by Dan Dillard
*****
Erin, Adam and I were discussing Halloween costumes when she noticed the front lawn at the Stubbins’ place was growing up.
She said, “Sam, you ever wonder where Suggs is? He retire, ya think?”
“Suggs?” Adam asked.
“Yeah. Suggs. I wonder where he’s at is all.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I bet she killed him. I bet he was kidnapping children all summer and feeding them to her. He finally ran out of shitty kids that nobody would miss.”
“Gross,” Adam said.
“We were smart to keep our eyes peeled on that place or we could’ve been breakfast,” she said.
Her face was rigid as she spoke. The matter-of-fact words would’ve looked like jokes on paper, but I was sure they weren’t.
“Isn’t it more likely he stopped coming because it’s getting cold and the grass isn’t growing? I don’t think Kevin’s cut our lawn in three weeks,” I said.
“But it is growing. Look at it next time you’re outside. It’s not that cold yet.”
“Whatever. You’re paranoid.”
“Noid!” Adam shouted, then giggled.
I giggled too. Erin wasn’t having it. “That woman is evil, I tell you. I never heard anything scream like that. And who doesn’t leave the house and never has visitors?”
I shrugged.
“And, Mr. Smartypants, tell me this: what does she eat? Have you ever seen her with groceries? You ever see anyone go to her door with bags of groceries? Anyone ever go to her door with anything?”
“The mailman?” I said, but it came out as a question.
She had a point. I couldn’t remember seeing the mailman stop at her house either, and he came around right as we got home from school. Unless she had groceries delivered in the middle of the night, by all rights she should’ve starved to death. Adam gulped and I understood how he felt.
“Maybe she hibernates like a bear and doesn’t eat until spring,” Adam said.
Erin and I nodded, and I for one, was amazed at the logic of the statement. Given this truth, that the demon-lady who lived on the corner was eating children provided to her by her lawn maintenance person. It was a distinct possibility in the minds of three ten-year-olds that she might hibernate over the winter months. With only two weeks left until Halloween, the haunts and creeps of the season were taking their toll on our little imaginations.
I watched her house like a detective on stake-out over those next two weeks. The leaves on that old, gnarled oak tree withered and fell. It was like some horrific countdown which didn’t help, especially when the wind howled and sent them skittering down the sidewalk with a sound like claws at the foot of my bed. The weeds in her front yard reached knee-high to a little kid and had begun to turn brown and die.
All the while, I never saw a soul enter or leave her house, just lamp light—downstairs in the evening and upstairs at night. That proved she was moving around in there and not yet hibernating. I pictured her slithering, just like Erin said. A snake with an old woman’s face. A snake that screamed like a banshee. Slithering around on cushions made from children’s skin, and in my imagination, that sound was like rubbing a wet finger on the surface of a balloon.
That evening my nightmares returned, and were as intense as ever. She crawled through my window, not a snake, but something else, something bony that moved in a disjointed, jerky way, not graceful but with definite agility…and with one purpose. There was no zoo animal with which I could compare the Eunice-creature. It cackled and clucked and bared sharp teeth at me, and all the while, she sniffed the air like she was hunting—for kid meat—for blood. Then she licked her razor chops right before I woke up sweating and unable to scream.