Halloween Escort

Halloween Escort

I remember sunning myself in the back garden as usual, licking my tail, my paws. Letting the warmth sink through my fur to my skin. I extended my front paws and clawed the ground inserting my claws and extracting. Insert, extract. It felt so good to stretch. With it getting dark so early now and the air so chilly, the moment of peace in the sunshine was exquisite. I fell asleep with comforting smells of leaves and hints of a wood fire somewhere in the neighborhood. I was dreaming about my bowl brimming with fresh cat food, the wet stuff I love when I was jolted away by Jill screaming, “Mojo! No!”

Mojo the Terror is the biggest baddest cat in the world. Obese doesn’t begin to say how fat he is but he makes up for his slowness with cunning. He sneaks. He tiptoes. He didn’t give a warning yowl, he would just attack. And darned if he can’t hide behind trees and potted plants and lattice work like a ghost. Mojo was the Bully from Hell, the most hateful body in fur imaginable.  

I jolted up. All four paws were off the ground and I was spinning mid-air to see where he was. He’d be close if he was going to pounce since he couldn’t exactly run.

There he was! Right behind me! I ran several feet in the air before my paws even touched down. I zigged. I zagged. I felt him swipe my tail. And then I was running pell-mell for the road. I shouldn’t run that way, but where else? He was so close!

I remember the most horrific pain and flying. A blur of clouds. I must have gotten away from Mojo but where was I exactly? What crushing pain!

Then it was dark. Little Jill was wearing a princess outfit and carrying a strange hard orange bag. Her mother was coaxing her down the path. Little Jill kept pointing to a strange marker in the corner of the yard that I didn’t recognize.  She was saying, “I don’t want to trick or treat! I’m too sad!”

“Honey, Furbs wouldn’t want you to be sad. Come on. You don’t want to miss Halloween, do you?”

I was right there, circling her and meowing but she didn’t seem to hear me or see me. Of course, I wouldn’t want her to be sad! I tried to cheer her up. I pawed at her dress. I meowed. She didn’t respond. Her mom picked her up and hugged her and they went shh-shhing away in the dried leaves.

Then things got really weird.

Bentley came barreling around the corner of the house and threw himself at a pile of leaves. He stretched out his front paws to brake and skidded into the pile yelling a slobbery “Weeee!”

I’d seen this every autumn for several years. Bentley loved playing in leaf piles. He was a goofy, easily amused dingbat of a mutt with big doofus ears, gangly legs and a thick brown tail that he seemed to have no control over.  

Bentley had also been dead for over a year. I know. I watched Jill’s dad dig the hole in the backyard. I watched them bury Bentley.

“Bentley?” I asked, as he emerged, shaking debris off his nose.

“Yeah-yeah? Oh! hey! Furbs! Whoa! Good to see you, dude! Wanna play in the leaves with me?”

Before I could stop him, he was charging into a new pile and leaves blew up into he air. I waited.

Let’s be clear about this. I tolerated Bentley. He had a good heart and he was a dog I suppose. As dogs go. But we weren’t exactly friends though I’m not sure he ever figured that out. He was one of those free spirits that just loves everyone and everything blindly without any vetting. To be fair, I had missed him some after the cancer took him. I’d forgotten how annoying he could be with all that exuberance. That tail always knocking over glassware and smacking me and Little Jill.

He shook himself and bounded toward me.

“You can see me?” I asked.

“Well yeah-yeah, Dummy! I wouldn’t be talking to you if I couldn’t see you, would I, he heh? Did you just get here? Have you been waiting long?”

“Waiting?”

“Yeah. They sent me to come get you, but I got distracted. Good to be back, you know? I miss this life. I miss Jill and all them.” He nodded his head toward the house.

“Came to get me?”

“Yeah! To cross over to the Happy Hunting Ground Park! I’m your escort!”

“Happy what?”

Bentley ran circles around me singing “Happy Hunting Ground! Happy Hunting Ground!”

I hissed. “Could you stop that please? It’s annoying.”

“Oh. Sor-ry,” he said, looking sheepish and slowing to a stop. He threw himself into a play position and looked me in the eyes. “You’re dead. You die, you go to the next place, The Happy Hunting Ground park. Oh-oh OH! You’re gonna love it! You get to chase things that squeak, the colors are super bold, you get to hang out with all your friends. It’s the BEST!”

“I’m dead? How did I--?”

“I dunno. I missed that part. You ready? You can take another tour around before we go. Anything you want to see?”

I scratched my ear with a hind paw. “I’m trying to remember. This is all so confusing.”

Bentley got up and bounced around in place then froze.

“Oh man, I forgot about that dang cat. I hated him.”

“What?”

I followed his gaze. Waddling through the zinnia patch that Mom had just planted, waddled a giant orange and white fury bowling ball of a demonic feline.

I cowered. “Can he see us?”

“Probably not in the daytime.”

“But at night maybe?”

“Tonight’s Halloween! I should think so!” Bentley said in the same expectant way that he used to wag and carry on when he was begging for treats.

I rubbed my paws together then stretched out my claws in the air. “Bentley? When do we have to leave? Do you think we could stay just a bit longer? Til after dark?”

“Sure!”

That’s when we hatched our plan. Okay, I’ll take credit. Bentley just went along. I should explain that Jill’s house happened to be at the backside of an old cemetery. The cemetery was a great place to play and hunt mice and lizards. It happened to be one of Mojo’s favorite places to hang out. Sure enough, as the sun sunk into a red sky growing out of the trees, Mojo shambled towards the wide gap in the chain link fence by the dead elm tree.

We followed at a distance.

I wasn’t sure that Bentley could tether his buoyant energy enough to not give our position away, but he surprised me. He must have hated Mojo the Terror almost as much as I did. And I forgot that it’s easy to be quiet when you’re a ghost.

Now I’d been in the cemetery a bunch of times, but it seems that somehow, I’d never been in there on Halloween night. Or maybe it was just because I’d never been in there as a ghost before. It was a whole new strange experience.

Mojo swatted at a lizard. He snagged it with a claw and was tormenting it when I realized maybe this was the time. “Come on!”

I found that I could move my paws to walk or just think movement and sort of glide forward. I can’t explain it exactly, but movement was easier. I still kind of felt the ground in an awareness way but not so much a tactile way if you see what I mean. We crouched behind a massive black grave that just said POWERS in massive letters. Mojo was just beyond the foot end of the grave.

 “Make a spooky howl like a wolf,” I whispered.

Bentley look solemn and concentrated. His head went down but then swooped upwards as a low “Wooo—eorr---wooo!” got louder.

Mojo stopped, one claw still stuck in the lizard’s back.

“Yes!” I said with glee. “He heard you! This is so great. Now growl like a monster!”

Now Bentley is a doofus, but he can growl a pretty terrifying monster growl. It worked. Mojo ducked his head reflexively, momentarily torn between skewering his prey or reconsidering the safety of his position.

Before I knew what he was doing, Bentley took off at a gallop and ran around the POWERS stone and charged Mojo. He sounded just like you’d think a hell hound would sound. It scared me and I knew it was just old stupid Bentley.

Mojo took one look at the charging spectre and dropped the lizard to run for cover. But he ran straight towards me!

I’m not sure how I did it. I wanted to scare him. This was the moment. Look big and terrifying. The biggest ghost cat ever. I hissed as if my last breath depended on it. I fluffed my fur up and arched my back. All of a sudden I was as tall as the POWERS stone and four times as fat as Mojo! My energy body had blown up like one of those scary balloon things that Little Jill got on her birthday. I hoped I was that terrifying. Maybe I was shiny like that too, and floaty. Mojo was running right at me and then he tried to stop. His eyes bulged. His fur rose all around in fright. Not just on his back but all over his evil body. His legs went stiff. He careened into me just as Bentley circled around snarling for all he was worth.

Mojo made this awful little choking sound like “glll—acck” and was suddenly terribly still. I had been elated to see the fear in his eyes as he ran through me but as I turned around, I saw that he was lying there. I went around to look in his face. His eyes were enormous staring at nothing.

We’d scared Mojo the Terror to death.

Bentley and I sat there for quite some time. I felt conflicted. We hadn’t meant to kill him, just scare him something awful. We’d wanted to humble him, not hurt him.

Bentley’s slobbery lips hung low. His eyes drooped in that way that usually got him hugs and extra snacks. We were lost in our feelings when there was a rustling. First just one then another then movement all around us.

A ghost mouse stepped forward and shouted, “You did it! You’ve saved the Kingdom of the Cemetery Mice!” He performed a dramatic low bow.

“Hip hip, hooray!” shouted another ghost mouse.

“Hip hip, hooray!” came a response chorus as more ghost mice appeared from the grass, scuttling along graves, running along tree branches.

“Bravo!” sounded an old ghost cat named Mr. Black. Mr. Black died when I was a kitten but I remembered his old peculiar jaggedy voice.

“Well done!” clapped Vivika, a ghost canary who flew down from thin air to land on top of the POWERS grave. “Mojo killed so many of my friends when I was a young little chirper and then he killed me too!”

“I remember that,” said Bentley. “That was awful.”

I remembered too.

More and more ghost animals came to celebrate. I still didn’t feel happy about killing Mojo, but as more and more ghost victims stepped forward, I felt better about preventing future crimes.

Then we all gasped. There was a great rumbling from the earth as if the Devil’s bowling league was having a special tournament. The rumbling got louder and seemed to animate Mojo. No, not his body, it his ghost that was wriggling up. Before he was fully upright, before he could come at us—and that’s what his vengeful, hate-filled eyes conveyed that he would do--two enormous red scorpions emerged from the ground. Their legs and body armor made an unsettling clicky sound.  They rose up effortlessly, one on each side of Mojo. Their great stingers poised above his horrid head as they used their pincers to seize his limbs. Their tails arced and stung, arced and stung, again and again striking the top of his head with perfect aim. His ghost body flinched terribly with each strike. It was horrific to watch the powerful scorpions subdue the cat so mercilessly. The three ghostly forms sank back down through the soil out of sight. The sound that Mojo emitted was like nothing I’d ever heard before: a high-pitched, desperate keening of utter despair. The sound lingered for a few moments even after they were no longer visible.

Bentley cocked his head to the side. His ears were wide as barn doors. “Wow,” he said. 

Wow indeed.

The dazed crowd of ghostly animals gathered around in mutual mute support. Birds, cats, dogs, lizards, toads, rodents all united by this fearsome experience. We were silent and contemplative.

Others were not.

The cemetery was getting peoplely.

Ghosts need effort to make sounds like footfalls or voices. They do make some sounds though as they move about; a sort of air current, a drop in temperature, the almost too quiet shush of an energy body moving. There were ghost children playing hide and seek. Adults mingled as if at a cocktail party. Old ghosts shuffling. Young ghosts laughing. Some ghosts crying.

Vivika chirped in a stage whisper, “I think we should go now.”

Bentley threw back his head and howled a long mournful cry.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said, flapping his head. “I just felt like it.”

It did seem right. Respectful and solemn.

And then the other ghost animals started trotting, flying, slithering away upward into the ether.

“You ready?” Bentley asked.

“I guess,” I said archly as if crossing over wasn’t a big deal. To be honest, I was kind of scared. I wasn’t going to let Bentley know that. 

“Let’s go then!” And he tapped my forehead with his paw. We began to float to the Happy Hunting Ground where we could chase animals but they never died they just squeaked with glee. I looked down to see the cemetery full of spirits.

“What about them?” I asked. “Where do they go?”

Bentley said, “The old ones will escort the new ones just like us. We go to the Park. They go to the Beyond. But we can visit back and forth.” 

Then we were passing through a mist of dazzling white light.