halloween

He walked steadily, feeling them behind him. His stride did not falter; he pretended they weren__ there. He pretended that all was well__hat those hideous things knew nothing about what he had done earlier in the night. But each pumpkin he passed nearly leapt off its porch or railing or wooden chair, expanded and morphed and throbbed as if in a funhouse mirror, and joined the procession behind him. The wind picked up, suddenly and fiercely, and construction paper decorations adorning the houses that surrounded him flapped helplessly against their doors and windows. The man ducked against the cold wind, and from the pursuing army of the jack-o_-lanterns behind him. Cardboard skeletons with fastener joints and witches with shredded yarn hair and ghosts with cotton ball sheets and black crayon eyes escaped their thumbtacks and scotch tape and newspaper twine and they flashed and danced in his face. He brushed at them desperately with his hands, attempting to tear a hole through them and escape.

The last clear thought I have is of my grandmother__ rust-colored wall clock ticking away in the darkness of my apartment__y sanctuary where I dreamed and desired and hoped for goodness and love. I wonder how long that clock will tick without anyone around to hear it. I wonder if maybe I should have taken my grandmother__ silverware or jewelry instead. I wonder _ if I knew then what I know now _ if I still would have approached Jade that first night and invited her into my life, only to watch as she took it from me and fed it to some Godless thing, as my mother had called it. Would I still have given myself over to her, knowing it would end the same way, with the barbaric flicker of hope that this time she could love me?

I__ an old man, now. I__e been alone since my 17th birthday. I__ wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus__ wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life__omething right. I didn__ want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I__ ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I__ been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who__ be foolish enough to love me.

As the thing came closer, what was left of Nick__ body became revealed and I could see how the dead boy__ eyes had bled from the trauma inflicted upon him; they dripped with steady succession onto the floor between his splayed legs. He looked like a rejected marionette tossed haphazardly in the corner by a frustrated puppeteer, his head drooping so low that his chin rested against his chest. His motionless arms lay at his sides, both of them squeezed into tight fists, as if he__ died futilely trying to defend himself.

Person 1: "Stay back....I have a demon inside of me."Person 2: "Let me get closer...I have a hell inside me where your demons can live."(from Dark Winter, #2 - out Halloween 2014)

Joey glanced at his alarm clock and saw it was just before midnight. His eyes drifted to his bookshelf. Lined up in a row, in the order of their publication, were all of the Spook Boys books, a series of kids_ books about two adventurous brothers who were constantly getting into mischief as they explored haunted houses and spooky old castles, or tried to solve mysteries involving missing diamonds or stolen paintings. Joey envied the characters in those books__e wanted his own life to be made up of such exciting, implausible adventures. But maybe his imagination had gotten carried away. Maybe his mind, saturated with such fictional tales, was more than willing to play tricks on him when it came to houses like the one on Creep Street.

Every small town has at least one house the children whisper about; the type of house that has always been abandoned; where the once pristine white paint has faded to a grimy gray; where the windows are boarded, and the lawn never grows; where children hold their breath and close their eyes as they pass by. A house that sounds like it contains an army of whispering spirits when the wind whistles through the nearby trees.In the town of Blackwood, that house could be found on Creep Street. It had stood there as long as he could remember.