Trick or Treat
There’s too much blood.
It streams down my face and splats on my sneakers, and my heart is pounding in my chest.
I didn’t want this. Every Halloween the plan is the same. We go to Dom’s House of Horrors party and, while our classmates drink and dance, we sneak into the woods for the ritual. But this year it’s ruined before we’ve even left the house.
A pool of red spreads across the bathroom tiles, staining the baseboard, and my best friend Haran says, “Sorry.”
But I’m barely listening. I’m too busy scrubbing my face until it stings.
“You look fine, Sam. Honest.”
“I said subtle,” I reply. “You made me look like Carrie!”
“Loose lid,” Haran says, pointing at the bottle of fake blood leaking over the bath mat.
I stare at my reflection. My costume is soaked pink, like it’s been washed in spaghetti sauce, my hair stuck in red clumps, my face rubbed raw.
“You’re still going though?” Haran asks, and I nod and say, “Give me your costume.”
“What? No.”
“This is your fault.”
“So go as Overkill,” he says. “Go as Disappointment.”
I’ve never hit him but I’m this close to changing that.
Haran grins and says, “Go as Panic … or Desperation.” He sees my expression and says “Sorry” again, meaning it now.
I don’t really want his outfit. It’s store-bought whereas I like to make my own.
“Wait,” I say. “I have an idea.” And two minutes later we’re next door, explaining all the blood to Chloe Atwood.
When we were kids, Chloe and I played together while our moms drank tea. We’d race up and down the hill on the corner and she’d beat me every time; then we’d practice kickups in the street until sunset. Back then, it didn’t matter that she was a year younger. Now, with different friends and different lives, we mostly smile and wave from separate driveways.
At school, she’s one of those quiet, studious kids clustered around the tables in the study center. She’s smart, which means, fingers crossed, she can help.
“Aren’t you a bit old for trick-or-treating?” Chloe asks.
I know I’m blushing when I say, “Do you have anything … my size?”
She raises her eyebrows. “This is unexpected. I’m honored. Come in.”
In Chloe’s room, watching her spread stuff over the bed, I ask where she’s going tonight and she says, “Nowhere.”
She’s dressed all in black, and I assumed it was the start of a costume. Chloe sees my confusion and says, “I had rehearsals after school.”
Black leggings and tops are the school dance team’s unofficial uniform. But it still seems weird, that she isn’t getting ready for tonight.
“How come you’re staying home?” I ask, and Chloe sighs and says, “My mom hates Halloween, you know that. She makes us sit with the lights off, so people think we’re out.”
“You want to come with us?” Haran asks, and I give him a look he ignores.
Chloe pulls a face but doesn’t answer. She takes the bottle of blood from Haran and busies herself in the corner for a minute. Then she turns back.
“Try this,” she says, dumping an armful of clothes into my arms. I change in her bathroom, then stare at the result, wondering if it’s enough.
I’m wearing gray shorts, tights covered in tiny skulls, black boots with metal toe caps, and a white T-shirt with SCARED OF LIFE, TIRED OF DEATH written with the last of my fake blood.
It’s not what I’d planned, but it’s something.
Through the door, Chloe shouts, “Show us,” so I open it, and she grins and says, “Perfect.”
Haran nods, then turns to Chloe and says, “So, you gonna come?”
She shakes her head and asks who will be there.
“Everyone,” I say.
“I don’t have a costume.”
“It’s not compulsory.”
“Says the guy who turned up on my doorstep asking for one. And what’s he dressed as?” she asks, giving Haran a once-over.
Haran spreads his arms, unnaturally long in his outfit, and says, “I’m Slenderman.”
“Well, it’s fucking creepy.”
Haran takes her hand in his spindly fingers, bows, and says, “Chloe … would you like to come to a party with us?”
She sighs, stares at the ceiling, then says, “All right. But it better not be lame.”
* * *
We drive toward the trees, their branches pointing in all directions but leading us to only one.
The woods loom over the far end of town, ominous in the gloom. If you want to leave Hayschurch, drive the other way and hope that, unlike most, nothing brings you back.
We’ve been here lots of times, but it always feels like we arrive by accident, as if country roads are pieces of string juggled and dropped by the wind.
I know just one person who lives like this, wrapped in skinny lanes and creaking trees.
When my headlights merge with the fog, it reminds me of the horror movies Dad let me watch when I was little, while Mom was out with her friends. I remember that mixture of fear and fascination; of being excited that my father was sharing a moment with me but knowing, deep down, that it was wrong.
“What’s this place like?” Chloe asks, and I say, “Imagine a haunted house.”
“Okay.”
“It’s like that. But Dom lives there.”
“Dom Simmons?”
“The one and only.”
Chloe frowns and says, “I should have stayed at home. That guy is the worst.”
“He’s okay when you get to know him,” I say weakly. Then add, “He’s one of my oldest friends.” As if that’s an explanation.
When we arrive, empty cars line the shoulder that leads to Dom’s house and I wish we’d got here sooner.
As if he can read my mind, Haran shrugs and says, “Accidents happen.” Then he strides confidently toward the open front door as dance music and screams spill into the night.
I hold back for a moment, the house a gray mass above us, and Chloe sighs.
“Finally, I get to attend one of Dom Simmons’s famous Halloween parties,” she says. “I can tell the other losers what the fuss is about.”
“You’re not a loser.”
Chloe grins and says, “That depends who you ask.”
I poke my head in the living room, nod some hellos, then go to the dining room, where a vast wooden table stretches along the back wall, covered with drinks and snacks and Halloween decorations.
Dom has gone all out this time—the familiar decor of previous years surrounded by even more new purchases. It probably cost the same as most people’s yearly food budget, but the Simmons family aren’t most people.
“Well?” I ask, ducking under a massive cobweb, and Chloe shrugs and says, “It’s not terrible.”
“It’s the best night of the year!” Haran shouts.
We fight through the crowd to get some drinks, sticky punch in red plastic cups, then head to the kitchen, where someone in a yeti costume is DJ’ing. Their decks cover the center island and I wonder if Dom paid for this as well. We used to spend days arranging playlists for these parties. Now even that’s gone to another level.
There are lots of Deadpools and Harley Quinns and a who’s-who of movie killers.
Three zombies slither past in a groaning conga line while Pennywise and Scarlet Witch dry-hump against the dishwasher.
“Classy,” Chloe says, and I wonder if bringing her was a bad idea.
Tonight—not the party, but the other thing—is special to us. We do something no one else knows about. As much as I like her, Chloe isn’t part of that. I hadn’t thought that she probably doesn’t know anyone else here. What if we can’t shake her off?
I stare around, at all the strangers I’m unsure about underneath their masks and their makeup, all the older people and the ones from other schools. I know why they’re here, but it still feels disconcerting.
The kids from Hayschurch Academy are the worst. It’s not a private school but it acts like it is. The students are all given a smirk on their first day that they wear even on weekends.
“I’m going to find Dom,” I say, nudging my way toward the stairs. The first room is locked and I don’t try the second. In the third, everyone is watching someone else play the new Resident Evil.
The toilet is occupied, at least three voices inside.
I head back downstairs and rejoin Chloe and Haran. In the hall, someone spins me around and, before I can focus, Dom is shouting, “I thought you were going to be … whatever you said.”
“The Zeitgeist,” I mumble.
“What’s this then?” he asks, looking me up and down.
He smiles but I can see he’s not happy.
Dom tells everyone what he’ll be wearing three months early to avoid clashes. His costume is nothing like mine, but I went off script and he doesn’t like that.
Copyright © 2023 by Vincent Ralph
