He was not sure whether it was Halloween or not. According to his haphazard calculations, it was, but he didn’t really care anyway. He had been napping on and off all day, but they were short cat naps. Long naps were conducive to dreams, and dreams terrified him these days. He had awakened to the slowly fading light of late afternoon, and he was hungry. Food was getting harder to come by, and he found himself traveling further out to find any kind of sustenance that he could get his hands on. When the trouble came, he was soft around the middle. One might say, pudgy. At least Gale had said so, and then she had gone off on one of her lectures about how he needed to get back to the gym, eat better. It used to get on his nerves, and make him short-tempered, but now, he would love to hear her lecture him just one more time. Besides, he realized upon reflection that she just wanted him around longer because, well … she loved him.
She would be proud of him now. Since she was gone and the trouble began, he’d become skinny. He was of average intelligence but not stupid, and right away he began to ration his food and water and store up what would keep. He missed her so badly. He lay awake some nights and stared at the ceiling and the memories of their years together played back in his mind like a movie. He sometimes became convinced that she was still there, then reality flooded in and the rest of the night, he sobbed. He crossed the room, picked up a framed photograph of Gale, and the longing intensified: her raven black hair, that shined when the sun hit it just right, and those emerald, green eyes. She was always stunning, and he often caught other men looking at her when they were out and about. He would just look back as if to say, “She is mine, pal. Eat your heart out.” Only, now she wasn’t his anymore.
He entered the kitchen and grabbed a piece of stale Italian bread, the last his friend Nannini used to bake for his friends and co-workers. It was stale, hard, but it would sustain life, and he cared little for his life anymore. He washed it down with a bottle of tepid water. Through the cracks in the boarded-up windows, he could see that the light was fading. He had better get a move on before the things made their appearance, these grotesque monsters. Their faces were too white, their lips red beyond what was natural, and those teeth.
He got a shutter and a thrill each time he thought about his late-day walk. They had come close before, but he had beaten them every time. He was not even that careful. Perhaps, he had a death wish, but he carried a pistol just in case. It would do no good against these things, but at least he would not have to worry about becoming one of them.
He went to the closet and grabbed a light jacket, slipped his arms in, sat down in the ratty chair, and slipped on a good, slightly used pair. With everything abandoned, he had gone to a sporting good store earlier and took a five fingered discount in the sneaker department. There were many more where this came from. He stood up, zipped up his jacket, and headed for the front door. He carefully pried a couple of nails out of a cross piece of lumber, laid the boards on the floor, opened the door, and stepped out on the porch.
He immediately got a chill. It was colder than he thought, and the neighborhood was empty, as usual, but in some way, it seemed bleaker and more lonesome than ever. The wind blew, and he zipped up his jacket as a chill gave him goosebumps. He started down the slate path that led to the driveway and noticed the quiet stillness. In the west, he could see a brilliant red, yellow, orange, and purple-streaked late afternoon sky, but the sun was dipping fast. It seemed to him that even the sun could not wait to get down and be hidden from view, away from these unholy monsters. Anyway, he had best move and fast. He felt a small voice of sanity in his head, questioning him as to why this was necessary, but he ignored it, and it went away.
He began his walk.
At the end of the driveway, he took a left and started around the block. The houses were medium-to-large houses, decades old, with all types of architecture. The streets were lined with large oaks, some massive. The lawns and shrubs used to be neat and picturesque, but since the trouble, they were weed-choked and unkempt. Cars were still in some driveways. He heard no birds, smelled no food cooking on grills, heard no sounds of children playing, just the wind and a loud, awful silence. He picked up the pace. He had no way to tell time, but he knew tonight it would be close.
He passed his friend Scott’s place. Scott was a talented singer who often had he and Gale over, where he would fire up the grill, but he tried not to dwell on such things. Those days were gone. He had passed three houses and was reaching the top of a hill when he saw the clock tower from the local college looming overhead. The bells used to chime, and it made him think of the bells of Notre Dame, a movie he and Nannini had discussed before. Boy, Nannini sure enjoyed his old movies.
He was so deep in thought that he was not even sure if he thought that or said it aloud. He finally reached the end of the block. Charlotte Avenue, usually teeming with cars, empty. He stared at the massive Withers building, stone with four large spires reaching into the sky, like something from an old, gothic horror film. Well, how appropriate. As he looked up at the building, the wind picked up. He actually saw it get just a shade darker, like a dimmer switch. When he was a kid, he used to stop what he was doing when he was playing outside and just stand and look and he could swear you could see it get darker. If it was not Halloween, it certainly should be the way the leaves seemed loud, as they skittered across the pavement with a clawing sound, as if they did not want to go anywhere but were forced to yield to the power of the wind. The sky grew brighter in the west, while it grew a bit darker where he stood.
Had he been a kid again, out trick or treating with his friends, this would have been the perfect All Hallows Eve, but now it just added to the nightmare that he lived with every day. He felt his first pang of fear, and then he walked, picking up the pace. He was not sure if the fear was fear of them or fear of losing to them. It was a short distance to the stop sign, and he was halfway around his normal track. He took a right and smiled to himself. He would beat them again. To his left was Shaw’s house. The guy was hilarious and had a quirky sense of humor, and he could not help but wonder how that humor would be applied to this Godless situation. He and his friends had made short films together, and a few of them were horror movies. How ironic, that he was trapped in a real one. If only they had known. As he walked, he laughed a bit. Tina, his first, best friend at work and a fan of all things dark, must have had some sense of enjoyment amidst all the horror. Now there was irony: Tina, taken down by these things, in her own real-life horror film. Well, she had to have gone out in the best way possible for her.
He used to laugh at Gale and call her a chicken. She hated scary movies, and Halloween was not her favorite time of year by any stretch of the imagination. The only way he ever got to see scary movies was when he stayed up after she had gone to bed and watched by himself. The few times he had watched with her, she held his hand and dug her nails into his palm until she nearly drew blood. Once again, a flood of emotion came over him: a mixture of longing, regret, and an ache in the pit of his stomach.
He had waited on her the night the trouble began, but she had never come home. He had gone out on his own to her work, found her abandoned car, but he never saw her again after that. In fact, he barely got home that night himself. He spent that night in a cellar, hugging his knees, and trying to process a world gone insane. He went out every day looking for her after that. He never knew exactly where he was looking; he was just looking. Deep down, he knew what had become of her, but he pushed it out of his mind. He could not bear to think of or see her that way.
He finally reached the home stretch, the last stop sign. It got darker, the wind became stronger, the air grew colder, the leaves skittered louder, and the whispers started. Very faint at first, he had heard them before. Usually though, he was much closer to home. He was in trouble, and he knew it.
He broke into a jog, but his foot caught the uneven sidewalk pavement, and he fell facedown. The gun slid off into the gathering dark. He had caught himself with his hands, but now he was bleeding. This would only drive them into a greater frenzy. He had no time to find the gun, so he got up and started to jog again. He hated the whispers; they got in your head. It was gibberish, words you could not make out, and lots of it. Yet, these whispers were hypnotic, telling you stop, wait, join them, and as it got darker, they got louder. He now had one singular thought: get home, and so he ran.
It was almost full dark now, and fog had appeared out of nowhere. It always did when these things came out. He saw his house and made a bee line for the driveway. As he approached, he saw the first one. At the corner of the house, seemingly floating out of the fog, was a man, white-faced, lips, much too red. It was smiling, talking to him without talking. It looked deranged. Behind it, a woman, same grotesque look, same wicked grin. They were appearing from all around the house. They were gaining strength by the moment, but he was fast these days, and he made for the door. As he fled up the walkway, he caught a glimpse of the familiar, but no, it cannot be. Snow white hands reached out of the mist and reached for him.
“Stop, wait, join us.”
“Not tonight.” His hands reached the door handle and jerked it open at the last minute. The whispers had now evolved into full blown shrieks of anger and frustration. The cries could not be described and could only be explained as the cries of something escaped from Hell. He hurled himself through the door and crashed onto the floor. He reached for the wood, and the hammer.
He had done it; he had beaten them again. He began to laugh maniacally from pure adrenaline, fear, and relief, but as he started to hammer the nails back into the door frame, a force far too strong for him to resist blew the door open, and he dropped the hammer and board and was thrown backward. He fell back against the wall.
She stood there in the moonlit doorway, her cruel mouth smiling with evil anticipation: raven hair, emerald eyes, porcelain skin, and too red lips. Then she began to glide towards him …
And he joined her at last.
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