Only by Moonlight

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

            The week before Halloween flew by in a flurry of study and work. As soon as I walked in the door after classes each day, I was greeted by a harried pixie with an extensive to-do list that kept me working so late every evening that keeping up with my classes was definitely a challenge. Alice wanted the house scrubbed from basement to attic, and, as resident housecleaner, the majority of this work fell to me. Rose and Alice pitched in when they could, but Rose had a group project due the Monday after Halloween, and Alice was still engrossed in last-minute party plans and her own classes. Jasper helped by bringing home take-out most evenings so that I didn’t have to cook dinner in addition to cleaning, and he and Emmett mowed the lawns and trimmed the hedges. I was definitely tired, but having everyone work together as a team gave me a warm feeling of truly belonging. Even though I was exhausted, it also felt wonderful to be needed.

            On Thursday I was home before two o’clock, just in time to be promptly dragged up to the attic to fetch box after box of Halloween decorations. I had been expecting one, perhaps two trips of carrying down boxes of decorations, but Alice apparently ranked Halloween right up there with Christmas, and six trips (six!!) were necessary for both of us to bring down the dozen large boxes, all filled to overflowing with every Halloween decoration known to humankind.

            Immediately Alice had corralled the guys into setting up the outside decorations, including a full-fledged graveyard on the north lawn and a murderous scarecrow and haystack scene on the south lawn. The center path to the front door (spattered with fake bloodstains, of course) separated the two gory scenes. Alice and I wound purple and orange twinkle lights all along the porch balustrades and columns, and at the far end of the porch, we hanged a dummy from a noose, his head flopping to the side at a horrifying angle. Ever the med student, Rose took special care in arranging a pair of skeletons into deceptively casual positions in the matching Adirondack chairs on the porch.

            Laughter rang out an hour later when we discovered that Emmett had slipped empty beer bottles into the skeletons’ hands—and after we begged and pleaded, Alice agreed to leave them that way.

            “And we’ll each carve a couple of jack o’ lanterns on Saturday morning to complete the porch,” she enthused (while the rest of us smothered sighs behind her back) as she scattered loose hay on the painted boards of the porch floor while I balanced precariously on a stool, hanging an assortment of rubber bats and spiders near the front door.

            The decorations inside were even more involved. In addition to helping Alice to wind more Halloween twinkle lights up the staircase railings and along the balustrade that overlooked the living area, we spread gossamer spider webs (anchored by a few too-realistic spiders) over the antique chandeliers and in dim corners. Electric candles inserted into a huge candelabrum blinked spookily on top of the piano, and decorations similar to those on the porch were strategically placed around the room. Alice had selected a cast-iron cauldron as the centerpiece for the dining room table along with more spider-webby candelabra; my last-minute job was to fill the cauldron with dry ice just before the party began to make it bubble over with a supposed witch’s brew—which also served the purpose of keeping the beer freezing cold.   

            Each night during the week, I fell into bed completely exhausted and not quite prepared for the next day’s classes. At least I slept like the proverbial dead, but I had to set my alarm early each morning so that I could cram in some studying before classes. By the time Friday arrived, I could have easily passed for a zombie with my pale face and purple-encircled eyes. Fortunately, Alice left me a jar of cotton pads soaked in witch hazel to help with my sleep-deprived eyes and promised me an afternoon of decadent pampering come Sunday after the party.