OCTOBER 31, 1985
UNDER THE DIM porch light, the child’s gruesome mask looked real, as if molten rubber had been poured over the poor thing’s skull and melted the flesh, the features hideous and deformed.
The woman caught her breath and shrank back, the bowl of candy nearly slipping from her hand. What kind of mother lets a young child wear such a grotesquerie, the woman wondered. And where are the child’s parents? Sometimes, parents who drove their kids to these better neighborhoods waited in their cars as they sipped beer from cans and prodded kids too young for Halloween to Go on up and get your goodies. Grab Mommy a big handful. But the woman didn’t see any adults or vehicles at the shadowy curb.
She stooped to better see the child’s mask.
“And what are we supposed to be?” she said.
“Dead.”
The child’s voice was reedy and phlegmy, genderless.
The woman searched the child’s mask, unable to tell where the mask ended and the child’s face began. There seemed to be no gaps around the unblinking eyes; the irises, as black as the pupils, wet and animal, swam in the oddly large eye whites.
“You’re very scary,” the woman said.
“You’re scary,” the child said in its strangled voice.
“Me?” the woman said.
The child nodded. “You’re a monster.”
“I am, am I?”
“Mmm. Hmmm.”
The woman started to laugh, but the laugh died in the back of her throat, gagged on a sharp bone of sudden, inexplicable dread. She looked over the child’s shoulder, toward the street, which was quiet and still and dark. Where were all the children from earlier, so ecstatic with greed?
“There’s no such thing as monsters,” the woman said.
“Mmm. Hmm.”
“Who says?”
“My mom.”
“Oh? And who’s your mom?”
“You.”
“I see. And who told you I was your mom?”
“My mom.”
A greasy sickness bubbled in her stomach. The dread. Irrational. But mounting. Her blood electric. She reached back to grip the doorknob as blood thrummed at her temples.
A child shrieked. The woman flinched and looked up as a pair of kids in black capes floated along the sidewalk and melted back into the darkness.
Wait! Come back! the woman wanted to scream.
She looked down at the child again. It held something in its hand now: something gleaming. A knife. The blade long and slender. Wicked.
The woman held out the bowl of candy.
“Take all you want,” she croaked, “and go.”
The child’s black eyes stared.
The woman’s eyes caught the silver glint of the knife blade as the child jabbed it at her belly.
“Jesus!” she cried. “You little shi—” But she could not finish. Pain cleaved her open, turned her inside out. Her hand slipped from the doorknob, and the candy bowl clattered to the porch.
Oh God.
She clutched her belly—too terrified to look—feeling a warm stickiness seep between her fingers.
The child drove the knife blade clean through her hand, and the woman howled with pain. The child plunged the knife again, just above the waistband of the woman’s jeans and yanked upward.
Oh God.
She was being . . .
. . . unzipped.
She staggered backward, crumpling in the foyer.
The child stepped into the house and shut the door with a soft click. Its face hovered above the woman’s. The woman reached up, clutched the mask’s rubbery skin. Pulled. The mask would not come off. She dug her fingers in. Clawed. The mask stretched. The knife sliced. She tore at the mask, gasping. The child had been right.
Monsters did exist.