Page 13 of The Boo Next Door

She goes down my walk into the dark. The Gourd glows orange over the trees on the green, ten days lit, twenty-two to judging.

Inside, I stand in the kitchen a while. Then I do a thing I decide not to examine.

The box has been sitting in my garage since Friday — I told myself it was overstock. A hundred feet of twelve-gauge exterior cord, contractor grade, the yellow kind that doesn't apologize. A box of twenty ceramic fuses in the correct amperage, because I looked at her panel through the basement window the day of the estate walkthrough, which sounds worse than it was. A ground-fault adapter. Heat-shrink, because if she's splicing over there, and she's absolutely splicing over there, she should at least splice right.

No note. A note makes it a favor, and I've been told about my favors.

I walk it over at eleven, when her lights are out except the porch, and set it on the rail next to the orange cord she made me keep, and I'm back over the fence line in under a minute, clean, no witnesses.

Except one. The window lamp clicks off as I hit my steps, and in the last of it I see the silhouette in the frame, ears and judgment, watching me the way he watched me come down the maple.

"Don't tell her," I say to a cat, out loud, in my own yard, at eleven at night.

I stand on my porch and do not look at the maple, or the porch where the fog finally thinned, or the window where the lamp just went dark.

I stand on my porch and do not look at the maple, or the porch where the fog finally thinned, or the window where a black shape is sitting in the lamplight, watching my house like a border guard.

The committee wants peace. Bee wanted her looked after. And I want⁠—

I stop the thought at the fence line, where it belongs.

Chapter 5

Lila

There's a box on my porch rail, and I interrogate it for a full minute before I let it in the house.

No note. A hundred feet of contractor-yellow cord, heavy as a python. A box of fuses — my fuses, the right fuses, the exact amperage, which narrows the suspect pool to one, because only two living people have ever cared what amperage this porch runs, and I'm holding the box. A ground-fault adapter. Heat-shrink tubing, which is pointed, because it means he knows I've been splicing, which means he's been listening to my extension cords the way I've been listening to his winch.

"It's not a gift," I explain to Beetlejuice, who has come out to supervise the interrogation. "It's psychological warfare. He's establishing that he can see my weaknesses. It's like when the Godfather sends you fish."

Beetlejuice sniffs the cord once and walks away, which is his way of saying the fish is fine, Lila, use the fish.

I use the fish. The séance parlor runs all evening on clean, uninterrupted, correctly rated power, and the table lift cycles like a dream, and I hate how good it feels. Somewhere over the fence, a winch runs. Neither of us sets anything on fire. Détente.

It lasts three days, and then the government gets involved.

Town hall on a Friday afternoon smells like radiator heat and folding chairs, and the Founders' Fright Committee sits behind a table like a parole board that bakes.

I'm in the second row. Grady Ellis is four chairs down in the same row, because we arrived separately, at the same time, from the same street, like a divorced couple at a recital, and the seating math got witnessed by everyone in the room. Ruth. Behrens and the good clipboard. Marge, attending in a strictly popcorn capacity. Dottie presiding.

The wall behind the committee table has forty-one years of Founders' Fright photos on it, and I made the mistake of looking. Bee's in eleven of them. Bee with the bride. Bee with the pirate wreck and the fire marshal, mid-argument, both of them clearly enjoying it. Bee at seventy-nine, the last one, in a lawn chair with a blanket over her knees, directing something out of frame with two fingers, like a conductor who no longer needs the orchestra to watch.

I looked away from the wall before the meeting started. Mostly.

"Thank you both for coming," Dottie says, which is hilarious, because the summons Behrens hand-delivered used the word required twice.

"Happy to," I say.

Grady says nothing. He's in a canvas jacket, sitting the way big men sit on folding chairs, which is carefully, and I keep my eyes on the parole board where they belong.

"The committee has reviewed the warning issued Thursday," Dottie says. "And frankly, we've reviewed the two of you. And we find that a warning is a fence, and fences hold livestock, not weather." She folds her hands. "So we're trying something else. The elementary school's Haunted Walk is a week from Saturday. As you may have heard, Carol Finch had her hip done Tuesday, bless her, and the Walk currently consists of nine sheets of plywood in the gymnasium and a bin of cotton webs from the Clinton administration."

I see it coming the way you see a wave coming. There's a whole second where you could theoretically run.

"You're both professionals," Dottie continues. "One of you builds attractions for a living. The other one holds this town's record for engineering things children scream about. As of today, you are co-chairs of the Haunted Walk. Jointly. You'll build it together, staff it together, and stand next to each other at the cider table Saturday night while four hundred children have a wonderful time. Consider it," and here she smiles, with the full warmth of a woman who has already won, "community service."

"Dottie," Grady says.