A Halloween Treat

The Handling

by Travis Hedge Coke

At night, I walk a long road, cut into the open, forest pulled back. A car is stopped on the side of this road. Two people, of two genders, move a mass wrapped in milky transparent material from the trunk or backseat. I go closer.

It would be polite to get up on two legs and wave. Smile and offer to help.

As they slide me off the roadside, the white sheet goes back, like plastic off my dead eyes. I see a wolf watching as the car leaves.

To keep vampires out, you have to hang towels on the doors.

There is a house nobody owns, between two hills on the great plane near the badlands. Two girls used to climb the roof, there. Played tag and talked and drank tea. Bitter tea.

One girl is a mixed-blood; hair shows in two different tones, in full light.

There’s a man in tweed, natty, tall to children, tall enough to cast shadows over himself. His shoes are hard, brown like treated leather, like bronze or stone, but cracking almost, grown into creases and cracks and hard.

A mixed-blood girl tells me her friend has something to show me. In the attic. Needs help. Takes my hand to direct me there.

At the ladder to the attic, in this abandoned house the girl waits on the floor while I ascend into dark. The attic door is very small, head level. I take a hand off the old ladder and open the door.

One eye is very bright in the attic. I hear both girls laughing. I think they are crying. I don’t know what they have to show me, but they sure think it’s hilarious.

I have been to this house before.

Having wondered how the man’s shoes could be so hard, I have come to believe that they probably were never shoes.

I have been to this house.

There is a house, or a series of houses, just against the inside of the woods. When you visit – and I have visited from a floor, from windows, from beds – a hospital bed; bedroom bed; guest – when you visit, they will welcome you. You will be accommodated. Here’s where to sit. Here is where to eat. Here, to sleep. You can talk, laugh and sigh and visit forever. And, when someone puts their hand on top of yours, it’s as light and soft as nothing at all.

Horrible things happen.

Some guys come along. Come in. Visit. They and then them. Someone goes out, alone, cold, and in a forgotten hospital bed, wires trailing off to record the death for later attention. Children bleed, backs up, on the still waters of the docks.

Sometimes all of these happen at one time.

Sometimes they just turn off your mouth, hold you screamless, and pull you across the floor. While people talk in the next room over, and chuckle when you later divulge.

Sometimes, someone stands over, making you tiny and immobile, and you’re upset because they stand so firm, watch so motherly, and so clearly need you. But they need to stop you. Still you. They need to steal you.

And everyone puts up with it. No use trying to get people to leave. Little tiny kids cry blood from the puncture under their chin. Pools filled with them, with kids, while girls try to palpate their stomachs for a denial. An old friend turns with shaky hands and asks if you can help get the nails out from her eyes. And you’re right there, but nobody believes in leaving.

When you’re just visiting, nobody ever thinks about what’s coming.

Sometimes you can get some help, if you ask.

You have to actually ask, though, or they stand by, watch and wait in panic, as terrible things are done every time.

They kept a girl on a leash, there. Took her out for walks and then down to the basement. On a leash, because, they said, they loved her. Loved her so much. So much, they loved her, they’d take her down through a big door into the basement. through the door and down the stairs, where there’s another door, at a right angle with the door out of the basement. (Same as the one goes in.) This second door, door on the side of the steps, is the way out. They pass by every time they take the girl for her walk.

They have good food, really good drinks, at this house. Or, series of houses. I think the other houses might be inside this one. Maybe they’re built in the same place, secured on the same ground, like how you put buildings on ruins, on collapsed ruins in vacant lots. But, I don’t think so. There isn’t time for that.

Three of us were in a house, once. Someone came for three nights. One for each, all times wearing faces not their own.

On the first night, they wore two faces, both dead and loved. They were followed happily, the way a puppy follows its own death, for ceremonial soup.

The second would not describe, but tried to shout and smoke them out.

When she came for me, waiting at a window where there was no window, I got out of bed to hear. Come outside and walk awhile, it was suggested.

“It’s cold out,” I said. “Come in, and I’ll make us some coffee.”

It’s cold and tired right now, and very late. Late enough it will be early soon. I’ll fix some coffee, hot coffee, and we can talk. And I’ll go back to sleep, knowing you don’t have to knock and wake anyone. I can stand while they sleep.

Initially published by Billy Stratton in Denver Quarterly, The Handling is an excerpt from Juliana.