The Witch of Halloween House

by Jeff DeGordick

  Tommy wiped the tears out of his eyes. "Yeah."

  "But you have to promise you won't tell Dad we're doing this. Just leave him alone for a little while—let him blow off some steam. He'll probably be busy that night anyway and won't know we're out, so just keep this between us, deal?"

  He nodded. "Okay." And as if to seal the deal in making her feel as guilty as possible, he crawled out of his cubbyhole, walked across the room to her, and wrapped his arms around her, nestling his face against her chest.

  A smirk crossed her face as her heart swelled, and she ran her fingers through his hair.

  A little girl sat on her bed with the door to her room closed as she played with her doll. She brushed its hair with a little comb, and she twisted it around, inspecting it from all angles. When it was to her liking, she set it next to the other dolls she had. She picked up a little teacup and set it on a little table. Just above a whisper, she feigned dialogue in a high-pitched voice. Her mom was somewhere in the living room on the other end of the house, and she had plenty of time to play with her dolls before she went to bed.

  Something tapped on her window.

  The girl looked up. There were thin white curtains covering the window, and she could see the muted square of darkness behind them. She didn't hear anything else, so she turned her attention back to her dolls, picking up a tiny teapot and pretending to pour it into a cup.

  A tap played on the glass again.

  She looked up. She stared at it for a moment, and she finally decided to put the teapot down and get up. She crossed the room to the window and reached out for the curtains. The darkness loomed behind it, waiting for her to open them.

  She pulled them open to each side and stared out into the night. She couldn't see anything on the other side of the glass—only her empty backyard. The blades of grass rolled gently in the breeze as the tree branches and bushes swayed. She lifted her finger and tapped on the window herself with her fingernail, mimicking the sound she'd heard. But when nothing happened, she turned around and walked back to her bed.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The girl stopped. She slowly turned around. Regarding the window for a long time, her little feet carried her back to it. She peered outside again, but still didn't see anything in the darkness. The movement of the bushes and the trees made it look like something could have been moving around, but she couldn't spot it. Her eyes drifted along the glass, eventually falling on something sitting on the windowsill outside.

  Her brow scrunched up and she placed her fingers underneath the window. She tried to lift it, but it was really heavy for her tiny size. She groaned and struggled, and the window began to budge. It went up an inch, then another, then she crouched down and pushed her palms underneath it, shoving up with all her might. The window slid up a foot, and the cold air of the dark evening floated into her bedroom.

  Her mother was still in the living room, obliviously watching television.

  The little girl's eyes fell on the strange object sitting on her windowsill. She reached out into the dark and grabbed it, pulling it inside. She held it up, twisting it around in her hand like she'd done with her doll and inspecting it.

  It was a gingerbread man.

  A smile crossed her face. She didn't know who gave it to her, but she liked the gift very much.

  Black Out

  The motion-sensing door slid open and Carmen and Tommy walked into the store. Being in a small town like this, they didn't really have much variety, and Hugh's Grocery and Home Supply Mart was just about their one-stop-shop for all their personal needs, whether they liked it or not. They walked past the food sections and aisles toward the other end of the store where they would be able to find the seasonal Halloween costumes.

  "So what do you think you want to be?" Carmen asked.

  Tommy opened his mouth.

  "Other than Joe Hardy," she added. "Lame costume, remember?"

  His mouth closed. He walked a few paces, thinking of a retort. "Why's it a lame costume?"

  "Because nobody's going to know who you are. They're just going to say, 'Oh, look, he's dressed as a boy in a red sweater. How nice.'"

  Tommy grumbled under his breath.

  The store was busy, with three long lines stretched from the open checkouts and a crowd of other people milling about the store.

  They reached the back of the store and found a couple aisles filled with all the Halloween accessories they could want.

  "You could be a pirate," Carmen offered, pulling out the premade costume.

  He looked at it. "Hmm..."

  She put it back on the shelf, pulling out another one. "Sailor?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I don't really like it."

  "Well, what do you want to be? I could put a mop on your head."

  "What would that make me?"

  Carmen shrugged. "I don't know... Mop Boy?"

  Tommy rolled his eyes and headed down to the other end of the aisle. Carmen looked around for a little bit, then she shouted out to him, "Take a look around and find something you like. I'm just going to get a few groceries while we're here."

  He turned and nodded to her, then he rounded the corner into the next aisle. There were various Halloween decorations, candy, and simple animatronics in this one, but no costumes. But standing at the end of the aisle were Brett, Randy and Shawn.

  They were talking to each other quietly and laughing, then Brett pulled something off one of the shelves and stuck it inside his jacket, surreptitiously closing it and glancing around. He spotted Tommy. "Hey, what are you doing here?" he asked with a mischievous smile.

  Tommy fidgeted with his fingers and slowly walked toward them. "Um, I'm looking for a Halloween costume," he replied.

  "That's stupid," Brett said. "Why would you go around trick-or-treating when you can just take whatever candy you want?"

  Randy glanced around, then he stretched up onto his toes and plucked a bag of candy off the shelf, slipping it into his own coat.

  Tommy knew that wasn't right, but he kept quiet.

  "So where's your sister?" Brett asked.

  "She's getting some groceries," he said. "What are you guys doing for Halloween, then?"

  Brett shrugged. "Don't know, but we'll find something fun to do. Maybe we'll break into the school now that the teachers are on strike."

  Tommy swallowed. "Cool," he said. He stood upright, adjusting his posture to try to act casually and fit in, though being around Brett and the others made him awkward and nervous.

  Brett laughed. "You wouldn't have the guts to break in there, anyway."

  Tommy's eyes narrowed at the challenge. "I would too!"

  "I bet you didn't even hear what happened there tonight," he teased.

  "What?"

  "Didn't think so," Brett said, laughing and turning away from him.

  "Tell me!" Tommy said.

  Brett turned back with a smirk. "Some janitor got wasted there."

  Tommy was confused. "What do you mean?"

  "He was cleaning down by the furnace in the basement and the thing exploded. The guy totally got torched."

  Tommy's eyes widened. "Really?" An imagined interpretation of the event played in his head, and it horrified him.

  "I heard it was the witch," Brett said.

  "The one who lived in Halloween House?" Tommy asked, startled.

  "Yeah, people say she didn't really die..."

  "Hey, what are you guys doing?"

  They all turned and saw Carmen standing at the end of the aisle. She held a small basket in her hand filled with bread, apples, and a few other things, and Brett immediately rolled his eyes.

  "I saw that, you little bugger," she said. She marched down the aisle to the three of them, and Randy and Shawn gulped, but Brett stood there defiantly.

  "I ain't afraid of you," Brett said.

  "You will be if you talk to my brother again," she snapped back.

  Tommy took a step out of the way from his sister's line of fire.

&nb
sp; Brett turned to his friends and smacked them on the shoulder. "Come on, let's get out of here." The three of them started to move, but then Brett stopped and looked at Shawn. "Hey, you didn't take any candy."

  Shawn stood awkwardly on the spot, looking between Brett and the shelf next to him.

  "Do it!" Brett punched him in the shoulder this time.

  A sharp breath escaped Shawn's mouth, then he quickly snatched a bag of candy off the shelf and stuffed it under his jacket as the three of them took off.

  Carmen watched them go with a scornful eye, then she turned to her brother. "What did I tell you about hanging around them?"

  Tommy backed up defensively. "I didn't know they were here! I just ran into them!"

  She looked at him suspiciously, but she let it go. "Come on, let's get your costume and get out of here."

  He followed her to the other aisle and they spent another ten minutes browsing costumes until Tommy finally settled on Spider-Man. Carmen made sure to get the right size, then she pulled it off the rack and gave it to him to carry to the checkout. They made their way up to the front and stood in line to pay for their items and get home before it got too late.

  The person at the checkout ahead of them finished up and left the store, and the line shuffled forward. A card fell out of the pocket of the man standing directly in front of them.

  Tommy bent down and picked it up, and went up to him and tapped on his back. "Hey mister, you dropped this."

  The man turned around, a guy somewhere in his forties with short brown hair, streaked with white on the sides. He was dressed well enough, but he had a bit of a disheveled look, with rough stubble covering his face. "Oh, thanks kid," the man said as he spotted the card.

  Tommy stared down at it before he extended it out to the man and saw that his name was Darius Fishburn, an advertising consultant based in Colorado. The phone number at the bottom of the card was scratched out with pen, and Tommy flipped it over to see another number scrawled on the back. He turned his attention back to the man who had his hand extended. "Oh, sorry. Here, Mr. Fishburn."

  The man took his card back. "Just Simon is fine," he said.

  "You're not from around here, are you?" Tommy asked."

  Carmen nudged him in the side. "Tommy, it's not polite to pry."

  Simon chuckled. "That's all right. No, I don't live here. I'm just passing through."

  "Where are you going?" Tommy asked.

  "Good question," Simon replied. "Well, I just came back from a pro bono gig at a house in Vermont, and now I'm heading to..." He pulled out a small notebook from his jacket, flipping it open and reading from it. "...Jasper, Louisiana."

  "What's there?"

  "Pray you never find out, kid," he said, then he smiled and rustled Tommy's hair. The line behind him emptied out and the cashier waited for him. He turned to pay for his items, and as he did, Carmen and Tommy saw a wide bandage that stretched up and wrapped over his shoulder under the collar of his shirt, like he had sustained some kind of injury.

  The man paid for his items and left, and the cashier turned to the two of them and offered them a welcoming smile. Carmen ushered her brother forward and the two of them started to raise their items onto the conveyor belt.

  Then the power went out.

  The whole store was plunged into blackness, and frightened murmurs coursed through the crowd standing in all the lines and shopping around the store.

  The front of the place was plate glass, which let in a little light from the streetlights by the road outside, but suddenly even that illumination seemed to dim as an intangible darkness settled over the entire area.

  Carmen felt around for her brother, but she couldn't find him. "Tommy?" He didn't answer, and she stumbled around in the dark. She felt someone and groped them, and the other person let out a shocked cry in a clear adult voice. "Oh, sorry!" Carmen said. She moved past them. "Tommy!"

  There was noise at the front of the store, like the cashiers had been fiddling around, trying to figure out what to do. Footsteps clapped through the dark, then a voice, loud and authoritative, pierced the darkness. "Sorry folks! It seems we're experiencing some kind of power outage. We're going to try to find some flashlights so everyone can safely find their way to the front."

  Carmen moved through the darkness toward the back of the store, crouching down and feeling around for her little brother. She couldn't find him anywhere, and finally she stopped and listened.

  The darkness blanketed her completely. It was more than just the lights being out; it was an actual oppressive feeling, similar to what she experienced before on her way to the school the previous night. It was like there was something in the darkness, watching her. She couldn't see it, she couldn't hear it, but she could feel it. Her mind immediately went to the witch that the man in the jail cell warned her about. It was a completely irrational thought, but in a time like this, rationality had no dominion.

  She felt the thing in the dark lurk and creep around, and a terrible fear rose in her chest that it wanted her brother.

  "Tommy!"

  "Carmen?" a voice returned at last.

  A beam of light appeared at the front of the store and cut through the dark. Carmen looked over her shoulder and saw it wash past her, then she turned her gaze and saw it highlight someone a dozen paces away from her in a brief flash. It was her brother.

  Tommy!" she rushed over to him, moving carefully in the darkness as the flashlight swept somewhere else. They called out, relying on each other's voices to close in on one another, then Carmen reached out and found his wrist. "Tommy!" she said desperately.

  "It's me!" he said, and she could hear fear in his voice, too.

  "Come on, let's get out of here," she said, dragging him toward the source of the waving lights. The crowd bunched up in front of them, and Carmen tried to push and get through, feeling the dark presence lurking behind her. She didn't know what physical sense her body employed to tell that it was closing in on her, but she knew it was. It gnawed at her like an itch on the inside that she couldn't scratch, and it was making her brain go crazy. She had to get out of here. She had to get out of here now. She wrenched on her brother's arm hard, and he let out a cry of pain as he was pulled through the dense crowd. She kept an iron grip on his wrist, not willing to let him go for anything. Her ribs crashed into the dull corner of the checkout counter, and she grunted, but kept moving.

  The store manager was at the front with the other cashiers, waving their flashlights around and calling out directions to the patrons. His voice was calm and soothing, but Carmen took no chances, rushing past him with her brother and heading for the exit. The automatic doors didn't work without power, but someone who'd already gone ahead of them had pried them open, and Carmen and her brother slipped out into the night.

  She stumbled forward and twisted around, facing the store, her lungs heaving as she panted for breath.

  "What's the matter?" Tommy asked her. "Why are you so worked up?" He looked down at his wrist in the dim light of a nearby streetlamp, rubbing the skin where she had roughly jerked it.

  She didn't say anything, just regaining her breath at first as she stared at the entrance and exit of the store with wide and suspicious eyes. She was waiting for that intangible black and terrible thing to come out of there and attack them, but nothing ever did. Had she imagined it all? After all, she hadn't really seen or heard anything in the first place. But it was a feeling that she couldn't shake.

  She rubbed her head. "What is going on around here?" she asked herself aloud.

  Tommy stood next to her and solemnly looked up at her. "Maybe we should try to find Dad."

  "Maybe," she said.

  "Brett told me what happened there."

  "At the school?"

  "Yeah. He said the janitor got set on fire."

  "What?"

  Tommy just nodded.

  Carmen racked her brain. She didn't trust Brett as far as she could throw him, but her dad had gone to the school for somet
hing, and nothing had been in the news yet. If it was true, then it was just another item to add to the long list of bizarre occurrences that had been happening lately; odd sensations that she couldn't explain, a missing child, bizarre symbols, and now a man being immolated? A pang of fear tapped on each disc of her spine, climbing from her lower back up to the base of her neck. The words of Peter, the man in the jail cell, echoed in her head and she shivered. Maybe the witch was real...

  She turned to her brother. "Yeah, I think it's time we went to the school."

  Clues in the Dark

  They crossed a row of tall trees and the school came into view. When they saw that the parking lot was empty and there were no flashing lights, their hearts sank.

  "They're already gone..." Tommy said.

  "Maybe Brett was lying," Carmen suggested.

  Tommy squinted through the darkness, spotting something. "No, look!" He pointed his finger toward the front of the school in the distance. Carmen strained to see it, but Tommy took off running.

  "Hey, slow down!" The night was bitterly cold and Carmen already had a bad feeling about this.

  When they crossed the parking lot, the truth came into focus for them. Yellow police tape stretched across the entrance like a spider web.

  "So they were here," Tommy said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a magnifying glass, dragging it along the tape and inspecting it with a keen eye.

  "Why on Earth do you have a magnifying glass?" Carmen asked with a smirk.

  He turned to her as if she had just asked the most foolish question. "Every good adventurer should have a magnifying glass." Carmen shrugged, and Tommy started to duck under the tape.

  "Hey!" she shouted, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him back.

  Tommy stumbled and then righted himself. "What was that about?" he asked.

  "You're not going in there. Are you crazy? We came here to see Dad, not go skulking around a dark school... a crime scene."

  "Well, Dad's not here," he said. "But... we are. Shouldn't we at least take a look?"