UNCLE MOON IN RAINTREE HILLS

by Fred Chappell

Elsewhere in this issue, it’s mentioned that we received a letter from someone accusing us of having an editorial bias against women writers from the west coast. This issue will probably give rise to similar conspiracy theories, because we have not one, not two, but three stories in this issue by writers who live in North Carolina. And all three stories are novelets! The blatant northcarolinanoveletophilia is just breathtaking, isn’t it?

Fred Chappell may well find this coincidence amusing, as he is a lifelong resident of the Tar Heel State and served as its Poet Laureate for five years. He says of this story that he has put it through a lot of versions, including one called “The Invading Spirit” that appeared in Weird Tales in 2005. But he says that similar openings are all that the two stories have in common.

* * * *

1

The way to Grammer’s deathbed was through the dormer window, up to the roof proper, down the gritty shingles to the porch roof, and over the trellis with its tricky creeper vine. Then Claudia and Jasper were on solid ground. The scariest part was climbing upward off the dormer. If a handhold slipped, the fall would be bone-breaking. The most tedious passage was down the trellis because Daddy and Barb slept in the bedroom on that side and were often restless in the night. The two children had learned to go quietly.

They made the journey confidently now. This was the thirteenth time they had come this way, the “sacred thirteenth,” Claudia named it. Her habit was to sacralize ordinary things: days of the week, articles of clothing, cats, toys, the sweeping silhouette the willow tree traced against the grinning silver moon. “Tonight is the sacred night, the unholy thirteenth,” Claudia said again.

Now they had reached the narrow asphalt lane that curled endlessly through this suburban warren, Raintree Hills, all the way out to the traffic circle that adjoined the main road. Jasper trailed behind his sister, a small boy, seeming smaller because of the big floppy black hat tugged low over his troubled brow. Claudia had made this wizard hat for him, rescuing it from Barb’s wastebasket and scissoring its wide brim into witchy fangs. It had once belonged to Grammer and that was probably why Barb junked it.

He recalled with irritation that while tonight was the sacred thirteenth, the night before had been the sacred twelfth, and that Claudia had consecrated every one of them back to the first one, that Sunday they had heard Barb whispering into the hall telephone that Grammer was very ill and not expected to live. She was calm as she spoke, coolly composed, but then Grammer was Daddy’s mother and not hers. Barb was Daddy’s second wife and Grammer had never kept secret the fact that she preferred the children’s real mother, Athalie, now enfolded into eternity, dear departed saintly soul. Grammer liked things the way they used to be, the way they were supposed to be. She spoke of her childhood on the farm as the golden time.

What a spooky place the moonlight made of this boring neighborhood! The angles of new-built houses produced shadows that lay like crape ribbons on the clipped and curried lawns. Claudia went stoutly along; the moonlight did not dismay her. Jasper was just uneasy enough to wish that he could know his sister’s mind and discover if she was as brave as she looked. He would like to think she was a little bit scared, yet he hoped she wasn’t, since she was his only protection except for his black, wizardly hat. He couldn’t know; Claudia’s was a mind beyond his present reach.

They passed the Sanford house where the May-time roses out front looked frosted under the moon; they passed warily the Morton house where a dim light yellowed an upstairs window; they marched defiantly by the house of old Miz Gratz who scowled at them crossly when they circled their bikes over the roadway here. Jasper thought Claudia looked heroic in her striped sweater and blue jeans. To Claudia, Jasper looked dopey, almost pitiable, in his pajama tops and the cotton shorts that displayed his knobby knees. Only the great floppy hat lent him dignity and Claudia was proud that she had conceived it.

A little ashamed of these thoughts, she turned suddenly to her little brother and thrust her bundle into his hands. “Here,” she whispered loudly, “you carry it for a while.” She knew he would be pleased with the responsibility.

Jasper clutched the Golden Net to his chest and burrowed his face in it, as if the magic of it might transfer to his body. It was only a ripped and re-tied pair of Barb’s pantyhose, fashioned into what Claudia called a net, but she had painted arcane designs on it with a black marker and had muttered sorcerous words into it in a dark closet and these ministrations had conferred the necessary powers.

So Claudia said, so she believed, and so then did Jasper. Neither now gave any thought to the fact that it had once enwrapped Barb’s skinny butt. Claudia’s powers had erased that datum.

As they drew closer to Grammer’s house, Jasper ventured the thought that the light was so bright someone was bound to spot them, but Claudia said no. “They won’t see you because your hat is the color of the night. They can’t see me because my hair is the color of the moon.” It was true that her hair was dime-bright, but then they went in under the shadow of the thick-leaved maple in Grammer’s side yard and in this dimness they disappeared equally. The brightest things about them now were their eyes so big and watchful. They crowded in against the trunk and took bearings.

“What do we see?” Claudia asked.

Jasper shook his head.

“What do we hear?”

“Nothing,” he whispered dutifully.

“Are there lights?”

“No lights.”

“Where are all the dogs?”

“Gone fast asleep.”

“I am the Princess of Thieves and you are my Sturdy Helper.”

This part of the catechism was hardest to countenance, but Jasper frowned and nodded.

“And now we go to steal,” she said.

At this solemn avowal they moved so quietly they might have floated out of the shelter of the maple over to the side of the garage where the mimosa brushed its delicate arms against a window. They climbed the tree and squirreled through the window and slipped to the garage floor. In here the only light was from the hidden moon, and they waited for their seeing to adjust. In a few moments they could see the dried oil patches on the floor where the old Pontiac used to sit till Barb wheedled it away from Grammer. Then they made their way to the stairs that led up to the hallway. At the bottom they paused. Their breathing had become quicker and louder and so they quieted their straining chests.

“Ten steps,” Claudia murmured.

“Ten,” said Jasper.

Up they went to the hallway door.

“Left hand is the Drunken Moon-Sentry. Right hand is Grammer Asleep.”

“Left,” said Jasper. “Right.”

Claudia swung open the door upon deepest darkness and they stepped into the hallway and waited. In a moment came the reassuring sound of Uncle Moon’s snoring. He sat asleep in the overstuffed chair in the den. He had been posted by Daddy to look after Grammer during her mysterious illness; he was supposed to be wakeful to her midnight needs and wants. But every night Budweiser and TV baseball claimed him and he was as heavy in bed as a fallen timber. They had nothing to fear from Uncle Hobart, Claudia explained in all confidence.

Only Barb liked her brother Hobart; everyone else thought him unmannerly at the least and sometimes grossly uncouth. Barb insisted that he was a special case, a type of artist not subject to the all-too-ordinary standards of the upscale development, Raintree Hills, where all the males worked in humdrum offices and the wives did charity work and played bridge turn and turn about. What Claudia and Jasper recalled was that Grammer was not ill until Uncle Moon arrived and that her health declined steadily in his company.

They tiptoed down the hall to where Grammer lay. At the door Claudia gave the silent nod that Jasper knew signified that they had arrived at The Fateful Gateway. Then she turned the knob and they stepped in and she eased the door shut.

Where Uncle Moon’s breathing had been like an unsteady cellist bowing flourishes, Grammer’s was light and tired, a breeze of the May night wearied to gentleness under the giant sky. It was as intermittent as breezes, seeming to stop for whole minutes before commencing again with a series of shallow pantings. Something was troubling her sleep, something always was, and it was Jasper’s office to name it.

At this point Claudia always grasped her brother’s shoulders from behind and urged him toward the bedside. Every night, just here, Jasper showed reluctance to proceed and only Claudia’s firmness prevented him from breaking into sobs and bolting the dark house, laying their scheme open to the inspection of adults. Claudia put her mouth to Jasper’s ear and said, “Give me the Net. Say the dreams.”

He handed the nylon to her and moved till he was two feet from the bedside. He licked his lips and closed his eyes, not daring to look at the shadow-shape of Grammer lying there, breathing so fitfully and opening her mouth now and again to make little mewling sounds.

For a while he said nothing because he saw nothing, but he knew that something must come to him. He would whisper what that was to Claudia, who lacked the talent to see such things. Sometimes he had no words for what he saw in Grammer’s dreams, no experiences that could unfold those images for him. They could be too vivid, too puzzling, and when he tried to speak of them he stammered. Claudia would nod knowingly and intone, “The Mystery of Sex.”

But tonight the images behind his eyelids were of a less domestic nature. Horses streamed thundering along under a clamorous brassy sun; a rainbow arched between ice floes; a cat leapt from the mouth of a Pepsi bottle. Jasper saw something he called a “sin-tower,” from the chest upward a splendid archer, but trotting behind this torso, a stallion. There were flowers that possessed elbows, and knees that sported eyeballs. A cloud collided with a mountaintop, spilling coins down those rocky slopes.

“But now the lake has come again,” he whispered. “All oozy and purple. The lake is drowning the mountain and the sky. All the world is the purple lake and dark. All the light is purple and drowning dark. Everything purple dark.”

“This is where the Raptor Spirit enters,” Claudia said.

But for Jasper it was dark still and it seemed a long time before the pinkish pearly glow arrived that signaled the approach of the Raptor. The light grew as slowly as a careful sunrise and then there glided into it, arising perhaps from Grammer’s inmost, a nearly shapeless form of brighter light. Or maybe it arrived from some other space downward into Grammer. The directions up and down were confusing when applied to her dreaming.

“I think it is coming now,” Jasper muttered.

Claudia leaned in upon him from behind. “I am holding the Golden Net,” she said. “Is this the great unholy night of the capture?”

Jasper stood silent and the both of them listened as Grammer’s breath grew more excited.

“It is almost with her now,” Jasper said. “It is brighter than ever before. Grammer’s room smells more like sky now.”

Claudia noticed it too, the diminishment of the smells of sachet and camphor and dried bitter medicine in small glasses and of linen none too fresh. There was an airiness about in the chamber, unmoving but cool.

“The Raptor is trying to get Grammer to come out. She knows where he is and wants to meet him. But it is hard and she also doesn’t want to.”

“Is she trying as hard as she can?”

“She is trying awfully.”

“This is the night. I am sure it is.”

“She has come partway, but she is scared.”

“This is the night,” Claudia said, “and I hold the Net ready. I can almost see her dream. I can almost see the Raptor Spirit.”

“What is it, then?”

“I think it was in a man. Inside. Is in a man one time. Maybe Grammer knew who.”

Claudia was ready for it—or him. Jasper and Claudia were prepared to trap this Raptor who had been approaching for thirteen nights, coming to woo Grammer out of her weary body, out of this weary world, to set her soul spinning in a blackness that possessed no stars, no sun, no breath. The Golden Net was waiting, with Claudia’s magic all imbued. They were to capture the seductive Raptor and imprison it and it could never again come to steal away Grammer. It would be their captive and she would be safe. And always their secret would be that she would never know she owed her life and very soul to her grandchildren and the Golden Net.

“Here it is,” Jasper said. “Right above the bed.”

“I’ll go to the other side,” Claudia said. “You must be ready to help the Princess of Thieves when she calls on you. We will steal it away on this sacred night.”

She went around the foot of the four-poster and squeezed against the wall on that side and came even with Grammer’s head and unfolded the Net. Grammer’s mouth was open in her uneasy sleep and that was where the Raptor would enter to snatch Grammer’s soul as it rose to meet it. The Raptor would be a smooth, sweet thing, Claudia thought, though she had never seen it. Jasper saw it in the way he saw all the dreams of others and their spirits inside them like flames in lanterns, and saw the swift, smoky entities that swarmed the night winds and the dark corners of attics and the gaped sleeves of dark overcoats that hung musty in closets. She had not seen but she had visualized from Jasper’s descriptions. So she knew what the Raptor would look like when they held it captive.

“Now it has slipped into her mouth. She is coming up to meet it to fly away together,” Jasper said.

“Now then,” Claudia announced and flung the net that had been folded once and three times and seven times again over Grammer’s mouth. “Take the end of it. Hold the Golden Net down tight.”

When they tightened the net across and bore down on the ends with full strength Grammer’s eyelids flew open and her eyes enlarged. She looked straight into the darkness above her, not seeing her grandchildren, and the sounds she made were only noises. She tried to struggle, but she was old and weak and tired and did not know that Claudia and Jasper were there to aid her.

Grammer was tired and feeble and very old indeed and went limp except for her eyelids which still strained open. For a year now she had battled her illness and all her nerve was spent. Her grandchildren had netted the Raptor at great peril to themselves. Grammer could sleep in peace now through all this night because Claudia was refolding the Golden Net according to ritual, once and thrice and seven times, and the Raptor was so enmeshed in its toils and so benumbed by the wizard words painted into it that it had ceased to struggle and was quiet finally as if asleep.

“We must let her rest,” Claudia said. “We will go home.”

Jasper was too frightened even to nod. He stood stock still till Claudia came from the other side and hugged his waist and poked her head under the big hat till it covered both their faces and said, “Sturdy Helper of the Princess, you have proved your mettle.”

They slipped into the hallway and the Drunken Moon-Sentry did not stir. He must have slumped asleep, for they could not see the top of his bald pinkish head over the chair back. Before his chair the seventh inning droned on and on, flickering. Uncle Moon must never know of the momentous victory that had been achieved while he snored.

They returned home the way they had come. Claudia led the way; Jasper trailed, now draped completely, as the moon had climbed, in the shadow of his black hat. He was overtired from the excitement and sleepy and would respond crossly if Claudia scolded his slow pace. But she showed wisdom for once and marched more slowly, careful not to leave him too far behind, all frightened. Truth was, she needed his company.

They climbed the trellis and over the roof and finally through their narrow bedroom window. They loosened the curtain that had been tied back and drew it and the moon’s force weakened considerably. After changing into their pajamas they tiptoed down the hall to pee. In the bathroom, Claudia knotted the Golden Net into a ball. “It goes in our closet for tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow we will smuggle it down to the basement and put it in the Secret Keep.”

Jasper nodded sleepily.

“Do you want to see what the Raptor looks like in the light? Shall I unfold the Golden Net?”

Jasper shook his head. He was too tired to be frightened, but he didn’t want to see it tonight. Too much had happened to try to take in more.

“Me neither. Tomorrow we’ll smuggle it down and soon we’ll look at it and nobody will know.”

He nodded, but the gesture meant nothing. He was tired past caring.

* * * *

2

There was no way it could have gone wrong, but it had gone all wrong.

Grammer had died and then there was great confusion, the house full of strangers fussing over Claudia and Jasper and, after all that, the funeral with itchy clothes and stiff shoes and the stuffy church, then the graveyard where they lowered her box and pitched dirt on it with a dreadful knocking sound. The children withstood the ordeals, as silent and white-faced as gravestones in moonlight, their eyes wide. They did not look into the faces of the adults who tried to draw them out and they most particularly did not look at each other.

How could it have gone wrong, the capture having proceeded precisely according to plan? The Golden Net had been applied as it should have been; Jasper had visioned the progress of the Raptor in the soul of Grammer, telling its every motion; they had trekked back and forth without being seen and climbed over the nighttime roof without falling to their dooms. But Grammer was no longer among the living and all the rooms in the house were filled with sobbing and tears, though Barb did not weep and was not expected to.

Daddy was inconsolable. Hours of hard mourning passed before he sought out the company of his children and hugged them and told them that Grammer had gone to inhabit a better place. Breathy and red-eyed, he said that there is a time for everyone and this was the time for Grammer.

They nestled to him, crying as much for his grief as for the loss of Grammer, which Claudia simply could not comprehend. Grown-ups came to murmur to them and this solicitude made them restless.

Uncle Moon did not come to them, but they felt his presence. From a distance he followed them with his bland, uninformative gaze, surveying them as if they were offerings in pet-store windows. Once in a while he would grin the horrible grin that spread from ear to ear almost and exposed his little reddish-yellow teeth, looking more than ever like the moon in Jasper’s storybook, the one pictured peering down sardonically upon two silhouetted thieves making their way over a round, treeless hill. The thieves wore big floppy black hats and carried heavy-laden sacks slung over their shoulders. The round-faced yellow moon eyed them with baleful skepticism.

His real name was Hobart, but Jaz and Claudia called him Uncle Moon because of the picture and the memorable story. And while he hung back from the children, as if to observe them more coolly, so the other adults hung back from Uncle Hobart. Grammer had died on his watch and he had only discovered her the next morning as he rose from his TV chair to go pee.

“Hobart must bear his share of this,” one of his cousins said, but Uncle Moon replied that there was more to it than met the eye and that he had his own notions about what had happened and why, though he would say nothing now. Aunt Irene and Uncle Donald tried to pursue his curious suggestion, but he only winked at them and wagged his big, pumpkin-like head. He was a confirmed drunkard; they would not take him seriously and yet his manner implied that he was privy to facts otherwise unknown.

But the children knew that the murderer was the Raptor, which had got away clean. The plan had been to capture it in the Golden Net and sneak it down into the basement and imprison it inside the big tobacco-colored stoneware jug that sat in the corner by the shelves of canned tomatoes. This was their Secret Keep, Claudia said, from which the Raptor could not escape. Here they would hold it and train it to their will. They would find a way to force it to return Grammer to the world of the living.

Yet when they undid the Net, unfolding it seven times, then three times, then once more, they found it empty. The Raptor had eluded them. They did not know what it would look like in the shadowy light down here, but they were certain to recognize it. The Net, though, held nothing but a smear of Grammer’s dying spittle and traces of her face powder and something of her smell, hard to detect.

Jasper gave his sister a long stare, burning with accusation.

“I don’t know, Jaz,” she said. “We did everything right, didn’t we?”

From the darkness by the dusty furnace came a gruff and grainy whisper: “Just right, down to the last detail. You didn’t miss a step, not a step.”

“Uncle Hobart?” Claudia said. “Is that you?”

“Uncle Hobart, is it?” asked the whisper. “Why don’t you say Uncle Moon? That’s what you really call me, ain’t it? Uncle Moon this, Uncle Moon that, Uncle Moon here, Uncle Moon there.”

Jasper began to sniffle. His fear was great.

“It was just a play name,” Claudia said. “We were not saying bad about you. We saw it in a book, sort of.”

“Was it a story about two thieves stealing two sacks of gold and sneaking away while the moon kept watch on ‘em?”

“The Moonlight Robbers,” Claudia said. “They were robbing the gold to take it back to the king’s palace where it belonged truly. They were good robbers.”

“Good, were they? I ain’t so sure. I think I know that story.”

Her voice was firm. “Yes, they were. They were good, only people didn’t understand.”

“I know a little song,” the whisper said. “It’s kind of a funny song. You see the moon, the moon sees you. That’s how it goes.”

“That’s not a real song.”

“It tells the tale, though, don’t it? It suits real well. You see the moon, he sees you too.”

“You are trying to scare us down here,” Claudia said. “We will go upstairs and leave you in this nasty old basement.”

“Don’t forget your Golden Net. You might need it again, you never know.”

“Well, don’t you forget either,” she said, though Claudia had no idea what she might mean.

* * * *

Jasper rarely spoke more than a few words to his sister. His stark, dark stare and pallid face expressed most of what he felt and sometimes thought.

Claudia took him in with a scornful look. She sat on her bed and Jasper squatted on the ragged rug beside it, regarding her closely.

“He is only trying to frighten us,” she explained. “He has scared you, but I will be courageous and teach you to be courageous.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. He might’ve been not asleep in front of the baseball TV and sneaked like a wily savage and saw us trying to trap the Raptor Spirit. Then he might’ve thought we were hurting her. But we would never hurt our Grammer.”

He looked away and began to snuffle. Tears shone yellow in the light from her bedside lamp.

“Don’t cry. Remember how Daddy says she has gone to a better place. I bet it is like the farm where she grew up on, the one she told about so much, how happy she was with her dog Ajax and the cows and the big pasture to roam in. That is her better place. Maybe we can go visit sometime.”

Jasper shook his head. He did not want to die and lie down in a coffin and have sad people pitch clods on him. That was the only way anybody could visit Grammer now.

“Uncle Moon lives alone in Grammer’s house. I heard Daddy tell Barb that Hobart acts like the house belongs to him but it doesn’t. Barb said Hobie was still her brother for all his faults and had looked after Grammer for a long time and deserved a little consideration. So that means he is over there all the time, thinking about me and you and plotting a dirty mischief, I expect.”

Jasper’s solemn stare was unwavering and Claudia could not tell if he believed or disbelieved.

* * * *

Yet it was not the case that Uncle Moon was holed up in Grammer’s house like a sorcerer in a secret cave, for he was here and there, and there, and over there, wherever the children played in their house or yard. Summer was shortening and nights were lengthening and Jasper and Claudia would go over when the first stars were visible and watch Grammer’s house until well after dark.

What was happening inside? The light in Grammer’s bedroom would flick on then off, and then the light from the living room would come on, then go off, leaving only the colorful, rippling glow of television. The upstairs bedroom light would go on and off and on and off, as if Uncle Moon were sending signals. No one lived there but Uncle—so why?

Once they thought they saw him up in the maple beside Grammer’s garage. The leaves were turning red and orange and they saw his round red-orange face among them, nodding and bobbling, and they supposed he must have climbed into the tree to spy on them, but then how could he know they would be there? Step by anxious step, they stole through the shadows until they saw it was not Uncle Moon’s head among the limbs but an orange balloon the same exact size, tied there with a narrow, white birthday-present ribbon. It was only a balloon, but it was still scary because a face had been painted on it with black ink, the face with the sneaky, knowing grin that surveyed with icy humor the two thieves with their slung sacks, The Moonlight Robbers.

They returned home and drank milk and sat in front of the TV for a little while. Then Daddy and Barb began quarreling again, so they climbed the stairs to their bedroom to wait out the confusion.

“Wasn’t it awful?” Claudia asked. “It was terribly awful, wasn’t it?”

After he nodded to agree, she was silent for a space and then said, “What if he is in league with the Raptor Spirit? What if they were joined up against Grammer? Can you vision it? Close your eyes.”

He closed his eyes and saw darkness.

“The hat,” she said. She took it all rumpled and melancholy from the box on the floor of the cramped closet, pushing aside the dance pumps that no longer fit and a doll dress she had tried to remodel. She tugged the hat onto his head and grasped his shoulders and turned him to face the bed. “Play like this is Grammer’s bed with her in it. Vision if you can see Uncle Moon with the Raptor.”

He shook his head.

“Close your eyes and vision.”

Darkness only. He told her to leave him alone.

“All right then.” She took the hat and stuffed it back into the box. “But it is the truth anyhow, I know it is. I just know it in all my heart.”

Five minutes passed before she revealed her plan to set up a headquarters in the basement, over in the corner beside the furnace where the whisper had come from. “We will take that place away from them and then they cannot hide there where Uncle Moon hid before and tried to scare us. We are not scared, are we? I am the Princess of Thieves and you are my Sturdy Helper.”

He shook his head, but she could tell he was frightened, even more than before because his face was whiter than ever and he was staring out their window as if something showed itself there.

When she looked, it fluttered away and she was not certain she had seen the smirky, orangey face with its eyes crinkled narrow, bobbing on the night breeze. “Hush now,” she said when he sniffled. “Nothing is out there.”

He cast his eyes down and she knew his fear was growing darker.

* * * *

So she devised a weapon, finding one of the bamboo fishing poles in a corner of the cellar and sawing it in two with a discarded hacksaw blade and fixing a sharp nail to the end with duct tape. Daddy had abandoned his workbench down here when Grammer became so sick and it was strewn with all sorts of oddments that might prove lucky.

She brandished her little spear, poking the air. “Whenever we see one of the moon-face balloons we will explode it.” She thrust meaningfully at a shadow. “Pop. There it goes, nothing left. It cannot scare us, no matter how many. Poof.”

The number of balloons had multiplied, tangled in the shrubbery or dancing among tree limbs or tumbling along the alley driveway with its grassy median. Why did not Daddy ask where all the balloons came from and what did they mean with their evil grins? Nobody mentioned them, though they were plain to see.

They grew more plentiful, even as Claudia valiantly attacked them. The more of them she poked into flabby ribbons, the more they multiplied. She dreaded the day she would come down here to the basement to collect herself and think about how nice things used to be before Grammer took sick and find the space filled wall to wall with red-orange balloons, huddled together and rubbing among themselves like new blind puppies.

She offered to make a spear for Jaz, but he said No, it only made things worse. The more they were destroyed, the more there were of them. And also besides, he said, when he came here by himself there was a whisper he could hear that was scary, though he could not make out the words. A Guardian Spear would be no help.

“What did it sound like, the whisper?” Claudia asked.

He frowned to concentrate, then made a sound through his teeth like wind in a ragged bush or like a sea wave bursting upon a rock or a deadly serpent hissing.

“That is only Uncle Moon. We are defeating his face-balloons, so now he is making whispers.”

“Why?”

“Because that is the way he just is. He must be a big coward, trying to scare kids like us. But we are not daunted.”

But now here was again the whisper they both heard plainly. It came from the shadows by the dusty old furnace. “If you ain’t afraid, you better be. You don’t see me, but I see you. That’s how my song goes, my new song. I see you, I see right through.”

“You are in league with the Raptor Spirit,” Claudia said, “and took Grammer away from us, but she has gone to a better place and you cannot find her now.”

“I know exactly where she went,” the whisper said. “But you would not want to hear. It would scare you plenty.”

“We have our Guardian Spear. It will protect us, no matter how many faces you send. You better not come near.” She stabbed the air in several directions.

The whisper sniggered.

* * * *

3

The school year had cranked up and was mumbling along and Claudia and Jasper attended to its rote duties absentmindedly. Already there were flyers posted on bulletin boards announcing the Raintree Hills Halloween Bash. The big neighborhood party was to be uproarious, centered at the traffic circle by the main road but also spread all through the development.

Uncle Moon’s faces had become less numerous; fewer of them disturbed their days and distressed their dreams, but the balloons had changed color to a dark and bloody red and their smiles had grown more crooked and meanly knowing. There was more commotion in the house now because Daddy and Barb were combating, as they had not done so often when Grammer was alive.

After the most heated quarrels, Daddy would seek out the children and give them hugs and talk to them in a low, calm voice. Things were not so bad as they seemed, he said, only some harsh feeling had built up for a long time and now was let loose. It was not only Grammer’s death but also many difficult legal details about her property and some taxes and it seemed that Uncle Hobart had been interfering in ways that no one could understand and while you would expect Barb to stand by her brother, she ought at least to be reasonable.

“I know you don’t understand all that I’m talking about,” he said, “but maybe if you know there’s an explanation for our behavior, you won’t be so apprehensive. I can tell that you are frightened and have been frightened ever since Grammer passed.”

Jasper trotted to Daddy where he knelt and pushed his face into his neck and sobbed a little. Claudia hung back. She felt that if she gave in and began to talk she could not stop and would tell everything, all about the Golden Net and the Raptor and how Uncle Moon lurked upon her and Jaz. If she told on Uncle Moon, he would do something terrible, you could count on that. He was everywhere and knew everything. He would know what she told her father.

“I have to go down to the old farmstead in Monroe County,” Daddy said. It was something about property boundaries Claudia would not comprehend. “It is not far. Maybe you two would like to come with me and see the place where your grandmother grew up. Do you remember how she liked to talk about it? You have not visited since you were very small people.”

Jaz said nothing, but Claudia was eager. “When do we get to go?”

“Soon. In about a week, maybe.”

* * * *

4

It would be restful to be away from the house where Barb rattled silverware and broke crockery, away from Uncle Moon who occupied both houses at once. Here he was in her kitchen, hanging around Barb as she washed her pantyhose in the sink, inspecting them carefully and discarding those in which she discovered the slightest flaw. Uncle Moon talked to her endlessly in his silly way and when Claudia and Jasper came in for water he wagged his big, roundy head at them and winked. “Everybody knows something,” he said, “but I know something nobody knows I know.”

Jasper scurried away, but Claudia stood her ground and returned upon Uncle Moon the evilest, crookedest smile she could muster. Then she turned deliberately and marched away slowly.

“I know you know I know,” he sang after her.

“Hobe, what in the world are you going on about?” Barb said.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Nothing yet, anyhow.”

* * * *

It was actually two weeks before Daddy invited them into the spacious back seat of the old Buick and pulled out of the driveway, swearing indistinctly at something Barb had said as he left the house. As soon as they were out of the Heaton city limits, rolling easy on the three-lane byway, he began to hum. He knew songs that were not played on the radio or MTV, songs that were easy to sing and cheerful.

The roadsides peeled by them, spattered with wildflowers sky-blue and golden and sometimes purple. The trees were splendidly red-and-gold. The maple by Grammer’s garage had turned too, red-and-gold, and the moon-face balloons huddled among the leaves. It was hard to make them out in that display, but they were there and if you stood still and stared a long time the shapes distinguished themselves and grinning faces peered out. Claudia thought that perhaps she spotted some of them nestled in the foliage along the highway, but Daddy sped by so fast the colors blurred all together.

They had traveled only forty miles or so when they turned off onto a narrow two-lane asphalt and then, not long after, onto a gravel road that ran around the pastured hillsides fenced with barbwire. It was exciting to see cows black-and-white and red-and-white and sometimes tall rangy horses with tails whipping in the breeze and once even a spotted pony. Jaz was absorbed and looked as if several cloaks of gray shadow had slid from his body.

And now they came to a grassy lane with two clay tracks that ran beside a long pasture with sagging wire and slanted, lichenous posts. Daddy rolled down his window and the smells that poured in caused the senses to lighten—clean dust, sun-drenched grass, bitter weeds. The lane led into the front yard of a tall house, all gray and patchy and with some of the blue tar shingles missing from the porch roof. A man sat in a weathered rocking chair and rose and came down the porch steps to greet the car.

Daddy got out and shook hands with him and told the children to come out and meet Mr. Perkins. He was a slight fellow with silver hair and a friendly smile—not nasty and knowing—and he shook hands with the children too, though he had gently to withdraw Jasper’s hand from the pocket of the boy’s jeans to do so. Daddy told him their names and he repeated them before responding to Daddy’s questions about the land surveyors who were here last week and would return next week. Today was Sunday, the only day Daddy could come, so he had no chance to talk to them, but Mr. Perkins reported carefully everything they had said and what he had asked and all that and after a minute or two Daddy pointed to the big once-red barn over there and told the children they could play there if they liked but not to get too dirty or Barb would have a fit. Mr. Perkins said, “And don’t you younguns be climbing up to the loft. They’s some rotted flooring up there and you might fall through and bump your butt.”

Jasper erupted into gales at that and Claudia remembered that it had been a long time, really long, since she had heard him laugh.

So they ran to the barn and, unable to tug open the heavy door, went to the small one at the side and stepped through into a big hollow space slatted with sunray and shadow. Here were more dust-smells and other smells too, of musty hay and moldy harness leather and others they could not name. They wandered through three stalls, marveling at the nibbled trough-edges. In the big open space in the center, they found pieces of iron once useful but now only rusty puzzles. Two pieces were handy for throwing so Jaz hurled them and made the walls boom and shower motes. Claudia spotted a gleaming and knelt and uncovered a yellow bracelet with some broken links. She swung it in the air before her eyes, peering closely. Might it have belonged to Grammer when she was a little girl? She would have played here; no little girl could resist, particularly if she were an only child. Grammer had longed for a sister, but none showed up and she had to amuse herself, lonely in the pasture and barn and in the grove above.

In a while the sun had shifted and the colors that shone between the boards on the west side distracted them. Different shades of orange there were, bright and dull and cloudy. Jasper pressed his face against the wall to peek through and Claudia joined him.

“Let’s go look,” she said.

He shook his head.

“Let’s go see. I am not afraid and you are not afraid either, Sturdy Helper.”

Yet she was not so brave as to meet the sight head-on. She led the way to the side of the barn. There they halted and she gathered her courage and peered around the corner, ready to draw back quickly. Then she said, “It’s all right, I think. It is only pumpkins. Let’s go look.”

Finally he came with her and they stood at the edge of the patch. Here and there stood spindly, withered cornstalks, some with drab leaves drooping. All around them were pumpkins, large and small, in among the shriveling vines. Scores of them: some as orange as the fruit orange, others reddish and pinkish and grayish and greenish all mixed with the brighter color. The shapes varied: some a little flattened like pincushions, some oval like grapes, tall gray globes with prominent ribs, and small, green, almost perfect globes, smooth as oilcloth. They had been looking for perhaps three minutes when Daddy came to tell them to choose the three best pumpkins for Halloween, the ones best suited for jack-o’-lanterns.

“No,” Jasper said.

“Don’t you want jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween?” Daddy asked. “Of course you do. That’s what Halloween is for.”

“He’s afraid,” Claudia said.

“Of pumpkins?”

“Yes. A little.”

“I never heard of such a thing, You are not afraid, are you?”

“No. Not much.”

“Why is Jaz afraid?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

“Let’s all go together and we’ll pick out one apiece.”

“He’ll be fine if you come too,” Claudia said. “Won’t you, Jaz?”

He nodded glumly. They shuffled among the pumpkins, Claudia and Jasper avoiding all that even remotely resembled Uncle Moon’s big round horrible face, but Daddy said they were rejecting those that were the absolute best for their purposes.

“We want the big round fat ones,” he said. “The kind with room to carve, the kind people can see on our porch from the road, not those little pointy ones you like.”

“You said we could pick.”

“But be sensible, Claudia. They have to be big enough for us to carve faces. You and Jaz will draw faces on paper and we will choose the best designs.”

Daddy cut three large specimens from the tough and drying vines with his pocket knife. Beside those three, Jasper’s choices looked puny and stunted, but Daddy said they should take all of them. They set the six in the trunk of the car, alongside the lug wrench and jack and the box of Grammer’s oddments that Barb had told Daddy to drop off at Good Will. He had assented but was in no hurry to complete the chore.

The light was going away, the lovely, dry October afternoon that had lit the trees like torches. Jaz did not look out the window as they rode homeward. He sat beside Claudia in the back, saying nothing even when Daddy questioned him about the farm and about his Halloween costume. He only stared at the seat back before him till they got to the main highway. Then he lay on his side and closed his eyes.

“I think our buddy tired himself out,” Daddy said.

Claudia kept silent. She knew that Jaz was in dread of the pumpkins in the trunk only a few feet away.

“We need to plan our Halloween,” Daddy said. “We want to have a real celebration and cheer ourselves up. Aren’t you looking forward? Raintree Hills is making a big deal of it, a Halloween festival.”

“I guess,” she said, though, like Jasper, she felt the strong presence of Uncle Moons in the trunk.

* * * *

“We will draw clown faces,” Claudia said, “and goofy faces and dumb faces like Freddie Warren’s and happy faces like on the buttons. We will not draw scary jack-o’- lantern faces that look like what everybody else does.”

Jasper nodded. He was already drawing with red, black, and yellow crayons on the torn grocery bags Barb had allowed them. His hand was unsteady, but Claudia could tell from his four designs that his were to be cheerful visages with easy smiles instead of jagged grins with snaggleteeth or fangs. They executed a dozen apiece and submitted them to Daddy.

He looked them over slowly. “Well, these are kind of...jolly. But they don’t look like Halloween to me. What do you think, Barb?”

He displayed them and she glanced up from her stitching under the brightest lamp in the living room and shrugged.

He studied them more closely. “They ought to be scarier, maybe. Why don’t you go ask Uncle Hobart to give you some tips? Barb says he’s an artist, a real artist, different from other people. Isn’t that true?”

She didn’t bother to look up. “He has pictures published in a book. That’s what artists do.”

Daddy chuckled. “Oh, that book...I wouldn’t boast about that book if it were mine.”

“But it’s not, is it? And never could be.” She knotted a thread and snapped it free of the tea towel she was embroidering with lavender daisies.

“You’re right. Never could be. That’s why if I were drawing pumpkin faces I would go and consult an expert artist like Hobe.”

Jasper stared at his sister in admiring wonder when she said, “We don’t like his faces. Jasper and me, we think they are mean, ugly faces.”

He chuckled again, more loudly. “But that’s Halloween. Ugly, mean faces are good for jack-o’-lanterns.”

“Not for ours. We like happy.”

“And just as well,” said Barb. “You don’t need to be bothering Uncle Hobart. He has been feeling ill lately.”

“How is that?” Daddy asked.

“He wasn’t clear. He said he was feeling sort of scattered. Or divided. No. He said scattered.”

Claudia thought of all the Uncle Moon heads in the pumpkin patch at the farm. Yes, he was scattered into dozens.

“Well, I haven’t seen him in a couple of days,” Daddy said. “I was wondering. Halloween is an important day for him, isn’t it? He wouldn’t want to miss that.”

“It’s his favorite holiday,” Barb said. “Except for the World Series. That’s where he’s been. Watching the games and calculating statistics and so forth. But he’ll be with us for Halloween and have a surprise like he always does.”

“I look forward to it. It will be an artistic surprise.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic,” Barb said. “Not all the time. Or is it just with Hobe? And me?”

“I’m willing to be surprised,” Daddy said. He smiled at his children.

* * * *

5

The carving did not go as planned. Claudia had carefully cut from the grocery-bag paper three faces—two that she had drawn and one of Jasper’s—and applied them to the pumpkins with duct tape. “These are to go by,” she explained. She slit through the paper at intervals to make the outlines. Barb had given her a dull small knife, which made the task awkward.

Daddy had prepared the pumpkins, opening the stem ends and reaching down with an ice-cream scoop and tearing out balls of seeds and stringy pulp and plopping the mess onto newspapers. Then Claudia had followed, as faithfully as the little knife permitted, the outlines she and Jasper had drawn. But the finished visages looked nothing like what they had designed.

“Now that’s more like it,” Daddy said. He had come to inspect, handing out tangerines from the pockets of his woolen jacket. He was going outside to rake leaves, but first he wanted to see. “These are real Halloween faces.”

Sadly, they were. They looked just like the moon face in The Moonlight Robbers with its lopsided grin and eyes filled with sneaky mischief. How did that happen, after all the planning? It seemed that the more Claudia planned things, the more they turned awry. She had tried to think why Grammer had gone to her better place after they had so valiantly defended her. Now it was the same thing again, all gone wrong.

She looked at these traitorous faces and went upstairs and got the book and brought it to show Jasper. “See,” she said, opening to the customary page. “It’s just the same.” Idly she turned back to the title page. “The Moonlight Robbers by Maurice Knight,” she read. “Ill-you-strations by H. B. Jackson.”

“Illyou—?”

“That means he drew the pictures, Mr. H. B. Jackson.”

“Did he draw that picture?”

“I guess.”

“Does he know Uncle Moon? If he drew his picture—”

“I don’t know,” Claudia said. Then: “Maybe he is Uncle Moon. H. B. might stand for his name. Ho Bart.”

“Uncle Moon is Swine.”

“Swain,” she said. “Hobart Swain. But he would use a different name for the book. A lot of writers use different names.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but it’s the way they do.”

“His mean face is everywhere. On our jack-o’-lanterns too. Tomorrow night is Halloween.”

“I will be dressed as the Princess of Thieves, like before. And you can dress as my Sturdy Helper. I will tell people who we are.”

“No, not Sturdy Helper,” Jasper said. “Not no more.”

“Of course you are. Why not?”

He stared sorrowfully into her eyes, then turned and walked out of the living room. As she heard him open the back door in the kitchen, she said, “Of course you are my Sturdy Helper.” Then the door closed sharply and he was out into the mysterious October dusk.

* * * *

6

In three nights it would be Halloween for real. The neighborhood lisped and fluttered with whispers and secret signals as the Horde spread the word that this was to be the best ever. Most of the members of the Horde were kids aged seventeen or younger, most of them much younger, but there were also young parents scattered among them to keep things from getting out of hand. They too were costumed and the pulchritudinous wives favored warrior queen outfits that showed their figures bountifully, unless the weather was inclement and they had to shroud themselves in unsexy overcoats. A Halloween Troll was chosen with whom to engage in fairly harmless but embarrassing foolery and the choice was kept covert until the occasion burst into a riot of fireworks and garage-band amplifiers and chanting and who-could-tell-what-all.

But on this unholy night before the Most Unholy Night, Claudia and Jasper had dressed as Princess and Helper and had stolen over to the maple tree by the garage of Grammer’s house. There Jaz shut his eyes tight and Claudia pulled his wizardly hat low on his brow and he visioned Uncle Moon, visioned him sitting in the house in front of the TV set, watching the final baseball game of the year, maybe the last one ever. He concentrated with all his might and visioned inside Uncle Moon and perceived—yes, just as Claudia had told him that he would—the Raptor Spirit, coming into Uncle the way it had come into Grammer, at first a glow pearly and pink, and then by little and little and little—Jasper held his breath—a great, bright light that signaled the advent of the Spirit, itself invisible, as it would take Uncle Moon away from Raintree Hills for good and all—but not tonight, no, three nights from now on Halloween Eve when he and Claudia would stand here again, just under the maple, and feel and know how it would be happening.

He whispered his visioning and Claudia took his hand to lend him courage.

“What else?” she asked. “What else?”

He tried to vision more.

“Will he go away to his better place like Grammer did?”

Sssshhh.

Before Jaz could speak they heard a fizzly expulsion of breath coming from nowhere, or so it seemed until a piece of orange plastic fluttered down at their feet. It had slipped from the maple branches above, sighing sorrowfully as it descended. Deflated, the balloon wrinkled Uncle Moon’s face into a silly lump, squashed together so that the grin and the eyes were one thing.

Jasper began to tremble violently and Claudia hugged him for a moment. “Yes,” she said aloud, “he has been listening to us from up in the tree. But the air leaked out and this one foozled away and is helpless on the ground.” She stepped on the scrap with the heel of her sneaker and ground down. “I don’t care if he did hear us talking. The Raptor Spirit is inside him now and you have visioned it. That means he is in a sorry pickle. We will come back on Halloween, the Most Unholy Night of all, and you cannot stop us, Uncle Moon, and that will be your undoing.”

* * * *

In the end, neither wore a costume. Barb painted their faces, making perfunctory swipes to indicate cat whiskers beneath Jasper’s nose and drawing red lipstick-stars on Claudia’s cheeks and forehead, but she would not let them carry the Guardian Spear to put someone’s eye out. They were ready to go, in their everyday clothes and toting a large grocery bag to gather Claudia’s treats and a smaller one for Jasper. The witches and warlocks, hags and haunts, demons and Draculas of Raintree Hills looked at them disdainfully. A tall Darth Vader asked Claudia why she was not in costume. She said that costumes were silly, but Jaz told him that Barb wouldn’t let them dress up.

“Who’s Barb?” asked the Empire warrior.

“She lives at our house now,” Jasper said.

“She is a witch of the worsest kind,” Claudia said. “She might be out tonight, riding her broomstick. And her brother is worster. Everybody has set out jack-o’-lanterns that look exactly like him. He is everywhere.”

This was true. It was not quite dark yet, but the squat stoops and modest bay windows and narrow porches of the houses sported rotund jacks, all smiling crookedly and leering with slant cat eyes. Some had triangular pupils like those of adders; some displayed a fang or two. The small ones looked as menacing as the larger ones—as if they were henchmen to the bigger, and more conniving than they.

Jasper did not like to go among them. He told Claudia he wondered if some of them had followed Daddy’s car from the pumpkin patch at the farm and he clung to her side. She kept close to the other kids, tolerating their teasing for the comfort of their company. She and Jasper had no interest in amassing candy corn and chocolate kisses; they wanted to accompany the part of the crowd that bloated as it went toward the eastern lanes, trampling across the asphalt past the Morton house, still dark except for the dim yellow upstairs window, past the house where old Miz Gratz lived and where none of the kids would knock, past the Sanfords’ house where the roses stood gray-black under the huge mottled moon that now had settled just above the roofs, almost touching. It seemed to have come suddenly from nowhere, this moon; it seemed to have bounced up from behind the horizon of house-rows, then stopped its motion, looming huger than any moon that had ever been seen before. Its aspect was patchy with shadows astronomers could name, all scattered or mingled, but Claudia and Jasper knew that these soon would coalesce to form the Uncle Moon expression, the one he had drawn in the book.

Now here they were with the crowd in the lane before Grammer’s house. There was a hurly-burly of witches and sorcerers, cowgirls and space pilots and bloody one-eyed pirates and princesses in white silk and one Mickey Mouse and others Claudia could not identify.

Above them all towered Uncle Moon, dressed as a raggedy scarecrow and wobbling back and forth on his unsteady legs in the farmer overalls. In his left hand he held a stick like a mop handle which impaled a jack-o’-lantern. The expression of the jack matched his own. “I see the moon, the moon sees you,” he sang. His voice was a dry crickle-crackle, a sound like a crookback dwarf jumping up and down on a bed of straw. “The moon sees everything you do.”

That sentence made them all go silent for a moment. Then one of the Wicked Witches of the West screeched: “Ho ho ho. Pay him no mind, my pretties. He is drunk, drunk, drunk—drunk as a funky skunk.”

A Batman offered his stern opinion: “Let him sing his stupid song. Up on stilts he won’t last long.” He was a plump kid and pointed a finger like a licorice stick at the scarecrow.

His taunt proved accurate. Uncle Moon began to teeter and to totter and to wobble and then over he went backward. His jack-o’-lantern bounced into the sky like a booted soccer ball, spinning till its candle twinkled like a saucy star. “Whoopsy-do!” he shouted. “Poor old Hobart is taking a fall. Don’t let me bust to pieces like Humpty-Dumpty. Hump was a friend of mine and look what happened.”

Heeding his plea, a quartet of pirates caught him in midair. “Oof,” they said. “This uncle is a heavy booger. Give us a hand, me hearties.”

Four Boy Wonders rushed to their aid. Eight revelers lifted Uncle Moon above their heads and bore him to an armchair set on the curb. It was a pitiable piece of furniture, its beige cushions all stained with wine and beer and probably pee. Claudia and Jasper recognized it as the TV-baseball seat Uncle Moon inhabited like he was a lumpy cushion himself. Barb had threatened to get rid of it, saying it was unsanitary, like so many of Grammer’s things. Maybe she had taken it to the curb for the garbage men to abduct. Or maybe Uncle Moon had toted it here to imbibe his alcohols under the Halloween stars. Maybe the Halloween Horde had brought it out to seat him in. What a mysterious night, this night.

Four of the strongest hoisted it to their shoulders and off they marched, Uncle Moon aloft and singing words Claudia could not hear as he was borne along the lane and then around the curve. The second-story window of the Morton house was dark now; whoever had kept the long vigil there had turned out the lamp to observe the spectacle from within their cozy darkness.

Jaz squeezed Claudia’s hand and she rewarded him with an approving gaze. “Yes, Sturdy Helper, it is as you said. The Raptor Spirit is getting bigger inside Uncle Moon. Soon he will be gone away.”

“Where?” Jasper asked.

“The Halloweeners will block the street off with trash cans; they will make a circle of them and put him in the middle in his TV chair. The police persons will come and put him away for being a hopeless case. I would not like to be in such a sorry pickle like that.”

“Where?”

“Not here but in the big traffic circle at the front where everybody can see. Look—they are carrying him away already.”

The crowd followed after Uncle Moon in his Boy Wonder-borne chair. He was singing something about the secrets he knew. The revelers were singing a different song, a temperance ditty about the evils of drink, and making a cheerful, loud job of it. Uncle Moon countered at the top of his range: “The moon, the moon has not yet set. I’ll get the better of you yet.” Then the crowd turned into Cherry Lane, headed toward the traffic circle, and their music trailed away.

Claudia and Jasper watched them out of sight, then turned to look at Grammer’s house. The eight front windows on the two stories exhibited big round jacks glowing and grimacing, but they did not look so menacing now. The grins were still crooked but not so mean-looking as before.

“Let’s go in and see,” Claudia said.

The front hall was full of jacks and balloons with the ugly faces. There must have been scores of them, all crowded together, and there were scattered jacks in the other rooms too. “Let us go see the baseball-TV room,” Claudia said and, sure enough, Uncle Moon’s usual chair was missing.

In its place was a high stool and on the stool was set the biggest pumpkin the children had ever seen. It was carved, but its expression was different. The eyes were small round holes; the nose was but a single narrow slit; and the mouth was a large mournful O. There was a drip-cloaked yellow candle inside, but its flame was out and the shell all around it was blackened.

“The Raptor Spirit has taken over,” Claudia said. “This is the last Halloween for Uncle Moon. It is just like you visioned.”

Jasper did not reply because he had visioned a different story, a tale in which Uncle Moon ascended to the moon over the rooftops and sat there at ease in a filthy crater to inspect the world below, every inch of it, and making Jaz and Claudia the particular targets of his unwavering attention. He had visioned his sister too and observed how the Raptor Spirit was making its way within her, a pearly soft glow at first, but nascent with the searing dark of full advent. He did not reply because he knew he must act alone to save her as they had labored to save Grammer. Last night he had prepared the Golden Net, folding once and thrice and then seven times, and now he was ready.