by Jerry eBooks
She thought back to the bag that had arrived ten days earlier. She was supposed to hand out three bags of her own, but she’d forgotten about it as soon as she’d put the bag away.
“Did you all get one?”
Annie laughed. “You haven’t looked around much, have you?” She pointed to her own house next door, and Ellen could see a white sign on the front door: WE’VE BEEN BOO’D!
She glanced at Bonnie’s place (where they were standing) and a similar sign hung on her door, too. And Charlie’s . . . and just about every other house she could see.
“I’ll have to get onto it,” she said without conviction.
Charlie leaned over to her, and Ellen could smell the red wine on her lips. Charlie put a hand on her neck and whispered to her, almost like a lover would. Her touch felt too familiar, and Ellen felt a longing for closeness and didn’t pull back.
She tried to think of Charlie’s hand being Davey’s, but the words she whispered interfered with her daydream.
“You need to do it, sweetie.” Charlie’s breath warmed Ellen’s ear. Ellen imagined kissing Davey, and how wonderful that always felt. “You need to. Don’t skip it, because you’ll always regret it. The first person to ignore the Halloween Phantoms always regrets it. They don’t fuck around.” Then in an even quieter voice she added, “But I do.”
Charlie kissed Ellen’s cheek and smiled. Ellen felt her face turn red and was grateful for the darkness provided by the twilight.
“I’ll get onto it tomorrow,” she said. She just wanted to escape from the ABC Club now, and she took a step backward.
She was going to say good night but surprised herself by asking, “Who started this thing, anyhow? Did one of you put the bag on my door?”
Bonnie took off her glasses and snorted. “Jesus, girl, don’t you get it? This isn’t a joke. Just do whatever the damned phantoms ask and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh. Well, okay then. I have to get back to Julie.” She stared at the three women and saw no twinkle of an inside joke. Annie and Bonnie stared as if she had just grown an extra head. Charlie . . . well, Charlie always looked at her with a bit of extra attention. “Good night,” she said as she turned and walked back to her home.
The rest of the neighborhood was dark and quiet.
And every house she passed had a sign on the door saying they’d been boo’d.
* * * *
April 14
Davey’s funeral was held five days after he died. The coroner didn’t do an autopsy, because the cause of death was obvious. Lightning didn’t leave many doubts.
Davey had been six years older than Ellen, but even so, they never really talked about his final wishes. She hadn’t known if he wanted to be buried or cremated, or any other things he may have wanted. The day before, she’d walked out to his “office,” which was a corner of the barn.
When they moved to Minnesota, Davey somehow found a property in a small town that backed onto a large field. The bank had repossessed it from the previous owner, and Davey bought it for way less than they ever thought possible.
“Every guy needs a place to work on things,” he’d once said. “This is my space.”
The barn was empty except for that one corner he called his office. Davey had talked about one day raising cows but they’d only been living on the farm for a few months. The first year they were going to stick to growing a few hundred acres of corn. That sounded like a big enough challenge, and she pushed aside the occasional musing about whether he could actually pull it off on his own or not. Fortunately, Ellen had a job as a waitress and so could help with the finances while they got the farm up and running.
What would happen to the farm now? she wondered. She decided that was a problem for another day.
The office had a makeshift wooden table, built from old pieces of particle board and two-by-fours. The only nice part was a swivelling brown leather chair that was actually quite comfortable. She sat in it and imagined her husband sitting beside her, planning their little farm.
There were some papers on the table, but of course nothing that would give her any hint of his final wishes. It was mostly lists of things he planned to do, items to purchase, important dates for the harvest, that type of thing.
Ellen closed her eyes and thought of Davey, missing him terribly, wondering how he’d been so unlucky. If only they hadn’t moved to Minnesota, if only he’d stayed inside when the storm struck, if only the lightning found a juicier target somewhere close by . . . if only.
She tried to pull herself from the fruitless thoughts and looked around the office more. There wasn’t much more to see, other than a green plastic glass that he’d used for a drink of water on the day he died. There were two cardboard boxes below the table. She opened the top one and found only paper, pens, tape, and scissors.
The bottom box was more sinister. She had forgotten about the gun.
Davey bought it shortly after they moved to Roseville, worried about moving to an unknown rural town with no way to protect his family. He’d taken Ellen out to the far end of the field one day and taught her to shoot it. She remembered him smiling as she held her arms out to steady herself before shooting. “You’ll never have to use it, baby.”
She’d enjoyed the target practice, more than she could possibly have imagined.
Ellen picked up the gun now and held it out, as if to shoot an invisible intruder. Davey’s lesson came back easily to her. She remembered the feel of his hand on hers as he helped to steady her aim.
Finally, she put the gun back, shedding more memories of their lives together.
* * * *
October 26
Ellen believed not a whit about Halloween Phantoms, but part of her still did want to fit into the neighborhood and it bugged her a bit that she wasn’t participating in the game. She found the note and re-read the instructions:
* * * *
Now that you’ve received your bag from the Halloween Phantoms, you must affix a note to your front door saying “We’ve been BOO’d!!!” This way, nobody else can BOO you again.
Hurry with your bags! As time goes on, it’ll be harder and harder to find homes that haven’t already been BOO’d!
Be sure to leave a copy of this note with each bag you deliver.
* * * *
Jesus, she hated crap like this. After dinner, she got into her car and drove through the neighborhood, looking at everyone’s door.
There were no houses left that hadn’t been boo’d.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
She drove back around the winding streets. Roseville only had about a thousand people, but surely not every single home had already been visited.
But after an hour, she gave up. She didn’t see one solitary house she could boo, and frankly, she’d lost interest in trying.
“Fuck it,” she said as she slammed her hand into her steering wheel. She drove home and threw the notice in the garbage.
* * * *
October 29
The doorbell rang again at 9:35, exactly as it did when the stupid Halloween junk was left on Ellen’s door. She closed her eyes and shook her head, knowing that once again, Julie would be leaping out of her bed to come down and see what was going on.
Ellen was in the kitchen, just finishing the dinner dishes. She walked to the front door and as she expected, Julie joined her shortly.
“Maybe it’s more treats, Mommy!”
I’ll be so glad when Halloween is over this year.
“Maybe.”
Ellen looked out the window again as she had the earlier night but again couldn’t see anybody. She pulled the door open, expecting to see a bag on the door handle but there was nothing there.
Instead, there were three figures standing at the foot of her front yard, close to the street.
“Mommy, who are they?”
Julie moved a little, so she was behind Ellen.
Ellen tried to make out the figures. Her house was smack in the middle section b
etween street lights and she’d always hated that. She’d complained to Davey when they first moved in, but there was nothing either of them could do about it.
The three figures stood side by side, facing her. They were about thirty feet from her door, which Ellen was grateful for.
They wore costumes—dark costumes with robes and hoods. The middle one wore chestnut brown while the two on either side of him were black. They just stared at her.
She couldn’t make out their faces exactly, but she could see bumps and maybe fur below their hoods. The costumes were good, and she didn’t like them at all.
“Can I help you?” she shouted.
Ellen was wearing a night gown and suddenly she felt very exposed. None of her neighbors were outside. She pushed Julie behind her and held onto the door, ready to close and lock it.
The three figures didn’t answer her call.
“Hello?” she tried.
They didn’t make a sound.
The middle one held a long stick in his hand that reached to the ground. As her eyes adjusted, Ellen could see that it was actually a piece of metal pipe, not wood. The other two didn’t carry anything but they had belts and there were items inside the belts. She didn’t know what they were. Rocks? Guns?
“Can I help you?” she tried again.
Then the middle figure started to walk toward her. He (She? It?) walked slowly and reached halfway to her, so that he was now standing in the middle of her lawn.
Ohmygod.
Ellen could feel her heart racing. Where were all the neighbors? Who could she get help from?
The figure just stood there and didn’t say a word.
“Please. Who are you?”
She knew she sounded pathetic, but she couldn’t help it. She’d never felt the need to protect herself before.
Julie pressed into her. “Mommy, I’m scared.”
The ghoul (or whatever he was) lifted the metal pipe off the ground and then thumped it down. Again and again he pounded the pipe onto her lawn and she imagined him doing that to her dead body.
Okay, that’s enough.
She leaned over and told Julie to run to the kitchen to get her cell phone.
When she looked back, the middle ghoul was walking back to join the other two, and they shuffled away toward the ABC Club and beyond. Ellen watched as they kept walking, and eventually she lost sight of them.
Julie brought her phone, but Ellen no longer felt the urgency to call the police.
“Mommy, who were they?”
“Just some teenagers out to scare us. Don’t worry about it, baby.”
“I don’t like them.”
“Me, neither.”
“One of them looked like Daddy.”
Ellen stared at Julie. “What did you say?”
“The one back there.” She pointed to where one of the figures was standing. “The way he walked. It reminded me of Daddy.”
“It wasn’t Daddy. They were too small. They were teenagers. Likely some bored boys.”
“Maybe girls.”
“I doubt it, but I suppose it could have been.”
Ellen closed the door, but neither of them got a good night’s sleep.
* * * *
October 31
Halloween continued to provide the blustery autumn weather that Ellen had grown to hate. The sky was overcast all day.
When she got home from work, it was already after 7:00, and Julie was champing at the bit to go out trick-or-treating. Too late, Ellen realized she couldn’t be in two places at once, so she just left a bucket of chocolate bars on her front porch for the kids to grab when they came to her home, and she walked Julie around the neighborhood for an hour. Julie was dressed up as Minnie Mouse, and even Ellen thought she looked really cute. Soon Julie wouldn’t want to do things like that, so Ellen took lots of photos.
When they got back home, the box of chocolate bars looked untouched.
“No kids?” she asked.
Julie just shrugged, and Ellen knew she realized there’d be more treats for her as a result.
Bedtime wasn’t until 10:00. Julie took her time getting changed, and Ellen wanted to go through all the candy to be sure it was safe.
By the time Julie finally settled down and crawled into bed, Ellen was just grateful Halloween was finally over. It was the worst ever, only punctuated with bits of Julie’s laughter as she walked around town collecting candy.
Ellen had a nice long bath and almost fell asleep in the water. She shook herself awake and was about to go to her own bed when the doorbell rang.
“Oh for Christ’s sake!”
This time, she wasn’t just irritated, she was full-force pissed off. She stomped down the stairs and pulled the door open.
This time there were only two of the ghouls standing at the end of her lawn. The one with the metal pipe was missing.
“Where’s your leader, boys? Get too cold for him?”
They didn’t move.
“Time to go home, boys. Halloween is over and now you can go back to church or whatever you do when you’re not bullying people.”
She thought of storming out and grabbing the little monsters, but then she heard Julie.
“MOM! HELP!”
The bone-chilling scream echoed through the house. Ellen turned and ran upstairs, not even bothering to close the front door.
She pushed Julie’s bedroom door open, but the room was dark.
“Julie? Are you okay?”
Then she saw the shadow leaning over her daughter and she froze. Can’t be. The missing Halloween phantom was on top of Julie. She could see the figure that was just a bit different shade from the darkness of the room.
It only took a few seconds for Ellen to get her wits back, and she hit the light switch.
There was no ghoul. Only Julie.
The first conflicting thoughts were gratitude that the monster wasn’t there and fear about the same thing.
“Baby?”
She moved closer and saw the blood splattered on the white sheets. And the broken face. And the arms and legs twisted in ways they were never meant to twist.
Ellen collapsed.
* * * *
November 4
The ABC Club attended Julie’s funeral, as did most of the parents and children that lived close to Ellen. They all looked at her and told her how sorry they were, but sometimes Ellen saw another side to them: written on some of the guests’ faces was an expression that said, “Thank God it was you and not me.”
She ignored the neighbors and just mourned her little girl.
When she returned home, the place felt empty. It was like all the joy and happiness had been sucked out of her family home and all that remained was a rotted mausoleum of bad memories.
Ellen sat on Julie’s bed for a while, wondering how her life could have been shattered so badly.
She closed the bedroom door and walked out to the barn, taking the opportunity to once again wander through old memories of her, Julie, and Davey.
“I miss you both so much,” she said softly.
She was chilly even with a wool sweater. The sun was starting to go down, but she wasn’t interested in heading back to the house. She wasn’t interested in much of anything anymore.
The gun was still in the lower box.
Ellen hefted it in her hands, wondering what it would be like to pull the trigger. Of course, she knew that when she did it, she wouldn’t actually know what it felt like. She wouldn’t be around anymore.
The gun was polished steel, and it reminded her of the metal pipe the phantom carried.
She put the muzzle of the gun in her mouth and clamped her lips around it. There was a part of her that wanted her to stop, but she didn’t pay much attention to it.
In her mind, she prayed to her Lord and said one last farewell to her little lost family.
ONE
It all started on a wind-blown Friday night in October. It was the night before Halloween, the night we always called Wrec
k Night or Devil’s Night back when we were kids and Halloween was second in our hearts only to Christmas.
At least the newspapers got that much right. The day, I mean. They pretty much screwed up the rest of the story.
I was there that night. Let me tell you what really happened . . .
TWO
In the chill autumn months after my first child was born, I spent many late night hours driving the streets of my hometown. It became a routine. Two, three nights a week, around about midnight, I’d creep into the nursery one final time to check on the baby (a healthy boy named Joshua after my father) and then I’d kiss my amused wife goodnight and off I’d go, driving the streets in random routes until my eyes went blurry and my spine sprouted kinks the size of quarters.
Driving and thinking. Thinking and driving. Some nights with the radio. Most nights in silence.
That was a little more than four years ago, but I still go out and drive some nights. Just not very often now; maybe once or twice a month, tops.
My wife, Janice, is wonderful (and wise) and she’s known me for more than half of my thirty-six years, so she innately understands the need for these trips of mine. We rarely talk about it, but she somehow knows that this town where we both grew up and still live today, this town—it’s streets and houses and storefronts and lawns and sidewalks and the very sky above—gives me a real sense of peace and understanding I could never hope to find elsewhere. I know how funny that sounds, how old-fashioned, but it’s the best and probably the only way I know how to describe my feelings for this place.
When little Josh was born it was an event that thrilled me to new heights, but also deeply troubled me. That’s actually a pretty big understatement, the part about it troubling me. You see . . . I worried about the baby. I worried about my wife. I worried a lot about myself. I worried a lot period. There were just so many new and important questions, and more and more of them seemed to be born with each passing day.
Could I be a good father?
Could I provide for the family with just a teacher’s salary?
Could I protect the baby from a world so different than the one I grew up in?