The Doppelganger

Only to Norton it didn’t feel like halloween. For one thing, this was the hottest October on human record, the hottest one Norton had ever experienced, and the whole county had suffered under a week-long brown out, damage control in the event that one errant spark should spoil the entire Halloween enterprise, though of course who could tell if some teenager didn’t just drop a smoke in exactly the wrong place cutting through the hills to his girlfriend’s backyard. 

For another thing, Norton was thirty seven, and looked at least forty five. 

If nothing, Norton could with any hope look forward to all the little ghouls and goblins who’d come running up to the door at closing time, ravenous for anything soft and sweet and chalk full of empty calories. Norton was a donut shop man, and had worked at his godmother’s store, Happy Donut, since the summer before high school. Norton thanked his godmother for the job, grease burns and all. Because besides the fact that he was in that hot little furnace of a shop three out of all four quarters of his solitary life, and that mostly, the company he kept was the same three old half-crazy bums come just off the street, and in clock work shifts at that, and the company you wanted, you needed, never seemed to step your way, well- the donut shop was alright. 

Happy Donut was alright for Norton, because today, the one day of all days most holy and most awaited to Norton’s one-man religion, he could pass out stale donuts to miniature wonder women and space cowboys in rocket boots with chrome spurs and silver hats. Not just bums and cops. That would be if the morning could get on any faster. Just now Norton was in the back warming the ovens for the day’s work. Three on the dot, and in a couple of hours they would open, and not five minutes after that, the shop would be filled with vagabonds and office jockeys, lining up to get their day’s first taste of warm airy, doughy goodness. Norton stood in front of ovens, reading a beat up King book and on occasion feeling the oven window with the back of his hand, a nervous tick, an OCD response. The sooner the ovens were ready the sooner he could start with the cake molds. The fryers he checked simultaneously, though the irony was the ovens gave him the most trouble, being about as old as he was. He flipped a page and pressed his hand on the window in one fluid movement, jerked his hand back and hissed, looking at the singed hair on his knuckles. The ovens were definitely ready now. 

Norton put his book down and went to the break room. In there he took the coffee pot (His godmother didn’t like him using the store’s machines) and poured himself a pint of black muddy stuff in a recently bought mug shaped like a sheet ghost.

From the hallway he heard the sound of the front door’s buzzer. A couple of years back, Godmommy replaced the decades old bell ribbon with an electronic chime. It reminded Norton of gas stations and middle school every time he heard it, and this time in particular he even spilled half his mug of steaming coffee on his left shoe. He yelped, cursed, and went limping into the oven room and out into the front of the shop. 

A man stood just inside the door. It was still dark enough that Norton couldn’t quite see him. “Sorry, closed!” he called, louder than he needed to, “Meant to lock the door when I came in. Unless you want expired donuts I have nothing for you.” The man at the door didn’t move, didn’t say a word. All Norton could see, by the light of the oven room behind him, was that he was about Norton’s own height, wore dark clothing, and a black cap. 

“Can you step outside?” Norton leaned on the display cabinet. It never once crossed his mind, not in a million years, that anyone would rob a donut shop. Faintly now, it seemed to surface  in the waters of his thoughts. Joke on the guy if he tried. Steal what? A roll of dollar bills and a couple dimes? Norton even felt bad for him then, a little. But not very much. 

He moved to the counter. When he looked back The figure had moved further into the store. He seemed even as Norton looked at him to be getting closer, though his body didn’t move a hair so far as he could see. The man was nearly at the counter now. Had Norton Blinked? What was happening? He put his hands up, almost to stop the man. “Hey,” he said, but the man caught his wrist, and for the first time Norton saw the stranger’s face.

It was his own face, or a cheap parody of it. It was a mushy mess of gray, puffy fish flesh, but somehow it was his face Norton stared at, and his own hand which held him.

“Tonight,” said the waterlogged, clay gray lips, “this All Hallows Eve, will be the longest night of your life. My treat. See you then.” The face, shadowed orange and blue by the light of the oven room and the growing morning outside, grinned at Norton with an inward laugh of knowing only replicated in skulls and scarecrows. The kind of smile that asks you to get in on the joke, though Norton had no clue what the man meant. Before he could squirm out of the man’s clammy grip, he let go of Norton and pushed back from the counter, and (the word effortlessly came to Norton’s mind) lurched out of the front door, into the autumn morning. 

Norton stood there, feeling the ice of the man’s fingers still on his wrist. Then, after cleaning the coffee spill in the back, and airing the fat pink blister on the top of his foot, and getting himself a new cup, he took the cake molds out and got to piping in the batter he’d made last night. All the while trying not to think of its similarity in color to a certain face fresh in his memory. 

As the day wore on the event of that morning did not so much fade into the background as twist and become a viewfinder image. Norton went through the interactions of the day in a fugue, five eighths of him trapped behind the warped projector of his memory, passing over again and again that gray face, those frozen fingers, what the stranger said just before he left. Norton knew that if he tried to recount anything more he’d be lying to himself. In fact the more his mind wormed around the events the more vague and shadowy they became. And that face, that face even began to lash out before him at odd intervals, creep back from his own memory into the corner of his eye, and when he looked, he’d find nothing, or another customer waiting in line. By the time he could almost close for lunch, almost every face that stepped in the door held some resemblance of the face of that morning/ at exactly noonday, Norton ushered out the last of the straggling morning patronage, and, shivering in the balmy october daylight, locked the door, and went to the back room.

Norton went to the fridge and pulled out a paper sack and a coors bottle. He flipped the red cap off and sat down. The chair, one of four given to him by an old art school, spattered in paint and short in one leg, complained loudly, and he had to hold his hands out for balance. He dumped his lunch on the plastic table, balled up the bag and threw it at the trash can in the corner. Bologna and Cheddar on wonder bread, swimming in yellow mayo and saran wrapped. A bruised granny smith. A pack of shelled peanuts. A mottled banana. 

Norton looked down at the pile for a moment, then got up and went to the front of the store. He came back with a powdered jelly donut in hand. He sat back down and munched on that, and halfway through he pulled out a pack of reds, lit one, and laid back. Godmother didn’t like him smoking in the break room, but what could she do about it? Norton smoked, alternatingly taking bites of over-sweet strawberry filling and puffing on a cigarette that seemed at the moment to be burnin much too fast for his liking. He looked at the seam between the ceiling and the wall, and he chuckled. HE was tired. God-tired. How was he this exhausted just halfway through the day? His feet felt like raw stumps, that blister above his toes had popped in the middle of the morning, and he felt the old and new layers agitating one another. His breath came in guttering hiccups and there was an invisible cape of numb ache from his temples, behind his ears, down his neck and over his back. For the first time in a very long time, Norton felt the toll of his age. 

He knew what it was about. There was no mystery to it. He hadn’t had a single moment free of the one thought plaguing him since it had happened. That man. In the quiet of the back room Norton had space to interrogate his memory with more precision. He wished he could forget about it. But even looking down at his pile of ugly lunch, that ragged, thick gray face and those cold, clammy hands passed over his inner vision again and again. Serendipitous that he should have an untimely visitor on this day in particular. Norton was almost grateful for the disturbance. He hadn’t had a notable Halloween in over a decade, if that, and the kid that had never died in him wanted nothing more than to feel, truly feel with all his heart, that racing, running, young fear. The fear built upon itself ever higher until, reaching that dreaded, fabled toppling point, it came crashing down in a screaming torrent, and ended in a pure breathless joy, laughter inimitable. But Norton did not feel that now, knew he couldn’t. And the thing that troubled him most, between the truth of this and the black figure in the recesses of his close recall, was the flicker in the eyes of the stranger. His eyes. And a knowing smile he could only have ever seen in a mirror. 

Norton stood up again. Robotically he walked from the table to the door and stood in front of it, not quite realizing what he was doing till he had his hand on the handle. He breathed deep and let his hand fall off of it. He needed air. The stub of his cigarette still burned in his meaty hand. He walked to the steel sink by the fridge and crushed it, poured water on the ash, and threw the butt away. He turned on the plug in the corner opposite the trash can and then he stepped out into the little hall leading to the oven room. He came to the front of the store, and his breath hitched in his chest and he choked. The man had returned, he stood just inside the door again. “Hey!” Norton shouted, just barely getting the word out. He moved for the swing door between the counter and the shop floor, and the man moved with him. He stopped. He moved again. The man moved too. Norton blew out a laughing sigh and leaned on the counter. Just his reflection in the storefront glass. Whoever that guy had been last night, Norton seriously hoped he took a long walk off a short pier. 

He stepped out of the shop, locked up again, and checked the lights just to make sure they were off before he went walking around the corner. He didn’t even need his jacket, the day was that warm. He passed by a couple of sweaty bums he knew at the gas station, and promised them each a few leftover bags of donut holes. Past the gas station was a couple of complexes, and beyond that rows and rows of pastel one story houses built in the 70s. Norton kept walking, even with the fire in his foot from his baby skin blister. He had to walk. It was broad daylight and the sky was a perfect blue. The sky baked down on him with summer radiance, but in the windows, some of them shrouded, some of them shuttered, some open, all sported their own bright smiling faces, round red-orange heads with cavernous eyes and black smiles, waiting to burn with candle flames. 

Walking, Norton smiles to himself. On the lawn of one little flat roof cottage is a styrofoam grave, a handprint upon it the color of candy apple syrup. Littered around the grave, as a matter of course, are foam limbs, covered in the same fake blood, hands and feet and incongruously bleached skulls. Under the porch stands the wicked witch of the west, apple in hand, waiting to spring up and howl with laughter. Norton walks on, and finds various facsimiles of the same display scattering the narrow neighborhood road. 

But a block or more, and Norton could not for all his trying smile. Because someone is following him. He sees the man, at a distance behind him, and though he wants to turn, though he wants to cut in at an alleyway and weave his way back to Happy Donut, he can’t for the life of him fathom keeping this stranger out of his view. It’s 76 at one in the afternoon, balmy but not brutal, and yet just a few minutes walking and Norton has soaked through his striped polo. Even his khakis are wet at the knees, and while he thought a walk would help, now he can barely breath. Because the man in black walks behind him, just a block down the road. He’s just far enough that Norton can’t quite make him out, in the shade of the canopy of magnolias and cypress and maple. But he’s there alright, Norton can feel those eyes upon him, their fire. And he picks up his pace. 

The splendor of Halloween fun around him has turned sour. At each side of Norton sit uncanny evils, in stark shadow and broad daylight. Once or twice even, a sensor from some high tech scare gadget picks up the tread of Norton’s black vibram shoes, and jumps out at him from the cover of an expertly parked car, behind a bush, just under a mailbox, and each time Norton jumps. Only it’s not funny, only he can’t breathe. And now every time he turns around, that little black shadow at the far edge of the neighborhood seems just another house closer. Norton has to turn, but which is the way? He’s been walking too long now. He has to open back up or explain to his goddamned godmother why she’s short on half a day of profits. Not to mention he kept the ovens idling. But where is he? These houses all looked the same, and he’s long passed his usual turn. And he can’t turn back. Even now, he can hardly look without seizing up. His eyes sting, his jaws cramp. If he keeps gnashing his teeth this way he’ll chip a tooth. He looks back one more time, and the figure stands right behind him in the sunlight. And Norton loses it.

He yelps, breaks forward into a sprint, and falls flat on his face. He’s tripped over something. Someone is crying, bawling out loud. He picks himself up and turns around. No stranger in black, But a little boy in mummy ribbons lying on the tanbark beside the pavement, a plastic pumpkin with half its contents spilled on the hot asphalt. He helps the boy to his feet and the kid shrugs out of his hands. He goes running off, toward where Norton had just seen his pursuer trailing behind him, not even bothering to pick up his candy. Rubbing his street burned elbows, Norton Picks up a mini pack of Reese's pieces, crosses the street, and heads back the way he came. 

Norton got back to Happy Donut and went straight to the bathroom without even locking the shop door. In the bathroom he turned the rusty knobs of the sink and lay each arm under the lukewarm water for a minute. He then washed his hands with that cheap pink gas station soap they had and sat on the toilet, rubbing his eyes with his palms. Most of the sweat on him had evaporated on the walk back, but in the confines of the small bathroom, with no fan and one dinky frosted glass window in the topmost corner, Norton could smell himself. And he stank. 

He wiped the last lingering beads of sweat off his face, rolled up his pant legs and unbuttoned his polo. He leaned back on the toilet and closed his eyes. And before he could take his next breath, a soft staticky hum came from the front of the store, faint, quiet, like a note played on an electric piano running out of juice. He opened his eyes. It came again. The front door. Customers. Norton steeled himself for the interaction and heaved himself off the toilet with a groan. He rolled down his pants and he buttoned the first button of his polo, Sprayed himself with an old can of Febreze, and walked out to the front  counter. 

In the front of the store Norton expected two customers but saw one. It was afternoon, and the sun was behind the store now, and again the shop was dark and mercurial. Not to mention, he’d turned off all the lights besides the one about the front door before leaving, and now he didn’t even have the help of the hall light behind him. With his prematurely aging eyes he saw a figure at the door again, now opening and closing it, playing with the bell. And something rose in him. Because this figure, so far as he could tell a vague black silhouette, wore a cap. The figure turned its head to Norton, slowly, in such a subtle way that seemed like the deepest disregard, that seemed like a frank insult. Norton burst open at the front counter. 

“Get the fuck out of here!” he said. The figure at the door fumbled with the handle, flung it open and rushed out of Happy Donut. Norton saw in the afternoon daylight it was just some teen, probably playing hooky and deliriously high, And Norton had probably scared off the one customer he’d get all afternoon. He threw up his hands and swore, Went to the front door and locked it, then went to the back room.

His lunch was still there, and there was still half a pot of coffee left. Norton hadn’t been hungry then but he was now. He sat down and took a chunk out of the apple. He stuffed himself until he got halfway through the bologna sandwich and then he gagged and spit out chunks of pink meat stuff. Then he just sat staring at the table. He could have sworn on his life that kid was the man from just that morning. How could he be spooked so badly? He’d had to deal with worse on a near-weekly basis for the last decade plus of his life. Bad tippers and tip jar thieves, dirty grandmas and prissy soccer moms. Cops and ex cops and ex cons and cons. Felons and Freaks. Everyone trying to fuck him because he was quiet and nice and alone. People will steal the gold caps right off your teeth if they catch you sleeping. But Norton could handle that. A thing like that made a lot of sense after a while. This, however. Norton couldn’t figure this thing out. Not to mention the face still hadn’t left his mind, not in the last ten hours since he’d seen it. It floated freely before him right now. His own bloated corpse face staring back at him and smiling. He heated it. He resolved  to take more desperate measures this time. 

Norton stood up and went to the freezer. He opened the door, shifted around a couple ice trays and bags of frozen peas, and reached all the way into the back of the freezer. He grasped a stout, round neck that stuck to his fingers like dry ice, and pulled out a bottle of English Harbor. He took his coffee mug, a swig of black stuff still at the bottom, and poured. The gold liquid came cold and strong, antiseptic and barely smelling of anything but its own sugary punch. Norton restored his cache and sat back down, his stomach still aching with residual convulsions. But this ought to help. Godmommy would just love to catch him now, the shop closed up on Halloween, him in the back there with a coffee mug full of rum and sweat rings on his collar, looking pathetic. But she couldn’t. She was at home at the moment, nursing a chronic headache that seemed always to arise when it was time to go to work. So Norton could have a drink, and he did. 

He drank half the cup in three separate slugs, one after the other. He always did this when he drank, he never could savor the sting. Plus his approach to alcohol always was as a quick and effective medicine for things he’d rather not be thinking about at the moment, and from that point of view dom perignon was as good as piss water. He took another warm gulp, then slammed the cup down and slid it away from him. He lay his head down, already the blood rushing to his face, and his brain turning on its side in bed, curling up into that smiley little fetal position. Norton felt the flutter of his eyelids, how slow they moved underneath the white of the ceiling lamp. Et Voila. No more fish face, so far as he could help not thinking about it. Just fuzz, cloud and fluff, sleepy starlight. He was drifting off already, such a hard drinker and such a lightweight. He didn’t fight it, just let it flood him. Who could care if Happy Donut sat closed on Halloween night?

There were no dreams, but memories. Memories, as it happened, of old Halloween nights back in Norton’s own lost childhood. Stomping along the sidewalk in Galoshes one rainy eve, the skeleton makeup already dripping off his face, But he still pressed on, happy as ever, and determined to have his reward for the frights he gave. Godmommy trailing behind about a block (There had never been a time without her), calling after Norton to “slow down, wait a minute!” But he wouldn’t. He absolutely couldn’t. The other kids had been let out a half hour earlier, at least, and how was he supposed to compete with that? No, he pushed on in the rain, in his little red rubber boots with the straps on front and back. That candy was his. They’d just yet to put it in his hands. He ran forward, howling, laughing, fighting against the wind and rain. And in the blur of orange street lamps and black light bulbs shining over garage doors, even in this great backstage of the mind, this thing that was more dream than memory now, he could swear he was being followed. And not by Godmommy. He neared a house, low and flat and flanked by cypress trees. He could taste that candy now! But he slipped, tripped off the sidewalk, and fell right into a gutter full of dead leaves and discarded pumpkin seeds. He sat back up on his little boots, and sat on the curb, and wailed, rocking in the wind. In classic kid fashion it had been little more than a bruised ego, but he wailed in the dark, dripping wet night, and he heard his Godmother running to him, then standing over him. But she didn’t kneel down to kiss his bruises or wipe his hands. No, she just stood over him, waiting. And now Norton wasn’t crying. Now bony little white faced norton couldn’t move. Because it wasn’t his godmommy, It never had been. In fact, this body over him (though little Norton could not quite say why), was much taller, much quieter, than she had ever been to him. And then, in his dream, in his memory, he turned his head. And saw beside it a fishbelly hand.

He woke up hot and cramped, lifted his head to look at the clock on the wall. 4:30 pm. He pushed back his chair and stood up. His legs felt like stone. The room store was dead quiet, except Norton could hear a gentle tapping somewhere, a distant rapping muffled by several walls of separation. He stood up completely and listened. Knock knock knock knock knock. It couldn’t be anything other than knuckles on glass. He moved his chair aside and once more walked out of the break room, through the oven room and past the fryers, up to the front counter. A little body stood outside the store in the growing dusk and tapped his knuckles on the glass. His taps seemed to falter for a moment, and he stood there while Norton walked up to the front door to open it. Might as well open up now, Norton thought. Halloween, after all, and if Norton couldn’t at least pass out leftovers to the local kids, he really might as well kill himself.

Norton flipped the latch and pushed the door open. “Yeah?” he said. The Kid looked up at him with that tongue-tied, wide eyed nerviness every kid exhibits when faced with a brand new feeling. Norton looked him over, saw his wraps and his white makeup and his black panda eye makeup, his skinned knee and the blood seeping into the gauze. “Hey!” he said. The kid jumped. “No, no, It’s alright. Here, come in, I’m just opening up again. You wanna cake pop? On me, new batch.” He opened the door wide for the kid to peer into it. Mutely, the little mummy shuffled his way into the shop and stood by one of the old plastic booths, looking sullen. Norton thought speaking any more might spook the kid completely, so he just went behind the donut glass, and pulled out a cake pop, a little zombie head he’d worked on personally and felt quite proud of, and gave it to the boy. 

He nibbled on it, looked up at Norton, back at the cake, then took as big a bite as he could manage out of it, and smiled at Norton, crumbles of red velvet dribbling off his lip. “Thanks,” he said with a little giggle, as sweet and young as any old boy might remember in his own misplaced nostalgia. 

“What’s your name?” asked Norton.

“Jack.” said the Mummy.

“Sorry about the knee, Jack.” 

“It’s okay,” said Jack, mumbling. He really seemed more preoccupied with his half eaten zombie head.

“Tell you what. You live around here?”

“Yeah?”

“Your mom like donuts?”

“Yeah.”

 “Your dad? Baby sister?”

“I don’t have a baby sister!” Jack said, laughing.

“Well if you did, She and your dad and your mom could have all the donuts you wanted, whenever you wanted. They can now, starting just this minute.” 

“Really?” Jack said. He was chewing on his cake pop stick, giving  him a lisp. 

“Definitely. And if you come back tonight you’ll see a bunch of kids passing this way. Just follow them up and when I see you I’ll make sure to have an extra cake pop for you. Sounds good?” Jack looked like he was about to sneeze out his eyeballs, his mouth was so wide. 

“Yeah!” was all he said

“Great! Now go play or find your friends or whatever you want to do. Just don’t forget while you’re out getting all that candy. Sorry I ruined the costume by the way, it’s really good.”

“It’s alright,” said Jack, “My mom made most of it. What’s your costume?”

“A donut baker,” said Norton, and he smiled a little. Jack giggled and ran out the front door. Norton watched him go, his skinned forearms no longer aching and his eyes bright, despite the rum headache. Jack skip-hopped into the neighborhood and turned the corner a block or two down the road. Norton watched him all the way, feeling grateful, just part of him watching out for the kid to make sure no other untimely walkers or errant minivans pancaked him. Luckily, it seemed Norton would have been the lightning strike in that regard. But Jack turned in on his street, and then Norton saw something else, much farther down the road, just perfectly located in his eyesight. A figure in black, pale of face, black capped, walking Norton’s way.

Norton walked back inside. He flicked on the lights and turned the coffee makers back on. He made sure the ovens were still warm, and turned back on the fryers. And he took a donut from the glass, but he only took one bite, and threw it away. 

People came. Tired workmen on their way home to lonely mega complexes beside highway entrances stopped in for maple bars and cinnamon rolls, if they hadn’t already bought their six packs. Pensioners idled in the booths, talking absolute nonsense with one another, totally incomprehensible to Norton, only pausing to wave their paper cups at him to demand refills. Bank tellers with paunches came through, stinking punk fourteen year olds in leather puffing on cigarette butts to convince themselves of their hard edge. Black men in rugby shirts and white girls from churches. One man even came in, dressed like a blues brother, and bought fifty dollars in donuts. Norton had to work overtime to make up for all the lost dough, and barely had enough in the case before another evening wave swept through. It was good business, because it was Halloween, and while people weren’t any less scary as they always were, in the night air was a warmth and a mischief-making mirth that played on every sweet-starved face that came into Happy Donut.

But Norton couldn’t think about that. Because in each and every passing face, each and every dour, dehydrated, baggy-eyed smile, was a little bit of that other smile. Was a little bit of his own. 

“Hey. Hey!” said the dirty punk kid. It was the same one who’d come in earlier and left a metallic funk in the room for a half hour after he left. He stood across the counter from Norton dragging on what had to be the same dirty little cigarette but he’d come in smoking the first time. In between sucking he blew gobs of bubblegum and popped them in Norton’s face. 

“Sorry, Norton said, “What was that?”

“I asked if you still had coffee.” the punk tugged on his oily, flat blonde hair and flakes of dead skin sprinkled on his leather jacket. He wore a chinstrap of gnarly cystic acne, and a mustache of yellow-black peach fuzz framed the pink of his perpetually scowling mouth.  “You got coffee?” 

“Oh, yeah… yeah.” said Norton

“Get it.” for a kid who very obviously had never in his life been able to swing a baseball bat, the punk had nuts. Norton snapped out of it, and walked idly over to the hot plate. He  turned around and placed a steaming cup on the counter, and was about to put on a plastic lid when he looked up.

“Cream or sugar?” he said, and shook so violently he nearly knocked over the machine behind him.

“What are you doing?!” The Punk seemed more calculating than puzzled, as if he were trying to figure out whether to hit Norton or laugh at him. “You high?” he said?

“No,” said Norton, “Just tired. Do you want cream or sugar?”

“Black.” said the Punk. he tossed a dollar on the counter and took the coffee and left before Norton could explain he was a dollar fifty short. Norton stood behind the counter, the second wave done and the shop dead again, thinking about how he could remember a time, not too long ago, that he would have walked calmly out of that store, calmly and quietly up behind B.O. boy in the fake leather and bitch boots, and flipped him over his boxers, and thought nothing about it. 

But he wouldn’t. He knew he couldn’t, knew that today he couldn’t have even had it out with the kid. Because he’d just seen his own dead face, wearing that kid’s leather jacket, wearing his smile. His only solace was that it was near closing now, and he could count on there being virtually no soul who would come in at this time. That is, until the kids came Trick-or-treating.

He went to the back room and took a chair and stuck it behind the counter. Godmother didn’t like that. Fuck her. He sat down in the window of space he had off to the side of the donut glass, rubbed his aching knees, and waited. It was nearly dark now. Kids would be arriving in droves pretty soon, all the local kids who knew that this night of all nights, they could score mountains of free donuts, fill their bellies full as they could with fatty sugary goodness. So Norton sat and Norton waited, hands folded, head straight, practicing his breathing and willing away his headache. The street lights flashed on, and the night became deep crimson, then violet, then indigo, and finally such an inky black that the orange lamps cast little more than halos. 

The night outside the shop was cold too. A still and unremitting chill lay damp and arresting on the street just outside. Not a gust of wind stirred the Magnolias or the juniper bushes. And this night too, for all Norton’s vain hopes and wishes, was dead and quiet as the grave. Not even a car drove by. Only one pedestrian seemed to be out just now, across the street, walking slowly, as if laden with heavy groceries. He waddled forward on stiff toy soldier legs, and Norton could barely see him but for the light of the street lamp. In the light of it, the walker turned, or seemed to turn, just so slightly, to look at the shop, And was that just the hint of a pale cheek? Wasn’t there the faintest trace of a snigger on that far away civilians face? Norton groaned and rubbed his eyes, laying as far back in his wooden chair as he could. The pedestrian passed, and there was pure quiet outside the store again. 

Norton kept on waiting. It seemed that by now the kids would have come. More probably by now they would all have come and gone with little brown paper bags swinging at their sides, howling and singing and screaming with laughter into the night. Only it had been a good hour since he had closed up, and no one had come. No one but him. He hadn’t come right back up to the store yet, but he would. And now Norton was waiting. He could see him, across the street, playing the lonely old man, trundling across Norton’s shop windows, again and again, to fuck with him. He wanted to fuck with him, drive him crazy and kill him. But he couldn’t do it while Norton was looking, so Norton sat and watched. And here he came again, trudging down the quiet little bystreet, swaying his body just so slightly as he walked. But he stopped, right in front of the shop, just partway under the opposite light, and now he looked at Norton. No glances, no mocking smile, just stared right down the barrel of the gun ready to fire that was Norton. And Norton had it. 

He shoved over his chair standing up, ran around the counter to the front door. He unlocked and burst through it.

“Come back again and I’ll fuck you up!!!” he screamed into the night. But no one was there. Only the distant highway pervaded the night, and even the inky air did not feel like a true night but only a perverted and stifling anti-day. Norton caught his breath, then walked back inside. 

Norton turned off the shop lights. He took his bottle of english harbor back out of the fridge. He took the hammerless snub nose he’d stashed under the cash register from his cubby, and lay it on his left thigh. On his right sat the bottle. And out there, in the darkness, was a much awaited visitor. Norton could stand to be patient now. He’d long since made up his mind to wait. Now it was only a question of when.

The sleeping night dragged on. Somewhere out in the neighborhood all those kids must be having sleepovers and bonfires, eating gummy bears and telling ghost stories, spooking themselves, daring each other to test the bloody mary myth, crying chicken at one another. From the outside, Happy Donut looked completely empty. It bled into the blue of the night, another storefront set in a row of identically built faux brick facades. But inside sat Norton, head straight and stolid, glaring out the front windows with straining eyes. Not a thought except for that of the man in black passed through his addled brain. He’d run from that face all day, but now he leaned into it. He passed it over his inner vision again and again, trying to get down every aspect of that gray mirror image, so he would know what to do when he saw it again. HE had never been so close to the truth. This had to be retribution for his sins, every sin. This was his penance and his challenge. And he had never been pushed to this, but now…

A figure came up to the shop front and idled at the corner of the window, just to the left of Norton. A black body with a black hat inched up closer to the door, shielding its face from the light and any cameras, leaning in close to the glass. And now Norton was absolutely calm. NOw he knew he must be calm or he would not be able to do what he must do now. He waited even still, he wanted the figure to draw up to the front of the store, to give him an out. And now it was at the door. It could not see him, It was staring in at the shop, but it could not see him. Then it let fall from its right sleeve a steel chain, raw and heavy. And the figure swung, and it struck the door glass, and shattered it. It stepped through, And Norton stood up.

He did not even give it time to look at him. He fired off three rounds. Two hit the figure in the chest and the third ripped a hole in it’s neck just below the jaw. The figure crumpled to its knees and collapsed on its back. It lay in the broken glass and pooled out noxious black blood. Norton walked over and looked down at it, and the face he saw was not his own. It was the punk kids. Then he became aware of ringing in his ear, and after that the sound of the store alarm peeling out into the street. He stepped over the body, ambled around the front of the store for some moments, short circuiting, and when he heard car sirens wailing down the highway he dropped his gun and ran. 

He ran back into the neighborhood. He couldn;t tell the time, but he knew it had to be late, because not a soul was out, and many houses showed only their porch lights, dark and cavernous as skulls from inside. Some homes still held up their ghouls and goblins, their inflatable pumpkins and guttering lanterns on white window sills. Norton ran blubbering through the middle of the street, kicking up dead leaves left crumbling over the dividing lines, looking over his shoulder now and again, to judge his distance. He stopped some blocks down, out of breath and sobbing, and turned to see if his store had stopped wailing. He wondered why no one woke up, why no one even so much as stood on their front porch and listened. And then he saw, and then he knew why there was the silence, even now. Because just a house or two down the road, passing a string of fiery electric torches stuck into someone's lawn, was him. Black coat, black hat. Fishbelly face. Eyes moth white and shining like quarters in a clay head. And a long, knowing smile. Norton nearly tripped over himself, stumbled, wheeled around, and ran.

He turned and turned again. His own evil face followed him down every lane. He cut in down someone’s driveway, crossed a string of driveways, drove himself torn and bleeding through a blackberry thicket, And passed into a garden.

There were late blooming roses on Trees at Norton’s head height. There were rows of orange trees along one wall, and along another rows of giant sunflowers. There was plush grass and wrought iron lawn chairs and plaster statues of children at play. And, in the middle of this unseasonal beauty, was a great kidney bean pool, crystal clear, filtered and warmed. Norton knelt down and touched the water. He let out a sigh that became a groan, and for just the barest moment, he  forgot he was being followed. He stood up, and remembered a time when he had been at a pool party on another untimely hot halloween night. He felt the cool of the water rising about him, the gentle hug of it around his young skin. He remembered the bounce of his body in the pool donut, half his body submerged. He remembered the freedom and the fun of that weightlessness, and the fear of drowning, since he hadn’t known how to swim then and he didn’t know now. And he remembered looking down into the clear water, seeing the warped bottom and the gathering blue where the light didn’t reach, and wondering how deep the pool really was, if it never really quite ended. And then he felt hands on his back, and felt a push.

That following morning, a pink mist hanging over the neighborhood and a new autumn chill in the air, a young mummy named Jack opened his sliding glass door, bleary eyed and bloated with excess sugar, and walked out into his backyard. He liked to jump in the family pool as soon as he got up in the morning, before anyone elsew in the house was awake, and feel the thrill of the icy waters shocking his system. Provided he woke up in time, that was, and this was just one of those days. Only, Jack walked to the edge of the pool giggling with anticipation, and then he stopped. He stood at the round rim of the icy blue kidney, looking at the mound of something floating on it's surface. it drifted, circlingi n the center of the pool, and when it had swung around to facd him, the quiet calculating part of Jack's little brain thought it recognized a face. Still, much too much of him was preoccupied with the bloated, ragged fishbelly skin, the big, vacant, silvery eyes. and the knowing smile.