A Halloween Story, (from the early 80s)

 No Marks on the Body

(Written in the early 80s for a Halloween contest sponsored by a Eugene Oregon Literary magazine, (I forgot it’s name, but am sure it no longer exists).  Not only did this story NOT win but, (this was 40 some years ago, so the details elude me) I remember reading notes in the November issue congratulating the winners, and how much better the winning story was than a particularly sick story they had received, one that nearly ruined the experience for the judges. Or some statement that to that effect - but however it was said, it was plain they were talking about how much they disliked this story…

I have done a bit of minor editing, which I doubt would have mattered.)

He sat at the kitchen table watching a squirrel make a quick estimate of the potential nut yield on his front yard. The cool, gray, misty, late October overcast bore down upon the tree-dwelling rodent’s calculations. The yard was raked and manicured, and any nuts that had been there earlier were gone. The squirrel looked  back at him, (there was eye contact, he was sure of that), then it leaped over the fence to seek nuts elsewhere. 

He had just arrived home from work. He popped open a can of beer and looked out toward the street and  saw  a nubile adolescent Cat Girl dressed in black, accompanied by a chunky woman who was dressed as Speedy Alkalizer.

“Damn!” He stood up to pull the drapes and the room got dark. He finished his beer and walked back to his bedroom to change his shirt. The polyester golf shirt he had been wearing all day at work carried a foul B.O., like the plague basilicus and he was visibly relieved when he donned a black cotton hooded sweatshirt that was a size too big. Who was that woman? 

Then he remembered standing in the ghetto Safeway express line on sixth street where Speedy had tried very hard to talk to him.

“What are you going to be for Halloween?” He remembered her asking that stupid question out of the blue, and how he ignored her by pretending to read the National Enquirer. 

But he relented and without looking up said,  “Myself.” 

She said nothing, so he looked and smiled at her, but she seemed perplexed. Then she began telling him about moving into town from some hamlet in the coast range, and her recent enrollment in a computer class at the local community college. He was trapped into listening to her because the cashier was waiting for the manager to bring some quarters. He nodded blankly. She stopped talking, looked at him and smiled. He suddenly realized that beneath her vagabond rustic hippie apparel was an attractive woman, or at least once had been. She continued to smile at him. He quickly grinned back and paid for his beer and walked out. She called out at him as he left,  “There are more things around here than just in your head sweetie.”

Anyway, he sat in his kitchen watching Speedy and what appeared to be her teenage daughter harassing an older man and woman, although they all did appear to laugh at something. He pulled off his socks and shoes and walked over to the living room, laid down on the couch and turned on the TV. 

About five minutes later he heard shuffling on his porch and then a knock. He lay still as a fawn for an uncomfortable length of time, then, again, he heard knocking. He still didn’t move.

Finally it sounded like they walked off the porch. “When I was a little girl,”  he overheard as they left, “we used to soap the windows of people who didn’t give us anything. It’s too bad I don’t have any soap.”  He peeked out at them through the curtains. 

“If they don’t answer, do you still soap their windows?”  The girl’s pipe cleaner whiskers and black Lycra leotards balanced the effect of two floppy, quilted ears that matched neither in size nor color. 

“Sure, if we didn’t like them.”

“Do we like this house?”

“No.”

There was more laughter. He was paralysed with a strange fear. He knew he had to get out of there, before they came back. He waited, not moving a muscle as he heard them walk away and  was glad they had no soap. 

When he was sure they were gone, he changed into loose clothes, put on some running shoes, and locked the front door. He started running. He ran across town, heading south, then up Lincoln street passed a house with columns, then up the hill, and then east, over across Willamette.  He passed hundreds of frightening little demons, all with horrifying single mindedness, out on a socially sanctioned glucose binge. By the time he got into the deeper recesses of south Eugene, it was dark.

He slinked down into a hillside cu-de-sac and crept into some shrubbery outside of a house that was at the bottom of a steep winding driveway. Jack-o-lanterns leered out of every window. Witches and skeletons floated around the fire-lite foyer. 

He noticed that the trick-or-treaters were getting older. Not all of them were in costume, but the unmasked ones were often stranger, and more hideous looking than the fairy queens, gobins, Elephant men, Nixons, bumblebees, Reagans, and Batmen, (and Batgirls), and a Flash that seemed to come and go in an endless procession. Fog was rolling in, and the smoke from the house’s chimney curled down, putting a darkening odor of hellishness in the air.

Someone in a black sweatsuit came out of the house and said something inaudible, and quickly disappeared up the cul-de-sac into the fog. He was disturbed, his stomach was queasy and he felt himself losing control of his thoughts. He continued to watch the house. Purple haired punks, frat boys and freeloaders were making their way into and out of the house.

He didn’t quite understand it. Behind him, (regardless of the direction) was a beating of footsteps that became louder and more rhythmic, raising his anticipation and fear, only to fade again. And then again. He sat still, and closed his eyes and it faded. A long time seemed to pass in an instant.

He pushed his way through the wooded area behind the house and moved quietly away from the houses. He continued running and walking along the Amazon, then turned east to climb up a steep sewer easement.  Again, he thought he heard something behind him, but when he looked he saw nothing. He kept hiking up the hill.

 He found himself under a house on stilts,  that from a distance, looked like a Martian landing craft. It was late. He looked down across South Eugene. Most of the lights were out now.  He picked out the house at the end of the cul-de-sac that he had just watched and saw little flickers of light rising from it like the embers from a fire.  He was very tired, but forced himself to go on.  He jogged on a path through Hendricks Park, and then down through the University, across Franklin Boulevard and then across the Willamette footbridge.

He wandered, jogging and staggering out onto the bark chip covered running trail, built on an old landfill. He could feel the ground moving, breathing, belching gas and growling. He walked east toward I-5, then sprinted under the freeway, and continued, now thoroughly exhausted, on the bikepath toward Springfield. It was well past midnight, into the silent early morning hours. 

 He knew someone had been following him for sometime.   At least he hoped it was someone. The idea that it might be something rather than someone was slowly making its way into his awareness and overwhelming his imagination.  He tried to tell himself  it was only the echoes of his own footsteps, and just as he had half convinced himself of that, he saw darting shadows in the peripheries of his vision.  When he turned to look, it became dead still, and embodied the form of a stunted oak tree…he was downwind from it now and he smelled a certain sulfuric odor. 

He faked left then spun right. He heard a whoosh…then across his vision streaked a sleek, black, nimble feline form that quickly disappeared into the brush. A slight wind swayed the trees. The gnarled branches of the stunted oak tree reached out toward him, then pull away. He stopped and stared. 

 “Pull yourself together”, he whispered. As he restarted walking, there were footsteps again, in front of him now, fading as quickly as they came. The wind died, and the oak tree became still and rooted again. He turned quickly, and felt himself beginning to panic.  He turned again, and started running…

He didn’t feel or see it. But something hit him, and he felt himself becoming smaller as the darkness around him swelled. Then whatever he was, what he had been, if indeed he had existed at all, left like a popped bubble, and he was gone.