Bags in hand, Hollis lumbers out of C-Town supermarket into the section of the parking lot in the shade of tall trees and a fence. In the farthest spot, in an effort to be clandestine (but really only boxed in by two SUVs) is his silver Accord. His light navy business attire does nothing for the chilly breeze, and his grey aviators wildly reflect the mild autumn sun.
Kicking open the tailgate, the semi-transparent form of a horse’s rump takes up most of his trunk space. “Move over,” Hollis says and tries to angle the placement of his bags away from the folded legs. After a few seconds, he gives up and drops the boxes of frozen Salisbury steak and bricks of instant coffee, earning an indignant snort from inside the cabin.
Hollis sinks back in the driver’s seat. Next to him, the ghost has both gloved hands hovering beside the dial for the radio, apparently trying to turn the wheel the size of a quarter. It does move, barely enough to change the murmuring radio station into static.
“No cucurbita pepo,” Hollis says, and restraining himself from gritting his teeth, “or even c. moschata.” The ghost makes a roof shape with its hands.
“No I don’t think that Field Market really had any in the back. That guy was gone for twenty minutes.” The ghost throws its hands up and makes a roof again. “Your idea wasn’t L.U.R.K.ing. We talked about this. We workshopped about this.” It points to the fence before them.
“The neighborhood,” Hollis replies with an unsaid question. “We don’t have time to graze your horse-thing on immaculate lawns.”
He taps the piece of notebook paper taped over the driver’s side sun visor. “L.U.R.K: Leadership, Utilizable, Reuseful, Kool. It’s all in the chapter of ‘Lurking Into Success’ I showed you. Did you watch the video?” He pauses, “Can you read?” The ghost does not respond.
Hollis lunges out of the way when the creature tries to nip at his wrinkled green tie. The ghost phases into the dashboard and out onto the pavement. “Hey, wait,” Hollis calls, “don’t get out you’ll be seen,” he stage whispers furiously, getting out of the car.
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Sawyer relaxes in a black SUV with tinted windows, reading a pamphlet. Emblazoned on the cover is “Sleepy Hollow Historical Society: Colonial biking trails, new and updated with covered bridges.” They hear a car door slam and lookup. A man in a rumpled suit, turned away with a hand to one ear, paces between the fence abutting the lot and the parked vehicles, including the one in which they were waiting.
“Look, I’m not going to buy it for you if you’re not gonna use it.”
Everyone’s getting all hopped up from the holidays arriving soon, Sawyer thinks with a rueful smile.
“I don’t know if an acorn squash would look proportional to your shoulders. It’s your head, you’re gonna have to live--er, exist with it.”
Sawyer remembers the conversation at the Homeowners Association meeting two weeks ago, mostly about an uptick in Halloween tourists this year. Some people really get into their costumes.
The suit turns to pace in the other direction, and he has no phone to his ear, instead running a hand through the greasy hair.
“We’ll cover a twenty mile radius of stores instead. Hey,” the man says, glaring at the air beyond him, “where—? Fine, fine, walk away. I’ll be busy with building solutions alone, then.” He gets in the car, bats something invisible away from the armrest, flinches and shies away like something had bitten him, then quickly backs up and drives away, hopping a curb. The lime green “ACS Will Coalesce 2013 Conference” bumper sticker did not go unnoticed.
Sawyer sits back and watches a squirrel loot a bird-feeder in one of the fenced-in yards abutting the lot. Behind that, grey and brown roofs piled like cards stretched into the horizon.
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The ghost thought it heard chickens chattering when it initially decided to set out, but that had been rodents raiding a hanging box of unattended seeds. Sometimes the spirit passes through a hedge, other times a fence. Each house has its own rectangle of land behind it, the ghost soon found, by striding from patch to patch, around jutting rocks and trees the denizens apparently did not think to clear, despite the size of their estates. The ghost steps over a small, sputtering creek that only ran within one yard, and it contemplates the likelihood of a horse-blight, or a plow shortage, or an embargo on French gardeners, trained roses, and gravel.
It seems some decided to dig huge, still ponds and short grass instead of vegetable rows, and the sheds had no pigs. The ghost stops to stare into one such pond from afar, its sparkling blue almost painful in the afternoon sun. It moves on towards the back fence and continues into another yard.
Soon the ghost realizes it was too late in its investigation of this neighborhood. There must have been a town wide rubbish burning day not too long ago. It sees no piles of rotten refuse, but every space has a huge firepit of stone or metal covered in ashes and grease. Passing through a dark fence, the ghost is confronted with a large swath of stone flooring, with wooden benches and cots strewn around a brick oven, all standing in the open air. The ghost skirts the grass along the back fence of that yard, double time into the next one, not looking to encounter any other ghosts in what are obviously the remnants of a house fire. Some moments it could hear a faint jingling of its spurs, even though they spun and jostled with every step. The surroundings would seem totally silent, almost causing the spirit to halt before turning into another fence or hedge at random. It was not Sunday, but possibly a Fair Day. Either way, the houses are empty, the perfect time to find a head from the ground to carve, or a head to steal off some shoulders.
The spirit passes through a short hedge into some bushes, and into the gargle of a tall fountain on another lawn. On the other side of the garden, to the ghost’s chagrin, is an unfamiliar forest-lined in orange leaves and quiet oak trees. It considers the house before it. Tall windows peer out, covered in curtains, with no movement on the inside. Tracing the stone path around the garden, all the surrounding beds were leafy shrubs or dead and dormant flowers.
It stops on the stone slab path before the three tiered fountain. Rushing towards the hedge, it examines the yard it had passed through, before the garden, and found it couldn’t recall which way it had entered before that. The spirit spins back around, now noticing the shadows that had grown taller, and how the sun now sits closer to the roof of the house. The spirit has an appointment to keep. A light breeze wafts from over the treeline. It crunches against the brittle plastic of the solo cup, folded and secreted away in the ghost’s coat. A distant growl, from an engine, the spirit realizes, ricocheting from somewhere beyond the houses, which the ghost follows out the front gate.
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Hollis drives onto a quiet street, the map on his phone indicating the most efficient route to the nearest farmer’s market with the most turns and switchbacks to lose a tail. Behind Hollis’s shoulder the horse snorted, swinging its head. Hollis sees movement to his right emerging from a motionless garden gate. He stops the car and rolls down the passenger side window when he loses sight of the figure. The ghost’s torso suddenly appears out of the roof above him instead, lunging down towards the driver’s seat, stopping just before the headrest in anticipation.
Hollis leans on the driver’s wheel and pulls down his sunglasses, “Welcome back, quitter.”
His phone chimes a sharp reminder to get back on the route. “We’re going to a farmer’s market.” The ghost’s shoulders slumped a bit and Hollis laughed. “I have a good feeling about this next one,” he says and moves to restart his phone again when he glances at the houses ahead of them.
Behind an immaculate set of concrete steps, before some white colonnades around a doorstep and almost hidden by two planters of extremely square topiaries, is the unmistakable domed orange of a pumpkin. Hollis slams on the brakes, sending the horse into the front seats and back again with a sharp screech, and its undead rider torso first into the dashboard. Hollis shudders when the horse’s scraggly, clammy mane flew in his face.
“I’ve been L.U.R.K.ing, and look at that,” he says and points to the coveted vegetable, “Problem solved.” He turns to his passengers.
“Well, go. Take it.” The ghost stares at Hollis, and reaches down to plunge its translucent hand straight through the volume button on the dashboard it had been previously attempting to turn, then crosses its arms over its chest. Hollis groans and tightens his tie, pulling it askew. “It’s always a crisis with you.” He considers the twenty feet of road and traces a path across the fifty feet of lawn that stretch beyond that. “We’re not even near a highway.” He glances at the line of houses up and down the street. None of the doors or windows within sight stir. The sky is cloudless.
“What if I turn around, and you scare me in the next ten seconds?” he says. The horse shifts in the backseat, tipping the car a little to one side.
“Now look we actually have to be deliberate about this, not throw away the flat tire with our tall boots, as grandfather used to say.” He takes a fortifying breath. “Don’t draw attention to the car.” Hollis sweeps his tie to the side and takes off his blue suit jacket, throwing it to the backseat. He squares his shoulders and reaches for the door handle. “Wait,” he says, “cameras.” He turns in his seat and reaches back for the coat, pulling it back off the ground by a sleeve. “I’ll have my ACS Junior Associate’s card revoked.” He shrugs the crinkled coat back on and pops the collar and lapels. His chin is effectively hidden. “Maybe they’ll think I’m a AEIL rep,” he says and tries to chuckle. “Keep the car running.”
Hollis launches himself out of his seat, leaving the door hanging open. He sprints down the sidewalk and skips on the balls of his dull dress shoes up the lawn to the stoop. The pumpkin sits next to the coils of a garden hose and a stack of packages. Hollis gently lifts the gourd from the porch. The pumpkin’s lid is perched neatly. Its eyes are the traditional triangles with black sharpie outlining the sides and angles a knife has missed. The mouth is twisted up and down between a sneer and a gulp.
A dog starts barking shrilly from somewhere inside the house and Hollis stumbles backward off the small stoop. “Start the car,” Hollis cries. He stomps onto a flower bed beneath a window and trails bits of purple asters halfway across the lawn.
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