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and Dad standing just inside the shadow of the garage, arms linked around each other’s waists with enormous smiles on their faces.
    Parents.

Very little conversation took place on the way to Eerie’s.  After perusing my classic rock CD collection and finding it severely lacking, Claudia cranked up the hard rock station out of Austin, playing groups with names like “Ludicrous Confusion” and “Toxic Dogs”-- the ones that were more concerned with the volume of the distortion than with lyrics.  It was clear she didn’t want to make small talk.
    When we got there, she leapt from the car like a kid at the gates of an amusement park and disappeared inside.  I didn’t see her again for another fifteen minutes.  In that time, I made my way methodically up one side of the first aisle, turned and went down the opposite side of the same aisle.  After I was sure I didn’t miss anything, I started on the second aisle.  Such is my way.  Not only do I have to look over the whole store item by item, but I have to do it completely before I even start selecting my purchases.  I’d brought a notebook along just to make sure I wouldn’t forget anything, making a note of the price in the margin when I found a close match.
    The items get pricier as you get deeper into the store.  The first aisle was mostly the cheap stuff, mostly because it was the closest to the door and most at risk of being shoplifted.  Make-up kits.  Individual pieces of costumes.  Hats and stockings and wigs.  There was a complete aisle dedicated to plastic hand-held accessories: swords, axes, maces, spiky balls on chains, broomsticks, scepters, plastic crucifixes.  The bulk of the warehouse is made up of costumes.  Kids costumes. Adult costumes.  Funny costumes. Scary costumes. Sexy costumes.
    The latex masks were behind a manned counter along the rear wall of the store.  The yard decorations including the smoke machines (which I spent a little time comparing) and the plastic cauldrons were toward the left hand wall.  The coffins and the electronic gizmos that creaked and screamed and leapt out at you were down the right hand wall.  These have riveted me since childhood.  I found it physiologically impossible to pass a label marked “press me” without following the instruction.  I was such a sucker for a welcoming red button that they could’ve put one on the far side of a guillotine and I would have reached through the frame just to press the damn thing.
    But the things that have always fascinated me the most are the dioramas with the moving parts.  The little miniature towns with ghosts hovering over graveyards and witches riding brooms over haunted castles.  The little lights going off and on behind windows.  The cheesy sound effects.
    Oddly enough, this was where I found Claudia.
    She had that glassy-eyed intensity that I suppose I must have, like she was trying to solve some sort of mystery the scene had posed.
    She straightened visibly when I sidled up beside her and that brief evidence of a childlike sparkle in her eye disappeared.  Her eyes seized on my notebook.
    “What’s that?”
    “My shopping list.”
    She grabbed it out of my hand and glanced through it.
    “You have got to be kidding me?  You drew a blueprint of your house and yard?  And I have the reputation of being the weird one.  Life has a certain irony.”
    She started away with my notebook in her hand.
    I raced after and snagged it back.
    “What are you planning to do with all of this?”
    “Decorating for Mom’s Halloween party.  She has one for all the neighborhood kids every year.”
    “When you say ‘kids,’ do you mean those young enough to get nightmares from the Disney version of ‘Legend of Sleepy Hallow’?”
    “Kids. Yeah.  Little kids.  It’s a tradition with her.  She always thought that there weren’t enough kid-friendly activities for them to do, so ...”
    Claudia grabbed an unattended basket that was sitting at the end of an