Page 4 of Halloween Haunting
“When can I move in?” she blurted, embarrassed at how fast it came out of her.
The man showed no sign of teasing her. “As early as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Why not? I’ll get the appropriate paperwork emailed to you, and once you sign it, the legal stuff will be done. Tomorrow, you’ll have a key in your hands.”
“That sounds perfect!”
“Great! I’ll get those sent over you. Enjoy the rest of your day, and we’ll see you in Holiday Hollow tomorrow!”
“Bye,” she said, clicking her phone.
The phone call felt as though it was over as fast as it started. It had, in reality, gone on for almost an hour and a half, but reality had nothing to do with feelings. To Grace, everything happened in the blink of an eye, her life flipped on its head over a bottle of wine and one drunken night.
No. Not over a bottle of wine. Over the end of her marriage and her life as she knew it. That’s when everythingreallystarted changing.
Now, sober and with something to look forward to. Her thoughts became clearer and crisper in a way they hadn’t been for some time, and it brought the past back with a rush of pain. Eight months ago, her ex-husband slid a stack of divorce papers across their long mahogany dining table. Simple pages rendered her speechless, devoid of happiness, deflated – someone she was incapable of recognizing.
But now? Suddenly there was a smile stretching across her face, one that she was in no hurry to remove. Who did she have to take it off for? That thought made her pause. There wasn’t a soul around, and yet, she felt embarrassed by her own achievement. Ashamed by her relentless excitement. For the slightest bit of happiness. Because that’s how she’d learned to be in her marriage. Ashamed of everything. Always thinking she was in the wrong, no matter what she did.
That was her entire marriage summed up. Moments spent being ashamed of living, desperate to fit her partner’s mold, only to realize that any shape she took would never be enough to satisfy him. But now, with a new future resting on the horizon, Grace told herself that she would never have to change herself for anyone else, not ever again. The Lantern House was a new start, a second chance. Holiday Hollow was her chance to live the life she had always wanted – even if she wasn’t quite sure what that meant yet. She leaned back against the bed, the smile becoming permanent as she quietly whispered to herself.
“Mylucky day.”
3
“Welcome to Holiday Hollow, a haven since 1614!”
Grace’s smile was on the verge of bruising her cheeks as she passed the sign for Holiday Hollow. Ever since she got off the phone yesterday morning, she had been practically bouncing with excitement. Before she’d even had breakfast, Grace loaded up her car from the hotel, and began her cross-country journey into the northern countryside. The drive was long and laborious, but it had been far more beautiful than Grace ever expected it to be. All her life, she lived in the southern states, sequestered to the warm and dry summers that seemed to stretch on throughout the entire year. Seasons often alluded her, besides the single tree that changed colors and respectively lost all its leaves.
But as Grace trekked further into the mountainous regions, where the national parks stretched into wide forests, she felt like she had entered another world. The higher elevation rendered the sky an unbelievable blue, without a cloud to stand in the light’s way. The trees were taller than any city landscapes, filled with more creatures than she could imagine. As she passed into Holiday Hollow’s town lines, the trees took on a more crookednature, almost like they had been in the middle of a dance, and were frozen in place.
The mountains curved around the town, placing Holiday Hollow in the midst of a safe valley. As if plucked out of an old storybook for children, the neighborhoods were nestled within nature, like blooming flowers of their own kind. The town center was a long street where people already walked and mingled, their laughter carrying on the gentle breeze. All the trees in Holiday Hollow were in the midst of a color change – their green was fading into a sharp yellow, while some were deepening into a scarlet red. Autumn approached, and judging by the series of Jack-o-Lanterns being placed outside of storefronts, Halloween loomed right around the corner.
Grace took a turn out of Holiday Hollow’s town center, about to take a loose gravel road into the thick of the woods, when a bouncing figure perched on the street corner caught her eye. Though colder weather loomed on the horizon, the stranded woman wore a bright colored sundress, the thin straps barely hanging onto her rounded shoulders. She looked to be pacing around her unmoving car, one of the back tires obviously flat, while smacking her short-heeled shoe against the rear every once and a while. Grace caught her kicking once before her pretty face scrunched up in pain.
“A haven since 1614,” Grace murmured, remembering the welcome sign.
Something like that could mean a lot of things. It didn’t say ‘safe haven.’ It reminded her of when the man on the phone mentioned ‘outsiders,’ as though there was a clear distinction between those who belong there and those who were visiting for the aesthetic.
What made a town a haven? Safety? Community? A haven for what – for who? But she didn’t need to ask herself all thosequestions to decide whether or not she should’ve pulled over for the stranded woman.
Grace was doing it before she had even made up her mind.
She leaned forward while parking on the main street’s corner, peering out through the front windshield. Where the sky was once an unblemished blanket of baby blue was suddenly engulfed by a growing storm. Dark and heavy clouds crept across the golden sun before it was snuffed out entirely, matched by a raven’s gurgling caw echoing down the long valley.
Grace turned the engine off. “It’s okay to be creeped out,” she whispered to herself as she got out of the car. “Totally okay.”
A few yards ahead, the pretty blonde, with hair cut close to her ears, waved an eager hand over her head. Silver jewelry chimed and clacked along her arms as she gestured, the sound as musical as an airy band.
Grace left her convertible parked on the corner as she met the woman in front of her cherry-red punch buggy. Now that she could really see the woman’s face, Grace was a bit awe-struck. They had to have been around the same age, not quite middle-aged but well into their forties. Despite that, the woman carried the youth of someone half her age. She wore it well, like she knew what she was doing.
In the reflection of the woman’s spotless windows, Grace caught a glimpse of her own image in her classic comfort outfit, the holey clothes she always turned to in days of long travel. Old converses smudged with stains she never remembered, denim overalls that managed to always be a bit too big on her, and an oversized t-shirt tucked beneath – that day, the shirt was from over ten years ago, the white print almost entirely faded across the front. If Grace managed to not look her age, it was because she was too busy dressing like a child.
“Need some help,” Grace asked, and the woman’s gaze turned toward her.
“You’re not the knight in shining armor I was expecting,” she called out, already extending a hand toward her. Neatly manicured nails, perfectly shaped into long claws, colored a bright shade of pink screamed out at Grace. “But I’ll take you all the same!”
