Middy likes to bake cupcakes, she tells me through her now more subdued mouth-breathing. I yawn then begin to doze off (“That’s okay, you can sleep, sure, but I’m still gonna tell my story anyhow,” she says cheerfully). But not before catching the first part of her story…

I’m real good at tellin stories, my kids tell me. I got one granddaughter now too but she’s too young to understand my stories and that, she’s only one and a half. But this one’s gonna be kinda scary, anyhow, so it’s a good thing you’re fallin asleep haw haw haw. And I would never tell this one to my granddaughter, she’d get too scared and her mom would yell at me (that’s my daughter [MIDDY POINTS AT FRAMED PHOTO ON COUNTER] Cheryl, that’s her mom).

So anyways, I should start off the story by telling you that this casino is haunted. Yep. It’s owned and run by Indians, you know, but the strange part is I guess it’s built on one-a their, like, sacred spots, a graveyard from way back when there was Indians all over the place and they could just go around you know doin whatever they wanted. So now they get to have these casinos, to kinda like get revenge on the … well, anyhow… it was a garbage dump, or landfill, I guess, between when it was a burial ground and now…

*****

I wake to a woman’s scream. I hear a muffled sizzling sound and smell rotting cucurbitus. “What is that?” I cry out through my jack-o’-lantern mouth hole.

“Oh, that lady in the other room is getting a Pumpkin Peel. Did you want one of those, too? They’re more money, but they get your skin SO smooth it’s unbelievable.”

“No, thank you.”

Neither of us says anything for a while, about four minutes. Middy straddles me on the chair and then places her foot on my shoulder to brace herself as she saws the jack-o’-lantern lengthwise on the side, and pulls it off my head with a thwup. She then starts to scrape the orange goo off my face and place it into a plastic tupper-like container using a spatula. I expect her to put it in the garbage but instead she pulls a storebought pie crust out of the cupboard. I ask what she’s doing.

“Well, you get to take your extra pumpkin facial with you, of course! Most of the gals take em home and make muffins or bread out of em, and that. But I figured since you are traveling and from not around here and that, I would just make you a pumpkin facial pie right here at Soaring Eagle’s! It’s like a special favor I’m doin for you.” “That’s the only nice thing anyone’s ever done for me!” I say, genuinely touched.

“Yeah… I know. That’s kinda related to what I was tryin to tell you when you was sleepin.”

Again preternaturally quiet, Middy wipes the last betacarotene stains off my face using a handtowel with ghosts on it and some nail polish remover.

*****

I look to the right and spy someone standing in the facialry with us, dressed in a really piss-poor “Native American” costume. Straight from Hollywood Central Casting circa 1971: Obvious wig, black wig, pulled into pigtails on the sides with feathers stuck in. Lame “war paint” on his cheeks, strangely business-suit-like soft doeskin separates with precious little bead embroidery. Cheap-looking moccasins.

“How,” he says as a greeting, raising his hand the way people from Michigan do when they want to point to the part of the state that they’re from, for instance the Thumb Area.

“How,” I say back. As he steps closer he seems to be covered in a thin layer of gray powder. Maybe he’s a construction worker at the casino. I didn’t see any construction on the way in, though.

“I am the Ghost of Halloween Past.”

“I told you!” Middy says, in a shuddering voice without using her nose, and she disappears into the next room with the facial pie fixin’s.

*****

“Let’s go, little white man,” says the Ghost, pulling me by the arm and leading me into the bright lights of the area with the 5¢ slot machines. “You’re white, too, I can tell under the dust.” “Yeah, don’t you recognize me?” “Hey! You’re the Indian from the commercial that was on TV during my childhood, with all the garbage. The one that cries,” I say, unconsciously patting my bright orange hair. “Yes, I’m Iron Eyes Cody, born Espera de Corti. Let’s not get talking about me, though. I’m here to show you some scenes from your childhood. Things that will provide a background on why you spread garbage everywhere. And by garbage I mean your bad vibes.”

A tear rolls down my cheek.

You can still smoke everywhere in Michigan, and the air is thick with the funky smell of peace pipes being smoked, mixed with the yucky ammonia-suffused stench of Marlboro Ultra-Lights, and Basics, then some Swisher Sweet tiparillos, and that.

I walk hand in hand with the Ghost of Halloween Past, and we sit down at one of the slots. You get 10 free gambling chips with every Pumpkin Facial, and I take them out of my pocket. “No gambling today,” says Iron Eyes. Before my eyes, the face of the Double Black Cherry slot machine transforms into a dusty miasmatic cloud of blacks, grays and purples. Soon all is smoke, and I am walking up the steps of the Royal Oak Public Library, alone, aged 6. My mom is there, but she’s putting money in the meter. I cannot wait to get inside and check out my favorite — not just Halloween book, but book period: The Littlest Witch.

*****

Right before I turned 30, in mid-October, everything in my life was falling down around me through some fault of my own. I wanted to just push my way back to normality as hard as I could, push through the mess and nothing would be wrong and I would wake up from the unending, sleepless dream that was snuffing out the last of my energies. Whistling past the graveyard, walking past the library, doing unhinged, desperate things like asking the librarian whether they had The Littlest Witch. They said they had it at another branch, so I went and picked it up because this year, with a big dose of magical thinking, I was going to dress as the littlest witch from the book.

But my addled memory had played a trick on me, and it wasn’t possible to dress like the littlest witch, because she was drawn in this expressionistic, ultrasimple way, like, just a pointy little inkblot. She barely even had a witch hat, she was so abstract.

But when I was still a child of 6, things could sometimes work out. My mom had sewn me a witch costume that year, just a plain witch costume that required no explaining.

*****

“What would you say to your 6-year-old self there, Evan?” asks the kindly Italian Indian.

“I would say, ‘Why do you want to be a witch?’ because I honestly don’t remember how that started. Also, I would probably call myself names, like fa…”

“Let’s move on to the next vision,” says Espera.

*****

[Part 3 Coming Soon...]

I’m neck deep in “mid”s. Mid-aged me driving a mid-size rental car through mid-Michigan. Temperatures in the mid-50s. Mid-weekend (Sunday morning). Mid-October. You can just call me Middy.

Actually, call her Middy, because that’s her name. She’s the lead facialist at Soaring Eagle’s Casino & Resort. Like me, she’s in her mid-40s, but Father Time and Father Class – our two dads – have had very different ways with us. Class dictates the general outlines of our appearances, with an assist from Midwife Gender, who is a trickster!

I’m a well-preserved middle-aged man-child with an expensive haircut and all my hair, which is dyed orange. No wrinkles, reasonable shape, about 15 lbs overweight. Which looks like more on my diminutive 5´0˝ frame. I always wear the same navy blue suit, but I change the shirts and ties most days. The lack of outdoor work exposure is written all of over my smooth, age-defying face. The good men and women of Mount Pleasant all pause as I walk into the room, the main casino floor, and ask where to get my Pumpkin Facial.

*****

In the sanctuary of the spa, Middy is washing her hands and humming along with the traditional Native American drum music playing softly from two speakers in the corners.

She’s got the standard-issue Bo-Rics sensible haircut, a ladies’ brushcut, really; frosted fakely. Bride of Frankenmuth. She’s taller than me and about 40 lbs overweight, but who’s counting? Her frames were free with the eyeglass prescription. White Keds. Stretch pants. Halloween-motif sweater with baby ghosts, scarecrows, “cute” (not scary) witches, bunnies dressed up as goblins, candy pieces and pumpkins with devilish grins dancing all the way around Middy’s solid, midwestern mid-riff. Hard, chapped, farmeress hands, simple oxidized bronze wedding band growing into the flesh on her ring finger. She breathes audibly as she stands over the sink. Through her mouth.

Because people don’t breath through their noses in Michigan. It is too cold, your mucous membranes up there freeze and you can die of nose hemorrhages. Most of the first settlers died of nosebleeds in their sleep, they just bled out in their sleep. That is the reason the northern midwestern accent is so “nasally.” Noses are closed for business! Permanently. Like the Ford’s plant where Harv and Shirl worked until last spring.

Middy, who looks like she is in her 60s, even though her casino-issued name tag clearly states her full name (Marlidden K. Jakob) and age (43), lights a pumpkin spice candle with one of those lighters that looks like a tiny, slim DustBuster that spits flames.

“There, how’s that?” She is referring to the pumpkiny, spicy fumes. “Real good.”

As we exchange the traditional pleasantries, she takes out a large carving knife and begins to saw a hole in the top of the pie pumpkin in her hand. Those are the smaller kind of pumpkin, the ones you use to make pumpkin pie

She carves out the “lid” with its pumpkin seeds dangling in their stringy orange viscous pumpkin matter. Holding the lid by its stem handle, she begins rubbing those pumpkin guts all over my face and neck with brisk circular motions, and I feel sleepy and contented.

*****

I simply had to turn off the highway when I saw the blinking orange digital display advertising Pumpkin Facials at the casino. I had no choice. Because Halloween is very important to me, and so are my fading looks that I’m trying to keep. This is the ultimate way to get up close and personal with the season: En-pie-ing your face in pumpkin, letting the fruits of the pumpkin patch nourish you from the outside in. You are literally diving face-first into the spirit of autumn, letting it coat your face.

Middy is looming over me spackling my cheeks, forehead, and chins with the pumpkin meat. She piles it on like it’s going out of style. My head sinks deeper into the pillow under the sheer weight of this facial. As soon as she is done doing this – taking care not to get any in my eyes! – she carefully places a fresh jack-o-lantern over my head (the bottom has been carved out), making sure the eyeholes are in line with my eyes. Now it has to set for a while. I close my eyes.

To pass the time, she begins telling me a story.

*****

[Read Part 2 here...]