Friday, October 31, 2014

This is Halloween

Richard took a long look at the neighborhood before nailing the last board over the window.  He wasn’t the only wrapping up the preparations for Halloween.  Two doors down, Jeff was stretching cottony webbing between the bannisters of his porch just in front of the life-size plastic coffin that was a Drac-in-a-box when the kids came for the candy.   The Masons had a giant inflatable ghost in the yard with Boo written across its midsection like a misplaced thought-bubble.  From Richard’s partial window view, orange spheres lined up in a neat row at the right hand corner of each home’s porch.  Precisely perched pumpkins- so cute.  Nearly everyone obeyed.  Richard had one, too, though he had carved it in such a hurry that the mismatched eye holes and wavy grin made it look more comical than spooky.  His jack-o-lantern looked like Charlie Brown with an eyepatch.  
But, even that seems kind of creepy when you’re in the place Richard is in.  I didn’t ask for any of this, he assures us, driving in the final nail.  The oak slats divided up the sunbeam into blades that stabbed across the room.  They cut the opposite wall at it’s base spilling light onto the floor.  
Light would not be a problem, though.  Not like last year.  A circle of flood lamps hung from the ceiling, three halogen work-lights stood on steel tripods along one wall, and a homemade circuit of LED spotted lamps made a grid opposite that.  Each plugged into outlets that has been individually wired to its own place on the breaker panel.  An alternate set of plugs runs to an exterior generator that can be started by remote control.  In case all of that fails, the floor under the bed is storage for the batteries.  Six car batteries,   fourteen 12 volts, a case of 24 D cells, a sack of ten flashlights, thirty-six AAA, twelve pen-lights, and a hundred and forty-four glow sticks.  A set of twenty solar lights charges in driveway and Richard plans to bring them in at sundown.  He keeps a careful inventory list, making three circles beside each item so that he can check it thrice.   He didn’t even trust the list to paper, rather it is written in red permanent marker on the wall behind the door and it is as tall as he is.
Matches.  He put a checkmark in the second circle.  Matches had found its way on and off the list a half-a-dozen times.  He still is not sure.  Fire is most certainly a very very, last, last resort.  He knew if it came down to that, then… well, that would be very bad.  He skimmed the life sized list and thought of the months worth of preparation and planning;  If it came down to striking a match, then it was already bad.  But at least it wouldn’t be dark.  Not the kind that of darkness that is so heavy it weighs you to the ground.  Not the kind of darkness were the sound of screams coagulate.  Not the kind that is so thick it fills your lungs and suffocates you.  Because if it came to that after all his preparation, then the only option would be the needle.  
He had considered a gun, but there were two problems.  Would it even fire in a darkness seemingly void of oxygen?  Secondly, he wasn’t sure he could do it.  Even in the darkness, he wasn’t sure he could pull the trigger feeling the cold steel on his temple.  Even in the darkness.  Especially in the darkness.  If he died in the darkness, well then it would be dark forever.
Richard shook his head to clear it until his cheeks flapped.   He thought of the tombstones down the road.  Here lies dear old Uncle Jake, he hit the gas instead of the brake.  Yuk, yuk.  The Millers.  They had a dozen wooden tombstones scattered here and there in the yard.  Some had rubber spiders or glow-in-the-dark bones decorating the graves.  One had a pair of spattered gloves reaching out from the ground.   Yesterday Richard watched Mr. Miller and his grandson making a new one.  Mr. Miller cut the shape from a piece of plywood and the kid slapped at it with a brush full of gray paint.  After it dried and was inscribed, the two giggled.  Richard could tell by the way Mr. Miller’s head lifted up then dropped as he doubled over and slapped at his knee.   The boy fell to the ground and rolled.  Must be a good one.  Richard couldn’t read it, even with the binoculars, because of the angle.  Maybe if he had some time after checking his list, he might take a walk and check it out.   Last year the Millers made two additions:  Here lies Jonathon Yeast, please excuse him for not rising  and another that Richard could not quite remember.  Something about someone whose life was full until they tried to milk a bull.
Yes, that’s the Halloween he used to love and sorely missed.  Halloween is supposed to be fun, isn’t it?  Trick or treating for candy.  Once when he was nine, he had gone with the bigger kids in the neighborhood all night and filled up an entire trash bag.  We’re not talking about apples and crap, either.   Candy and tons of it.   They bigger kids took half of it, but it was still a monster haul for little Ricky, as his mother called him for the first twelve years.    Her eyes were wide as he dumped it onto the kitchen table so that they could check it for pins and razor blades.  That was tradition, too.  The hilarious and sad tradition of checking kids’ candy for the tampering of the evil.  The local hospital used to run it through the x-ray machine for free.  Thats the kind of stuff that opens the gates of Hell.  Just a little at a time, and some don’t even realize when it envelops them.
Richard shook his head again.  Hard.  He turned to the radio for distraction.  Of course the radio would have to go before lock-up time.  It is no secret that the dead can talk through those frequencies, and he has no interest in what they might have to say.  And do they say some bizarre things.  He thought back to the Halloween before last when he heard them.  And what he heard was perfectly clear………………………..

No comments:

Post a Comment