by Dan Dillard
*****
I decided on a ninja costume. It was dark blue with a red bandana to tie around my head, there were even some plastic throwing stars in the box and Dad and I painted a wooden sword. Adam dressed as a cowboy with jeans and plastic chaps, clip on spurs for his sneakers and a ten-gallon hat that didn’t fit, but when he tipped it back, you could see his face—it was the same costume he wore last year and the hat still didn’t fit. It would fit by the time he was too old to care. Erin had an ugly, rubber, psycho-killer mask like one of the movies the older kids went to see. She carried a bloody plastic knife and aside from her short size, was very convincing. It came as a surprise to no one.
Several of the neighboring families came to our house for a pot-luck and the kids all carved jack-o-lanterns together. Dad told us his favorite story: the Halloween Legend of Jack. In it, Jack fooled the devil and then roamed the earth with a lantern carved from a turnip.
“And that’s where the term, jack-o-lantern comes from,” he said and gave the youngest kids a wink.
They thought it was an amazing story. I thought he made it up but the internet proved me wrong years later. Once he was done, we put candles in our jack-o-lanterns, drew the shades, turned off the lights, and admired our handiwork in the darkened kitchen. A chorus of oohs and ahs rose from the audience of moms and dads and then the carved gourds were placed outside on the porch.
We ate caramel apples and watched Charlie Brown and Snoopy on TV. After some popcorn, the adults made their way to the back porch to smoke cigars and cigarettes and drink things we couldn’t have.
All Hallows Eve was two days away and I couldn’t wait. There would be gobs of candy and I got a charge out of seeing the imagination that went into all the costumes. I loved the masks most of all, even the plastic ones with the elastic bands that always ended up worn as hats, ruining the illusion.
Kevin and I went outside with some old clothes that Mom donated from Dad’s closet.
“Hey! That’s my favorite shirt,” he’d say each year.
“You won’t miss it,” she’d reply.
He winked, so I knew he really didn’t mind.
We crammed those shirts and pants full of hay from bales they’d bought at the feed store. Kevin and I never talked while we worked. He chewed on his tongue—a look of careful concentration, and I mostly watched. Next, we glued big button eyes on a burlap sack and set up our scarecrow next to the porch. The boots sat on the ground with the ends of the pant legs stuffed inside. The same old straw hat we’d used in previous years finished the job. Not too original, but a tradition I treasured.
Sheets became ghosts that haunted the trees in our front yard. The pumpkins we’d carved, that scarecrow, and some red floodlights capped a nice display for impending trick-or-treaters.
“You ready to scare little kids?” Kevin asked.
“You bet…and eat candy,” I said.
“Yep, so much we’ll get sick. Then there’ll be nothing to do but lay around and watch horror movies,” he said.
I nodded, wondering what craziness Vincent Price would get into. Dad always found the old black and whites. Those were my favorites.
“Just one more thing left to do,” Kevin said, and I knew what he meant.
Until mom called us in, we raked the leaves in the front yard into a respectable pile and took turns diving in, re-raking, and diving in again sending them flitting about like little crunchy bats. It was a great evening. It was one of the best. It was also the last time I would ever see my brother.
TRUTH
SLEEP BATTLED WITH thoughts of candy and mischief. My imagination soared with the possibilities of Halloween and she didn’t crawl through my window that night so when I slept, it was peaceful. When I woke the next morning, the world felt normal. Mom was cooking breakfast and I smelled bacon and heard the sizzle of grease. Dad sipped coffee in a white v-neck t-shirt and pajama pants while reading the Saturday paper.
“Mornin’ Champ! You ready for some ghouls and goblins tonight?”
“Yup!” was all I could manage through my yawning.
“Where’s your lazy brother?” He asked.
“Dunno,” I replied.
Kevin always beat me downstairs. Was he sick? Had he gone outside to make more ghosts or jump in the leaves? Or worse…was he plotting an ambush for one little brother, a trick that would be his treat?
Tip-toeing up the stairs, I plotted my counterattack. I would check his room first—carefully—in case he was waiting for me there, ready to pounce from behind the door, or maybe out of his closet. His bedroom door was shut so I slowly opened it, all too aware of the squeak of the brass hinges. That squeak couldn’t be helped. I peeked through the crack to see if he was sleeping soundly—a Halloween oddity in my favor. Had he been, I planned to take a few steps back into the hallway for a running start. With that much momentum I could’ve leapt from five feet away and landed on top of him. Knees first would have done the trick, right in the gut. Only, he wasn’t there and my sly grin faded.
His bed was empty. His blanket and sheets had been pulled loose and dragged across the floor and Kevin’s pillow was gone. The window was open and the torn screen flapped in the cool morning breeze. It looked exactly as I imagined it in my dreams. As if I’d taken a snapshot of my mind, his room was the crime scene leftover after someone, or some thing, grabbed me in my sleep and pulled me through that window to my gruesome demise. I saw it all happening in my head.
It was surreal and didn’t match up with the bright morning sun as it happily streamed in through the open window. The screen cast busy shadows on the floor as it danced. I felt sick. I felt violated. I felt alone. I hoped he would pop out of his closet and scream Gotcha! Boy, I got you good, you turd. I would’ve relished being called a turd, being startled. But he didn’t pop out of his closet. I screamed as I played the nightmare in my head. The one I’d seen on a dozen sleepless nights. Eunice, snake-like and bony, herky-jerking her way through that busted window screen, slithering to the bed and grabbing Kevin like a rag doll and dragging him back to her lair as he clutched his pillow, his sheets, his blanket, anything that might help him hang on. But everything failed him. I failed him. We all failed him.
I screamed for my parents. I screamed until they were there, in the room, inside my nightmare, come to life.