Do You Believe in Magic?

I'm questioning my belief in magic. Read about it (here).

 

The Ghost of Kilarney Park: Conclusion

Happy Halloween! Check out the conclusion of The Ghost of Kilarney Park (here).

 

The Ghost of Kilarney Park

I’d thought to make this story from my memoir The Kid in the Kaleidoscope a Halloween tradition, but I haven’t reposted it in years. I hope it helps put you in the mood for ghosts and goblins. Check it out (here).

 

Pure Joy

I had special candy treats for two children knocking on our door this Halloween. Read about it (here).

Silent Screams

 I’ve been dabbling in fiction, and this piece just won honorable mention in a short story contest. I’m posting it in honor of Halloween. If you find spiders terrifying, you might want to pass on this; if not, check it out (here).

 

Out of Hell

 

I don’t normally post on Thursdays and I don’t usually post fiction, but here’s a fun story to celebrate the holiday. 

 *****

A shiver runs through me when I think back to the time when Tammy, my wife of five years, came to the conclusion that the gray tabby who’d lived contentedly with us since we bought her on our honeymoon, was lonely. Tammy convinced me that Sausalito, “Saucy” needed another feline to keep her company. On Halloween of ’79 we decided to purchase a kitten. Read (here) about the horrors that followed. 

The Ghost of Kilarney Park: Conclusion

 

Haunted houses and Halloween go together like dots on dice, but the haunted house on our street never did anything to attract trick-or-treaters. So why was there a light burning on Verna’s porch?If you missed the first part of this story, check it out (here).

Read the conclusion (here).

The Ghost of Kilarney Park

 

This story, a true tale from my memoir The Kid in the Kaleidoscope, has become a Halloween tradition here at Chubby Chatterbox. I hope you enjoy it:

*********

Haunted houses belong in the realm of goose bumps, foggy nights and old neighborhoods, not pristine suburbs with freshly asphalted streets, unblemished sidewalks and immature trees. But a ghost lingered across the street, in a house where a man died. Read about it (here).

Out Of Hell

 Fiction to help celebrate Halloween:

A shiver runs through me when I think back to the time when Tammy, my wife of five years, came to the conclusion that the gray tabby who’d lived contentedly with us since we bought her on our honeymoon, was lonely. Tammy convinced me that Sausalito, “Saucy” needed another feline to keep her company. On Halloween of ’79 we decided to purchase a kitten.

      

We soon discovered it wasn’t the right season for kittens. We were about to give up our search when we spotted a Siamese kitten for sale in the classifieds. We called the number and were invited over.

      

The breeder’s residence was a normal looking house, at least I remember it that way. The silver-haired husband and wife selling the kitten appeared normal as they ushered us into plush chairs in the living room. As we made ourselves comfortable two stunning Siamese cats pranced across the room in perfect unison, reminding me of the reason ancient Egyptians worshiped felines. They settled on the hearth and glared at us as if we were the ones about to be bartered away.

      

Are those the parents of the kitten we’re here to see?” I asked.

      

“Yes,” answered the woman. “Do you know much about Siamese cats?”

      

“No,” Tammy replied. “We have an adult cat but she’s a plain gray tabby. We’re looking for a companion to keep her company.”

      

The woman exchanged a furtive look with her husband. He frowned at her until she said, “George, go and get the kitten so these nice folks can get acquainted with her. I’ll pour everyone some iced tea.”

      

After a few minutes our hosts returned, she with the drinks and he with what looked like a squirming turd covered in sooty fur. The turd opened its eyes and I could see that it was a cat. Missing were the fathomless blue eyes so characteristic of Siamese cats; instead, there were unusual flecks of orange that looked like glowing embers. Too bad I hadn’t foreseen in those eyes the orange of a prison jumpsuit. Rather than an ermine body with mink-colored accents, this kitten’s fur was dirty brown. It had enormous ears like those of a bat.

      

We should have bolted for the door but Tammy, to my surprise, started making cooing sounds. “It’s soooo cute,” she said, practically purring herself.

      

The two regal cats near the hearth looked at me critically when I said, “This cat doesn’t look like its parents. It doesn’t have white fur, or blue eyes.”

      

“It will lighten up as it reaches adulthood,” the woman said hastily. “That’s when the eyes turn blue.”

      

“What about those ears? She can probably pick up Radio Free Europe with those things.” I’d expected a smile. Was Radio Free Europe still operating?

     

 “She’ll grow into them,” the man said. I noticed fresh scratches on his arms.

      

“How much is she?” Tammy asked.

      

The husband and wife glanced at each other. “Fifty dollars,” they said in unison.

      

“May we have a moment to discuss this?” I asked.

      

“Certainly.”

      

They placed the kitten between its parents on the hearth, and left the room. The parent cats stared at their offspring for a moment, rose and dashed from the room. The kitten made no effort to follow them. I tried to pet it but the kitten shook as if trying to shed its skin. My brain was crowded with all the red flags popping up.

      

Tammy was undeterred. “Isn’t it adorable!” she exclaimed.

      

I didn’t think it was adorable; it had a face only a mother could love, and from what I could see its mother didn’t love it.

      

“And what a bargain. Only fifty dollars. Let’s go for it.”

      

I could tell from the steely glint in my wife’s eyes that nothing I could say or do would change her mind. When the owners reappeared I handed over fifty bucks and we left with the kitten.

      

We named her Tas because she was like a Tasmanian devil, always racing about in a whirl of agitated motion. I’d never actually seen a Tasmanian devil, other than the cartoon, but the name seemed appropriate because I’d never seen a cat like this before.

      

Saucy, whose supposed loneliness was the reason we’d purchased Tas, stared at the new arrival like a surfer eying a fin in the water. Saucy wanted nothing to do with her. As time passed, Tas did not grow into those ears but her fur remained dark as a coal mine. Her eyes never changed to blue but continued to glow like embers recently pulled from a furnace.

      

No matter how nice we were to her, Tas would not purr. She refused to accommodate the rhythm of our household. She clawed the furniture, jumped on us while we slept and seemed to smile while throwing up food during the dinner hour. When she wasn’t a blur of motion she was laying on top of our fridge with her head dangling over the edge, looking at the world upside down. This was where she was situated one Saturday when I decided to make myself a sandwich. Not wanting to bonk her head when I opened the fridge door, I nudged her out of the way. Tas bit me. Not a nip but a bite, her fangs sinking deeply into my flesh.

      

I yelped and exploded with a barrage of obscenities. A kitchen cleaver was nearby on the counter and I considered sinking it into the cat’s skinny neck, but at that moment Tammy, who’d been gardening in the backyard, burst into the kitchen to see what the fuss was about. She failed to close the door leading to the backyard. Tas leapt off the fridge, sailing through the air like she’d been born to it and landed on the floor. She dashed out to the backyard and vanished in a flash.

      

“We’ve got to find her!” Tammy screamed. “She’s so small. Big cats will beat her up.”

      

Not likely, I thought as I finished rinsing my hand in cold water and wrapped a paper towel around it. Blood bloomed through the paper. “She’ll come back on her own,” I said, half-heartedly, glad to see her go.

      

Tammy dashed up and down the street but finally returned, alone. She sank onto a kitchen chair and began to cry. I patted her shoulder. “It’s for the best,” I said. “Tas wasn’t happy with us.”

      

Our house returned to the tranquility we’d enjoyed before bringing Tas home that Halloween. Months later it was hard to remember we’d ever lived with such a disruption. But an incident brought Tas vividly to mind one hot July evening shortly after her departure. I’d cracked open a window in our bedroom to let a slight breeze into the stifling room and something flew in the window. I didn’t recognize it at first, but Tammy rose up on the mattress, pulled a pillow close to her face for protection and began screaming, “Bat! It’s a bat!”

      

I grabbed the golf putter she’d given me for my birthday and tried to clobber the bat but it proved as illusive as a hole in one. I finally made contact and the bat fell onto the bed, where it lay without moving.

      

“Get it out of here,” Tammy shrieked. “Get that filthy thing out of my bedroom.”

      

Thinking it dead—and with no thought for the diseases they undoubtedly carry—I grabbed the bat by a wing and tried to fling it out the window. Instead of being dead it sank its rat-like teeth into my hand, the same spot where Tas had bitten me months earlier. I reached for the alarm clock on a nearby nightstand and beat the bat until its head crushed and it released its bite on me. Taking no chances, I wrapped the broken animal in an old t-shirt and carried it down to the garbage can beside our house. The sanitation truck emptied the can later that morning, just as the sun came up.

      

My sleep was disturbed the next few evenings by the rustling of wings. But when I explored with a flashlight I could find nothing. Tammy once woke to find me sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at her. Moonlight poured in through the window painting her with a pearl-like glow. She was more beautiful than ever and a sensation swelled in me that I’d never felt before. I wanted her desperately, more than I’d wanted her that first night on our honeymoon five years ago. But this was different. This passion originated in a different place. I had a nearly uncontrollable urge to sink my teeth into her neck, but I resisted.

      

Futile. It was only a matter of time.

 "Blind Cat" painted in 1999 by Stephen Hayes

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

  

Conclusion: Ghost of Kilarney Park

 If you missed Part One, check it out here.

 

Haunted houses and Halloween go together like dots on dice, but the haunted house on our street never did anything to attract trick-or-treaters. So why was there a light burning on Verna’s porch?

     

 My feet began pulling me to the light. My head swirled with thoughts of murder: rat poison, asphyxiation, throat slashing, but I was more interested in candy than my safety.

     

 I inched up the front steps to her porch and peered into Verna’s kitchen window. She was seated at her kitchen table, her head resting in her hands. Her back was to me and I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her crying, a raspy soul rending sound, not the depraved rant of the undead or the wailing tirade of a guilt-riddled wife who’d murdered her husband. 

     

 Instead of ringing her doorbell, I turned to go. As I did so I saw something on her table that made me squeak like a mouse finding a wheel of cheese—treasure. Edible treasure.

      

On Verna’s kitchen table was a large pirate chest made of cardboard. Among the pirate images painted on it was one of the most cherished names in a chubby kid’s lexicon—Hershey. Inside the chest were countless bars of chocolate. Not the penny-size ones—these big boys fetched upwards of a quarter each. I felt like Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo as I eyed such treasure.

      

Verna must have heard my squeak. She turned around and looked at me standing there on the other side of her kitchen window.  I’d never seen her up close and I noticed she was totally opaque without a ghost’s translucence. Her eyes, while red, didn’t look otherworldly. She swiped away tears with the back of her hand and waved me in, saying, “The door isn’t locked.”

      

The door opened with a moan, as if it wasn’t accustomed to swinging open. My costume didn’t make entering any easier. Verna’s house had the same floor plan as ours which meant I was practically inside her kitchen when I stepped through the threshold. She stood up and gave me a watery smile. She looked…rather pleasant, even with puffy eyes. But then Hansel and Gretel would never have entered the witch’s house had she not also appeared pleasant.

     

 “That is a very nice costume. Did it take you long to make?”

     

 I nodded.

     

 She turned to the chocolate chest. “I ordered this from a catalog a few months ago.”

     

 “It’s a lot of candy.”

     

 “I was planning on handing it out to trick or treaters this evening.”

     

 “But you never give out candy on Halloween,” I said.

     

 “True. True. But this year I decided to make up for all the years I sat in this dark house without handing out treats. Unfortunately, I had to work late tonight and by the time I got home all of the children had already passed through the neighborhood. All the children, except you. You’re Stephen, from across the street, aren’t you?”

      

The costume didn’t disguise me as much as I’d thought. I nodded.

     

 “Would you like some candy?”

     

 Another nod.

      

She reached into the chest for a foil-wrapped chocolate bar, dropped it into my pillowcase.

      

I thanked her and headed for the door, but her sniffling stopped me. “You should come to neighborhood barbeques and block parties next summer. And my birthday party is in two weeks. Why doncha come?”

     

 “After all this time, I don’t think people would want me to come,” she answered.

      

“I want you to come.”

     

 She looked kinda pretty as she smiled at me and closed her door. I headed home, where my mother waited with her sweet tooth.

      

The next day I awoke to find a Hershey’s treasure chest on our front porch. An attached note said:

For Stephen, my only Kilarney Park friend.

Don’t get a stomach ache.

       

That afternoon something sprouted on our street that we hadn’t seen before. The bright red paint seemed out of place in front of the gray house that had once haunted my feverish imagination. Hammered into Verna’s front yard—a FOR SALE sign.

      

A few weeks later, the Ghost of Kilarney Park moved away.

             

Ghost of Kilarney Park

 

In keeping with the season I’m reposting a true Halloween story from my memoir The Kid in the Kaleidoscope. I hope you enjoy it:

Haunted houses belong in the realm of goose bumps, foggy nights and old neighborhoods, not pristine suburbs with freshly asphalted streets, unblemished sidewalks and immature trees. But a ghost lingered across the street, in a house where a man died.

      

I was only two when our neighborhood suffered its first fatality. Kilarney Park (later to be swallowed up by the Silicon Valley) had just opened for occupancy and neighbors had yet to come together with barbeques and meet-and-greets. It didn’t help that none of the parents on our street seemed to know the dead man’s name, much less how he died. By the time I was eleven no one could even remember what he’d looked like. For years he was referred to as The Ghost of Kilarney Park.

      

Once after an excessive dose of cough medicine, I peered out of our front window and saw the ghost sitting on a nearby light pole. The next day I got the best grade I’d ever received on an arithmetic test, a C+. I figured the ghost was good luck and I spread the word. Soon kids in the neighborhood were attributing good luck to the ghost, as well as bad.

      

The deceased had been married to Verna, who continued to live in her neat little house at Kilarney Park until I was eleven. She wasn’t old enough to look grandmotherly, but she appeared older than the adults on our street. If she had any friends or family they were never seen visiting her.

      

Verna’s house was a colorless shade of gray. Her car was gray and she went to work on weekdays wearing gray suits that matched her gray hair. She planted no flowers. Weeds such as dandelions might have added a hint of color but they refused to take root in her soil. The developer of Kilarney Park had planted sycamore trees in the front yards but Verna’s died. In its place was an Italian cypress shaped like a giant candle stick. It was such a dark shade of green that it appeared black. My mother complained that the sight of it depressed her.

      

“Why?” I asked.

      

“Italian cypresses are associated with cemeteries.”

      

“Why?”

      
“Because the roots don’t fan out. They grow straight down and don’t disturb the dead,” she said.

      

On weekday mornings Verna could be seen driving to work. She was the only woman in our neighborhood who worked outside the home until my mother landed a job when I was fourteen.

      

Verna was grist for our rumor mill; our fertile imaginations ran rampant: The reason The Ghost of Kilarney Park hadn’t moved on was because his wife had murdered him and his soul cried out for revenge. She done it with poison—rat poison, maybe. Or maybe she slit his throat with a carving knife while he was snoring. My best friend Ricky Delgado didn’t buy that one; he said the police would have hauled her away if her old man was found among blood-soaked sheets with a gaping hole in his throat. Another theory was that she asphyxiated him with car fumes in the garage. There was little by way of malice that we kids in the neighborhood wouldn’t attribute to the poor widow.           

      

Randy Bernardino who lived three doors down from us was a feverish Twilight Zone fan; he floated the idea that Verna was as dead as her husband—a ghost, one who might not even know she was dead. This notion of Verna being a troubled specter caught between two worlds began to lose plausibility when her battery died and Dad rescued her with jumper cables. It seemed improbable that a ghost needed a car to get around in.

      

The years rolled past and Verna continued to live in a universe parallel to ours, keeping her own company while never interacting with anyone. She drove by our lemonade stands, lawn parties and garage sales until she faded from our sight. But after several years of invisibility, an episode happened that brought her vividly into view.

      

Halloween—1963.

      

Except for Christmas, Halloween was my favorite holiday. My mother always checked my booty when I returned, claiming she was looking for tampered candy or hidden razor blades. She always used this as a pretext for confiscating some of the best candy. Ricky Delgado and I always worked on our Halloween costumes together. One year he’d be a pirate and I’d be a cowboy. Or he’d be a spaceman and I’d be a vampire.

      

Several days before Halloween in 1963 we both decided to be robots. Since neither one of us was willing to consider a different costume, we played a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who got to be a robot. My paper covered Ricky’s rock, but my best friend could be a dickwad and wouldn’t lose gracefully. So we both built robot costumes.

      

Boxes were glued together, a small one for the head and a large one for the body. Openings were cut from the inside so our heads could slide into the smaller box like the headpiece of a space suit. Wire coat hangers were straightened and attached as antennae. The larger box was supposed to rest on our shoulders to prevent the weight from pressing down on our heads, but the costume still managed to give me a tremendous headache.

      

When it came to finishing touches, Ricky struggled to keep up with me. I never received a grade less than an “A” on art assignments. In the fifth grade I was King of the Bulletin Boards. (The extra credit helped get me a “C” in arithmetic classes.) I cut neat openings for the eyes with an X-Acto knife and appropriated a broken shower nozzle for the mouth. After spray painting the boxes silver, I painted rivets and welded seams. My pièce de résistance—a laser blast to the body where a space creature had zapped me. A few more details here and there, legs and Keds wrapped in aluminum foil and presto—Man of Metal.

      

That year Halloween fell on Thursday. I faced an arithmetic test the next day and wasn’t prepared for it. (I’d spent too much time working on my costume.) My mother refused to let me go trick-or-treating with Ricky until I’d finished all my homework and assured her that I was ready for the test. Hearing my mother hand out candy to trick or treaters on our front porch only darkened my mood.

      

Ricky was long gone by the time I covered my legs in aluminum foil, slipped into my costume and grabbed a pillowcase for the candy.

      

“It’s getting late. Don’t go too far,” my mother said without commenting on my

costume. “And don’t eat anything until you bring it home so I can check for razor blades.”

      

A wane moon floated overhead as I began knocking on doors. Many houses had already handed out their candy and turned off their porch lights. I received an unexpected reception by those still handing out goodies. I’d worked hard to make my costume memorable, but I hadn’t realized just how similar mine was to Ricky’s. Everywhere I went I was mistaken for him. And he had over an hour head start. The candy distributor at every house I approached said nearly the same thing as they closed their door in my face, “Nice try—you’ve already been here.”

      

As fast as possible for a chubby kid dressed in boxes, I huffed and puffed to a section of neighborhood where I didn’t normally go. Still, every doorbell I rang had already been rung by Ricky. Before long my Zorro wristwatch was telling me it was time to head home: I was the only kid still walking the pavement and most porch lights were off. My empty pillowcase hung limp in my hand as I headed home.

      

The lights of our house were likewise off when I turned a corner and headed home. I had a splitting headache from the heavy costume pressing down on my head and a back itch I couldn’t possibly scratch. Then I saw a light. In the strangest of places.

Conclusion tomorrow….

Vanitas

  

When this image peered out at me from my picture file I was reminded that Halloween is just around the corner. While in Rome not long ago, I dragged Mrs. Chatterbox to one of the gazillion churches to see a few famous Caravaggios. After viewing the paintings, I saw this sculpture by the door on our way out. At first I was startled by it, but not so much that I couldn’t snap a picture.

      

This is referred to as a vanitas, a reminder that life is short and all is vanity; in time we all return to dust. Interesting sentiment, but friggin’ creepy if you ask me. And what is the purpose of that elaborate ironwork—bars to keep people from touching this exquisite yet revolting sculpture, or a barrier to keep this masterpiece of the macabre from escaping?

Note: Still working on a few details, like moving my followers over to the new site, but the new and improved Chubby Chatterbox is up and running (most of it anyway) at chubbychatterbox.com . 
Check it out. 

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