The Halloween Children

by Brian James Freeman

  In the corner sat the same cardboard boxes I’d noticed last night, when I’d assumed they were empty. They were sealed with packing tape. With black marker, Shawna had written A / V—for “audio/visual,” which is less incriminating than “surveillance equipment.” And far less incriminating than “internal organs” or “severed limbs.”

  As I looked at three boxes arranged against the wall, I realized they’d been lined up together so neatly, almost the exact length of a coffin.

  I set my tool chest down, retrieved a box cutter from the open tray at the top.

  Before I cut into one of them, I examined the sides to see if any liquid soaked through the cardboard. They all appeared to be dry. I tapped my foot against the left-most box, expecting a slosh from inside, but heard nothing. The way the internal padding reacted—Bubble Wrap or foam or wadded paper—it felt like my toe prodded gently against a person’s stomach.

  I clicked out the box cutter’s blade, then positioned it over the taped seal. The blade slid easily through the tape. I had to be careful not to press down too hard, accidentally slicing into the contents.

  Nothing inside stared back at me. I found a familiar computer monitor and a keyboard with its cord wrapped around it. Tiny speakers, more cords. I sliced open the other two boxes, finding the rest of the surveillance equipment I’d seen the previous night.

  Nothing more.

  Except for a long strip of cloth in the third box. A tie. Blue with thin white stripes. It was probably a spare. If it was the same tie that had strangled the insurance investigator, somebody had washed it to remove the stains.

  I tucked the top flaps to reseal each of the boxes.

  Turns out Shawna hadn’t been speaking in code. Nothing sinister: just items to be placed into storage.

  She must have made earlier arrangements with the investigator, though I couldn’t figure out why she’d lied about the time of their last meeting.

  It seemed likely she’d never checked inside the bathroom. She’d been so calm because she had no idea what had happened in this apartment.

  The body would still be there.

  Once again I approached the bathroom—the equivalent of the kids’ bathroom in our apartment, opposite the bedroom my son and daughter shared. It struck me how the innocence of kids could be scooped out of a building, along with the furniture—intrusive equipment set up in the same place where they’d sleep or play with dolls or crayons, a lurid Peeping Tom violating their sanctuary. And just above the tub where they’d splash water, where Mattie would twist his hair into shampoo horns or Amber would cup a froth of perfumed bubbles in her hand, then blow it into the air—in a room with the exact same floor plan—some business-suited horror swayed from the curtain rod, fingers struggling beneath a knotted tie, feet kicking at the lip of the tub while a tongue-strangled gurgle sprayed spittle out the corner of his mouth. The knot finally broke, too late to save him, and the body tumbled into dry, hard porcelain, limbs splaying and snapping.

  I reached to push open the bathroom door. My fingertips twitched at the memory of sliding down the jelly of wet, dead eyes.

  The bathroom was empty. And clean.

  I could almost think I’d imagined the whole thing. I’d seen something in the dark—an abandoned towel or bathrobe—and my overexcited mind filled it with a human shape.

  Almost. But the clean was its own kind of proof, considering how the rest of the apartment had been allowed to accumulate dust and dirt. In her previous anecdote of covering up a death, Shawna proudly commented: I scrubbed blood off the wall and floor and repainted the whole room myself—couldn’t trust the discretion of outside contractors.

  I examined the bathtub. The white didn’t exactly shine, but it bore scuff marks from a recent scrubbing. I knelt next to the tub, reached in, and lay my palm flat against the nonslip ridges on the bottom. The tub felt warm, from hot water washed over it again and again.

  The idea was repulsive to me, but I leaned my head into the tub and took a deep breath, checking for the smell of death and bodily waste. The odor was mostly chemical, like wet paint. Another scent lingered, in the tub itself and in the whole room. A seasonal air freshener—something like Autumn Harvest or Pumpkin Spice.

  In a small plastic trashcan under the sink, I noticed a wadded ball of toilet tissue. The paper was wrapped around something. No point being squeamish, considering what I’d already done these past few hours. I picked up the wadded white tissue and pulled apart the damp folds.

  Inside, I found a wedge of lemon.

  —

  You probably think you know what goes on in a person’s mind after an experience like this. A normal person’s mind, you’d want to imply—to insult me, to show how my reaction doesn’t measure up with anything rational.

  Well, I can’t tell you what’s normal. Can only do my best to recall what thoughts occurred to me, in what order. Maybe you’ve got a list of stages you’ll compare them against, like that anger-denial-bargaining-acceptance pattern for grief, right?

  Obviously, I knew something awful had happened in that apartment. Suicide, I was thinking, but if I wanted to go full Sherlock I might wonder how he hadn’t been able to save himself, the shower rod an easy distance from the rim of the tub, so he could have kept himself steady. More likely, somebody stood over him, pulled the tie tighter, kicked him back from the tub, taunted him in his final gasps. Who might that be: Shawna, after some under-the-table business deal went bust? How about Joanne Huff, the invalid afraid she’d lose her only source of income? Her atrophied muscles rippling with renewed, almost supernatural strength, she’d prove all the investigator’s suspicions as she lifted him like a puppet, wrapped and knotted the cloth about his neck.

  Or is it you (turning to the gathering of suspects in the country-house drawing room), the college student from downstairs? You said you’d never met the man, but you slipped up earlier when you mentioned his name. Oh, don’t bat your innocent eyes at me. The two of you were having an affair—and you learned he planned to return home to his wife. You punished him for his betrayal, didn’t you? Didn’t you?

  I could spin out scenarios like this all day. How about…some other resident found a surveillance camera pointed into her bedroom? Not that far-fetched of an idea, really. If he’s already placed one set of spy cameras, how much trouble would it be to plant a few more? He could spy on the whole building, the whole damn complex.

  Or maybe his death wasn’t related to Stillbrook at all. A private investigator would have other clients, would have a history of exposed secrets that ruined countless other lives.

  A lot of people would have wanted him dead. So, yeah, murder. Suspicion of foul play. Whatever you want to call it.

  But I decided it was suicide, because that was the less troubling thing to believe. I wasn’t an accomplice to murder, or obstructing justice or anything like that. Suicide is kind of a private decision. You can’t arrest the guy who did it, so as far as I’m concerned, there’s no crime.

  Easier to look the other way. Play dumb.

  All I did was move a few boxes into storage.

  Honestly, once that suicide theory clicked into place for me, my conscience was clear. I didn’t give the matter a second thought.

  Though I will admit one thing puzzled me. If the guy really did kill himself, what drove him to it? Why would he commit suicide in this dreary empty apartment? And not with pills or a razor, or at least a sturdy rope, but with a cheap necktie he just happened to have with him. That makes the act seem improvised. Spontaneous.

  As if something about the apartment drove him to kill himself. Places can have an effect on people. That’s what all those haunted-house movies are about.

  Or maybe he’d witnessed something awful on one of those monitor screens. Just doing his job, bored out of his mind watching this sickly, motionless woman. Then all of a sudden he sees it: something so disturbing that he can’t stop thinking about it. The image undermines his sense of self, his sense of what’s righ
t. He doesn’t want to exist in the same world as something that terrifying.

  I wonder what that image might be.

  Those computer files might be worth reviewing.

  —

  Our basement storage rooms were pretty much first-come, first-served. Instead of assigning them to particular apartments—there weren’t enough to go around—tenants had to wait and watch for somebody to move out, then try to be the first to latch a combination lock onto a freshly emptied storage cage.

  You could see through the wire mesh of each four-foot-by-four-foot floor-to-ceiling cage. Not all of the cages were marked, so you didn’t necessarily know whose stuff you were looking at. A lot of it hadn’t been touched in ages. Stacks of out-of-date magazines and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Old-fashioned televisions with rounded picture tubes: a phonograph player and some vinyl records. A Smith-Corona typewriter. A plastic bin overflowing with Barbie and Ken dolls swimming through a sea of tiny clothing. A lot of sealed boxes and beat-up suitcases.

  Not much worth stealing, that’s for sure. In better condition, a few things might pass as antiques, but really, you wonder why people bothered with locks.

  Easier to use the garbage bins outside.

  The tenants were on their own, but Shawna appropriated an “official” storage cage in each of the paired buildings. Her cage in building 6 was practically overflowing with party supplies, but my cage was full, too: all my tools, the stepladder and replacement bulbs; extra shelving and fixtures and extension cords; mop and bucket, broom and dustpan, and the cleaning liquids. Still, her instructions specified that I store the A/V boxes in my supply unit. I managed to stack the boxes in there okay, but I knew I’d have to move them around or scootch past them every single time I needed supplies for, you know, my job.

  The idea irritated me a little. I wasn’t thinking about the boxes as evidence, that she’d had me place them there to incriminate myself. Like I said earlier, I’d settled on the suicide theory, so I didn’t dream I’d ever become a murder suspect.

  Multiple murder, for that matter.

  No, I was just angry about the inconvenience. And how typical it was for Shawna to make snap decisions, never thinking how much trouble she put me through.

  So that explains the little spiteful thing I did.

  That, and my annoyance about the canceled Halloween party.

  Because I could see all the supplies in Shawna’s locked storage area. Christmas lights and ornaments and the artificial tree for our “Holiday Party.” Hearts and stupid Cupid cutouts for Valentine’s Day. Balloons and welcome signs for our semi-annual open house.

  And all the Halloween decorations that now, thanks to another of her snap decisions, wouldn’t ever get used. Plastic pumpkins. Ghost and witch silhouettes. A hinged cardboard skeleton. Foam tombstones. Giant rubber bats and spiders, and spiderwebs made out of cotton.

  Shawna usually made me retrieve the decorations before any Stillbrook event, so I knew the three-number combination. I dialed it in and unlatched her storage locker.

  Thinking: Wouldn’t it be cool if someone found these forbidden decorations and put them up all over Stillbrook?

  Lynn

  Some might say I crossed a line by telling those teenagers to leave my little girl alone or I’d make them regret it for the rest of their short lives, but I don’t think anyone who would say I crossed a line is a parent.

  Sometimes, as a parent, you have to do unpleasant things to protect your family.

  Things you never, ever could have imagined doing before you had kids.

  When you start to suspect there’s something wrong with the place where you live, where your FAMILY lives, you have to investigate that suspicion.

  You can’t ignore what your gut is telling you.

  If some inner voice says someone is up to no good, then you need to find out what’s going on.

  If you have this nagging thought that there are people watching you when you go outside, well, you need to get to the bottom of that.

  The sooner, the better.

  If your family is in danger, you have to act.

  Even if that danger comes from within.

  Sometimes I think bad parents can be the biggest danger kids face.

  We’re supposed to mold them and prepare them for the real world, to make them into responsible little human beings.

  So when Harris wants to show them scary movies, I wonder what exactly he’s thinking.

  Honest to God, here’s what happened.

  We help each other clean the bathroom once a month because it’s a task neither of us will take sole responsibility for.

  Usually, helping means retrieving a forgotten cleaner from under the kitchen sink and taking turns with the scrubbing and keeping each other company while we do a crappy job.

  So one day I’m scrubbing the grout for what feels like the millionth time in my life and Harris is sitting on the toilet.

  Not using the toilet, mind you, but sitting on the closed seat.

  We always say to the kids, when the seat is down, the toilet is just another chair.

  When you’re all crammed into this small of a space, you end up with phrases like that, what can I say?

  Anyway, Harris asks me, “What’s the scariest thing you think these kids could handle?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, if something scary happened, what’s the scariest thing they could deal with?”

  “Harris, I have no idea. What kind of scary things are you planning to happen to our kids?”

  “Nothing to them, Lynn. I was just thinking maybe we need a horror-movie night to introduce them to some scary stuff. It really made a difference for me as a kid. Facing the bad things on the television screen prepares you for the bad things in the real world.”

  “The bad things in the real world? Like axe killers and people-devouring space blobs?”

  “Lynn, you know what I mean.”

  Actually, I didn’t know what he meant.

  I also didn’t know why he suddenly wanted to show our kids scary movies.

  Sure, Halloween was coming up, but a scary movie isn’t my idea of a family-bonding activity. I’ll watch them with Harris now and then, but our kids aren’t ready for that kind of thing.

  Awhile later, after we had moved onto a more neutral topic, I started remembering how Harris and Matt had been whispering to each other in the dining room the day before.

  Had that been about this so-called horror-movie night Harris wanted to have?

  Or could it have been something else they were planning?

  Do you understand what I mean now about how sometimes the danger comes from within the family?

  I had a conversation with Amber about her brother one day that really got me thinking about how a family works together or pulls apart.

  I was taking a break from my work and Amber was finishing up her homework.

  Her brother was following his father to a repair job in one of the other buildings, so for the moment we were alone.

  This is one of those conversations that I can play back in my head like it’s on videotape.

  I asked Amber, “You look up to your brother, don’t you? Even though you don’t always get along?”

  She turned away from her homework and stared at the ceiling and thought for a moment as if she didn’t know the right answer.

  Then she looked me in the eyes and said, “We get along fine.”

  “Didn’t you accuse him of breaking one of your toys last week?”

  “It was a bad toy. I mean, not one of my favorites. It was an accident. Anybody could have done it.”

  She seemed like she was offering too many explanations. I didn’t like the idea of her apologizing for her brother, either.

  Since we were alone in the apartment, I said to her: “You can tell me everything. You know that, right?”

  Amber laughed and smiled. “I don’t have time to tell you everything we do.”

  “Oh, I know
that. But if Matt ever did something wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  Now Amber really focused on me with those big eyes of hers. Her homework was completely forgotten. She said, “Like what?”

  I didn’t want to give her examples and I couldn’t be specific. That would be like leading the witness or putting awful ideas in a child’s head.

  So I just said, “I don’t know. Maybe if he forced you to do something you didn’t want to do.”

  “Like clean my half of the room?” she asked with a bigger smile.

  “No. We’d all like you to do that.”

  She laughed again, but the smile kind of faded away. She said, “Matt can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

  There was something about the way she said this, a kind of singsong rhythm like it was a line from a top-40 tune, and she tried to get the words just right.

  Yet the emphasis was on the wrong beats:

  MATT can’t make her…as if someone else could?

  And a weird stress on WANT, as if she’d actually want her brother to lead her into mischief.

  Maybe I’m just reading too much into an innocent conversation, but the whole talk really got me thinking about what real dangers my little girl might be facing out there in the real world.

  And what could I do to protect her?

  Harris

  In the middle of all this craziness, Mattie asked me to explain Halloween.

  The conversation has stayed with me all this time. It’s part of my connection with my kid: I can quote things he said to me the same way movie fans can quote lines from their favorite films. Sure, not everything out of the kid’s mouth was gonna be as classic as Use the Force or We’re gonna need a bigger boat or We’ve traced the call…it’s coming from inside the house. But it was special because Mattie said it. His words were part of our time together.

  If you’re a parent, too, you understand.