The October Game (Shock Suspenstories #9, June/July 1953)

Mitch put the gun back into the bureau drawer.

MITCH: "No, not that way. Louise wouldn't suffer that way. She would be dead and it would be over and she wouldn't suffer. It's very important that this thing have, above all, duration. Duration through imagination. How can I prolong her suffering? How, first of all, can I bring it about? Well..."

The man standing before the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his cuff links together. He paused long enough to hear the children run by swiftly on the street below, outside his warm two-story house. Like so many gray mice, the children. Like so many leaves. By the sound of the children, you knew the calendar sat. By their screams, you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the year. October. The last day of October with white bone masks and cut pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle fat.

No. Things hadn't been right for some time. October didn't help any. If anything, it made things worse. He nodded slowly at his image in the mirror, adjusting his black bow-tie.

MITCH: "If...if this were spring, then there might be a chance. But tonight, all the world is burning down into ruin. There's no green of spring, none of the freshness, none of the promise."

Mitch had never liked October. Ever since he first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees, it had made him cry without a reason.

MITCH: "*sob*...*sob*"

And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with the spring. But it was different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring. He had been crying quietly all evening. It didn't show on his face. It was all somewhere hidden. But it wouldn't stop.

MARION: "Daddy?"

MITCH: "Marion?"

There was a soft running in the hall. It was Marion, his little one. All eight quiet years of her. Never a word. Just her luminous gray eyes and her wondering little mouth. Marion had been in and out all evening, trying on various masks, asking him which was most terrifying, most horrible. They had both finally decided.

MITCH: "The skeleton mask, dear. It'll scare the beans from people."

MARION: "Isn't it just awful, daddy? I like it, too!"

As he finished his bow-tie and put on his dark coat, Marion appeared in the door, all skeletonous in her disguise.

MARION: "How do I look, daddy?"

MITCH: "Fine!"

From under the mask, blonde hair showed. From the skull sockets, small blue eyes smiled. Mitch sighed. Marion and Louise, the two silent denouncers of his virility, his dark power.

MARION: "Coming down, daddy?"

MITCH: "In a moment."

What alchemy had there been in Louise that took the dark of a dark man and bleached and bleached the dark brown eyes and black hair and washed and bleached the ingrown baby all during the period before birth until the child was born, Marion, blonde, blue eyes, ruddy-cheeked?

LOUISE: "It's a girl, Mitch. A blonde, blue-eyed girl."

MITCH: "Oh..."

Sometimes he suspected that Louise had conceived the child as an idea, completely asexual, a conception of contemptuous mind and cell. As a firm rebuke to him, she had produced a child in her own image. Her eyes, that day in the hospital, were cold. They said...

LOUISE: "I have a blonde daughter, Mitch. Look!"

Louise had never wanted a child. She had been frightened of the idea of birth. He forced the child into her. It had been very easy for Louise to hate this husband who so wanted a son that he'd give his only wife over to a mortuary. When Mitch had put out a hand to touch, the mother had turned away to conspire with her new pink daughter-child, away from the dark forcing murderer.

LOUISE: "No! Don't touch her!"

MITCH: "Louise, I..."

And it had all been so beautifully ironic. His selfishness deserved it. The doctor had shaken his head and said...

DOCTOR: "Sorry, Mr. Wilder, your wife will never have another child. This was the last one."

MITCH: "And I wanted a boy!"

Now it was October again. There had been other Octobers. He had thought of the long winters, year after year, the endless months mortared into the house by an insane fall of snow, trapped with a woman and child, neither of whom loved him. During the eight years, there had been respites. In spring and summer, he got out, walked, went to ball games. There were desperate solutions to the desperate problem of a hated man. But in winter, the hikes and games and escapes fell away with the leaves. Life, like a tree, stood empty, the fruit picked, the sap run to earth. And now, the eight winter coming, he knew things were finally at an end. He simply could not wear this one through.

MARION: "Ooh, the bell! They're here!"

There was an acid walled off in him that had slowly eaten through tissue and tissue over the years. And now, tonight, it would reach the wild explosive in him and all would be over. Downstairs, there were shouts and hilarity. Marion, greeting the first arrivals. Louise, taking parents' coats. A rich syrupy smell of candy filled the bustling house. Louise had laid out apples in new skins of caramel. There were vast bowls of punch fresh-mixed, stringed apples in each doorway, scooped, vented pumpkins peering triangularly and a waiting tub of water in the center of the living room waiting with a sack of apples nearby for the bobbling to begin. Mitch walked toward the stairs. He hesitated.

MITCH: "Why don't I just pack a suitcase and leave? No, not without hurting Louise as much as she's hurt me. Divorce wouldn't hurt her at all. No, I must hurt her. Figure some way to take Marion away from her legally. Yes. That's it! That would hurt most of all. To take Marion away."

He descended the stairs. Louise didn't look up. The children shouted and waved as he came down.

MITCH: "Hello, down there!"

CHILDREN: "Hi, Mr. Wilder! Hi!"

By 10:00, the doorbell stopped ringing. The apples were bitten from stringed doors, the pink child faces were wiped dry from apple bobbling, napkins were smeared with caramel and punch and he, the husband, had taken over. He took the party right out of Louise's hands. He ran about, talking to the twenty children and the twelve parents, who were happy with the special spiked cider he fixed them. He supervised pin the tail on the donkey, spin the bottle, musical chairs and all the rest, midst fits of shouting laughter. Then, in the triangular-eyed pumpkin shine, all houses lights out, he cried...

MITCH: "Hush! Follow me!"

He tiptoed toward the cellar. The parents commented to each other, nodding at the clever husband, speaking to the lucky wife.

MOTHER: "How well he gets on with the children?"

LOUISE: "Yes."

MITCH: "The cellar! The tomb of the witch!"

The children crowed after the husband, squealing. He made a mock shiver.

MITCH: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!"

The parents chuckled. One by one, the children slid down a slide, which Mitch had fixed up from table sections, into the dark cellar. He hissed and shouted ghastly utterances after them. A wonderful wailing filled the dark pumpkin-lighted house. Everybody talked at once. Everybody, except Marion. She had gone through the party with a minimum of sound. It was all inside her, all of the excitement and joy.

CHILDREN: "Weeeee! Golly, it's dark!"

MITCH: "Hurry!"

Now, the parents. With laughing reluctance, they slid down the incline, uproarious, while Marion stood by, always wanting to see it all, to be the last. Louise went down without Mitch's help. Marion stood by the slide. Mitch picked her up.

MITCH: "Here we go."

They sat in a vast circle in the cellar. Warmth came from the distant bulk of the furnace. The chairs stood in a long line down each all, twenty squealing children, twelve rustling relatives, alternatively spaced. They had all groped to their chairs in the blackness, the entire program from here on was to be enacted in the dark, he as Mr. Interlocutor.

MITCH: "Now, quiet!"

There was a smell of damp cement and the sound of the wind out in the October stars. Everyone settled. The room was black black. Not a light, not a glint of an eye. There was a scraping of crockery, a metal rattle. The husband intoned...

MITCH: "The witch id dead!"

CHILDREN: "Tee-hee!"

MITCH: "The witch is dead! She has been killed and here is the knife she was killed with."

He handed over the knife. It was passed from hand to hand, down and around the circle, with chuckles and little odd cries and comments from the adults.

MITCH: "The witch is dead and this is her head!"

...whispered the husband and handed an item to the nearest person. Some little child cried happily in the dark.

BOY: "Oh, I know how this game is played. He gets some old chicken innards and he hands them around saying 'these are her innards!' and he makes clay head and passes it for her head and he passes a soup bone for her arm and he takes a marble and says, "this is her eye!' and some corn for her teeth and a sack of plumb pudding and gives that and says, 'this is her stomach!'. I know how this is played!"

PARENT: "Hush, you'll spoil everything!"

Mitch said...

MITCH: "The witch came to harm and this is her arm."

CHILDREN: "Tee-hee!"

The items were passed and passed, like hot potatoes, around the circle. Some children screams, wouldn't touch them. Some ran from their chairs to stand in the center of the cellar until the grisly items had passed. One boy scoffed..

BOY: "Aw, it's only chicken insides. Come back, Helen!"

Shot from hand to hand with small scream after scream, the items went down the line, down, down to be followed be another and another. The husband said...

MITCH: "The witch is cut apart and this is her heart!"

Six or seven items moving at once through the laughing, trembling dark. Louise spoke up.

LOUISE: "Marion, don't be afraid. It's only play."

Marion didn't speak. Louise asked...

LOUISE: "Marion? Are you afraid?"

MITCH: "She's alright. She's not afraid."

...said the husband. Marion didn't say anything. On and on the passing, the screams, the hilarity. The autumn wind sighed about the house. And he, the husband, stood in the dark cellar, intoning the words, handing out the items. Louise's voice came again from far across the cellar.

LOUISE: "Marion?"

Everybody was talking.

LOUISE: "Marion, answer me! Are you afraid?"

Everybody quieted. Marion didn't answer. The husband stood there at the head of the dark, cellar. Louise called...

LOUISE: "Marion, are you there?!"

No answer. The room was silent.

PARENTS: "Where's Marion? Maybe she's upstairs?"

LOUISE: "Marion!"

No answer. It was quiet. Louise cried out...

LOUISE: "MARION! MARION!"

PARENTS: "Turn on the lights!"

The items stopped passing. The children and adults sat with the witches' items in their hands. There was scraping of a chair, wildly, in the dark. Louise gasped...

LOUISE: "No. No, don't turn on the lights! Don't turn on the lights! Oh god, god, god! Don't turn them on! Please, please, don't turn on the lights! DON'T!"

Louise was shrieking now. The entire cellar froze with the scream. Nobody moved. Everybody sat suspended in the sudden frozen task of this October game. The wind blew outside banging the house. The smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with the smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried...

BOY: "I'll go upstairs and look!"

And he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house four times. Around the house calling...

BOY: "Marion? Marion? MARION?!"

And at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting, breathing cellar and saying to the darkness...

BOY: "I can't find her!"

Then some idiot turned on the lights.