It Wasn’t Quite Halloween

While visiting the haunted house, one of the teenage ghouls stumbled forward from the shadows and inadvertently knocked off Mother’s wig. It was easily reappointed. Unfortunately, seven year old Chance thought it was her head that had been severed, so he screamed and ran blindly back outside into the parking lot. Believing he had become suddenly orphaned, it was the first time that terror took up residence in an alveolus of his brain. The shocking incident became, over time, a vintage memory of Halloween.

Mother had bought it for him to calm him down. The balloon was black with orange outlined caricatures of cats and bats and ghosts. From the edges of astronaut covers, Chance watched as it circulated from corner to corner of the bedroom on the invisible draft of the forced-air heat. Its doppelganger shadow tagged along, wobbling up and down along everyday walls now wickedly orange from the dying candle in the pumpkin on his desk. The balloon had become a guardian of sorts, marching steadily and surely, back and forth, along its post. Much to his relief, the troublesome holiday was winding down to a rather satisfying conclusion.

Darkness was inevitable, and darker it became.

That’s when the face grew out of the woodwork.

It started like a swarm of smallish colorful dots much like starbursts forecasting a faint. Never manifesting a mouth, its wordless purpose made it all that more malevolent. Having sufficiently gathered enough of whatever is was that gave it form, all bumpy and pointy, the evil oval shot straight toward mister balloon.

Chance slammed his soul-windows shut so tightly that he could hear the blood rushing through his ears. He continued to shiver-shake, for the squiggle-face found a way to live beneath closed eyelids as well. Worse even, it now knew that it had his undivided attention. All swirling ceased, frozen momentarily, as if catching its own reflection in a dream-mirror, it begin to seep closer, puffing up, bigger and bigger, filling the pits of his sockets. He couldn’t bear it up close, for he somehow knew that if it reached him, he would die. He bolted up from the bed and chased it back into the woodwork by switching on the lights.

Somewhere in his early teens, perhaps after he went to Summer camp, Chance began to sleep with lights out again. He could never quite explain sufficiently that he wasn’t afraid of the dark but of that which lived in the dark. In the years ahead, he slept soundly, exhausted by time consuming responsibilities, lockstep with the pernicious parade: college, career, marriage and children.

It was now late October again, by no fault of his own, Chance found himself alone. Having lost himself that evening in the fictional romance of a one-sided love story, he had foolishly allowed the darkness to cover him with its heavy, black endlessness.

Just a few minutes in the small hours was all the face needed to vanquish a lifetime of solitude and worm its way back from out of the woodwork. It hovered about, reminiscing over the familiar surroundings, until it saw itself seated near the fireplace. Jiggling closer and closer, it hesitated for a moment, confused and expecting its usual banishment, then it settled, seethed and spread over itself, draining dry its own elasticity and emulating a mere mask of an unconscious countenance.

It wasn’t quite Halloween, but it was close enough.






Written tonight and published here first.



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