The Halloween Children

by Brian James Freeman

  Interviewer: Tell us more about Halloween night.

  Victim: There wasn’t supposed to be a Halloween night. Not officially, at least. October thirty-first was supposed to be just like any other day.

  Interviewer: Did your community have problems in the past?

  Victim: Not really. Of course, you hear all the stories on the news. Things that happen other places. Trick-or-treating simply invites mischief. It’s not safe for the kids.

  Interviewer: Who made the final decision?

  Victim: It doesn’t matter. Good intentions, you know? The whole idea was to protect our kids, which makes it pretty ironic.

  Interviewer: How so?

  Victim: It would have been a lot safer just to have a normal Halloween…

  Harris

  “Are you sure it isn’t just that bird squawking?”

  “I know what a bird sounds like, Harris.”

  My after-hours number was intended only for emergencies—a flooded bathroom or some bolt-struck tree limb crashing through a bedroom window—but Joanne Huff seemed to think it was okay to phone anytime with simple noise complaints. She was the reason I kept my work cell on vibrate after midnight and sometimes considered turning the damn thing off completely. I remember thinking: If anything bad ever happens in the night and I don’t hear about it, it will be her fault.

  “There’s a county noise ordinance.” I wasn’t as loud and forceful as I wanted to be, since I didn’t want to wake Lynn. “You’re free to call the police.”

  She ignored my suggestion and continued. “Shawna told me there weren’t any contractors in that unit. They shouldn’t be doing construction work this time of night anyway—am I correct? Wait. Wait a minute. Listen.”

  I knew she was holding the phone in the air, turning it the way people do when trying to get more signal bars.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Shhhh. Wait.” After a moment, she gave up. “Well, of course it stops while I have you on the phone. But I know what I’ve been hearing. It’s not any construction noise.”

  “Okay. What kind of noise is it?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “If you don’t tell me, then how am I supposed to help?”

  Too late, I realized my mistake. I’d hoped to put her off until the morning, but now that I’d admitted the possibility that I might help, she’d never let me off the hook.

  “Yes, good,” Joanne said. “Only because you’ll check that apartment now. You have to catch these things while they’re going on. Otherwise I’d never say.”

  My wife shifted in the bed. Her back was to me, the way she usually slept. I moved my legs, trying not to jar the mattress as I prepared to stand.

  Joanne said, “I’ll tell you what it sounds like. It sounds like pleasure.”

  She paused, in case I’d ask her to elaborate. I declined.

  “The wrong kind of pleasure,” she finished.

  —

  As I pulled some khakis over my pajamas and shrugged into a loose sweatshirt, I speculated on what Joanne might consider the “wrong kind” of pleasure. Was she homophobic? Or maybe she meant something involving animals or plush toys. Sharp metal points or leather straps.

  Then I wondered how she would know. Joanne Huff didn’t strike me as someone who’d ever experienced pleasure. This is a bit mean to say, especially since she and I were about the same age, but the best way I could describe her would be to say that she seemed kinda…dried up.

  I didn’t wake Lynn. She understood the hazards of my job and wouldn’t worry if she found my side of the bed empty. I tiptoed to the hall closet and gathered my toolkit, so I’d look official walking around the complex so late at night. Also, I made sure I had my passkey and I grabbed my Maglite, since the electricity was likely turned off in the vacant apartment. Plus, the three D-cells and metal casing made the flashlight a pretty hefty club if I needed a weapon.

  Mostly I decided there was nothing going on. Just Joanne being her usual paranoid self. Somebody’d thrown shoes for a tumble in the basement dryer and the noise carried. Or maybe a stray cat or rodent found its way inside the vacant apartment. If there was a human noise in that apartment, though, I had a guess about the cause.

  Stillbrook Apartments was within walking distance of a satellite campus to the University of Maryland, and college kids sometimes grew tired of their dorm rooms and went exploring. A few years back, another local apartment complex had trouble with kids breaking into an empty unit and having a “quiet” party there: beer, of course, and other mild drugs students might experiment with; whispers and laughter, likely accompanied with the usual late-night, dark-room activities. Nothing too messy to clean up after, at least initially. Such things tended to escalate.

  The first group was cautious, enjoying how the forbidden location added fresh excitement to their partying routine. The next weekend brought extra recruits and the larger group became reckless: more noise, a few glasses breaking, some wilder physical couplings. And the following week brought even more students, trying to top the fun of the previous nights, not caring how rowdy they got in “their” secret party suite, until of course the cops showed up and the whole crowd rushed out at the sound of sirens—kids running in all directions, so many that the cops didn’t know where to turn and caught none of them.

  Following the usual course of rumor—that, and ratings-hungry TV channels—the whole thing practically grew into local legend. The kids had a few candles, since the apartments wouldn’t have electricity. Rumor turned these into black candles, arranged in a Satan-suggestive pattern. And in all those furtive, dark fumblings, teenagers were bound to spill stuff. Alcohol, mostly, but some predictable bodily fluids, too. Rumor added blood to the mix—again, arranged in an ominous pattern.

  Anything for ratings or to make the town seem more thrilling than it actually is.

  So I was braced for college kids but expecting nothing more than a squeak mouse.

  You know what I found, but I’ll tell you anyway. You want this whole thing in my words, and that’s what I’m giving you.

  Lynn

  Harris thinks he’s so quiet when he wakes up at night. I can hear only his side of the phone conversation, but the emergencies usually seem manufactured.

  I’ve known for a while that one night I would follow him and see what he’s really up to, but I didn’t know when that night would come.

  Does this make it sound like I don’t trust my husband?

  I guess it does.

  I’ve always wondered what I might discover if I actually did follow him.

  How about the night when I heard the ringing of a phone, some whispers about a bird squawking, then a county noise ordinance, then something about pleasure.

  Since I’m writing about my problems with my husband, I guess I should be honest about the kind of things I’m afraid I might find out.

  That night I was very still, listening to my husband’s latest late-night call.

  He moved to the edge of the bed, signaling he had decided he would be making another one of his unpaid middle-of-the-night emergency trips to somewhere in the complex.

  He dressed in the dark and muttered to himself, “The wrong kind of pleasure? What the hell does that mean?”

  I thought that was a really good question myself. What kind of stuff was he getting himself mixed up in anyway?

  After that, I heard the front door of the apartment close as quietly as Harris can manage, which isn’t very quiet at all.

  Then I had a decision to make: Would I follow my husband or would I continue to trust him unconditionally?

  If I didn’t trust him, I could leap out of bed, throw on the bare minimum of clothes needed to be modest if someone spotted me, and then step over to our bedroom window to track where he was headed.

  I might watch as Harris started across the courtyard below. He’d probably be moving slowly, half asleep, which would mean I wouldn’t have to rush.

  I could sneak out the front d
oor of our apartment, just as he had, although I would close the door softer than he ever could. Wouldn’t want to wake the children.

  Once I was outside our apartment, I’d try to be as silent as a mouse in the hallway so none of the neighbors who happened to be night owls would hear me, but I’d probably run down the steps two at a time to make up for lost time.

  When I reached the first floor, I would open the door to the courtyard and feel the brisk October air wash over my skin.

  Then I would follow my husband into the darkness.

  Yes, if I did decide to follow my husband, it would probably have gone something like that.

  But what would I have found when I reached the other building?

  Was he having an affair?

  Or would I discover something far more horrible?

  Harris

  Building six was what I call “Big Brother” to the one my family and I lived in. Stillbrook was made up of paired buildings, with one slightly larger because it had an extra half-floor to accommodate the laundry room and storage area that’s shared by both buildings, with a meeting room that stretched out to the back. I started calling them Big Brother and Little Brother, since from a distance it’s like the one building’s a “head” taller, maybe putting its arm around the smaller guy like a brother. Shawna reluctantly adopted the terminology, since it’s an easy way to refer to the building with the laundry and storage facility.

  The laundry room might be more convenient if the two buildings were connected internally. As it was, since we apparently drew the short straw when we moved in, Lynn and I had to take turns lugging laundry out the front of our building, across the grass-split sidewalk, then through the neighboring doors, then down a half-stairway to the basement laundry closet. Struggling to unlock the door while still balancing the laundry baskets, I’d often hear the whoosh of a rinse cycle or the tink of dimes in a dryer—a likely indication the equipment was all in use and I’d have to abandon our stuff on the folding table to mark a place in line. A real pain.

  As I investigated Joanne’s complaint, this time of night offered rare silence from the laundry room. I waited next to the notice board in the entryway, listening for other possible sources of noise. Nary a squawk from the Durkinses’ annoying bird, though I heard a faint snoring from behind their bolted door. I had a funny thought that maybe the bird had sleep apnea or something. Or maybe it could mimic those kinds of human sounds, too, as an additional way to humiliate owners. Oh, I didn’t fart, Father O’Malley. The bird made that raspberry sound. Urp. Oh, that one was me. Sorry.

  As I made my way toward the top floor, the stairwell lights flickered. I’d have to replace the bulbs soon, but it was always cheaper to make ’em last as long as possible. On the middle landing, I heard a frantic tapping from inside apartment C. That college gal likely pulling an all-nighter, clicking at some history or psych paper. Nothing from the Tammisimo place across the hall. I moved slow on the top steps, careful not to rattle my tool chest. If there was a secret party going on in the vacant apartment, I wanted the element of surprise.

  I looked beneath Joanne Huff’s door. The light was on in her apartment, which made sense, considering she’d just called me. But I also expected two little shadows for her feet, in case she pressed against the door with an eye to the peephole, checking up on me. That would mean getting up out of her chair, though, so maybe not. I waved a greeting at her door anyway, then held my finger to my lips in a silencing gesture, in case she considered barging into the hall to give me more instructions. Or ask me to take some trash downstairs for her.

  I did a little cartoon-character tiptoe over to the vacant apartment. No light under that door—not even the flicker of a candle. I set down my tool chest, then held my ear as close to the door as possible without touching. Listening for the sound of pleasure, I guess.

  I felt like I was living one of those horror-story moments where I was supposed to notice my nervous breaths, then a dull, rapid thumping, and, Oh, God, it’s my own heartbeat! And, Then I heard a scream of pure agony. I realized the scream was my own.

  Yeah, none of that happened. Nothing but the expected nighttime silence. So much racket during the day, I couldn’t help but imagine I was poised on the edge of some disturbance: the rattle of heating pipes, a whistle of wind, the random snap of wood as an old building settles in its foundation. The buzz of a fly; the scurry of tiny feet along a baseboard, a banded tail dragging behind.

  I fished out my passkey, then turned it inside the lock. I pushed the door inward, and the hinges didn’t even creak. The vacant apartment would probably offer no significant surprises. I heard nothing; I’d find nothing. Still, I paused a moment before crossing the threshold.

  I guess I’d had a premonition or something. This was where the worst of it began.

  Opening that door.

  —

  Leaving my tool chest outside, I flipped the switch of the Maglite and cupped my left hand over the dish to control the strength of its beam. Enough light filtered in from the landing for the moment, and I followed my shadow into the vacant apartment.

  With all my maintenance visits, I’ve seen every style of apartment in Stillbrook. There’s basically three boxy floor plans. Normal one- and two-bedroom units, with mirror-image variations depending on whether they face the front or back, and a “deluxe” two-bedroom with den, which costs more because of the so-called extra room that essentially steals its space from the kitchen and bedroom closets.

  As I stepped into the “extra” den, the door closed on its own behind me—not an ominous wind- or ghost-slam, just a regular close. 6E was a deluxe, like my family’s unit in the attached building. Considering I’ve stumbled blind through my place plenty of times making a late-night pit stop, I could’ve found my way easily even without the flashlight. No furniture to bump into here, either, or kids’ toys to trip over.

  Empty apartments always look bigger, before they get crammed tight with years and years of accumulated junk. Three cardboard boxes sat beneath the side window, but otherwise the floor was clear. Sure, sure, this place’ll suit us fine, I could remember saying a ways back, when Mattie and Amber were barely two and three years old. It’s cute, Lynn said, and did a little spin in the spacious living room, not really envisioning a future where the same move might knock over a chair or crash a floor lamp into a TV screen.

  I partially uncovered the flashlight and let the beam trace a path across the hardwood floor. The place smelled musty, tinged with a varnish or wet-paint odor. My shoes stuck to the floor slightly with each step as I headed to the back bedroom.

  In the mirror floor plan, this would be mine and Lynn’s bedroom—slightly bigger than the second bedroom, and with an attached bath. From the doorframe, I waved the full flashlight beam into the room, corner to corner, along each wall. No curtains, but standard Target-issue mini-blinds on the windows—closed tight, and with several layers of dust graying the cheap plastic. Hardwood floors here, as elsewhere, sticky again as I crossed to the accordion-door closet on the opposite wall.

  The fake wood panel crackled when I touched it and seemed to push back against my palm. It was like putting my hand on an old witch-woman’s leathery stomach, feeling her breathe. I wasn’t sure where that thought came from, but it caused my first uneasy sensation of the night. Maybe I should have said I’ve seen enough, backed out quickly, and then insisted to Joanne that my thorough investigation revealed nothing.

  Why worry about the closet? Ours barely held Lynn’s clothes—it certainly wasn’t big enough for a person to hide in.

  But I put my left hand on the paneling again, felt the springy give-and-take of the accordion slats. I raised the Maglite like a club, then grabbed the door handle to give it a quick tug.

  The door stuck. Those stupid plastic bearings always fell out of the metal runners, and you had to force them. I leaned into it, pulled harder, and the closet scraped open.

  No need for the club. A hanger rod lay on the ground next to some
disassembled shelving, but the closet was otherwise empty.

  So stupid for me to get worked up. I decided to do a quick run-through of the other rooms and call it a night.

  But that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone in the apartment.

  Perhaps I sensed the presence before I heard it. My frozen breath fogged the air. A room’s supposed to drop twenty degrees and that’s when you realize you need to call a ghost hunter or exorcist. But of course it was the last week of October, with no heat turned on for this apartment.

  The idea of a witch had already drifted into my mind, so it wasn’t so much a laugh I heard as a cackle.

  “Harris.”

  God, the breathy voice sounded like Joanne Huff. Like she’d finally left her lounge chair and followed me here. She walked so seldom on those spindly legs, which meant her movements would be slow and deliberate. Perfect for sneaking up on somebody.

  I spun around, waving the flashlight’s beam. The room was empty.

  Another cackle. “Oh, Harris. Better do as I tell you. I could destroy you.”

  Clear as a bell but no sign of Joanne. This bedroom was at the far end of the apartment, too distant for Joanne’s voice to carry through the walls. I examined the heating duct beneath the windows: Was it possible the sound had transmitted through the vents?

  I knelt, then cocked my ear close to the duct. Dust webbed over the grill, and a dry stale odor wafted up but no sound.

  “I could destroy this whole building if I wanted to.”

  Definitely not from the vents. An unnatural, wistful speculation colored her tone, almost as if I was reading her mind.

  “Harris!”

  Holy hell, that was the loudest yet. The weirdest thing happened next. A distant answering voice—Got it!—followed by a clang of metal. Then footsteps on the hallway stairs, getting closer and closer.

  I rushed across the dark living room and into the den. I don’t mind admitting I was pretty spooked, fully expecting to find the front door wide open, some grave-emptied ghost framed in the hallway, dragging Christmas Carol chains behind it.