A String of Lights

They were ready.

Danny wiped his palms and smiled at the Jack-O-lanterns threaded through the trees. They glowed with incandescent glee, spectral shapes casting grim and beautiful shadows over the grass. He checked the time and ran into the shower. Then he dressed, slid the pumpkin pie into the oven, and readied the hot chocolate.

Headlights illuminated the driveway.

Danny sprinted for the door to greet Rebecca. She stood smiling and beautiful in her dress, her long socks printed with jack-o-lanterns, and a pin in the shape of a witch shimmering silver in her hair.

They kissed. Then he covered her eyes and guided her to the backyard. She gasped, the glowing jack-o-lanterns painting the world in the colors of her dreams. A year into their relationship, and they only became closer. Danny had smiled and not said a word when she had told him how much she had loved Halloween. He had said nothing, but he had remembered.

They ate and drank in the back yard, and then retired to bed. After, they lay naked in each other’s arms and listened to the wind sing against the window.

Danny awoke the next morning. Rebecca didn’t.

The stroke had taken her, and soon he found himself standing over her grave.

Days, weeks, months, the passing of time streaked into muted colors. Danny limped through life, and in between he was nothing save for a wound that ever throbbed with her name.

The jack-o-lanterns withered and rotted.

Summer’s end came with early twilights, and soon October.

One morning Danny could smell her. He awoke to the cadence of her scent, warmth and spice.

The sigh of passing leaves over his lawn carried her voice, whispering his name.

In the shower he felt her hand rub his back the way she used to, and as Halloween neared, he tasted her lips as he drifted to sleep.

He had never wept for her. To do so would be to let go.

Halloween came in the screams of excited children, in marathons of ghouls and specters on televisions, and the rhythmic bass tones of house parties.

Danny sat alone in his living room, clenching a knife in his hand, considering that irrevocable act that would solve nothing and save no one.

A warm glow bloomed over his backyard.

He stood, the knife tumbling, and stepped outside.

He found the Jack-o-lanterns as he had placed them a year before, shining and shimmering, their faces glowing like angels masquerading as devils.

Danny gaped.

He saw her beyond in the shadows, in her dress and those socks, gazing at him with eyes that spoke of love and sadness, of the need to accept what was lost so to gain what was to come.

She stepped back into the darkness and was gone.

He went to follow, then saw something shining in the grass. There her witches’ pin lay, silver and bright. Danny fell to his knees and wept. And the Jack-o-lanterns shined down upon him.