I switched off the light and laid down on my cot, throwing back the only sheet as it was still warm and humid. A hint of a breeze came through the back window. A few minutes passed, and then a muffled moan emerged from the family room.
“What’s that?” whispered Kevin, suddenly alert.
“What?”
Another moan.
Kevin sat up in bed. “Did you hear that?”
There was a faint rumble of thunder. The screen puckered against the window frame and I felt the air rush by me like a sharp intake of breath. A prolonged moan, slightly louder.
“There’s something in the other room!” Kevin whispered hoarsely.
“I heard it, too,” said Rob.
A flash of lightning illuminated the window.
“Maybe we should investigate,” I suggested. Perry and I crept out of bed; the other three boys followed. As we entered the family room, there was the sound of something scraping in the corner, followed by muffled knocks.
“It’s coming from the corner,” Perry cried out. Lightning illuminated the face in the watercolor, making it more distinct, two empty holes for eyes and a gaping mouth with splintered teeth. In the darkness that immediately followed, there was a loud groan followed by a crack of thunder that sent us scurrying back into the bedroom to huddle by the foot of the stairs.
“I’m not going to sleep down here,” Perry’s friend insisted. A wailing moan emerged from the family room, and the boys went racing up the stairs. I retrieved the tape recorder and put it back in my suitcase, then followed them.
“There’s a ghost in the basement!” Perry’s friend was crying to his mother. “I think someone is buried in the wall.”
Raindrops began splattering at the windows, and the flashes of lightning grew brighter, followed closely by peals of thunder.
“Oh, that’s nonsense,” Carole said. “There aren’t any ghosts here.”
“But we heard it!” Kevin implored.
“I want to sleep with you and Dad,” Perry’s friend demanded to his mother.
An especially loud clap of thunder made everyone jump.
“I don’t want to sleep downstairs, either,” said Kevin.
Carole sighed. “Okay. You can sleep up here.”
Blankets were laid out on the floor upstairs, and everyone tried to fall asleep while the storm passed overhead.
The next morning, Mary and Jim rose early. I heard the latches of a suitcase being clicked shut as I went into the bathroom. When I came out, they were standing at the front door saying goodbye to Carole, their suitcases lined up like the Three Bears. “I’m sorry that we’ve decided to leave so suddenly. Don’t wake Roger, but please tell him goodbye for us,” Mary asked.
Carole wished them a safe drive. They picked up their suitcases and walked out to their car on the street. Carole held the screen door open a moment, watching them leave, then pulled it shut and turned to look at me.
“Thank God they left,” she said. She paused, and looked at me suspiciously. “Did you have anything to do with those ghost noises?” I nodded. “Well, then, I owe you a big thanks.” She laughed softly, which started me laughing, and the next minute we were both howling.
Roger stirred in the living room. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Carole said, and smiled.
* * *
“Okay, we’re here,” I said. My hooded driver pulled the Impala to the curb beneath the shade of a large maple tree and turned off the motor.
“One last story,” he said, turning toward me, “only this time I’ll tell it to you.” A shiver passed through me in the coolness of the shade.
* * *
There was this guy who liked to give rides to strangers. He would ask each rider to tell him a story. If he liked the story, he would let the rider go. But if he didn’t...
One time he picked up a hitcher and asked him for a story. “You mean a made-up story or something real?” asked the rider.
“Doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.”
So the rider told him a story. But it wasn’t a good story. They finally pulled up at the rider’s destination.
“Thanks for the ride,” came the usual reply.
“Do you deserve to live or die?” asked the driver, looking straight ahead.
“What kind of question is that?”
The driver said nothing, just kept looking straight ahead. After a moment, the rider said, “I’ve got to go.”
“You won’t get far,” said the driver. The rider struggled with the door, but it wouldn’t open. He propelled himself over the door to the sidewalk, but lost his footing and stumbled. When he looked up, the driver was standing right over him. He scrambled to his feet and turned to run to the door of the house. He wildly twisted the doorknob, even though he knew it was locked, then fumbled for his keys while behind him he heard the footsteps of the driver drawing closer. His hands were shaking, and he couldn’t fit the key in the lock. The keys clattered to the ground, and he cursed, quickly bending to retrieve them. The driver was only a few steps away now, almost taking his time, and the closer he got, the more frantically the rider tried to open the door. The lock finally clicked open. He rushed inside and shut the door, firmly bolting the lock. But when he turned around, the driver was standing right in front of him.
“How did you—” stammered the rider.
“I told you, didn’t I?” said the driver. The rider pushed past him and ran through the house to the back door. But when he swung it open, standing there was the driver. The rider slammed the door shut and ran upstairs to his bedroom. He locked the door and pulled out his cell phone.
“It’s no use,” said a voice behind him. The rider turned sharply to see the hooded driver standing there in front of him. The driver gently took the cell phone out of his hand. “You’re coming with me now,” said the driver. “Let’s go.”
The rider’s knees grew weak and he collapsed to the floor. He must have passed out, because the next thing he knew he was back in the convertible and they were heading down the street. “Where are you taking me?” he meekly asked, his body slumped and cowering against the car door. The driver said nothing, just kept looking straight ahead.
* * *
I sighed warily. “Well, thanks for the ride.” I opened the heavy, creaking door, and grabbed my backpack, when a hand suddenly gripped my arm, holding me back.
“See you,” he said, then let go. I stepped onto the curb and shut the door. The car shuddered as he started the motor, then suddenly backfired, and even though I should have expected it, the sound still managed to startle me like a gunshot. I watched the Impala make a U-turn and head back down the street. A stylized chevron stretched across the ample trunk, its “V” dipping in the center like a downward arrow. That’s when I noticed there was no license plate, just an empty space where the plate should have been. I thought of his parting words as I hurried into the house, remembering to bolt the door firmly behind me.
The Witch
The year they chopped down the oak tree out at Bailey’s Crossroads was the year “it” happened. The oak tree had stood in that spot long before anyone could remember. It was a towering tree when Old Man Hawkins was still a boy—that’s what he said. And he would repeat the story he heard as a kid, about the witch who was hung from that tree.
The oak had grown weak with age, so the town council decided it was safer to chop it down than wait for it to fall across the road during a storm. So one day in October a tree trimming company was dispatched to Bailey’s Crossroads. By the end of the day all that remained was a stump. They cut the trunk and limbs into small chunks and the town sold it as firewood to the locals. But Old Man Hawkins refused to buy any. “I won’t bring that tainted wood into my house,” he said. Neighbors laughed together over his superstitious fear.
October had been uncommonly warm that year. Then the weather abruptly changed the week before Halloween, a chill hanging in the air even during the day. The Longacre family was selling t
heir harvest apples from a fruit stand at Bailey’s Crossroads, along with huge pumpkins that were perfect for carving into jack-o-lanterns. In the cornfield behind the stump, the wind rustled the dry stalks as the sun dipped low in the horizon. Chuck Suarez pulled off the road into the dirt next to the fruit stand and got out of his truck.
“I think you may be the last customer of the day,” said Roy Longacre.
“I’m looking for some good-sized pumpkins for my yard,” said Chuck. Every year he decorated his house and yard with the most elaborate scenes for Halloween, carrying on the tradition after his wife had died. It had been her passion, but now he made it his own, making sure to keep the decorations up through the Day of the Dead. There were ghosts swaying from trees, a body in an old steamer trunk that he arranged to look like a coffin, tombstones lining the path to the porch, cobwebs draped across the banisters, and a skeleton with a top hat and tails sitting in a chair beside the door. Chuck gazed over at the oak stump across the road. “I miss that old tree. The crossroads just don’t look the same without it.”
“I know what you mean. It gave some nice shade on a hot summer day.”
Chuck picked out four pumpkins, and Roy helped carry them to the scale. “You gonna try and outdo yourself this year with the decorations?” asked Roy.
Chuck laughed. “I sure am.”
“Well, the kids love it. At least the older ones. My girls still talk about when they used to go trick-or-treating and how scared they’d get walking up to your door. Isn’t that right, Melissa?”
“Johnny Cottler had to bribe me with a dollar to get me to knock on your door,” Melissa Longacre said. “I had nightmares for a month.”
“You planning on going out in costume this year?” Chuck asked.
Melissa wrinkled her nose.
“She’s too ‘mature’ for that business,” Roy said, using his fingers to imitate quotation marks.
“Well, you come on out and check out the decorations anyway.”
Roy rang up the price. “What do you have in mind for this year?”
“Oh, the usual, plus… I don’t know yet.” He looked over again at the stump. “Do you believe what Old Man Hawkins says, about the witch who was hung from that tree?”
“Naw. He’s a superstitious old coot. I think it’s a story his granddad told him just to scare him when he was a kid.”
“What do you think, Melissa?”
She shrugged.
“Yeah. Well, I may have an idea.”
All week long Chuck planned the decorations. He carved a scowling face into one pumpkin, and into another one a fearful expression patterned after Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” These would sit at the foot of the porch steps. The other two pumpkins, with more traditional faces, would sit on the third step. He pulled down the boxes marked “Halloween” from the rafters in the garage. There were assorted skulls, cardboard black cats, gravestones, plastic vampire bats, ghostly sheets, masks, a tattered black smock and skeletal green hands… almost everything he needed. He drove over to an antique shop in the next county and there, in a dusty corner of the store, he found what he was looking for: an old hand-crafted broom in the style of the 18th-century, with stiff stalks of broomcorn.
Halloween arrived. A dry breeze scattered dead leaves down the street in front of Chuck’s house. He hung the ghosts from the trees, laid out the coffin with the body, placed the gravestones firmly on the lawn, and set out the jack-o’-lanterns. In the window he arranged his prized miniature band of mariachi skeletons. By the time he had completed his newest creation, the streetlights had started to come on. Standing in the shadows of the porch was a witch in a tattered black smock. All you could see of its downward glancing face was a pointed green chin, its eyes out of view under a ragged black hat. In its arms it held the old broom.
Chuck poured out the bags of candy into a large dish beside the door. In the fireplace he placed some of the logs from the dismembered oak tree, and soon the first wisps of smoke were climbing up the chimney. Along the street, the youngest children were already walking hand in hand with their mother or father, tykes dressed up as Batman and Spiderman and the Little Mermaid, but none ventured into his yard. The ghosts swayed in the trees, and the candles flickered inside the jack-o’-lanterns.
As the light leeched from the October evening, the older kids began to emerge: witches with pointed hats, silver robots, a creature with scales. They approached the house warily, never taking their eyes off the witch in the corner of the porch. Like a black cat slipping through a fence, night arrived. Soon the middle schoolers were finally out: devils, pirates, a group dressed like Easter Island megaliths, a ghoulish rabbit with a skeletal face. Melissa Longacre came down the street in a trio of teenagers. One was wearing a blue wizard’s hat decorated with stars and moons. They walked up the path and climbed the steps to the front door. Just as Melissa rang the bell, her companion said, “Hey, the witch moved.”
Melissa looked over at the bent figure. “Yeah, right.”
Chuck answered the door to a chorus of “Trick-or-treat.” The guy in the wizard hat held out a bag already bulging with candy. “Awesome decorations,” said the wizard.
“Thanks,” said Chuck, dropping an extra helping of candy into the bag.
As they turned to go, Melissa looked again at the witch and gasped. Its head was now lifted and looking straight up at them. Then she laughed. “Hey, how did you do that?”
“Do what?” asked Chuck.
“The witch. How did you make its head move?”
“Huh?” Chuck peered out onto the porch and was startled to see the position of the head had changed. “Okay, guys, enough with the pranks.” He approached the witch and tilted its head back down toward the floor.
“We didn’t do anything to it,” protested the wizard.
Chuck ignored the comment but grinned. “Well, anyway, enjoy the rest of your Halloween.”
As they headed toward the street, Melissa looked back at the witch. Its head was still facing downward, but she thought she saw the broom move. “This place always creeps me out,” she said to her companions, and they hurried down the path.
When the next batch of trick-or-treaters rang his bell, Chuck spotted Paul and Joyce Rivkin standing on the path. He stepped out onto the porch. “I didn’t even recognize your kids,” he laughed, patting the youngest one on the head.
“Great decorations, Chuck,” said Joyce. “Even better than last year.”
The kids scampered back down to their parents.
“They wouldn’t go up to the door unless we came half way,” said Paul. Joyce waved goodbye and they went on to the next house.
As Chuck turned to go inside, he noticed the witch’s head had lifted up again, staring right at him. “Damn teenagers,” he muttered, and went back over to re-position the head. As he walked back toward the door, he heard something skitter behind him. He whirled around and nearly stumbled off the porch when he saw that the witch was standing right behind him. The body was still in the same bent position, head still looking down, face partly obscured, hands holding the broom, only it had moved about ten feet. There was no one behind it. How could it have moved? He felt around the figure for strings, and felt the arms and shoulders to make sure there was nothing but the stuffing he had placed in there. Carefully he lifted the witch and moved it back to the corner of the porch. But this time, he backed away from it, never letting it out of his sight.
The fire was burning strongly now, warming the room. He added another log and stirred the fire with the poker. He heard young footsteps outside on the porch, followed by the doorbell. Just as he opened the door, the two girls screamed. Instinctively he looked toward the corner and was shocked to see the back of the witch as it jumped over the railing and disappeared into the night. The two costumed girls who were at his door turned and fled.
Chuck started to dial the police, but stopped before he reached the last number. What would he tell them—that a stuffed figure had leaped off his
porch and taken off into the woods? He canceled the call and instead dialed Roy Longacre.
“Listen, Roy, something very strange has happened. The story that Old Man Hawkins tells about the witch—what do you know about it?”
“A little bit. Why?”
“Who did the hanging?”
“Well, it was so long ago. A bunch of people from town, is what he always said.”
“But who led the mob?”
“I don’t know. Or… Well, I think it was his great-great granddad.”
“Meet me over at Old Man Hawkins’ place—quick! I’ll explain there.”
From his truck, Chuck tried calling Old Man Hawkins on his cell, but there was no answer. He arrived just as Roy was pulling up. “What’s going on, Chuck?” asked Roy.
“I don’t know.”
A light shone from an upstairs window, but the rest of the house was dark. Chuck noticed the front door was ajar. “Hawkins!” he called out as he pushed the door open and stepped inside. He groped for the light switch and flicked it on. “Hawkins!”
Above them they heard a scuffle followed by something crashing to the floor. Chuck ran up the stairs with Roy trailing behind. “Chuck, what’s going on?”
A light was coming from the doorway at the top of the stairs. They rushed inside and abruptly stopped. Before them was a ghastly scene. The bedsheets were disheveled, a chair was overturned, and the bedside lamp had fallen to the floor, illuminating the slumped body of Old Man Hawkins. His neck had been sliced clean open, blood spilling out over his chest and pooling on the floor.
The two men suddenly became aware of another presence in the room, lurking in the corner in shadow beside the armoire: a bent figure in a tattered black smock. The witch slowly raised its head, and in the sockets of the mask-like face were two eyes glowing like coals that stared directly at them. But before the men could move, the witch vanished, as if it had never been there. For a moment, Chuck doubted whether he had even seen anything. That’s when he noticed on the floor, not far from the body of Old Man Hawkins, an old 18th-century hand-carved broom.