Amulet

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Halloween had supplanted Christmas as Sean’s favorite holidays many decades ago, some time during college when it changed from an evening of dressing up to trick-or-treat (or to take his sister around the neighborhood while shunned by his former friends and schoolmates) into an excuse to party and indulge himself in all manner of hedonistic delights. His vicarious joy from the pleasure of children only further cemented the holiday as his favorite, bereft as it was of cultural or religious baggage or family expectations throughout his estrangement from his sister.

The Neville-Bernstein residence had developed something of a reputation in their neighborhood and the surrounding area, as a house with festivities. One generous with the candy, and who wouldn’t cut off trick-or-treaters because they were in high school. It was an area where Josh and Sean had originally disagreed, Josh more judgmental than the telepath, but Sean had persevered because it was his house (at first) and because his husband (then boyfriend) had a rather poor track record of winning arguments with Sean as the opposition rather than in court or wearing down some of his other friends.

This year brought distinct challenges as, for the first time, Josh was responsible not merely for hanging spiderwebs in his home but for transforming Pilot Ridge from small mountain town into Halloween spooktacular. Sean certainly did not resent his husband’s absence, even as he missed him for their ritual. After all, the telepath, too, had increased obligations from his role as acting headmaster at Hammel, tasked with planning their annual Halloween dance rather than his duties beginning and ending on the day of when recruited to chaperone.

He had made the best of the situation, turning to his protegee and extending an invitation to Irving Coley, Jr. to lend a hand in exchange for undivided attention for the entire afternoon (an offer unvoiced) and the promise of a hot meal afterward.

Retrieving the decorations from the attic was an increasingly precarious task, as his the pain in his knees worsened with each year, and the temperatures had begun to drop outside, compounding the aches and stiffness. One of these days, he would need to move the entire kit and kaboodle into the garage or even the basement, to ease the burden of decorating for multiple holidays throughout the calendar year.

But that was a task for another day.

Once all of the boxes had been piled and sorted in the living room, divided between upstairs and downstairs, indoors and outdoors, the two of them began their task. They had tape aplenty to aid in affixing cobwebs and skeletons where they might fit.

“What did your family do for Halloween back home, Junior?”

[Irving Coley, Jr]

Dr. Neville's home was so quaint, and Junior adored it almost as much as he adored the psychiatrist. He'd latched onto the opportunity to help out, flattered to be asked when there were any number of other students who would surely leap at the same chance. (and many who would have balked, bothered as they were by the mere presence of telepathy - but Junior couldn't bring himself to mind, not when he had a dad who could control minds).

He enjoyed Halloween, although he hadn't gone trick or treating since manifesting. This wasn't due to any internal drive to appear mature, but instead was due primarily to the presence of his cousins. He wanted them to believe he was mature, to fit in as best he could with the Coley family.

"Oh, um. This, honestly. I helped Mrs. Cunningham decorate. But she can animate things, so there were less ladders involved...." His gaze drifted towards the step ladder propped up against one corner of the living room. "And then helped mom hand out candy."

When she was feeling up to it; equally likely he would hand it out himself. When he'd been very little his dad had taken him trick or treating, but that tradition had come to an end as his dad had progressed further at work. "Sometimes I went trick or treating with Brandon and his parents."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Only a member of Connecticut’s Coley clan would consider Sean’s home quaint given the excessive number of bedrooms and space for two middle-aged men and a rabbit, down to the four-car garage when only one of them drove. Still, Sean had glimpsed memories of Junior’s childhood home, the type of turn of the last century mansion that put to shame any house in the state of Vermont, not merely in Pilot Ridge.

It was the boy’s earnestness that cast the thought as complimentary and amusing rather than callous and judgmental. His older cousin George, for instance, after years at Hammel had lost any such generosity of interpretation.

His fingers unspooled the purple, orange, and green spider lights for the porch with a dexterity better befitting a man half his age. Familiarity guided the task where he would slow with a new decoration (or if he had taken less care when wrapping them after the holiday last year; an ounce of prevention).

A soft smile graced his features, thoughts of the scene from Beauty and the Beast. “Animation would make the task easier. The height helps, but…” He gestured vaguely at the room around them, high ceilings and difficult to reach corners.

“Handing out candy is one of my favorite parts of the holiday. Getting to see all of the children in their costumes, faces lit up with the Halloween spirit, it warms the heart.” Finished with the lights, he set them aside, reaching for another spool.

“When was the last time you went trick-or-treating?”

[Irving Coley, Jr]

Junior reached into the box of decorations to pluck forth a plastic spider when a plastic witch's head began cackling loudly. He dropped the spider, fumbling to try and catch it, but it landed on one shiny dress shoe. "Oh, umm. I think we were...eight..." He picked the spider up again, surveying the ceiling for a perfect place to stick it. He tried to recall that last Halloween trick or treating, difficult because so many had passed in between. "I was Buzz Lightyear and Brandon was Woody. Yeah, that was third grade."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“Third grade?” Sean repeated sympathetically, his instinct to frown held in check by three and a half decades of professional training as a tabula rasa and an addition decade and a half of a telepath’s tendency to decouple thoughts and emotions from facial expression.

Eight years old was so young to have been forced to abandon trick-or-treating. Ryan had continued well into high school, and even Sean himself had gone out until he was twelve, when the telepathy rendered it impossible to return home. By comparison, eight was a baby.

Almost half of Junior’s brief life spent without the holiday ritual.

The telepath reached into the box, flicking off the witch’s head while making a mental note to remove the batteries at the beginning of next month when he swapped Halloween decor for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

“Woody and Buzz Lightyear do make for a good motif. Mr. Bernstein and I try to match as well.” Their costumes did not always comport to a romantic duo, even if they invariably found themselves used that way in the bedroom afterwards.

Rising to his feet, he crossed to the fireplace to hang the first string of lights. “Do you plan to dress up this year, Junior?”

[Irving Coley, Jr]

Junior beamed at the praise, even if it was for a costume he hadn't fit into for a decade. "Yeah, I'm going to be a scarecrow. I bought some overalls."

They were one $130, which he thought was a completely reasonable amount of money to drop casually on a pair of overalls he might never have a reason to wear again. "But I already had a plaid shirt. The hay is the tricky part, but Poppy promised to help."

And he was glad of that; her creativity would only improve the end product, but also he simply liked spending the time with her.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“A scarecrow. That’s clever.” Sean’s praise was sincere, not the idle compliments he offered to students when he thought they required a bit of attention or a boost to their self-confidence. Costumes remained an area of expertise and special interest to the psychiatrist, a culmination of his own interest in dressing up and the merge instinct which caused him to experience his husband’s enthusiasm in equal measure and complementary role.

He didn’t inquire into how much the boy had spent on the garments, unable to judge for the indulgence (once, he and Josh had jetted off to Burlington to buy that very same item for a night of roleplay, although they had surely spent less) and aware that Junior’s sense of reasonable price differed from the median family. Sean was well off between an upper middle class upbringing and the dual-incomes of professionals without children or expensive hobbies.

“Tucking a little hay into your sleeves and your collar and under a hat if you wear one should do the trick.” He spoke from experience. Scarecrows were popular for parties.

Unfurling the lights, he ran them along the mantle, allowing them to dangle like spiders from their cobwebs.

[Irving Coley, Jr]

"Right, but I don't want it to fall out." Junior explained, tucking the spider on a lampshade. He wasn't a particularly energetic dancer, but he still couldn't imagine hay remaining tucked into his sleeves for the entirety of any of the Hammel school dances. Shedding hay would be embarrassing, particularly given that he would have family present to witness that.

And Poppy.

And Brandon.

Although he expected that Poppy wouldn't tease him about it he still wanted her to think well of him.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean attached the end of the string of lights to a small hook hanging off the side of the mantle, placed there many years ago to aid in decorating. The telepath so loved particular holidays and had purchased a number of light strings for all manner of holidays: Christmas and now Chanukah, Halloween, Valentine’s Day… When he finished with the first string, he crossed the room, returning to the box to retrieve another decoration.

“What about using a sweat band or a rubber band to hold the straw in place? That way, you could tuck it in and it shouldn’t jostle loose unless you work up a sweat on the dance floor. And those are easy to find on short notice.”

Perhaps Sean underestimated the enthusiasm of youth due to his own dislike of dancing. However, it was the idea that first came to mind, a solution that he would employ if he were inclined towards a similar costume.

He rummaged through the box again, this time removing a large cobweb to hang in the corner of the room, directly above the piano. Metaphorical or not, it certainly added to the ambiance. A proper creepy Halloween manor was infested by wriggly creatures.

[Irving Coley, Jr]

Junior did, in fact, plan on dancing although he wasn't entirely sure he would be working up a sweat; he'd taken dance lessons for more sedate moves than those that could be expected from many of his peers. Certainly nothing that might be seen in a club or that might resemble the choreography from the dance team.

Still, the idea was Dr. Neville's, which made it genius. Even if it ultimately didn't work, he believed that it would because of his unshakable faith in his mentor.

"That's a great idea! I'll have to try that," He decided, reaching one hand into the decoration box and pulling out a little mouse in a skeleton costume, the body made of wood and the arms and legs and head cloth. He moved towards the mantle, setting the mouse where it's little cloth legs could dangle over the side.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

This was one area where Sean’s upbringing overlapped with Junior’s despite the wide wealth chasm and nearly fifty years between them. After all, the Nevilles had only been upper-middle class, a family headed by a respected surgeon, himself the son of a doctor but without the resources and class markers of the Coleys. His parents paid for school and could have afforded to do so even with today’s exorbitant price tag. The Coleys could purchase a college of Junior’s choosing (but of course it would be Yale).

Sean had been enrolled in cotillion as a shy, awkward teenager whose social circle had abandoned him and who had managed only to befriend his powers trainer. To broaden his horizons. Junior had been enrolled as a matter of expectations, along with his other cousins, like his father and aunts and uncles and grandparents, with the assumption that the next generation of Coleys by blood and by marriage would do the same.

As a result, they could waltz, but that was hardly what one did at a high school Halloween dance. Not that Sean kept up with modern dance trends, but he recalled from Valentine’s Day that Ariana Grande demanded peppier moves.

The psychiatrist hung the cobweb above the piano, implying more than intended as he stretched the fabric to create the familiar concentric pattern. “Let me know how it goes. And if you want me to take some photos of you and Poppy, I can do that too. Mr. Bernstein and I will be camped out by the concessions.”

As they were every year.

[Irving Coley, Jr]

Irving's face lit up at the offer of photos as he dug through the decorations, untangling a plastic skeleton half his height.

"Could you? If I don't text some to my mom she'll be sad."

She wouldn't say as much, although his dad might; the expectation that he do his best for her because of her poor health pervaded their family life in a way that he didn't even consciously consider. That was simply the way that things were, and while he might envy another family, he didn't ever really think just how much his mother's health impacted his decisions. He wanted to make her happy, because there was so little she could do. She couldn't even always visit when the rest of the family descended upon them from Connecticut, housebound by her health for days at a time, sometimes out of nowhere.

And the one time she was supposed to visit and she'd wound up in the hospital instead, so that he'd spent the entire holiday at Maddock with his dad. Somehow Labor Day lunch at the Sunny Side Up Diner hadn't exactly been what he'd hoped for when his parents had mentioned visiting.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“Of course I could.” Sean didn’t possess a sadistic bone in his body, and he would never dangle something so meaningful to a student (and yet so simple for him to deliver) unless he intended to keep his word. “Look for me when you arrive, and we’ll take a nice array to send to your mother. We can pose them nicely.” Almost like a prom photo, which would be the closest Junior might find, as Hammel had shunned the prom tradition since, if not its inception, then at least the 1960s when Sean had first enrolled.

The cobweb dangled above the piano, vaguely reminiscent of a crypt, or the antique store where Sean had first procured the instrument decades ago. He returned to the boxes, rummaging for a rubber spider to make the web its home.

Although his protege did not speak aloud, the psychiatrist remained privy to his thoughts and the reminder of the hospitalization that had resulted from one of her last visits for a long weekend. He knew the disappointment well, saw it in the minds of patients and coworkers and friends alike, had seen it with his own eyes when Josh would visit his father at the treatment center, dementia eroded his memories until clouded eyes failed to recognize Josh despite knowing and loving him for more than fifty years.

“When I was a student, my parents didn’t visit often either. It wasn’t easy for them, between my father’s schedule and my sister in school. My first Easter, I wanted nothing more than to go home for the holiday, but I had to remain up here instead.”

It was not the same, but he wanted Junior to know that he could relate.

[Irving Coley, Jr]

Junior was aware that he wasn't the only student whose parents had minimal visits - or, in some cases, none at all. And yet he compared himself not to those whose parents had entirely cast them out due to meta status, not to those whose parents simply couldn't afford to travel to another state, but to his extended family. Uncle Sherman had a job that kept long hours, and he could visit where Junior's parents couldn't. Not in the same way.

He struggled to disentangle the skeleton's ulna and femur, brows furrowed in concentration on his task. "Did your dad work overtime all the time, too?" He asked, envisioning someone who looked like Sean but with Irving Senior's neutral disapproving expression stamped across his face, suit and tie impeccable. Except that Sean had a sister, a fact Junior was mildly envious of. He'd wanted a sibling for years, but of course that was never going to materialize.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The situation of Junior’s father and that of his uncles was different, but Sean knew that hearing this was cold comfort to a fifteen-year-old boy who yearned for his father’s approval and measured that by time spent together, thus always coming up lacking. The psychiatrist had no doubt that Irving, Sr. loved his son, judging from the care packages that arrived like clockwork. Their expense was less important, no matter how jealous his peers were at the money his family could drop on goodies and pick-me-ups. Rather, it was how the boy had yet to complain to Sean that the contents were inapplicable. That his father didn’t send him generic items, or mix up his son’s preferences with those of his cousins, or forget that he had outgrown a hobby or a passion.

It was difficult to bridge the perception gap between subtle signs and someone who required more obvious ones. Sean had struggled with this in his relationship with Josh, a man who spoke in grand gestures and often missed the myriad ways Sean communicated his own needs and affection.

Shoving the spider’s four back legs through the web to ensure that it wouldn’t fall in the middle of the night and wake Sean or his husband, causing the latter to worry about an intruder, he returned to the decoration bins, rummaged for something else that might fit in the living room before they had to move to another part of the house. “My father was a surgeon, and he was on-call more times than he wasn’t. You know how medicine is: his schedule was unpredictable. He did his best for us, but there were nights he didn’t come home at all, and visits that were rescheduled. Missed opportunities.”