by Jacob Rayne
Derek’s face lit up like that of a kid at Christmas and he greedily scooped up the pound coins and shoved them into his pockets.
One of ’em fell from his pocket and he ducked to pick it up, scraping his hand through the dark liquid on the floor.
‘This is blood,’ he said, suddenly fifty shades more sober.
He hurriedly wiped his hands on the curtain and spun. The house was still in darkness.
‘I don’t like this,’ Dwight said.
‘Shut up, you big girl,’ Derek said.
The chill in the air made them pull their clothes tighter round themselves.
The flicker of a flame came from the upstairs landing, though they’d all have sworn on their mother’s lives that it wasn’t there when they walked in the house.
‘I really don’t like this,’ Dwight said.
As he turned to walk down the stairs – eluding Derek’s furious grasp – the door slammed shut, sending waves of cold through the house.
Dwight gulped and turned towards his friend on the stairs.
Derek was first up the stairs of course, his pig-headedness wouldn’t let it be any other way.
The second pumpkin was there, halfway up the snaking staircase. The dying light cast by the candle in its hollowed out carcass scattered shadows across the walls.
‘Plenty more where that came from,’ was plastered across the wall in what looked like dripping blood. It appeared almost black in the fading light.
He saw the glint of gold in the pumpkin’s head, illuminated a little by the dancing flame atop the pumpkin’s candle.
He ducked his hand in, felt dozens, no hundreds, of pound coins in there, even the dry crinkle of paper money. A grin crossed his lips and left a split second later when the snarling jaws of the pumpkin snapped shut around his wrist.
He cursed, pulled away, taking a large chunk of his flesh. Blood spattered down onto the bare floorboards, seeming to melt into dark stains that were already there.
‘You ok?’ Dwight said. ‘We can go if you want to?’
‘Are you shitting me?’ Derek said, snatching his arm away.
Fiona gave the pumpkin a wide berth. The eyes seemed to follow her, the mouth to widen as if imagining how she would taste.
The top of the staircase was cast in a blanket of shadows. The floor up here was darkened, with what looked like a dried pool of blood staining the old floorboards. There were also burn marks.
It looked like there was the chalk outline of a body there, too.
Minus one of its hands.
They moved into the bedroom.
The pumpkin was behind the door this time. The pool of light it cast was dim, and Fiona and Dwight only saw the room for a second, before the door slammed shut.
‘Time’s up, motherfucker,’ Fiona would later sob, traumatised, onto police report and into local legend, ‘That’s what it said on the wall, in foot-high letters.’ She sobbed, sniffed, took a gulp of coffee. ‘That’s what Derek said to Harry, before he threw the lighter.’ She gulped again, let what she had said sink in.
The crime scene team, upon entering the room, had seen that her story was true. The foot-high letters were carefully traced across the wall in fresh blood. The prints didn’t match anyone on record, although Fiona had a funny feeling that they’d match the missing right hand of Harry Land.
Yeah, they’d match those just as fine as you’d like.
‘So what did they do to him, miss?’ Ray said, suddenly sitting bolt upright in his chair, his eyes glued to her, his ears pricked up.
She smiled a knowing smile. ‘I could tell you but you’d have nightmares for the rest of your sorry life.’
‘Please tell us,’ the kids said.
She shook her head. ‘It’s enough to tell you that there was blood all over the walls. Derek’s own hands were missing, I’ll tell you that. His arms ended in ragged, bloody stumps. And his eyes, they were the worst part. They were just staring… glassy. Dead.’
A couple of the kids baulked. The rest were ok; in this day of movie violence and sadistic video games they’d no doubt seen worse on the idiot box.
‘So, what happened to him?’ Ray said. ‘I mean, who did it?’
The malicious grin once again played across Miss Hopper’s lips. ‘Who do you think?’
‘It was Harry, dumbass,’ Jeremy said, suddenly full of confidence.
Ray’s brow furrowed, his two thick black eyebrows meeting in the middle like a pair of particularly hirsute mating caterpillars. ‘But…’ you could almost hear the cogs in his head turning as he struggled to process this information. ‘…Harry died. How…’
Miss Hopper snorted laughter. ‘It’s Hallowe’en, time for a scare,’ she sang to remind him. ‘If you trick or treat you’d best beware. Don’t knock on the door of Harry Land, or the devil will come and chop off your hand.’
Ray’s brows furrowed further still.
‘He made a deal with the devil to pay them back, slowpoke,’ Katie Frank said, shaking her head in disbelief that he still hadn’t figured it out.
Miss Hopper smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, him and his friends.’
‘So what happened to them, Miss?’ Ray said.
That night, they got home, tried to sleep, but terror consumed them, prevented them from getting a restful night. They heard fingers drumming on the window like the legs of an immense spider.
And looked out to see a lone hand on the windowsill. No body attached to it, just a festering, oozing piece of dead flesh.
But it wasn’t dead, the fingers, though rotten and dead and harbouring countless maggots, had a strength and a dexterity that managed to open the latch on the window.
It crawled into the room, like some horrid creature.
And…
It grabbed Dwight’s arm and pinned it to the mattress. He opened his mouth to scream but another hand – this one much smaller and fresher and scabbed with eczema – crawled up the bed and clapped down over his mouth so hard he couldn’t scream, could barely even breathe.
He fought hard, but it was too late for him.
Much too late.
This shadowy form appeared in the room, so dim and tenebrous he struggled to make it out.
He said there looked like horns on the top of its head and glowing red eyes that blazed through the snaking shadows. There was a snort that sounded like a bull or a goat, then his bulging eyes fell upon the razor sharp axe held aloft in the apparition’s huge hand.
It was the same axe Harry had used to chop off his hand.
It held it up for a second, and he was certain he saw it smile, heard it laugh. The noise echoed around in his head.
Then the axe plunged down, slamming into the skinny wrist with a force that instantly severed his hand.
Thick gouts of blood sprayed out, hitting the ceiling and bouncing back down onto his trembling body. It was like he took a blood shower, one of the cops who found him would later say.
And before he died, his own hand crawled up his body, slowly, savouring every inch it moved. The dead fingers flexed then grabbed tight around his windpipe. His struggles intensified, but the hands held him tight. He wasn’t going anywhere.
The severed hand crushed in ever tighter, forcing out the meagre amount of air that remained in his starving lungs. Then it pulled hard, tearing his throat out in hot hails of blood. It was the last thing he saw; his own, severed hand holding aloft the crushed length of his larynx.
When they found him the hands had gone, of course, but they found trails in the blood. Found Derek’s fingerprints, and those of Fiona, whose body was never found.
The severed hand was never recovered either.
‘Woah, that’s brutal,’ Ray said, a whiter shade of pale covering his already pasty face.
Miss Hopper nodded.
‘So now you know where the song comes from,’ she said. ‘And you know why you must avoid Harry Land’s house if you decide to go trick or treating.’
‘Ah, that ain’t gonna h
appen to any trick or treaters,’ Katie said. ‘That’s just a scary Hallowe’en story. Not true.’
Miss Hopper’s face was instantly robbed of the glee it had previously exhibited.
‘It is true. And none of you must ever go there. Every year since the unfortunate night of Harry’s death there have been kids curious and stupid enough to visit poor Harry’s house. And every year there have been kids who have never returned home. Hands that have never been found.’
‘Bull-shit,’ Jeremy piped up, his voice much more powerful than his usual timid self.
‘I don’t think any of us should go,’ Ray said. ‘It sounds scary as shit to me.’
The reversal of the usual classroom roles was startling for most of the class. Most of them began to heckle Ray.
‘You must promise me that none of you are ever going to go up there,’ Miss Hopper said, face grave.
The kids all looked around each other. A handful of them were reluctant to promise, but Miss Hopper saw that most of them were terrified. They’d rather swallow their own shit than go up there, judging by the timid, clammy faces that stared back at her.
Jeremy, Katie and Gerard were the only ones who were yet to promise not to go to Harry’s house.
‘Come on, guys,’ Miss Hopper said.
‘We promise,’ they said together with a complete lack of sincerity that made her think of the spin-doctor politicians she’d seen on TV spinning a web of lies ready for the next election. Not my fault if they get themselves killed, she thought.
She began to talk again, but the bell sounded. As the last bell of the school day, she knew she had more chance of flapping her arms and flying than keeping the unruly kids in class.
‘Please, kids, I’m begging you, don’t go up there,’ she shouted as they shouldered their bags and jostled to be first out of the door.
There was trick or treating to be done, scares to be dished out and no time to waste on school.
4
Katie knocked on Ray’s door. He scarfed down the last of his spaghetti bolognese, smearing more of it down his double chin and leapt to his feet.
He threw the Freddy Krueger mask he’d inherited from his older brother over his head and shouted, ‘Trick or treat.’ With that, he grabbed Katie in a headlock and roughly noogied her.
‘Hey,’ she squealed. ‘This hair took me ages to sort out. Get your fat hands off me.’
He pulled out the head of one of the snakes she’d meticulously woven into her hair. ‘The hell you supposed to be, anyway?’
‘Medusa, dummy. Don’t you listen in class? We only did it like last week.’
He shook his head.
‘Where’s Gerard?
‘He’s still getting his costume on.’
Ray nodded.
‘Let’s go get him. He’ll be there all night if we let him.’
Katie smiled, itched one of the snakes. The green wool she’d woven in looked awesome but it sure was itchy.
They saw a pale figure in a crisp white sheet in front of them. Two dark eyes peered out through the crudely cut eyeholes.
‘Where you off to, you big girl?’ Ray said, upon recognising Jeremy’s skinny frame underneath the sheet.
‘I’m going to rap on Harry Land’s door,’ Jeremy grinned. ‘You coming?’
Ray gasped. Shook his head instinctively, his mouth floundering for the right words.
‘Now who’s the big girl?’ Jeremy laughed.
‘Yeah,’ Katie said. ‘Let’s go up there and see if it’s true.’ A grin almost as hideous as Miss Hopper’s spread across her face.
Ray squirmed. On the one hand, one of the softest kids in the school was going. This was going to be seriously bad for his street cred. On the other hand, he was genuinely terrified by the story Miss Hopper had told him. His belly was doing somersaults like when he and his brother had double-dared each other to eat raw sausages the previous summer. But this was worse somehow.
He gulped.
‘See ya there, if you ain’t too scared,’ Jeremy grinned, turning and walking, singing the Harry Land song as he went.
It further put the shits up Ray.
‘You can’t let him go and not go yourself,’ Katie grinned. ‘Every kid you’ve ever bullied will turn on ya. You’ll lose any respect or fear you ever held over them.’
Ray nodded. Gulped again. The aftertaste of the spaghetti bolognese burnt his throat. His belly churned even more violently.
‘Yeah, but wait for Gerard. I ain’t in no rush to go there. No reason he should miss out either.’
It turned out Gerard wanted to go; it was the first thing that spilled from his lips.
Ray tried to protest but their taunts further belittled him. He was used to dishing out the bullying and had never been on the receiving end before. He was swept along like a twig in a raging river.
The house was even creepier than they’d imagined.
Elm trees ran riot over the house, which looked as though it hadn’t been occupied since the turn of the previous century. The windows were shattered, covered in dried dark streaks. The wooden walls were scorched in places where no one had bothered to repair them.
All three of them felt eyes upon them, although only Ray chose to believe the sensation.
The skin on the back of his neck began to crawl.
‘Is that blood?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it, unless Miss Hopper’s had the ketchup out to scare us away,’ Gerard laughed. With his zombie face paint, he almost looked dead already. Ray hurriedly dismissed this thought.
‘No sign of Jeremy,’ Ray said. ‘Bet he ain’t even come here.’
‘He will have done,’ Katie said. ‘He was super-determined.’
‘Probably ran away shitting his pants already,’ Gerard laughed. The laugh echoed briefly then cut off as if even it was scared to cross the threshold of the Land household.
‘Let’s fucking do this then,’ Ray said, a thin sliver of his tough guy persona returning at long last.
He walked much faster than he wanted to, but he didn’t want to lose any more face in front of his friends. They both looked up to him and he couldn’t be seen to be wussing out.
He took in a deep breath, raised his hand.
Squealed like a little girl when a blood-smeared hand clasped his shoulder hard enough to leave red finger-marks.
‘That was too fun,’ Katie laughed in his ear. ‘Say, you aren’t going pussy on us, are ya?’
‘Course not,’ he said, trying desperately to hide the shake of his hand, the rapid heartbeat that thundered in the middle of his throat.
‘Then fucking knock on the door then,’ Gerard said. ‘It ain’t that hard. See.’ He rapped three times on the wood.
‘Oh no,’ Katie grinned. ‘You knocked on the door of Harry Land. Now the devil will come out and chop off your hand.’
Gerard hid his hand up his sleeve and began to fake some screams.
‘Piss off,’ Ray said. He knocked hard on the door. Just the once, that was all he could stomach.
Katie brayed a fast beat on it.
‘There, can we go now?’ Ray said.
‘Ah-ah-ah,’ Gerard smiled. ‘We’re going in. Gonna bring one of those hands back home if there are any.’
‘There aren’t gonna be any hands,’ Katie said, as if explaining it to a toddler. ‘Cos it ain’t real.’
‘There might be this one,’ Gerard said, putting his other arm up his sleeve and beginning the fake screaming again.
Halfway through his screaming, the smiles on his and Katie’s faces vanished without a trace when a cry of utter despair came from inside the house.
5
‘What the hell was that?’ Katie said.
‘See, we should never have come here,’ Ray said, turning and making for the end of the path.
‘Come on, this could be the coolest story since the original Harry Land story,’ Gerard grinned.
‘Or a gruesome footnote,’ Katie grinned. ‘Either way, it’ll be a
rush.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Ray said as Katie put her hand to the damp-rotted wood and pushed gently.
The door swung open, letting out the dim light from a trio of pumpkins in the middle of the hallway.
‘Come on,’ she said, moving into the house, her feet making the charred floorboard creak.
Ray gulped hard and followed. His dinner jumped up to sternum height but he managed to swallow it as he moved into the house.
Gerard was keen as mustard, shoving past him and into the hallway.
‘Is anyone there?’ Katie shouted, her voice echoing ominously off the walls. ‘We heard a scream. Are you hurt?’
‘It’s Jeremy pissing about,’ Ray said, suddenly furious. His fear evaporated until he saw the bright flecks of blood on the three pumpkins.
The door slammed shut behind them, sounding like a bomb blast in the silent house.
The pumpkin nearest to Ray began to squirm, the lid of it moving around as if something inside was trying to push its way out.
What looked like the leg of some hairless tarantula poked out through the gap and began to claw its way slowly out of the pumpkin. Soon there were four more legs.
‘Who left a spider in here?’ Gerard laughed. ‘Nice one, but we ain’t fooled.’
They all drew a sharp intake of breath when they realised that it was a child’s hand in there, not a spider.
‘Well they must have drilled through the floor in the basement and poked their hand through,’ Katie said, trying to rationalise the creeping dread that threatened to freeze her heart.
‘Yeah, come on out, Jeremy,’ Ray said, his hatred and disdain for the nerd again overriding his terror for a second.
He grabbed the hand, and his mind screamed at him the skin was too cold, the flesh too squidgy, to be Jeremy’s, but he ignored it and pulled hard.
‘Come on out, you prick,’ Ray shouted, pulling with all he was worth. A grin of triumph lit his face as the hand began to slide out.
Ray screamed himself when he saw that the hand ended in a bloody stump. Maggots, deathly pale in the darkness, squirmed in the open bones and veins therein.
‘Relax, it’s a fake hand,’ Katie said, but the tone of her voice wasn’t convincing any of them.