by J. W. Ocker
Down another street, the group found themselves embroiled in a candy corn fight between a pair of witches and a group of Pilgrims. After heaving a few snack-sized candy bar grenades into the fray, the threesome made it safely down the road.
In front of Town Hall, near the statue of the founder, burned the orange heart of Cowlmouth’s Halloween, a monstrous jack-o’-lantern. The bulbous, warty creature sat heavily on a stack of wooden pallets. It had wide, angular features that glowed and glowered. Through them, a halogen lamp could be seen giving life to the jack-o’, its demon-tail extension cord trailing behind its bulk through a hole bored into the shell. The electric pumpkin stared at the monsters that streamed past as if they were its personal minions. A thin line of yellow police tape formed a magic square around the pumpkin, keeping those minions at bay.
The trio stopped at the tape. A cardboard sign beside it labeled the winner of the Cowlmouth Fall Carnival as PIPKIN’S SOUL. Douglas stared at it for a few moments and then looked at the tip of his plastic scythe. “Anybody have a pocketknife?” Audrey reached a feathered hand into her costume to pull out the orange-handled blade with the emergency medical services insignia, the same tool she’d brandished at Cowlmouth Cemetery. Douglas took the knife, dropped his candy bag and scythe, and adjusted his skull mask to make sure it covered his face. With a quick look around, he slipped easily under the tape.
“Whoa, whoa, where you going?” Lowell called after him.
Douglas didn’t answer. He just walked straight up to the demon gourd. He pulled open the knife and bent over the pumpkin. When he stood up, there was a letter cut into its orange flesh, right beside its evil grin—a D.
“Holy hockey sticks,” was all he heard behind him.
Douglas took a step back, admired his handiwork, and then slowly walked back, tossing Audrey the knife and ducking under the tape. As his two friends stared at him, he said, “We’re facing our monsters tonight, right?”
Eventually, the Raven and the Grim Reaper and the Minotaur found their sacks filled with enough candy to last them until the next Halloween. They jumped out of the seemingly unending stream of tiny terrors and into the deep entryway of a defunct furniture store that was one of the few havens from Halloween in all downtown. In that bubble of calm, they dropped their bags to the concrete with loud thumps. Audrey followed the bags with her own thump while Lowell and Douglas saluted each other with their plastic weapons and commenced sparring.
“Man, this feels like the best Halloween ever,” Lowell said as he parried a pass from Douglas’s scythe.
“Everybody seems really into it,” agreed Douglas, aiming for one of Lowell’s horns.
“What next?” asked Audrey. “Curfew?”
“No way, man. Ow!” Lowell dropped his ax, paying for it with a smart slap across his knuckles from Douglas’s scythe. “This is probably my last Halloween.”
Douglas dropped his scythe to his side and raised the skull mask so that it sat on his head. “What do you mean?”
“Getting too old for this. Might be too old already.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t think many other seventh graders went out this year.” Audrey reached into her bag, fished out a piece of candy, and, without looking at it, unwrapped it and tossed it into her beak.
“There was no way I was going to skip trick-or-treating on a Halloween with a genuine murderer in town. Next year, I won’t have that excuse. Probably.”
In the gorgeous orange and black of the moment, as the flow of trick-or-treaters mobbed past about ten feet away, “a genuine murderer in town” was the least unsettling part of that statement to Douglas. He looked through the costumes at his friends. At Lowell, at Audrey, at Lowell again. Lowell’s last Halloween, he thought. He couldn’t imagine trick-or-treating without his best friend, which meant this was probably Douglas’s last Halloween, too.
“We should watch some scary movies after curfew. My place,” he offered.
“Now that’s Halloween. Horror movies at a funeral home,” said Audrey, picking at a bit of feather that dangled above her eye.
“Anybody got a jawbreaker? I kind of want a jawbreaker,” said Lowell, dropping to the ground and digging around in his pillowcase. Audrey dove into her personal hoard to see what she could come up with. Douglas didn’t move. His bag sat lonely on the stoop. He was staring out the entryway, trying to point a shaking finger at the street.
A tall, robed form had strode darkly across the entryway. It was just for a few seconds, but in those seconds, things seemed to go wavy—strange—as if Douglas’s inner ears had shut down. He could barely hear what his friends were saying.
“That was him,” Douglas finally mustered.
“What?” mumbled Audrey, chewing on the decapitated head of a cinnamon bear.
“Him. The Day Killer. He just walked right past us.”
All three ran to the edge of the entryway, peering around it like monsters in a closet waiting for a child-victim to enter its bedroom.
“Where is he?” Lowell hissed.
Douglas raised one hand and slowly pointed a finger as if he really were the Grim Reaper calling out the soon-to-be deceased. The dark figure, a larger version of Douglas, continued down the street. The costume blended well into the crowd of ghouls. “We’re going after him, right?” Douglas was almost surprised to hear that the words were his own.
“I might be a little candy-drunk, but I totally think we should,” said Audrey.
“I could be wrong.” He didn’t think he was.
Lowell cracked a grin large enough that it almost dislodged his nose ring. “Of course we’re going after him. Wrong or not, we’ve got to find out. Come on.” He reached out and snagged Audrey’s arm as she jumped out onto the sidewalk. “Don’t forget your bags. We’re no longer trick-or-treating. But we are pretending to trick-or-treat.”
At first, they all stuck close together, but at Lowell’s instruction, the group spread out into a loose snake, making it easier to cut through the Halloween crowd. Each person kept their eyes on the friend ahead of him or her. Whoever was in front kept their eyes on the dark form. Lowell started out in the lead, but the group alternated so that if the hooded figure turned around, there was less chance he’d suspect he was being followed.
When it was Douglas’s turn, he tried to pick out some identifying detail about the figure, or what it was that made him so sure, despite the brief glance, that it was the monster that had chased him that cemetery night. But there was nothing. Just a hump of black weaving through a tide of monsters. Nothing strange. At least on a Halloween night. No masks swiveled as the figure passed. Nobody took off running in terror. But all Douglas could think was that the Day Killer was inches away from hundreds of potential victims.
If he was the Day Killer.
Maybe he was just somebody’s dad trying to find his kids. Douglas tried his hardest to convince himself that was true.
A few blocks later, they found themselves on more residential streets in an area that bordered Druid Park, a forest that started at the edge of town and extended almost all the way to Main Street. The clumps of trick-or-treaters thinned here, so the Ghastlies stuck closer together. Every once in a while, they found it necessary to climb a porch and do some actual trick-or-treating to keep from looking out of place.
Eventually, the hooded figure turned down a side street, disappearing around the corner of a house.
Lowell stuck his arms out to stop the other two, counted off a reasonable amount of time, and then dropped them. The group raced to the corner, peering down the street.
“Hockey sticks!” whispered Lowell.
The long street sloped down into darkness and was completely empty of candy-laden monsters. The night’s trick-or-treaters had already passed through this neighborhood like a pestilence, leaving each house barren and devoid of treats. All that they’d left in their wake were a few torn paper skeletons dangling from porch overhangs, some discarded apples in the gutter, and a few flimsy candy wr
appers scratching across the street in the breeze.
A lone, dark figure walked down the sidewalk, getting farther and farther ahead and blinking in and out of existence under the glow of the street lights.
“There’s no way we can follow him down there without him realizing it,” said Lowell, pacing as he swung his ax. “We’re going to lose him.”
“We should call somebody. Your dad, maybe,” said Audrey, pulling her phone from somewhere among her feathers.
“We could. But by the time he got here, that guy will be safe at home or eight streets away or hiding in the middle of Druid Park. And all he has to do is ditch the robes and he could hide even better than that. Worse, we don’t have any proof that he is the Day Killer, nothing except Douglas’s word. And I definitely don’t want to explain to my dad why we all believe that. What’s the killer doing out on a Monday, anyway? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe he ran out of toothpaste,” said Douglas.
“Still, other than Doug, this is the closest anybody has ever been to the killer and lived,” protested Audrey. “We have to remember where we are. We should start looking from here the next time we patrol.” She craned her head to look up at the looming green sign attached to the telephone pole at the corner. “Chatman Street.”
“Wait.” Douglas flipped up his skull mask to check the name of the street, himself. Why does that name seem so familiar? Something about …
“Wait for what?” asked Audrey.
Douglas didn’t answer. He just kept looking at the green aluminum rectangle. And then he had it. “We’re not going to lose him. I think I know where he’s going,” he said quietly. “Death House.”
“That’s what I call your house,” said Audrey. “I mean, before I knew you, of course. Now I call it Doug’s Death House.”
“You’re stepping on an explanation,” Lowell said to her.
“It’s an abandoned house somewhere on this street. It’s supposed to be haunted. Would make an ideal hideout for somebody trying to hide between murders.”
“How many Halloweens have we been through together, Doug?” Lowell spoke the question in a strange monotone, staring at his finger as he ran it over the blunt edge of his plastic ax.
“I don’t know. Like three or four.” Douglas looked at Audrey, who shrugged in a “He’s your best friend” kind of way.
Lowell continued examining the details of his prop weapon. “And all this time you’ve been holding out on me? You’ve had a genuine haunted house in your back pocket, and you’ve never brought it up? Not even once? There are laws governing friendship, and I’m pretty sure that’s a severe transgression of them. Did Moss and Feaster tell you about it?”
“My dad, actually. And it was only a few weeks ago. Things have been kind of crazy since then.”
“Yeah, like following-a-serial-killer-down-a-deserted-street-on-Halloween-night crazy,” said Audrey.
“Tell us about Death House,” insisted Lowell.
Douglas fiddled with the hood of his robe, which had noosed itself around his neck too tightly for his comfort. “There’s not much to say, honestly. Dad called it Death House. Said it was on Chatman Street near Druid Park. There were rumors of a family that was murdered there back when my great-grandfather ran the funeral home. He didn’t tell me any ghost stories. Just that when he was a kid, they used to pretend it was haunted because nobody lived there.” He dropped his skull face back into place. “Somebody probably lives there now.”
“Well,” Lowell said, swinging his ax pensively, “I always thought Cowlmouth needed a haunted house. Let’s go.”
“What about curfew?” Douglas asked through the thin veneer of his plastic skull. “It can’t be that far off.”
“Man, if we catch the Day Killer, we’ll never have a curfew ever again.”
Douglas dropped his head and looked at a scrap of orange streamer that had torn loose from a set of decorations and been trampled into a dingy brown color. “He could have led us here, you know—to a deserted street. He could be hiding out there waiting for us.”
“There are three of us,” said Audrey. “You heard the Halloween rules. Three equals safety. Mathematics.”
Douglas nodded. “Then let’s go.”
The three stood at the top of a hill, gazing down the steep incline that ended somewhere in the darkness below them.
“The street looks pretty long. Any idea where this Death House is exactly?” asked Lowell.
“I think Dad said it was at the bottom.”
“Of course it is,” said Lowell.
“We’ll find it. Just look for the house with blood oozing from its windows,” Audrey remarked dryly.
“Okay, last chance for anybody to suggest the sensible thing. We could all go to Doug’s and catch some fright flicks,” said Lowell. Nobody replied. “Good. They can make fun of us for trick-or-treating past our expiration dates, but they sure as hockey sticks aren’t going to make fun of us for chickening out on a haunted house. Or a serial killer.” They were bold words, but Douglas couldn’t help but notice that Lowell was suddenly carrying the toy ax like it was real. He tightened his own grip on his scythe.
As they walked, the three automatically leaned back a few degrees to adapt to the descent. The streetlamps were on, but a bit too widely spaced to do too much other than make the darkness around them deeper. Even Audrey’s reflective safety tape seemed muted. They could just see that the street was bordered on either side by large, rambling houses shoved close together, each shaped with unnecessarily extravagant arches, tall pillars and broad porches. All were visibly run-down and had been rebuilt with mismatched building materials, the mark of houses that had lived through too many decades. They were set high enough above the road that the only access to the front doors was long flights of steps. Were some giant monster to sweep away those steps with a pass of its claw, the occupants would be as effectively trapped as a bald Rapunzel in a tower. Behind the houses on their right, they could make out the tall, dark trees of Druid Park, making it seem like they were farther from the civilization of downtown than they actually were.
As they walked quietly down the hill, empty lots took the place of houses, like missing teeth in a rotting smile. Eventually, the empty spaces outnumbered the houses, until the trio finally arrived at the bottom of the street. It dead-ended in a cul-de-sac more like the outer boundary of the world than the end of a street. A single, terrifying house stood at the far end. Death House.
If any house wore its haunted on the outside, Death House did.
Every wall bowed inward, except the ones that bowed out. Every window and door was twisted, bordered by enormous gaps like a badly put-together jigsaw puzzle. Death House’s three chimneys were stained black from either ages-old soot or the terrified demons that expelled themselves from whatever dark heart kept this place standing against all the laws of physics. The house crouched more than it stood, as if it were nursing the injuries of its broken timbers and chasm-cracked foundation. Its roof sagged deep enough in the middle to relocate its attic somewhere to the third floor. And it made sounds … empty whistles and creaks and insect noises and faint, unidentifiable wails that continued even when the breeze slackened. Around the house, the earth had gone back to a primeval state in which three-foot-high grasses and black trees with long gnarled roots hid countless generations of twisted evolution, like some evil Galapagos.
“Ho. Lee. Crow,” whispered Audrey. “How come I’ve never seen this place before?”
“It must only exist on Halloween,” Lowell whispered back.
“It must’ve been abandoned for a hundred years. Like the town just let it sit here to rot, hoping one day it would dust into nothing and disappear,” said Douglas. “Something horrible definitely happened here.”
Audrey pushed her beak onto the top of her head. “So, do we trick-or-treat it?”
“Only if you want poisoned candy,” was Douglas’s reply.
“Then what?”
“We at
least have to look inside,” replied Lowell. “See if this is the Day Killer’s hideout. And, if it ends up just being a haunted house, then fine. We ended Halloween in style.”
“Man, I don’t think my legs would listen to me even if I really wanted to walk up to that place,” said Douglas.
“Please, Cemetery Boy. It’s not that hard,” said Audrey. “Three of us, remember?”
“For now,” said Douglas ominously. “Then there’ll be two. Then one. And then … the end.”
“You’re being silly. Besides, if we’re going to miss curfew, let’s make it worth it.”
“Here goes nothing,” said Lowell, edging closer to the gates. “Wish I had my baseball bat.”
“Wait. I’ll go first,” said Audrey. She made a show of settling her raven mask back into place and heaving her black and orange candy sack over her shoulder before approaching the tall, threatening gates. At least, they’d been gates at one time. Now they were little more than a chaos of rusted, bent, and broken shafts of black iron that encircled the house like a stunted species of wild thorn bush. They seemed more “No Trespassing” sign than an actual “No Trespassing” sign. Audrey slid easily through one of the gaps and turned around. “I said I’ll go first, not I’ll go by myself.”
Douglas and Lowell looked at each other and then followed.
Inside, they had to step over the smashed corpses of pumpkins that somebody had tossed over the gate, but mostly they waded more than walked, the long weeds brushing the bottoms of their elbows and twigs snapping beneath their sneakers. Douglas looked down and could barely make out flagstones from what had once been a walkway. It was hard to imagine that once upon a time people wanted a path to the house. Above them, the crooked black limbs of trees stretched bitterly toward the moon overhead, which had already escaped behind a sky that had grown solid with clouds.
Finally, they arrived at rickety porch steps that jutted into the weeds like a boat dock on a stagnant lake. Without discussion, they took turns tiptoeing up the decaying stairs, each board sagging beneath their slight weight, threatening to swallow them into whatever dark nether region gaped beneath the house.