Marian felt the tears in her eyes as she looked straight down and saw one baby that crawled on its arms because where its legs should have been hung a twisted, stumpy tangle of cartilage and skin, a sad trophy from thalidomide days. Her heart broke at the sight of it; to have been born so horribly misshapen, to die so early, only to be called back like this.
The sight of the awakened dead was horrible enough; the thalidomide baby made it worse.
Who moves in the shadow?
But what terrified Marian the most, what caused the blood to coagulate in her veins and her throat to contract and her bowls to twist into one excruciating knot of sick, was the sight of what each of these dead carried—
Who rustles past unseen?
—their own heads, the ones they had been died with. Some had eyes, others only dark chasms, but all of their mouths were locked in death’s eternal rictus grin.
With the dark so deep...
And on every set of shoulders sat a new head, one with carved eyes, a three-cornered nose, and a crescent moon mouth, all glowing brightly inside.
...I dare not sleep...
She watched as every member of Jack Pumpkinhead’s lineage was greeted by those who had mourned at their graveside with calls of Mom or Darlin’ or Grampa, then with open arms and loving embraces in the light of the gigantic fire—
...all night this Hallowe’en!
—the organ stopped screaming.
Marian turned and saw Boots standing at the top of the stairs. Her eyes were wide and glazed, her hair hung around her face in clumps, caked with blood, and her hands were shaking uncontrollably.
“He told me he wouldn’t let Mama beat us anymore,” she said to her niece. “He told me that he’d make it better, that I wasn’t ugly because of my scar. That’s why Burt wouldn’t marry me, you know. He said he couldn’t look at my scar, it was too ugly.”
“Oh Boots....”
“Don’t worry about them folks down there. Jack’s gonna make everything fine again. All of ’em, see, all of ’em missed someone who was buried here. There ain’t a person in this town who don’t cry inside every day from some kinda loneliness. Even the spirits who live here, they cry, too. Loneliness follows you, hon, it follows you forever. But maybe that’s all over now. You should feel good, having all the family back like this. They all think the world of you. Shame on you for not letting them know their love meant something.”
“I’ll not have you speaking to her that way, Boots,” came the voice of Jack Pumpkinhead.
He was only a few feet away from Marian on the stairs. She had nowhere to go, except through the hole in the crumbled wall, and the drop was at least twenty feet. She bit her lower lip and cursed herself for getting trapped like this.
“I didn’t mean anything,” said Boots to Jack. “I only wanted her to know that—”
Jack raised a twig-finger as if to scold, then shook his head. “Don’t apologize for anything. We’ve all spent way too much time being sorry for one thing or another.”
Marian stared at him.
Something was wrong. He seemed...weaker now. The fire behind his eyes was growing dim.
I can’t deny him a drink when he needs one.
Her fear suddenly vanished as Jack came up and joined her on the landing.
“Come along with me,” he said, his voice soft and loving, no longer the horrid croak of before. He held out one of his twig-hands.
Deep within the human heart there lies a point at which there is no room for fear, no use for pity, and little consequence if old resentments are present or not; it is a place where failures are forgotten and past sins forgiven. Looking at the thing she now, at last, recognized, Marian felt something in her change. Grow stronger. “D-dad?” “Present and accounted for,” said Jack. “I hope you can forgive me for all this, honey. I just needed to see you one more time.”
She took her his hand. He led her down the stairs and through the pews, then across an aisle to a spot on the south side of the church where he pointed toward a small mosaic carved into the wall.
The Marvelous Land of Oz.
There was the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Tin Woodsman, along with Tip and the Gump and the Woggle-Bug and the Saw-Horse...and Jack Pumpkinhead, his arms spread wide like an old friend who was about to give you the biggest hug you could imagine.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“When I was overseas during the war,” said her father, “it seemed like every church my unit found had been destroyed by the fighting. I thought it was awful. Those places had been so beautiful once. One day we came into this town where the church hadn’t been blown to shit and I decided to go in and light a penny candle, say a prayer that all of us’d get home all right. There was a sniper hiding in the organ loft. I guess he’d completely lost his mind. He shot me twice in the leg and once in my shoulder, then blew his own head off. I laid in there for almost an hour before somebody from my unit found me. I almost died from all the blood I lost.
“I promised myself that if I made it home alive, I was gonna spend the rest of my life building churches. I know it was that church that kept me alive. It was telling me I had to go on living because my life had a purpose. So I decided I was gonna be a great architect who’d go around the world fixing beautiful churches. I’d maybe even design a couple of them myself. The most beautiful thing I ever built was a tree house for your brother when he was seven.” He doubled over in pain, then fell to the floor. Ignoring her own pain, Marian ran over to him and knelt by his side.
Marian cradled his head in her arms. “You’re back now. You can build them. You can do anything you want. This place is yours. And you’ve got all those...people who have come to help you.”
Jack’s body hitched. His light was almost gone.
“You need a drink,” said Marian, exposing her bandaged wrist and starting to tear at it with her teeth.
He gripped her hand, stopping her. “No. You listen to me. No matter what you think, I never blamed you for anything. You always made me happy. I really enjoyed seeing your commercials and shows on television. I’m sorry I never told what a good actress I think you are. I’ll bet you’ll be famous someday.” “I won’t let it end like this,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “C’mon, Marian—you’re an actress. You should know that when it’s time to get off stage, you go. And don’t milk your exit.” “Yeah,” she said, ripping the remaining dressing from her wounded wrist, “but I’ve been known to demand re-writes.”
She bit into the tender flesh of her wrist and tore away what little scabbing was there, then removed the stem from Jack’s head and gave him a drink.
A good, long one.
And then he told exactly, precisely what needed to be done.
8
Once you have reached this step in the process, the base-patches should reveal to you the overall pattern you need to follow in order to complete your quilt. How wide to make it and how many patches should be included is up to you. You’re on your way to having a patchwork quilt! Congratulations! Now, go back, and repeat steps 1-7 as needed.