The room felt strangely quiet once the pace of their breathing calmed. Tom looked down at the beautiful, ruined creature beneath him, her hair loose and tangled, her cheeks glossy with what might have been pool water or tears. She kissed him. He clutched handfuls of her glistening damp hair, deepening the kiss, pressing into her as though he might yet absorb some of her lustrous passion.

"I love you," he sighed. He hadn't meant it the way people usually meant it. He loved her body, her taste, her naivety; but mostly he loved the way she made him feel about himself. Strong, experienced, mature. He wanted to take if back as soon as he said it. A guy should never say those words before at least first six months of dating. And never to a girl as young as Alex.

To his relief, she didn't say a word in response, even after her blush faded. He hoped that maybe she didn't hear him.

Downstairs, the music reeled and people shouted as the bass began pumping.

"Was I okay?" she asked. "It's been a while for me."

"Yeah. This was amazing." Tom wondered if he should tell her it was okay that she had been a virgin. He didn't want to embarrass her being caught in a lie.

Alex curled up in his arms and recited "Poppies in July."

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

And it exhausts me to watch you

Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes that I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

Tom listened and kissed her tenderly on the forehead when she was done. "So I should send you a bouquet of poppies, not daisies?" he whispered.

"Don't send me anything," she said. "Mother will get the flower dictionary out."

Tom laughed, but his head swam with panic. He couldn't decide if the notion of actually dating Alexandria Stockton appealed to him. He was on the rebound from an unfeeling narcissist and his best friend would literally murder him if he ever found out. There was also her youth. She clung so tightly to his arm. Orgasm had a sobering effect, and it dawned on him that he had stumbled into this without considering the consequences.

"We should go back down at some point," he said, severing the intimacy.

"No," she whined sweetly. "Stay."

"It's Halloween." Tom reached for the clothing on the radiator. His pants were damp but warm.

Alex sat up and twisted the sheets around her torso. "Tom?"

He adjusted his mask in a mirror, watching her in the reflection. "Hm?"

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No."

"Was this a mistake?"

"No. Let's enjoy the rest of our night, okay?" Tom tied off the back of his mask. "I'll meet you down there."

Alex went into her purse, rattling through what sounded like pill bottles. Tom left discreetly, checking the hall before he going outside and closing the door behind him. He didn't mean to linger in the hall, but he heard Alex through the wall. She was crying. The sound made him sick with guilt.

"Alex?"

The room went silent.

"Are you okay?" He knocked, paused, and lay his head against the door. He thought about going back in, about what he might say. "I care about you" would send the wrong message but "I'm not looking for anything serious" would make things worse. "I didn't think this was a big deal" and she would never forgive him. All he could think to do was head downstairs and get back to the party.

He liked Alex well enough, but he didn't want a girlfriend. He didn't want to live by new sets of rules or conform to the modicum of behavior expected by a young, insecure lover. The injustice of it was that Alex was as sincere and idealistic as Tom had once been, and if he abandoned her now, she might become jaded and distrustful as Tom was now. Was he creating another broken person to throw at the world? God forbid, another Lacey Hart.

Outside, a bonfire raged in a stone pit. A band of drunks tossed beer bottles in and wailed as the glass shattered and the flames flared. Some people had begun telling ghost stories, the orange light flickering on their faces. A guy with no hair and coke bottle glasses was in the middle of the tale of Ghost Woods. He talked about how Cherokee Indians used to fish in Shark River in the summer. In the winter, they moved inland and buried their dead in the woods. When colonists purchased Shark River territory from the natives, they discovered ancient burial grounds and left those undisturbed. But that's why the woods were haunted. The group around the crackling fire grew silent as his story captured their imaginations.

Tom's attention drifted from the storyteller as he saw Alex walking toward the group. She came out wearing a fur-lined coat and holding a champagne bottle by the neck. She took a seat on Tom's lap and cuddled him for warmth.

"Hey," he whispered. She was lost to inebriation, downing the champagne like soda pop.

"Want some?" she asked him, resting her head on his shoulder. Tom shook his head.

A buxom nurse leaned forward at the end of the first guy's story, interjecting belligerently, "The oak tree in Ghost Woods is cursed. You know about that boy who went crazy and tied a little girl to it, right?"

Alex hid her face against Tom's neck. She was trembling, and not from the cold.

"I know that one!" a guy in a hockey mask said. "Ten years ago a boy tied this little girl to a tree as an offering to the Jersey Devil. And her blood that fell into the soil was poison to earthly things. And ever since that day, every tree around the oak where she was bound grows bent away, crooked and gnarled, as if repelled by the negative energy of the place."

"Pagans still go there to pay tribute. They leave the skulls of mice and birds as offerings."

"They say the tree talks and anyone who hears its voice will die within the year."

"The witches build their fire pits there, and people said that if you go there at night, cultists will chase you away with chainsaws."

Alex started whispering under her breath. Tom listened closely until finally he could make out what she was saying. "I am part of the night. I am part of the night."

"What does that mean?" he whispered back.

She gasped. The champagne bottle slipped from her fingers and into the snow.

"Hey," said Tom. "We can go inside if you want."

She shook her head. "I'm not afraid anymore."

A young man in a heavy black cloak cleared his throat and broke up the conflicting stories. "You all have it wrong," he said.

"Does anybody have a cigarette?" the nurse asked. The cloaked figure provided her a fag and she lit it in the fire.

"There is a witch with real magic who operates in Ghost Woods. She invited Baphomet to live int the tree there and her coven does rituals for his pleasure." Everyone around the fire was silent. Tom recognized the voice. It was Jacob. "You all know the local legend of a little girl who wandered into the woods and ended up with staples in her head, but you don't know the real horror of it all. You didn't hear what it sounded like when her little skull cracked. Have you ever broken a piece of chalk? It feels good, right? It's like cracking your knuckles. Breaking a little girl's skull is like that, but a hundred times better."

Tom gave Alex a little push and she hopped up. He rolled up his sleeves.

Jacob snickered. "Something wrong?" he asked, standing up to face Tom. He untied his cloak and let it fall to the ground. Underneath he was wearing a white undershirt and black pants. He had a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm and nipple rings poking through his shirt.

Tom took the first swing.

Jacob took the punch with ease, touching his jaw and licking the front of his teeth. He grabbed a tuft of Tom's hair, reached under his knee and flipped him on his back. Snow rushed up Tom's shirt. Jacob landed a few good punches into his ribs, but Tom fought through the pain and pinned Jacob's fist in the snow, landing a nasty strike flat on his nose. The cartilage cracked and a worm of blood inched down his lips.

They staggered apart, regaining composure and sizing each other up from afar. Jacob pinched his nose, wiped away the blood and held his head high like it was nothing. The people inside got wind of the fight. Party guests swarmed around them and to Tom's dismay, they wanted more. Tom half expected somebody to step in and stop the madness but nobody did. Maybe it had something to do with it being Halloween, or there being snow on the ground, but the crowd was thirsty for blood.

Jacob lunged at Tom. Tom sidestepped him and grabbed him by the arm, twisting it behind him. He shoved him on the ground and made Jacob taste the snow. People started counting down from ten.

"Four, three, two, one," they finished.

"Who said this was wrestling?" someone shouted.

Tom released Jacob and gave him an arm up. He handed him his do-rag to soak up the blood under his nose.

"So it's the good detective's son, huh?" Jacob hissed. "First, your buddy Nathan breaks into my house and pistol whips me. Now you attack me at a party. When will you cocksuckers let the past go?"

"You are poison to this town!" Tom shouted. "You're responsible for Hannah."

"I'm responsible?"

"You were feeding her drugs."

"Selling. And if I hadn't, she would have found them somewhere else. You're the one who abandoned her to go to college and screw coeds. So don't go flinging blame around."

"You killed her as far as I'm concerned."

"Whatever." Jacob snorted through his bloodied air passages. "You better watch your back, Scarboro."

Jacob took up his cloak, shaking out the snow. The crowd dispersed and Alex brought Tom his fencing saber. "You didn't have to do that," she said. She fastened the blade to his belt and brushed the snow off his clothing. Jacob started to go but Alex yelled, "Jacob! Wait!"

Tom couldn't believe what he was hearing. What transpired next amazed him. Alex ran forward and took the bloody do-rag from Jacob. She gathered a ball of snow into the fabric and pressed it to Jacob's broken nose.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

"I'm fine, doll." Jacob threw his arm around her. "I have your medicine, if you want it now."

"Yeah. Let's go inside."

"Are you crazy?" Tom blurted. "You're not going in there with him."

"I thought you wanted to enjoy the party," she replied. Her voice was different and her entire body language had become stiff and shut off to him.

Jacob let slip a creepy chuckle. "Toot-a-loo," he sang as the two of them went back in together.

This is my fault, Tom thought, watching her disappear with that low-life piece of crap. He wondered what she'd been popping earlier. Hillbilly heroin? He tried to make a mental map of all the substances she'd consumed that evening. There was the coke before he got there, at least two glasses of champagne and whatever else was in the bottle, those pills she'd had up in the room and now whatever Jacob was giving her. The realization horrified him. She could die. She could die that very night on Halloween in the same way Hannah died. He questioned whether or not he had the audacity to go after her, ruin her night, embarrass her in front of her friends, get her in trouble with her parents, and make her hate him forever all for the sake of saving her life.

No need for all that, he decided. She would probably be fine. Anyway, she was eighteen. She could make her own decisions. She had made that clear when she kissed him. Tom ambled back inside.

The house was littered with half-drunk champagne flutes and plastic cups. The night seemed endless and every hour stranger than the last.

He found just the guy he needed on the upstairs balcony. Captain Morgan. A pirate seemed like the perfect companion at the moment. He had the rum and he had an expression of longing that resonated with Tom especially well this night.

Princess Jasmine, Avatar and Leeloo from The Fifth Element smoked hashish in a hookah. They offered Tom a hose, but he declined and took a seat next to Captain Morgan on the stone floor.

"How are you, fellow pirate?" Tom asked.

Captain Morgan sighed. "Have you ever been in love, friend?"

Tom cradled his head in his hands and groaned. "All too often, and now I can't even muster enough affection to be nice to a girl for one night."

"Care to play a game?" the captain asked.

"Sure."

"You tell me anything, true or untrue, and I call your bluff. If I'm right, you drink. If I'm wrong, I drink."

"All right," Tom agreed. "Sounds simple enough. I'm realizing now that I shouldn't have come here tonight."

"That's true," Captain Morgan said. "Try to make it harder, or you'll be out cold before things even get interesting." Tom nodded and took a swig of the rum. "This wig is a bitch," the Captain said.

"I hope it's a lie," Tom said. The Captain laughed.

"It's the truth. You, again."

Tom drank. "My best friend hates me," Tom said. Captain Morgan eyed him closely.

"I fear you're telling the truth."

"No. But he will."

"Ha. Why's that?" he asked, taking a drink.

"I ran into this girl we know. She's his on-again off-again girlfriend of like forever and I kind of just hooked up with her. Now she likes me and that's gonna complicate things."

Captain Morgan had a sideways grin. "We pirates often break the codes of honor upheld by other men. All right. My name is Oswald, but my friends call me Waldo."

"You're a liar. Nobody's name is Oswald," Tom said. Captain Morgan and the girls around them laughed. He had to drink. "I'm still in love with my ex-girlfriend," Tom said.

"That's so true, it hurts me to look at you," said the Captain. What started out as a joke brought Tom to drunken tears. Captain Morgan capped his rum and patted Tom's back. "Hey, knock it off. The Dread Pirate Roberts doesn't cry."

Tom buried his face in Captain Morgan's velvet shoulder pads.

Leeloo whispered in Jasmine's ear. They stood and left the balcony. Avatar tried not to look at Tom and suddenly Tom became very aware of how pathetic he must have appeared. He tried to calm himself down. Captain Morgan offered him the bottle of rum, and as he extended his arm, Tom caught a glimpse of a round wrist tattoo, that same sun star eye from the tree in Ghost Woods.

"Have you ever heard of the Night Man?" Tom asked.

Captain Morgan laughed darkly. "You up for a change of scenery?"

Liquid courage had prepared Tom to follow him right down the rabbit hole. "Yeah."

"Up you go, buddy. What's your name?"

"Just call me Roberts."

"Riiight, and I'm Captain Morgan." Captain Morgan helped Tom stumble down the stairs.

"I need a mask," Tom cried. Captain Morgan called the room to attention as they descended into the foyer.

"This guy needs a mask. He's been in a fight and wants to cover up his ugly!" Captain Morgan had a booming voice, and the room responded immediately. Many offered their masks in states of drunken generosity. It was either green and yellow feathers or a black kitty cat. Tom took the pointy ears and whiskers.

And so Captain Morgan and the Dread Pirate Kitty made their way through the sea of people and out the front door. The captain pulled out a set of keys at a black SUV and helped Tom into the passenger seat.

"Let me just grab my friend," the Captain said. Tom leaned his head against the back window. He saw Alex running toward him, explosions of purple and red fire sparkling behind her. Fireworks exploded in the sky, ripples of popping trembling down. Alex opened the door to the back seat and got inside.

"What are you doing?" Tom slurred.

"Going to the next party."

"You can't come," Tom said.

"The cops are going to show up here any minute," she said. "And, anyways, these are my friends you're going with."

"You're already friends with Captain Morgan?"

She giggled. "Who isn't?"

"No, I'm not. I'm on a mission. I'm infiltrating the cult that meets in Ghost Woods. So if you're tagging along, no more coke and no more drinks, okay? Stay close to me."

Alex clapped her hands, cackling. "You're wasted."

"And fasten your seatbelt. I don't think Captain Morgan is sober."

The world spun around him. Captain Morgan returned with Cleopatra. Cleopatra got into the backseat with Alex and she asked if the Dread Pirate Roberts was okay. Tom muttered something about being just fine and they took off into the night.

__________

Music: Muse "Aftermath"