“Nice,” Hogan said. “I’m Hogan. I bake things. Can you remember the jinni who brought you tolife?”
“There was ajinni?”
I sat forward and patted Hogan’s thigh. “Gnomes have really short memories. He won’t remember how this all happened tohim.”
“Did you take the penguin?” Delaneyasked.
“There was a penguin!” Abner blinked his good eye and looked completely confused. “Anyone got someone I could eat? A statue, a relief, maybe some sweet yard art? Abner sure could use somecandy.”
Hogan laughed. “Dude. You are sometal.”
“Can you tell what’s making him animate?” Delaneyasked.
“Can you tell what’s making him a zombie?” Iasked.
Hogan tipped his head a little and scratched under his hat. “A beheading, a burial, abite.”
I shivered. It was exactly what Death had said. “That is socool.”
My doorbell rang with a buzz followed by a scream because it was Halloween, and I didn’t do anything byhalves.
“I’ll get it,” Myrasaid.
“It looks, kind of...colorful?” Hogan asked, like he was talking to himself. “Yeah, colorful. Like fire and smoke. It’s kind oforangey.”
“What is?” Iasked.
“The wish that was granted. It was something for a…child, I think. A gift. That’s…well, that’s not what Iexpected.”
I could imagine he hadn’t expected his absent father to have done anything as nice or maybe mundane, if one considered that he was a jinni, as granting a kid’s wish for a statue to come tolife.
“Trick or treat!” a chorus of kid voices calledout.
“Wow, you look so scary,” Myra said from the door. “Are you a vampire or ashark?”
“Both!” a little kidcrowed.
Aw…I was missing out on the kid costumes. That was one of my favorite parts ofHalloween.
“Abner’s old.” Hogan waved his hand. “But I think…I think he belonged to a kid once. A long, long time ago. A littlegirl?”
“Poppy,” Abner said with a wistful note. “Sweet, brightPoppy.”
“You remember her?” Iasked.
Abner’s already clouded eyes got cloudier. “We used to play tea party. Every gnight in October. She’d open her bedroom window and bring me inside. We ate candycorn.”
“What happened to Poppy?” Delaneyasked.
“It was the strangest thing,” Abner reminisced. “She kept getting bigger. Until she wasn’t little. Until she was like you. And then she droveaway.”
“She didn’t take you?” Hoganasked.
“I fell out of her hands when she was packing me in the trailer. Head broke right off. She leaked water out of her face and buried my head. Left my body standing aboveit.”
Sothat’show Abner lost his head. I couldn’t imagine how many years ago that had happened. Fifty? Ahundred?
And all this time we’d been dealing with his body as the leader of the gnomes, not knowing his head was buried beneath it. I wondered if someone had decided it was time to bury the body too. Or throw it away in the landfill.
