The ancient hand-held radio spit out more static than music. Rich scents of alfalfa, loam and rotting leaves filled the autumn twilight, thick and heady. In the bed of the truck, hands on each others hips and a horse blanket itching beneath their bare shoulders, the couple exchanged whispers and soft laughter.
A vampiric orchestral theme broke through the static along with a ghoulish voice. "The barrier between this world and the next thins on All Hallow's Eve." Cheesy laughter - 'muah ha ha' - trailed off into pops and fizzles and the next tinny rock song that played accompanied the sound of lips meeting.
Soon: "Baby." He smiled up at her face - freckled with an upturned nose. She panted at him, her cheeks red from the chill in the air. "Baby. We have to be at the party soon."
"And we promised," she said, smoothing his rock-star-long hair out of his eyes and drawing her fingers through the stubble under his chin. "I'll find the shirts. We can put 'em on driving."
He caught her arm before she slipped out of the truck, planting a kiss on her wrist and earning a smile in return. By the time she had gathered their discarded clothing and costumes, he had started the car and was waiting to pull back onto the road.
"You have to put on the mask before we go anywhere," she said, climbing into the passenger seat, proffering a limp gray mask, and fishing in the glove-box for a bottle of fake blood. "It'll be more fun if we show up with everything on."
"Yeah, yeah." He slipped the mask on and leered at her, affecting the classic-Hollywood Dracula, "I vant to suck your blud!" She shrieked as he bit a string of kisses from her neck to her thumb. Her teasing struggles covered the meaty, ripping sound from outside the cab.
Laughing by the time he finished kissing her, she pulled on her own mask and arranged the bandages to flatter her dime-store Egyptian earrings. "We can put on your cape when we get there."
The bump when back tires found the road disguised the weight that climbed into the bed of the truck.
Their friends threw the party in an old barn miles from everywhere. Light spilled through the slats between the boards, a glow they saw before they topped the hill that hid the the abandoned farm from the surrounding residences. Next to the barn, a farmhouse crouched, dark and rotting.
The truck illuminated the farmhouse windows as they descended the hill, throwing the shadow of a giant teacup on the wall of the kitchen. As they watched, a brick fell from the chimney and punched a hole through the roof. She shivered, clutching at his arm. "Totally haunted. This place is perfect."
After they parked in a graveled drive half-full of cars, she hopped down out of the cab. Dust clung to every one of her bandages. She complained about the stains as she helped him tie his cape and affix the plastic ruby brooch at his throat.
"Just enjoy, Baby," he whispered into the bandages just above her earring and nudged her through the doors.
The barn easily fit the hundred who showed up to dance. Despite the sequined laughter of crowd, however, it still managed to be appropriately Halloween. Fake cobwebs mixed with the dingy, gray real, and huge bubbling cauldrons of dry ice made the gaps between her bandages feel chill and clammy. The hay had rotted in the loft and every so often a glob of matter splashed down onto the dancers below, dislodged by the bass.
A DJ stood in the corner and tended his turntables, running his thumbs along the mixing pads that helped him slow-fade from one song to another. A scuffle in the corner accompanied cries of 'dead rat, dead rat', but the event lost out to her and his desire to celebrate.
The two of them danced and kissed and danced some more. What little conversation took place kept itself outside the barn in the light-striped dirt at its sides.
Suggestions to investigate the house were laughed away. Even the bravest considered it one heavy breath away from collapse. Heat, music, and the electricity of skin on skin was far preferable to foolish horror-movie idiocy.
His cape and her mask-and-earrings were set aside soon after they arrived, lost underfoot or on a drink table or ground into the cracks between the concrete slabs that formed the floor. It became a game for him to catch her up and nibble a kiss into her neck before she'd have a turn to shamble after him until she cornered him with a knot of celebrants.
She laughed when he captured a wandering Elvis and planted a kiss right on his lips. She made them hold still so she could get a picture of it on her cellphone.
The shadow slipped from the bed of the truck and onto the ground, gaining shape and volume and height. It left no footprints and raised no dust.
A latecomer bidding a couple of his friends a good time as they stayed in the car walked straight through the shadow without recognizing its presence. Bits of it clung to his shoes as he entered and detached as he joined the dancing.
As the shadow coalesced in a corner, growing in size and gaining shape, the DJ announced a retro song and a cheer went up. With most party-goers singing at the top of their lungs, eyes closed and heads thrown back, the now-creature plucked the rat carcass from inside its limb and discarded it. It breathed, filling new lungs with air heavy with sweat and dust and heat.
It claimed a discarded bow-tie and and a bikini top and finished its transformation into an androgynous humanoid. It tied on both the bow-tie and the bikini-top and left its lower half bare, choosing instead to leave its shaggy legs and hooved feet uncovered.
The familiar song over, the dancers once more separated into group, cleaving to friends and letting the music carry their heartbeats.
The shadow caught a ghost. The ghost's eyes, all that could be seen through the scissored holes in the sheet, widened in surprise. The ghost saw it grinning in pleasure and invitation, a shadow without a face, filled in by expectation. Despite the click-click of the hooves and the pebbles-in-a-glove feel of the hands on its shoulders, the ghost nodded agreement and the two began to dance.
Old music began to play, older than waxed drum inscribed with a needle. It began low, and soft, and did not overpower the DJ. Instead, it followed the shadow and the ghost as they danced, steps delicate and intricate, the percussion of their heels and the harmony of their movement making the dance a full symphony. The shadow drew the ghost close, pressing into the sheet with the cold planes of its body. Once more, the empty face held a question.
The ghost nodded and whispered, "Bring them all," and party became revel.
The music could not hide the ripping, rending, and tearing noises. A confused, bated hush fell over the celebrants as, from the edges of perception, things crept inside the barn. Along the walls. Across the ceiling. From the cracks in the floors. Things came, mostly in humanoid forms, grotesque. Horned and hooved, clawed and fanged. They descended upon the guests.
Every creature claimed a partner. Elvis stared into the too-large eyes of the hellspawn that chose him, trying to avoid looking at the long forked tongue that flicked out and in as it breathed.
The mummy, freckled, sans earrings, clung to her vampire's hand as a succubus accosted him, drawing her tail between his legs and a clawed finger along the line of his jaw. His grip tightened on his girlfriend's hand, but the succubus tugged him away.
Left alone and un-partnered, the mummy turned to run. Before she took two steps, however, she fetched up against someone hard and cold. She looked down, very slightly down, and tried to back away when she recognized the figure.
The ghost - a true ghost - put out his hand to stop her. His spectral fingers held her wrist as she tugged to pull away, her breath coming in short gasps. "No. Go away."
"The barrier thins," the ghost told her. "Some of us step across."
The music began again. In the corner, the DJ appeared preoccupied with a pair of inquisitive imps. The small creatures, red-eyed and furry, pressed buttons they shouldn't. The songs switched at random, some playing the same vocal line over and over, some skipping tracks after a few brief moments. The dancers tried to keep up.
Some of the costumed partigoers accepted the spirit of the revel immediately, drunk or high or foolish or courageous. Others evaded their partners from beyond the veil and fled to their cars. A chorus of motors sounded from outside in the makeshift parking lot, drivers with keys, able to flee. The creatures froze those who did not run or accept the revel, placing them in solemn lines about the edges of the barn, able to watch but not move.
The mummy and the true ghost claimed a corner between a frozen greek god and his caryatid counterpart. Tears ran down the stilled woman's face. The mummy sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and stared at her hands.
"I never thought to see you again," she said, the sound of renewed laughter washing over the pair. The dancers now made more diverse sounds. Thudding and squeaking and snarling intermingled with the jingle of jewelry, the squeak of leather and rubber on concrete.
Each breath she took felt distant, belonging to another. Hand on her chest, her fingers tingled and numbed, and her heartbeat seem to stutter. "I'm glad I'm sitting."
"I never said goodbye." She covered her mouth and spoke the words into her hand. The sharp claws of a beast stepped inches away from her knee as it whirled its partner. Swing dancing.
The ghost rested a hand on her shoulder. "I knew."
Timid, she reached out a hand and brushed the hair over the exit wound on the back of his skull. She started to speak, but he stopped her with a small, quelling noise in the back of his throat. "Don't. This is goodbye."
She folded her arms across her chest. Eyes dry, she took a deep breath, "No coulda-woulda-shouldas, huh?"
He smiled, older-brother fond, and said, "We can dance."
They left the god and goddesses, immobile beyond quivering, and joined the press on the dance floor. Gyrating bodies filled the barn near to bursting, crowded with dancers taller and wider than their mortal counterparts.
The sister noticed now more ghosts among the dancers, preserved in death as they left the realm of the living. Men and women missed limbs and organs, danced without eyes and mouths and ears and hair, variously charred and flattened and embedded with glass. The ones without an obvious death scared her the most. More than monsters came through the barrier this night.
She danced with her brother, a slow wedding waltz, as the revel grew louder, rowdier, and more fierce. Some of the statues at the side melted into mobility and joined with creatures, claimed upon their first step. The chaos increased as the human participants forgot the world beyond the barn and set the ground to trembling.
Dawn arrived too soon. At the first glimmer of sunlight through the gaps in the walls, the partiers dropped their arms and blinked at each other in the barn's musty haze. The music, small and tinny in the morning light, faded as the DJ stirred. Sleepy, murmuring, the costumed awoke. No creatures. No statues. No sign of anything but an elation that carried through beginning hangovers.
They trickled out in ones and two to find their cars, spreading away from the barn, mussed, torn and exhausted. Somehow no one was surprised that the farmhouse had collapsed overnight.
The glaze-eyed vampire found his thoughtful mummy unwrapped and excavating her earrings from the packed gravel. He held her tight to his side for a moment as he stared at the rubble of the farmhouse.
"Baby, I think the party did that. Didn't hear it go. Did you?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No. I didn't hear anything. You okay? Did you take something last night?"
"Naw, didn't take anything. The whole thing just-" he cut himself off with half a hiccup and kissed her dirty cheek.
"Yeah," she said, "I know."
