Halloween Spirits: 11 Tales for the Darkest Night Read online

The crowd hurried toward the rear gym door. Something pushed them back. Something loud. Something scared them backward. I thought that it had to be another Long Fellow—a mate. As the crowd spread themselves away from the door a half-ton Harley Davidson rolled right through them instead. The Outlaws. There’s something in the pitch of those engines that sounds just perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever loved hearing that sound more than I did that Halloween. I couldn’t help though but wonder where they’d heard the Long Fellow had come, or how. I imagined Rob signaled them somehow, left them some kind of message.

  As the first of the Outlaws rolled into the gym, spreading the crowd against the walls, the second bike drove inside. It was Rob.

  I still couldn’t move. My fingertips were turning dark and my stomach wrenched on itself. I felt like I might fall down any second.

  The band was still playing. Jules was nowhere to be seen. It seemed I was alone, standing inches from the Long Fellow while he drew my life from my hands.

  Rob’s Harley roared. The bike raced toward us; Rob hunched down low toward the handlebars, his teeth gritted, his mouth snarling.

  The Long Fellow turned in time to see the front wheel lift from the gym floor. The Harley was up on its back wheel. How the hell is Rob strong enough to pull a wheelie on a Harley? I thought. Those bikes weigh half a ton.

  But he had and, impossible as it seems, the Harley drove full speed toward the Long Fellow. In a flash the front wheel bashed into the Long Fellow’s chest, sending the creature backward dozens of feet, breaking its connection to me.

  Two more Harleys raced right behind Rob as I fell to my knees. Once the connection to the Long Fellow was gone, what little energy I had left wasn’t enough to keep me up. My hand tingled like it’d fallen asleep. I tucked it into my shirt without looking at it. I didn’t want to know the damage. Not yet.

  On the other side of the gym near the band, the Long Fellow lay on the ground and Rob was circling behind it. The crowd screamed and gasped.

  The Outlaw with the red hair drove up near the Long Fellow and swung a massive metal chain around his head. His bike bucked a little; he lost his balance for a second because he was riding with one hand.

  The Long Fellow jerked toward him, its mouth open, swinging its sickle-shaped claws. Red flinched but didn’t stop rotating the chain over his head. It was getting faster and faster. On the opposite side of Red, I saw Rob doing the same thing.

  Red whipped his chain at the Long Fellow and it wrapped around the creature’s middle. Then Rob threw his chain and it wrapped around the creature’s neck.

  Screaming and protesting, the Long Fellow threw out its arms. The chains fell off and you could see a big black mark across its chest where Rob’s tire had struck. I saw little splotches of blood throughout the wound. That thing bleeds red just like me, I thought. Isn’t that funny? By then I was curled up on the gym floor watching the whole thing sideways.

  Red bent down to pick up his chain and the Long Fellow swung. Red dropped and rolled onto his back. It looked like he’d fallen off his bike before and knew how to fall without hurting himself too bad. The Long Fellow swooped down and hit him again with its sickle-claw, slashing Red in the back. His leather jacket split. He stood up, although he was limping a little bit.

  The Long Fellow made to strike again, but Rob managed to hoop his metal chain around its neck once more. That gave Red time to hop back on his bike and twirl his own metal chain. The third Outlaw, one I’d never seen before, got a chain around the Long Fellow too.

  Toward the back of the gym we spotted several more Outlaws watching the scene, although they seemed to be keeping folks out of the way more than anything.

  When I turned around Red was nodding at Rob and the Long Fellow was wiggling like a stuck pig. It tried to jump and Rob jerked upward a little. He pulled his chain tight so that the Long Fellow couldn’t raise itself more than a few inches. Red did the same. They nodded and Rob put both feet up and steered for the back door.

  The Outlaws guarding the gym raised their arms to keep people back as Rob and Red dragged the Long Fellow across the way. At one point it dug its claws into the varnished wood flooring, scratching long ruts in its wake. It hollered as if struck, but it was one of its black toenails that’d caught in the ruts. The Outlaws pulled the Long Fellow, breaking the nail off in the process. As soon as it’d passed, I spotted Jules run toward the nail, wiggle it free and put it in his pocket.

  The Amphibians kept right on playing. Their long hair completely covered their faces and they never turned their attention from their instruments. I don’t believe they missed a single psychedelic note. “Hey, there?” Nurse Lorraine bent over me, her eyes darting left and right real quick, scanning me.

  I showed her my hand, careful to keep my eyes on her and not look at it. “It got me a little,” I said. “Hurts.”

  I held my wrist so that she could see. “We need to get you out of here,” she said. “Are you cool otherwise?”

  Wobbly on my feet and doing my best to get up, I said, “I’m cool.” She held me by the crook of my arm.

  Before she walked me out of the gym and away from the music and the scattered crowd, we watched the Long Fellow screech and claw at its chains as the Outlaws rode into the night. I hoped they took the damn thing somewhere far away, and I hoped I never had to see it again, and I hoped they made it pay for Jenny Lou and for me and my hand and for everything it’d done to Harvest Hill.

  Just outside the gym, Jules caught up with me. “So wasn’t Rob the guy who gave us the finger earlier?”

  “Yup,” I said. “Guess he had a change of heart.”

  “Can’t believe that thing’s real,” he said and produced the nail for me to see. “At least I’ll have this to remind me.” He put it away.

  I showed him my dark fingers. “And I’ve got these,” I said. “And hopefully I won’t have anything to remind me. Hope that that thing’s going to get lost after tonight. Hopefully we’re done with that thing forever.”

  Once we walked away, none of us ever felt much like speaking of the Long Fellow again.

  ***

  “Is that true?” Lew, Jr. asked his father.

  His dad smiled and stood from his recliner. “Well, we all grew up and the world replaced the Long Fellow with Vietnam, Communists and atom bombs. Heck, getting married and a 9-to-5’er seems more frightening.” He winked at Lorraine, who’d brought them some cocoa. “But it is Halloween, after all. Never saw what happened to the Long Fellow. Rob never told me. If it’s still out there somewhere he might decide he’s hungry enough to come on down here again.” He stretched his arms. Both his sons’ eyes went immediately to their father’s left hand - to the fingers there that were a shade darker and covered with scar tissue.

  “You even have the marks still?” Lew, Jr. poked his brother. “It is true. Papa wouldn’t lie to us.”

  When they turned, their parents had gone, leaving them to look out their living-room window toward their yard, their town, the big oak tree swaying in the wind and the moon that hung low on the horizon. There was a scratching sound somewhere close by, followed by a faint howl. Then they could both swear they heard children singing outside, their voices carrying on the cold October wind:

  “When the night gets long

  And the day goes quick,

  You better hide inside,

  Or you might get sick—

  Out come the Long Fellow,

  Playing his tricks,

  Sucking your soul,

  Through your fingertips…”

  BONES LIE QUIETLY NOW

  Nate Kenyon

  Brendan stood on the edge of the sidewalk, shoes touching the lip of soil where the driveway had been. He stared at the hole, over twenty feet across and ten feet deep. Yesterday this was cracked asphalt; today it was a jagged, gaping mouth. Construction workers had exposed the fieldstone foundation, and the house looked as if it teetered on the edge of oblivion.

  He looked up at the old Greek Rev
ival mansion, its windows grimy, siding weathered and nearly stripped of paint. Long ago it was the crown jewel of the neighborhood, anchoring the route into town. The owners were wealthy pillars of the community and threw large parties where men in double-breasted suits and hats walked arm in arm with ladies in evening dresses while a grand piano filled the first floor with gentle music.

  Now the wide porch and columns sagged under the weight of neglect. He looked down at his feet again and the line of dirt beyond his toes.

  “Hey Brendan!” It was the new girl, Sarah. She’d appeared in the neighborhood less than a month ago, right when the workers started rehabbing this place. He’d never met her parents, didn’t know where she’d moved from, never saw her anywhere except right here. Sometimes, after the workers had gone home for the day, they would play in the yard behind the old house, but they never talked about her past. He glanced in the direction of the yard. Now, with the hole, it would be more difficult to get there.

  “Whatchya doing?” she asked, arriving by his side. Her face glowed with an inner light. Her hair was up in a ponytail, wisps floating down around her delicate neck. “You always dress so goofy, like an old man with your shorts and socks. What, you’re gonna jump in there now? Don’t tell me, you were lost at sea, and your young bride killed herself in a fit of passion. Now you’ve returned home and you’re going to kill yourself rather than live without her.” Sarah closed her eyes and spun around. “How romantic!”

  Sarah was always making up these stories. Brendan thought she was the most interesting and creative person he had ever met. He wished he could share her enthusiasm. But this house had always frightened him, and now, with its guts exposed and the hole dug right up to the foundation, he felt wronged somehow, as if the old place had been laid out on the operating table and then left there while the doctors and nurses all went home.

  “They say it’s been abandoned for over ten years,” Sarah said, in a hushed voice, as if telling a terrible secret. “Ever since the accident. A little kid climbed in through a basement window, fell and broke his neck on Halloween night. Nobody knew where he’d gone. The owners didn’t find him for a week, until the smell brought them down cellar. And now, it’s Halloween again, and he’s going to come back!”

  Brendan knew the stories, of course. A long line of accidents, actually, always in the basement, always on that same day of the year. They said the house was cursed. Maybe she didn’t know all of it.

  “How did you hear that?” he said.

  Sarah shrugged. “My dad grew up near here. He told me about it once—” She stopped suddenly, her body tense. “Hey, look near the top of the foundation.”

  Brendan didn’t need to look. He’d seen it already. Until yesterday, the basement window had been boarded up, but the workers had exposed it. No light penetrated within.

  She touched his arm. “Let’s peek in there, Brendan, huh? Whattaya say? Maybe we’ll see a ghost!”

  He shook his head. The window, and what lay beyond it, made him shudder. Besides, they would have to climb down the steep sides of the hole and up the stone foundation. It wasn’t safe for either of them.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him around the hole, skirting the edge of where the dead grass and dirt fell away. Her grip was like iron. “What do you suppose they’re doing, anyway? Building a garage or something? It’s creepy, like a big empty grave. I bet there are bodies down there. Maybe they dug some up. What do you have to do when you dig up a body, anyway? You probably can’t just keep working. You’d have to bury it again somewhere else, otherwise the dead can’t rest.”

  When she reached a point where the side of the hole wasn’t quite as steep, she sat on her bottom and slid, dirt cascading down until she reached the bottom.

  “Come on now. Don’t be chicken.”

  He hesitated on the edge, the ache growing in the pit of his stomach. Then he worked his way down until he stood at her side.

  Sarah’s eyes were shining with excitement within the darker slash of her face. The sun had fallen toward the horizon, and its reddish glow lit the top of the foundation like fire while down here, in the hole, it was cold and black with shadows. Brendan shivered.

  “I’ll boost you up,” she said. “Just a quick look!”

  No, he thought. I won’t do it. But the idea of her touching him again made him begin to climb the jutting, crumbling rocks of the foundation.

  His foot slipped once as a rock came loose, but she was there with a hand on his bottom, pushing with a strength that surprised him. The window hole was just above his head. He pulled himself up and peered into the dark. Cold, damp air wafted into his face. He could see nothing.

  “Well?” Sarah called.

  Brendan heard a noise. It sounded like a child crying.

  The basement was large and dark. A pile of old boards lay to one side. Stone support columns lurked in the shadows like the torsos of giant men, their shoulders against the support beams.

  He was about six feet from the dirt floor. The sound came again. He ducked out and managed to get a leg hooked through, then the other. He dropped to the floor.

  “Brendan!” Sarah shouted. “Are you okay?”

  Brendan turned and looked all around the basement. It was empty. There was nobody there. His heart sank.

  A moment later he heard the sounds of someone struggling outside, and Sarah’s hands appeared on the window’s edge. She hooked her arms in, then pulled her head up and blinked into the darkness. “Where are you? I can’t see! Come on, it’s almost trick or treat time…”

  If he stood on his tiptoes, he could just reach her.

  Brendan stretched out his hand and grabbed her wrist. She looked down at him, and screamed, then screamed again, the sound reverberating through the empty basement, going on and on as she stared with bugged eyes at the bones of his hand touching hers, nothing but bones. A hand of bones.

  Stay with me, Sarah. I’m so lonely. Stay here with me, forever.

  He gave her wrist a hard yank, and she tumbled in after him.

  ***

  The crowd had gathered beyond the police tape. A used candy wrapper fluttered by, refuse from the evening before. Whispers of conversation carried through the strange contours of the open hole. “They found her this morning. Broke her neck, the poor thing.”

  “I heard they found a boy’s remains in there, too, under the foundation,” another said. “Nothing but bones. Had to have been there ever since the house was built.”

  “You suppose someone murdered him and hid him there? That must have been a hundred years back or more…”

  Brendan stood in the shadows of the basement, listening. He had been here for so long, and all the others he’d tried to bring inside had left him. But maybe Sarah was different. He looked at her, standing silently over in the corner. She hadn’t moved since the fall.

  Sarah, he thought, would stay. But if she didn’t, he would find someone else.

  He waited for them to come.

  COMING HOME

  Maria Alexander

  My mouth is sour with whiskey and the loaded shotgun lays heavily across my lap in my sofa chair. This is my Christmas Eve ritual.

  I hate Christmas. The holidays. The time for families to gather to share love and good cheer. Bullshit. I try hard every year to forget there is a Christmas precisely because it reminds me of my family, but this fucking world won’t let me. They’ve romanticized a nightmare.

  Now a major industrialist, my father can list many crimes to his name, some commercial, some social. But the greatest are against his family and me, his oldest son. When he first started, he made me and my younger brothers and sisters work in the “family” business on our country estate. Sometimes through the night. Once when I nodded off—I was probably ten at the time—I’ll never forget how he made me stand outside in the snow. Barefoot. I caught a severe cold and almost suffered frostbite. Only then did my mother intervene. She sternly lectured him that she didn’t have time to wipe noses and
rub feet. She had charities to run…

  Because of his charm and rapidly advancing position in society, he frequently escaped the inquiry of the law. So he starved us, he beat us, he deprived us of sleep. Out of pure malice. Or to manipulate us. And he got away with it all.

  On Christmas he strangely thought he could make it all right. By lavishing us—and everyone he knew—with mountains of gifts, he thought he could atone for the foul, frightful being that he was the rest of the year. How sadly wrong he was. Yet I realize now he was not unique. Guilty of what so many people are to some extent, buying the right to inflict pain.

  I ran away one winter when I was young enough to forget exactly when, yet old enough to have the strength. I tried three times. The first time, he caught me and locked me in the stable for a fortnight. The second time, he raped one of my brothers in front of me. I wasn’t daunted by the threat, only quickened by it. The third time, I escaped into a heavenly indigo night, lungs heaving painfully and legs plowing heavy and wet through the snow.

  And I never looked back.

  My lips kiss the mouth of this Jack Daniels bottle and I take another long drink. Coughing as the liquor spikes my throat. Funny how parts of the gun remain so cold, yet my hands are sweaty and warm. When I can’t douse the pain with the alcohol, I sometimes think of using it. But so far I haven’t. Not on myself (obviously) or anyone else.

  My black slacks wrinkle and crease from sitting so long. The stereo radio crackles with late-night music from a modern rock station. At least it isn’t Christmas music. It’s Nine Inch Nails. Black as your soul. He had a strange aversion to the color black, and would never let us wear it. Perversion drives me to wear nothing but that now. Contrasting with my pale skin. And faded grey eyes…

  The whiskey is making my head heavy. I shift in the chair, the heat of the roaring fire gently licking my face and bare arms. For many years, I wouldn’t even have a fireplace in my home. Even that reminded me of his annual hypocrisy. For who doesn’t look at a fireplace and envision stockings nailed into the mortar? Who doesn’t think a mantle is naked without them?