She chuckled. “It doesn’t have to end,” she said.
“Yeah, right,” I said.
“For real,” she said, taking me by the hand. “I was reading this book, see, a scary Halloween book and it said that if you bring a jack o’ lantern into a graveyard, set it on a grave and make a wish at exactly midnight on Halloween… it’ll come true.”
“Yeah right,” I’d said but, five minutes later, we were trudging up to Nightshade Cemetery, me lugging the family jack o’ lantern off my porch the whole way.
We found a grave as soon as we could, because the pumpkin was getting hot and smoke was pouring out of its top and we stood in front of it, holding hands.
“Now what?” I’d whispered, because isn’t that what you do in graveyards?
“Now we make a wish!” she’d said.
I chuckled, glancing down at my glowing cell phone. Yup, midnight on the dot!
“Make every day Halloween!” I’d shouted, tugging on her hand so she’d do the same.
We were high, high on candy, on October, on 31 days of fall leaves and pumpkin shaped word searches during free time in Mrs. Allison’s 5th grade class, on trick or treat and costumes and apple cider and cupcakes with orange and purple frosting and spider rings stuck in the frosting and we shouted and held hands and swung them and said, over and over, until our voices were hoarse: “Make every day Halloween! Make every day Halloween!”
Then we got tired, or the candy wore off, or the fact that we were in a cemetery at midnight on Halloween chanting in front of a flickering pumpkin on somebody’s grave creeped us out and we left, running out of there as fast as we could, leaving my pumpkin behind and still smoking on the strange tombstone.
I’d forgotten all about it, mostly. I hugged Inez in the middle of the street, my arms caught up in her sparkly back bee costume wings and then she trudged back to her house, floppy bee antennas bouncing on her head. I’d crept back into my room, slipped into bed, chuckled at the thought of us holding hands and screaming, and fell fast asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I smelled something funny: my Mom, making witch shaped pancakes. Again.
“On November 1st?” I thought, heading out to the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “That’s weird.”
“Happy Halloween!” Mom had said, not winking at me, not joking, not playing a trick on me. Just standing there, in her floppy witch hat and the orange apron that said, “Boil and Trouble” on the front.
I kept waiting for her to crack up and haul Inez out of the pantry and say, “Psych!” But she never did. And when I finally thought to glance down at my cell phone, there was the date: October 31.
Again.
That was 108 mornings ago. That was 108 witch shaped pancakes ago. That was 108 pumpkin shaped word searches ago. That was 108 trick or treats ago. That was 108 Nutty Buddies ago!
And now we sit, on the low brick wall outside of school, waiting for curfew, just ticking down the hours before October 31 ends, and Halloween starts all over again.
“We better go,” I say, sliding off the wall and hearing the rasp of my long, black witch cape scraping along the bricks.
“Yeah,” Inez jokes, nudging me with her shoulder. “We don’t want to get grounded and miss Halloween # 109!”
* * * * *
Story # 5:
The Costume Contest
“How on earth do you get your skin to feel so… cold?” Mr. Armbruster asks.
I chuckle, making a big deal of my gray lips and yellow teeth. “If I told you,” I lie, “then everyone would do it.”
He frowns, bald head shiny in the bright gym lights. “You can tell me,” he says, leaning in closer, breath smelling like the bag of nacho chips he always has with his bag lunch. “I won’t spread it around.”
I chuckle, cold breath spilling over my cold lips. “Okay, well…” I lean forward, like this is top secret stuff here. “The cafeteria lady let me hang out in the walk-in freezer for ten minutes before the contest.”
He nods, as if he’s buying it, then stops nodding and rolls his eyes. He’s got a clipboard in his hand and he ticks off some boxes. “You’re lucky they don’t take points off for fibbing to your assistant principal, Conroy,” he says, inching away, “Or you’d be instantly disqualified!”
But he’s laughing, smiling, still ticking off boxes about my costume when he gets to the next kid in line, Booger Johnson, who’s wearing the same lumberjack costume he wore last year. And the year before that.
Ms. Prendergast, the librarian, is up next. I watch her as she inches closer, still ticking off boxes from the kid on the other side of me. It’s only Jilly Hex, though, and she’s wearing a witch costume so… not exactly stiff competition.
I can tell Ms. Prendergast hasn’t seen me yet. Not really, not close up, the way Mr. Armbruster just has. She’s way too calm. But then she looks up, face smiling, automatically, and then everything just kind of… freezes. She pauses, mid-step, one foot just coming off the stage floor. Her face gels into this kind of slow motion mask and her eyes get big.
“Conroy?” she asks, speeding up a little and putting her foot down, one step closer to me. “Is that… are you okay?”
I chuckle. She’s the third judge to ask me that. “Yes, Ms. Prendergast, I’m fine. It’s a costume contest, remember?”
She nods, squinting through her red rectangular glasses. “I know that, dear, but my goodness… that gray pallor of yours is so… convincing.”
“I hope so,” I chuckle, again flashing the yellow teeth for effect. “It took hours to get just right.”
(Technically, that’s kind of true.)
She sees my teeth and gasps a little. “And those teeth, my goodness. They weren’t like that when you were getting your library card renewed last week.”
I smirk. “Well, no, I wasn’t in costume then.”
She takes her pen from her clipboard and uses it to poke around my unnaturally white hair. “Conroy, this is… I hope this dye will come out after Halloween.”
“Sure,” I lie, waving a gray, bony hand. “It better, anyway.”
She nods, taking the pen and using it to poke at the blood stains on my T-shirt, dried and crusty after my mid-morning snack on the way to school.
(Relax, it was just a couple of squirrels. And maybe a raccoon or two. And that one stray cat who kept following me through the alley. But no dogs, definitely no dogs. And no people, either. Not yet, anyway…)
“Is this from the Drama department?” she asks and before I’m forced to tell another little white lie she winks and says, “The fake cat fur stuck in the stage blood stains is very authentic, Conroy!” And she giggles, wickedly, scribbling new notes on her clipboard.
Then, mid-scribble, she looks up, eyes wide. “So that’s it?” she says, tapping her clipboard with the pen. “That’s why you’ve been checking out zombie books all week?” she says.
And, actually, yeah, it kind of is. “Guilty as charged,” I say, holding up my cold, gray hands like people do when they say something stupid like “guilty as charged.”
But Ms. Prendergast is kind of awkward and thinks I’m giving her a “high five” sign and so she pats one of my hands, awkwardly, as she does all things and then she flinches and she draws her hand back like she’s just touched a block of ice.
“And so cold,” she says, leaning forward. “Tell me, how’d you do that?”
I give her the line about the Cafeteria Lady and she snickers, inching away, ticking off more boxes in her clipboard.
Then comes the last judge, Missy Wilkes. They have to have one student on the panel, to keep things fair, and every year it’s always someone perfect and cheesy and fake like Missy Wilkes.
She’s wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume, of course, and looks positively beautiful in it, of course, with her flowing red hair poking out from her hood and her long legs covered to the knee in white stockings.
“A zombie, Conroy?” she says, rolling her ey
es, already giving me bad marks on her clipboard. “Lame, much?”
I make a little growling thing in my throat. It’s new, like the cold skin and the yellow teeth and the white hair and the hunger for squirrel brains and raccoon guts and cat livers. But she’s such a Mean Girl, it hardly even phases her.
“What, like Little Red Riding Hood is so original?” I snap back, something I wouldn’t have done four days ago, before that gray guy with yellow teeth and white hair bit me on my way home from school.
She flares her perfect nostrils, still managing to look 21 instead of 12, which is what she really is, and snorts, “You don’t have to be original when you look like me, Conroy Simpson.”
I shrug because, well… chick’s got a point.
“So, let’s see here,” she says, looking at her clipboard and getting down to business. “Originality?” she reads from the board, then looks at me, doing more major eye roll activity. “Not very.” And she makes a check mark on her judge form. “Authenticity?” She makes a face, like maybe she doesn’t know what that means, then quickly adds, “Fair.” Check.
“Commitment?”
She lets the clipboard fall to her side and inches closer, sniffing me carefully until she gets too big a whiff and then backing up quickly. “Well, you certainly went all out in the smells department. What’d you do, Conroy, roll around outside a slaughterhouse?”
“I wish!” I blurt before I can stop myself.
She leans in, smelling like flowers and perfume and candy and evil. “Relax, Conroy. You don’t get judged on what you say, just what you look like. It’s a costume contest, remember?”
Yeah, I think but don’t say, biting my tongue; my cold, undead tongue. A costume contest where the winner gets a $50 gift certificate to Carlo’s Cold Cuts.
Do you know how much brains I could buy with fifty whole bucks?
“Besides,” she says, stepping back and checking boxes on her clipboard like crazy, “word has it you’re going to lose by one vote to Booger Simpson and his lumberjack costume.”
I smirk. “One vote?” I ask. “Who’s would that be?”
She gloats and points her pen back at herself, clutching her clipboard to her chest and spinning toward my competition with a big, “Wow, what an authentic costume, Booger!”
I stand there, fuming, hungry for brains. The judging seems to take forever now that I know I’m going to lose, even though there are only six fifth graders onstage and I’m the clear winner, by far. And still, Missy is right: I lose by one vote. Hers, obviously, since she gloats and giggles and claps animatedly as Booger takes center stage to receive his award.
Then again, I gotta admit, the only one who’s going to get as much joy out of spending 50 bucks at Carlo’s Cold Cuts as I would have really is Booger Simpson.
I slink offstage with the other contestants, who pat my shoulders – before flinching at the cold – and say things like, “I thought you had it locked down this year, Conroy” and “Maybe next year, pal.”
I smile with my new yellow teeth and shake my head with my new white hair and follow them out of the auditorium as three quick bells signal the end of the school day.
My bus is already in the loop but I head toward my locker instead, taking my time, because I’m not taking the bus home today. I see Missy’s red hood near her locker, giggling as she talks to her BFFs about the big Halloween party at Booger’s house after trick or treating that night.
They talk and I bury my head in my locker, waiting, waiting, until one by one they rush away, to the bike rack or the bus loop or the traffic circle out past the Teacher’s Lounge where the parents all wait to pick their little darlings up from school.
Missy lives just up the block, in the condos on the river, and besides she wouldn’t miss a chance to strut around in her Little Red Riding Hood costume even if she lived clear in the next state.
I follow her, out past the bus loop, across the grass by the bike rack, slowly, slowly, smelling her perfume and listening to her shiny black shoes scrape on the sidewalk.
There are still too many people around, but eventually, once the busses leave and the bike rack is empty and the traffic dies down, she’ll slip through the trees in the field by her place and take the same shortcut home she does every other day.
The one with the tall trees, the ones that blot out the sun and are so close together you can barely see the sidewalk once you’re a foot or two inside. And that’s when I’ll strike.
Hey, if I can’t win fifty bucks worth of fresh brains, maybe I can get some of the old fashioned way…
* * * * *
About the Author
Rusty Fischer is the author of over a dozen YA paranormal novels, including Zombies Don’t Cry, Zombies Don’t Forgive, Vamplayers and Ushers, Inc. Visit him at www.rushingtheseason.com to learn more and read tons of FREE YA holiday paranormal stories just like this one!
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