Devils Night
I
Halloween started long ago in a pagan age. The heat turned the leaves orange. Then clouds and rainbows came, it rained all morning, and by nightfall the sky was cloudy and cold wind blew through the trees. It chilled the bark and sucked the warmth from clothes.
A witch carved the face of an apple. She sat in a hut with a bone knife. The blade broke through the skin. Red juice stained the wrinkles of her hands.
Eye sockets sank under the edge of the knife. The blade was too big. It sank behind the socket and crunched against the core. She split the skin under the nose, peeled it up in strips, and started digging out pieces of apple flesh. To get the knife to sink into the flesh, she had to squeeze the apple with the other hand. Her nails dug into the apples. She could’ve cored every seed from its body.
Then she twisted the knife to lift the jagged skin strips from the white of its mouth. Two rows of sharp teeth. A ring of white gum stuck out over the top row of razor sharp points.
The witch looked to her side. A basket of apples. A basket of turnips. While she glanced away, her hand slipped and she drove the point of the knife into her thumb. She gagged in dissatisfaction, but her hands were already covered in small cuts and red juices.
She tried to dig the knife into the turnip. The tip of the knife sliced the skin. It made an awkward eye shape. Like a bird had picked a worm out. The skin was tough. The meat within resisted the knife. She guided the blade with her thumb in short jagged chops.
She hung the faces from the dark tree outside. The ancestor tree. The one they buried over the bones. Dozens of roots pressed into the mud. Its branches reached out like broken fingers. Dozens of faces dangled. They blew in the cold wind. Each one agape, wide eyed, their teeth sharpened, their tiny eyes bounced on the string where the village could see them, and they could see the village.
Smoke rose from the village
The village danced around fires. They heaped the harvest around it. They drained barrels of beer. They wore costumes of skins and funeral cloth, covered their faces in mud, and their bodies in branches. After the dancing, they feasted. Once the treats were all gone, most went to bed. But a few villagers remained in costume of monsters from the spirit world. They still wanted the night to continue. They weren’t ready to go home.
They snuck onto the land of the witch, with fabrics and mud masks concealing them, they crept under heavy darkness, to the strings and faces. They growled as they opened their mouths. They climbed the tree and tore the turnips and apples off. Then dropped them so that only cores hung from the strings. In the morning the witch saw the cores laying on the ground and the strings flying on the branches of the tree. Scraps of flesh stuck to the bark. She smiled. The spirits accepted her offer.
She counted the strings. She saw someone in a costume walking down the trail. He had an apple. She heard gnawing from under the Earth.
II
Micheal was a firefighter. He had a good life with a nice house and small family. He hated Halloween. He tried to watch scary movies with his wife but he did so in his reflective shirt and fire retardant pants rolled up over his bunker boots. A scary part happened. His wife jumped but Micheal was listening to his radio.
“There’s been another break in. No fires yet.”
“Why don’t you get off that thing? They’ll call you when they need you.”
Micheal got up and started pacing.
The Jones’s Estate Halloween expo was cancelled. Vandals got to it the night before. The commercial was cancelled too. The vandals didn’t just sack the chunk of land. They damaged the filming equipment, cut the advertising banners to pieces, Left obscene graffiti on the barn wall and roof, they even took hammers to the old cemetery. The very memorial stone to the maiden who perished in the 1840s was dashed.
Micheal suspected a couple of boys from the other district in town. They were teenagers but still went out on Halloween to trick or treat. He shook his head. No good can come of it. If they’re out, they’re up to no good.
He called for his son Howie to come downstairs. But no one responded. Howie always defended those kids.. Last time they talked, they argued about going out for Halloween.
Micheal called out again. Silence fell over the house. The scary movie in the other room echoed. They could hear trick or treaters giggle in the streets.
Then a knock came at the door.
For the first time since that fight, he heard his son moving around upstairs. Footsteps skipped down the steps. A huge red puff bounced down the stairs with gingerly steps. Blindly.. His feet slipped a little bit with pace.
“No way. What are you wearing? You look like a balloon.”
It’s Crewmate. From Among Us.”
“I don’t want you hanging out with those friends of yours.”
“They’re not bad kids, Dad.”
Micheal thought of the damaged estate. Of the “Devil’s Night.” Last year there was a record number of fires started on that night. Ever since his son made these friends, his interest became morbid, dark humored, excited by risky things.
“Remember when I showed you all those burned down buildings from Devils Night?”
“Dad, we're just trick or treating.” Howie folded his inflatable arms. His eyes barely appeared over the visor.
“But you could run into the guys who did do that.”
His scanner went off. Words chimed in between static and beep patterns.
“...reports…multpile fires… locations…”
III
The front door opened up. Howie was in his Crewman costume. Stevie was Spider Punk. Po was Gojo Satoru. Rice was a Creeper. They went together down the street as the early dusk fell over the town.
Stevie got lots of candy. Spikes poked out from his spiderman costume. The leather vest kept him warm as the sun settled.
Po kept adjusting the blindfold over his eyes and the white wig on his head. Sometimes they got tangled up. He kept eating his candy.
Rice did okay. His pixelated face and cardboard body started to fall apart. He was beginning to get nervous.
It got cold, but the wind stopped blowing. Clouds covered the sky, but left gaps for the moon to shine through. Less and less people were out. The town got quiet. The halloween decorations seemed to be echoes of the celebrators of Halloween, the whispers of the long dead.
“Let's go to one more house.”
They climbed the haunted steps, their shoes crunching over dead leaves. A scarecrow stood at the top of the path, its crooked arms stretched out beneath a ragged coat. Its burlap face turned toward them, or perhaps it had always been facing that way. Beyond it stood a woman in a long black dress. Her white hair fell over her shoulders in tangled waves, almost reaching her waist. She stood perfectly still beneath the porch light.
The woman smiled when she saw them.
"Well, look at you," she said. "Such wonderful costumes."
She reached into a great wicker basket beside the door. Inside were apples, wrapped sweets, and little parcels tied with orange ribbon. She handed each boy a full-sized candy bar.
"Take one, dears. You've come a long way tonight."
The boys thanked her and turned to leave.
"Don't stay out too late," she called after them. "There are things wandering about tonight that don't know the difference between children and ghosts."
They laughed, but when they looked back, the woman had already disappeared into the house.
It was great. Once the sun went all the way down, they realized they were the only ones still out.
“I don't want to go home yet.” Stevie said.
“Me neither.” Howie said.
“Yeah, one more house.”
The other two kids fidgeted. Their costumes were coming apart.
“We could watch scary movies at my house.” Rice said.
“Not yet.” Po said. “Know what sounds like fun?”
They all shrugged.
“Watch this.”
Stevie went up to a house with lots of pumpkins.
“You guys stand there.” He started climbing up the gutters and onto the roof. “Now hand me the pumpkins.”
The kids ran away and got out of there just as the old man opened the door. They moved all seven of his jaco-o-lanterns to the roof of his porch. He cursed at them but they were too swift for him, and they made it off into the night.
“That was fun.”
“Ohio.”
“Let’s do that again.”
They went to another house with an election sign. The neighbor across the street had an election sign for the opponent. The kids swapped the signs and left them facing the windows so the homeowners would see if while drinking their coffee.
“Know what we need? Soap.”
“No. Toilet paper.”
“Guys.” Po pointed into a car. “The keys are inside.”
The kids stood still. Then Howie stepped up.
“I know how to drive.”
He got into the car. It was parked on the drive way. He turned the wheel, put it into reverse, drove it backwards into the yard, then straightened the wheel and parked it across the driveway.
They ran away laughing into the night. Their costumes were falling to ribbons. They ate their candy and talked about what to do next.
“What if we went and pranked that horror writer?”
“You mean Bancroft Mallum?”
“Yeah that guy. How funny would it be if we stole his gate? Then we can go home.”
IV
The kids made it to the gate of the Mallum estate. A large house with a big yard. The guy wrote some kind of best seller twenty or thirty years ago, and every Halloween he tried to make a big deal out of it to get people interested again, and the kids were sick of it. The gate was cold black steel with spires and dragons and bats. They stood there in the pale light. But they had no tool to unhinge the gate.
“Well, I guess we should just go home.”
They were headed up the street when they saw a shadow on the road. He was in costume. A fortnite Peely. The kids thought it was someone from school. He had a bag of candy in one hand, and a power drill in the other.
“Hey man, what’s up?”
“Hey guys.”
“Where are you going?”
Peely pointed at the house.
“We were just going there but we couldn't open the gate.”
“Oh yeah?” Peely showed them the power drill.
“You got a way in?”
Peely nodded.
“Let's go, Skibidi!”
Peely attached the battery to the drill, and tink, tink, tink tink, the bolts fell from the hinges and they lifted the gate from its holdings. They hooted in celebrations and leaned the gate against the brick of the wall.
“Alright, that was awesome. What’s your name?”
Peely crossed his arms and pointed at the house again.
“You want to hit it again? We might get caught.”
Peely shook his head.
He pulled a hammer out of his bag.
“C’mon guys, now let's smash his wife’s statue.”
Peely sprinted across the lawn. The kids, exhilarated, followed him. He ran to the gardens where a soapstone statue stood in the moonlight. Above average amateur work.
Peely grunted and breathed hard, baring the hammer across his chest, before he began wailing on its head. The head bent so he hit it a few more times until it fell off. Then he hit the statue in the midsection under it and collapsed in the flowers. Then he beat it to pieces.
“Holy crap. Awesome.”
“Now lets shut his water off!”
Then Peely sprinted to the other side of the yard. He lifted a lid, and turned a handle.
“Mother fucker better feel it now.” Peely grunted under his costume.
“Now what?”
“Just one more thing.”
Peely picked up a rock, walked up to the window, hurled the rock and shattered the window. Then he crawled inside. The glass cut his costume, inside he peeled his mask back. Rice noticed that the person in the costume had white hair. He was far older than anyone they knew in school.
The kids stood out in the cold. Waiting. Waiting.
Rice went up to the window. He cupped his hands around his face and peered into the glass. There was a light on inside. Something moved behind the curtains.
Then the lights went out.
The boys waited. Stevie called Rice's name. Po laughed and told him to quit messing around. The lights came back on, illuminating the empty room. Rice was gone.
They looked around the yard. His Minecraft costume lay on the grass, its cardboard face turned toward them. There was no sign of him.
A cat appeared on the fence. It was black, with a white patch beneath its chin. It watched the boys with eyes that seemed much too bright in the darkness.
"Go home," it said.
Nobody moved.
"Now," said the cat. "Halloween is over for you."
The boys ran. They didn't stop to argue or look behind them. Their costumes rattled and dragged against their legs as they raced down the street. The houses seemed farther apart than before. Porch lights flickered in the distance, and the decorations swayed on their lawns, though there wasn't any wind.
Stevie was the first to fall behind. He spotted a house with a light burning in the window and ran up the steps, pounding on the door.
"Help! Open up!"
The porch light blinked. Once. Twice. The door creaked open a little.
Howie turned to call him, but Stevie was gone. His Spider-Punk mask lay on the welcome mat, and the door slowly closed.
Po screamed. He grabbed Howie's arm, and they ran together.
At the next house, Po rushed toward a porch decorated with little orange pumpkins. He pulled at the doorbell. A cheerful tune played from somewhere inside. The curtains moved. A shadow passed behind the glass.
"Please!" Po shouted.
The porch light went out.
When it came back on, Po was gone. His white wig lay on the steps, and his blindfold hung from the doorknob.
Howie ran alone.
Howie ran alone. He could see his house at the end of the road, its porch light burning. He heard something following him, keeping pace just beyond the reach of the streetlights. He didn't look back. He ran up the driveway, threw himself through the front door, and slammed it shut.
He was home but his father's voice came from the dark.
"Howie?"
V
Bancroft Mallum woke late the following morning. His head was pounding. His mouth was dry, and his body ached as though he'd spent the night running. He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember why he felt so terrible.
Then his wife screamed.
He stumbled out of bed and hurried into the hallway. His wife stood beside the staircase, staring at the statue. It had been smashed to pieces. Its head lay on the floor, its face broken away. Stone fragments were scattered across the carpet.
"What happened?" she cried.
Mallum looked at the destruction. He rubbed his forehead.
"Damn vandals."
His wife turned toward him. "What do you mean, damn vandals? They were inside our house!"
Mallum didn't answer. He looked down at himself. His clothes were filthy. His hands were scratched, and there was dirt beneath his fingernails.
Then he noticed the costume.
The yellow Peely suit lay crumpled beside the bed. Its fabric was torn, and the black fabric around its eyes was stained with something dark. One of its hands was still stuffed with a handful of broken stone.
Mallum stared at it. He remembered the gate. The pumpkins. The statue. He remembered laughing. His wife was still talking, but her voice seemed very far away. Mallum slowly looked toward the mirror at the end of the hallway. There was a smear of yellow paint across his cheek.
He began to laugh.
