A Halloween story -" Until Stan comes along "

Is it that time again, I thought to myself? There is a chill in the air and leaves are changing color. Tomorrow the trick-or-treaters will come to our door.

This year seems a little more thought provoking as the wind makes the leaves dance and the branches sway. I’m not as young as I used to be. Living in a small town, everything is nearby and it is so easy to get where I need to go. People are always smiling and sharing stories. However, it seems to have gotten quiet around here since the damaging tornado this summer. People just don’t seem to come over much anymore. My phone seems to have just stopped ringing. Things will change though it’s the holidays. When people are reminded to connect with those they love. Oh, how I treasure the holidays.

I wish people weren’t so busy all the time. My son and his family very seldom come to the house anymore. They always seem to be on a schedule, and very preoccupied when they stop by. It is like they have somewhere else to be. None the less my son always takes care of the things I am unable to do myself.

When he was a young boy he was always mindful of the things that were dangerous for me to do. He would go to great lengths to keep me off the step ladder. He would say, “Mom let me do that for you.” as he would climb up and knock the spider webs from the ceiling fan. I guess now that my dearly departed husband, Stan, is gone he knows when it needs to be taken care of. Ever mindful of my needs, I really cherish him for all that he does.

My grandson is truly the apple of my eye. He reminds me of his father in so many ways. Whenever he comes to visit he always has a smile. He always brings something he has for show and tell. We sit on the love seat and share smiles and giggles until he gets the wiggles and climbs down to get a juice box or snack from the kitchen.

There was a time my son used to ask me to sell the house and move in with his family. I always appreciated it, but how would they have their privacy with me around. I guess after a while he didn’t want to pester me about it, so he quit asking. This only comes to mind because of the occasional faces in the window. It is unnerving as this younger generation feels it is ok to peer into an old ladies home. It only happens on occasion, and seldom is it the same person. However, this is my home, and I don’t appreciate the intrusions on my personal space.

Oh dear, they left me. I wanted to thank Charles for his help, but I was so deep in thought I didn’t get an opportunity to say goodbye. I am glad that he put a timer on the lights maybe it will keep unwelcome peeping toms away. Being alone all the time, I don’t want to worry about intruders. This home is gently loved like I am, and it is beginning to have its own creaks and moans.

Oh thank goodness Charles left a few bags of Halloween candies for the trick r’ treaters. I won’t have to pick up any candy at the store for Halloween.
I suppose I will do a little more reading before I go to bed. What’s this, my book has been closed again? I nearly forgot what page I am on. Madeline must have closed my book. She is a dear girl, but I wish as my daughter in law she wouldn’t do that. I am sure it’s to keep Sammy from coloring on, or tearing the pages. I need to remember to put my book up so that won’t happen anymore.

It is wonderful to read stories that take me back to moments in time no one seems to remember anymore. Oh how I long for those days, a time when men were men, and it was wonderful to be a lady. Where was I, oh yes page 37. The 1947 Chevy and a Cracker Jack box…

How long have I been reading? My goodness it is so late. I have lost track of time.
Well, there’s nothing I need to do in the morning, so I… What was that noise? It must be the wind. I don’t see anything. I will leave the lights on all over the house. I will check the tree branches in the morning. If there is a branch that needs cut down Charles will take care of it. I will see him tomorrow when he brings Sammy over to trick or treat and help me hand out candies. Off to bed I go.

Oh my, I must have been frightfully tired. It is already mid day. I should check the tree where the noise came from. Maybe there is a branch too close to the window. What is this? Why are there footprints in my flower bed? Who was here? I better go call Charles now.

The phone doesn’t have a dial tone… what has happened? I am frightened now. What am I going to do? It doesn’t look like anyone is around now. I’ve got to regain my composure, watch and wait. I’ll just turn on the radio and read more of my book. Charles will fix everything.

Who’s there? Charles is that you? I walked into the foyer to find a little Sammy dressed like a pirate. His eye patch is over his forehead and his sword is strapped to his waist. His bandana covers what little hair he has and he looks ready to gather his bounty. “Oh you are a sight for sore eyes”, I said. Madeline followed close behind dressed as a fair maiden. “Oh my, you all look wonderful. Where’s Charles?” I asked. Madeline looked at Sammy as he leaned toward the doorway and said, “ Daddy will be inside in a moment ” Madeline said. “I am so glad you all are here. I believe there has been someone lurking around outside. I think they almost broke in last night. Come over to the window.” Just as I was showing Madeline where I suspected the trespassers were to be lurking about, Charles popped up in the window startling both of us. Then he called for Madeline to come outside.

Sammy was inside so I stayed with him. I could over hear Charles and Madeline’s conversation.

“Ever since mom passed away, I have worried about this home being robbed or broken into. You know honey we should make a decision about selling or moving in here. I think there are homeless people who are lurking about mom’s home. It would break her heart if she were here.”

I fell to my knees pulling the drapery off the window. “Dead! Who’s dead? How? When did I die?” I stammered. Hearing the noise they ran into the house thinking something had happened to Sammy.

There he stood looking at me. I stood and he joined me. We went to sit on the love seat.
He can see me; why can’t they? “Son, I am here!” Charles turned his head, looking at Madeline he asked, “Did you hear something? What is that…I thought I heard a woman’s voice?” Charles returned with, “Did you turn on the music?” “NO!” she replied.

Looking around the room, Madeline noticed my book. “Did you open your mom’s book?” she said, tapping Charles on the shoulder “NO! I didn’t.” Worried, she continued,
“What is going on here? Charles didn’t you turn out the lights last night and set the timer?” They both turned a pale shade of white. They moved about the house looking in all the rooms. Madeline’s voice rang from upstairs, “Charles the bed is turned down, but there isn’t any sign of anyone breaking in!”

Where is Sammy? What is he doing? They both reached the side of the love seat. Sammy pointed in my direction, he said boldly, “Grand ma!” Shocked, Charles a believer said “Mom are you there? Move something... make a noise!” Feeling a little bit ridiculous, and still a bit confused I turned off the music. They both sat where they had been just standing. “Mom, can you do that again?” I turned on the music. Eventually, it became a code. Soon their questions were answered.

Charles gained composure, and explained the freak accident that took my life. I still am not sure why I didn’t pass on. However, I know now that Halloween night is when I am the strongest. At times they can almost see me. Charles refers to that Halloween night as the night my mom came to live with me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m delighted to stay here until Stan comes to get me.

A Haloween story - Until Stan comes along."
Alisa Lucas -Aka. Max LucasCopyright © 2008

THE HALLOW CAT

The car screeched to a halt.

The driver peered down the hood of the car to see a black cat sitting in the beam of the headlights, giving itself a bath. It sat long enough for the driver to get really annoyed, then walked away.

The cat crawled under a fence, through a yard, across another street, through another yard and over a fence into the woods. It continued another fifty in, where it joined many more black cats.

An old tom sat on a log in front of the group. The right ear was missing. Bald patches from old scars peppered his fur and his tail bent oddly. One of his front teeth was missing, as well as his right eye. "Tomorrow is Halloween. We have a duty to frighten and unnerve every human we can. However, be wary. There are many who would harm you because of your black fur."

A queen joined him on the log. She was missing her left eye, but was otherwise unscathed. "Each kitten is to team up with an older cat, who will show them the ropes."

When the kittens all had their partners, the queen continued, "Spread yourselves throughout the city. We will meet here again at the dawn of the first of
November."

"We will sing the Hallow Cat before we depart," said the old tom.

Hundreds of feline voices rose and rode the wind.

"On this night of a thousand fears,
Humans try to hide their tears.
Little do they realize,
Where the only true fear lies.
For they are left desolate,
On this night of the Hallow Cat."

A human paused to listen to the caterwalling coming from the trees, shuddered, and quickly went inside.

-----

Lady and Folgar sat on a fence, watching. Occasionally, Folgar's tail twitched. Lady, a six month old kitten, moved her head up and down and side to side, trying to spot a human.

"Stop fidgeting," said Folgar. "You're not going to unnerve anyone with all that movement."

"Unnerve who? I don't see anyone."

"Look in the window. There is a human watching us."

"Where? Where?" In her eagerness, Lady lost her balance and fell off the fence.

Folgar ignored her and continued to sit like a statue.

Lady climbed back up, peered in the window and mewed. "I see it! Is it unnerved yet?"

"Sit very still and stare. The only movement should be the occasional twitch of your tail."

The two black cats stared at the human for several hours. When the human, unnerved, refused to look at the cats again, they left.

-----

Jaguar sat on a branch. A human walked underneath. Jaguar landed on his head, meowed, ffftted, scratched and left.

-----

Katrina followed the disguised children to a door. She sat in the middle of the sidewalk as they rang the bell. When the door opened, the light hit her eyes. The children, happy with their gain, turned and screamed at the sight of her glowing eyes.

-----

Domino waited outside a corner shop. The door opened. He rubbed up against a leg. The heavily laden lady, unable to see him through her purchases, screamed and fell. Domino waited until she saw him before running off.

-----

George, a crow in his mouth, and Felix, a rat in his, placed their catches on a doormat. Felix hid behind a hay bale, while George climbed the scarecrow standing by the door. George pressed the doorbell with his paw and jumped down to hide with Felix.

A middle-aged woman opened the door with a bowl of candy. Her smile faded. She looked down and screamed.

George and Felix ran across her path and off the porch.

-----

Betty ran. Five human boys were chasing her. One carried a bag, another a stick. All wore thick gloves. They shouted at each other and her. Betty turned down an alley. They followed.

She crawled under a dumpster. The stick followed. She growled, hissed and batted at it.

The sound of many fierce growls entered the alley. Other cats who had seen her running by had come to her rescue. The boys were covered in a dozen black cats, each. Betty joined the fray. The boys ran. The cats dropped off them and continued their hauntings.

-----

A group of humans walked through the graveyard. A boy boasted of his bravery, while the girls cringed. A boy hid behind a tombstone waiting to scare the group.

Ghost dipped his paws in a puddle with frost forming around it. He hobbled on three legs to the hiding boy and placed his cold wet paw on his exposed ankle. The boy yelled, jumped up and ran out of the cemetery.

The boaster saw him leave and ran after him. The girls followed, screaming.

Ghost sat on the tombstone and purred.

-----

Pre-dawn brought the last black cats to the woods.

The old tom sat again on the log. One at a time, other cats would join him and tell their tales of Halloween Night. They all laughed heartily at the easiness of scaring the humans.

As the sun broke the horizon, the cats left one by one to return to their homes. The song a dwindling hush on the fresh morning breeze...

"...For they are left desolate,
On this night of the Hallow Cat."



Elizabeth Williamson Copyright © 2008

The Seed: A Halloween Tale

I've made a few minor changes. Hope it works.


The Seed

Every day of Summer Vacation Marc and Dale had walked past Old Lady Croswell’s run-down house and every day she followed them with her “evil eye”, as Dale called it. Marc once had the audacity to wave timidly and say, “Hello Ms. Croswell,” only to see her jerk forward in her rocking chair, as if to jump up and chase after them. He was only slightly comforted when she sat down again, but was uneasy when he saw that she was still leaning forward, eying them critically, her hands clenched the arms of the rocker, her elbows hovered above the arm rests. She looked like a panther, prepared to spring at them if they so much as smiled in her direction. When they reached the end of the block they laughed at the old woman, though she scared Marc more than he liked to admit.

That night Dale arrived at Marc’s front door with a sleeping bag, snacks and comics under his arm. Marc had arranged with their parents to have Dale spend the night camping in Marc’s backyard. As the moon rose high in the sky, they snuck, armed with flashlights, a spade, and a rope, over to Ms. Croswell’s yard and stole a seed from her ‘prize-winning’ garden. It wasn’t until they got back to Marc’s house that they inspected it for the first time.
“Now I know she’s a witch.” Dale said, a look of repulsion on his face.
Marc grimaced. The seed was nearly the size of a walnut, and was a sickly green color with yellowish spots that looked like speckled viper’s eyes. Five knobby bumps stuck out at weird angles, and Marc swore that it throbbed, very slightly, as he held it.
Dale suggested they bury it, “to hide the evidence”. Marc chose a back corner of the yard below a gnarly sycamore tree as the spot. He could see the spot from his bedroom window. He knew he’d be able to keep an eye on it from his bedroom, and see if it grew.

After several days of watching they noticed that a single root-like protrusion stuck up from the ground. It looked dead and gray, instead of green and alive. Marc said it looked creepy, Dale agreed. But dead or not, it continued to get bigger, or at least thicker with thin wiry gray twigs sticking from it. Then the strangest thing of all happened; the ground below it began to bulge. Within days the bulge was nearly the size of a small man, and Marc swore that it was throbbing, ever so slightly, as if it were breathing.

Both boys noticed something odd about Ms. Croswell too. Ever since they’d stolen the seed; instead of glowering at them as they went past, she watched them with a strange satisfied expression on her face, as if she knew something they didn’t know. They crossed the street whenever they had to pass her house. They could have sworn that they heard her cackle carried on the breeze after they’d passed.

The night seemed to be becoming chillier, or maybe it was Marc’s conscience pricking him about the theft. It didn’t seem to bother Dale, but he told Marc that he wasn’t sleeping well lately. It was as if he was being watched at night while he was sleeping. Marc had had the same feeling; he shuddered as he reflected on the previous night.

As Marc climbed into bed he heard a tap, so faint, he hardly heard it at all in the still of the darkened room. Was it a mouse scurrying on the rug? Then again, so quiet, the sound barely audible. What was it? There, at the window? Then tap, tap tap, louder this time. Then Bang! Bang! The glass of his window shuddered under the blows. Marc snapped toward the window. A hideous creature its gray almost human face grimaced at him through the darkness. It was covered head to toe with short and long twigs and moss. It banged several more times, then long crooked fingers, wickedly sharp, scratched at the base of the window, trying to get under the window pane, to lift it; to get in, to get him.

Marc darted for the door, and stifled a scream as he banged his shin on the corner of his bed frame. He leapt up, and hobbled through the house trying vainly to locate his parents. At each window he passed the monster was already there, scratching and banging at the window, watching him, and madly attempting to get in. He ran into the living room where his mother and father sat looking stunned, a book in each of their laps. He spat out the whole story, even the details of the theft of Old Lady Croswell’s repulsive seed and the thing that had grown from it. Several attempts, by each of them, to see anything in the yard, bore no evidence of a ‘monster’, and they sat on the couch together.

His parents didn’t believe that Ms. Croswell was a witch, or that her seed had come to life; they did recommend a solution to Marc’s ‘agitation’. They told him that in the morning he could dig up the plant and take it back to Ms. Croswell, and apologize. In spite of his protests his parents insisted that both he and Dale would do exactly that.

Marc didn’t see the plant at the window anymore that night, but thought he heard the sound of branches scratch at the side of the house. Around 2 a.m. Marc finally fell asleep, but rested badly. His dreams shadowed by gnarly trees that tried to get through his window.

At 6 a.m. Marc called Dale. They discussed the night’s events with nearly the same tale to tell. Dale too had seen the thing in the window and confessed all to his parents. Within 20 minutes Dale was out in the yard with Marc looking at the mound and the dead looking stem. By all appearances, the creature wasn’t able to come out of the ground during daylight hours, but hibernated during the daylight hours. Hoping that their theory was accurate, they devised a plan. Reluctantly, Marc tied a rope securely to the topmost part of the plant, and at Marc’s signal, Dale pulled with all his strength on the rope. There was a loud crack and eight inches of the plant broke away, dangling from the length of rope. An unearthly muffled groan rumbled up from the mound. Marc dropped the rope he’d intended to tie the thing up with, and both boys screamed and scrambled backward simultaneously. The mound of earth moved just below the grass, as if something were crawling around beneath a rug. It raced toward the fence and burrowed below it in the direction of Ms. Croswell’s place.

It was nearly 7:30 before the boys got the nerve to start off in the direction of Ms. Croswell’s, and not without some encouragement from Marc’s dad. A broken fragment of branch from the creatures back dangled from between Marc’s index finger and thumb, dripping greenish ooze. As he approached Ms. Croswell’s front porch they noticed that Ms. Croswell herself was bent over a mound of grass in her yard, speaking softly and running her hands over it in long smooth strokes. She looked up at the boys, who froze mid-step; her steely gaze met their terrified ones. She stood up, which for all of her four feet, nine inches, might as well have been ten. As she strode ponderously over to the base of the stairs, she gave them a contemptuous glare. The boys took an involuntary step backward. Her gaze moved to the oozing limb in Marc’s hand. “I believe that belongs to me.”
“Yes,” Marc stammered, and extended the plant out to her. Ms. Croswell snatched the branch out of his grasp, and Marc pulled his hand back. Dale twitched.
“We’re sorry.” The boys said together. Then without another word, the boys ran all the way back to Marc’s house before pausing to catch their breath.

Dale was the first to see the package on the steps of Marc’s porch, he pointed at it wordlessly. It was small and wrapped in glistening purple paper, a black silk ribbon tied neatly into a perfect bow on top of it. A folded piece of parchment paper was tucked neatly under the ribbon.
Marc picked up the note and unfolded it, reading it aloud as Dale read over his shoulder. “A reward for your integrity. Use them wisely.” It was unsigned. Marc tugged at the ribbon and the lid slid off easily without unwrapping it. Inside the tiny box, resting in a bed of dark purple silk, were two almond-sized cream-colored seeds.


The Seed
by Ken Chandler
Copyright © 2008

TOPIC: A Halloween Tale

In honor of "All Hallows Eve" coming, I propose that we all write a story for Halloween.
It can be:
• A scary Halloween tale
• A Ghost Story
• An Urban Myth
• Or a Mystery

Happy Halloween everyone!
(For inspiration, here's Monster Mash and Vincent Price's sinister laughter.)

The links are Rated PG, harmless Halloween fun.