"Trickster" by Steve Rasnic Tem
Halloween Horrors (1986) edited by Alan Ryan
Readers unfamiliar with "Trickster" by Steve Rasnic Tem may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
Greg has a hard time believing his brother Alex died the year before. While he and his wife are navigating a congested San Francisco street traffic, Greg thinks one of the masked Halloween revelers who stop their car is Alex. This leads to Greg's night-long pursuit on foot of figures he thinks are Alex.
He’d always been a trickster—even as a child. Not content to be a mere practical joker, he played with death.
It started with snakes and spiders, the usual thing, dropping them down girls’ dresses and laughing when the girls went squealing to the teacher. But after a time he began adding a trick or two of his own: eating the spiders while the girls withered before him, carrying dead lizards around in his pockets for days in the hot summers. He was fascinated by such things, and even more fascinated by people’s reactions to them.
I remember once when the family was on a picnic, having a good time. We heard him screaming and looked up just in time to see him toppling off the edge of the Powell River Bridge. I thought our mother was going to die of fright. We ran over and found him hanging on a cable under the bridge, laughing at us....
Alex is a remorseless trickster until the end of his life. No one is spared, least of all Greg. So it's no wonder Greg thinks Alex is ready to reveal the greatest punchline of all: he is still alive.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“He’s still alive.” It was all I could say. The man in the clown mask still stared at me. Under the dim light in the corner he looked like an old photograph, yellowed and cracking, the surface of the photograph beginning to flake away from its backing. He still hadn’t been served. The waitress walked right by him.
At the next table a group of people in peasant costumes and elegant masks were playing a fortune-telling game with cups of water, potato chips, and dirt. A beautiful blonde wearing a silk blindfold was feeling the outside of each cup, trying to decide in which one to put her fingers. There was a flowerpot behind them; I supposed that’s where they’d gotten the dirt. One of the waitresses glanced at them, frowning.
“Greg, I know you’re upset …”
I looked at her. “I’m sorry, but that was him … or what’s left of him. He’s waiting.”
“What’s he waiting for, Greg?”
“I don’t know, but I think it’s me …” I looked away, trying to look at the ocean, the waves breaking, then looked back at the room and saw the grin, the wide glowing grin, one tooth missing. Alex was sitting where the clown had been.
[....] I reached for the grin, tripped, and crashed into the fortune-telling party; I looked down at my hand in the cup of dirt. When I looked at the table where the clown had been, a huge jack-o’-lantern sat there, almost covering the small tabletop, a candle behind the enormous grin, flickering, creating shadows. I grabbed the waitress who had come to help me.
“The man who was there … at that table … the clown mask …” I gasped.
She looked at me nervously and pulled away. “No one sat here tonight. This is my station. The pumpkin, you know? We put the pumpkin on this table.”
Marcie got me out to the car, holding me up when I stumbled. Several people grinned at us, thinking I was drunk, I suppose. I kept turning back to the restaurant, the dark line of ocean, looking, looking. And just before Marcie shoved me into the passenger seat I saw the clown again, standing on the cliff beside the restaurant, taking off his mask.
And revealing another mask, a white glistening face, beneath it.
Marcie was quiet for most of the ride back into town. Then she glanced over at my dirt-encrusted hand. “You got pretty dirty there. What were they doing with those cups anyway?”
“Fortune-telling,” I said, staring at the road, waiting for something, anything to cross the path of the speeding car. I had the unnerving sensation of shadows in my peripheral vision. “You use dishes: one of water, one of meal—they used potato chips for the meal—and one of dirt. The one you put your fingers in reveals your destiny.”
“And dirt? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Death,” I said....
Headlong through the night, on foot after Marcie retreats to home and bed, Greg finally picks up Alex's trail in Golden Gate Park. From there, brother confronts brother in a single-room bolt hole. Once there, Greg learns Alex the trickster has a last mortal gag to pull.
Steve Rasnic Tem's skill at strange-making turns a trite Halloween coming of age cliche into a superb short story of real uncanny power.
"Trickster" is worth seeking out and reading.
Jay
Audio version begins at 1:30 here:
