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Her gaze got distant, and Bram could tell she was back in that time, seeing Zachary as he was. Bram wished he could be there. He wished that he could’ve known Zachary then.
“I would’ve been his friend,” Bram said.
She cupped his cheek. “I know you would have, dear.”
“He might leave now, anyway,” Bram said bitterly. “He has the chance for a promotion in Denver.”
Mrs. Lundy narrowed her eyes. “Well, I guess you better go with him, then. Or give him a damn good reason to stay.”
* * *
When Bram got home from Mrs. Lundy’s, Zachary was standing on his porch.
“Oh, hey, there you are. Hi.”
“Hi,” Bram said. “I was just talking to Mrs. Lundy about you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup. She thinks you are a passionate person who values honesty.”
“Oh. Well. That’s true. Hi, Hemlock.”
Hem yipped, but had learned that Zachary did not appreciate being licked in greeting.
“I was just going to come find you,” Bram said. “I have a proposal.”
Zachary raised his eyebrows. “This is so sudden, but yes. I’d like a spring wedding.”
Bram laughed. “Liar. You’d want a horror movie wedding.”
“You can’t have a horror movie wedding in the spring?”
Bram grinned. “You’re right. Anyway, you wanna hear this or not?”
“Hear it.”
They sat on the stoop in a patch of sun, warm despite the chill in the air.
“Okay, so. I think we should collaborate.”
“On what?”
“On our Halloween decorations.”
At the horrified look on Zachary’s face, Bram clarified his thoughts.
“Wait, wait. I know you have the whole ghost ship concept that you’ve been working on for, like, seventy months, and I don’t mean you need to change your whole plan. But I could help you execute it! And you could help me theme mine to be in conversation with yours. It would be so cool! And we could have way more impact with two yards than one.”
Zachary seemed to contemplate this.
“It’s true that our impact would be exponentially greater,” he allowed.
Bram grinned. “Plus, it’ll be fun.” He bumped Zachary’s shoulder with his own.
“Well, it’s fun doing it on my own.”
“Fun-er, then,” Bram said, and kissed him before he could say that funner wasn’t a word.
“Hmm,” Zachary said. Bram kissed him again. “We can try,” Zachary said. “But I would need your clear consent that I am in charge of this vision.”
“I totally understand that you are in charge, oh visionary one.”
Zachary narrowed his eyes but nodded, and Bram knew he’d been taken at his word.
“Yay! This is going to be so awesome,” Bram declared to all of Casper Road.
Chapter Twenty
Zachary
The truth? It was more fun to work on the decorations with Bram than it was to do it by himself.
Once Bram had proven that he was indeed willing to honor Zachary’s vision and planning, they had a blast fine-tuning some of the modes of execution of Zachary’s decorations and building Bram’s skills and yard into them. They even planned a concept for the street between their houses to be implemented on the day of, when the road would be closed to all but foot traffic.
Zachary’s concept was of a sunken ghost ship crewed by skeletal creatures that did not resemble humans. His house would be the ship, and the creatures would be constructed out of a combination of human and animal bones (fake, of course, because he hadn’t been able to source real ones). He’d been sketching the creatures for months. When in situ, they’d be lit eerily by his secret weapon—the bioluminescent algae that Wes used as the basis for his research—so that they seemed to glow with a dappled, deep-sea light. It was times like these when it paid to have a best friend who was an inventor.
The tree in Zachary’s yard would become the main mast of the broken ship, with one of the creatures lashed to it, Odyssean and screaming. Other creatures would be laid throughout the lawn, clawing their way hither and yon, as if the ground were the ocean.
He’d been given strict instructions the first year, after several children were so terrified of his concept (a hospital in which a doctor had gone murderous and begun dismembering her patients) that they refused to even walk past it—or to go to the doctor, according to several neighbors. Now he was careful to make the concept far removed from everyday life, and the figures indistinct enough that children weren’t too terrified.
When he told Bram about that injunction, Bram had breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Phew. I don’t want to be too scared to approach your house.”
And he’d raised his eyebrow just a little in a way that had made Zachary remember all the things they did behind closed doors. They’d exchanged heated glances over the next hour before they clasped hands and retreated behind those closed doors to do some of what they were thinking about.
They emerged, flushed and satisfied, and Bram had the idea that his chainsaw carving of the dragon could, with a little editing, become a sea monster. That led them to imagine all the ways Bram’s decorations could also be made to look like they were underwater. A number of blue tarps borrowed from Charlie Matheson’s woodshed made quite a compelling ocean, when anchored in waves to the ground.
