Halloween

by John Passarella

  Inside the house, The Shape notices the glow of a television, the volume turned low and the sounds of activity in the kitchen…

  * * *

  Mentally kicking herself for getting such a late start, Gina Panchella placed the frozen chicken in a plastic container in her kitchen sink, turning on the faucet to defrost it with a cold-water bath. If she’d been thinking clearly, she would have taken it from the freezer and placed it in the refrigerator the day before, soon as she got home. But she’d been a bit scatterbrained lately. She’d write herself lists and place sticky notes on the counter or fridge, but half the time she’d forget to read her own notes. Now she worried she wouldn’t have time to thaw and cook the chicken before Ralph got home from his swing shift.

  The combination of watching Kate’s baby girl and dealing with trick-or-treaters until she’d finally run out of candy and turned off her porch light to signal to kids the candy well had run dry, meant she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch. She couldn’t wait for the chicken to thaw to grab a bite with Ralph, so she decided to make herself a sandwich. Placing a baked ham on the cutting board next to a plate with two slices of white bread, she went to the fridge for a jar of pickles and mayonnaise. After setting them on the counter, she sliced several pieces of ham with a large black-handled chef’s knife, placing them one at a time on the bread. Normally, she’d use two slices, but her stomach was rumbling, so she sliced a third. Then she realized she’d left the Swiss cheese in the crisper drawer. Couldn’t eat her ham sandwich without a slice of Swiss on top.

  Leaving the knife on the counter, Gina returned to the fridge, opened the door and flipped through the bagged cold cuts until she located the Swiss cheese. Back at the counter, she peeled off a slice of cheese and added it to the sandwich. After adding a pickle and some mayo, she carried the plate to the kitchen table and set it on the blue-and-white checkered tablecloth. A simple meal for one.

  In the sink, the cold water overflowed the plastic container and made a gurgling sound as it splashed down the drain. After she turned off the faucet, Gina made a mental note to refresh the water in thirty minutes. Then reminded herself a mental note wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Of course, the paper notes hadn’t helped much either, so she had to trust herself to remember. With her stomach continuing to growl, she sat at the table to take a bite of her sandwich—and remembered she’d left out the condiments and cheese.

  Forget it, she told herself. I’ll clean up later. Then she had a sudden craving for some chips to pair with her sandwich. Raiding the pantry would only take a few seconds. So, she slid back her chair and tried to stand. Something pushed back against the chair and she lost her balance. As she caught the edge of the table with her hand, she saw a man in dark coveralls standing over her, face hidden by a pale mask.

  She opened her mouth to scream—

  —as he swung a hammer down and smashed it against the crown of her head, shattering her plastic curlers, which cushioned the blow slightly but lacerated her scalp.

  Terrified, she screamed, but the sound came out more as a raw gasp.

  And a second blow crunched against her skull.

  Her legs buckled, and she fell back against her chair. Blood poured down her forehead, spilling over the bridge of her nose.

  She tried to raise her hands to ward off the blows, but her limbs felt as if they were encased in cement. Even as the light dimmed around the edges of her vision, she saw him turn the handle in his hand, twisting the clawed end of the hammer around to face her. His arm rose again. Then the biting edge of the metal claws came at her in a blur of motion. The last thing she felt was a jarring impact, followed by tremendous pressure and the sensation of her skull bursting open, the bones of her face twisting, fracturing and—

  * * *

  The Shape watches the woman collapse into her chair, her open eyes vacant as her head falls forward to strike the tablecloth.

  Dropping the bloody hammer to the tiled floor, The Shape walks to the counter, reaches past the cutting board and picks up the black-handled knife.

  The Shape turns the sturdy knife back and forth to catch the gleam of light on the sharp blade. Satisfying.

  Without glancing at the dead woman again, The Shape crosses the kitchen and the dining room beyond, into the living room. A baby’s crib sits by the front window, bathed in the glow of the television. Inside the crib, swaddled in blankets, the baby cries.

  Unaffected by the infant’s distress, The Shape walks out the front door, down the porch stairs and continues to the sidewalk.

  A few trick-or-treaters pass, veering around The Shape without comment or reaction. Ahead, The Shape sees a man and a woman hurrying to their car, a doctor and a nurse—costumes not professional attire based upon how much of the woman’s skin is exposed. They open the car doors, get inside, husband in the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, hell,” the man—husband—says, “I can’t find my keys.”

  “We’re going to be late,” the woman—wife—tells him.

  The husband hurries back into the house.

  The Shape stops, watches the wife—alone in the car—sitting impatiently in the passenger seat. Vulnerable. The Shape’s fingers flex around the handle of the blade, pressed against The Shape’s side. Hidden, for now.

  In the silence, crickets chirp.

  The Shape considers.

  “Hello?” the woman says, staring at The Shape.

  The Shape’s hand tightens around the handle.

  “Come on, baby,” the husband says as he crosses in front of The Shape to return to the driver’s seat with his car keys. “Let’s go.”

  The Shape steps away from the curb as the car pulls away.

  Once the car is gone, The Shape looks up to the next house.

  Through the front window, The Shape sees a woman moving around inside…

  * * *

  For possibly the hundredth time that evening, the doorbell rang.

  Andrea Wagner veered toward the door, scooping up the wooden serving bowl of Halloween candy she’d placed on the small table by the front door. A few hours ago the bowl had been overflowing with miniature chocolate bars and bags of hard candy. Now… not so much. Only a few lonely items remained. She’d checked the cupboard earlier to confirm she’d emptied every bag she’d stockpiled in the last month or so. This was her last candy hurrah of the evening.

  She opened the door with a wide smile on her face.

  A chorus of young voices greeted her with, “Trick or treat!”

  Three children stood on her stoop, a number that, fortunately, matched the number of items left in her candy bowl. Two girls and a boy, ages ranging from about eight to twelve. Of course, she thought, the McClaren kids. Shane, Payton, and…

  Unfortunately, she drew a blank on the younger girl’s name.

  “Wow! Look at you, all dressed up,” she said, a phrase she’d repeated throughout the evening. “So, what do we have here?”

  Andrea always enjoyed seeing the kids in their costumes. And the littlest ones were so cute. They reminded her of Emma, when she was so small she’d hold her mom’s hand as they walked door to door. Of course, now that her daughter was well into her teens she kept her mother at a socially acceptable distance, basically an adolescent restraining order. Just a phase, Andrea told herself. I was the same way with my parents.

  “Let’s see,” Andrea said. “A pretty princess… and a rainbow unicorn, right?” Both girls nodded. “Ooh, and an alien. That’s spooky!”

  All three McClaren kids held out their candy bags.

  “You guys are my last customers for the night,” she said as she dropped a treat into each bag. “Happy Halloween!”

  Mumbling their thanks, the kids rushed off, probably trying to make up for a late start. Only a few costumed stragglers roamed the street. And judging by the number of extinguished porch lights, the flow of candy had cut off at many homes. With a sigh, Andrea closed her door and turned off her own porch light. It was all over so so
on.

  As she crossed her living room her cellphone rang. Nobody bothered with the landline anymore—other than robo-callers. Not for the first time, she wondered why she still paid for the damn thing.

  She stopped in the middle of the living room, pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and answered the call, immediately recognizing Sally’s voice. “Hey, Sally,” she said. “No, just me. I know. I volunteered as a parent chaperone, but Emma vetoed that idea. Said I’d embarrass her in front of her friends. Well, I hope she’s enjoying the dance. What’s up?” Glancing through the window as she listened, she noticed movement outside, a dark shape, but also something pale—a face or a mask. Another straggler, she thought absently. Tall. Probably a teen making the rounds one last year before—

  “Really? Where did you hear that? That’s awful…”

  Feeling a chill race down her spine, Andrea suddenly felt exposed.

  She hurried to the window, grasped the cord for the horizontal blinds and yanked it to the left to lower them. As the slats dropped, she caught a momentary glimpse of her reflection in the window glass—and she wasn’t alone!

  Whirling around, she dropped her phone and screamed.

  The dark shape with the pale face stood before her.

  Wielding a long chef’s knife, a hand blurred in front of her, slicing left to right below her jawline.

  For an excruciating moment, she felt an intense burning pain in her throat—then her world collapsed into darkness…

  * * *

  The Shape watches the middle-aged woman crumple to the floor, blood gushing from the deep neck wound. The blood pools around her tilted head, coating her splayed hair as her empty eyes stare into space.

  Turning, The Shape walks out the open front door, knife held low. Drops of blood fall from the tip of the blade, splattering the carpet in his wake…

  * * *

  Dr Ranbir Sartain sat up with a gasp in his hospital bed, covered in sweat. Disoriented, he glanced around the dark room, breathing heavily. The only light came from medical equipment beside his bed and a sliver of light from the hallway outside his room. He was in a hospital now, but he remembered he’d been shot… by the boy who discovered him… on the prison transport bus…

  The memory triggered earlier impressions from that evening. Images flashed through his mind; a jumble of violence, like a jigsaw puzzle tossed in the air—accusing faces, staring at him in their final moments—

  —a prison guard, Kuneman, bleeds from his neck—

  —the bus driver looks up at him, in horror and surprise, involuntarily spinning the wheel as his throat is slit—

  —the bus rocks wildly on its suspension as it swerves off the road and down a steep embankment—

  —through it all, the Smith’s Grove patients rattle the mesh barrier separating them from the guards, screaming as blood spatters their faces, like a feeding frenzy or a descent into madness—

  —a second guard, Haskell, screams, his bleeding face smashed against the mesh-covered window until a gunshot blasts through his skull—

  Trembling, Sartain reclined in the hospital bed, focusing on the dull pain in his shoulder to anchor himself. He slowed his breathing to lower his heart rate, watching the display on the monitors as a type of biometric feedback. Though he was alone in the hospital room his recollection of the memories had been so vivid it seemed as if they were on public display.

  But the only one who mattered had been there with him.

  A witness to the moment.

  22

  Even from outside Haddonfield High School Allyson, Cameron, and Oscar could hear the thumping bass of the music seeping through the walls and windows of the gymnasium. Other than a few strategic spotlights shining on doorways and one angled up the flagpole, the exterior of the high school looked appropriately dark and moody. Even though they were running a bit late, they stopped at the twin brick columns of the entrance gate to take themed photos. Members of the dance committee had mounted painted plywood gargoyles atop each column. The style of the artwork was reminiscent of two-dimensional television animation rather than an attempt at photorealism. Looking more realistic than the gargoyles were the two plastic skeletons attached with fishing line to the columns.

  The Exquisite Corpse Dance had officially begun about thirty minutes before she arrived with Cameron and, naturally, Oscar, who had tagged along with the pair. A few of their costumed classmates lingered by the main door. Everyone else had already gone inside.

  They had arrived late due to Oscar’s eleventh-hour costume change. He’d planned to go as a vampire in sunglasses, but after tripping a couple times, he reconsidered that plan. Keeping the black cape with its wide red collar and red interior over a black novelty t-shirt designed to look like a tux, he pocketed the plastic fangs and sunglasses and put on a pair of curved devil horns. “Rather be a horny devil than a blind bloodsucker,” he explained.

  “Either way’s fine with us,” Cameron said, urging him along.

  “What about Mephistopheles,” Oscar said, snapping his fingers. They’d recently read Goethe’s Faust. “Anybody asks, I could say, ‘Don’t Meph with me, bro!’”

  With a weary shake of his head, Cameron said, “Please don’t say that.”

  “Okay, horny devil it is,” Oscar said.

  “Truth in advertising,” Cameron said.

  Allyson chuckled.

  “Oh, don’t laugh,” Oscar said, raising his cape with both hands more in the manner of a cinematic vampire about to transform into a bat than any movie devil she’d ever seen. “Chicks dig a guy in a cape.”

  “I have literally never heard that,” Allyson said.

  “After tonight,” Oscar said, “you’ll know it for a fact.”

  Cameron laughed. “Dream on, Casanova.”

  Allyson and Cameron stuck to their original plan to go to the dance as Bonnie and Clyde. And Cameron had embraced his role as the effortlessly glamorous gun moll, wearing a tan knit beret at a jaunty angle, a brown-patterned scarf low over a mustard-yellow short-sleeved cardigan, and a brown plaid-patterned pencil skirt, along with brown socks and black loafers. He’d abandoned the blond bob wig in favor of his own shoulder-length loose curls, and his commitment to character ended short of shaving his exposed legs, though that choice was more a nod to the comedy of the moment.

  “You make a fetching Bonnie,” Allyson said.

  She leaned in and they kissed.

  “And you—”

  Stepping forward, Oscar wrapped his cape around Cameron, pulling them apart. “How dare you insult my bro,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “I’m here for you, Cam. Skirt or no skirt.”

  “She didn’t insult—”

  “Called you a dog, Cam,” Oscar said. “Like, ‘Fetch, Bonnie, fetch.’”

  “Dude, you’re acting out again,” Cameron said, laughing. “Get over it.”

  “Although he does have the luscious locks of an Afghan hound,” Oscar added, grinning as he attempted to pat Cameron’s hair.

  Dipping away from Oscar, Cameron approached Allyson again. When he took her hand, Allyson beamed. “Bonnie and Clyde are inseparable,” she said with a pointed glance at Oscar, who bowed his head.

  Less daring—and less gender-flipping—Allyson’s Clyde costume consisted of a pale straw fedora, a double-breasted, waist-length suit jacket with matching pleated slacks in a brown checked pattern, a long-sleeve dress shirt with suspenders and a necktie. High pant cuffs exposed her black socks with brown dress shoes, but little of her calves. She’d pinned her long hair up under the hat. And for her own jaunty look, she tucked a wooden match in the corner of her mouth, a fake cigarette.

  “As I was about to say, before Oscar Mephed it up—”

  “Dude!” Oscar exclaimed. “You do love me.”

  “—you are one stylish Clyde,” Cameron continued, ignoring Oscar’s joyful outburst.

  They kissed again, a gentle brushing of lips—

  “Yield to Death,” a voice boomed
behind them.

  Startled, the trio turned as a tall student in a hooded black cloak wearing a rubber skull mask strode toward the gate, holding a scythe before him. As he neared, Allyson noted the scythe consisted of a broom handle with a cardboard blade covered in aluminum foil.

  He stopped between them and said, “I am—the Grim Reaper.”

  “Really?” Cameron said, smiling. “I had no clue.”

  Oscar shrugged, playing along. “I’m shocked.”

  “Allyson?” Cameron asked.

  “Speechless,” she said, deadpan.

  “Someone at this school has an appointment with Death,” the Grim Reaper proclaimed in his best sepulchral tone. Turning in a slow circle, he lowered the tip of his aluminum-foil scythe blade toward Cameron, Allyson, and, finally, Oscar. “You three may pass.”

  “After you, Mr Reaper,” Oscar said, gesturing toward the entrance with a sweep of his cape.

  They waited silently until the Grim Reaper entered the school. Then they all burst out laughing.

  “What was that?” Allyson said.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Oscar said, adding in a deep voice, “Death!”

  They laughed again.

  “Hardcore cosplayer,” Cameron said.

  “Not so hardcore after they confiscate his broom scythe,” Oscar said.

  “That has to be Arlo,” Allyson said, picturing the tall, skinny senior. “Arlo Riddock, right?”

  “Bet it is,” Cameron said, nodding. “Heard he’s a larper.”

  “Don’t be racist,” Oscar said.

  “Live action role play,” Cameron said.

  “Never pictured him coming to a school dance,” Allyson said, reminding herself that Vicky had to figuratively twist her arm for her to come.

  “It’s not a dance,” Cameron said. “As far as he’s concerned, it’s a costume party.”

  “It’s a dance—with Death,” Oscar sang, raising his cape and spinning in a circle.

  “He’s enjoying that cape a little too much,” Cameron said to Allyson.

  “Enough stalling,” Allyson said, as much to herself as them. “Photo time.”