Empty Heaven, page 4
“This one is for you,” Rita said, handing me a long bundle of sage, which KJ then lit with her Citgo matches. We all stepped into the road holding smoldering sage sticks.
Jasper was very quiet. He had on one of the red robes, embroidered with stone fruits of some kind (I assumed they were plums, for his family name), but it was undone and fell open over his regular punk wear. His face was paler than normal, the angry tinge of his cheeks faded into nothing. He tapped my shoulder and spoke into my ear.
“Darian,” Jasper said.
“Yeah?”
“I know you don’t really believe us,” Jasper whispered urgently. “I know you never have. He keeps outsiders from believing in him, no matter what they see. But I am telling you, as one reasonably intelligent individual to another, that Good Arcturus is real—”
“Jasper,” someone called, a woman with a formal-sounding voice that cut through the night. Definitely Mrs. Plum.
“Fuck,” Jasper said, looking over his shoulder. Then he turned away completely. “Yes, Mom?”
Jasper’s parents, who always seemed stern and too old, appeared a little distance behind the Kobayashi family. Jasper gave me one last searching look, then fell back in line with his folks.
There were literally hundreds of people in the street now, all moving in the direction of the town common, and Good Earth Way had become a riot of smells—cider, smoke, sage, cinnamon—and of voices. About halfway down the street the voices started to unify into one harmonious sound, and a song came from ahead and behind us. I strained to make out individual words:
Oh, Lord of the Straw who protects all we love
For health and for happiness outside and in
For cleansing our vaunted good village of sin
We give you another new shield from above
It was Jasper’s voice, audible even from some distance behind our group, that helped me to hear the words best. I was surprised he was participating at all, but his voice was a good guidepost.
“Funky, huh?” KJ asked. In deference to the cold, KJ had swapped out her favorite bucket hat for a purple beanie in the exact same shade as Jasper’s hair, with a hand-stitched Soundgarden patch on it, which looked as incongruous with the red velvet cloak as anything possibly could.
“Very Something Wicked This Way Comes. You’re all the spooky Autumn People,” I said.
KJ whistled. “High praise? You’ve always said you hated Ray Bradbury.”
“I do,” I said, feeling a little queasy about bringing it up at all. It wasn’t like anything that had happened was Bradbury’s fault. “But… he used to be my favorite.”
“You gonna tell me about it someday?” KJ asked.
“Sure. Someday,” I said. At that moment, in the firelit dark of the October street, I had no intention of ever telling KJ about Dexter.
Our group approached the town common, which was a long rectangular area of grass lined with trees and topped off with a big old stone gazebo. I had spent tons of summer afternoons there before, listening to music on KJ’s boom box or eating K-Family pizza on a blanket. But tonight as we came through the trees I saw a place that had been totally transformed.
Torches hung with braided calico corn ringed the whole common, just beyond the wall of trees, making the space glow and flicker. Big smoldering cauldrons lined the green, and as we passed everyone dropped their burning sage sticks and incense into the pots, adding to the diffused smell.
Long tables—the cheap particleboard kind used at school functions—were arranged in a sort of squarish spiral that covered the whole area, starting with a huge central table loaded down with local crops. (There was a big old painted sign right on the village line that said KESUQUOSH—HOME OF SQUASH! and they definitely lived up to their slogan: pumpkins were arranged artfully all over the common area.) Decor had clearly been contributed by a lot of the townspeople—I saw a few of the ornate dollhouses that Rita made and sold (mostly to summer tourists) among the pumpkins, tea lights inside their little rooms turning the houses into lanterns.
But the thing that drew my eye was a cake that stretched the entire length of the centermost table. It looked like it was meant to feed more than a thousand people. It was a red velvet cake with white icing drizzled over the top and dripping down the sides, tiered like a wedding cake—but so long that it looked like a scale reproduction of the White House, or something. The other tables were bare of food and covered with thin lace tablecloths. Red taper candles burned in candelabras on each tabletop, dripping wax onto the lace.
“This is so cool,” I said, taking in the homespun grandeur of it all. People had fallen into a long line and were finding their seats in a deliberate way, first walking left around the feasting table, past the gazebo.
There was something in the gazebo.
I had been so drawn in that I hadn’t even looked over there. The gazebo squatted to the left of the banquet table, interrupting the flow of the space, and was covered in sunflowers. The steps were paved with bunches of sunflowers cut at the moment of their fullest bloom. Bundles of hay were piled inside of it… with something crouched behind them, dominating the back of the structure. A shape.
I couldn’t make out anything more. The sunflowers were stuck into the earth around the gazebo, obscuring the view through the empty windows. People stopped at the gazebo one by one and mounted the stone steps, crushing sunflowers underfoot and stepping inside. Disappearing for a moment and then coming back down the stairs to find their seats.
“Okay, this is great, I’m so excited. This is the best night ever. I’m so happy,” KJ said, pushing at her beanie. She reached out and squeezed my hand pretty hard, which was weird. Like I said, she was never touchy with me.
For a minute I was so surprised by the hand-holding that I didn’t process the urgency of the gesture. Then my brain caught up, and I realized KJ’s hand was clammy. Panic-sweaty. And then I realized something else.
KJ was lying.
KJ, who struggled with the truth on her best days, was not having her best day. She was telling herself a string of lies. But… it wasn’t her normal style of lying. That type of lying was usually casually impulsive and stupid enough that I suspected it was pathological. This had purpose and import. There was a reason for it.
“Why are you lying?” I asked.
“Gotta keep a clear head,” KJ said, and smiled tightly at me. She kept her hold on my hand. “Feel my real feelings.”
“Okayy…,” I said, and squeezed her hand back, which drew a slightly less tight smile from her. “If lying is how you feel your feelings, I guess I won’t stop you.”
“I knew you’d understand,” KJ said. I did not understand at all.
“Sure,” I said, feeling uneasy.
“This is the best part. I’ve been waiting my whole life to do this. I’m so glad you’re here,” KJ said.
More lies. Her hand squeezed mine again, hard enough to be uncomfortable. I wanted to be insulted by the fact that KJ was lying about being happy that I was there, but I was not that thick. KJ was unhappy about me being there because she cared about me.
We were rounding the banquet table now, in a long, slow line, and Alex was just ahead of us. A good chunk of the crowd was still singing, but there was a cacophony of other sounds: chairs moving, kids yelling, people talking.
“I’m so excited,” Alex called over the din. Torchlight highlighted the curtain of his long dark hair. His lean face was split by a sweet smile.
Alex definitely wasn’t lying.
The majority of people around us seemed happy. Almost everyone was having fun… though I caught a few glimpses of townies who looked a little flat, like they’d rather be somewhere else, or like they were trying to remember something. Maybe if they’d left the stove on at home. But nobody looked miserable.
Except, of course, for Jasper. I turned back and saw him, flanked by his parents. His face was closed off, his eyes totally downcast.
Rita dropped back a little, touching my shoulder. “When you go up to greet Good Arcturus, you can introduce yourself, and ask for something, if you have something you need. I know He’ll be happy to meet you, since you’re a Sabine by blood. I’m so happy you’re here, honey. It’s nice to be a part of something, isn’t it?”
“Um. Good Arcturus is in the gazebo?” I asked, believing that about as much as I believed that God Himself was hanging out inside of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.
“Yes, of course,” Rita said, and moved forward to rejoin her husband. The two of them disappeared inside the darkness of the gazebo, coming out a few moments later. Ken had tears in his eyes and Rita was smiling, saying something to him as they went to take a seat.
Alex turned around, threw up a peace sign with both hands, then ran lightly up the steps.
“It’s like an effigy, right?” I asked KJ.
“I don’t know,” KJ said. Now she was telling the truth. Her voice was strained. “I’ve never been to a Great Harvest Hallow before.”
“But you said you came to these every year!”
“I come to the Harvest Hallow every year. It’s different—like, we do a big one every thirty-five years. When His shield wears thin.”
“Okay, KJ,” I said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Your turn,” Alex said, coming down the stairs as lightly as he’d gone up. It had been maybe two minutes since he’d gone in.
“What did you—” I started to ask, but Alex was gone, and KJ was stepping up the stairs.
“You can still leave right now,” KJ said, out of the side of her mouth. She wasn’t looking at me. And I, despite all my skepticism, was getting pretty nervous about Good Arcturus. For a second I considered backing out. But something inside me refused.
“I have to see him,” I said.
And it was true. I hadn’t come all the way here and dealt with my friends freaking out just to back out seconds from doing the thing.
I went up the stairs with KJ, sunflowers under my feet, and looked into the darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
Saturday, October 28, 2000
KJ climbed the steps half in front of me, her body language more eloquent than any speech could have been. I nudged her over.
“Stop being a human shield,” I said, which was a sentence I would think about often, later. But KJ’s eyes were fixed on the shape far back in the shadows of the gazebo.
“Greetings, my Lord,” KJ muttered, and then knelt down on the flowery gazebo floor without hesitation. “It’s an honor to be here. I ask for the continued prosperity of my… of the Kobayashi family. We love and keep You every day.”
I didn’t kneel, even though KJ clearly wanted me to. She tried to pull me down via our connected hands until I dropped my hold. I was staring at the still and silent shape in the dark. I have to know, I thought, and took a step forward. Under my sweatshirt, my arms broke out in goose bumps.
I took another step.
“Darian, wait—” KJ said.
One more. The thing in the darkness was very tall. It waited behind massive bouquets of sunflowers like it was hiding. But it was too large to hide. It brushed the ceiling of the gazebo.
“Hello,” I said. I tried to make my voice normal, but it broke a little as I spoke. I took one more step forward, waiting for the thing to move, and suddenly the shape in the darkness resolved into an object that made sense.
“Oh,” I said, and a little nervous laugh came out of my mouth without my permission. “I see you.”
It was a scarecrow. Of course it was, I thought—but KJ and Jasper had seemed so intense about the whole thing that for a minute I’d actually been expecting some living god/monster to be waiting for me.
Good Arcturus was huge, yes, and creepy in the inherent way of scarecrows and other things that live in the uncanny valley of almost-but-not-quite-human, but he was just a scarecrow. Like you might see in any field.
It was hard to see colors in the dimness, but I thought the scarecrow’s straw body was painted red underneath all the cloth that it was shrouded in, which was some lighter color. The cloth reached to the ground, hung drapelike over twisted stick arms that spanned the entire space of the gazebo, and wrapped around the scarecrow’s head entirely, so that it stood hooded and faceless.
“You’re not real,” I whispered. “Obviously.”
I reached out my right hand, about to touch him. But however bold I was when asserting myself as a realist, I couldn’t quite bring myself to touch the yards and yards of torn and leathery-looking fabric around the scarecrow.
“Are we good?” I asked KJ, taking a step backward without turning around. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Good Arcturus. He’d been oddly placed… like he was bracing himself to leap forward.
“We’re good,” KJ said. This time when she offered her hand, I pulled her up. KJ wiped her hands on her robe, staring at the no-faced effigy in the sunflowers.
“Thank you, my Lord, for your love,” KJ said. “I am so honored to be here with You, so grateful to be held by You, so glad that Darian got to meet You. Gotta go now, but it was incredible.”
Together we backed out of the gazebo. Good Arcturus stayed motionless, like a scarecrow was supposed to.
“Not so bad, huh?” KJ asked, when we got down the stairs.
Whatever fear had been plaguing KJ all day was gone. She looked actually relaxed now.
Did you really think Good Arcturus was going to be alive? You did, didn’t you? I thought. I was too polite to say it. But I was relieved to see that KJ was relieved.
We walked away, leaving the next person to ascend toward the scarecrow. The rest of the Kobayashi-Jenetopolous family met us at one of the tables in the square spiral of seating that meandered around the green.
“Kahie?” Rita asked. “How was seeing Him?”
“It was great, Ma,” KJ said. “We both loved it. It’s KJ, though, remember?”
“I’m sorry, baby, I just forget sometimes,” Rita said. “Darian, did you enjoy meeting Him?”
“An experience for sure,” I said.
“I’m so glad,” Rita said, and pulled out a chair. “You girls sit down.”
I took a seat. The red lace tablecloth brushed my thighs, and KJ slumped into the chair next to me, every inch of her long body communicating relief.
“Why were you nervous before?” I asked KJ, when the crowd of milling people got loud enough for us to talk without being overheard.
“I don’t know,” KJ said. “I didn’t have any reason to feel nervous. Not that I can think of right now, anyway.”
A bunch of people—I was pretty sure they were part of the family who ran the local garden center—sat down at the next table. A kid around our age leaned across the space to say something to KJ, and Alex looked over and smiled at me, guileless and glad.
“I’m grateful to be here with you, Dare,” he said.
“Likewise,” I said, and patted his shoulder.
And it was true. I was really glad to be there, even though KJ had gotten me all freaked-out to meet the scarecrow. I had nobody to tell me that the harmless evenings Senovak and my mom and dad had spent in Kesuquosh on Harvest Hallows of the past were not what I was getting into. That the Great Harvest Hallow—which happened every thirty-five years and just so happened to fall on the year I had chosen to visit—was really something else altogether.
A group of red-robed kids started winding through the angular spiral of tables, filling everyone’s cups with something gold. I handed over my water glass for one of them to pour the drink into, and looked at KJ, who was chugging hers.
“Is it cider?”
“Nope,” KJ said. “Sunflower-honey mead. It’s made here. I personally think it’s nasty as hell, but it is highly alcoholic.”
I examined my cup, and thought with amusement about how disapproving Senovak would be if he knew.
“I have to drink this out of respect for your religious observances, right?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” KJ said. “It would be majorly insulting if you didn’t.”
I drank half of the mead in two enormous gulps. It was nutty and flowery and almost sickly sweet. You couldn’t taste the alcohol so much as feel it in your throat. KJ polished off her glass. Alex grinned at us and followed suit, drinking quickly.
“Guys!” Rita chastised from the end of the table. “Save some for the toast!”
“Sorry, Ma,” KJ said, not looking sorry at all. I felt a pleasant buzz starting—a buzz that eased the remainder of the slimy unease I’d felt from seeing Good Arcturus in the flesh. Or the straw.
At a table closer to the center of the green, Jasper and his family took their seats.
Jasper’s angelic face (Alex said Jasper looked like Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet, but I thought he was much cuter and I knew he was much shorter) was, as always, incongruous with his expression. He was glaring blankly at his place setting while the festivities went on around him, his mead untouched, for all the world looking like the only Grinch in Whoville.
Then, at some signal that I missed, a sound of flutes and panpipes came from the far left of the green. People were playing a tune that matched the one they’d been singing in the streets before, and the great seated crowd of Kesuquoshians grew quieter as the music got louder. There was a grisly, ear-bending moment of feedback from a microphone, and then the amplified voice of a woman came from near the table that held the monstrous cake.
“Good evening, my friends,” said the voice. I caught a glimpse of the speaker, highlighted by torchlight: a petite woman of late middle age, with short gray hair. The First Selectwoman of Kesuquosh, a.k.a. Birdie Plum, a.k.a. Jasper’s aunt, who always looked nicer than she was. Kesuquosh was maybe slightly more diverse than the wealthy, isolated, super-homogenized Massachusetts towns around it, but there were still a great deal of early-fifties, upper-middle-class, well-dressed white ladies around. And Birdie was a part of the multitude. But she had… something to her, beyond a small familial resemblance to Jasper. A kind of charisma that separated her from other people. Her face was pretty, her red robe thrown across one shoulder in a jaunty way, her smile accentuated by bold red lipstick. But Jasper had always claimed that underneath her sweet exterior (the same sweet and guileless exterior that seemed to be the default in Kesuquosh) she was highly unpleasant.
