The Halloween Children

by Brian James Freeman

  “I don’t like this at all.”

  I only had my back to her for a moment and hadn’t heard the rustle of lifted paper. Somehow she’d managed to tilt her head and skim the flyer.

  “Shouldn’t think it’d make much difference to you.”

  “No,” she said, “I much preferred the party. Kept the little poop stains from visiting. I don’t buy candy, and I don’t always have the energy to greet them at the door.”

  “Just one day a year, for the kids.” I couldn’t stop myself from making the point. Maybe it’s because Shawna was so inflexible: no profit in arguing with the boss, so I saved all my wisdom for this strange hermit woman.

  “They have enough days,” she said. “Christmas. Birthdays. The whole damn summer.”

  “There’s nothing like Halloween. Don’t you remember?” I was prepared to paint the whole scene for her—like from a fifties black-and-white movie, with some splashes of pumpkin orange. Black cats in the shadows. Mist over a bright moon. The distant howl of a wolf. The rustle of dry leaves. Bare tree limbs stretched like skeleton arms. Kids with ghost and pirate and princess and witch costumes. Pillowcases stuffed with candy, and no dreams of a stomachache the following morning.

  Then this thing happened to me. Maybe you’ve had the same experience. You know, how you’re okay with something…snakes or bees, for example, or let’s say a spider. Other people are scared of it, but you’re fine. There’s one in the room with you, a blotch the size of a raisin, dangling at the end of a gossamer thread, and its weight pulling it down. You’re wearing short sleeves, the spider’s on target to drop onto your exposed arm, and you think, God, if Mom were here she’d be screaming and jumping away, yelling “Kill it! Get it off me! Kill it!” But you’re perfectly okay. You watch that hairy raisin drop, and you’d even shrug if you could, but it’s not worth the effort. The spider lands on you. It’s not venomous, it’s not gonna bite you. It’s not crawling in some menacing way toward your open neck or burrowing beneath your clothes. It’s just there on your arm. It’s nothing.

  You’re proud of yourself for not reacting. Being so mature.

  Then a violent shiver of revulsion hits you. Doesn’t even need to be an obvious trigger. You haven’t thought about the hairs on its vile body, the bristles along its eight unnatural legs, the click of those tiny mandibles or its predatory black eyes. It’s just an overwhelming disgust, and you shudder and swipe the thing off your arm, and you want to dance and stomp your feet and make bleh! noises, tongue out and nose crinkled, and you’re still scratching yourself a few minutes later, as if bugs had crawled all over you.

  Maybe that kind of thing has happened to you? Once or twice? Well, I got this same sudden rush of revulsion about Joanne Huff. I’d been in the room with her awhile, not exactly liking her, but feeling okay about it. Doing my job. Being civil. You can’t flick a person away like you could a spider, step on her like you could a cockroach. Then the idea of her illness struck me. Maybe the fact that I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with her. When you don’t know the disease, you also don’t know how it spreads. I was standing there talking with her, more than I needed to, but could I get sick just from talking? Breathing the same foul air? Or would I have to touch her?

  “Harris, what’s come over you?”

  I guess I couldn’t hold back a shudder, but her shrill voice didn’t help me calm down. There was a weird crackle in her speech, and it made me imagine the dry skin of her lips splitting. And then I remembered those kissing diseases like mono. You kiss the other person, put your lips over hers, press them together, mash them around, and the dry skin crackles, it’s bristled like the legs of a spider, and a froth of contagious blood pops out, and your own dry mouth summons spittle into the mixture.

  “I’m going to call the office,” she said. I thought she meant to complain about my odd expression, but she was back on the trick-or-treat subject. “If I don’t want kids coming by, I shouldn’t have to tolerate it.”

  Her hand lifted from a crease in the chair, and she was holding a cellphone. She probably had Shawna on speed-dial.

  “No offense,” she said to me, “but I loathe children. They knock on my door, and I’d probably want to kill them.” She turned her attention to the phone, pressing a button with her thumb.

  My signal to leave, which was fine by me.

  —

  “My paints are all messed up,” Mattie said that evening. A simple observation, no accusation in his voice—almost like he didn’t half realize I was in the room and might decide to punish the likely offender.

  I pictured him saying the same phrases over and over while staring into the open tub of art supplies. “The red is in the white. The black is in the yellow.”

  Mattie turned around to explain. “All it takes is a drop. That’s why you have to wash the brush when you change colors.”

  I leaned down to look over his shoulder into the open paint jars. The white jar looked like it was filled with Pepto-Bismol. The paint in the yellow jar had a nasty green-gray color, like something hocked into a napkin during flu season.

  Mattie was careful with his paints—with everything, really. He was the kind of kid who didn’t want different food items touching one another on the plate. “You think Amber borrowed your paints when she was working on that diorama with your mom?”

  “The markers, too.” Mattie pulled the top from a Crayola marker and waved its red tip close to my face. The felt tip was mashed down. “This one’s new. I’ve hardly used it.” He was wearing a T-shirt, his arms exposed, and he ran the marker’s tip along the inside of his left forearm. Mattie pressed hard, a valley in his skin following the marker. He would have drawn a thick red line, the illusion of a knife cutting into soft flesh, but there wasn’t any ink left. He ran the dry tip back and forth a few more times, making a sandpaper-scratch sound that really got on my nerves, and I had to tell him to stop.

  “I guess Amber was in a hurry to finish that project for school,” I said. “She’s not as careful as you are. I’m sure she didn’t mean to ruin your paints and stuff.” I made it a point not to blame Amber too much, since I didn’t want the kids fighting with each other again. “Your mom was with her, too,” I added.

  Mattie replaced the cap on the marker—though, of course, the damage was already done. It would never write again.

  “Why don’t you make a list? I’ll get you some replacements from the Dollar Tree.”

  I thought that would make Mattie smile. He always liked things when they were fresh and new. Instead, he said: “She’ll just do it again.”

  “No. I’ll talk to Amber. Your mom and I will both talk to her.”

  Then I got another idea. I thought about when I was Mattie’s age, how I had a secret in our backyard toolshed: a loose wall panel I could slide back, and I’d pulled out the fiberglass insulation to clear out a small compartment where I could hide comics and toys.

  Well, there weren’t any wall panels or other hiding places in our small apartment, but I could do the next best thing. Mattie’s desk was a sturdy wooden junker Lynn and I found at a yard sale, and I’d sanded and stained it to make it nicer. The two side drawers were especially heavy, the bottom one deep enough to serve as a file drawer. “Hey, Mattie—how about I drill a few holes and install a lock on one of your desk drawers? That’ll keep your stuff safe, won’t it?”

  And he sure smiled at that idea. For me, it was one of those moments where you’re really happy to be a father—when you realize how easily you can connect with your kid and give him just what he wants.

  From Digital Transcription #7

  Interviewer: It seems to me that you’re purposely misleading the investigators. Why would you of all people do that?

  Victim: I’m telling you what I know. If you don’t choose to believe it, that’s your problem.

  Interviewer: After what happened in your community, shouldn’t you want the perpetrators brought to justice? I would think you’d have a special interest in
seeing them caught.

  Victim: You’re still missing the point.

  Interviewer: Why did you survive, when so many others didn’t?

  Victim: A lucky break, I guess.

  Interviewer: “Luck” seems a bad choice of words. Do I need to show you those photographs again?

  Victim: I’m well aware of how my neighbors died. My friends.

  Interviewer: Why were you spared?

  Victim: Okay. [Takes a deep breath.] It was something my wife did. She’s a kind person. Always had a weak spot for children.

  Interviewer: You keep mentioning children. It’s impossible that children could do this. [Lays a photograph on the table.] And this. [Another photograph.] And this. [Another.]

  Victim: I will never forget their eyes, those empty eyes behind their awful masks. [Pause.] We were spared because…[Inaudible.]

  Interviewer: What? Please repeat your statement.

  Victim: [Pause.] We gave them what they wanted.

  Lynn

  The next afternoon, I heard the pleading voice again.

  A variation on it, at least.

  I was taking one of my official breaks: fifteen minutes at ten-thirty and two-thirty, imposed by ComQues as part of their telework regulations.

  I went into the kitchen to fix a healthy snack of baby carrots and hummus, and when I reached in the cabinet for a small plate, somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

  I was alone in the apartment.

  Because of our rigorous timed breaks, I knew the kids weren’t back from school yet.

  Their bus drops them off about three-ten, and it takes them five minutes more to walk home.

  Not Harris, either.

  Harris keeps pretty varied hours, depending on how many tasks he has, but I can always tell when he’s in a room with me.

  Part of the reason is that Harris makes a lot of noise, generally: loud unlocking of the door, clanking his tool chest on the floor, a loud sigh or two about how busy he’s been.

  But the other reason is that I can “sense” Harris whenever he’s around.

  It’s another measure of how our marriage has changed, because it used to give me a happy feeling of togetherness.

  Now his presence adds a kind of tension to a room. I always notice it.

  So it wasn’t my husband, wasn’t the kids.

  I spun around to see who or what had tapped my shoulder.

  Nothing there.

  Then I heard the voice again.

  “Help me.”

  From the walls. “I need you. Help me.”

  I pressed my back against the counter so nobody could get behind me. The utensil drawer was to my right and I considered grabbing a sharp knife.

  The voice drifted ghostly in the air itself.

  “Hello?”

  My scalp started to tingle, as if my hair was beginning to stand on end.

  The voice said, “Is this the correct number?”

  Then I sighed in relief and started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” the formerly sinister voice said.

  All Harris’s fault. Those damn ghost movies he makes me watch.

  Once I heard the “correct number” comment, I realized what had happened.

  My phone headset.

  The old headset I had previously used had been attached to one of those curly stretch wires that connected it to the computer and phone line.

  At break times, I would unplug the cord and drop the headset at my workstation.

  But we got a new system last week, though, which is wireless.

  It was much easier to use: I’d simply flip a switch to shut off the connection and I could walk around the apartment while still wearing the lightweight headset.

  Except during this particular break, I’d forgotten to flip the switch.

  I’d gone into the kitchen and a service call connected without my realizing it.

  The click of the connection, then the unexpected weight of the headset, had registered as a tap on my shoulder followed by ghostly fingers in my hair.

  Nothing more than that.

  Working as part of a computer-support call center, I’m used to hearing “help me” on a daily basis, from all kinds of people.

  The same thing must have happened yesterday, when I heard a similar voice calling from the walls, from upstairs.

  I’ve got to be more careful about turning off my headset during breaks.

  And I guess I should be more assertive about what kinds of movies I like, rather than simply going along with Harris’s choice.

  You can help me with that, right?

  But just because there was an easy explanation for what I had been hearing, that didn’t mean I wasn’t a little on edge.

  Maybe with good reason, too.

  —

  The next day Amber shared something with me that bothered me enough that I started looking at this apartment complex with entirely new eyes.

  Harris and Matt were in the laundry room in the connected building because we try not to assign chores based on traditional gender lines.

  I was working on this stupid secret journal of mine and Amber was reading quietly in her room, but she came to ask me a question and I didn’t hear her enter the living room.

  Her little voice startled me when she asked right behind me: “Mommy, whatcha working on?”

  “Mommy, what are you working on,” I said, automatically correcting her grammar.

  I didn’t close the Word document, though.

  Even a child recognizes the instant guilt of a quickly closed computer screen.

  She repeated, “Mommy, what are you working on? I haven’t heard you talking to any of the people you help in a while.”

  “Oh, some days I guess people know what they’re doing on their computers and don’t need Mommy’s help as often. They’ll call eventually,” I said, lying to my child as easily as any parent does.

  I never realized until I had my own children how easily the lies could flow. Sometimes you just didn’t have the time for the truth.

  “Mommy, when you’re done, could you help me type in my story?”

  “Your story? You have a story?”

  “Yes, and I don’t want to forget it.”

  This was something new, and any new development with your child kind of wakes you up from the mental cruise control you’re on.

  A writer, eh? She wanted to be a writer. So young to pick such an educated profession! The pride I felt was very real.

  “How about we type in your story right now?”

  “If you’re sure you have the time,” she said. My little angel, always concerned about others over herself.

  “For you, I always have the time. Let me log out for my lunch break.”

  I closed the window I was in and opened a new Word document. Amber came and stood next to my chair.

  She said, “Okay, here’s how it starts. A long time ago, there was a little boy who called himself Jack.”

  I typed: Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Jack.

  “No, Mommy. It’s not my story unless you write exactly what I say.”

  Well, I couldn’t resist. I typed her exact words on the screen: No, Mommy, it’s not…

  Amber giggled and said, “Stop!” and then when I typed Stop! she said it again, louder, then we both got the giggles.

  “Let’s start over,” Amber said.

  “Okay.” I pressed the delete key until the cursor had backed up and devoured all of the text, and then I gave her an expectant look. “I’ll just type what you tell me. Nothing more.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” I dangled my hands like spiders over the keyboard. “Now. What’s your title?”

  The Bad Place

  by Amber Naylor

  as Told to Mother

  A long time ago, there was a little boy who called himself Jack. He lived in apartment 5D of the Stillbrook Apartments.

  One Halloween, he started to feel very, very sick. He told his mommy and dad
dy that he was going to The Bad Place.

  His parents asked him where The Bad Place was and he said he would show them.

  It was Halloween night, but instead of trick-or-treating with his friends he took his parents to the basement of the other apartment building, where the laundry room and common area were. The lights were out in the big room, but candles on the floor made a bright star pattern.

  Jack stabbed his mommy and his daddy with a big knife until they were bleeding out all of their blood. Jack didn’t know he was doing this, a demon was making him do it.

  When Jack realized what he had done, he stabbed himself and he died.

  Halloween went on as planned because no one knew the family from apartment 5D was dead until the next day.

  The End

  I was shocked at the story, especially since Amber had set it in our apartment.

  The idea that my little girl could have had such horrible thoughts in her head didn’t feel real.

  Yet I tried not to show too much concern in front of her because I didn’t want to stifle her creativity.

  I asked how she had come up with something so creative, and she told me she’d heard the story from those teenage kids who are always hanging around the courtyard.

  They live in the other building.

  So she hadn’t come up with these horrible thoughts on her own. That made a lot more sense to me.

  My Amber was creative and smart, and she wouldn’t have dreamed up something so nasty on her own.

  As the day went on, I found myself getting madder and madder the more I thought about what Amber had said and the horrible things those teenagers had told her.

  What the hell had they been thinking?

  They shouldn’t have tried to frighten my little girl like that, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll have to pay them a friendly visit to discuss their manners.

  From Digital Transcription #7