were swarming through them; the trees that had shaded them by day now looked frightful in their nakedness, gaunt and hungry.

  “Why am I doing this?” he asked himself as he followed Wendell through the darkness. “I’m cold, and I’m uncomfortable.” (He might have added frightened to the list, but he left that thought unsaid.)

  As he was about to suggest they turn back, Wendell pointed up and hissed: “Look!”

  Harvey looked. Directly overhead, a form was moving silently against the sky, as if it had just launched itself from the eaves of the House. The moon had slunk away behind the roof, and shed no light upon this night-flyer, so Harvey could only guess at its shape from the stars it blotted out as it sailed. Its wings were wide, but ragged—too ragged to bear it up, he thought. Instead it seemed to claw at the darkness as it went, as though it were crawling on the very air itself.

  A glimpse was all Harvey had. Then it was gone.

  “What teas that?” he whispered.

  He got no answer. In the moments he’d taken staring up at the sky, Wendell had disappeared.

  “Wendell?” Harvey whispered. “Where are you?”

  There was still no reply. Just the slithering in the leaves, and the moan of hungry branches.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Harvey said, louder this time. “And you won’t scare me that easy. Hear me?”

  This time there was a reply of sorts. Not words, but a creaking sound from somewhere in the trees.

  He’s climbing up into the tree house, Harvey thought, and determined to catch Wendell and scare him back, he followed the sound.

  Despite the nakedness of the branches, their mesh kept all but a glimmer of starlight from falling on the groves. He slipped his mask down around his neck so as to see a little better, but even then he was nearly blind, and had to listen out for the sound of Wendell’s ascent to guide him. He could still hear the creaks plainly enough, and stumbled in their direction, his arms outstretched to grasp the ladder when he reached it.

  Now the sound was so loud he was certain he must be standing beneath the tree. He looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the trickster, but as he did so something brushed his face. He snatched at it, but it was gone, at least for the moment. Then it came again, brushing his brow from the other side. He snatched at it a second time, then, as it touched him again, caught hold of it.

  “Got you!” he cried.

  His yell of triumph was followed by a rush of air, and the sound of something crashing to the ground at his side. He jumped, but refused to let go of whatever he was holding.

  “Wendell?” he called.

  By way of a reply a flame flared in the darkness behind him, and a firework erupted into a shower of green sparks, its light making a gangrenous cavern of the grove.

  By its flickering light he saw what he held, and seeing, let out a panicked yammering that had the crows rising from their roosts overhead.

  It was not a ladder he’d heard creaking, it was a rope. No, not even a rope: a noose. And in his hand, the leg of the man hanging from the noose. He let go of it and stumbled backward, barely suppressing a second shout as his eyes rose to meet the dead man’s stare. To judge by his expression, he had died horribly. His tongue lolled from his foamy lips, his veins were so swollen with blood his head looked like a pumpkin.

  Either that, or it was a pumpkin.

  A fresh fountain of sparks now burst from the firework, and Harvey saw the truth of the matter. The limb he’d held was a stuffed trouser leg; the body a coat spilling bundles of clothes; that head a mask on a pumpkin, with
cream for spittle and eggs for eyes.

  “Wendell!” he yelled, turning his back on this scene of execution.

  Wendell was standing on the far side of the firework, his ear-to-ear grin lit by its spitting sparks. He looked like a little demon, fresh from the inferno. At his side was the ladder that had come crashing down to get the drama underway.

  “I warned ya!” Wendell said, holding up his mask. “I said I was going to be a hangman tonight!”

  “I’ll get you back for his!” Harvey said, his heart still beating too fast for him to see the funny side of this. “I swear…I’ll get you back!”

  “You can try!” Wendell crowed. The firework was beginning to fizzle out; the shadows around them beginning to deepen again. “Had enough of Halloween for tonight?” he asked.

  Harvey didn’t much like admitting defeat, but he nodded grimly, swearing to himself that when he finally got his revenge, it would be choice.

  “Smile,” Wendell said, as the fountain of sparks dwindled. “We’re in the Holiday House.”

  The light had almost gone, and even though Harvey was still enraged at Wendell (and at himself, for being such a sucker), he couldn’t let it die away without making peace.

  “All right,” he said, allowing himself a tiny smile. “There’ll be other nights.”

  “Always,” said Wendell. The reply pleased him. “That’s what this place is, “he said, as the light went out. “It’s the House of Always.”

  VII. A Present From the Pass

  There was a Thanksgiving feast awaiting them when they got back into the House.

  “You look as though you’ve been in the wars,” Mrs. Griffin remarked when she set eyes on Harvey. “Has Wendell been up to his tricks?”

  Harvey admitted that he’d fallen for all of them, but there was one that impressed him in particular.

  “What was that?” said Wendell with a smug grin. “The falling ladder? That was a clever little touch, wasn’t it?”