In Laymon's Terms

Originally Published in October Dreams, 2000

AST TIME I ever went out trick or treating, it was with my best friend Jimmy and his sisters, Peggy and Donna. Peggy, Jimmy’s kid sister, had a couple of her little friends along, Alice and Olive. There was also Olive’s older brother, Nick. Donna, Jimmy’s older sister, was in charge.

We all wore costumes except Donna.

Being sixteen, Donna thought of herself as too old for dressing up so she went as herself in a plaid chamois shirt, blue jeans and sneakers.

Peggy wore a Peter Pan outfit. When I saw her in the green elf outfit and feathered cap, I said, “Peter Pan!” She corrected me. “Not Peter Pan, Peggy Pan.”

One of her little friends, I don’t remember whether it was Olive or Alice, sported a tutu and a tiara and carried a wand with a star at one end. The other girl wore a store-bought E.T. costume. Or maybe she was Yoda. I’m not sure which.

Nick, I remember. All of fourteen, he was a year older than Jimmy and me. He was supposed to be a Jedi warrior. He wore black coveralls, a black cape and black galoshes. No mask, no helmet. We only knew he was a Jedi warrior because he told us so. And because he carried a “light saber,” pretty much a hollow plastic tube attached to a flashlight.

Jimmy was “the Mummy.” Earlier that night, Donna and I had spent ages wrapping him up in a white bedsheet that we’d cut into narrow strips. We kept pinning the strips to Jimmy’s white longjohns. It took forever. It would’ve driven me nuts except for Donna. Every so often, she gave Jimmy a poke with a pin just to keep things interesting. We finally got it done, though, and Jimmy made a good-looking mummy.

My costume was easy. I was Huck Finn. I wore a straw hat, an old flannel shirt and blue jeans. I had a length of clothesline over one shoulder, tied at the ends to a couple of my belt loops to look like an old rope suspender. As a final touch, I had a corncob pipe that my dad let me borrow for the night.

So that was our group: who we were and how we were dressed that night.

Jimmy and me, Donna and Peggy, Alice and Olive and Nick.

Seven of us.

Except for Donna, we carried paper bags for our treats. Donna carried a flashlight. For the most part, she took up the rear. She usually didn’t even go to the doors with us, but waited on the sidewalk while we rang doorbells, yelled “Trick or treat!” and held out our bags to receive the goodies.

For the first couple of hours that night, everything went along fine. If you don’t count Nick going on occasional rampages, bopping us on the heads or prodding us in the butts with his light saber, proclaiming, “The Dark Side rules!” After a while, Jimmy’s bandages started to come off and droop. At one point, E.T. (or Yoda) fell down and skinned her knee and spent a while bawling. But nothing major went wrong and we kept on collecting loot and roaming further and further into unknown territory.

It was getting very late when we came to a certain house that was not at all like the others on its block. Whereas they were brightly lighted and most had jack-o’-lanterns on their porches, this house was utterly dark. Whereas their shrubbery and lawns were neatly trimmed, this house seemed nearly lost in a jungle of deep grass, wild foliage and brooding trees. It also seemed much older than the other houses on the block. Three stories high (not two like its neighbors) and made of wood (not brick), it looked as if it belonged to a different century.

The houses on both sides of the old one seemed unusually far away from it, as if whoever’d built them had been afraid to get too close.

Though Nick usually ran from house to house without returning to the sidewalk, cutting across lawns and brandishing his light saber with Peggy and Olive and Alice chasing after him, this time he thought better of it. All four of them came back to the sidewalk, where Jimmy and I were walking along with Donna.

“What’s with that house?” Nick asked.

“It’s creepy-eepy-eepy,” said either Olive or Alice, whichever one was the fairy godmother princess ballerina.

“It doesn’t look like anyone lives there,” Donna said.

“Maybe like the Munsters,” I said.

“I think maybe we should skip this one,” Donna said.

“Hey, no,” Jimmy protested. “We can’t skip this one. It’s the best one yet!”

I felt exactly the same way, but I never could’ve forced myself to disagree with Donna.

She shook her head, her bangs swaying across her brow. “I really don’t like the looks of it. Besides, it’d be a waste of time. Nobody’s there. You won’t get any treats. We might as well just...”

“You never know,” Jimmy interrupted. “Maybe they just forgot to turn their lights on.”

“I think Donna’s right,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s there.”

Jimmy shook his head. By this time, all the “bandages” had slipped off his head. They dangled around his neck like rag necklaces. “If somebody does live in a place like that,” he said, “wouldn’t you wanta meet him? Or her. Maybe it’s a creepy old woman. Just imagine. Like some crazy old witch or hermit or something, you know?”

For a while, we all just stood there and stared at the dark old house—what we could see of it through the bushes and trees, anyway, which wasn’t much.

Looking at it, I felt a little shivery inside.

“I think we should just go on,” Donna said.

“You’re in charge,” Jimmy muttered. He’d been ordered by his parents to obey Donna, but he sounded disappointed.

She took a deep breath and sighed. It felt good to watch her do that.

“It’s probably deserted,” she said. Then she said, “Okay, let’s give it a try.”

“All RIGHT!” Jimmy blurted.

“This time, I’ll lead the way. Who else wants to come?”

The three girls jumped up and down, yelling, “Me! I do! Me! Me-me-me!”

Nick raised his light saber and said, “I’ll come and protect you, Princess Donna.”

“Any trouble,” I told him, “cut ’em to ribbons with your flashlight.”

“Take that!” He jabbed me in the crotch.

He didn’t even do it very hard, but the tube got me in the nuts. I grunted and gritted my teeth and barely managed not to double over.

“Gotcha!” Nick announced.

Donna bounced her flashlight off his head. Not very hard, but the bulb went dark and Nick yelped, “OW!” and dropped his light saber and candy bag and grabbed the top of his head with both hands and hunched over and walked in circles.

“Oh, take it easy,” she told him. “I barely tapped you.”

“I’m gonna tell!” he blurted.

“Tell your little ass off, see if I care.”

The ballerina fairy-godmother princess gasped.

E.T. or Yoda blurted, “Language!”

Little sister Peggy Pan almost split a gut, but seemed to know she shouldn’t laugh at Nick’s misfortune so she clamped a hand across her mouth.

Jimmy, more concerned about my fate than Nick’s, patted me on the back and asked, “You okay, man?”

“Fine,” I squeezed out.

Donna came closer. Looking me in the eyes, she said, “Did he get you bad?”

I grimaced and shrugged.

“Right in the nads,” offered Jimmy.

I gave him a look.

Instead of killing him, as intended, my look seemed to inspire him. “Donna’s a certified life guard, you know. All that first aid training. Want her to take a look?”

“Shut up!” I snapped at him.

“Stop it, Jimmy,” she said.

“How’d you like to have her kiss...”

I punched his arm. He yelled, “Hey!” and grabbed it.

“Okay, okay,” Donna said. “Everybody calm down. No more hitting. How are you doing, Matt?” she asked me.

“Okay, I guess.”

“Nick?” she asked.

He was standing nearby, gently touching the top of his head. “I’ve got a bump.”

“Well, that’s too bad, but you asked for it.”

“Did not.”

Donna said, “You busted my damn flashlight.”

Jimmy and I laughed. So did Peggy Pan.

E.T. or Yoda blurted, “Language!”

“You shouldn’t go around whumping people on the head,” Nick explained. “You can cause ‘em brain damage.”

“Not you!” Jimmy said. “You haven’t got one.”

“That’s enough,” Donna said. “Come on, are we gonna check out this house or aren’t we?” Without even waiting for a response, she stepped off the sidewalk and started trudging toward the creepy old place.

I went after her, hurting. Each step I took, it felt like a little hand was squeezing one of my balls. But I didn’t let it stop me and it seemed to pretty much go away by the time we reached the porch stairs.

Donna stopped and turned around. She still held the flashlight in one hand, though it wasn’t working anymore. With her other hand, she put a finger to her lips.

In a few moments, everyone was standing in front of her, motionless and silent.

Donna took the forefinger away from her lips. She pointed it at each of us, counting heads the way a school bus driver does before bringing a bunch of kids back from a field trip. Done, she whispered, “Okay, six.”

“Seven,” I said.

She turned her head toward me. The moon was full, so I could see her face pretty well. She raised her eyebrows.

“You,” I whispered.

“Ah. Okay. Right.” In a somewhat louder voice, she said, “Okay there’re seven of us right now. Let’s hope and pray there’re still seven when we get back to the street.”

Her words gave me the creeps.

One of the girls made a whiny sound.

“I wanna go back,” said one of them. Maybe the same one who’d whined. I don’t know whether it was Alice or Olive. It wasn’t Peggy Pan, though.

Peggy Pan whispered, “Wussy.”

Jimmy chuckled.

And I saw the look on Donna’s face and realized she was trying to psych us out.

Not us, really. Them.

Nick had made her mad, and she wasn’t exactly tickled by Alice or Olive, either, so she figured to make life a little more interesting for them.

“If anybody wants to go back and wait for us on the sidewalk,” she said, “that’s fine. It’d probably be a good idea. No telling what might happen when we go up and ring the doorbell.”

One of the girls whined again.

“You’re just trying to scare us,” Nick said. In the full moon, I could see the sneer on his face. “Can’t scare a Jedi,” he said.

Donna continued, “I just think...every one needs to know the score. I wasn’t planning to mention it, but...I’ve heard about this house. I know what happened here. And I happen to know it isn’t deserted.”

“Yeah, sure,” Nick said.

Lowering her voice, Donna said, “A crazy man lives here. A crazy man named...Boo. Boo Ripley.”

I almost let out a laugh, but held it in.

“Boo who?” Jimmy asked?

I snorted and gave him my elbow.

“Ow!”

“Shhh!” Donna said. “Want Boo to hear us?” She looked at the others, frowning slightly. “When he was only eight years old, Boo chopped up his mom and dad with a hatchet...and ate ‘em. Gobbled ‘em up! Yum yum!”

“Did not,” Nick said.

“I wanna go home!”

“Shut up,” Nick snapped.

“But Boo was a little boy back then. And his mom and dad were very large. Even though he gobbled them day and night, night and day, there was always more that needed to be eaten. Well, Boo’s mom was a real cat lover. She had about a dozen cats living in the house all the time and stinking it up, so finally Boo started feeding his folks to the cats. Day and night, night and day, Boo and the cats ate and ate and ate. At last, they managed to polish off the last of Boo’s mom and dad. And you know what?”

“What?” asked Peggy Pan. She sounded rather gleeful.

“I don’t wanna hear!” blurted tutu girl.

“Knock it off, pipsqueak,” Nick snapped at her.

“Boo and the cats,” Donna said, “enjoyed eating the mom and dad so much that they lost all interest in any other kind of food. From that time forth, they would only eat people. Raw people. And you know what?”

“What?” asked Peggy Pan and I in unison.

“They still live right here in this house. Every night, they hide in the dark and watch out the windows, waiting for visitors.”

“You’re just making this up,” Nick said.

“Sure I am.”

“She isn’t, man,” said Jimmy.

“They’re probably up in the house right this very minute watching us, licking their lips, just praying we’ll climb the stairs and go across the porch and ring the doorbell. Because they’re very hungry and you know what?”

“WHAT?” asked Peggy Pan, Jimmy and I in unison.

In a low, trembling voice, Donna said, “The food they love most of all is...” Shouting “LITTLE GIRLS LIKE YOU!” she lunged toward Alice and Olive.

They shrieked and whirled around and ran for their lives. Yoda or E.T. waved her little arms overhead as she fled. The fairy dancer whipped her magic wand as if swatting at bats. One of them fell and crashed in the weeds and started to cry.

Nick yelled, “Fuck!” and ran after them, his light saber jumping.

“Language!” Jimmy called after him.

Donna brushed her hands together. “Golly,” she said. “What got into them?”

“Can’t imagine,” I said.

“What a bunch of wussies,” said Peggy Pan.

“I can’t stand that Nick,” said Jimmy. “He is such a shit.”

“Language,” Donna told him.

We laughed, all four of us.

Then Donna said, “Come on, gang,” and trotted up the porch stairs. We hurried after her.

And I’ll always remember trotting up those stairs stepping onto the dark porch and walking up to the door. Even while it was happening, I knew I would never forget it. It was just one of those moments when you think, It doesn’t get any better than this.

I was out there in the windy, wonderful October night with cute and spunky little Peggy Pan, with my best buddy Jimmy, and with Donna. I was in love with Donna. I’d fallen in love with her to this day and I’ll love her the rest of my life.

That night, she was sixteen and beautiful and brash and innocent and full of fun and vengeance. She’d trounced Nick and done quite a number on Alice and Olive, too. Now she was about to ring the doorbell of the creepiest house I’d ever seen. I wanted to run away screaming myself. I wanted to yell with joy. I wanted to hug Donna and never let her go. And also I sort of felt like crying.

Crying because it was all so terrifying and glorious and beautiful—and because I knew it wouldn’t last.

All the very best times are like that. They hurt because you know they’ll be left behind.

But I guess that’s partly what makes them special, too.

“Here goes,” Donna whispered.

She raised her hand to knock on the door, but Jimmy grabbed her wrist. “That stuff about Boo and the cats,” he whispered. “You made it up, didn’t you?”

“What do you think?”

“Okay.” He let go of her hand.

She knocked on the door.

Nothing.

I turned halfway around. Beyond the bushes and trees of the front yard, Nick and the two girls were watching us from the sidewalk.

Donna knocked again. Then she whispered, “I really don’t think anyone lives here anymore.”

“I hope not,” I whispered.

Donna reached out and gave the screen door a pull. It swung toward us, hinges squeaking.

“What’re you doing?” Jimmy blurted.

“Nothing,” said Donna. She tried the main door. “Damn,” she muttered.

“What?” I asked.

“Locked.”

Oh, I thought. That’s too bad.

The wooden door had a small window at about face level. Donna leaned forward against the door, cupped her hands by the sides of her eyes, and peered in.

Peered and peered and didn’t say a word.

“Can you see something?” Jimmy asked.

Donna nodded ever so slightly.

“What? What’s in there?”

She stepped back, lowered her arms and turned her back to the door and said very softly, “I think we’d better get out of here.”

Peggy Pan groaned.

Jimmy muttered, “Oh, shit.”

I suddenly felt cold and shrively all over my body.

We let Donna take the lead. Staying close behind her, we quietly descended the porch stairs. At the bottom, I thought she might break into a run. She didn’t, though. She just walked slowly through the high weeds.

I glanced back at the porch a couple of times. It was still dark. Nobody seemed to be coming after us.

Entering the shadows of some trees near the middle of the lawn, Donna almost disappeared. We all hurried toward her. In a hushed voice, Jimmy said, “What did you see?”

“Nothing really,” she said.

“Yes you did,” Peggy Pan insisted.

“No, I mean...” She stopped.

The four of us stood there in the darkness. Though we weren’t far from the sidewalk where Nick and the girls were waiting, a high clump of bushes blocked our view of them.

“Okay,” Donna said. “Look, this is just between us. They ran off, so they’ve got no right to hear about it, okay?”

“Sure.” I said.

Jimmy whispered, “They’ll never hear it from me.”

“Okay,” Donna said. “Here’s the thing. It was really dark in the house. I didn’t see anything at first. But then I could just barely make out a stairway. And something was on the stairway. Sitting on the stairs part-way up, and it seemed to be staring straight at me.”

“What was it?” Peggy Pan whispered.

“I’m not really sure, but I think it was a cat. A white cat.”

“So?” Jimmy asked.

I felt a little letdown, myself.

“I think it was sitting on someone’s lap,” she said.

“Oh, jeez.”

Peggy Pan made a high-pitched whiny noise. Or maybe that was me. Or her. “All I could see was this darkness on the stairs.”

“How do you know it was even there?” Jimmy asked.

“The cat was white.”

“So?”

“Someone was petting it.”

“Let’s get outa here,” Jimmy said.

Donna nodded.

“Remember, not a word to Nick or Alice or Olive. We’ll just say nothing happened.”

We all agreed, and Donna led us through the trees. Out in the moonlight, we walked around the clump of bushes and found Nick and the girls waiting. “So what happened?” Nick asked.

We shrugged and shook our heads. Donna said, “Nothing much. We knocked, but nobody was home.”

Smirking, he said, “You mean Boo and his cats weren’t there?”

Donna grinned. “You didn’t believe that story, did you? It’s Halloween. I made it up.”

Nick scowled. The ballerina fairy godmother princess looked very relieved, and Yoda or E.T. sighed through her mask.

“Good story,” I said.

“Thanks, Matt,” said Donna.

“Can we still trick or treat some more?” Peggy Pan asked.

Donna shrugged. “It’s getting pretty late. And we’re a long way from home.”

“Please?” asked Peggy Pan.

Her little friends started jumping and yelling, “Please? Please-please-please? Oh, please? Pretty please?”

“How about you, Nick?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Guys?” she asked Jimmy and me.

“Yeah!”

“Sure!”

“Okay,” Donna said. “We’ll go a little longer. Maybe just for a couple more blocks.”

“Yayyy!”

The girls led the way, running up the sidewalk to the next house—a normal house—cutting across its front lawn and rushing up half a dozen stairs to its well-lighted porch. Nick chased them up the stairs. Jimmy and I hurried. By the time the door was opened by an elderly man with a tray of candy, Jimmy and I were also on the porch, Donna waiting at the foot of the stairs.

We were back to normal.

Almost.

We hurried from house to house, reached the end of the block, crossed the street and went to the corner house on the next block. It was just after that house, when we met on the sidewalk and headed for the next house, that Donna, lagging behind, called out, “Hang on a minute, okay? Come on back.”

So we all turned around. As we hurried toward the place where Donna was waiting on the sidewalk, she raised her hand, index finger extended, and poked the finger at each of us. Like a school bus driver counting heads before starting home from a field trip.

She finished.

“Seven,” she said.

“That’s right,” I said as I halted in front of her.

“Seven not including me,” she said.

I whirled around and there was Jimmy the woebegone mummy dangling loose strips of sheet, some of which by now were trailing on the sidewalk. There was Nick the Jedi warrior with his light saber. And Peggy Pan and the ballerina fairy princess godmother and Yoda or E.T. and—bringing up the rear but only a few paces behind the girls—someone else.

He carried a grocery bag like any other trick or treater, but he was bigger than the girls, bigger than Nick, bigger than any of us. He wore a dark cowboy hat and a black raincoat and jeans. Underneath his hat was some sort of strange mask. I couldn’t tell what it was at first. When he got closer, though, I saw that it seemed to be made of red bandannas. It covered his entire head and neck. It had ragged round holes over his eyes, a slot over his mouth.

I had no idea where he’d come from.

I had no idea how long he’d been walking along with us, though certainly he’d shown up sometime after we’d left the dark old house.

Is that where he joined us? I wondered.

Speaking in his direction, Donna said, “I don’t think we know you.” Though she sounded friendly and calm, I heard tension in her voice.

The stranger nodded but didn’t speak.

The girls, apparently noticing him for the first time, stepped away from him.

“Where’d you come from?”

He raised an arm. When he pointed, I saw that his hand was covered by a black leather glove.

He pointed behind us. In the direction of the dark old house...and lots of other places.

“Who are you?” Donna asked.

And he said, “Killer Joe.”

Alice and Olive took another step away from him, but Peggy Pan stepped closer. “You aren’t gonna kill us are you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Cool costume,” Jimmy said.

“Thanks,” said Killer Joe.

“So who are you really?” Donna asked.

Killer Joe shrugged.

“How about taking off the mask?” she said.

He shook his head.

“Do we know you?” Jimmy asked.

Another shrug.

“You wanta come along trick or treating with us?” Peggy Pan asked.

He nodded. Yes.

Donna shook her head. No. “Not unless we know who you are.” Her voice no longer sounded quite so calm or friendly. She was speaking more loudly than before. And breathing hard.

She’s scared.

And she wasn’t the only one.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ll either have to let us see who you are or leave. Okay? We’ve got little kids here, and...and we don’t know who you are.”

“He’s Killer Joe,” Nick explained.

“We know,” Jimmy said.

“But he’s all by himself,” Peggy Pan said. “He shouldn’t have to go trick or treating all by himself.” She stepped right up to him and took hold of a sleeve of his raincoat and tilted her head back.

“Peggy,” Donna said. “Get away from him. Right now.”

“No!”

Killer Joe shrugged, then gently pulled his arm out of Peggy’s grip and turned around and began to walk away very slowly, his head down.

And I suddenly figured this was some poor kid—a big and possibly somewhat kid, granted—but a kid nevertheless without any friends, trying his best to have fun on Halloween night, and now he was being shunned by us.

I actually got a tight feeling in my throat.

Peggy Pan, sounding desolate, called out, “Bye, Killer Joe!”

Still walking away, head still down, he raised a hand to acknowledge the girl’s farewell.

“Come on back!” Donna called.

He stopped walking. His head lifted. Slowly, he turned around and pointed to himself with a gloved hand.

“Yeah, you,” Donna said. “It’s all right. You can come with us. But we are almost done for the night.”

Killer Joe came back, a certain spring in his walk.

Though he never removed his strange and rather disturbing bandanna mask and never told us who he was, he stayed with us that night as we went on from house to house, trick or treating.

Before his arrival, we’d been on the verge of quitting and going home. But even though he rarely spoke—mostly just a gruff “Trick or treat” when people answered their doors—he was so strange and friendly and perky, we just couldn’t seem to quit.

This had been going on for a while and I was about to follow the bunch toward another house when Donna called softly, “Matt?”

I turned around and went back to her.

She took hold of my forearm. In a quiet voice, she said, “What do you think of this guy?”

“He’s having a great time.”

“Do you trust him?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t,” Donna said. “I mean, he could be anyone. I think it’s very weird he wouldn’t take off his mask. I’m afraid he might be up to something.”

“Why’d you let him come with us?”

She shrugged. “Guess I felt sorry for him. Anyway, he’s probably fine. But how about helping me keep an eye on him, okay? I mean, he might be after the girls or something. You just never really know.”

“I’ll watch him,” I promised.

“Thanks.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “Not that we’d be able to do anything much about it if he does try something.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know one thing, I won’t let him do anything to Peggy. Or you.”

She smiled and squeezed my arm again. “Sure. We’ll let him have Alice and Olive.”

“But we’ll encourage him to take Nick.”

Donna laughed. “You’re terrible.”

“So are you,” I said.

After that, I joined up with the rest of them and kept a close eye on Killer Joe as we hurried from door to door.

Sometimes, he touched us. He gave us friendly pats. But nothing more than what a buddy might do. I started to think of him as a buddy, but warned myself to stay cautious.

Finally, Donna called us all over to her. She said, “It’s really getting late, now. I think we’d better call it quits for the night.”

Sighs, moans.

“Just one more house!” the girls pleaded. “Please, please, just one more house? Pretty please?”

“Well,” said Donna. “Just one more.”

Olive and Alice went, “Yayyyyy!”

Killer Joe bobbed his masked head and clapped his hands, his gloves making heavy whopping sounds.

We all took off for our final house of the night. It was a two-story brick house. Its porch light was off, but one of the upstairs windows glowed brightly.

All of us gathered on the porch except Donna, who waited at the foot of the stairs as she often did.

Peggy Pan rang the doorbell. Olive and Alice stood beside her, and the rest of us stood behind them. I was between Mummy Jimmy and Killer Joe. Nobody came to the door.

Peggy jabbed the button a few more times.

“Guess nobody’s home,” I said.

“Somebody has to be!” said Peggy. “This is the last house. Somebody has to be home.”

Olive and Alice started shouting, “Trick or treat! Trick or treat! Open the door! Trick or treat!”

Killer Joe stood there in silence. He seemed to be swaying slightly as if enjoying some music inside his head.

“Maybe we’d better give it up,” Jimmy said.

“No!” Peggy jabbed the doorbell some more.

Suddenly, the wooden door flew open.

We all shouted: “TRICK OR TREAT!”

An old woman in a bathrobe blinked out at us.

“Don’t any of you kids know what time it is?” she asked. “It’s almost eleven o’clock. Are you out of your minds, ringing people’s doorbells at this hour?”

We all stood there, silent.

I felt a little sick inside.

The old woman had watery eyes and scraggly white hair. She must’ve been eighty. At least.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“Well, y’oughta be, damn kids.”

“Trick or treat?” asked Peggy Pan in a small, hopeful voice.

‘‘NO! NO FUCKING TRICK OR TREATS FOR ANY OF YOU, YOU BUNCH A FUCKIN’ ASSHOLES! NOW GET THE FUCK OFF MY PORCH!”

That’s when Killer Joe reached inside his rain coat with one hand and jerked open the screen door with his other.

If the door had been locked, the lock didn’t hold.

The woman in the house yelled, “HEY, YOU CAN’T...!”

Killer Joe lurched over the threshold and the woman staggered backward but not fast enough and I glimpsed the hatchet for just a moment clutched in Joe’s black leather glove, and then he swung it forward and down, chopping it deep into the old woman’s forehead.

That’s all I saw.

I think I saw more than most. Then all of us were running.

We were about a block away and still running, some of the girls screaming, when I did a quick head count.

Seven.

Including Donna.

Not including Killer Joe.

Joe had still been in the house when we ran off.

We never saw him again. He was never identified, never apprehended.

That was a long time ago.

I never again went trick or treating after that. Neither did Donna or Jimmy or Peggy. I don’t know about Nick and Alice and Olive, and don’t care.

Now I have a kid of my own. I hate for her to miss out on the strange and wonderful and frightening joys of dressing up and going house to house on Halloween night.

Trick or treating...

Sometimes, what happens on Halloween is as good as it gets. Sometimes not.

Judy agrees.

“What the hell,” she said, “let’s go with her, show her how it’s done.” Judy’s not Donna, but...she’s terrific in her own ways and I have my memories.