The Halloween Children

by Brian James Freeman

  Whatever I quote you about Mattie, it’s gonna be one hundred and ten percent accurate. Better than a tape recording.

  Now, when this particular conversation occurred, I can’t be quite as certain. Times and dates don’t always register with me. If I had to guess, obviously close to Halloween. I mentioned the decorations stored in the basement, so best guess would put it sometime after I’d found the hanged man in 6E…but not quite when Lynn found that nasty thing burning alive in our oven.

  No, the oven thing definitely hadn’t happened yet. Otherwise, I’m sure I wouldn’t have made that wisecrack about traditional holiday meals.

  —

  “Huh. Halloween?”

  “Yeah,” Mattie said. “Who came up with the idea?”

  We were in the kids’ bedroom, but Amber was with her mom in the den. They were at the computer, working on something that involved a lot of Amber chatter, and I guess us guys needed a break for a while. I sat on Amber’s bed and Mattie was at his little desk where he kept his schoolwork but also his paints and sketchpads.

  “Halloween’s always been around. Since I was a kid, but way, way before that, too. It’s connected with the seasons—the autumn harvest, I think—but there’s also a religious element.”

  “Religion?” Matt tested out the idea, found the combinations absurd. “Religion and ghosts and witches and monsters?”

  “You’re right, it does sound kinda messed up. I guess you’re supposed to think of old guys in robes—like monks, but they were called druids then. And ceremonies, with a similar kind of order and ritual as a church service, chants or singing or whatever, but not really praying to God. At least, not as we understand Him today.”

  Well, I was doing the best I could—considering that I wasn’t a Halloween scholar. Not then, at least. Most of what I knew then, I’d gathered from movies and from stories I’d read. Fiction, which throws in some facts now and then for flavor, but it’s hard to tell which parts are historical truths.

  “What about the costumes?”

  I remember thinking how Mattie must drive his teachers crazy with all these questions. But he was so polite the way he asked, so I guessed they would forgive him. His eyes shone bright with curiosity and he scribbled over a sheet of paper with different colored markers. He was doodling, but that was his way of paying attention.

  “Costumes. That all started with a big party, called a masquerade. Yeah, I think that happened back in medieval times, during the plague. This rich guy threw a party, and he wore a red robe and a skull mask.”

  Mattie switched to the red marker, drew a long hooded robe and colored it crimson. I kept quiet for a bit and watched him work. Instead of a skull mask, he used a black Sharpie under the hood, making a dark oval where the face should be. As a finishing touch, he took a pair of scissors and poked two holes in the shadowy face. The white space of the next page showed through, so it was like two bright eyes flashing in the dark. Pretty cool effect, and I told him so.

  Getting back to our conversation, Matt asked me, “What about the candy?”

  “That’s what makes it fun for kids. More candy than you usually get during the year, and all different kinds. Hey, don’t worry. We’ll still have candy.”

  He wasn’t getting upset. Or at least, he wasn’t letting it show. He stopped coloring, though.

  “I wish we were having our Halloween party this year,” Mattie said. “I really liked all the decorations.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” There I was, looking at this creative, cool kid, and all I could think was how he deserved the best. Everything I had as a kid, and more—again, the same way most parents feel. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Yeah. I’ve kept a lot of secrets.”

  So funny how he said that, like a little adult. As if some sixth-grader would have all these serious secrets. Life-and-death stuff, of course.

  I looked to the door in case Amber was coming back to the room. “I know where the decorations are hidden.” Next I described the basement storage area, making sure to stress that he should never go there by himself, and the decorations were all locked up behind iron bars, and not even an expert bank robber could get past the security systems Shawna put in place. I mentioned laser trip wires and alarm bells and strobe lights—maybe laying it on a little thick so he’d know I was exaggerating.

  Then I changed the subject a little, telling stories about my childhood trick-or-treat days, how different things were back then. I also told him about the boarding school I attended in ninth grade, how sad I was not just to be away from home but separated from all the traditions I’d grown up with. For me, Halloween had been the worst of it—the first major holiday I’d spent away from my mom and dad and little sister. What saved me, then, was when I figured out a lot of the other kids felt the same way. Homesick. Halloween sick. We weren’t allowed to have a party there, either. It was against school rules. We were supposed to be too grown-up for that kind of stuff.

  This wasn’t exactly a school for smart kids—though I didn’t admit that part to Mattie, of course—but turns out we were a pretty resourceful bunch. One kid mentioned a haunted attraction he’d visited in Pennsylvania: a corn maze and hayride, with decorated setups along the trail. There was a fake cemetery, with guys dressed in sheets and moaning like ghosts. The hay wagon rolled past one area that was set up like a mad scientist’s lab, with lights sparking and flashing and a green-skinned monster rising from the lab table. People hid in the trees with fishing rods, rubber bats tied to the ends, and they swung them over the wagon as it passed. The kid remembered a bonfire, too, and a stone altar with a person tied down, and men in dark robes chanting, one of them raising a dagger over the sacrifice. Another thing he remembered, too, was this large tree that kind of leaned over the path, one limb extending so it was almost like the wagon headed into a tunnel. And then a man’s scream, and a body dropped from the tree limb, cloth over his head and a noose around his neck, legs kicking as the life was strangled out of him.

  No. The more I think about it, I stopped myself before telling Mattie that last bit. I didn’t mention anything about a hanged man.

  What I did was, I brought the story back to our boarding school, and our section of the dormitory. We kids decided to turn our wing of the building into a kind of haunted attraction. We brought in leaves from outside and threw them on the hallway floor. We made tombstones out of cardboard, set up candles for atmospheric lighting, and cut out bat and spider shapes from construction paper “borrowed” from the art room. I remember I made my own zombie makeup out of flour and food coloring—and when the wet flour dried on my face and hands it cracked and itched, but I kept the mask on all night. The whole thing was a lot of work, and not near as good as the professional job they’d do at the fancy hayride. But it was fun, and it was ours.

  That was the lesson of my story, which I made sure to highlight for Mattie. “You understand what I’m saying, Mattie? Life doesn’t always hand you everything you want. Sometimes you have to make your own version of Halloween.”

  He nodded, and I could almost see gears turning in his little head. Mattie flipped his sketchpad to a new page, and I kept quiet to see what he’d do. He outlined a large square, then another one behind it—connecting the corners to make one of those 3-D boxes kids like to draw. Inside the box, he sketched in some smaller shapes, and after a while I could tell it was a room. When he drew a dotted line down the middle, I knew exactly which room he meant.

  “Hey, that’s this room, isn’t it?” I pointed to the bed on his side, the bookshelf and dresser. Outlines of Amber’s toys crowded the other half, including a small dollhouse and stuffed animals piled on her bed. “Now draw the desk, and yourself sitting there doing this exact same picture. I’ll bet, if you had a really sharp pencil and a magnifying glass, you could put a small version of your picture inside the larger one, another little version of you drawing an even smaller picture, and the same picture inside that, and on and on. Infinite. Kinda fun if you think abou
t it.”

  His marker stopped moving and his head tilted to one side as he tried to grasp the concept. I’d always thought that idea was cool when I was a kid, like when you face two mirrors together and the image turns into an endless tunnel. Kind of a magic spell, really.

  “Dad?”

  When I looked down, I saw he’d turned the page and started a different picture. An autumn tree, bare of leaves. He drew some orange pumpkins on the ground and was ready to make faces in them.

  I guess I’d zoned out for a minute. “What’cha need, kid?”

  “Does my Halloween have to have religious stuff in it?”

  “Nah. I think you can just stay with the pumpkins and ghosts and monsters.”

  “Good. Because I understand how religion fits, the more I think about it, but I think Halloween is better without it. It’s like the movie you let me borrow, and things get worse when the priest visits.”

  I’d forgotten I loaned that one to him. A little too disturbing for a sixth-grader—for most sixth-graders, I’d say—but I figured Mattie could handle it. “Keep that between us, okay? If your mom finds out I let you see it, her head would probably spin all the way around just like that girl in the film.”

  “I’m done with it. I can give it back. Turn around for a second and count to ten.”

  I played along. I heard him unlatch his paint set, lifting a compartment, and I could pretty much figure out where he’d hidden the key to his desk drawer.

  “Okay, you can look now.” He unlocked the drawer I’d fixed for him, then he took out the DVD and gave it to me. Out of respect for his privacy, I didn’t peer into the drawer to see what else he had stashed in there.

  “I hope it didn’t give you nightmares,” I said.

  “No.” Mattie locked the drawer again, then held the key in his fist. He’d wait until after I left the room to return the key to its hiding place. “It was a movie. It wasn’t real.”

  Email from Jessica Shepard

  From: Jessica Shepard

  To: Jacob Grant

  The Halloween Children are watching me. They’re watching us all, Jacob.

  Forget what I said about coming to visit. Don’t come near this place. It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself.

  PLEASE DO NOT COME HERE.

  There is NO ESCAPE once you enter this place.

  There was once a boy named Jack who stabbed his parents because a DEMON MADE HIM DO IT.

  There once was a man who blew his brains out with a SHOTGUN.

  He PULLED THE TRIGGER with his BIG TOE.

  What if that man is still here?

  A shotgun blows off half of your face and where does it go?

  IT SEEPS INTO THE WALLS.

  He’s here NOW, Jacob.

  I researched photos of gunshot wounds. I found one that I think was taken in my apartment.

  HIS FACE IS IN THE WOOD PANELING IN THE BACKGROUND.

  PLEASE DO NOT COME HERE.

  —Jess

  <>

  Lynn

  Have I told you about how the kids started pulling away from Harris and me?

  There were little signs at first, but I’m their mother and I noticed right away.

  They had started to keep secrets from us, for one thing.

  Harris thought this was no big deal.

  Sometimes I really wonder about the man I married.

  Secrets lead to lies.

  Lies lead to trouble.

  All kinds of trouble.

  For example, you would think I’d be happy when Amber and Matt started spending more time in their room without fighting, but somehow the change in behavior was troubling to me.

  I tried to talk to Harris about it while doing the dishes one night after dinner.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Isn’t it strange that they’re suddenly spending so much time in their room, especially in the evening when we’re supposed to be having family time?”

  “Well, we were supposed to have the scary movie night together, but you vetoed that idea. Besides, they’re getting older and learning how to be a real brother and sister. Give them their privacy.”

  “Kids need supervision, Harris.”

  “They’re kids, Lynn. For God’s sake, it’s perfectly normal.”

  “I don’t like it. They’re being too secretive.”

  “And you’re being too snoopy. And kind of crazy.”

  That was a little uncalled for, don’t you think?

  “We keep secrets from them,” he continued. “Why shouldn’t they get the same courtesy?”

  “Adult secrets are different. Children keep secrets about the wrong things.”

  “Oh, their lives aren’t as complex as you’d like to think. Like when a kid laughs and won’t tell you what’s funny? Maybe they’re laughing at their parents or their teachers, making a mean comment at a classmate’s expense, but nine times out of ten it’s some harmless poop joke. It’s not like they’re whispering government secrets or planning to take over the world. Kids can be mischievous, but they’re not sinister.”

  Deep down, I was pretty sure Harris really believed that kids couldn’t be complex.

  At least about most kids, especially our kids.

  I had my doubts.

  Not about Amber, of course, but about Matt.

  Perhaps my biggest fear, if I’m being totally honest, was that Matt would influence his sister in some terrible way.

  That Matt would get Amber to lie for him, maybe, and that lie would hurt the whole family.

  Harris and I didn’t finish the conversation because it was clearly becoming a fight, which we tried to avoid, but that night, after Harris fell asleep, I decided I would be a bad parent if I didn’t do something to find out what our kids were doing.

  Asking the kids wouldn’t get me to the truth since kids are amazing liars, and Harris thought I was acting crazy (his words), so I might need to get creative.

  The more I thought, the more clear the idea become.

  Something would have to be done.

  But what?

  Harris

  “What about your big secret with Amber? The book you two are working on.”

  It was my wife’s turn to do the kids’ laundry, but I was helping her fold. We let the clothes stack between us on the living room couch, crosshatching the items to separate Amber’s stuff from Matt’s.

  “All Amber’s story,” she said. “I’m only writing it down.”

  “Why keep it a secret, then? Since secrets are supposed to be so dangerous and all, according to you.” I admit that I mocked Lynn’s earlier concerns, mostly to distract her uncanny intuition away from what was really bugging me. Oh, nothing. Found a hanging corpse next door, is all. I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Amber’s not ready to share the story until it’s finished. Simple as that. A lot of authors feel the same way.”

  “Now she’s an author, huh.” We set the piles of folded shirts on the coffee table, then dumped out the socks from the other basket. I took a break for a bit, since I never liked matching up the socks, but Lynn didn’t seem to mind. “You could still tell me what it’s about. She didn’t make you sign a confidentiality agreement, did she?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t understand it,” Lynn said. “The subject matter’s completely beyond you. It’s a love story.”

  “Very funny. Matter of fact, I already learned from Matt that it’s a Halloween story. Unless it’s a love story, too? ‘Cupid’s Skeleton’? ‘Romancing the Pumpkin’? Am I getting close?”

  “Miles away.” She matched a few more socks, and I helped with the stragglers. All the while, I tried to think of the silly things little Amber might come up with. She had a cute way of thinking, putting ideas together that didn’t quite fit. Not as logical as Mattie, so sometimes she’d surprise you. Years ago at the zoo, she described an elephant as a big gray toad. She explained by pointing at th
e sign, which she couldn’t actually read. See? It says epi-toad. Of course, I always reminded her during Dumbo or during the “epitoad” stampede of a Tarzan flick. Lynn got a little mad that I wouldn’t let stuff like this go, but Amber just laughed. I never said that, Daddy.

  A series of thumps pulled me out of my reverie. At first I thought it was Amber or Matt running behind the couch, but then I realized it was the upstairs guy again—Mr. Stompy. He crossed from one end of his apartment to the other, then back again. If we had a chandelier in our living room, its crystal pendants would have jangled with each stomp.

  “Jeez, sounds like he weighs four hundred pounds.”

  “He’s a nice old man,” Lynn told me. “Frail old thing.”

  “Then he must be doing it on purpose.” Since he was a recent move-in, I’d barely met him myself—he never called for any repairs, I’ll give him credit for that—but this constant inconsiderate movement was ridiculous. “Why couldn’t we have gotten Joanne Huff as our upstairs neighbor? She never gets out of her chair, so she’d be pretty quiet.” Another stomping pass across the room. “I’d like to cut off his feet.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

  The expression on Lynn’s face—a mix of paranoia and disappointment—made me think her intuition had seen through me after all. She sensed my gruesome discovery of the night before, divined my nightmare speculations of Shawna using my handsaw to grind, businesslike, through the corpse’s bones.

  Lynn knew it all. Couples can read each other’s minds like this sometimes. And she was thinking how awful it was for me, at a time like this, to joke—yes, Lynn at least knew I was joking—about cutting off a man’s feet.

  “What?” I said, playing innocent. Those things never happened. I’d decided never to speak of them.

  In answer, she offered a quick tilt of her head toward the kids’ bedroom.

  I almost sighed with relief. My wife didn’t have a witch’s intuition after all, and was simply revisiting a tiresome argument. Little pitchers have big ears, if I’m quoting right. The idea that, when we think they aren’t listening, or even aren’t in the same room, our kids might hear what we say—or misconstrue a vague tone in our voice—and somehow Mattie or Amber would then be influenced in some hypothetical, negative way. Always watch what you say, how you say it. I know you’re joking, Harris, but they might not. Like it or not, you’re a role model. They admire you.