A Predator in the Neighborhood

“What kind of fish goes fishing,” Megan asked me one evening. The trivia game we were playing was the first of our family’s traditions leading up to Halloween. I hesitated. After throwing my hands up in defeat, she exclaimed. “Anglerfish,” then read the blurb under the answer. “Female anglerfish have a modified dorsal ray that resembles a fishing pole. A luminescent organ dangles from the tip like bait. It hangs directly in front of the fish’s mouth, the hypnotic glow from the organ/bait attracting prey.” She was intrigued, and the following evening she was on her laptop researching anglerfish.

Days prior, Mrs. Creel moved into the house next door. The woman had a crescent-shaped mouth that stretched across her bony face like she endured a plethora of bad facelifts. My daughter, however, claimed that she looked like an anglerfish once she saw the images online; the deep-sea creatures have enormous mouths. She unjustly declared Mrs. Creel an enemy.

“That’s not an adequate reason to reject her before even getting to know her,” I said, but Megan had a unique and sometimes disturbing imagination. I was determined to show my daughter that you cannot judge people by their looks. I strode over to Mrs. Creel’s house with a list of local businesses I thought might interest her and invited her to lunch.

“I wanna meet her too,” my son, Jeremy, stated as soon as soon as I got back to our house.

“You will. This lunch is going to be girls only.” I glared at the back of my husband’s head; I told him about my plan only hours earlier. To my son I said, emphasizing the first word quite loudly, “Dad has something fun to do with you that day.”

“Yah, Sport,” my helpful, and always attentive man shouted from the other room, “You and me, boys only.”

The following Sunday afternoon, my husband stood next to me while I stirred a big pot of beef stew. He inhaled, exhaling with a drawn out aw. “Smells delicious.” He and Jeremy were going to be at the arcade while Megan and I enjoyed our lunch with Mrs. Creel.

Minutes after the boys trundled out of the driveway, I heard the doorbell chime. As I approached the foyer, Megan let the sheers billow across the window and raced passed me. I shook my head and rolled my eyes before opening the front door.

Mrs. Creel handed me a basket of fresh rolls before following me to the kitchen. Megan ran to my side. I slid a chair from the table and pried my daughter from my hip, forcing her to sit. Mrs. Creel seemed sympathetic, and in an effort to release some tension in the room, she commented on the scarecrow sitting on the swing that hung from the big tree in our front yard.

Megan brightened, “My brother, Jeremy, and I made it together,” she declared.

The kind, older woman said that they did a great job and offered to give the kids a few dollars if they would make one for her.

The two of them discussed scarecrow making techniques, Mrs. Creel reminiscing about her own scarecrow making days. She disclosed that one reason she moved to the neighborhood was to hear the laughter of children, vowing that it was a wonderful remedy for loneliness. Megan seemed to loosen up a bit and asked Mrs. Creel if she wanted to hear a joke.

Leaning in from across the table, Mrs. Creel replied, “Sure.”

“How does a scarecrow drink his juice?” asked Megan.

Mrs. Creel crinkled her forehead as if she were deep in thought.

Megan started to giggle; she must have deemed that she was about to divulge the most hilarious answer ever. “With a straw,” she squealed.

Her one-woman audience let out a burst of laughter, opening her cavernous mouth so wide that I thought her jaws would unhinge. Her dentures sailed across the freshly waxed table, revealing tiny, pointed teeth. Megan’s eyes went wide. Her chair screeched as she shoved herself away from the table. She sprang onto her feet, nearly falling flat on her face as she whirled around, munching through the archway and disappearing out of the room. Moments later, her bedroom door slammed upstairs.

Mrs. Creel was clearly mortified. She fumbled awkwardly for her dentures and headed for the door. I followed the poor woman, all the while trying my best to calm her, but there wasn't much I could say to ease her embarrassment. I slumped against the closed front door and sighed before marching up the staircase.

When I entered Megan’s room, she was perched cross legged on her bed hugging her pillow.

“Give me a reason not to be disappointed in you,” I demanded.

“The anglerfish captures its prey with spiny teeth that angle inward to make escape impossible,” she sobbed. Megan’s theory about our neighbor was becoming more evident in her twisted realm.

My heart was breaking; I could only imagine my daughter’s genuine fear, fictional or not. I decided to read up on the basics of the anglerfish in hopes that I could beat her to any further comparisons. And although educating myself helped me better understand Megan’s perception of Mrs. Creel, I was a little ashamed for trying to find other similarities between the woman and the carnivorous beast.

That evening, I took the initiative to let Mrs. Creel know that that afternoon’s incident had been forgotten. I knocked on her door with her basket in hand, intending to ask her if she was still interested in the kids making her a scarecrow. She invited me inside. Her house was practically the same layout as mine.

I followed her into the kitchen and was seated at the shaker style table. A steaming mug with a tag dangling from the lip was on the counter. Mrs. Creel withdrew a second mug from the cupboard and dropped in a tea bag before pouring water from a kettle that was still simmering on the stove. She carried both mugs to the table and sat down next to me.

While we talked, I mentioned that there were so many leaves in the backyard, we’d run out of clothes to stuff before running out of leaves to stuff them with. She held up a finger in a be-right-back gesture and strolled out of the room. When she returned, she handed me a few garments in a grocery bag. We hugged each other; expressing our gratitude, and I left.

The next day, the kids made the scarecrow but asked me to deliver it to Mrs. Creel. When I first saw it, I experienced a fleeting feeling of Deja Vu. I shrugged and commended the kids for their handiwork, then laid the doll in a wheel barrel and strolled over to Mrs. Creel’s house. She seemed a little disappointed that the kids didn’t make the delivery themselves.

As I lay in bed that night, my head swam with possible things the scarecrow could have reminded me of. I noticed that the clothes were children’s sizes. Granted, Mrs. Creel was a small woman, but the clothes were “child-like;” a pair of camouflage cargo pants and a cardigan sweater with cartoon character buttons. Then it hit me. Months prior, a story on the news caught my attention. A child had gone missing from a nearby state. The photo they showed was taken the day she was last seen. The outfit on our neighbor’s scarecrow looked like the outfit the girl was wearing in the photo.

I was wide awake now, so I rolled out of bed, careful not to wake my husband, and opened my laptop. I found the latest information on the case, the girl still had not been found. I scrolled to the picture below the article and shivered. Now I was getting paranoid, maybe Megan wasn’t wrong about Mrs. Creel being a predator. I studied the photo; the girl’s sweater had two buttons missing. I didn’t recall noticing any missing buttons on the scarecrow. I was feeling anxious, silly, and beginning to doubt myself. My daughter had a frightening way of pulling others into her world.

***

I busied myself by discussing Halloween costumes. I looked forward to making the kids’ costumes each year, it was one of the few times I expressed my creativity and talent. To my surprise, Megan wanted to be a mermaid rather than her usual villainous character. I was damn proud of the finished product.

Next on the list was a trip to the pumpkin patch. Our family piled up in the car. “How do you fix a broken jack-o-lantern,” Megan quipped. My hubby and I looked at each other questioningly.

“With a pumpkin patch,” Megan’s brother shouted.

She pouted the rest of the drive, her brother stole her thunder, but she perked up when she saw the field of pumpkins.

As we were driving home, I told the kids about Halloween when I was a girl, about how we had to sing for our treats. My husband joined me in reminiscing about those past days and I thought it was a good close to a good day. Unfortunately, that was not the end to our day out.

By the time the car trundled into the driveway, it was dusk, and Mrs. Creel was sitting on her porch under the soft glow of the porch light. Megan got out of the car and Mrs. Creel hollered, “When I switch on my porch light every evening, I say a little prayer for you.” Megan ran into the house crying. Apparently, Megan associated Mrs. Creel’s porch light with the glowing lure an anglerfish uses to catch its prey.

***

Halloween night, Megan put on her costume, grabbed her trick-or-treat bag and stood in the bay window anxiously awaiting her friends. When they arrived twenty minutes later, they commented that from the street outside, Megan looked like she was in an aquarium. That made her smile. Before they left, Megan turned toward me and said she was going to tell jokes for her candy, and then she said, “Knock, knock.”

I replied, “Who’s there?”

“Philip”

“Philip who?”

“Philip my bag with candy,” she remarked, and she jogged down to the sidewalk with the others.

It was the first year Megan went trick-or-treating without me, but her brother wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed home with him. I kept the front door wide open, but the screen door stayed locked between the clusters of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls.

At 9 p.m., the stream of costumed children slowed to a trickle, so I sat in the wingback chair near the window. The doorbell rang several minutes later. It was Megan, thank God. As I unlocked the screen door to let her in, she pointed at Mrs. Creel’s house.

“Mrs. Creel’s porch light is still on,” she said, a little out of breath, then she turned toward her friends. “We haven’t stopped there yet.”

“It’s getting late,” I interjected.

“But the light’s still on, this is the last one,” she assured me. Then she said in a gruff monster voice. “We want our treat.”

“Go get your treat,” I replied in my own monster voice.

I watched as the kids sauntered up the walkway and onto Mrs. Creel’s porch, then the door opened, and they filed inside. I should have been happy that Megan was finally taking a leap toward getting to know Mrs. Creel, so why was I feeling uneasy?

Seconds passed, then minutes, then I stepped outside. I counted to ten and trekked over to Mrs. Creel’s house. The scarecrow was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch. My curiosity heightened and I stepped closer. The last two buttons had been replaced with solid red buttons. I wondered if I was looking at a scarecrow or an effigy of the missing child.

I turned toward the door, knocking and ringing the doorbell simultaneously. I twisted the doorknob and found it unlocked, so I pushed the door open. I grabbed a knife from the block on the counter and winced when I noticed that a different knife was missing from the set. I’m not sure why I felt I should be quiet, but I tiptoed across the kitchen floor and stood aghast in the threshold to the living room.

The kids huddled together. They were splattered with blood, but they assured me that the blood wasn’t theirs. Where was Megan? Crimson handprints stained the carpet and the door frame leading into the bedroom.

As I stood in the doorway, my gaze drifted to Ms. Creel’s vacant stare, her hand clutching the handle of a bloody knife. In my peripheral vision, I could see the candy bag still looped around Megan’s wrist. I gasped, focusing on my sweet baby as she slumped on her knees next to Mrs. Creel. My daughter looked up at me and said, matter-of-factly, “The liver of the anglerfish is considered a delicacy.”

End