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First Halloween Costume

By Halloween Alliance

It was around 8:30 that evening, hours after everyone else had gone home, when Susan finally finished up Mr. Fraser’s paperwork. It had been harder than normal for Susan to keep her mind on her work tonight, what with Don’t chilly reaction to her call letting him know she’d be late again tonight. To make matters worse, she couldn’t help but keep thinking back to the sight of the strange little girl. That image continued to haunt her, if only in the back of her mind, as she was locking up the office for the night.

Exiting the building, Susan noticed that the night was just as peculiarly dark as the night before, and that the only thing she could see clearly was her car, which she’d fortunately parked beside a light pole far across the parking lot. As she walked along the pavement, listening to the wind, she noticed that her car, now the only car on the lot, seemed to be casting an odd, irregularly-shaped shadow on the ground at its right side. A moment later, she was the extra bit of shadow move to the left, telling her that someone was there, hiding behind her car. She felt suddenly warm and dizzy, but continued to talk at the same rate toward the car. She was terrified of whomever was crouching behind the car, but somehow the thought of turning to run the other way&emdash;possibly encouraging the owner of the shadow to chase after her&emdash;seemed even worse. Besides, by now she’d walked so far from the building that he’d have a good chance of catching up with her, especially since she’d have to take the time to unlock the door before she could get back inside.

Discreetly as she could, she reached into her purse for the pepper spray that Don had made her carry, but before she even had time to wonder just how to use it, she could see she wasn’t going to need it. From behind the car stepped a small child in a brown, furry raccoon costume. The child looked straight at Susan, and she wondered just what he’d been doing behind her car. “Hey! Little boy?. . . Or little girl?. . . Sorry, but it’s hard to tell, with the mask and all. . . What’re you doing messing around that car? That’s my car!” she called out, but the little raccoon didn’t answer. She thought she heard a faint giggle come from under the mask, but before she could be sure, the child turned and ran away into the darkness. “Wait a minute!” yelled Susan, “I want to talk to you! Who are you? Hallowe’en isn’t until tomorrow!” But it was no use; the little raccoon was gone. She didn’t even hear the sound of small feet running off, or anything save the ever-louder whistling of the wind. Now she was close enough to the car to see the two flat tires on the side that had been hidden from view. There was no doubt about it; the kid had let the air out of two of her tires. Just a stupid Hallowe’en prank, she told herself, although it did seem awfully malicious, since now she’s have to walk home on such an unusually dark, windy night.

The walk home felt long and lonely, and although she wasn’t normally afraid of walking alone at night, tonight was different. The sky was so perfectly black that she was unable to see very far in any direction, the darkness seeming to trap what light there was and hold it abnormally close to its sources. Susan found this disconcerting, and so spent most of her journey looking down at her feet. Even so, she could barely see her shoes clearly except when she passed under a street lamp. Every time she did so, it seemed, there were a few dried leaves skittering across the sidewalk just in front of her. The wind continued to howl at her, seeming to grow slightly louder and colder with her every step.

The lighting was a tiny bit better in her neighborhood, and she began to look around at her surroundings more and more the hearer she got home. She noticed the cutout skulls, ghosts and witches taped to various windows, the cardboard tombstones (many of which had blown over) in several front yards, and especially the jack-o-lanterns that leered at her from numerous porches. She only noticed one that had a light in it, giving its toothy grin a bright yellow glow, and concluded that whoever carved that one must’ve put an electric light inside it, since the high wind would certainly have blown out a candle. Although Susan always liked to see carved pumpkins, she somehow didn’t like the way this one smiled at her, and quickened her step to get out of what would have been its range of vision, had it been alive. For a split second, she thought it would be satisfying to run up onto that porch and smash that pumpkin on the sidewalk below, just to wipe that smug grin off its face. Just as quickly, though, she realized that it probably belonged to someone who really loved the season, and she knew she could never give someone a bad Hallowe’en memory by committing such a hateful and senseless act.

The last thought to cross Susan’s mind before she fell asleep that night was actually a somewhat cheerful one. As she pondered the unlikely sight of the giant raccoon vandalizing her car, it occurred to her that if children still wear the same kind of Hallowe’en costumes that she did as a child, then maybe she was still sufficiently youthful to be thought of as a big kid herself.

Susan slept fitfully that night, and Hallowe’en morning found her in a jittery mood. At breakfast she told Don about the nightmares she’s had all night, in which grotesque, grinning jack-o-lanterns would roll out of the darkness at her feet, look her in the eye and laugh out loud for a few seconds, and then shrivel up and decay into piles of gooey mush right before her eyes. Don really wasn’t interested in his wife’s nightmares, but still did his best&emdash;however briefly&emdash;to convince her that they were perfectly normal reactions to her unpleasant experience that evening. Their discussion was a short one which, as always, ended with them both rushing off to work.

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