Welcome to Night Vale - Excerpt - The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

From New York Times bestselling author Joseph Fink (and creator of Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead) comes a wickedly fun middle grade novel about a Halloween-obsessed girl named Esther Gold, who goes out trick-or-treating for one last year, only to find her town under the thrall of a mysterious presence. BOOK LAUNCH: July 27 @ 8pm ET with author Joseph Fink in conversation with Ransom Riggs. Pre-order the book here (https://www.welcometonightvale.com/books#halloweenmoon) to attend this event. THE HALLOWEEN MOON by Joseph Fink is available now at welcometonightvale.com/books or wherever it is you get your books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Joseph Fink here. Back in 2016, I started to write a novel. It was a novel for both children and adults, and it was about one of my favorite holidays, Halloween. I wrote the novel that I desperately wanted to read back when I was 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, and now that novel is here, my first middle grade novel, The Halloween Moon, out tomorrow, July 27th. The novel is about Esther Gold, who loves Halloween more than anything, except this year, Halloween Night never ends, and the scary stories might be happening for real. Today, I am presenting to you an excerpt from that novel, and this is also so exciting. The audiobook is read by Kevin R. Free, who, of course, plays Kevin in Welcome to Nightville. Kevin is a longtime friend and a wonderful performer, and there is no one I would rather have read this book for you all.

So please enjoy the first few chapters of the Halloween moon performed by Kevin R. Free and get the book wherever you get books starting tomorrow. And don't miss the Halloween moon launch event. That's tomorrow, July 27th at 8 p.m. Eastern, in which the one and only ransom rigs and I will talk about writing, Halloween and the spooky side of storytelling. Access to the launch event is free with purchase from participating bookstores. info about that is at welcome to nightfield.com slash books. Okay, here we go. The Halloween Moon. Quill Tree Books and Harper Audio present The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink. Performed by Kevin R. Free.

Before, the Bennington Museum of the Unusual and Rare was not an attraction that received many visitors. Most people had no idea it existed. which was exactly how the museum wanted it. The only regular visitor was James Bennington, who was also its owner and curator. He had put the greater part of a vast inheritance into it, and so he felt entitled to his nightly private tours,

given only to himself, smirking proudly at his trophies. Other than James, the most frequent visitors were those delivering new items to the collection. As a courtesy, he would usually, show them around, although even then he would keep back some of the more rare and famous pieces. It was better that no one knew about those. And he also took care on such tours to emphasize and demonstrate the scale and severity of the security systems in the building. Given the occupation of these visitors and the temptation that his collection represented, it was wise to make clear

up front that any attempt to steal from him would end abruptly and poorly. Once in a great while, he would have a friend in the museum, a fellow collector of the priceless. These occasions were rare because James had almost no friends. He liked to think that his collection was all the friend he needed. But if a collector of his caliber visited, he would give a tour on the understanding that this would be reciprociful. later with a tour of the visitor's collection. These were the only people James allowed to see the rarest pieces, partly to show them that he had definitely outdone them with his collection,

and partly so that when he visited them, they would not hold anything back from him. There was an understanding among collectors such as he. They did not live ordinary lives, nor did they follow ordinary rules. They were better than that, and the scale of their collections was proof of their extraordinary natures. The Bennington Museum of the Unusual and Rare showed up in no guidebooks and had no reviews on the internet.

It was not registered with any organization. In fact, to the world, it was not a museum, but simply James's house, tucked safely away behind walls and gates and security cameras on a nondescript cul-de-sac in one of the many hillsides of southern California, settled by the wealthy and famous. James was not famous, had no interest at all in fame. Many of his neighbors were celebrities, and this only annoyed him, since it meant that cars and

tour buses came by to look at the neighborhood where this actor or this sports star or whatever lived. He didn't care about who his neighbors were. He only cared about his collection and the absolute privacy of himself and his visitors. The reason he detested publicity was simple. His collection was not legal. Every item in it had been stolen, from museums mostly, or heavily guarded storage facilities, or sometimes from the homes of other collectors,

although very rarely because, of course, stealing from a fellow collector was only an invitation for them to steal from you. The illegal collecting community was built on a mutual trust that was, in turn, built on a mutual distrust. On this particular night, in early October, an uncomfortably dry and warm fall evening, with the wind whipping hot and fast in from the desert, spreading a fire through the hills,

so the air was smoky and palpable even in this cloistered little neighborhood, miles from danger. James was expecting no visitors at all. Even a minute outside and these conditions left him, choking and wiping at his eyes, so he had spent the day tucked safely away in the filtered and conditioned air of his museum. All to say that he was confused and frightened when there was a knock at the door. No one should have even been able to knock on his door since it was behind

a secure fence and passed several sensors and cameras. But there was definitely a knock. He pulled out his phone and texted his chief of security, Donna. He had an on-site security staff at all times, and Donna herself practically lived at the house, overseeing its protection. She responded to any texts within seconds, 24 hours a day. But Donna did not reply to the text. Minutes passed with no reply. The knocking continued. He went to the intercom and flicked it on. Go away. He said, in a voice he incorrectly thought, sounded brave. There is armed security on its way. If you leave now, we won't press charges. That's not very welcoming at all, a voice from close behind him said.

He screamed and whirled around. There was a man wearing a uniform like an old-fashioned diner waiter, black pants and white shirt and a white paper hat. Every part of his outfit was perfectly pressed and neatly maintained. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you, the man said. He smiled, a warm and utterly false smile. It's only that no one was answering my knocking. The police are on their way, James said.

You need to leave. The police, the man said, but you said. but you said it was armed security. Which is it, Mr. Bennington? James heard a skittering sound, like a swarm of insects. And was that a child? Who just ran down the hallway behind the man? It had looked like a child.

No children had ever been allowed in the museum. He shuddered to think what a child might do to a collection like his. No one is on their way, Mr. Bennington, are they? The man said. He didn't come any closer, leaning on the mantelpiece of one of the house's eight fireplaces. And you are fine. You are totally fine. We merely need one item from your collection.

My collection is not for sale. The man's smile got wider, hungrier. We aren't buying. This time, three children most definitely ran down the hall. They were wearing ragged and dirty Halloween costumes, although it wouldn't be Halloween for another three weeks. One, dressed like a pirate, turned to look at James as they ran by,

but the light flickered oddly and he couldn't see the child's face. I have a security staff at all times, James said. They have the house surrounded. Oh, the man said, looking around with a gleeful performance of curiosity. He examined the complete lack of other people in the vicinity, and then listened to the utter absence of approaching footsteps outside. He held up his hands, a pose that said, What are you going to do? Good help is hard to find.

I'm sure it's as you say, sir, the man said. and while it's true, I myself don't have a security staff to match the one that is undoubtedly on its way to arrest us, what I do have, and here he unfolded one long pale finger to indicate behind James. Is her? The woman was in the doorway behind him. She hadn't been there before, and he was sure he hadn't heard her approach. She was simply not there, and then there. Pure power radiated from her.

She was small, but her shadow stretched strangely across the room, far too long for her diminutive human form. Hey there, sorry, the woman said, scrunching her face apologetically. This won't take a sec, and then we'll be totally. out of your hair. Promise. I know I certainly hate unexpected visitors. Come on, Dan.

The peculiar man and the terrifying woman turned and walked down the hall toward the collection. James, despite his fear, hurried after them. No matter who these weirdos were, he would never let anyone touch his collection. But to his horror, they already were. There were filthy, costumed children crawling all over the place, like an elementary school Halloween party, sitting inside cases that he had been assured were completely theft-proof,

curiously picking up ancient urns and putting handprints on pieces of Renaissance art registered in international databases as permanently lost. It was his worst nightmare. The woman and her paper-headed sidekick ignored the children and walked through the collection with a focused intent. As we were told, the woman said, stopping at one particular case. Exactly what we needed. James flapped his arms frantically.

Absolutely not. That statue is priceless. The artist died while carving it. You can see where he chipped the elbow as he collapsed. There have been entire books written about that statue. There is no piece of art like it in the country, in the world. The paper-headed man casually lifted the theft-proof plexiglass case, like it was the cover on the scrambled eggs at a free hotel breakfast.

Don't worry, sweetheart, said the woman with a strange shadow. I've no interest in the statue. See? Like a cat, knocking a glass off a table, she playfully scooted the statue to the edge of the display while James's guts twisted, and then the statue fell and shattered. James couldn't breathe.

He would rather she had killed him. His collection was more than him. It was his legacy to the world, although he would never let the world see it. The woman laughed, and he knew then, that she was not a woman. She was some seething, deep power,

wearing the flimsy costume of a human, as false as the costumes on all these children that had somehow gotten into his museum. It was like the sun had put on a plastic dollar store mask and strolled about the earth, pretending to be a person. What I want, the woman said, is this.

She picked up what had been next to, the statue and tossed it lightly from hand to hand. That, James said, when he found air again, but that's... I mean, in a collection like this, it has some interest, but it barely has value outside of the novelty. Perfect, the woman said. Then you won't even miss it. It'll be like we weren't even here.

And just then, they weren't. James was once again alone with his collection. No children, no paper-hatted man, and no woman who was not a woman. He looked around and assessed the damage. The statue was unrecoverable, and that hit him in the guts all over again. And of course there was the theft of the trinket.

But his museum was sprawling, with countless rare, one-of-a-kind items. All in all, he had made it through this okay, terrified, but okay. He put one hand on his chest, felt the air going in and out of his body, and let his racing heart settle back down to its usual pace, which was when he heard the sound that had haunted his dreams for years. The wail of police sirens in his front drive. One. Esther Gold loved Halloween.

Maybe you love Halloween. Maybe you dress up every year and put a lot of time and care into your costume. Maybe you watch scary movies and then can't sleep, but also can't resist watching more. Maybe candy corn tastes better to you than other candy, not because it tastes better, it doesn't, but because it tastes like a moment in time, like a season. But you don't love Halloween the way Esther did. Esther refused to watch anything that wasn't a scary movie. Her dad liked to watch sitcoms. Her mom liked to watch important dramas starring important people.

Her brother liked watching movies in which people kissed, although he pretended he didn't. But Esther only liked movies with darkness and Dutch angles, and the part where the main character leans down to the sink to wash their face, and then when they look up again there is a pale, menacing creature behind them in the mirror. Esther made three different costumes every Halloween. One was for school, one was for trick-or-treating, and one was in case the other two didn't turn out as well as she had hoped.

She put more time into her backup costume than most people put into any costume they would ever wear. Esther didn't even like candy, but she collected as much as she possibly could for the sheer act of collecting it. She would eat some of it, sure, it was fine, but mostly the contents of her overflowing bag went to friends and to her brother, or sometimes to the trash, if her parents discovered how much candy she had managed to collect. unhealthy her father often said he was right greedy her mother often said she was wrong esther wasn't greedy about the candy she didn't collect it merely to have it she collected it because it was part of the ritual of halloween and more than anything she loved this annual night when everyone gave up on being realistic and clear-headed and being too old for scary stories, and just let themselves pretend a little.

This is what Halloween was to Esther. It was a night in which the whole neighborhood came together to tell a story, and above all, Esther loved stories. Yes, Esther Gold loved Halloween. But one year, Halloween was not a holiday about getting together to pretend a scary story. One year, the scary story became real. Two, Esther had always been the only Jewish kid in her grade. This had usually not mattered to her. Being Jewish wasn't that big of a deal anymore, she would tell herself. But also, it mattered a lot.

It was both important and unimportant at the same time. If she had been asked to explain this, she wouldn't have been able to, but she felt it. When she was eight, she and all the other kids she had grown up with had moved to a new school. They were leaving the school for the little kids and going to the school where they would be staying through junior high. It was a defining moment, as far as such terms apply in towns where not a lot ever happens. The first day of school had been on Yom Kippur. No one who set the calendar for the school district knew they had scheduled it this way. They didn't know what Jan Kapoor was.

As the other kids got to know their new school, Esther spent the day in her synagogue, which was a 30-minute drive from the town she lived in. When she arrived on the second day of school, everyone else knew where the bathrooms were, where to go for recess and lunch, and all of the new rules that had been explained to them while she was at synagogue. It felt like vertigo.

Her hands shook and she, She couldn't make them stop. The teachers did their best to help her out, but none of them were very sympathetic. None of them could understand why she didn't just show up to the first day of school. Her grandmother had been the one who taught Esther to love her Jewish identity, to be proud of it, even if perhaps people treated her worse because of it. Her grandmother's name was Debbie, and Esther's parents would have named her after Debbie, except that Jewish people don't name children after people who are still alive.

So Esther had been named after her great-grandmother instead. It was Debbie who had first introduced Esther to a love of Halloween. Esther's parents didn't get it, but Debbie would have Esther over when she was little, take her trick-or-treating and show her spooky movies probably a touch too old for her at the time. Now Esther was 13. Her bat mitzvah had been four months earlier. It was Halloween-themed, of course, even though it was in June, which the kids at her synagogue would have found incredibly dorky

if she had invited even a single one of them. They were all from the same town, which wasn't her town, and so it felt like all of them were already friends with each other. There had never been room for her to join their close-knit cliques. And so, while they invited each other to their breakfast, bar and bat mitzvah parties, she only invited her family and a few non-Jewish friends from school. It was okay, the party ruled. She had a magician perform.

She loved magicians for the same reason she loved Halloween. They told a story that promised a world more interesting than the world she had to live in. Grandma Debbie had loved it. The rest of the adults were less sure. You know, her dad had said at the party, looking at. over the paper-cut-out bats and ghosts on the wall. This means you're an adult now, and adults don't go trick-or-treating. She had ignored that, and it hadn't come up again since.

She knew that eventually there would come a last year she could go door to door, walking past a few plastic pumpkins scattered half-heartedly on a lawn, or past elaborate front yard displays full of fake body parts and light-up ghosts. There would come a last year. she would feel that moment of anticipation and apprehension as she knocked on a stranger's door and waited to see who would answer. There would come a last year for the satisfying weight of a full bag of candy after a round of trick-or-treating. But this was not that year. Next year, maybe. Or the year after. Or the year after that. Three. On the day before holley,

Halloween, Esther started her walk home from school by herself. Her parents let her walk alone because their house was only 10 minutes away from the school, and the roads between were all quiet and suburban. Still, many of her friends' parents gopped in horror, as they watched her go right past the waiting line of SUVs and minivans in the school parking lot, shocked to see her step out onto a public sidewalk, rather than get into an air-conditioned vehicle. Sasha Min's mother called,

Do you want a ride, honey? And Sasha groaned from the back, where she was sitting next to her brother, Edward, in his car seat. No, Mom, not her. Sasha do not be a brat. Esther, honey, it's dangerous to walk alone. Hop in. That's okay, Mrs. Min, she said.

And Sasha sighed in loud relief. I don't know what your parents are thinking, letting you walk all that way by yourself, Mrs. Min said, just loud enough that Esther could hear. Edward threw one of his toy trucks from the back seat into the front seat and laughed. Esther didn't get the big deal. It was a ten-minute walk. She didn't know what kind of great dangers Mrs. Min thought might be lurking in the lazy sunlight of a Southern California afternoon. But the most threatening obstacles Esther had ever

encountered during the day were those same parents, too busy scolding their children while driving to notice Esther crossing the street. The way home wound by a series of quiet cul-de-sacs before dipping through a bit of wild land that had been left by the real estate developer as a combination vacant lot and low-maintenance park. The truth was that the development of The developer hadn't wanted to shell out the money for bulldozing the little canyon into submission. And so there was this pit of land full of narrow trails. Some put there half-heartedly by the developer, and some etched by the eager feet of children as they sought out every hidden cranny and secret clearing.

The stream that ran through the center of the canyon was just gutter runoff on its way to the city sewer. When the sun was out, the canyon was a playground for the neighborhood. children. And Esther loved it for the adventure it offered, only a short and steep dirt path down from a suburban street. But the moment the sun went down, the safety of the canyon disappeared, and it became the domain of all sorts of creatures, from roving coyotes to most worrisome of all, high schoolers who were known to use the secluded areas of the canyon for late-night parties. The canyon was where the older teenagers did whatever they couldn't do in the streets and empty parking lots. Esther was wisely cautious of the feral animals, but it was the older kids in their parties,

parties that felt to her both grown up and wild, that put a pit in her stomach as big as the canyon itself. As she walked home that afternoon, the canyon was still in its daylight form, a pretty bit of nature between tract homes. She took the path through the center of the canyon, across the wooden bridge over the gray gutter runoff pretending to be a stream, past the low-hanging branches of a white-flowered plant she knew was called mule fat. This plant and its name are real. Look it up.

Her father had taught her the name on one of their walks when she was little, and it had always stuck with her, even as she had forgotten every other plant he had taught her. Past the mule fat was a tunnel that went under the main road. The walls of the tunnel were made of corrugated metal, so passing through it made her feel like water running down a drain. In the middle of the tunnel, the air got cold, no matter how warm the day.

It was the only part of the walk home that Esther found unnerving. The shadows in the middle of the tunnel were deep. seeming to promise secret side passageways leading even farther away from the warmth of day. Passageways that a child would never find their way out of. She and her friend Augustine had grown up playing in the canyon. They had made up a game called the Feats of Strength. One of them would announce that the game was starting

and then they both had to get through a series of feats before the other did. The first feat was close. Climbing to the top of the tunnel entrance and sitting with your feet dangling over. Then you had to crawl through a narrow pipe in the drainage ditch. Third, you made your way carefully, and often painfully, up a steep slope covered in cactus, running along a secret path that the two of them had formed by passing over it so many times. The path was directly against the back fences of nearby houses, and the dogs in those backyards would jump and bark as they ran.

to the sight of the final and as yet unattempted feat. This was leaping from a ledge into a pond full of runoff water below. Neither of them had ever completed that last feat, mainly because the height of the jump scared them both, but also, and this was the reason they set out loud and chose to believe, the pond was absolutely disgusting, brackish, algae covered, and full of who knows what,

from the city gutters. But Augustine wasn't with her on this walk, so she hurried through the tunnel to the other side, where the trail grew broad and flat, winding along the fake stream until it rose sharply back up to the gate that led to her street. She came out of the gate and turned the corner,

passing Mr. Nathaniel's house. Mr. Nathaniel was washing his car. He washed his car constantly, even though there was usually a drought, declared in Southern California. And he never seemed to drive it anywhere, so the car never got dirty. It was a Ford pickup,

stationed always in the driveway. Not only did Mr. Nathaniel hose it down a couple times a week, but he also liked to spray down his driveway and the sidewalk in front of it. It drove Esther's father crazy. We're in a water shortage, and he's watering the sidewalk,

her father would say, peeking through the blinds of their front window, at Mr. Nathaniel, who was stubbornly spraying the concrete like it might sprout and grow. Once Mr. Nathaniel had even gone out in the middle of a rainstorm, standing outside without an umbrella or jacket, his shirt clinging and turning seethru, spraying water onto a driveway that had already become a waterfall after two days of rain. That time Esther's father had been too angry even to speak. I...

He had said to Esther, waving his hand. Well, he had said. And then he had gone to take a nap. Sometimes when Esther's father got too frustrated, he would just take a nap. Esther didn't like Mr. Nathaniel, not for the same reason as her father. She also thought that his constant car and sidewalk washing

were wasteful, but the real reason she didn't like Mr. Nathaniel, was because there was an aspect about him that unsettled her. Nothing specific, but on a gut level, he didn't feel right. She hated walking by his house when he was outside, which he often was, hair must, wrinkled face sullen and blank, checkered shirt, loose at the collar with a white tuft coming out of it at his throat. As long as she could remember, he had seemed the same age,

and that age was very old. She walked quickly past him. He ignored her and kept spraying his car, although she swore that he aimed the hose intentionally so the water bounced off its side and sprayed her. Now her socks and shoes were all wet. She hated Mr. Nathaniel. Two doors down from Mr. Nathaniel was the Gabler House.

The Gablers were perfectly nice people except for one great crime that outweighed every pleasant, oh hi there Esther and friendly wave. The crime was this. Mr. Gabler was a dentist, and so on Halloween night they put out a bowl full of toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes. Esther didn't require that everyone love Halloween as much as she did.

She didn't require that everyone participate. Some people turned off their lights and pretended they weren't home when Halloween came around, and that was fine with her. as long as there were always some houses with lights on and jack-o-lanterns lit, then the non-participators were merely background noise to her Halloween experience. But to actively spit in the face of all that Halloween stands for by getting every passing trick-or-treaters hopes up, only to have those hopes dashed by a plastic bowl full of what could only be described

as the moral opposite of candy, This to Esther was a crime without pardon. Her only solace was that the toothbrushes usually ended up scattered all over their lawn, and the toothpaste tubes were often put on the Gables' front walk and stomped until they exploded, a little mint rainbow on the concrete, left to dry to a chalky lump by the next morning sun. Once a year, on November 1st, Mr. Gableer looked like Mr. Nathaniel, carefully going over his driveway with a hose. Oh, hi there, Esther, called Mr. Gabler.

He often came home for lunch, since his office was only a ten-minute drive away. Right now it looked like he was on his way back to his car for an afternoon of rooting around in people's mouths. Hi, Mr. Gabler, she said, trying to sound as pleasant as she possibly could. She knew his heresy against Halloween wasn't really his fault. He just didn't get it. She could and did, and always would forever and ever hold it against him, but she still tried to be polite about it. In any case, the truth was that the toothpaste wasn't what bothered her most about Mr. Gabler. The main issue was his absolute mundanity.

There was no adventure that she could see to his life, and it seemed such a waste of the freedom adulthood gives you to spend it staring in strangers' mouths and watching TV news every night. It was the opposite of everything Halloween stood for to Esther. The toothpaste was only a symptom of the utter boredom of Mr. Gabler's life. Say hello to your dad for me, Mr. Gabler said as he got back into his car. I sure will, she said, to the slamming of his car door. She sure wouldn't. Toothpaste. Ugh. As she reached her corner,

she heard strange music in the air. She had never heard music like it before. It was the warbling chime of an ice cream truck, but the melody wasn't any of the happy and annoying melodies those trucks usually blared. Instead, the music sounded sad, or even angry. The song was complex and long, and a little off-key.

It was the music an ice-cream truck would play at a funeral, if anyone was ever eccentric enough to have an ice-cream truck at their funeral. The source of the music came trundling out of the cul-de-sac with worn tires and a hood belching puffs of black smoke. The ice-cream truck, if that's what it was, was filthy. And along the side of the truck there was the faded image of a jack-o-lantern. drawn so crudely that it barely resembled any jackalanturn she had ever seen. And chipped and badly applied type around the jackal lantern were the words,

Queen of Halloween pumpkins, get yours while they last. An ice cream truck that sold pumpkins. What an odd idea. But she also found it cool. More everyday institutions should be changed in October to celebrate Halloween. schools should teach ghost stories. Every house should be haunted. Every dream should be a nightmare.

The driver gave her a long look as he drove by. His hair was greasy and combed down over his face. What she could see of his expression looked sullen, like he hated not only his job, but the whole world too. Suddenly the idea of the truck seemed less cool. She decided it was best to get through her front door and quick. By the time she got inside and up to her room, she was already forgetting about the creepy man driving the ice cream truck

that wasn't an ice cream truck, because it was only one more night until Halloween, and there was so much left to do.