ONE THOUSAND HALLOWEENS
Two ghosts meet.
October 31st
The day I woke up
There I was, trekking down a street in Singapore in the sticky-hot October. You’d think Singapore would cool down in autumn, but that’s not what happens. What actually happens is you, the naive American, realize Singapore is sticky and hot and humid the whole goddamn year so you resign yourself to three showers a day and a couple icy beers with dinner.
So, like I said: there I was, drenched in sweat, wishing I was back in Maine.
About halfway back to the hotel I turned the corner at a noodles shop and found a small bench to sit on, in the shade. Across the narrow street a group of American girls, clothes a few shades darker with sweat, had their phones out in frantic search of an air-conditioned taxi. It wasn’t long before the owner of the barbershop they were standing in front of shooed them from the entrance and they scattered off to somewhere safer, leaving me alone with the street.
You don’t often find a street so empty in Singapore.
I marveled at it. And, for some reason, I got up from my bench and walked into the middle of that street and looked up at the buildings. The barbershop and the noodle shop were stubby and short but behind them were skyscrapers and I watched them reach into the sky, cut through clouds, and I watched and—
* * *
I woke up in Maine, in an attic. Pure dark. Loud silence. I tried to take a breath but I couldn’t pull air in, tried to feel my hands, my feet, my legs but clawed at air. I panicked and scrambled around the attic, chest tight like drowning, scratching at my chest but finding nothing there to scratch.
It was only after ten minutes or so I realized I did not need to breathe. After I realized this I settled down a minute. After I settled down I remembered I’d just been in the street in Singapore. As I recalled this I heard, faintly, the sound of the truck as it came towards me and the brief crunching before everything went dark and finally I knew where I was. And what I was.
I took a moment to laugh. The truck driver had unknowingly done the world a great favor, I supposed. My number had been 46. Would’ve been 47 if I’d made it to the hotel that day. Did I enjoy killing people? Not particularly. Did I enjoy the money enough to hold my nose while I did it? That’s what I told myself.
But, as much as I’d have liked to believe so, money doesn’t save you from speeding vehicles.
I would have spent the afternoon that Halloween languishing in the attic, bemoaning my condition, wishing my life had been spared so that I might have continued ending others. But that became impossible when I discovered I was not alone.
The other ghost—if that’s what you could call him—was thin and bony. All bones. An animated skeleton. He still had his eyeballs back then, but they were black and slimy and the ooze dripped down his face for a look that was quite macabre, fitting for the season.
“What should I call you?” I said to the skeleton-ghost. I know now his name is Thomas, but I prefer to call him Bones, so that is how I will refer to him from here on. At my question, Bones tilted his head slightly at me and did not reply. Of course, I thought, it is mute. Maybe I am too and I can only hear the words in my mind. The thought haunted me.
Bones stood up, not making a sound, and opened a small door at the bottom of the attic which opened up to a wooden ladder. He began to climb down. I knew I could either sit in the attic and spend the day in self-pity or see where my strange new companion was going. In a moment I was climbing down the ladder also. And this is where the events of the night truly began.
* * *
The upstairs of the house was dark. Cobwebs haunted the corners of the walls and doors were boarded up, faded yellow-and-black ‘CAUTION: DO NOT ENTER’ tape crisscrossing the whole of the house. The skeleton did not seem to mind the tape, nor did he seem to mind my presence. He walked down, with the strange limping gait of his, to the end of the hall where he opened a door that led down the stairs.
The living room downstairs was just as abandoned as the rest of the house, but there was a window, half-shattered with jagged edges sticking out and the rest of the glass on the floor. The skeleton walked to peer out the window and so did I. The sun was just setting and this is when I realized I must be in the Maine countryside. One gentle hill folded into the next, the fiery oranges and reds of autumn still hanging onto half of the trees, the other half skeleton-like and ready for the winter snows.
Out the window I saw a farm down our dirt lane, across the paved road, and down a private drive of their own. But other than that the skeleton and I were entirely alone.
This only lasted for a few hours.
The night was clear and the moon had come up and painted the lawn—if you could even call that feral weed-jungle a lawn—silver, and I saw it was vandalized with the same CAUTION tape I had seen upstairs. The feelings of grief and self-pity were still nagging at the corners of my mind but the events that would soon happen drowned all of them out.
Four teenagers were walking up the drive, heads darting left and right in intervals, talking in hushed tones.
They, too, had costumes on. One of the girls was a witch, of sorts, though she looked as if she’d forgotten most of the costume at home and had opted for just enough to cover the important bits. The other girl was a boxer, so her lack of clothing made a little more sense. The boys had costumes on but they looked rather low-effort. I guessed one of them was a sorcerer and one of them might have been a superhero, Thor maybe, but it really was hard to tell. Anyway, in a moment, none of it would matter.
One of the boys looked like my son Jake, but I knew it could not be him. God, Jake. I hadn’t even thought of him. I wanted to cry but Bones grabbed me and pulled me behind the kitchen counter as the teenagers approached the house.
“They can see us?” I whispered, holding back tears. If I could even cry. Though he did not acknowledge me, something in the way he tilted his head said yes.
The door creaked open. I could not see the teenagers but heard their footsteps scuffing on the dusty wooden floor.
“Hello?” shouted one of the boys. Maybe the one who’d looked like Jake, maybe the other. “Anybody here?” His voice shook just a little, but at no response, all of them laughed and began talking in louder voices.
“Good find, Maya.”
“I know. Spooky, isn’t it? They say nobody who comes in here on Halloween makes it out alive.”
Silence for a moment.
“Bah!”
“You’re going to have to try harder than that.”
“You still jumped a little.”
“Bring any food for the ghosts?”
“No, silly, you know that ghosts can only drink wine.”
“Wine?”
“Yeah.” A pause.
“Why don’t you text Brett? Tell him to bring Kelsey out.”
“Sure.”
“Does anyone have the speaker? It’s too quiet in here.”
“Sure, it’s right—”
A scream. I looked to my side but Bones had disappeared. I peered over the counter and saw where he’d gone. Now he wasn’t just covered in the black ooze from his eye—he was covered in the blood of one of the boys, whose head rolled like a bowling ball onto the table and hit the floor with a crack. Now the three others made a mad dash for the door. The two girls made it out, screaming terror, and bolted for the road.
Bones did not follow the girls. He’d cornered the one who looked like Jake near the front of the living room. The kid was screaming unintelligibly, slobbering, sobbing. He looked so much like Jake.
In a moment I was behind Bones and had his skeletal arm twisted around his back, putting pressure on it, my foot caught in front of his. We fell to the ground, tangled, me back to doing what I did best. I punched down, grabbed at his face. Put out both of his eyes. They rolled on the floor and he opened his mouth, full of sharp teeth, and made a scraping, snarling noise. I punched his face again and my hand went numb with pain. When I looked up Jake had made it out of the house toward the road and I rolled over on my back.
That is how Halloween ended that night.
October 31st
One year after I tried to kill Bones
This Halloween was the year I learned that Bones and I are not full-time ghosts. We are Halloween ghosts. Which makes us more of temporary curses, really. So when I woke up the next Halloween my hand still hurt, anger still pulsing through my ghostly limbs, but Bones and I were back up in the attic.
He raised his head, no more eyes, just gaping sockets. He opened his mouth. Teeth like razors, still there.
And to my complete surprise, he spoke.
“You cannot kill me,” he said. “I am already dead. You should know this.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t try.”
“You are not supposed to be here.”
“What do you mean? I’m not, and you are? You murdered a kid last night. Or last year. Whatever.”
“That is my duty. I am a curse. I am compelled to kill.”
“Then what am I?”
“Also a curse. You should have helped me kill them.”
“I’m not going to help you kill people.”
“You spent your whole life doing the same.”
“How do you even know that? And that was different.”
“Was it?”
We sat in silence for some time. Bones stood up and gave me a nod.
“Off to kill some people?” Bones did not answer this, but he opened the trapdoor in the attic and clambered down the stairs, bones creaking. Before his head disappeared beneath the attic floorboards he turned to me.
“Want to join?”
And with that I heard him climb all the way down and make his way downstairs.
* * *
As soon as Bones left the attic I got to work. Earlier that day, before he’d woken up, I’d found another door in the attic which led out to the roof. From there, I figured, I could make it down the roof, warn any kids that might feel particularly daring tonight, and spare everyone from dying.
Climbing down the roof I thought about what Bones had said. He was just doing his work, wasn’t he? Like me? Maybe. But something about last Halloween I didn’t like. The look on the kid’s face. The one who looked like Jake. I nearly doubled over at the thought. Had a whole year really passed for him? It was just yesterday—or last year, rather—I walked through Singapore with plans for his birthday that next week. I tried to push the thought away.
Dark had settled in on the countryside. Kids would be arriving soon, if any came this year. Bones would be killing them. I made to jump down from the gutter and run to the end of the lane, stand guard. But the thought of Jake put itself back into my mind. Is this what I was meant to do? Spend every waking day struggling with a ghost with no time to mourn my son, until one day he would die and then there’d hardly be anything left to mourn?
No.
I turned and went back to the attic through my secret door. And I cried for Jake and thought about what he was like now. 22 years old. Was he still dating Larissa? Would they be engaged by now? Would he have graduated college? I curled up into a ball. The tightness in my chest was worse than when I’d arrived and discovered I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was drowning.
During the night I heard screams from downstairs. I did not care.
At the end of the night I made an attempt to leave, to find Jake wherever he might be and to talk to him. But as I reached the end of the dirt country lane all faded to dark, and I lost consciousness.
October 31st
Fourteen years after I tried to kill Bones
The past few days—Halloweens, rather—I spent without talking to Bones. I just wondered about Jake and about my life had I not died. And after a while I stopped thinking about these things even, and my mind became dark and vast and empty. The feeling of unconsciousness at the end of the Halloweens was much the same as my waking thoughts. I curled up in a ball on the floor and held myself.
Bones paid me no attention as he went down the stairs from the attic this year.
October 31st
Thirty-seven years after I tried to kill Bones
It’s hard to grieve alone in an attic with a skeleton, when each passing day means a year off your son’s lifetime. Knowing you can’t see him. And knowing you’d give anything to see him. But they say time heals all wounds. While I know now that isn’t true, it certainly helps.
This Halloween I woke early and went downstairs to prepare for the evening.
When Bones came down the stairs his rickety old skeleton, which was looking older by the year, pulled back in surprise. He titled his head at me and bared a few of his razor-teeth.
“What is the meaning of this?” He was, of course, looking at the dinner table. I’d lined it with candles I’d found in an old cupboard above the sink. There were two glasses of wine, across from each other. I smiled at Bones. Or I tried to, but how it came out I’m not sure. I had resolved myself to be friendly.
“This is for us. Well, one of the glasses is for you. The other’s for me. The candles are to share. Not to eat, mind you. For ambience.”
“Why?”
“Bones, how did you get here?”
“I was killed.”
“I know that. But how?”
“I was on the way to school.”
“You were—you were what?”
“I was twelve.”
“What happened?”
“I do not remember.”
“Want to sit down? Just before the kids get here, I mean.”
I motioned for him to sit and he did, at the chair across from me. It felt like a real haunted house. Two ghosts sharing wine. The kids all those Halloweens back had been right. Ghosts can drink wine.
As it turns out, ghosts can also get drunk.
“—so your crush Gertrude went out with that guy Joseph before you could tell her you liked her? And you’ve been thinking about it for the last two hundred years?” I wheezed. It was all so good.
“God knows that if I could leave here, Joseph would be dead.”
“But he is dead though, right? That was two hundred—”
“Silence.”
I shut my mouth for a moment, then burst out laughing. Bones said, “what is your name?”
I said, “Carlos.”
“I am Thomas. What sort of a name is Carlos?”
“Probably didn’t have too many of ‘em around these parts two hundred years ago.”
“Oh.”
“Say, Thomas, it’s good meeting you.” And it was. This was the best Halloween I’d had in years.
“Carlos, why have no kids arrived tonight?”
“Ah, that? I put one of the old corpses out in front of the porch.”
“Oh. But did you leave a note? Something to ward off the kids?”
“See, that’s what the corpse was for.”
“I see.”
“Now Bones, you’ve gone a whole night and you haven’t killed anyone.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe that curse isn’t so strong after all?”
Maybe it was all the wine, but Bones didn’t seem nearly as upset as I’d thought he’d be. We sat there and drained a few more glasses of red before everything faded black, and the night ended. Until tomorrow, or next year.
October 31st
Ten years after I became friends with Bones
The house this Halloween overflowed with children and teenagers and young adults. Only this year, they paid to get in.
Each hallway had been renovated—the product of long hours of labor between Bones and I, who were immensely proud of the result—and lined with black-and-red LED lights. Skulls and blood, mostly fake, decorated the rooms. Loud, creepy music echoed throughout the halls. Workers shepherded customers through in the dark, dressed as ghosts and zombies, jumping out at them at every turn.
Every once in a while Bones or I would make an appearance, but one time that resulted in the police showing up so we were more cautious about it these days. We’d save it for the real tough guys. This year we watched from a cobwebbed, shadowy corner upstairs in the house.
“Not bad, eh, Bones?”
“Not bad.”
“Not bad.” A third voice. What?
Bones and I turned around, my fists at the ready, his teeth bared. Before us stood what was really just an oozing red blob of what might’ve been blood. Around where its head should be the blood formed features: eyes, a nose, a mouth. But you had to stretch your imagination to see it.
“And who are you?” Bones asked, his voice scraping.
“I don’t know. A ghost, maybe? I arrived... Just today. Say, shouldn’t we be killing the people in here?” Bones just looked up at him and sat back, relaxed.
“How about you join us for wine instead? See what you think about killing when that’s done.”
The three of us sat there in the haunted house, counting our cash. Not that it really mattered. The employees were paid well. The newcomer’s name was Maurice. From New York, cab driver, bad accident. I asked him all about the future. That got boring fast. Same types of people, same types of problems.
Bones turned to me. “Tell me that story about Jake again,” he said.
“Which one?”
“The one about the time you two spent a weekend in Paris, and he told you he wanted to become a painter. At the Louvre.”
“Ah that one. You want to hear it, Maurice?”
“All ears.”
“So, my wife had just left me and I said to Jake—who’s eight at the time—hey, buddy, why don’t we go to Paris...”