Still, as with so many small towns where farmers have been the bedrock of the economy for generations – especially in Low Ferry, where most of the families had immigrated from Europe in the last two centuries – there were deeper currents below the surface. Christianity sat on the village like the snow and there was a great deal of brown, earthy tradition underneath. As their most recent immigrant I could see it clearly, but I don't know if those born and raised in Low Ferry even knew it was there.
Unlike Chicago, with its spook stories about poisoned candy and very real stories about kids getting hit by cars, there wasn't much to fear on Halloween in Low Ferry. Nobody was even in a car after dark on October thirty-first. The only reason that the church held a Halloween Party every year, really, was because we all needed somewhere to gather. It might as well be under the wide ceiling of the cavernous church basement, close to the cemetery. It gave the adults an excuse to dress up, at any rate.
I planned to dress up myself, that year, in my Dottore mask if nothing else. I didn't really have anything to go with it, but when you're wearing a handmade replica of a seventeenth-century costume prop there's only so much you really need.
As I stepped into the street I ran into Carmen and her boyfriend coming out of the cafe, and joined them for the short walk to the church. Clara, toddling along between them, was dressed up as a kind of elaborate combination of dinosaur and unicorn, some of it already smeared with chocolate.
"She did it herself," Carmen confided. "I asked what she wanted to be, and she said she wanted her dinosaur pajamas and her unicorn hat."
"It's not a bad look," I said, waving to Jacob as he passed. Others were streaming up the street, the families coming from trick-or-treating, the older kids from god-knows-where. The single adults in the village, like myself, exchanged sheepish what-are-we-doing-here looks as we went.
"Aren't you cold?" Carmen asked, pointing to my scarf, wrapped around the mask I carried instead of around my throat.
"It's not so bad out," I answered. "Bracing, that's what it is."
"You sound like Charles."
"May I live to be his age," I intoned, and Carmen laughed.
"Hello Paula!" she called, as the door to the hardware store opened and Paula emerged. She was certainly...shiny, in a heatproof silver welding-apron and a headdress made out of bolts and needle-nosed pliers. "What are you?"
"The spirit of industry," Paula replied. "You?"
"The parent of a unicorn-saur," Carmen said.
"Christopher?" Paula lifted an eyebrow at my clothes -- plain black denims and a black jacket. "Johnny Cash?"
"I haven't put mine on yet," I said.
"Fair enough. Be my date tonight?" she asked, offering me her arm.
"Never happier," I replied, and took it as we continued up the street.
The church was dark for the most part, but lights blazed around the back-entrance, down a narrow road that divided the church from the cemetery. Carmen chased after Clara, who was running on ahead, while I stopped to greet a few farmers and say hello to Bert, who owned the grocery store.
"Christopher!" Charles called from the doorway, where he was wrestling one of the coffee urns into submission. "Come inside, son! Aren't you cold?"
"Not much," I answered, but I joined him inside and caught the top of the urn as it began to slide off. I carried it after him down the half-flight of stairs and into the basement. The warm lower-level, below the sanctuary, smelled like dust and stale tea, coffee, pastries, and chafing-dish fuel.
"Care to help me?" he asked, setting the urn down, and I nodded and trailed after him deep into the forbidden depths of the basement, through a couple of unmarked doors and into the kitchen's storeroom. He deposited a tray full of chipped mugs in my hands and picked up another urn.
"Don't know that I told you," he grunted, as he hauled the large cylinder along, "but we've got a new Sweeper this year for the festivities. New Fire Man, too."
"Oh?" I asked, elbowing a door open for him. "Well, don't spoil the surprise. Are you Straw Bear this year?"
"Of course," Charles said. "Here, put the mugs down."
I obediently set the mugs on the counter with my mask on top of them and helped him hold the urn while it filled with water from a high tap. When it was done we eased it back against his shoulder.
"So," he continued, as he carried it out into the larger room where the partygoers were, "you don't look like you're in costume, Christopher."
"Right here," I said, picking up my mask and unwinding the scarf. I turned away from him, pulled it over my face, tied the straps in the back, and turned around – eyes now framed by circles of copper wire, thin nose protruding, bushy eyebrows caught permanently mid-waggle. Charles laughed.
"Oh, that's wonderful," he said. "Did Lucas make it?"
"You know him?" I asked, surprised, and then felt stupid. Of course he knew him -- even those who hadn't met Lucas knew at least about the peculiar recluse at The Pines.
"Sure. He was up here just last week, asking me about the Straw Bear."
"Really," I said, intrigued. "He showed you his masks, I guess."
"A few. He said he had more." Charles was staring almost disconcertingly at my mask. "He's very...deft, I guess you could say. It looks like you."
"What?" I asked, studying my reflection in the big silver urn.
"Well, a little bit. Not the eyebrows, but the face, you know?"
"Huh." I hadn't noticed, but without the glasses perched on Dottore's nose I supposed the narrow, scholarly face would look like mine. "Is Lucas here?"
"Haven't seen him yet, but he'll probably show up. He's been invited, anyway."
Charles set up the water to heat and people began to crowd around us, picking at the trays of food on the table. The children were more concerned with the games that a couple of industrious youngsters were running, where you could win a few pieces of candy or a small toy. The adults wanted coffee to keep them awake.
I felt faintly superior to most of the others there – their masks, if they wore any, were cheap plastic things well below the level of craftsmanship Lucas had put into mine. I got a lot of compliments on it, and a few outright stares.
The children were in much more elaborate outfits than the adults, chasing each other through the room or huddling in groups to plot mischief. I looked around for Lucas but, not seeing him, went to busy myself hopping from group to group, picking up news and redistributing it. All of the players in that season's live-action soap opera – Michael, Nolan, Sandra, Cassie, Nolan's younger sister and one or two other minor characters – were drifting around the party as well, being watched by the village and watching each other warily.