Chapter 33
Grant: Let it Snow
We catch up to Mrs. B. And Terri. I don’t meant to be anticlimactic or anything but we just arrive at the site. There’s no fanfare, no sudden shouts of “HOORAY OUR HEROES HAVE COME TO SAVE US!” There’s just a bunch of people who may or may not be people I know – it’s hard to tell at this point – roaming around like zombies. The kids are just walking around aimlessly, their eyes unfocused, making occasional grunting sounds. A few of the kids grab at each other and make some guttural sounds but it looks like the fight has gone out of them. What’s more disturbing is the adults. My neighbors. My friends. The people who pump my gas and cut my hair and make my breakfast. There’s a palpable anger in the air. They are cursing and ranting about things I can’t understand or maybe refuse to understand. There’s too many of them shouting and I can’t make out many individual words but there’s an awful lot of cursing in those shouts. There are bodies. Bodies of my neighbors, sprawled out on the ground, killed by a manifestation of evil that showed itself as screaming children.
The shadows are everywhere. They seem to be dancing, reveling even. Terri remarks that they seem darker and larger than any of the shadows she saw before.
“Well, let’s see if our plan works.”
Mrs. Beasley places Curtis’s boombox on the hot chocolate table. She pulls the Winter Festival cassette labeled 2007 out of her pocket and slips it into the opening. Closes it. Turns the volume to ten. Presses play.
“HO HO HO, Stu McLundy welcomes you to yet another glorious Greener Valley Winter Festival!”
Everything stops. The children stop roaming. The adults stop cursing. The shadows stop dancing.
“Let’s get this started in the new, old fashioned way,” his voice booms. The music starts up. Brenda Lee singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” I briefly wonder if this was a bad choice, if we should have used one of his regular radio shows instead and started out with one of those ridiculous ‘70s songs about muskrats making love.
Terri takes my hand. I hold my breath in and reach for Mrs. Beasley with my free hand. The three of stand there, a devilish version of Red Rover going on, daring the shadows to come for us.
Mechanic Stu walks to the very center of the festival site. The shadows seem to recognize him. They hiss to each other, secrets and plans we are not privy to. They talk in snake like whispers, plotting something I don’t want to know. Stu stands there, Dixie cup in hand. I have no idea what he plans on doing with that snow. I have no idea about anything anymore. We’re making this up as we go along and for a second or two, I try to channel Han Solo but there’s no mirror nearby and even if there were, I don’t know if I’d want to see the other side. Because this would-be hero probably looks like he’s about to piss his pants in fear.
“Be brave, damn you!” Mrs. Beasley reprimands me. Of course. She’s reading me as she’s holding my hand.
“I’m trying,” I say.
“The hell you are. You’re trying to be some space pirate hero.” I start to correct her terminology but think better of it. “Try being yourself. Try being Grant for once.” Thing is, I’m not sure who the fuck Grant is anymore. Or ever was. “Not the time for an existential crisis, Grant,” Mrs. B. says. I sigh. Because I don’t know what else to do.
The song ends and everyone is still in a staring contest with each other. Stu’s voice, which seems truly disembodied being that Stu himself is standing twenty feet in front of me not saying a word, once again blasts from the speakers.
“Now let’s get Mrs. Fetterling up to the stage!” This is the part where the Festival officially starts. Mrs. Fetterling would say a few words of welcome, her kids usually straggling behind her. She’d lift up her paper cup of hot chocolate and we’d all do the same, toasting to the Christmas season. Hokey, I know. But that’s what Greener Valley does best. Hokey.
Well, Mrs. Fetterling is standing off by the bleachers in a somewhat catatonic state. She had been screaming up a storm about something before Stu’s voice disrupted the little anger party. She doesn’t respond to the five year old instruction to get up on stage but it’s just as well because the tape has been spliced to cut out the spaces where the townspeople talk their Winter Festival talk. It’s just Stu and music. The next song Stu had cued up on this day in 2007 was “An oldie but goodie to get you kids dancing in the snow. You know how I love this one.” The first notes of Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Knock Three Times” hit the air.
You ever see one of those shows where’s there’s a dangerous animal on the loose and the park service guy gets a hold of it and jams a needle in its ass so the animal immediately calms down, then keels over? The people of Greener Valley are like that, but without the keeling over. They just go calm. Serene, even. The kids are coming out of their feral stupor, the grownups look less angry.
“It’s working! It’s working!” Terri is hopping up and down excitedly and we’re all still holding hands so we look like we’re doing a demented version of the wave at the Winter Festival.
And it is working. For now. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know how many songs we have to play. I don’t know what the shadows are going to do.
And then the shadows do what they are going to do. They do this Transformer thing where they join into one giant shadow swarm and they head for Stu. He sees it coming but doesn’t move. He just stands there, a big, fat mechanic frozen in fear. Or maybe it’s not fear. Maybe it’s courage. He’s holding the Dixie cup in his hand, looking to the shadow swarm, then looking at the cup. He knows what he’s doing. I trust him. And I know in that moment that I’m no hero. It’s Stu. He’s the hero here. I’m just a player. I’m quite ok with that.
The song is about over and I panic. We can’t waste time with Festival introductions or Christmas music. We need the music of Scratch and Skip.
“Mrs. B, do you still have the tape that was in the stereo when we found it?”
“It’s in the other slot.”
I look at the boombox. It’s one of the models that had a dual cassette for taping from tape to tape. I take a second to thank modern technology for all it has given us since cassette tapes. I’m obviously staring at the boombox like an idiot because Mrs. Beasley pushes in front of me and takes control. She deftly switches from Tape A to Tape B and holy Jesus thank you god, it’s the goddamn DeFranco Family and I have never been so happy to hear their trademark song.
When “Heartbeat” starts up the town comes to life. Everyone – kids, grownups, teens – they look wide-eyed and awake and not quite sure what is going on. But one thing they do know is that there’s this huge black shadow about to swallow up some guy in the middle of the Festival grounds. They don’t yet realize it’s Stu and I’m guessing that’s a good thing.
The shadow starts humming. It’s low at first, then becomes buzz like then louder until it’s almost drowning out the music. Fuck. Fuck.
“Fuck.” My sentiments, exactly, Terri. The swarm moves in. I feel panic in every nerve in my body, rising, threatening to make me puke. I don’t want to watch Stu McLundy get swallowed up by shadows. I don’t want to watch him die. Again. And it’s not just that I’ve grown kind of attached to the guy, it’s that I don’t know what will happen if the shadows eat Stu whole.
The song is almost over. Stu is almost a goner. The shadow swarm is now right over him and it looks to me like it’s forming itself into a shape. As the shape takes form I can see what’s becoming and my heart stops for a second. It’s a woman. A broad shouldered woman in a dress. The swarm has taken the form of Her. Or, she is the swarm. She is the shadows.
I feel Mrs. Beasley’s hand in mine, sweaty and shaking. I can feel myself about to vomit.
The shadow of Her is inching its way toward Stu. He catches my attention, beckons me over to him. Is he crazy? He thinks I’m going to put myself between him and that the shadow of the woman who wants to devour me?
Mrs. B squeezes my hand. Hard. “Grant. Go. This is no time to be a pussy.”
I guess this is my time to be a hero? I can’t imagine what Stu wants from me because it’s certainly not protection. I walk over, slowly, quietly, so as not to annoy Her shadow. Her words in the library keep repeating in my head” “I want it all, but I’ll settle for you.” Am I walking into her trap? Is this it for me? What the hell will she do with me once she has me? This whole thing is absurd. I’m walking in the middle of the town square on Winter Festival day toward Stu McLundy, who is being threatened by a woman shaped group of shadow monsters and I’m surrounded by the people of Greener Valley who all seem to be oblivious to anything that’s going on.
I make it over to Stu before the shadow does. He hands me the cup. “Take this,” he says. “Take it and make it work.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about or what he wants me to do. This is not a good time for the glib Stu McLundy to suddenly be out of words.
“What, Stu? What am I supposed to do?” I hold the cup of snow in my shaky hand. She is getting closer and I’m starting to panic.
“STU! Talk to me!”
“Figure it out, hotshot. This is your redemption, not mine.”
I’m all that’s left between the shadow and McLundy and I have a feeling She is about to swallow me whole. I do the only thing I can think to do at the moment. I throw the cup of snow at the Her. Or the shadows that make Her up.
It’s snowing. It’s snowing. Not just a few drops of snow from the cup, but a glorious, full out snow, the kind with big, fluffy flakes that make kids dream of a snow day. We’re blinded by the flakes and I can’t see what’s going on but I can hear voices, I can hear singing, I can hear people talking and I then I hear a soothing, baritone voice say “Stu McLundy, signing off of Scratch and Skip for the last time. Thank you, Greener Valley.”
The snow lightens up a bit and I look to where Stu and the shadow swarm were.
Were.
There’s nothing there now. No shadows. No Stu in a mechanic’s jumpsuit. The snow and the music have combined to bring the residents of Greener Valley to their senses and to ward off, for now, Her and her shadows. I hope that somewhere out there, Stu McLundy, folk hero of Greener Valley and probably many other towns in faraway lands, was finally getting to rest in peace.
Underneath the feeling of relief is a layer of anxiety. I have this feeling She is not done with me yet. She’s gone, for now. But not for always.
There would be a lot of explaining to do to the people of this town. Or not. Maybe it wasn’t up to us to explain.