HorrorHead
04-07-2009, 10:55 PM
Halloween.
Candy bowls and Jack o' lanterns. Candles flicker and dead brown leaves swirl on the breeze. A time for spooks and spectres. Tales round a campfire of witches and vampires, ghouls and zombies. A time to celebrate the dark.
Halloween.
The night drawing in early now. Twilight at four. Shadows lengthen. Merge. Become one, endless shadow. Children. In the streets. Playing, laughing, celebrating the coming night. Indoors now, to get ready, to put on a costume, wear a mask, hide yourself. From the night.
Out on the street again. Mothers cluster, flutter, counting. Faces creased, lips tight. Two, three four, five. Everybody here. C'mon, lets' go. Everybody stay together. And separate out into the darkness, different routes to take. Faces painted, slip through the light-dark-light of the streetlamps. Costumes buttoned, laced and sewn. Some who are lazy or poor, just wearing cheap plastic masks, binliner as a cape, a fright wig and call it good; just give me candy. Different now, not who they were. Not Sammy, Dracula. Not Jim, The Mummy. On and on and on. Some with grownups, others not. Some almost grownups themselves, not bothering to hide, to paint faces or dress up, just out for candy and chaos. Spoil sports.
Carrying lanterns and bags and baskets. Eyes bright and smiles wide. Door to door. Knock, knock. Waiting, waiting, sometimes answered, sometimes not. Who's there? Trick or treat! And then the candy and chocolate and sometimes an apple or orange (yuck!). Laughing and smiling and counting the goodies and then on, on to the next house, the next door.
Trick or treat!
----
Mr. Estevay checked the candle in the Jack o' lantern to make sure it hadn't gone out, then let the living room curtains drop back into place. Through the window he had seen that the streets were already full of children out trick or treating, eager to get the best shares of the candy. He smiled to himself, a warm, friendly smile, he enjoyed Halloween so much. It was his favourite holiday of the year. The children all painted up, begging for sweets and the such like. He always felt a special glow as he handed out the treats, always happy to see the looks of pleasure and joy that the children shared. Except for the ones who didn't bother, the lazy ones and the older ones; old enough to know better. That wiped the smile from his face.
Mr. Estevay had only one rule about trick or treating; you had to make an effort. If the children couldn't be bothered to dress up, to indulge in tradition, then he couldn't be bothered to give them anything. It was a matter of principle. He'd grown up in America, where Halloween was taken a lot more seriously. And as for the older ones, well, they only seemed to be out to cause trouble and he certainly wouldn't have any truck with that.
His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell and the muffled giggling of children outside.
Mr. Estevay smiled to himself again and, picking up the candy bowl on his way to the door, prepared to greet the first callers of the night.
----
As the four boys clustered under the streetlamp, Dougie let the garden gate slam shut with a shriek of the hinges. They stood in a small circle in the orange glow of the sodium lamp, in descending order of size; Dougie, Sam, Rob and Sam's little brother, Tim. Sam resented Tim's presence a little, but their mother had made it perfectly clear that if Timmy couldn't go trick or treating, then Sam couldn't go either. The quartet peered into the gloomy depths of their trick or treat bags.
'Wotcha got?', asked Dougie, rooting through his growing collection of sweets. The old lady had been generous and he had a lot of boiled sweets in his bag now, enough to last days.
With a look of slight distaste, Sam reached down into his bag and removed a round, green object. 'Bollocks', he said, wrinkling his nose, 'she give me an'apple.' His tone suggested that an apple was about the most insulting treat that a ten year old could be given.
'Bollicks!', cried Tim, cheerfully, obviously delighted to have a new word in his vocabulary, 'Bollicks!'
Without looking up from his bag, Rob said, 'An she give me an'orange.' His tone suggested that this was, in all probability, far worse than an apple. All of the boys, with the exception of Tim, who was still cheerily experimenting with his new word, wrinkled their noses.
'Bollicks!'
'Here, Tim', said Sam, seeming to suddenly notice his little brother, 'd'ya wan' an'apple?'
'Bollicks!'
'Okay. Here ya go then.' He tossed the ripe apple to his brother, who fumbled with it for a few seconds before he finally got a grip on it. Tim peered at the fruit as if he'd never seen an apple before. And then, obviously deciding that it was a trophy worthy of some more noise, he began to run around in circles, yelling at the top of his lungs.
'Yaayy! Bollicks! Bollicks!' A group of older kids passed by, staring at the little boy as he danced a jig and wiggled his bum at the passing cars.
Rob and Dougie looked at Sam, who looked back and shrugged, as if to say 'What can I do? I'm under orders'. Then they all turned to watch Tim as he threw the apple at an unsuspecting cat, who immediately scampered off into the nearest hedge, peering out nervously with its suspicious green eyes. Without saying anything, they all privately considered the possibilities of just wandering off and leaving him there. Then they all pictured what Tim's mum would say when they tried to explain it and realised that they really should keep an eye on Tim, if only for the sake of their own, relatively peaceful, lives.
Shaking his head to clear it of a world where little brothers didn't exist, Sam called out, 'C'mon, Tim, let's go get some more sweets.'
As they moved off, Tim skipped along behind them, his mask tipped up over his head like a peaked cap, binliner streaming out behind him, all the time yelling at the top of his lungs. 'Sweets, yaayy! Bollicks, yaayy!'
----
'Here you go', said Mr. Estevay, throwing a small handful of sweets from the candy bowl into each of the bags held out in front of him. There was a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face, matched by those of the children on the doorstep. 'Don't eat them all at once, now. Don't want to make yourselves sick.'
The children chorused their thanks and, as one, cried out, 'Happy Halloween!' As they turned away, Mr. Estevay returned the greeting and closed the front door. Placing the candy bowl back on the little shelf by the front door where he usually put his post, Mr. Estevay walked back into his living room and sat down to watch some more TV.
He had only been sitting for a couple of minutes when the doorbell went again. He hurried to the door and flung it open, beaming widely. 'Happy hallo… ween.' His smile didn't so much fade away as wobble precariously on his face, before losing its balance and plunging over the side. On the doorstep stood four little boys, all of them quite obviously trick or treating.
As if to confirm this, three of the boys yelled, 'Trick or treat!' From the back of the huddle, Mr. Estevay heard a little voice follow up with 'Bollicks!'.
They were also quite obviously not wearing costumes. Not proper costumes anyway. They were, instead, wearing the traditional uniform of the hopelessly lazy. Black binliners, torn down the middle to make an impromptu cape, the same cheap and nasty plastic masks covered their features, except for the little one at the back, who wore his like a cap, framing his dirty blonde hair. The cheap, garish 'trick or treat' bags, obviously from Poundland or somewhere like that, finished off the 'nasty plastic' look. Even though they didn't smell, the sight made him want to wrinkle his nose all the same, pulling a face as if he'd just realised that there was something green and unpleasant stuck in his teeth.
'Don't you boys know how to make a proper costume then?'
The boys just looked at him, apparently uncertain under their masks. Deciding, it seemed, to ignore the question, the boys, cried out 'Trick or treat!' again, thrusting out their bags in his direction.
He looked disdainfully down at the bags for a moment and then even more disdainfully down at them. 'No', he said, shaking his head, 'I'm afraid it's going to have to be a trick.'
And then he shut the door.
----
The three older boys all looked at each other. Tim just stood there, staring at the undeniably closed door.
'What he say?', asked Rob.
'What?', said Dougie, confused.
'I said…'
'He wants a trick', said Sam quietly, ' 's what he said.'
'What! What! What!', trilled Tim, finally noticing the huddled discussion.
'Wossat then?', asked Rob, 'Woss 'e mean?'
' 'S wot ya do when they don' give you a treat, right?', said Sam uncertainly, 'Trick 'em, I mean. 'S traditional, innit? They don' give you a treat, you give 'em a trick, thass how it works.'
' 'Sat right, den?'
'Right', spat Dougie, 'I'll give 'im a trick 'e won't forget. Listen up you two, what I want ya to do is…' The boys huddled closer together, whispering, conferring, conspiring.
----
Mr. Estevay stood just inside the door, in the darkness, smiling. He could hear the boys outside, whispering to each other and wondered what they were planning. Didn't matter much, they'd have to get up around midnight just to pull one over on him. He'd forgotten more tricks than they knew and he'd grown up in a time when imagination counted for a lot.
He didn't have long to wait. A couple of minutes later, the doorbell rang again.
Hand on the doorknob, Mr. Estevay beamed, he really beamed. This was going to be so much fun. He yanked the door open with a flourish.
Outside, the boys were waiting for this cue. 'Right!', yelled Dougie, 'Get 'im!' And the boys started to move… and then didn't as Mr. Estevay reared.
Mr. Estevay was a small, harmless looking man with a balding head and the beginning of a pot belly, but when he reared, he reared. He had been practising for a very long time. He didn't so much grow, as stretch; his body becoming thinner and thinner the taller he got. And he got very tall. When the top of his head was just about to touch the doorframe, he began to curve forward, looming over the suddenly terrified boys rather than simply bending down. His mouth dropped open, his jaw began to stretch and something foul smelling issued from his gut. The jaw stretched further and further down until it was resting low on his sunken chest, his mouth full of wickedly sharp and impossibly long fangs. Hands raised, elongated and talon-tipped.
He roared and a stench washed over the boys. Dougie didn't notice at the time but that was when he peed himself. Then, with no noticeable movement of his mouth, Mr. Estevay said, 'Boo!'
That was it, the boys had seen enough. Shrieking and screaming they scattered into the night.
Terrified, rooted to the spot, little Tim stood in the middle of the doorstep.
'Bollicks', he said, in a very, very tiny voice.
Mr. Estevay, nice, harmless-looking Mr. Estevay stood where the thing has stood just a second ago. He looked down at Tim for a moment and then reached for something in the hallway. Bending down a little, he said, 'My, you're a brave little one, aren't you? Well, since you're so brave, here's a little something for your trouble.' And then he dropped something into Tim's hand.
Tim looked down at the object in his hand for a second, two, three and then suddenly realising what it was, he too began to shriek and disappeared into the night.
Shaking his head as the little boy ran away, Mr. Estevay went back into his house, closing the front door behind himself. As he headed back into the living room, he plucked a candied eyeball out of the candy bowl and dropped it into his mouth. He bit down and it popped with a satisfying spurt.
Sitting down in front of the TV again, he smiled again. Halloween was definitely his favourite time of year…
Candy bowls and Jack o' lanterns. Candles flicker and dead brown leaves swirl on the breeze. A time for spooks and spectres. Tales round a campfire of witches and vampires, ghouls and zombies. A time to celebrate the dark.
Halloween.
The night drawing in early now. Twilight at four. Shadows lengthen. Merge. Become one, endless shadow. Children. In the streets. Playing, laughing, celebrating the coming night. Indoors now, to get ready, to put on a costume, wear a mask, hide yourself. From the night.
Out on the street again. Mothers cluster, flutter, counting. Faces creased, lips tight. Two, three four, five. Everybody here. C'mon, lets' go. Everybody stay together. And separate out into the darkness, different routes to take. Faces painted, slip through the light-dark-light of the streetlamps. Costumes buttoned, laced and sewn. Some who are lazy or poor, just wearing cheap plastic masks, binliner as a cape, a fright wig and call it good; just give me candy. Different now, not who they were. Not Sammy, Dracula. Not Jim, The Mummy. On and on and on. Some with grownups, others not. Some almost grownups themselves, not bothering to hide, to paint faces or dress up, just out for candy and chaos. Spoil sports.
Carrying lanterns and bags and baskets. Eyes bright and smiles wide. Door to door. Knock, knock. Waiting, waiting, sometimes answered, sometimes not. Who's there? Trick or treat! And then the candy and chocolate and sometimes an apple or orange (yuck!). Laughing and smiling and counting the goodies and then on, on to the next house, the next door.
Trick or treat!
----
Mr. Estevay checked the candle in the Jack o' lantern to make sure it hadn't gone out, then let the living room curtains drop back into place. Through the window he had seen that the streets were already full of children out trick or treating, eager to get the best shares of the candy. He smiled to himself, a warm, friendly smile, he enjoyed Halloween so much. It was his favourite holiday of the year. The children all painted up, begging for sweets and the such like. He always felt a special glow as he handed out the treats, always happy to see the looks of pleasure and joy that the children shared. Except for the ones who didn't bother, the lazy ones and the older ones; old enough to know better. That wiped the smile from his face.
Mr. Estevay had only one rule about trick or treating; you had to make an effort. If the children couldn't be bothered to dress up, to indulge in tradition, then he couldn't be bothered to give them anything. It was a matter of principle. He'd grown up in America, where Halloween was taken a lot more seriously. And as for the older ones, well, they only seemed to be out to cause trouble and he certainly wouldn't have any truck with that.
His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell and the muffled giggling of children outside.
Mr. Estevay smiled to himself again and, picking up the candy bowl on his way to the door, prepared to greet the first callers of the night.
----
As the four boys clustered under the streetlamp, Dougie let the garden gate slam shut with a shriek of the hinges. They stood in a small circle in the orange glow of the sodium lamp, in descending order of size; Dougie, Sam, Rob and Sam's little brother, Tim. Sam resented Tim's presence a little, but their mother had made it perfectly clear that if Timmy couldn't go trick or treating, then Sam couldn't go either. The quartet peered into the gloomy depths of their trick or treat bags.
'Wotcha got?', asked Dougie, rooting through his growing collection of sweets. The old lady had been generous and he had a lot of boiled sweets in his bag now, enough to last days.
With a look of slight distaste, Sam reached down into his bag and removed a round, green object. 'Bollocks', he said, wrinkling his nose, 'she give me an'apple.' His tone suggested that an apple was about the most insulting treat that a ten year old could be given.
'Bollicks!', cried Tim, cheerfully, obviously delighted to have a new word in his vocabulary, 'Bollicks!'
Without looking up from his bag, Rob said, 'An she give me an'orange.' His tone suggested that this was, in all probability, far worse than an apple. All of the boys, with the exception of Tim, who was still cheerily experimenting with his new word, wrinkled their noses.
'Bollicks!'
'Here, Tim', said Sam, seeming to suddenly notice his little brother, 'd'ya wan' an'apple?'
'Bollicks!'
'Okay. Here ya go then.' He tossed the ripe apple to his brother, who fumbled with it for a few seconds before he finally got a grip on it. Tim peered at the fruit as if he'd never seen an apple before. And then, obviously deciding that it was a trophy worthy of some more noise, he began to run around in circles, yelling at the top of his lungs.
'Yaayy! Bollicks! Bollicks!' A group of older kids passed by, staring at the little boy as he danced a jig and wiggled his bum at the passing cars.
Rob and Dougie looked at Sam, who looked back and shrugged, as if to say 'What can I do? I'm under orders'. Then they all turned to watch Tim as he threw the apple at an unsuspecting cat, who immediately scampered off into the nearest hedge, peering out nervously with its suspicious green eyes. Without saying anything, they all privately considered the possibilities of just wandering off and leaving him there. Then they all pictured what Tim's mum would say when they tried to explain it and realised that they really should keep an eye on Tim, if only for the sake of their own, relatively peaceful, lives.
Shaking his head to clear it of a world where little brothers didn't exist, Sam called out, 'C'mon, Tim, let's go get some more sweets.'
As they moved off, Tim skipped along behind them, his mask tipped up over his head like a peaked cap, binliner streaming out behind him, all the time yelling at the top of his lungs. 'Sweets, yaayy! Bollicks, yaayy!'
----
'Here you go', said Mr. Estevay, throwing a small handful of sweets from the candy bowl into each of the bags held out in front of him. There was a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face, matched by those of the children on the doorstep. 'Don't eat them all at once, now. Don't want to make yourselves sick.'
The children chorused their thanks and, as one, cried out, 'Happy Halloween!' As they turned away, Mr. Estevay returned the greeting and closed the front door. Placing the candy bowl back on the little shelf by the front door where he usually put his post, Mr. Estevay walked back into his living room and sat down to watch some more TV.
He had only been sitting for a couple of minutes when the doorbell went again. He hurried to the door and flung it open, beaming widely. 'Happy hallo… ween.' His smile didn't so much fade away as wobble precariously on his face, before losing its balance and plunging over the side. On the doorstep stood four little boys, all of them quite obviously trick or treating.
As if to confirm this, three of the boys yelled, 'Trick or treat!' From the back of the huddle, Mr. Estevay heard a little voice follow up with 'Bollicks!'.
They were also quite obviously not wearing costumes. Not proper costumes anyway. They were, instead, wearing the traditional uniform of the hopelessly lazy. Black binliners, torn down the middle to make an impromptu cape, the same cheap and nasty plastic masks covered their features, except for the little one at the back, who wore his like a cap, framing his dirty blonde hair. The cheap, garish 'trick or treat' bags, obviously from Poundland or somewhere like that, finished off the 'nasty plastic' look. Even though they didn't smell, the sight made him want to wrinkle his nose all the same, pulling a face as if he'd just realised that there was something green and unpleasant stuck in his teeth.
'Don't you boys know how to make a proper costume then?'
The boys just looked at him, apparently uncertain under their masks. Deciding, it seemed, to ignore the question, the boys, cried out 'Trick or treat!' again, thrusting out their bags in his direction.
He looked disdainfully down at the bags for a moment and then even more disdainfully down at them. 'No', he said, shaking his head, 'I'm afraid it's going to have to be a trick.'
And then he shut the door.
----
The three older boys all looked at each other. Tim just stood there, staring at the undeniably closed door.
'What he say?', asked Rob.
'What?', said Dougie, confused.
'I said…'
'He wants a trick', said Sam quietly, ' 's what he said.'
'What! What! What!', trilled Tim, finally noticing the huddled discussion.
'Wossat then?', asked Rob, 'Woss 'e mean?'
' 'S wot ya do when they don' give you a treat, right?', said Sam uncertainly, 'Trick 'em, I mean. 'S traditional, innit? They don' give you a treat, you give 'em a trick, thass how it works.'
' 'Sat right, den?'
'Right', spat Dougie, 'I'll give 'im a trick 'e won't forget. Listen up you two, what I want ya to do is…' The boys huddled closer together, whispering, conferring, conspiring.
----
Mr. Estevay stood just inside the door, in the darkness, smiling. He could hear the boys outside, whispering to each other and wondered what they were planning. Didn't matter much, they'd have to get up around midnight just to pull one over on him. He'd forgotten more tricks than they knew and he'd grown up in a time when imagination counted for a lot.
He didn't have long to wait. A couple of minutes later, the doorbell rang again.
Hand on the doorknob, Mr. Estevay beamed, he really beamed. This was going to be so much fun. He yanked the door open with a flourish.
Outside, the boys were waiting for this cue. 'Right!', yelled Dougie, 'Get 'im!' And the boys started to move… and then didn't as Mr. Estevay reared.
Mr. Estevay was a small, harmless looking man with a balding head and the beginning of a pot belly, but when he reared, he reared. He had been practising for a very long time. He didn't so much grow, as stretch; his body becoming thinner and thinner the taller he got. And he got very tall. When the top of his head was just about to touch the doorframe, he began to curve forward, looming over the suddenly terrified boys rather than simply bending down. His mouth dropped open, his jaw began to stretch and something foul smelling issued from his gut. The jaw stretched further and further down until it was resting low on his sunken chest, his mouth full of wickedly sharp and impossibly long fangs. Hands raised, elongated and talon-tipped.
He roared and a stench washed over the boys. Dougie didn't notice at the time but that was when he peed himself. Then, with no noticeable movement of his mouth, Mr. Estevay said, 'Boo!'
That was it, the boys had seen enough. Shrieking and screaming they scattered into the night.
Terrified, rooted to the spot, little Tim stood in the middle of the doorstep.
'Bollicks', he said, in a very, very tiny voice.
Mr. Estevay, nice, harmless-looking Mr. Estevay stood where the thing has stood just a second ago. He looked down at Tim for a moment and then reached for something in the hallway. Bending down a little, he said, 'My, you're a brave little one, aren't you? Well, since you're so brave, here's a little something for your trouble.' And then he dropped something into Tim's hand.
Tim looked down at the object in his hand for a second, two, three and then suddenly realising what it was, he too began to shriek and disappeared into the night.
Shaking his head as the little boy ran away, Mr. Estevay went back into his house, closing the front door behind himself. As he headed back into the living room, he plucked a candied eyeball out of the candy bowl and dropped it into his mouth. He bit down and it popped with a satisfying spurt.
Sitting down in front of the TV again, he smiled again. Halloween was definitely his favourite time of year…