There’s one unspoken rule on Halloween night around here. You don’t eat any of the candy you get until your parents check it. Nothing that’s not wrapped, sealed, and totally safe… unless it’s from someone you really know, of course. Everyone knows the horrors stories about razor blades, rat poison, and loads of things far more foul in kid’s Halloween candies, even though most of it was total bunk. I even once had someone tell me that all the kids you see on the backs of milk cartons around here are taken by a witch on Halloween night. These are stories we pass as kids from one generation down to the next as one of the rites of passage of becoming one of the ‘big kids’. Of course, like I said, there are exceptions to every rule, case in point, our next door neighbor Marie Collins, or like all of the kids (and a good deal of the adults) in our neighborhood called her, Nannie Marie.
Marie essentially raised my dad after my grandma passed away and it was just grandpa raising him. She’d take some of the load off of grandpa and watch dad when he was a kid, having him help her in the kitchen and whatnot. She loves kids, she’d always say that there’s nothing more beautiful than a chubby little baby. See, Marie found out she couldn’t have any kids, from what she told my grandpa, after what happened before her husband ran off. He used to beat her something awful. He wasn’t a nice man, from what my grandpa told me. He’d come down hard on Marie for talking to my grandpa or having the neighbor ladies over for tea. Grandpa went over once to return a sugar bowl and caught him beating up on her with the end of the belt with the buckle on it, and he pulled him off. Shortly after that he ran off with a younger woman and a good bit of Marie’s money she’d put back from baking, from what my grandpa said he’d gotten out of Marie a few days after it’d happened.
He was pretty surprised at her tenacity after being left like that. She threw herself into her baking and her candies, and she became pretty well known for them. She was always the one to go to for a pie, for a cake, and absolutely any sweet you could imagine, and it wouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg like at some of the other specialty shops the next town over, either. She always outdid herself on all the major Christian holidays, but her most spectacular work was on Halloween. She made tons and tons of candies for the neighborhood children, which were known to be stolen by their parents, on occasion, due to pure nostalgia. Most of the parents here grew up eating her candies, so they didn’t see too much wrong with stealing a piece or two of the huge bags she’d send home with their kids on Halloween night. I mean, the whole neighborhood grew up craving it from November 1st onward.
She’d make these buttery salty-sweet popcorn balls that nobody could replicate, tiny little pies in every flavor from custard to mincemeat, marshmallows, caramels, ribbon candies in a rainbow of colors, chocolate truffles, and most importantly, her special candy corn. I know what you’re thinking, but it tastes nothing like that awful store bought corn syrup laden junk that we all know and hate. Hers had the taste of buttery chocolatey caramel with a taste no one else could ever replicate. It was a happy Halloween indeed to the little boy or girl who got themselves a bag of that candy corn. I’m drooling as I write this just imagining how close Halloween is and how she used to let me lick the spoons when I’d help her. The same treat that she’d always given my dad for helping her all those years ago. She said that was my special present as her new little helper.
I’d been helping Marie with her Halloween duties for the past several years since she was in her late eighties and couldn’t see too well to make her famous candies. Even with cataracts in both eyes and a fake hip, she still didn’t want to disappoint all of her children. Of course, she trusted me more than anyone else because I’d been pretty good help in the kitchen as a kid and she let me in on some of her recipes so I could help her. That’s something that not even my dad could boast. I used to be mystified at the way she could create such wondrous flavors so effortlessly, and all those years ago, I’d asked her how she got her candy to be so much better than everyone else’s. She asked me if I could come over later on in that week, and she’d show me from start to finish how her candies got so delicious. I was overjoyed at the prospect. This was going to be like seeing the master at work. I came back at the time she specified with a big grin on my face. I asked her what we were going to be making, and she told me a little bit of everything. She got all of her ingredients lined up on her table with her well-worn pots ready to go on the stove. We started off making the butter caramels, but her little glass jar of butter was almost out and had a weird odor, so I told her we needed more. She said to follow her down into the basement so we could get another jar.
There were three steel doors that greeted me at the basement steps, two close to us and one on the far end. She had a very large walk in freezer and fridge built in side-by-side to house all of her necessities, and she walked straight into the cooler. She had labels on all of her glass jars, but they had numbers on them I didn’t quite understand. The butter jar we took out had a 190 on it, and I asked her what for. She explained that it was a batch number. Sometimes things were aged a bit differently or had a different strength, and since we were out of the good butter we’d have to make some more after we got finished this evening.
I followed her back upstairs and helped her make the caramels with some of the odd smelling butter. It had a rough smell like old chicken and bacon grease. Something gamey, yet still compelling. I’d never had fresh butter that didn’t come in stick form, so I followed her lead and made some of the best candies I’d ever tasted. We did some cookies and some candy corn, and each piece seemed better than the last because I was finally getting to learn the secret behind what made every Halloween seem so special. After we’d finished she made me put on an apron. She said we had enough time to make some more butter and to get some meat ground up for the little mincemeat pies, which she said were the hardest pies to make, but she needed some help grinding at her age. I happily tagged along downstairs, this time moving to the third silver door at the opposite side of the basement. This door, I noticed had several latches on the outside, which I thought odd for a meat cooler.
Stepping inside, I first noticed the chill in the room. This must be where she stored the meat. She flipped on the light to reveal a totally nude scraggly man with sunken features chained to the ceiling, moving ever so slightly as if he hadn’t eaten in days, a plump looking young woman who was gagged and bound, her screaming muffled by the damp cloth in her mouth, and beside the young woman, a body of undiscernible gender, chunks missing all over, a purpled blue color, cold hardy maggots creeping over the eyes, blackened tongue, and opened mouth.
“Pity when the meat goes bad before you have a chance to use it,” she said.
At that point I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I remember sitting down to cry. She scooped me up and explained it all to me.
“When we’re hit with hard times, the Lord truly provides us, darling. A few nights before my husband departed, I told him I was pregnant. All I’d wanted for years was a baby. He for some reason thought I’d been fooling around with my good friend from next door, your grandpa, and beat me so badly that I lost the baby. That baby was a miracle child because I was told I’d never be able to have one, and he stole it away from me. In a fit of anger, I hit him over the head with a pan I’d been washing the next night and it killed him. I didn’t know what else to do, or how to get rid of what I’d done, but the Lord provided me with an answer. A man that sour in life should as punishment be sweet in death. The Lord provided me. I used every part of him but the bones, and those were easily disposed of down here. The fat on a man can make the most wondrous butter you’ve ever tasted. The meat, better than steak with none of the fat veins. Doesn’t cost a penny, and it rids the world of abusers and trash. It never hurt anyone, and the neighborhood children got such enjoyment out of it. I couldn’t stop after him. Offering to pay a junkie for a day’s work will ensure he comes down here to fix a little old lady’s refrigerator. Anything for that next fix isn’t it, darling?”
With that last remark, she jabbed the man hanging from the ceiling and tears rolled down his face as she sliced thin pieces of his flesh off and put them in her bowl before cutting off hunks of meat while he screamed and begged and dropped them in a bucket. I stood there wordlessly absorbing all of what was happening around me. She then directed me to the meat grinder with the bucket and showed me how easy it was to grind the tender meat into a more usable form, cutting it with sausage. She shut the door on the bleeding man’s dying screams and walked me up the stairs to finish showing me how to make her pies.
It’s been a decade since that night. Marie passed last year right after Halloween, to the lament of child and adult alike. The local paper said it’s like she held on for just one more and did some boastful piece about how many years she’d lived in this town and what a love for the children she’d had, but did anyone really know her but me? Did anyone else ever know what she kept inside of that basement? After all these years, I thought I’d write all of this out, to tell her real story. The woman behind the candy. The woman who made her namesake on more than just a cup of sugar and a lot of love. I felt I should make sure this is all well written so that everyone can get to know the true Marie Collins, and get to know what a person like her can teach the world. Earlier this evening I saw this young girl walking alone by the road with the most gorgeous blue ribbon in her hair. A blue ribbon I thought would look just marvelous tied around a very special basket of candy. You see, this year will be the first Halloween I’ve ran from this house without dear Nannie Marie and I plan to set a special basket on the porch for all of the parents taking their kids around the neighborhood. I want it all to go perfectly for the children, and as per Marie’s last instructions to me, this new batch of candy has to go out first because it’s very special. You could say there’s a big part of Marie in every last bite.
Submitted October 15, 2015 at 01:31PM by candy_manning http://ift.tt/1G74oWw nosleep
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