Kathryn Nicolai (6:45)
You're safe. You can relax. Take a deep breath in through your nose and sigh it out. Nice. One more inhale and release. Good chef and the ghost light. In the ballroom on the second floor, revelers were dancing. Candles flickered within the hundred or so jack o lanterns lining the grand central staircase. From the inn's entryway all the way up to the attic. There was an eerie greenish glow from my bubbling cauldron of homemade punch on the buffet table and through the tall windows that looked down to the lake, dark as night and reflecting a thin crescent moon. Branches swayed in a rising wind. The rain had been threatening to wash out trick or treating all day. More than once, while I cooked and prepared for the festivities, I'd seen a thick gray ceiling of clouds sweep over the village, and then, as if they'd somehow been frozen in place, just stop. I don't know if you've ever seen completely still clouds. I hadn't, but that's what they appeared to be. No swirling, no shifting, and no rain. I suspect that friend of the innkeeper, the one who'd promised us a bright sunny day for the wedding we'd hosted here a few years back, she'd had something to do with it. Just in the last half hour the wind had picked up, leaves were tumbling from trees like orange and scarlet snowflakes, and I figured we had only minutes before the rain finally fell. At least the trick or treaters had gotten through their neighborhood traps before it came. I'd had a dance or two and was just catching my breath, leaning up against a pillar near the double doors, when a flash of something caught my eye from the hall. It was the red light on the dumbwaiter, a bit like a miniature elevator. Its panel had a call button on each floor. When it was in transit, its tiny bulb glowed red. When it arrived at the floor it had been called from it flipped to green. I tilted my head in question, wondering who had pressed the button below. I scanned the ballroom, looking for the innkeeper, searching for her blue dress and white pinafore. We'd coordinated costumes this year. She was Alice and I was the Cheshire Cat. Or, I'd teased, the chef, Shire cat. The theme had been her idea, and when I asked what inspired it, she said something about how she sometimes feels like she's through the looking glass. And besides, Sycamore wanted to be the mad catter. She didn't get any argument from me. I was already thinking of the cookies I could decorate to say Eat me, and the bottles of cordial and fizzy juice I could tie Drink Me labels to. My costume was a deep plum chef's coat with silky black ears atop my head on a tail snaking from my back. I'd painted my nails in stripes of dark and light purple, and when I pulled my face into a wide Cheshire grin, I had false fangs glued to my canine teeth. Just for fun. It was Halloween, after all. Alice didn't seem to be anywhere in the ballroom, so I guessed she must be the one calling the dumbwaiter. Likely she was refilling platters down in the kitchen to bring up to the buffet, but when I checked the chafing dishes and domed plates, there was still plenty of my Crescent Moon pies and candied crows. My Fog on the Lake punch was more than half full, and the Mystery Cauldron Dip with batcrackers had a backup waiting to be set out. She must not have realized that I had a stocked cooler under one of the draped tables, and it's not that I don't trust her in my kitchen, but, well, she should enjoy the party and leave the food restocking to me. I slipped out through the double doors and onto the landing, making my way down the steps carefully in the candlelight when I rounded the half landing between floors, a little niche in the wall where the innkeeper had hung a bouquet of nightshade from a hook in the ceiling, a sort of Halloween version of mistletoe. I chuckled, sidling past the couple there in the entryway. The center table was decorated with dripping black candles and a giant centerpiece of orchids in the same midnight hue. A single tarot card was peeking out from the moss at its base, and I could just make out that it was the Six of Cups. Partygoers were everywhere, lounging on the fainting couch beside the front door, telling stories and jokes near the bowls of candy by the front office and crowding the long hallway that led to the back of the inn. I was just inching my way through it when a green light blinked on beside the butler's pantry. What? I stepped closer to the dumbwaiter station, trying to understand what was happening. I'd assumed whoever had pressed its call button had done it from the hoist way in the kitchen a floor below where I stood. I looked up and down the hallway, and while I saw plenty of people and more than one cat, they all seemed busy with conversation or games. No one was looking at me or the dumbwaiter. If someone here was playing a trick on me, they had a solid poker face. I reached for the gate to slide it back and see what was being sent from floor to floor, but in that moment the green light blinked out and the red one flashed on beside it. Come on, I said aloud. I needed to see what was happening in my kitchen. I started toward the stairs at the end of the hall when a sudden flash of lightning cut through the night through the windows of the back porch. I saw it reflected the surface of the lake. It was so bright that most of the people thronged in the hall paused their conversations to gape. A moment later they broke out in nervous laughter, and as I rounded the corner and started down the kitchen stairs, a boom of thunder struck, chasing me down to the bottom like I was escaping an explosion in an action movie. I'd left most of the lights on down here, anticipating the need to fill fresh platters and fetch more punch ingredients from the fridge, but someone had turned them off. There was only one left on the one over the staff table where we ate our meals together. It was an old pendant light with a pretty jade green glass shade. The innkeeper told me she'd found it in a box down here when she started renovating. It made a soft circle of light around the table, and when I went to bed each night, it was the light I left on. I'd even joked before that it was like the tradition in theaters where they always leave a single bulb lit on stage to burn through the night. A ghost light, they called it. Just then I heard the mechanical whirr of the dumbwaiter through the wall. As I turned to look, the green light snapped on. Rain spattered against the window panes and branches swayed in the wind, throwing moving shadows across the walls. I approached the gate of the dumbwaiter and reached for the knobs. My hands weren't shaking, but my breath was a little fast. The feeling in the air was the same as the scent of ozone when lightning strikes. I wasn't afraid. I was excited. The doors opened easily, and at first I thought it was empty, that this was just a prank and probably Alice and the Mad Catter were watching me from a corner, stifling their giggles. But then I saw a gleam of white at the back and reached in for was a card, an old one, more yellow than white, worn at the edges. The ink faded. I took it over to the table to read it under the light in handwriting that reminded me of my grandparents. I read the words at the top. Original Village Inn Pickles. My mouth fell open as I scanned through the listed ingredients and method. The recipe was different from mine, not by a huge margin, but enough to make me wonder how these would taste. Suddenly my mind filled with new dishes I could serve beside these pickles. A whole dinner dedicated to this original recipe. It made me wonder if there were more cards like these somewhere, if whoever had sent this one might offer up more. I smiled broadly as I tucked the precious card into the front pocket of my chef's jacket and climbed the stairs to rejoin the party chef and the ghost light. In the ballroom on the second floor, revelers were dancing. Candles flickered within the hundred or so jack o' lanterns lining the grand central staircase. From the inn's entryway all the way up to the attic, there was an eerie greenish glow from my bubbling cauldron of homemade punch on the buffet table and through the tall windows that looked down to the lake, dark as night and reflecting a thin crescent moon. Branches swayed in a rising wind. The rain had been threatening to wash out trick or treating all day. More than once, while I cooked and prepared for the festivities, I'd seen a thick gray ceiling of clouds sweep over the village, and then, as if they'd somehow been frozen in place, just stop. I don't know if you've ever seen completely still clouds. I hadn't, but that's what they appeared to be. No swirling, no shifting, and no rain. I suspected that friend of the innkeeper, the one who'd promised us a bright sunny day for the wedding we'd hosted here a few years back, had something to do with that. Just in the last half hour the wind had picked up. Leaves were tumbling from the trees like orange and scarlet snowflakes, and I figured we had only minutes before the rain finally fell. At least the trick or treaters had gotten through their neighborhood tromps before it. I'd had a dance or two and was just catching my breath, leaning up against a pillar near the double doors, when a flash of something caught my eye from the hall. It was the red light, the dumbwaiter, a bit like a miniature elevator. Its panel had a call button on each floor when it was in transit. A tiny bulb glowed red when it arrived at the floor it had been called from it flipped to green. I tilted my head in question, wondering who had pressed the button below. I scanned the ballroom, looking for the innkeeper, searching for her blue dress and white pinafore. We'd coordinated costumes this year. She was Alice and I was the Cheshire Cat, Or, I'd teased, the Chefshire cat. The theme had been her idea, and when I asked what inspired it, she said something about how she sometimes feels like she's through the looking glass, and besides, Sycamore wanted to be the mad Catter. She didn't get any argument from me. I was already thinking of the cookies I could decorate to say Eat Me, and the bottles of cordial and fizzy juice I could tie Drink Me labels to. My costume was a deep plum chef's coat with silky black ears atop my head and a tail snaking from my back, I'd painted my nails in stripes of dark and light purple, and when I pulled my face into a wide Cheshire grin, I had false fangs glued to my canine teeth just for fun. It was Halloween, after all. Alice didn't seem to be anywhere in the ballroom, so I guessed she must be the one calling the dumbwaiter. Likely she was refilling platters down in the kitchen to bring up to the buffet, but when I checked the chafing dishes and domed plates, there were still plenty of my Crescent Moon pies and candied crows. My Fog on the Lake punch was more than half full, and the Mystery Cauldron Dip with bat Crackers had a backup already waiting to be set out. She must not have realized that I had a stocked cooler under one of the draped tables, and it's not that I don't trust her in my kitchen, but, well, she should enjoy the party and leave the food restocking to me. I slipped out through the double doors and onto the landing, making my way down the steps carefully in the candlelight. When I rounded the half landing between floors, a little niche in the wall where the innkeeper had hung a bouquet of nightshade from a hook in the ceiling as a sort of Halloween version of mistletoe. I chuckled, sidling past the couple there in the entryway. The center table was decorated with dripping black candles and a giant centerpiece of orchids in the same midnight hue. A single tarot card was peeking out from the moss at its base, and I could just make out that it was the Six of Cups. Partygoers were everywhere, lounging on the fainting couch beside the front door, telling stories and jokes near the bowls of candy by the office and crowding the long hallway that led to the back of the inn. I was just inching my way through it when a green light blinked on beside the butler's pantry. What? I stepped closer to the dumbwaiter station, trying to understand what was happening. I'd assumed whoever had pressed its call button had done it from the hoist way in the kitchen a floor below where I stood. I looked up and down the hallway, and while I saw plenty of people and more than one cat, they all seemed busy with conversation or games. No one was looking at me or the dumbwaiter. If someone here was playing a trick on me, they had a solid poker face. I reached for the gate to slide it back and see what was being sent from floor to floor, but in that moment, the green light blinked out and the red one flashed on beside it. Come on, I said aloud. I needed to see what was happening in my kitchen. I started toward the stairs at the end of the hall when a sudden flash of lightning cut through the night. Through the windows of the back porch, I saw it reflect in the surface of the lake. It was so bright that most of the people thronged in the hall paused their conversations to gape. A moment later they broke out in nervous laughter, and as I rounded the corner and started down the kitchen stairs, a boom of thunder struck, chasing me down to the bottom like I was escaping an explosion in an action movie. I'd left most of the lights on down here, anticipating the need to fill fresh platters and fetch more punch ingredients from the fridge, but someone had turned them off. There was only one light on the one over the staff table where we ate our meals together. It was an old pendant light with a pretty jade green glass shade. The innkeeper told me she found it in a box down here when she started renovating. It made a soft circle of light around the table, and when I went to bed each night, it was the light I left on. I'd even joked before that it was like the tradition in theaters where they always leave a single bulb lit on stage to burn through the night. A ghost light, they call it. Just then I heard the mechanical whirr of the dumbwaiter through the wall. As I turned to look, the green light snapped on. Rain spattered across the window panes and branches swayed in the wind, throwing moving shadows across the wall. I approached the gate of the dumbwaiter and reached for the knobs. My hands weren't shaking, but my breath was a little fast. The feeling in the air was the same as the scent of ozone when lightning strikes. I wasn't afraid. I was excited. The doors opened easily.
