This is how Edward came to know about Jack, who lived in this clutch of a house surrounded by big fists of laurel and beyond that, grey green pines that speared high into the heavens. Edward and Roy, they walked past that house regularly and somehow it always looked the same. Fall, winter, spring, summer, on nice sunny days it looked dark, foreboding, sinister. When Edward and Roy, all of 13, passed by that house, they slowed their pace, glanced up the walkway that had a high grass arching over but not touching, no, but leaving a narrow strip of concrete walk wide enough for a leg to pass.
On this particular day, the day before Halloween, a day of slanting yellow sunlight and orange leaves cackling up the street from a heavy, dust-laden wind, Edward and Roy stopped and looked up the walk, past the curving grass, to the dull green painted and faded concrete steps to the screen door with the brown screen torn and the door behind, forest green. The windows on each side had brown shades drawn. Edward looked to Roy and asked, “Does anyone live there?”
Roy, pulling his new white pile blue denim jacket close, said, “Yeah, Jack.”
“Jack? Jack who?”
“I dunno.”
“What’s he look like?” Edward looked back at the house, peering past the laurel bush, vaguely noticing the shininess of the leaves which reminded him of a sowbug’s skin.
“Um,” Roy said, shifting his Modern Biology textbook from its perilous position on his loose leaf binder, “Well, I saw him a long time ago... you know, he’s real fat and wears those grey pants and a green plaid shirt and he’s got white hair and his face is puffy and he’s got pink ears like a rabbit.”
“Oh,” Edward said, “how come I’ve never seen him?”
Roy shrugged. “Maybe you ain’t been using your eyes...”
“Huh,” Edward said. Then, “Hey, let’s stop by here tomorrow night and see if he’ll give us some treats.”
“Huh,” Roy said, “you just wanna see what he looks like. I don’t wanna bug the old guy.”
“Whattaya mean?” Edward said, sticking his hands deep in the pockets of his large maroon coat while pinning his loose leaf between his arm and side. “If he hasn’t been seen for a while, maybe we should look, what harm is there in that?”
“Come on, come on, let’s go...
“Wait,” Edward said, “let’s stop by....”
They pushed and they fought and they tugged and they laughed and the afternoon and evening passed and before either realized it, it was 6 p.m. Oct. 31st. The rap on the door announced it.
Edward opened the door. “Boo,” said Roy. He was dressed in a white sheet.
Edward laughed, “Good try, grape nuts.”
From the living room, Edward’s father yelled, “Edward, you apologize to Roy.”
“Sorry, grape nuts.”
Edward’s father’s stern voice boomed, “Edward!”
“Come on in,” Edward said.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“So where’s your costume?”
“Right here,” Edward said, unrolling a huge burlap bag and pulling it over himself.
Roy stared, “You’re going as a bag of potatoes?”
“Naw, you dope. I’m going as a paper bag.”
“Yeah?” Roy said. “Well, sure is a good costume for you.”
“Huh?” Edward said.
“Just air inside.”
“Ho, ho,” Edward said, wishing he could think of a clever response. He grabbed his shopping bag, “Let’s go get some goodies.”
They stepped out into a blustery, billowy Halloween night with a thin crescent moon that gave the sky a sly smile. Their first stop was the Henderson’s party. Two big baleful pumpkins squatted on the front stoop and the carved images were sinister indeed--faces of a cat, a bat, Edward guessed. “We should make a haul here,” he said.
Martha Henderson answered the door and said, “Eeek, a ghost and a sack of potatoes!” as she slapped her hands on the sides of her jowly cheeks.
Someone peered over her shoulder, a tall guy with bleary red eyes who mumbled, “Eh, looks like ghost stew, heh, heh, now if that ain’t all....” The man whispered to Martha in a voice Edward and Roy weren’t supposed to hear, “You the meat, my love?” Mrs. Henderson dropped her arms suddenly down and back, which told Edward and Roy that the gentleman had a little trick of his own in mind.
“Here you go,” she said, depositing in the empty accounts of Roy’s and Edward’s bags, popcorn balls.
And after the door was shut, Edward looked at Roy and exclaimed, “Popcorn balls!”
Both broke into fits of laughter, snickered and ran, throwing the popcorn balls at each other.
Mrs. Smith, who was dressed like a black cat with red whiskers, also had a party going when she opened her door and purred, “Meooow, my children, what are you going to do?”
“Say ‘trick or treat’,” a dumbfounded Edward said.
“Meow,” Mrs. Smith said and into the bags fell handfuls of Hershey’s Miniatures.
“Thank you,” Roy said.
The ritual continued. Children and adults playing with the spirits and the forces creative and always the laughter, gleeful screams. The laughter subsided when Edward and Roy reached Jack’s house, which sat in the dark with light creeping out from behind drawn shades.
“Um—do you still want to...”
Roy said, “I dunno. Looks pretty spooky.”
“Are you sure you know this guy?”
“I think I did. Maybe it was somebody else.”
In the darkness they continued looking at the house. They heard distant sounds of laughter, the voices of children, ghostly, audio phantoms of the night. And Edward and Roy stood, staring, with bulging sacks.
“Let’s,” Edward said. “I will if you will.”
“Naw,” Roy said, “I don’t think we should.”
“Scared?”
“Uh, no. No. But you know he might have a big guard dog...”
“Hee, hee, hee,” Edward said, “maybe a big guard spider.”
They both gulped. “Are those eyes over there near the porch?” Roy asked.
“How many do you see?”
“... um... three...”
They shifted.
“Still wanna go?” Roy asked.
“Gee, um... you don’t really see three eyes do you?”
“No.”
“Whew!”
“Now I see five, still wanna go?”
“... um...” Edward said.
“Chicken.”
“Am not.”
“Are too,” Roy said.
“Dare you.”
“Double-dare you.”
And before they knew it, they were daring and bluffing right up the walk.
“Something moved,” Roy whispered.
“Did not!”
“Werewolf?”
“Shut up,” Edward said.
They crept closer.
“Do you hear breathing?” Roy asked.
“Yeah. Yours.”
“Do you remember the scene from Frankenstein where the monster—”
“Would you shut up?” Edward hissed.
Movement in the laurel.
“Wind,” Edward said.
“I dunno,” Roy said.
They moved closer to the house until they were on the front porch.
“You really want to do a trick-or-treat here?” Roy asked.
“I dunno,” Edward said. “Don’t know what will happen if he opens that door.”
“How do you know that it’s even a he that will open it?” Roy whispered.
Edward felt the hairs rise on his neck, felt his scalp tingle. “Let’s see if we can peek through the window,” he said.
They put their bags on the ground and carefully crouched by the nearest window.
Snap. Edward stepped on a twig.
“Shhh,” Roy said. “Whoever or whatever inside can hear that... be careful.”
“Okay, okay.”
Quietly, stealthily... there... a place where the shade did not come down all the way and Edward looked into that room on that Halloween night, a night when the wind haunted the brush and sent leaves cackling up the street. A night where the silver moon shone thin light on ghosts and other costumed horrors, where evil lurked disguised and ready. Edward and Roy looked into the room and saw him. And they stared. Jack was standing, shirt undone, drinking from a tall, green bottle; abruptly, it slipped from his hands and fell to the floor. He looked down at it, swayed, caught himself by grasping the top of an overstuffed chair, then looked up, to the ceiling, to a bare light burning there and sobbed, “Oh, God!” He staggered forward, stumbled, fell over a table crowded with beer cans and bottles and crash and clatter, they cascaded to the floor and, finally, he made his way to the overstuffed chair and collapsed into it and then closing his eyes, he appeared to slip into sleep.
Edward and Roy continued staring and after a while, they stopped looking and grabbed their bags and who knows why but they sat on the porch, and into Roy’s plastic bag, they placed an orange, an apple, some Oreo cookies, a few Fig Newton bars, some Hershey Miniatures and a Milky Way too, and tied it to the doorknob with a long thread from Edward’s costume. They knocked on the door, hard... and then ran—out of sight, and into the dark heart of that Halloween night.