“The gruesome ghoul, the grisly ghoul, without the slightest noise,
Waits patiently beside the school, to feast on girls and boys.”
-“The Ghoul,” Jack Prelutsky
***
The first time the Night People came for Amina she was six years old, and it was Valentine’s Day, and also her birthday.
She stayed up late that night with a flashlight, looking at the Valentines from her classmates and chewing the small, chalky candy hearts the teacher gave out.
The cards were flat, pink and red cartoons that didn’t really make sense to her. When she thought of a heart she imagined something meaty and hot, not a shape cut from paper. But at least the candy was nice.
It was approaching midnight when she heard scratching at the window. And, peeking out of the covers, she saw a man standing there. This should have frightened her, but it didn’t. In fact, although she didn’t really know why, she was thrilled.
The stranger wore a black coat and a hat with a wide brim, and his eyes looked like shiny pennies. He tapped the window with his sharp, unkempt nails again, asking to be let in.
Amina tiptoed to the window and opened it. The man reached in to pick her up and sat her on his shoulder. She held on, anticipating a swift ride, and together they ran off into the night, Amina feeling perfectly secure.
The stranger’s coat, she discovered, was not a foul thing, but smelled of savories and spices and things deep in the ground which were not yet rotten. When she got older, she would recognize them as funeral scents.
It was a cold night and she had only pajamas, but she didn’t mind. With the winter wind in her hair she felt free. She wasn’t surprised to discover they were going to the cemetery, with its aged trees and leaning monuments and the somber, shadowy opulence of the Millionaire’s Row tombs up on the hill.
The stranger lifted her over the fence and set her down softly, then clamored over it himself. A single candle glowed on top of a nearby headstone, where the grave was open and the box taken out. Here were a dozen people dressed in black. They welcomed Amina like old friends.
The sight of the open coffin and the smell of grave dirt didn’t bother her. Even when she saw what the Night People were doing with the unearthed body (her unspeaking protector soon joined them, leaving Amina perched on the headstone to watch) it didn’t seem wrong.
Bodies are put into the earth to be eaten, after all. Why should bugs and worms be the only ones to do it?
But when they offered her a seat at the feast, she shook her head. They frowned and muttered, but Amina’s silent guardian quieted them with a gesture, and no one seemed to want to challenge him. They left Amina be.
When it was over, he put her back on his shoulders and carried her to her window again. She felt bad about declining the night’s offer, but she knew that it wouldn’t have been right to eat anything. It wasn’t time yet. Something was missing…
The man in black tucked Amina in and kissed her on the forehead, and as soon as he was gone she went right into a dreamy slumber, feeling warm and safe as she never had before.
At breakfast the next morning her parents piled food high on her plate, but she wasn’t hungry. They must have seen something in her face, because their smiles faltered when she looked at them. A furtive glance passed between them, and they left the table. Amina didn’t mind. She preferred being alone.
She never told her parents about the nighttime visit, but she imagined they knew anyway. They still loved her, but it was a cold, panicky affection, like they were afraid of what might happen if they didn‘t.
For her part, Amina didn’t think about either of them much. She knew they weren’t really her parents. She had a new family now, and eventually they’d come back for her. She couldn’t say when, but for the rest of her life she never doubted that it was true.
***
When Amina was 20 they came again. It was another Valentine’s Day, and it was also her wedding night.
Her parents were dead by then (a freak accident, a ferry collision), but in the meantime she’d met Jim, picking him from one of her classes at the university.
He sat next to her for an entire semester without saying anything, but now and then he’d look at her without realizing she noticed.
One day she trapped him after class and told him he should take her out. He tried to shy his way out of it, but she didn’t let him. Amina always got her way eventually.
Jim took her out like she said he would, and then he did it again, and after a while he forgot to be shy around her anymore, although he never did talk much. That was fine with Amina.
It went without saying they’d be married the next year, although neither of them had money for a wedding. Jim worked as a security guard and Amina worked at the library, or the music store, or the farmer’s market, depending on what day of the week it was.
They made just barely enough for a two-room apartment. It was a small, drafty place, but Amina liked it. It was near the cemetery.
The wedding would be a small affair, just the two of them and a few of Jim’s friends, because Amina had no real friends (who would come out in the daylight, at least), and Jim’s parents disliked Amina so much that they refused to put in an appearance.
That was all right too. Just the two of them would have been enough.
Did she love him? Not quite. She loved his earnestness, and the quiet way he did every little thing without compromise. She loved the feeling of his slumbering body in bed. She loved that he got up every day with no preconceptions and laid down each night with a sense of deliberate amazement.
And she loved that he was never so afraid of her that he wanted to leave. If anything, fear brought them closer. But she had to admit that something was missing.
After the wedding dinner they went back to the apartment. Jim promised that someday they would have a real honeymoon, just as extravagant as they wanted. She told him she didn’t care about things like that (even though she understood that those promises were more for him than for her). Only one thing about the wedding night interested her.
She lured him to their front door with kisses, each lingering a little longer than the last. It had been his idea to wait until after the wedding; it was the only time in Amina’s life that she hadn’t gotten her way, and though she’d found the wait annoying it was also thrilling somehow.
The short trip from the front door to the bedroom was a flurry of activity, with clothes pulled at, pulled off, and in a few cases damaged.
She expected Jim to be as passive a lover as he was everything else, someone who would require coaxing and guidance. But to her surprise, he took charge right away, pushing her half-clothed against the door and crushing her mouth with a kiss that drew all the air out of her.
She spread her legs and wrapped them around him, the muscles of her thighs squeezing him. Amina was strong. She never let on exactly how strong. Jim could never really overpower her, but his touch was firm in a way that left no room for compromise. Amina, delighted, let him have his way. Where was this coming from?
He kneaded her naked breasts until she gasped, then sculpted the curves of her hips while his lips pressed again and again to the side of her neck and shoulders. The pulse of his erection was tangible even before he took it out. Its regularity made Amina think of a metronome, and she giggled.
When he pushed it in she gasped and then whimpered, wrapping her arms and legs tighter around him. The wet feeling seemed to go all the way through her, and the pressure of his penetrating cock came to rest at the tip of her spine as all the jumbles of nerves in her body sang.
Her nipples swelled and hardened, pushing into his bare chest as her fingers skittered like pale spiders down his back, trying to find purchase on his ass as he thrust in-out, in-out. She wanted to grab hold with both hands and pull him all the way into her but couldn’t quite reach.
They went on like that anyway, until Amina’s back ached and her knees felt weak but she still didn’t want to give in. When Jim’s cock finally contracted and then emptied a hot, wet, gratifying spurt inside of her she fell onto him, kissing his open mouth over and over until they landed in bed and fell asleep curled up in each other’s arms, exhausted and content.
In her dreams, Amina heard the scratching at the window. When she woke up she heard it still. She knew without even pulling up the blinds what it was.
She rose quietly, dressed and put on shoes, and left without waking Jim. It was another chilly Valentine’s night, but a bright one, with a full moon that painted the world silver-black.
Her escort waited at the bottom of the stairs. He hadn’t changed at all, but she was too big to carry now. They walked together instead. The trip made Amina feel very grown up.
This time Amina climbed the cemetery fence on her own, knees and elbows scrambling. A trail of flickering candles led to a particular grave. Everyone was there, just as Amina remembered them, and they all remembered her too.
She felt at home in the graveyard. She fit here, naturally, side-by-side with everyone around the unearthed coffin. She listened to their stories of great funerals past, sang along with the very old songs, and joined in their game of passing bones from one to the other with eyes closed and guessing which part they were holding.
She even took off her clothes and lay down in the empty grave to see what it felt like. It was her special night, in her special place, with her special friends. But she still didn’t eat when they offered.
As dawn approached, her shy chaperone walked her home again. She gave him a kiss on the cheek at the door. He smelled of incense and myrrh. When she slipped back into bed Jim woke, commenting on how cold she was. She kissed him until he quieted.
After that things changed, like they had with her parents. Jim was still kind, and loyal, and affectionate, and supportive. They worked and studied and spent nights together like they always had. But there was something brittle around the edges of their life together.
He knows, she thought. Maybe he’d followed her that night, or spotted her slipping out or back in? Maybe the scratching at the window woke him, and he’d investigated? Maybe she’d come back smelling of grave dirt?
Or maybe he just knew, without seeing or hearing anything, because he loved her and sometimes you just know things about the person you love.
She knew he was afraid, but he still didn’t leave her. It wasn’t in his nature.
Amina considered taking him to the cemetery. She wasn’t sure if her friends would be there, but it was all right if it was just the two of them. They could sing the songs and play the bone game, and she’d repeat as many of the stories as she could remember, and Jim could lie in the grave with her and—oh, it would be extra perfect.
She realized now couldn’t really love Jim the way she wanted until he was part of her perfect nighttime world. When he finally was, he’d know the real her. And everything would be the way it ought to be.
She thought about it, but she didn’t do it. She was afraid that it would be too much for him. That he was too human. If he reacted with horror, it would be the same as rejection. And that was something Amina could never stand for.
***
In the end it didn’t matter. The next Valentine’s Day was Jim’s funeral.
One night, in his sleep, his heart just turned off. The doctors said it was probably caused by an arrhythmia, something that could have gone on for years without him noticing it. Jim never got any check-ups. Doctors cost too much.
The funeral was a rainy day, full of black umbrellas. All of Jim’s friends came, and Amina could barely remember any of their names. They all went to Jim’s parents’ house later. They called it a wake, although Amina knew that a wake should properly be held before the funeral.
(She was getting a sociology degree with an emphasis on funeral customs).
Most of Jim’s friends were consoling, even thought it was clear they didn’t really want to talk to her. One of them might have been hitting on her. (He didn’t know her very well). At the end of the night, after a lot of wine, Jim’s mother offered a tearful apology and said they should try to begin again, now that they were all each other had left of Jim.
Amina said she’d like that (knowing that nothing would ever come of it). They offered to let her stay the night there, but she turned them down. She was anxious to be home.
She’d imagined the apartment would be dark and empty when she got back that night, but there was light in the window. On the first landing on the stairs, a lit candle waited for her, and then another, and another, leading all the way inside and back into the bedroom, where all her nighttime friends were waiting for her.
Each of them gave her a single grave flower, until soon she had a sizable bouquet. Her quiet guardian draped a black veil over her head too. And why not? This would have been her first wedding anniversary, but in a way it was a wedding in itself.
Because there, on the bed, fresh from the earth, was her groom. Jim looked as handsome as the day they’d met. Death became him.
It was a honeymoon and a wake. When Amina lay down next to the cold, unflinching body of her husband and took him in her arms, she was happy. They were finally together the way she’d always wanted. Jim’s dear heart had known her so well that it stopped just for her.
Her friends were quiet, respecting the sanctity of the moment. Still, there was a certain impatience in the room, and Amina felt it too. Much as she’d have loved to spend all the hours until dawn lying with Jim, she couldn’t put off the next part forever.
After all, after the wedding comes the banquet.