7 days of Halloween Tales – Day 1

I was too old to trick-or-treat. So, I stayed home. I dressed as a witch with a hat and a black dress. The house was decorated with our Halloween staked ghost, jack-o-lanterns and parlor lights. I had large bowls of prebagged candy with Nerds, Kit Kats, Snickers, Butterfingers, Reese’s Cup and Laffy Taffy. The doorbell rang and I thought, “Here we go, first trick-or-treaters of the night.” I opened the door and that was when it got strange. I was catapulted into a room with 10 doors, and my surroundings were a dense gray fog. Surely, I am dreaming all the old ghost stories I was told when I was little.
I heard a young girl crying behind the first door. I hesitated but opened and there sat a girl in a red dress, black ribbons on her red hair and tears on her freckled faces. I asked, “What’s the matter, little girl?” She turned and held up a jack-o-lantern, and said, “Every Halloween, I carve this jack-o’-lantern and set it on the porch. But this year, no matter how many times I try to blow out the candle, the flame refuses to go out — and looking at it, its grin keeps changing.”
I lowered my head, and sure enough the jack-o-lanterns smile kept widening. Lucy pushed it close to my face, “You try!” I hesitated again, and blew, and Lucy disappeared. The Jack-o-lantern cackled. Then I was back in my house with a jack-o-lantern in my hands. The doorbell rang, and I opened, and it was Lucy, and she said, “There you are taking the Jack-o-lantern,” and skipping away.
I think I had it with this Lucy girl. I turned to go to my couch, and the doorbell rang, “Ah, I thought, finally trick-or-treaters!” I opened the door, and it was a girl in a white mask, she screamed, “I was at the thrift store, I found this cracked porcelain mask marked ‘Do Not Try On.’ I laughed, slipped it over my face — and heard a soft voice whisper, ‘Finally!’ I can’t get it off!” I went to close the door, but she wedged her foot, and the door rattled back open. I went to help take it off, and it slid off effortlessly. I looked at the white mask, she had no face underneath, and I looked down in the mask, and I saw her wrinkled face in terror! I dropped the mask and heard it break, but a wisp of moths dispersed from the floor and the girl was gone. I closed the door, tired of Halloween already.
I decided enough is enough. I took a piece of candy from my overflow bowl. I opened the Laffy Taffy banana, my favorite, and when I bit into the taffy a strange caramel taste came from the candy and on the insides of the candy wrapper, I saw flashes — the girl’s face, a scream, and a dark forest. Then I looked down and realized the wrapper had my name written on it. I was stunned. I don’t believe in ghosts, but this Halloween is haunted.
I reached to pick up my phone and turned my head to look at it. I then realized I was holding scarecrow’s hand and standing in a corn maze, my watch said it was ten o’clock. Then the clock struck midnight, “Can’t the clock tell time,” I thought, “It’s only minutes past sunset.” I went to move and realized I couldn’t walk because I was stuffed inside the scarecrows 6 feet off the ground.
That’s when five people approached wearing Boris Karloff Frankenstein masks asking me to make a blood promise, and they would get me down, if I didn’t agree they would, taking out a packet of matches, light me on fire. I closed my eyes and began to think, “This can’t be happening.” A new door appeared. “Agree” the five people screamed! I said, “No, you’re not real.” That’s when they threw their last match and I burst into fire. I was free, as a dozen tombstones with my birthdate on it began inching closer to me.
I wasn’t sure why, but I began to pull the sleeves of the tattered black witches dress I wore that I grabbed from the costume shop’s clearance rack when I put it on, it fit perfectly — and I began suddenly remembering lives I’d never lived, and I believed I was dehydrated at the time, but now a voice appeared in my mind, and that’s why I don’t celebrate Halloween anymore. So, I took off the cursed witch’s dress.
This year, there’ll be no decorations. No costumes. No candy. When I asked why I don’t celebrate Halloween anymore, I heard a pale whisper from beneath my witch’s hat, “Because the next time we come… we’ll never leave and you will never come back.”