Where, exactly, did my wife and I get the idea to host a Halloween party? I don’t rightfully know. We had begun the party at nine PM, yet here we were at almost midnight, still alone, watching an old horror movie, snacking on nachos and feeling stupid in an empty house. “Think we should give it up?” I asked. Estelle nodded her head and stood from the couch. That’s when the second hand moved yet again and the doorbell rang, beginning the craziest evening of our lives.
Where, exactly, did my wife and I get the idea to host a Halloween party? I don’t rightfully know. Perhaps we chose to do it because we had recently moved into our new mansion and wished to meet the neighbors. Those neighbors had been scarce in view, hiding behind fancy iron gates and ancient stone fences topped with cast iron spikes in the shape of arrow heads. I stepped up to the speaker boxes planted on the stone by many of those iron gates, pressed the button to talk, and cordially invited the invisible residents within to our Halloween shindig.
“We are hosting a grand Halloween ball at Donlevy Manor, our home. Please attend and bring your family and friends. We will have games, food, alcohol, and prizes for the best costumes, so come dressed to impress, but costumes are not required so, just come.”
If I received a reply it was either noncommittal or lightly apologetic. “I’m sorry but we already accepted an invitation to a Halloween party,” “we don’t believe in Halloween,” “we’ll be out of town,” or “let me check my calendar. I’ll get back to you.” This one didn’t take my name or number so I don’t know how they would get back to me, unless they stopped by Donlevy Manor in person.
One of the unseen answering voices in two of these mansions asked me if I truly lived in Donlevy Manor. “That place has sat vacant ever since…” They didn’t finish their statement. “Ever since what?” I asked, but never received an answer.
Perhaps we decided to host a Halloween party because we had no friends to speak of and we wanted to acquire some. Perhaps we were simply bored. At any rate we decided to host a party. The time of year dictated the party’s theme. After all, who celebrates Election Day when there are no presidential candidates?
I suppose I should tell you who we are. I was born Maxwell Smith in Sydney, Ohio, a rather unassuming town about forty minutes from the Indiana border. I met my wife, Estelle Donlevy, whilst attending college in Connecticut. Yes, Estelle has the same last name as our manor. She was a simple, pasty-looking, raven-black haired girl with the most lovely green eyes, studying Elizabethan Drama and setting my heart on fire every time she quoted Shakespeare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of Shakespeare, but when Estelle would open the door, glare at her dog and order, “Out damned spot!” my heart always skipped a beat.
Estelle didn’t talk much about her past. She talked all about the present, other pasts (she was studying Elizabethan Drama, after all), pop culture, and many interests.
When she married me, Estelle decided to change her last name to Smith, although I almost begged her not to. I would have been happy to become a Donlevy, but she wouldn’t have it. She wanted my plain-Jane last name. We planned to move to Ohio where I would make my start in computer engineering and Estelle could start a theater company in town, but just before we could load up our car, my new wife received a telegram. Her aunt Eloise had passed. As Eloise had no children, Estelle was the closest living relative. She stood to inherit her mansion in Rhode Island, along with half a million dollars, which would cover the taxes for a few years. We loaded up the car but remained in New England.
Estelle told me she had been to her aunt’s mansion once as a little girl, but she didn’t remember much of the place, only that the entry was a two-story front room with a wide staircase that hugged the curving left wall. “The stairs had no banister,” she claimed. “I thought I’d fall to my death but had to run up and down them anyway.” She also remembered running all over that house, which she claimed went on forever. I didn’t believe her until the estate lawyer had us follow his Audi from his office.
We drove past many hidden homes in that wealthy Providence suburb. “Isn’t every town in this state a Providence suburb?” Estelle smacked my arm. When the Audi stopped at one of the iron gates, and the realtor got out, unlocked the padlock, removed the chain, and swung open the creaking gate, I quipped “is this place for real?” Estelle smiled at me as we drove beyond those ivy-covered stones, through a stone arch and short tunnel with more ivy, and into a narrow parking area just wide enough for the two cars.
“I remember this now,” said Estelle. “This is a courtyard just for parking cars. That tunnel went through the front of the house.”
“It’s kind of tight,” I complained.
“I think they must have made it for horses and carriages.”
Estelle’s memory had served her right. Donlevy Manor’s passageways and rooms seemed to go on forever. Following a few days in the mansion, we found the building’s limits. Beginning the second day, we counted the manor’s rooms. By the end of the first month, we had a purpose for every room, or at least a name, and the old house became manageable. Still, I felt there was more to it than we could know simply by exploring. I heard creaks in the night. I sensed presences that weren’t there. I saw shadows that did not look quite right, and some walls didn’t seem to match up to other walls as if there could be spaces between.
Donlevy Manor was old, but not in disrepair. Eloise had kept it clean but not polished since her husband, Trevor Donlevy, had passed away five years earlier. In preparation for our Halloween soiree, we covered the walls of some of the rooms with spooky themes: monsters, spiders, bats, moons and haunted houses. Estelle was very creative. She strung up a large web in the front room that passed from floor to second-story ceiling with a huge black widow spider. She also closed off one room by leaving the door open but fitting the doorway with bars and the view of a rotting prisoner within.
“Aren’t you the creepy one,” I whispered in her ear, as we both looked through those fake bars.
She smiled slyly. “The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.”
There she was, quoting Shakespeare, and I fell in love with her again.
As I mentioned before, on Halloween at Midnight, there came a knock at the door, a powerful knock against the thick, oak door. It creaked as I opened it, which always made me shiver. I saw no one outside in the dark, forested yard, so I shut it again.
“Honey,” I called to my wife who sat on the antique sofa. “I think we should put away all the food before it gets stale and call it a day.”
“I have more care to stay than will to go.”
I simply stared at Estelle for a long, lingering moment before answering. “Is that Shakespeare?” She nodded. “Are you going to quote Shakespeare all night?”
“Ourself will mingle with society and play the humble host,” was her answer, and it sounded like the Bard.
“Whatever.”
The door called again with the same, commanding knock and just as before, there was nobody there. This time I stepped completely outside and searched the yard. Still, there was nobody.
As soon as the door closed behind me and I had a good look at Estelle’s pretty smile, another softer knock sounded from the door. I swung open the door ready to shout but stopped because a man stood on the stoop. He wore the most incredible costume: A black formal suit complete with red cape, oiled-back hair with a distinctive widow’s peak, and the most realistic-looking fangs I had ever seen, sharp enough to pierce a garden hose, dripping blood which seemed to coagulate on the wooden flooring.
As I gawked at the man who was sure to win our costume contest, Estelle called from behind. “We have heard the chimes at midnight!” Then she added, “Come, thy mortal wretch, with thy sharp teeth!”
The man dressed as Dracula laughed a cold, evil laugh, so in character it was frightening. “Immortal wretch I be. Iz Zis Donlevy Manor?” he asked in a chilling Romanian accent.
“Uh yes,” I answered. “Do you need a tissue for your, uh, teeth?”
The man sucked in the dripping blood stuff with one breath. “No need my friend. I vish to join your spooky soiree,” he said with a sly grin and the cadence of a Transylvanian count, yet he continued to make small talk and wouldn’t enter. “Tell me, how do you taste?” he asked.
“You mean the hors d’ouvres?” I asked.
“Vy yes, the hors d’ouvres,” he said with difficulty.
“Come in and try them.”
“I think I vill.” Finally he entered and glided over to the snack table.
“Try the homemade pizza rolls,” I called. “They’re delicious.”
“I am afraid Italian does not agree vith me,” he answered and picked up a mini hot dog soaking in barbecue sauce.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Estelle proclaimed and gave me a wink. She got up from the couch and made small talk with the count, at least that’s what I called him. I didn’t recognize the man at all.
The oak door remained open behind me, and I suddenly felt a presence. I turned fast to see. Towering over me was a dark, imposing figure, also in a cape and a mask which cloaked his face in black and topped his head in small, pointy ears. The figure barely breathed but said, in a low growl, “I’m Batman.”
I managed a nervous grin and held out my hand but the caped crusader pointed behind me, so I looked. Estelle still talked with the Count, who sipped a Bloody Mary, and a woman dressed in a sheer black catsuit, also masked with little ears. Catwoman? Where had she come from? I wanted to ask Batman, since he would be an expert, but when I turned he was gone, and replaced by an ugly old crone with green-tinted skin and a huge red wart on the end of her nose. She wore a tattered dress with black-buckled boots, red-and-white striped socks, and a pointy black hat. I gasped. She noticed and broke out in cackles.
“Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” She shattered my eardrums and made my skin crawl. “How be you, my pretty?” she asked in a voice that could summon a demon.
“Are you an actress, because your costume is dope and you play the part so well?”
“What part would that be, Love?”
“The part of a hag.”
“A hag, you say?” She raised a small, twisted stick. Was it a wand, ready to cast a spell? A bandaged hand grabbed her green hand. The shocked, costumed hag reeled, saw who had stopped her, and broke into more ear-splitting cackles.
“Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Grey, fraying bandages so old-looking they could turn to dust, wrapped around a female form which stood beside the crone. The mummy said nothing, only gazed at me through hollow eye sockets. A moth flew from the left socket. She and the hag crossed the room, found an open area, and began moving their arms, hips and legs. The music steadily increased in volume, playing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
“Please don’t do the Thriller dance,” I thought. They didn’t, but their gyrations were no less creepy and a toe fell off the mummy’s costume.
A howling pierced the air.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I thought I had been silent but heard my wife’s voice in my ear. “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
“Could you please talk normal?” I begged, turning to face her hazel eyes.
“The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”
I took that to mean no.
“Do you know these people? I mean, I don’t remember seeing any of them anywhere, and these costumes are the bomb! It makes me think that a local theater troupe caught wind of our little Halloween party and decided to crash it.”
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances.”
No, I was not going to get a straight answer from her.
“If music be the food of love, play on!”
She stepped away and was swallowed up by the crowd, and what a crowd it was. I had lost sight of the door and all manner of costumed creatures had entered our manor. The grand entry was a sea of heads of varied shapes, sizes, colors, and levels of deterioration bouncing up and down to the thumping music, now playing a disco beat. Was that “MacArthur Park?” I heard Estelle yell, “Put out the light, and then put out the light!” Suddenly the lights shut off, and strobes came on.
“Strobes?” I thought. “We don’t have any strobe lights.” But the strobes were not ours. They came from a floating, saucer-shaped ship that hung and spun in the air above the crowd. They stepped back to form a space so the saucer could descend and end its spin. A hatch opened and a little green man stepped out, with antennae and elongated, black eyes.
“Games?” he said in a high-pitched, otherworldly voice. He must have been using some sort of an electronic voice modulator as part of his costume.
I realized that choosing the best costume would be tough, and I wondered if our $50 gift card to Chili’s was a sufficient prize. Some of the costumes I saw in that room didn’t seem possible. We were talking about incredible feats of engineering genius. A few guests dressed in old time clothing were visibly transparent. I saw one man playing volleyball with his head, and the head was laughing. Electricity crackled between the ears of someone dressed as Frankenstein’s monster and a nearby mad scientist laughed maniacally. A huge, black, three-headed hound leapt from the bottom to the top floor effortlessly, helped by the fact that there wasn’t a railing.
A rapper rhymed from the stereo. “Throw your arms in the air…” A scarecrow, zombie, and robot dutifully removed one arm each and waved them above like they just didn’t care. I climbed the steps carefully, sideways, with my back against the wall, as a group of zombies danced around on the steps. Once on the second-floor landing, I surveyed the room and tried to spot the best costume, but it was hopeless, so I left the front room, passed a side room where a group of gnomes were attempting to pin the tail on the centaur. The horse man didn’t appreciate that much. Zeus was busy showing off his lightning skills to a mermaid in the drawing room.
Wherever I went in that house was a small crowd of creatures in the best Halloween costumes known to man. At least nobody was in the master bedroom. The door was locked and Estelle had the key, so I couldn’t go in there to escape.
Two more serious-minded folks stood outside the bedroom door having a wistful discussion about their memories of the Paris Opera House, of all things. They spoke in French, but I caught a word or two I could recognize. One was hunchbacked, with a deformed face. The other wore a full tuxedo, finely pressed and so black that it glared. He had a white masquerade mask covering half of his face. “Bonjour, Monsieur Donlevy,” he addressed me. “Zis soire c’est magnifique, no?”
“Yes. No. Sorry, sir. My name is Smith. My wife was related to the Donlevys who owned this manor.”
The Parisian laughed. “Oho, so you know not, no? Estelle is true, a Donlevy, at least zis century. Tell me, Monsieur Smith, are you husband number thirteen or fourteen?”
“Excuse me Mister, I don’t like your tone.”
“My tone?”
“Whatever you Frenchmen call it. You know nothing about our marriage, so if you would excuse me.”
The hunchback touched my sleeve. His voice was gravelly and rough, yet more sensible than the tuxedo-wearing one. “Excusez-moi, Monsieur Smith. Forgive my friend, sil-vous plait. He spends too much time below ze house of opera. Zere are things you don’t know about your new wife, no. We know her from many years. We mean no insult, no?”
I glared at the duo and left without an answer.
I finally had an idea about the best costume prize. Maybe we could keep our gift card. I rushed back to the top of the main stairs and yelled, as loud as I could, “It is now time to announce the winner of the best costume!”
The noise and confusion stopped, and the manor house fell deathly silent, until a lone voice, not unlike Victor Frankenstein’s assistant, Igor, shouted, “costume? Who’s wearing a costume?”
I snickered uneasily into my hand. “Yes!” I called. “The best costume! This is, after all, a Halloween party.”
“Halloween?” came the hag’s voice. “Don’t you mean ‘All Hallows’ Eve?’ Bwah ha ha ha ha!”
“Whatever you call it!” I called. “We call it Halloween, and y’all are wearing such excellent costumes so this was a very hard choice to make…”
“Blurghlughlearshgl!” came a new beastly sound.
“Blimey, Sasquatch, hush up before I shoot ye,” a transparent man in a pith helmet ordered.
“Anyway, I’ll get to the point. The winner of the First Annual Donlevy Manor All Hallows’ Eve Party is…”
Finally, there was silence once again.
“The Invisible Man!” There, nobody there was dressed up as the Invisible Man, so we could keep the card, claim the Invisible Man had left, and have ourselves some chips and salsa. I waved the card in the air, expecting nothing, then noticed, there was nothing in my hand. “What the…” I looked around in the vain attempt to find out which one of these creatures had stolen the card, but everyone was looking at the stairs to my right. Sure enough, the card was floating in air, moving down the steps, as if… no.
I turned away, left the landing, and made my way to our bedroom. I was exhausted, confused, and ready to turn in. After all, it was six in the morning and the sun would rise soon. I opened the door and noticed Estelle was already in there, resting on the bed. She smiled and said, “Unbidden guests are often welcomest when they are gone.”
I changed into my PJs and made my way to the bed, then plopped down. Estelle lay down too. “Will you be talking like you’re in this century when we wake up?”
“How do you like my friends?” she asked.
“That’s not Shakespeare.”
Estelle giggled. “No, it isn’t. Willy never did write that one down, and he would have said something like, “how dost thou likest these friends of mine.”
It was my turn to laugh. “So, is everyone… in that mob out there, your friend?”
“No. I don’t know where Catwoman came from.”
“Or Batman,” I added.
“Batman?”
I dropped it. After all, I hadn’t seen the caped crusader at all during the remaining night, or Catwoman either. I wondered if he had brought her to justice. “Those were amazing costumes. Where did you meet such incredibly creative people?”
Estelle covered her mouth. She let out small snickering breaths, as if she knew something that I didn’t.
“What is it?”
“Max, those weren’t costumes.”
“Wh…” But I couldn’t reply. A thousand thoughts entered my mind all at once. “So…” but I couldn’t answer still. I’d seen Dracula? He had asked how I taste? “Uh, so… The Invisible Man really did win the costume contest?”
“And he probably had the worst costume.”
“How could you tell?”
We laughed. “I don’t know, Es, if I hadn’t seen things that nobody could possibly pass off as a costume… then… I’d say you were pulling my leg. Hard. I have a million questions but I don’t know where to start. Okay, why our place? Why tonight?”
“I’ve gotten to know a lot of people through the centuries, and I tend to gravitate towards the most unacceptable. I look forward to this day most. It’s the Day of the Dead, when the dead walk among the living.”
“What are you talking about? Through what centuries? What does that have to do with us?”
Estelle turned serious. “Max, there’s something you need to know about me, and I’m sorry I kept it from you, but I didn’t think you would understand until now, until you met my friends.”
I remained silent. This wasn’t going the way I hoped or expected it to.
“Max, please tell me you’ll accept what I have to tell you.”
“I accept,” I said, without hesitation.
“Good. Max, I’m.. well… why is this always so hard to express!” she shouted at the air, then hit the mattress, hard. “Okay, Okay Stella, it’s okay.” She self-soothed.
I just tried to soften my stare. I had said that I would accept what she would tell me, now it seemed I had agreed too soon.
“Okay Max. I think I’m ready to tell you. Don’t say I’m crazy. You’ve seen some crazy things. Please say you won’t think I’m crazy. The Baron Zonderschultz tried to have me committed.”
“The Baron What?”
“Never mind, just please promise you won’t think I’m crazy.”
“This again? Just tell me, Essie!”
“You must promise…”
“Alright! I promise!”
There was silence once again. Well, I could hear reveling and worry a little about the shape of the house.
“Max, I’m over five hundred years old.”
This wouldn’t sink in. “But your Aunt Eloise left you this…”
“Max,” She held my arms with her hands. “I am Aunt Eloise.”
“What?”
I tried to piece it all together, but I couldn’t.
“I have to tell you the whole thing. I knew Shakespeare. I loved his plays, and could easily have been Juliet, Lady Macbeth, anything if he hadn’t had that stupid idea of having guys dress up as girls for those parts. He could be a flake sometimes. But that’s not the point. Anyway, I was married to an alchemist, one of the last ones actually. Anyway, his name was Byron, and he found the secret to eternal life. It was his life’s work, and he created a potion of some sort that he claimed would make the drinker live forever. He tried it out on me, but before he could take the potion, the doofus had a heart attack, dropped the remaining potion, and died. He left me to go on living, and living, and living. Willie died. The first Queen Elizabeth died. I remarried. That husband died. People started talking. Why didn’t I seem to age. The word ‘witch’ was being used, so I fled to America and started anew where nobody knew me.
“I will tell you my entire history. I promise I will. Somewhere through the years I figured out that very few would accept the idea of a woman who doesn’t age. I learned the art of makeup, to age myself, but even that won’t answer for someone who lives more than a century. I’ve remarried fifteen times now. I’ve faked my death nine times. This manor has been mine for three hundred years, under four different names, all my own. I had ten years to grow bored here after Trevor passed. I’ve never been much for television. Instead, I took down my volume containing Willie’s collected works, and memorized the entire thing again. I do weird things to pass the time during those in-between years.
“The final year of Eloise was a busy one. Those weekends I disappeared from campus, I came here to pantomime my demise.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “I’m husband fifteen? I can’t mean that much to you, and you’ll find fifteen husbands after me. Yes. What did you do, seek out an open-minded college student to keep up your farce?”
Estelle’s face didn’t change. I suppose she had heard it all many times before, and I noticed an accepting wisdom there. “Max, I’m sorry it’s this way, but there’s no other way I can see. I can’t make you last forever, as I’ve had to. I don’t wish for death. The world’s a vastly interesting and wonderful place. I only wish to share this portion of my endless life with you. Are you alright with living in a huge manor, even if you have to put up with all my rowdy friends one day every year?”
A knock came on the door.
“Yes, I guess I can handle it,” I said, then got up to answer the door. There was nobody there.
“Thanks for the gift card,” came a disembodied voice. “I may have to use Doordash.”
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