Near the end of the October, John and all of them were carving pumpkins, just happy to be alive. John is her lover. The men in white pants and shirts were out in the yard at Nantucket's Asylum were fixing the tops of the birdhouses, and beneath one, a blue-painted birdhouse, lay a starling that wanted to fly, but couldn't because its wing was broken.
After being released on their last day from school, they took a trip. The very next day was hot. Sissy's friend from school surprised her by showing up at her dad's house.
"Sissy, does your dad have any pops left? If not, I'll run to the Lakehouse and get you one," said her friend.
"Are you there?"
Ray opened the door and Paul gave him a grimacing stare.
"Yes, Paul, I'm here, but it's late. I thought you'd be coming over tomorrow?" she said.
Earlier that day, Paul had helped her dad close up the law firm. It was all part of the plan. He gathered what he could, and walked out unnoticed from the Mancouver building. Ray left, and now it was just Paul talking to Sissy.
"My friend Paul, how are you?" Sissy said.
"Pete better be ready, or I'm calling it off."
"Paul, you're the man of the hour."
He was the man of the hour. He got them the car, but didn't go along. Peter Thomas wasn't a habitual drinker. He was a good boy who drove sober. He got wasted like the rest, however, after they got there.
It was one hell of a Halloween ride. Bennett was such a smartass! Maybe that's why Gibbers pushed him. Who knew? They weren't supposed to go there anyway, but the friends liked their explorations into space.
Let me tell you what happened. Their friends, Freaky Ray, Sissy, her sister Sue, Mary-Andrews, Bennett, and Peter all got drunk and went to explore this old barn located in this old, deserted fishing village. It was a stupid thing for them to bring whiskey, but that was Ray's idea.
He sure liked to drink. Maybe that's why he broke his leg and let her Bennett die.
Nobody could fathom the noose in the barn. When Gibbers saw it, he freaked and stepped on a weak board that broke. He escaped harm, but Bennett fell off a ledge and onto a pitchfork someone had propped up in the barn. It went through his stomach and out of his back.
Two hours before this, they were all laughing and having fun, but they were plastered.
"Wanna screw?" Ray said.
"Are you crazy? Sissy is right there," Sue said, indicating she sleeps around. "You hear all them crickets? You stirred up the whole goddamned place. Now, keep it down!"
The daylight was fading, but their buzz wasn't.
"Hand me a light," Gibbers said.
"Are you scared?"
"Why look, guys, Freaky Ray has spoken," Bennett said.
"Nah, Ray," Gibbers said, "I'm not scared."
"The hell you ain't! What about all of that old machinery?"
"What about it?"
"It don't scare you?"
There was a bunch of old farming tractors lying around the yards. Ray bowed and mooned his friends.
Someone uttered a comment that they wished they were at the beach.
"I remember once I was at the beach, I forget which beach, and there was this girl that said a strange thing as she walked by," Mary said. "She said, 'I hated those blackberry pies she made, but her chili was dynamite!' I never knew what she meant by this. At least then, I got to hang with Teddy. He was always saying how fine I was. The babes jammed on the beach in those days, too. Hot 80s women wearing sexy spandex much-too-short shorts. Those beach bands rocked! I had the hots for the lead singer. She had on green spandex shorts, and man she knew how to shake it."
Anyway, by now Peter was way drunk.
"Hey guys, I found a noose," he said.
The noose had been observed before and was placed there earlier in the year by a gang of sadistic anarchists.
Then there was the accident. There was a loud bang as the boards beneath Bennett gave way. The only thing they saw was his body going down and dust coming up.
"Gibbers, you idiot!" cried out Ray, wasted out of his mind. Sissy was the only sane person who seemed to keep her head straight.
"Nobody freak out!" Sissy said.
She was sane, but hysterical. Ray was freaking out. He had his hands bracing his head, cupping his ears, yelling God knows what. Then he calmed down.
"What the fffffuckkkk man?! Damn, he got cut bad. He will need a hospital," Ray said.
"He's fucking dead you idiot! It pierced his fucking body," Gibbers said.
Panic broke out and everyone blamed everyone.
"How the fuck are we goin' to get him out of here?" Sue said. "Where the fuck is my sister? Guys, I need a para... med..." Then she passed out.
Ray helped to carry Sue's limp body into the '57 Chevy. The cherry red '57 Chevy Paul had helped to get. It looked like the car in "Christine."
They found out their friend Gibbers had a nervous breakdown when Sissy and her friend went to visit him in the Asylum of Nantucket.
To their horror, we discovered that he had killed himself. One attendant told them, after the breakdown, he had hung himself in the garden. The attendant found a note saying, "there were feelings of guilt" from the accident.
As the teens were leaving the asylum, an old man approached them in a hall. They weren't sure who he was or if he worked there.
"You the girls that were messing around at that old farm?"
The man didn't frighten them, but what stood behind him did. They saw the ghost of Peter Gibbers holding a pitchfork. They ran down the hall screaming.
