The night was cold and desolate, the sky an eerie shade of brackish blue, patches of fog floating low like wraiths, and through it all, somewhere along a deserted street, trudged a Ghost, a KPop Demon Hunter, and a Josh Allen.
The Ghost gnawed his lower lip, though his companions couldn’t see it through his ivory-white sheet. The KPop Demon Hunter (Rumi, specifically) gnawed a Milky Way. Josh Allen hummed “Mr. Brightside,” and was remarkably off-tune.
“Maybe we should head back,” suggested the Ghost, checking the time on his phone. “It’s kinda dark out.”
“Nah, buddy,” said Josh Allen. “It’s creepiest when it’s dark.”
“And we’ve barely gotten any booty,” Rumi added. She finished her candy bar, then dropped the wrapper into her bag. “Where is everybody anyway? It’s like we’re on The Last of Us or something.”
The Ghost shivered again, because the mere mention of fungus-zombie-freak-thingies freaked him out. Especially on an evening like this. “You guys didn’t hear about Mike McZee? He was bitten by an animal last night. At school, Ravi was like, ‘It was a pit bull,’ but on Snapchat, everyone’s saying it was a…” He gulped, then whispered the final word. “…Werewolf.”
“Oh yeah,” Josh Allen chuckled. “Livy told me about that. But she said McZee was just making up a tropical story so he could skip school.”
“The word you’re looking for is ‘topical,’” Rumi corrected. She arched a painted-purple eyebrow. “And you and Livy are…?”
Josh Allen answered with a casual shrug.
“Well whatever happened,” said the Ghost, “the parents are freaked. Mine only let me out because we’re staying in the neighborhood and we’ll be done by eight and…wait, actually, can we stop talking about this? I’m starting to freak out.”
That made Josh Allen laugh. “Relax, scared-of-life. If anything really bit McZee, it was probably just somebody’s pet chihuahua.”
“Yeah,” Rumi added, as she drank raw pink powdered sugar from a Pixie Stick. “Werewolves don’t exist. Except for those.”
They waved at a pair of such creatures strolling down the opposite side of the street. The werewolves waved back, but wouldn’t stop for a candy swap, not even when Rumi used her best haggling voice.
“Cowards,” she said with a shrug.
The trio turned down Cynthia Lane, stopping at every house with even a single light on, getting a Snickers here and some candy corn there. The Wilson residence actually had the audacity to give them apples. Rumi hurled hers into the woods.
“Apples? On Halloween? And they didn’t even have the decency to put some caramel on them?” She shook her head in disgust. “Appalling.”
The Ghost tucked his apple under his sheet and crunched. “Mmm. Cortland.”
Rumi grumbled, fishing a lollipop from her bag. “This Halloween stinks.”
They turned onto Kendall Ave. and collected a decent booty from the Hyde house, albeit only after some expert begging from Rumi. No one else answered their doors, or even had candy out. Aside from the pair of werewolves, they saw no other trick-or-treaters.
“I swear there were more kids around last year,” the Ghost observed, finishing the last bites of his apple. “I think Covid officially killed Halloween.”
“That or the McZee situation,” Josh Allen suggested. “Or maybe everyone’s too old for it. Maybe we’re too old. My brothers would not stop making fun of me on the way out the door. Although they make fun of me for everything. Like, did I tell you guys—?”
“Silence!”
The exclamation was so sudden that both the Ghost and Josh Allen jumped. Their Rumi was a theater kid, after all, and when she wanted to summon her stage voice, she could.
“That topic is off limits, okay?” she said, this time a little softer. “We’re not too old. We’re not even in high school yet.”
“Yeah, but we will be,” Josh Allen pointed out. “In, like, a year.”
“That’s only if you pass. Besides, this is supposed to be the funnest night of the year.” Rumi glared from one boy to the other. “We should treat it with the proper respect.”
“Okay, but can we go home now?” The Ghost held up his phone. “The texts are starting.”
To that, Rumi said nothing. Instead, she bit her lollipop with such rage that it shattered into shards on the ground. Then she turned and stomped away.
“Maybe she was the one who bit McZee,” Josh Allen whispered.
“I heard that!” Rumi shrieked.
They continued like that for a while, the Ghost and Josh Allen together while Rumi stomped up ahead. The evening was growing inkier by the minute, and it was difficult to track her in the gathering gloom. The Ghost felt a twinge of an all-too-familiar feeling: Fear.
“Hey Audrey,” said the Ghost. “I think you should stay near us…”
“We agreed on no normy names tonight!” she shot back. “I’m Rumi!”
“Dude, you know how she gets on Halloween,” Josh Allen sighed, employing the tone of a man who’s seen too much of the world. “I know what’ll cheer you up Audr—I mean, Rumi. How about we tell our scariest stories?”
Rumi wheeled back around and rejoined them. “Did somebody say ‘scariest stories’?”
“Could we not?” asked the Ghost. “Heart attacks at our age are unusual, but they’re not unheard of. And my heart rate’s getting really high.” He referenced the number on his smartwatch, for emphasis.
As was usually the case when the Ghost got like this, his friends completely ignored him. “Scary stories,” said Rumi. “Go.”
Josh Allen, clapped his hands together. “Okay. So. Me and my mom and my dad and my brothers were at the tailgate last weekend, right? And these three guys, they light a folding table on fire, right, and then they climb on top of an RV, and they’re like, ‘Bring on the Chiefs!’, and then they pile-drive the table. Well, only one guy actually hits the table—the other two miss and hit the pavement. But the one guy, the guy who lands on the folding table, he catches on fire, and his buddies have to put him out. With snow!”
The Ghost blinked, then smiled to himself. “Wow. I think I’m getting braver. That story didn’t scare me at all!”
“That’s because it wasn’t a scary story,” Rumi groaned. “It was just a story.”
“It was too scary!” Josh Allen insisted. “The fire guy was wearing a signed Marshawn jersey. You know how valuable those are?”
Rumi sighed. “Let me show you how it’s done.”
Rumi (technically the girl dressed as Rumi, though she’d be known as Rumi for the night) loved telling stories—especially the scary ones. The Ghost recalled one time she told a story so scary that he, the Ghost, had begun to cry, at which point Mrs. Billings had sent Rumi to Principal Sawchuck’s office for reprimanding. The Ghost had apologized for getting her in trouble afterward, but Rumi had only grinned at him.
“Tears are the sign of a story well told,” she’d said.
And so, presently, as the leader of the KPop Demon Hunters began her latest tale, the Ghost readied his tear ducts.
“Ahem. So, my dad was raking leaves over the weekend when he heard something in the woods behind the house. Said it sounded like munching. He looked around, didn’t see anything, so he kept on raking. But then my mom let Buster out, and Buster ran to the fence and started barking his head off, so my dad dragged Buster back inside, and then he came back out, and it was getting dark, and he heard the munching again. And also conversation. Two voices. He said it sounded…otherworldly.”
“Audrey,” whispered the Ghost, peering into the shadows of a nearby copse of trees. “You’re freaking me out.”
“I don’t know any Audreys,” she snapped. “I only know Rumi. And Mira. And Zoey. And sometimes Jinu. Now where was I?”
“Something freaky in the woods.”
“Thank you, Joshua. Ahem. So. Whatever it was, my dad said it sounded big. Like, really, really big. Bear sized. We’ve had bears back there before, and my dad usually bangs some pots to scare them away so they don’t eat Buster, so my dad came back inside again to get some pots, only my mom was like, ‘For the love of God, Daniel, wipe your boots before you come in here again!’, so then he grumbled and wiped his boots, and when he went back outside for like the tenth time, he found…it.”
“What?” the Ghost squeaked.
“Was it Bigfoot?” Josh Allen asked. “It was, wasn’t it? I knew it. I knew he was real.”
“Better.” Rumi halted. The boys did the same. She paused, drew out the moment, then said, “It was…four empty half-eaten cake boxes. Four!” And she bulged out her eyes, waving two upraised fingers on both hands.
The Ghost expected to feel terror when Rumi told stories. What he did not expect was to feel confusion. “What’s a cake box?”
“The box you put cake in. Duh.”
Josh Allen wrinkled his nose. “Dude, my story was way scarier than that. You’re losing your edge, Rumi.”
“Rude. I’m telling you, that’s what happened. My dad told me as soon as he got back inside. He was like, ‘Sweetheart, don’t go playing near the woods anymore. There’s a sugar-crazed vagrant on the loose.’”
“When was this?” asked the Ghost.
“Two days ago,” answered Rumi.
“And when was the Mike McZee incident?” asked the Ghost.
“Yesterday,” answered Josh Allen.
“So what if…?” The Ghost could barely finish his sentence, because his teeth had begun to chatter. “What if there’s a monster out there? And it’s getting hungrier?”
The three of them stared at each other, wide-eyed. And the Ghost began to think that maybe Rumi’s story was scarier than he’d given it credit for.
“Should we turn back?” asked Josh Allen.
“But,” said Rumi, “we haven’t gotten to the Linderbaums’ house yet.”
The Linderbaums’ house. The word was like a spell, and they all knew its power—even the Ghost, who liked Halloween least of them all.
It was a matter of worship. Some people worshiped God, others several gods, others abstract concepts such as follower counts or stock prices or their own hedonistic whims. The Linderbaums worshipped none of those. The Linderbaums worshiped only one thing: Halloween.
They worshiped with their lawn decorations (a hundred-grave styrofoam graveyard, each bearing a unique pun). They worshiped with their costumes (no one in the family ever wore the same costume twice). But most of all, they worshiped with their candy.
The Linderbaums had a dragon’s hoard of sweets. Some (the Ghost’s parents, for instance) called it excessive. But the Linderbaums didn’t care. They shared their candy, lavish and limitless supplies, into the wee hours of every Halloween night. The neighborhood rumor—long whispered, though never confirmed, yet never disproven, either—claimed they had catacombs beneath their house stuffed with treats. All the better to worship their holy day.
Considering all that, skipping the Linderbaum house was kind of out of the question. Especially on a thus-far bust of a Halloween night.
With matching resolute nods, Rumi and Josh Allen strode onward, toward salvation. The Ghost stood there with a hunched back, like a little old man hiding beneath a clean sheet.
“Guys?” he said pitifully. “Guys? You can’t leave me here alone. Not with a dangerous weirdo on the prowl!”
“Then come with us!” Rumi called.
The Ghost winced, shook his head, turned back, took a step, then turned back again and shook his head again, only this time shakier. “I can be brave,” he said to himself. “I can do this.” He ran after his friends.
The Ghost’s teeth were still chattering, and not just from the cold, although it had indeed gotten colder. The sun had long since gone to sleep, relieved by a silver half-crescent moon that looked sharp as a blade. Silence settled around them. The three-story, gothic-style house with its mansard roof loomed before them…yet something was wrong with it.
“Why…?” the Ghost struggled to keep his voice steady. “Why did the Linderbaums leave their front door open?”
Rumi and Josh Allen squinted into the gathering dark. Indeed, the front door stood ajar, like the half-lidded eye of a fresh corpse.
“Probably didn’t latch,” the Bills star quarterback asserted.
“Or,” Rumi whispered ominously, “someone…or something broke in.”
The Ghost let loose an involuntary squeak. Even Josh Allen, usually higher on the bravery scale, was chewing his thumbnail. Only Rumi summoned the pluck to stride forward.
“What are you doing?” the Ghost hissed. “We should call the proper authorities!”
“I’m kinda with Grady on this one,” Josh Allen admitted. “It’s awfully quiet. And the lights are off in there.”
“No normy names!” Rumi barked over her shoulder. When she reached the porch, she peered into the darkness. “I don’t see anything.”
“Cool,” the Ghost whispered. “Now let’s go before something sees us!”
A low groan echoed within the house.
Everyone froze. It was definitely not their imaginations, nor fear getting the best of them. It was a groan of pain, like an animal halfway to death.
“Hello?” called Josh Allen.
“Anyone alive in there?” asked Rumi, the first traces of fear twinging her tone.
The Ghost said nothing. He was too scared to speak.
Together, they entered the house.
It was no brighter inside than out, the air little warmer than the night. Something smelled faintly of rubber, and of meat. Raw meat.
“One sec.” Rumi turned on her phone’s flashlight. “That’s better.” Behind them, the front door creaked. Rumi swiveled her light toward the sound, just in time to illuminate the door slamming shut behind them.
The Ghost stopped breathing.
“Did you guys do that?” Rumi whispered. The Ghost definitely heard terror in her voice that time. It only scared him more.
A bump to their right. Rumi whipped her light around, but caught only what looked like, what couldn’t be, a massive, hairy leg.
“It’s the thing from the woods.” The Ghost was practically weeping. “It’s gonna munch us like…like spongecake.”
This time, Josh Allen did not protest, nor did Rumi. She shone her light around the room frantically, trying to relocate the creature. It was an average living room: Couch, table, recliner, TV, family pictures on the wall, rug on the floor, body on top of it—
They all screamed.
Blood. Blood everywhere. Rumi’s light revealed the remains of a teenage boy, ruined and mangled. His intestines spilled from a gaping stomach wound, glistening like a hundred lolling tongues. The blood beneath him was thick and congealed. His face was frozen in an expression of absolute terror.
The Ghost, Rumi, and Josh Allen screamed and screamed and screamed. And then Bigfoot leaped out at them.
At least, at a glance, it looked like Bigfoot. It made a sound at them, and they were all screaming too loudly to realize how familiar that sound was, how familiar the Bigfoot itself was. The sound was a rapid rolling of the tongue, one that nerds everywhere have been imitating since 1977. And the Bigfoot had stringy brown-and-black fur, along with a utility belt strapped across its shoulder and a futuristic crossbow in its hands.
The lights blazed on. Rumi and Josh Allen stopped screaming, while the Ghost kept right on going, his cry unbroken.
The corpse on the floor sat up and laughed. Bigfoot removed his head, revealing a balding, mustached, pasty human face, which was also laughing. And then a third person, a woman about the same age as the Bigfoot, appeared around the corner. She wore a Morticia Addams costume, and she too was laughing.
“Got ya!” the mutilated teenager exclaimed through shudders of laughter. “Happy Halloween!”
It was only then that the Ghost stopped screaming. (It was that, or pass out.) They had just been, after all, the victims of a Linderbaum Halloween prank.
The man in the Bigfoot costume—actually a Chewbacca costume—stepped forward. “We’re sorry, kids. We’re really leaning into the tricks this year. For the holy day, ya know?”
Morticia stepped forward next, lugging a vat of candy. “I hope we didn’t scare you too badly. Here. Take all the treats you like.” Inside were heaps of chocolate, hard candies, taffy, lollipops, candy corn, and, for some reason, lottery tickets.
Rumi grinned maniacally. “Worth it.” She dug in. Josh Allen shrugged and did the same.
The Ghost, however, didn’t join them. He was trying to breathe, trying to assure his body everything was fine. It was just a prank, just a joke. Scary? Yes. Cruel? Definitely. Uncalled for? Absolutely. But he’d survived it, he’d done it, and now it was over. They could collect some candy and head home, and maybe, after he’d told them about the prank, his parents wouldn’t even be mad at him for being out past eight.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Would you mind getting that, hon?” Morticia asked the Ghost. “I would, but…” She was still holding the vat, and Josh Allen and Rumi were practically feet-up inside it. Chewbacca and his mangled teenage son, meanwhile, were busy setting up for the next victim.
So, exhaling the last of his fear through his bedsheet, the Ghost strode to the door and opened it.
A tall trick-or-treater loomed in the doorway. Very tall. Impossibly tall, actually. As the Ghost craned his neck to see just how tall this newcomer was, he felt his upper vertebrae pop. Had to be eight feet, at least. But the Ghost understood in an instant.
“Stilts,” he guessed. “Am I right?”
The towering trick-or-treater didn’t answer. Instead, it stuck out a hand. A green hand. A green hand coated in a glistening substance that shimmered like a pond’s surface, despite the dim porch lighting.
That substance covered its entire body, which was green all over, and scaly all over, and yet, it somehow struck the Ghost as more avian than reptilian. Maybe that was due to the face, which had a long, sharp protuberance resembling a beak. Or the eyes, which were wide and black and glassy and unblinking.
And this eight-foot-tall-trick-or-treater, odd as it was, got even odder—because it wasn’t alone. The Ghost now noticed a metal disk beside the visitor, with a triangular display of three red lights in its center that spun in a counterclockwise rotation. He thought at first the disk was rolling on wheels, but no—it was hovering, just off the ground.
“Sweet costume,” said the Ghost. “But what’s with the floating Roomba?”
The trick-or-treater said nothing. It only curled its fingers three times in succession, the universal sign for, “Gimme.”
“I get it,” said the Ghost. “You’re another Linderbaum, aren’t you? Cousin? Aunt? NBA star?” The Ghost turned back to the family. “Nice try, guys.”
The Linderbaums stood frozen, as did Rumi and Josh Allen. Rumi had a Three Musketeers halfway to her mouth, where it hung limply in her fingers.
“Part two of the prank, huh?” The Ghost nodded to himself. “Just when you think it’s over, the tallest Linderbaum comes to the door dressed like a greasy chicken-lizard. Am I right?”
“Grady,” Rumi whispered. “That’s—”
“Okay, okay.” The Ghost turned back to the trick-or-treater and its Roomba. “You got us. I’m guessing rubber latex slathered in Vaseline or something? And I’m supposed to give you some candy now?” The Ghost offered a Tootsie Roll from his own bag. “Hurts my teeth, anyway. My dentist says I have weak enamel.”
“Thanks, pal,” rumbled the trick-or-treater. It had a voice that reminded the Ghost, somehow, of Wilford Brimley. It took the candy in surprisingly delicate fingers (and the Ghost suddenly realized it only had three of them, not the usual five), then dropped it—wrapper and all—into that beaklike maw. Munch, chew, swallow, grunt. Then it offered its three-fingered hand again.
“Yup,” said the Ghost, as he placed a second helping of candy into the trick-or-treater’s massive palm. “Definitely rubber latex.”
The bird-alien-thing made even quicker work of that one, then opened its hand for the third time. “Trick-or-treat,” it said. “Give me something good to eat.”
“Come on, man. You’re cleaning me out here.” Reluctantly, the Ghost dropped a third serving into the big green hand, which once again tossed the still-wrapped candy into the beak. This time, the subsequent munching was punctuated by a loud belch. And then, once again, the upturned palm appeared.
“Listen, Linder-whoever-you-are,” said the Ghost, his voice adopting a tone unfamiliar not only to his friends, but to he himself. He supposed his leftover adrenaline was making him edgier (so he made a mental note to practice mindfulness later). “I don’t need all this candy, but my friends do. This might be our last Halloween together, so it needs to be awesome, and they’ve been pretty disappointed by the haul as it is. So if you want more candy, you’ll have to move along to the next house.” Then, remembering his parents’ lifelong guidance, he added, “Please.”
The massive trick-or-treater blinked its black eyes at the Ghost. (Its lids closed sideways, not top-to-bottom.) It clicked its beak. Then it turned and spoke to its Roomba companion.
“This is why I love humans, Maxwell,” it said. “They’ve got guts.”
“Yes,” beeped the Roomba. “But you’ve got internal organs as well, Captain.”
“We’ll work on that one.” The alien swiveled its slimy head back to the Ghost. “Happy Halloween, pal. And thanks for the candy.” With that, the alien lumbered off into the darkness, its Roomba hovering behind. The Ghost never saw either of them again.
Sighing, he shut the door and turned back to the Linderbaums and his friends. “Is there a phase three to this prank, or can we get going? My parents are gonna have a fit.”
“That wasn’t us,” the Linderbaum son breathed.
“I don’t know who that was,” Chewbacca whispered.
“I don’t think it was a ‘who,’” Morticia Addams added.
“Yeah,” Josh Allen added. “I think that was a robot. And, like, an extramolestual.”
“That’s definitely not the word you’re looking for, Chris,” said Rumi. To the rest of them, she asked, “Did you see the way it slammed that candy? That must’ve been the thing in the woods behind my house. And Grady…you stood up to it. And more importantly, you saved our candy.”
“I did?” The Ghost gaped at the now-closed door, where the trick-or-treaters had stood mere moments before. “But I didn’t…I thought…” He gaped back at Rumi. “Hey. You used my normy name. And Chris’s.”
“Dude!” Josh Allen slapped the Ghost on the back. “It’s like you were finally brave…on accident!”
#
A Ghost, a KPop Demon Hunter, and a Josh Allen left the Linderbaum residence not long after. They didn’t really know what to say, nor did the family know what to say to them. It’s not everyday you meet a pair of travelers from another planet. In the end, the Linderbaums bid them a Blessed Halloween, and the kids departed.
The night had turned positively frigid, though none of them noticed. They trudged home in silence.
Finally, Rumi made an announcement: “My stomach hurts.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell anybody, but I think I peed my pants a little,” sighed Josh Allen. “You know. When we almost died.”
The Ghost blinked through the holes in his sheet. “We did?”
Josh Allen shrugged. “I mean, it tried eating McZee, and it would’ve eaten us, too, if you hadn’t scared it off.”
“We still don’t know what really happened to Mike McZee,” Rumi reasoned. “But yeah, that was totally not human. It was, like, actual-scary. And Halloween’s only fun because it’s fake-scary.”
Through all this talk, the Ghost was lost in introspection—until he heard that last part. “Wait. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” Rumi stopped and sighed. “This Halloween turned out kinda mid. Maybe it should be our last.”
“I am getting too mature for the scene,” Josh Allen mused.
“And we just saw a literal alien,” Rumi added. “That was not on my bingo card. Plus, next year is high school, and high school has parties. Maybe we’ll get invited to one.”
“Guys,” said the Ghost. “We have to go trick-or-treating. Forever. Until we die.”
“Huh?” asked Josh Allen.
“What?” asked Rumi. “You want to go trick-or-treating? You hate trick-or-treating.”
“No, I was afraid of it,” the Ghost corrected. “There’s a difference. And how long have we been doing it?”
“Five years with our parents, two years without,” Rumi answered, without hesitation.
“See? It’s been our tradition for literally forever.” The Ghost said. “We should keep it going. We should stick together.”
“Really?” asked Rumi. “Aren’t you afraid? Of, like, what the upperclassmen are going to say?”
The Ghost thought about that for a moment. He shrugged, and beneath his white sheet he was smiling, though no one else could see it. “Not anymore,” he said.
They came to their crossroads. Josh Allen lived on the street to the left, Rumi on the right, the Ghost straight ahead.
“So,” asked the Ghost. “Same time next year?”
“As long as you’re all there,” said Rumi.
“As long as the Bills aren’t playing,” said Josh Allen.
And that was how their Halloween ended. Until the next one.
Kyle A. Massa is a comedy author of some sort living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include eight books, along with several short stories, essays, and poems. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking cheap coffee.
This is a story from Kyle’s upcoming short fiction collection, Mother Night. Look for it and its companion, Father Day, everywhere books are sold on December 31. Click the links to preorder your digital copies directly from the author.
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So I was in my in-laws’ basement.
