Halloween Candy Read Free

feet; her skin bruised in several places—particularly around her mouth, which was swollen on the upper lip. In her small pudgy fingers was a length of thread. Ellen was so shocked by this sight that she could not say a word—the girl was only seven or so, and what her appearance indicated about the Neesons…

    Papa Neeson was like Frank. Likes to beat people. Likes to beat children. Joey and his black eyes, this girl and her bruised face. I could kill them both.

    The little girl’s eyes crinkled up as if she were about to cry, wrinkled her forehead and nose, parted her swollen lips. 20

    From the black and white canyon of her mouth a fat green fly crawled the length of her lower lip, and then flew toward the light bulb above Ellen’s head.

    Later, when the sun was up, and the snow outside her window was blinding, Ellen knew she must’ve been half-dreaming, or perhaps it was a trick that the children played—for she’d seen all of them, the two-yearold, the five-year-old, and the girl. The boys had trooped out from the shadows of the hall. All wearing the filthy diapers, all bruised from beatings or worse. The only difference with the two younger boys was they had not yet torn the thread that had been used to sew their mouths and eyes and ears and nostrils closed. Such child abuse was beyond imagining. Ellen had seen them only briefly, and afterwards wondered if perhaps she hadn’t seen wrong. But it was a dream, a very bad one, because the little girl had flicked the light off again. When Ellen reached to turn it back on, they had retreated into the shadows and the feeling of a surreal waking state came upon her. The Neesons could not possibly be this evil . With the light on, and her vision readjusting from 21

    the darkness, she saw only houseflies sweeping motes of dust through the heavy air.

    At breakfast, Joey devoured his scrambled eggs like he hadn’t eaten in days; Ellen had to admit they tasted better than she’d had before. “You live close to the earth,” Papa Neeson said, “and it gives up its treasures.”

    Joey said, “Eggs come from chickens.”

    “Chickens come from eggs,” Papa Neeson laughed, “and eggs are the beginning of all life. But we all gather our life from the earth, boy. You city folks don’t feel it because you’re removed. Out here, well, we get it under our fingernails, birth, death, and what comes in between.”

    “You’re something of a philosopher,” Ellen said, trying to hide her uneasiness. The image of the children still in her head, like a halfremembered dream. She was eager to get on her way, because that dream was beginning to seem more real. She had spent a half-hour in the shower trying to talk herself out of having seen the children and what had been done to them: then, ten minutes drying off, positive that she had seen what she’d seen. It was Frank’s legacy: he had taught her to 22

    doubt what was right before her eyes. She wondered if Papa Neeson performed darker needlework on his babies.

    “I’m a realist,” Papa Neeson said. His eyes were bright and kind—
    it shocked her to look into them and think about what he might/might not have done.

    Mama Neeson, sinking the last skillet into a washtub next to the stove, turned and said, “Papa just has a talent for making things work, Missus, for putting two and two together. That’s how he grows, and that’s how he gathers. Why if it weren’t for him, where would my children be?”

    “Where are they?” Joey asked.

    Ellen, after her dream slash hallucination slash mind-your-ownbusiness, was a bit apprehensive. She would be happy not to meet mama Neeson’s brood at all. “We have to get back to the train,” she said. “They said by eleven.”

    Papa Neeson raised his eyebrows in an aside to his wife. “I saw some flies at the windows,” he said. “They been bad again.”
    23

    Mama Neeson shrugged her broad shoulders. “They got to let them out at times or they’d be bursting, now,