Summer Is Not Dead: The Seasonal Killer

The cicadas screamed so loudly from the trees that Mark could barely hear himself think.

REEEEEEEEEEEEE.

He didn’t mind.

It was the sound of summer refusing to leave.

REEEEEEEEEEEEE.

“Pumpkin spice. Yuck.”

Mark spat onto the sidewalk and watched the brown glob sizzle in the August heat.

Ninety-four degrees.

That was what the bank sign had said three blocks back.

Ninety-four damn degrees, and somebody had just sold him a pumpkin-spice coffee.

“I don't get it.”

Across the street, the family had been decorating their house for Halloween for the last hour and twenty minutes.

The mother started with the porch.

The father handled the yard.

Two children carried decorations back and forth from the garage while an elderly woman sat beneath an umbrella supervising the whole operation.

Spiderwebs stretched across bushes still fat with summer leaves.

Orange lights wrapped around a porch railing hot enough to burn bare thighs.

A Styrofoam tombstone had been hammered into grass that needed mowing twice a week.

And standing proudly beside the mailbox was a twelve-foot skeleton wearing a black witch's hat.

Mark checked his watch.

August 2nd.

A cicada screamed somewhere above him.

“Exactly.”

His eyes moved from the enormous skeleton to the inflatable pumpkins, then to the swimming pool shimmering behind the house.

An idea came to him.

“You want to decorate?”

The cicadas screamed louder.

“Fine.”

He looked toward the pool.

“But we're decorating for summer.”

Mark started with the mother.

She had been the one hanging the skeletons.

That seemed appropriate.

By the time he was finished, there was almost nothing soft left about her.

He worked until the idea became literal.

Bone.

White.

Clean.

Human.

He dragged what remained of her toward the pool and propped the skeleton upright in a lawn chair. A bright inflatable ring went around the waist. Cheap plastic sunglasses balanced over the skull.

A pink flamingo drink holder sat in her lap.

Mark stepped back.

“Summer.”

Much better.

The father belonged on the porch.

He had spent most of the afternoon arranging pumpkins there, moving them three inches left, then two inches right, as if October might arrive faster if he got the symmetry perfect.

Mark corrected that too.

The head sat where the largest jack-o’-lantern had been.

He hollowed it enough to make the resemblance obscene.

Triangles replaced the eyes.

A crude grin cut through the face.

Then came the sunglasses.

Those were important.

He wanted the police to remove them themselves, to have that tiny moment when they thought they understood what they were looking at.

Then realize they didn’t.

Beside the head, he placed a bottle of sunscreen.

SPF 50.

He laughed at that longer than he should have.

The boy took the most work.

Mark found the kite in the garage.

Blue.

Cheap.

The kind that came folded in plastic with a smiling sun printed in one corner.

Perfect.

He hung the boy beneath the oak tree and stretched pieces of skin outward in a crude imitation of bat wings, fastening the kite between them so the whole thing shifted whenever the wind moved through the yard.

The eyes bothered him.

Too human.

Too frightened.

So he removed them.

Black beads went in their place.

Then came the cicadas.

He had collected them from the yard earlier, some dead, some barely moving, their shells and wings dry and papery in his hands.

One clung to the boy’s shirt.

REEEEEEEEEEEE.

Another disappeared beneath the skin near the shoulder.

Two empty shells sat where eyebrows used to be.

The kite string ended in a note.

Mark printed carefully:

CICADAS ARE THE ONLY BEADY EYES YOU SHOULD BE ENJOYING IN AUGUST.

He underlined AUGUST twice.

The grandmother was almost too easy.

Her skin already had that thin, weathered look age sometimes gave people.

Leathery.

Mark had noticed it immediately.

By then, the kiddie pool had emptied halfway from all the splashing and struggle around it.

He skinned her carefully enough to preserve broad sections, then stretched the hide across the little plastic pool.

A cover.

He smoothed it flat.

From the children’s craft bin, he found stamps.

Suns.

Watermelons.

Flip-flops.

Palm trees.

Little smiling crabs.

He pressed them over the surface again and again until the thing looked almost cheerful.

Almost store-bought.

Almost like something a parent might order online for twelve ninety-nine with free shipping.

“That’s better.”

The daughter came last.

She had been the one who brought out the candles.

Pumpkin pecan.

Apple cider.

Autumn leaves.

One after another.

In August.

Mark hated her immediately.

Citronella, on the other hand, belonged outside in summer.

Citronella had a purpose.

Citronella understood boundaries.

By the time he finished with her, the air smelled scorched.

He carved into the top of her head just enough to make room for a wick, then wrapped yellow caution tape around the body like a manufacturer labeling a jar.

Across it, he wrote:

SUMMER CITRONELLA

Below that:

OUTDOOR USE ONLY

He considered the label, then added:

KEEPS PESTS AWAY

That one pleased him.

He placed her near the back door.

Not hidden.

Not displayed prominently either.

The police could find the others first. They could think they had seen the whole house.

Then someone would notice the shape near the patio.

Someone would walk closer.

Someone would read the label.

And only then would they notice the second strip of caution tape tied around her wrist.

This message was for them.

Mark wrote slowly.

Carefully.

No spelling mistakes.

No crossed-out words.

SEASONAL ITEM.

DO NOT OPEN UNTIL OCTOBER.

And beneath it:

DON’T COME LOOKING FOR ME. YOU’LL ONLY RUSH THE SPOOK.

He capped the marker and headed toward the driveway to admire his work.

Then the styrofoam tombstone caught his attention.

He stared at the fake engraving.

R.I.P.

Mark snorted.

He pulled the bloody knife from his pocket, walked behind the tombstone, and carved into the blank foam:

SUMMER IS NOT DEAD.

He underlined DEAD twice.

Then he turned the tombstone around so the message faced the house instead of the street.

Let them find it later.

The yard was quiet now.

No children.

No laughter.

No boxes of fake cobwebs scraping across the driveway.

Just cicadas.

Heat.

The sprinkler ticking back and forth over the grass.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

At the curb, Mark stopped for one final look.

The mother lounged beside the pool.

The father waited on the porch.

The boy shifted beneath the oak whenever the breeze caught his kite.

The kiddie pool was covered.

The citronella candle waited beside the patio.

And among all of it stood the ridiculous twelve-foot plastic skeleton that had started the whole thing.

Still wearing its witch’s hat.

Mark considered taking it down.

No.

Let the police see the difference between a Halloween skeleton and a real one.

Summer had returned.

He breathed in the hot August air.

“See?”

A cicada screamed from somewhere high in the oak.

For the first time all evening, something else seemed to understand him.

“Someone appreciates the season.”

REEEEEEEEEEEE.