by Various
He climbed in the backseat and his mother took off to Massapequa Junior High. She chattered on her cell phone during the whole trip. Then she let the Boblin and his brother out in front of the school, having not once looked him in the face. If this had happened a few years prior, she might have found herself lip to lip with a green-faced, pustule-covered freak, but she'd given up kissing the kids goodbye long ago. She waved an aimless hand at them before driving away.
They were late for school, just as she'd warned. They took their time walking toward the building.
The Boblin pulled his brother aside by the shoulder. "Look at me."
"What?"
"Don't you think it's weird that I'm still wearing my Halloween mask to school?"
"What Halloween mask? That's just your ugliness nasty regular look, isn't it?" He stifled a laugh.
"You're clueless," the Boblin said, adding an insult that he knew would hit home. "Just like mom."
The Boblin and his brother made it all the way to the hallways before they saw any other kids - all latecomers, rushing to square away their lockers and head off to class.
"See ya later, snot head," Pete said as he ran down the hall.
Splitting up at Bob's locker was an old ritual of theirs. Pete's class was on the other side of the building.
The Boblin flicked the combination lock and opened the door and put away his backpack. He thought twice about going to class. The teacher wouldn't recognize him, so why bother showing up for roll call?
"Look here, someone thinks it's still Halloween!"
The metal locker door slammed shut with a noise like a gunshot.
Joe Hanson stood in the space where it once blocked his view of the hall. Hanson was the bully of the school. The Boblin knew this because he'd once pushed his little brother down the stairs for no reason other than "looking at him funny" on his way up.
"Hi there, Joe," the Boblin said, the words feeling goofy between his oddly-misshapen lips.
"Who do we have here?" Joe Hanson asked as he slapped at the mask that didn't come off and then made a funny face of terror.
The Boblin thought he'd introduce himself, but his mouth tore open and had already snapped around Joe Hanson's arm and began chewing into the ulna. His mouth flooded with blood and he hungrily swallowed his breakfast. When the boy pulled away to run, the Boblin lunged and found the throbbing meat of the neck even tastier. He pushed him inside his locker and munched into his ribcage until the bell rang, when the Boblin thought it best to lock up the carcass, grab his bloody book bag and run towards home.
***
He showered again, this time to wash the blood off his body. He didn't know what to do about his clothes so those were put in the trash in the garage. The Boblin was a mess. In the mirror, he noticed that the green gill-like edging of the mask had not only merged seamlessly with his human flesh, but that the green pigment had begun spreading down his neck. Boils were growing on his shoulders. Hairs sprouted in weird places. And the lobes of his ears had turned into elongated flaps that had acquired the organically pointy shape of a fleshy diamond.
The Boblin was not horrified. No. He had begun to like his new appearance very much.
What mattered to him more, now, would be what to do about his family. They had ignored him so far, but there would come a time when there'd be no escaping the fact that his mask was not going to come off. And what if the Boblin got hungry for more man meat? Would little Petey be for dinner? Mom?
After all, the hunger was something he couldn't control - his face had just taken over and snapped its jaws onto tasty Joe Hanson's wrist when they'd come close enough for that long pickle nose of his to smell the pumping blood it harbored. That's what horrified the Boblin more than anything else. The lack of control. The sudden lunge of his mouth, champing on its own accord. The instincts taking over. He found that eating a human was a very rewarding act, but he didn't like losing control at the drop of a hat like that. He'd rather pick his victims on purpose, just like all those killers in the movies did.
He took one last look in the mirror. The boils from the mask had darkened to a rich mustard yellow. He pinched at one with two fingers and - surprisingly - it burst as easy as a blister, blurting milky pus all over the mirror and sink. This pleased him because he'd always thought those stupid boils were what made the over-the-top goblin mask look fake. Now he looked far more realistic - far more like a Boblin should. He grinned and noticed that his teeth had somehow become triangular and sharp as blades and that the canines, especially, had elongated like a dog's. Maybe the Boblin was getting more and more gobliny than he expected. On the inside. But that was okay, so long as he found some place to run to and something meaty to eat. For he was getting bored with looking at himself and getting hungry all over again.
He still had sense enough to put on some clothes. A hooded sweatshirt would conceal the Boblin's face from those who might recognize him as no longer human. He quickly scanned his room, looking for anything he might want to take with him, given that this might be the last time he ever stepped foot inside the place. Nothing meant much to him anymore. The books, the baseball glove, the posters...all of it was Bob stuff. Not Boblin stuff.
Except the bag at the foot of his bed. The one filled with Halloween candy. He rushed over to it and dumped its contents onto the bed. He sorted out the suckers and tossed them onto Pete's pillow, a parting gift for his little brother. The rest went back into his bag, just in case he needed something to munch on as he chose his next victim.
***
He rang the doorbell and held the bag open. A woman answered.
"Trick or treat," he said to the stranger, his grin spreading wide.
Her face expressed recognition and horror at the same time. She wasn't the right person. But he pounced anyway, latching his mouth around her forearm as she tried to shut the door. She fell backwards and he went right for the thrashing neck. Her lilac perfume was a welcome new marinade as he pulled her entire throat out with one mean tug of his head.
***
"Trick or treat," he said to the neighbor next door, his grin spreading wide all over again.
The longhaired man who answered the door was clearly horrified - not by the green-faced boy but by the massively bloodied sweatshirt and massive row of teeth that stood before him, waist high. He turned but the Boblin leapt onto his back and feasted. He got a lot of hair in his mouth. That sort of bothered him the way that stringy corn on the cob used to bug him, so he punched into the man's back with his lower jaw and clamped onto the muscles that held his left shoulder blade in place. This was some of the best meat he'd had yet. It was so satisfying, he spent the night in the man's house, sleeping peacefully in front of the television set. Luckily, no one came home.
The doorbell awakened him when the cops came over to ask about the lady next door, but he just ignored them, curling sidewise on the sofa and sleeping while they worked the rest of the block.
He would have to work the rest of the block, too. This one and the next one. The Boblin had to find his creator. He was on the hunt. He was almost entirely a beastie now, but he still had his memories and he figured that someone along their trick-or-treating route on Halloween must have done this to him. He didn't know who or where or why, but someone whose doorstep he'd visited had turned him from Bob into the Boblin. Maybe it was just some sort of trick instead of a treat - a magic trick. Or maybe it was just the work of some candy that he'd snuck out of his bag when they went from door to door - candy that had been laced with some potion or poison. Maybe it was the mask manufacturer. He didn't care. He had to find the person who did this to him. And he had to eat. The Boblin was homeless, after all. Whoever had done this would have to take him in. He was their kid now.
He moved at night, when the cops were gone.
The Boblin ate the whole block. None of the neighbors claimed him as their child. None seemed remotely responsible for his transformation. All of them were innocent. And all of them tasted good to the B
oblin.
***
He was no longer hungry, but he was lost. He had nowhere to go but back home.
His mom opened the door.
She recognized the goblin mask instantly. She rolled her eyes and then said, "Where the hell have you been, Bobby?"
He sighed. "Trick-or-treating, I guess."
"I thought you ran away. You had me worried sick." Her lips quivered and she clearly couldn't keep her angry front up long enough to scold him. A tear spilled out of a quivering eyelid. She bent down to hug him and pick him up, but stopped short of a homecoming hug. "What is that stinky stuff all over you?"
"Bloo-" he started but his mouth was open and her heart was so close to him and he couldn't stop from jumping right into her chest, mouth first, munching his way through her breast and swallowing hard as he nuzzled into the gap between her ribs. Chomping madly, he rammed his tongue through the cage of bone, trying desperately to reach the heart encased there, thrashing its purple meat against the muscles that surrounded it. But he couldn't quite get the green tip of his goblin tongue close enough to the muscular prize to tug it free. In a struggle to get there, he held her tight with both arms, finally giving her the hug she'd originally wanted, using all his might to pull his face deep into her corpse.
"Halt, bloodthirsty demon of the damned!"
The Boblin looked up, surprised by both the assured sound of his brother's voice and the ludicrous words of his command.
Peter stood tall above them, slipping a shaking arm through his wizard costume, the conical sorcerer's hat crooked on his head like a dunce cap. He uttered baby talk: "BrogeticusLividnum Fazistuporfluo."
The Boblin had finally found his maker. He thought that when he found his creator, he would find a new father - perhaps even a new mother - to join in eternal hellish bliss. But never a little brother.
But then… No, someone who didn't know how to eat a lollipop properly could not possibly be responsible for this. The kid was just play-acting. Trying to erase the horror he had found in his foyer with a fantasy. Trying to escape from the traumatic scene of his mother's demise in the only way he knew how - through pretending to be in control.
In his free hand, Peter waved a wand.
The Boblin had had enough of this nonsense. Pete was always jerk. He never could stand up for himself in school. He'd do him a favor. He'd make spit bubbles with his bloodied skull. The Boblin lunged.
And fell down onto his chin, the impact snapping the very tip of his tongue off between his sharp teeth.
He yelped like a dog and tried to pick himself back up to lunge again, discovering that he was anchored to his mother; his hands and feet stuck to her dead body like weights. His flesh connected to her flesh. His hands bound to her sides with an impossible epoxy. His fingertips, gone, sunken into the ribcage. The Boblin moved to chew them free, but even then, it hurt - he had felt the bite pierce her skin as if he had bit into his very own and pulled away in agony.
Her dead eyes opened. Mother had never looked so strange. It was as though she were wearing a mask that made her into a whole different person. And maybe that was because he was seeing himself at the same time that he was gazing at her, the vision of two sets of eyes impossibly meeting one another along a shared optic nerve, blurring oddly into one fuzzy image that masked his face over hers and hers over his in a way that made the Boblin into something more. Something Mom and something Bob and something Goblin. A Momblin.
From somewhere above, his master opened up a sucker while he uttered a new command.
MICHAEL A. ARNZEN
is a past recipient of the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Critic's Guild Award. His latest book, Freakcidents (DarkVesper 2003), is a collection of poems about impossible mutants and carnival freaks. His website, gorelets.com, is a popular visit for horror fans online.
Real Monsters
By Bob L. Morgan
...It's only me dear
In my midnight disguise...
"The Kinks"
Halloween Night
2001
A Full Moon
Chicago IL.
Kedzie Ave.
"We are two bad muthafuckas," Bobby Joe Lee said to Jake Borton beside him and passed him the joint they were sharing. He blew a stream of smoke at the windshield and laughed.
Jake took his deep hit and held it in. The veins stuck out on the sides of his neck before he let the smoke out with a loud, "Haaaaaah," sound.
"Tonight we be fuckin some muthafuckas up," Jake said and passed the joint back to Bobby.
The car stereo blasted out some old hard pounding acid-rock. A light misty rain was coming down. The streets were wet and shiny. Streetlights, neons and headlights made streaks like laser beams down the pavement.
Jake pulled out his thirty-eight special and checked it again for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes.
It was loaded.
He put it back in his belt line under his leather jacket.
Van Halen screamed to them from the radio, the song was Running With the Devil....
Bobby yelled, "That is the story of my fuckin life!"
"Mine too, muthafucka!" Jake answered him.
Bobby and Jake grew up together. They flunked out of and dropped out of High School together. They hung around the streets and did drugs together. They stole cars together, like the one Bobby was driving. They robbed drunks and junkies and raped women together.
They were like Martin and Lewis, Crosby and Hope, Starski and Hutch or a thousand of the other two-man teams who went down in history together. Except that they were ghetto white trash who didn't care about anyone or anything. And they were proud of it.
This was their favorite night of the year. The night when wearing masks didn't draw attention. What they were doing tonight they'd done for the last two Halloweens. It was so much fun that Bobby and Jake would make this their Halloween tradition, until somebody stopped them.
The plan was simple - rob fast, kill any witnesses. Spot a pair wearing costumes on the street. Kill them, take their masks. Steal a new car every time you get the chance. Then do it over and over again.
For the last two Halloweens, this worked like a charm. They were switching masks and cars so fast the police never knew what they looked like or what they were driving. They never left any witnesses behind.
Last Halloween they accounted for eight deaths by shooting. Jake always said it was nine. He said he got two for one because his final victim was a pregnant woman standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change. He shot her just because Bobby had a higher score than he did that night.
This was what these boys lived for. This was what got them off. This was their favorite night of the year. Halloween, their night of masks and murder.
Bobby pulled the stolen car over to the curb at the corner of Cermak and Kedzie. The car he drove was a beat up early eighties green Pinto. It had so many rust spots that it looked like it was suffering from a bad case of teenage acne. The newer cars were too hard to wire. After he tried a few recent models and almost got caught when the alarms went off, he gave those up.
They were parked in front of a privately owned convenience store. The sign read "Monster Mart."
Bobby grabbed a rubber mask from under his seat and pulled it on over his head. He checked the chrome plated forty-five that he took off a business man stupid enough to walk through Forest Park after dark.
Loaded.
Jake pulled on his mask.
They looked at each other.
Jake had on a Jason hockey mask from the Friday the Thirteenth Series. Bobby had on a Bill Clinton mask.
"Damn," Jake told Bobby. "You the scariest mutherfucker I ever seen."
"Yeah," Bobby answered laughing, "But that Hillary. She scare the shit outa' me."
Both the masks came off the rack at "Lowell's Groceries." The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Lowell were discovered five minutes after Jake and Bobby left with the masks and the money from the till.
They walked across the sidewalk keeping their hands on the guns in their belts. Bobby kicked the front door open and stepped inside the store.
An old oriental man was behind the counter reading a magazine open to a spread that showed panoramic scenes of the countryside of China. He looked up when they entered.
"Hey!" Bobby yelled and jerked his pistol free from his belt. "Treat this trick, muthafucka!" He marched to the counter, the gun out in front of him pointed at the old man's head.
Jake stepped inside and to the right of the glass door. He kept his pistol in both hands pointed at the floor in plain sight.
This was a small convenience store. There were only three short aisles with coolers holding beer at the back and the cash register counter.
Two women, a black and a Mexican, were at the coolers. The Mexican was dressed like a fairy princess. The black had on an Elvira outfit. They froze when they heard Bobby's yell.
Jake waved his gun in their direction. "Don't you even think about moving," He shouted to them.
They couldn't have moved less if they were made of stone.
The old man behind the counter froze too. His mouth hung open in surprise.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Bobby shouted at him. "Get me the god-damn money!"
The old man was shaking. His hands were jerking so much he couldn't hit the right keys to get the cash drawer open. He started stammering, "I-I-I-I."
"Get the fuck out of the way!" Bobby yelled at the old man and shoved him with his left hand. The old man stumbled a step, then went down dragging some cartons of cigarettes off a rack with him. Bobby leaned over the counter and slammed at the closed cash drawer with bottom of his pistol grip.
The cash register bell rang like the starting of a round at Madison Square Garden. The drawer stayed shut.
"Get him to open the god-damn thing!" Jake yelled.
"Shut up!" Bobby yelled back. He banged at the register some more making it sound like he was playing a pinball machine.
