The graves of Marian’s parents were located in front of a small abandoned church on the cemetery grounds. The long-forgotten architect who’d designed the church had, like Marian’s dad, been an admirer of Antonio Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona. She thought of Gaudi now because he’d been something of a hero to her father, a man who laid bricks, cut lumber, and balanced beams for a living. Her parents had married on Hallowe’en nearly forty years ago (hence that day being the Big Celebration Day in the Quinlan household), then honeymooned in Barcelona where her father was awestruck by Gaudi’s masterpiece: She could still recall the wonder in his face whenever he spoke of the experience, shaking his head in amazement that the plans for the cathedral’s construction were so vast, complex, and precise it would take hundreds of years to complete.
“I wish I had that kind of talent,” he’d said. “To be able to create something like that, something that you don’t just build, but something your soul goes into, something that will go on being created hundreds of years after you’re gone, so you’ll never be forgotten.”
“You know,” said Mom, “in that pamphlet they were giving out, it said that Gaudi was partly inspired by a quilt his mother had made when he was a child. I always wanted to get back to that quilt I was working on.”
Dad laughed. “Well, then; you got your dream project and I got mine.”
A soft rustling of leaves somewhere behind told Marian that yet another band of demons and wizards and ghoulies was making its way through, but she did not turn to look; her gaze was still fixed on the crumbling church before her. Dad had always been fascinated by the church’s obvious, though less extravagant, Gaudi influence, disregarding that the structure was merely the echo of another man’s genius; from the blue marble inlay to the ominous gargoyles to the reproduction of the Virgin Mary over the rotting and sealed oak doors, the building seemed to apologize for what it wasn’t rather than boast of its own virtues. Over the years sections of the front and side walls had collapsed, revealing parts of the interior. From where Marian stood she see exposed portions of both the belfry and the organ loft. Her dad once put in a bid to renovate this church, seeing it as his one and only chance to leave behind something to equal the glory of the Sagrada Familia— a wild and improbable dream, to be sure, but one that he’d nurtured for over half his life. It helped him to pass the long nights when his back pain kept him awake and the bills outweighed the bank balance— both conditions being part and parcel of an independent contractor’s chosen occupation. The city later decided that renovating the church wasn’t as important as building a new shopping mall and so dropped the project. Still, her father had kept the family gravesites near the structure; if he couldn’t rest near his greatest triumph, he would rest near the symbol of what might have been.
Marian stared at the decaying church and sighed. Even in death her parents had to settle for second best. Their tombstones were side by side, with a third spot reserved— at his own request— for Alan.
There was no space for Marian; they’d always known she’d be the one to break away completely, to build a new life far away from this sad and tired little town that liked to call itself a city.
She hoped that her dad knew how hard she’d tried (but not all that hard, said something in the back of her mind) to get here in time.
Tried and failed.
As the beggars’ retreating footsteps crunched through the dried leaves, Marian knelt down and placed one rose on each of her parents’ graves, whispering a prayer taught to her by her mother at a time when the Mass was still spoken in Latin, the language of worship Mom had always preferred:
“Intra tua vulnera aescode me,” she said, hoping she was remembering it correctly.
She heard the approaching footsteps but paid them no mind.
“Ne permittas me separari a te. Ab hoste maligno defende me. In hora mortis meae voca me; Et jub me venire ad te, Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem—” She saw a shadow slowly rise up behind her to stretch over the graves. Spindly, almost twig-like arms and hands; a slender, tubular trunk; and a large, rounded head with its stem jutting upward. She smiled and felt a tear slip from her eye.
For a moment, kneeling there under the entwined shadows, she was six years old again, listening as Mom read to her from L. Frank Baum’s The Marvelous Land of Oz, describing how Tip came to build Jack Pumpkinhead who would be his partner as they went in search of the Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow. Jack Pumpkinhead, with his round eyes, three-cornered nose, and mouth like a crescent moon, living under the watchful gaze of Mombi the Sorceress. Jack had been Marian’s imaginary friend through most of her childhood, always next to her during math tests at school, sitting by her bed at night after the Friday chiller movies to guard against the creatures she feared were waiting under the bed or crouching in the closet. Only she could see him then.
Just like now.
She was so pleased to have him with her again she almost couldn’t finish the prayer.
“In sa ... sa ...”
“In saecula saeculorum,” said Jack Pumpkinhead behind her. “Amen.” “Amen,” echoed Marian. Something brushed against her shoulder, then rested there. A soft whisper, full of October melancholy: “Let’s sing our special song.”
She reached up and, not turning to look, touched the twig-fingers of Jack’s hand. She knew his being here was just a bit of childhood whimsy she had never been able to discard (after all, a good actress was supposed to be able to recall feelings and experiences to enrich her performances), but, still, it amazed her how easily she was able to slip back into the Marian of childhood and find she still fit.
The shadow softly sang: “Ol’ Jack Pumpkinhead lived on a vine/Ol’ Jack Pumpkinhead thought it was fine...”
She thought there was something different about his voice, but not wanting to ruin this wonderful surprise by analyzing it to death, she answered in song, just as she always had: “First he was small and green, then big and yellow/Ol’ Jack Pumpkinhead is a very fine fellow.”
She rose to her feet and turned to embrace him, dearest Jack who’d come back one last time to protect her from the grief and guilt she couldn’t face.
His eyes glowed a sickly orange-red, casting diseased beams through the early evening mist. He was hunched and shuddering, a soul-sick animal.
“I thought you had forgotten about me,” he said, and it was then that Marian knew what was different about his voice; it was no longer the light, happy tenor that she’d given him, it was the sound of an empty house when the door was opened, an empty bed in the middle of the night, or an empty crib that never knew an occupant; dead leaves skittering dryly across a cold autumn sidewalk; the low, mournful whistling of the wind as it passed through the branches of bare trees; it was a sound so completely, totally, irrevocably alone that hearing it just in a whisper’s instant made her long for the warmth and safety of home and hearth: even if her company there was now superfluous, at least she wouldn’t be alone as that sound.