Hallowe'en

 Autumn hung in the brisk evening air, lit by a backdrop of foggy pinks, oranges and blues that blanketed the death lined streets below. Sneakers crashed down on dancing leaves breathed only momentarily back to life by a cacophony of youthful laughter that echoed between houses. Heavy eyes glared down on the morbidity of the joy the arises in the frightful activities of the night, longing with the patience of a spider sitting by its own web, waiting for its next meal. Wind creaked, echoed, and howled through the aged paneling, unkempt floorboards, and heirlooms lost in another time. The walls breathed with a heavy ache and a hunger. Then a sound cut through the silence as though a knife piercing the softest skin. A soft voice muttered to another that responded with gruff aggression only to be met by a patient third tone. They were planning something, something still uncertain but certainly frightful and urgent. The soft one paced in a circle by the door, her shadow looming through the above window like an omen. It was taunting. Taunting the patience, taunting the hunger, taunting the silence that had sat and grown for yet another three hundred and sixty-five days and nights. The silence was starving yet still this shadow taunted it mercilessly. ‘Turn the knob’ it thought. ‘Unleash my yearly hunger. Feed to me your fears.’ Then, just as the streets ran as quite as the lonely rooms and the halls grew further shrouded in darkness in the changing skies, the rusted doorknob turned, and the door cracked letting in the smallest sliver of light before fulling revealing the shadowy figures now embraced by the open doorway.

 The first figure through the door was the gruff voice, tall and dazzled by a stark white costume adorned with pom poms, frills, and a small pointed black and white hat. His face was slender and pale with a wide black smile and a black line down the center of either eye. He stepped to the side, his oversized shoes flopping against the weathered rug, to reveal the soft voice. Tight blonde curls draped against the sides of her rosy face and down a pair of large dark wings attached to her back and wrists. Behind her was the patient voice, shorter than the others, with a dark and warm complexion. Long black and red fabric dragged across the floor from his shoulders and pointed teeth stuck out over his lips. As he stepped inside the gruff one sharply asked about another two. The patient one peered around the door framed and turned back to say they were coming up the street now. In moments two more shadows walked into the web. Identical in face but not in presentation. One was dressed all in blue with a pair of silver bracelets attached to his hip and darkened glasses hung from his wide collared shirt. The other wore pointed brown boots and a wide brimmed hat and a long-braided rope attached to his own hip. As they all congregated into the foyer the wind pulled the door closed behind them causing each of them to let out their own personal scream. The screams quickly subdued to laughter and the laughter slowly blended back into silence.

 “So, who here already knows the story?” The gruff voice asked this with a wide smirk further expanding his painted smile. The others swiftly raised their hands in response prompting him to ask, “But do you know the full story?”

 The soft voice spoke up at that. “Do we really need to do this here? Can’t we just do this at a graveyard or something?” Her face twisted and looking away from her listener. Who quickly responded with a harsh laugh.

 “Absolutely not.” An aggression rattled in the back of his throat once more as he spoke, yet he continued to wear the wide mocking grin as he stared at her. “Do you know how many others are going to be at the graveyard? It’s a cliché. Besides, in order to properly understand the story, you need to experience it as well. And what better way than in the very house it happened in. The very rooms that gave birth to a different death.” He turned, facing the sitting room, raising both hands into the air disrupting its slumber like a reckless child.

 “Okay man we get the picture.” The patient one pushed past him and towards the fireplace with a heavy bag that he promptly dropped to the floor. “We can at least get some light in here.” He reached into the bag and pulled out small logs of wood and a box of matches. The rest of them gathered around as the fire began to crackle and spit and began to illuminate their youthful chubby faces. As the surroundings began to creep out from the shadows, they all looked around in awe, the flames dancing around in the white of their widened eyes. Each one paced around a different corner of the room before swapping position in an elegantly choreographed dance.

 After a few moments the gruff one finally stopped with his back turned to the flames. Looking down at the patterned mazes embossed in the aged rug beneath his feet he posed a question. “Can I tell you a ghost story?” Everyone stopped to face him, their curious smiles detailed in the light of the fire. Their shadows continued their dance upon the peeling walls as they chose their seats around him, ears perked and hearts thumping. He continued.

 “It was in this house that ten people were murdered. No one knows how, or why. They were each found alone, each in a different room and each killed in a different way. Some say they did it to themselves, that they were all mad. Others say it was the act of a mad man. But some, some say it was the house itself that killed them. That the walls come alive and feed off your fear and that the blood of its victims runs through each board. That the house is alive, and it is hungry, waiting for its next victims.”

 “Is that why you brought us all here?” The boy in blue begins to laugh with his brother who continues. “Are you going to sacrifice us to the house?” Both boys continue to laugh at the thought of their friend murdering them separately, each in a different and creative way.

 “How would you do it?” The soft one was blushing in the warmth of the fire’s glow as her question elicited a similar blush on the gruff one. And he thought for a moment, and despite his hidden hesitation, his witty mind had an answer.

 “Well, to stay true to the lore, I would have to kill you each separately and differently. Bill,” He directed his attention to the patient one. “I would take you to the upstairs guest room where the grandfather was found. I would break out the window and place you neatly on the glass still in the frame.” Bill froze at the thought that he truly would do that to him while the twins laughed at the thought. Their laughter was only broken by him calling on the twin in the hat. “Tommy, I would take you into the bathroom and drown you in the tub because I don’t think you’re actually strong enough to fight me back. And Dick, I would take you to the kitchen and use you as a knife block.” The boys did not laugh this time, only sat in silence and the fear of the now same looming thought that began to haunt Bill. “Sophie.” He paused and stared at her porcelain face as her eyes stared back just beginning to well with tears. “I would take you to the master bedroom where the wife was found. I would suffocate you with the same satin sheet that she was.” Sophie slammed her hands down on the arms of the chair, thrusting herself into the air and walked away through an empty archway.

 “Jesus Trevor, what is wrong with you?” Bill spoke this time less patiently than before.

 “She asked me how I would do it! I was just coming up with something. Come on Soph; its Halloween.”

 “Yea, well that felt I little too thought out for my liking.” He stood and exited in the direction of Sophie.

 “What, c’mon? You don’t think I would actually do those things right? It was just a scary story. Just a bit of fun.” He shouted out to them without reply.

 “I don’t think they’re really having fun.” Dick spoke up.

 “Do you guys think the stories are all true? That those people really all died in here like that?” Tommy seemed worried. “You had to have made some of that up right Trevor?” Trevor sat now on the floor, the amber glow of the fire silhouetting his frilled collar and pointed hat. He bowed his head and traced the mazes in the rug with his finger.

 “They’re all true. My grandpa was a cop. He saw the bodies himself. The wife was smothered in the bed sheets. The husband in the bathroom soaked in blood. The rest of the family, all in a different room. All dead. It happened on Halloween. The kids were still in their costumes when their bodies were found.”

 “They killed the kids too?” The twins spoke in unison.

 “They, he, it. They really never found out what happened. Their best guess was an unaccounted-for family member that ran off after. But they could never explain how they could have killed them each like that. They say each room is now haunted by the person that died in it.”

 “Well, who haunts this one?” Sophie finally had returned but remained in the open doorway with Bill. Their faces were still and cold.

 “Um, the grandma, I think. She was found at the foot of the stairs; her head was twisted around. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. Hey, I’m sorry I got ahead of myself. I meant to scare you but, not that badly.”

 “It’s okay. It is Halloween after all” She smiled and made her way back into the yellow glow. “What do you guys say we check out these rooms?”

 The room itself appeared hesitant…no. It was anxious, anxious with anticipation, longing, hunger. A violent and inevitable game had begun, and its players remained completely unsuspecting. Just as the words fell over her lips and spilled across the floor a dormant clock awoke, turning over its rusted and tired gears, and chimed. The deathly ring rattled through bones sending shivers up and back down everybody. An omen loomed in the air above, dangling just close enough to send a shock wave through a single strand of hair on the head and move across the skin. Just apparent enough to sense the vicious presence and just out of touch enough to pay little mind. The group composed themselves, laughing at the sudden shock, and began their decent into death, unaware the ghosts of the house were already watching in anticipation.

. . .

 “No way that really happened!”

 “I swear!! My dad went to school with them!” A tall, gawky boy persisted, standing in front of the craftsman fireplace. His friends booed from the weathered couches while throwing popcorn at him. “Seriously! The neighbors heard the gunshot and called the cops. When they got here, all five of them were dead in a different room.”

 “Okay, so this guy went crazy and killed all his friends on Halloween.” The other continued with false bravado from the armchair. “But come on, the ghost of the grandma, the house burning then suddenly not, the house coming to life… scary as fuck, I’ll give ya that, but no one is believing that any of that is real. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

 “Woah….” They all said in unison.

 “Dude, you can’t say that on Halloween.” One girl spoke from the couch across from him, throwing popcorn at his face.

 “That’s like, double jinxing us!” The girl beside her continued the thought.

 “Okay, if you all really believe this shit, then why did you all come here?”

 “Curiosity.” The girl sitting in his lap spoke with certain, unaware the house itself was also curious about them as well.

 “Well, if we’re all so curious, let’s take a look around.” The girl hoped off him and to her feet as they made their way to the foyer.

 The tall boy paused and looked down at the fragile floorboards in a moment of silence. “This is where they found the guy in the clown costume, the gun still in his hand.” He looked back up, holding fingers to his head mimicking Trevor’s final moment. A pitiful laugh barely rattled out of his friends before moving on. “Anyways, the real sight is this way.” He motioned them with a swift arm down the hall under the stairs as his friends followed like rats into the dining room.

 “Hey, where’s that feast you were talking about? Wasn’t there supposed to be a candied ham or something that killed one of the twins?” The cocky boy laughed while wrapping his arms around his girlfriend from behind as she elbowed him.

 “Just follow me.” He grinned and guided them to a hall off the dining room towards a narrow door. “It’s just down here.” He opened the door to the darkened stairwell and pulled a flashlight out from his back pocket as they made their way into the basement. The path was long and dim, the flashlight revealing little more than the next step ahead of them. As they approached the base of the stairs, the shallow light cast itself upon a set of footprints and drag marks left in the dirt. “This way.” He followed the trail nearly too quickly for the others to keep up, leading them towards a stone wall that the tracks seemingly disappeared under. He put the light away shrouding them in a biting darkness that reached out and toyed with their other senses. In the dark they heard three knocks echoing off the stone wall before a small section popped open and a red glow began to illuminate them once more. As they stepped through the opening, they looked around at the candles surrounding the walls and illuminated the room.

 “Dude, what the fuck is this? Did you set this up before we got here?”

 The tall one stood in front of his friends with his back turned. He began to giggle as he slowly turned to smile at the fear on his friends’ faces. “Nope. They did.” He nodded his head to the opening in the wall as his friends turned to see the old woman standing there with her wide smile and yellow eyes, surround by her family. Screams ricochet off the walls and back at the ones that threw them. They turned away from the old woman to find their friend was no longer standing alone. Behind him now stood five figures in costumes. One, dressed as a clown, stood beside him whispering in his ear. He slowly pulled back and turned away to reveal a hole in the back of his head.