Home for Halloween

Halloween always used to be my least favourite holiday. Children, sticky and hyperactive, would come tearing down the streets, dashing across the roads without looking, dressed in dark colours and impossible to spot. They came marching up our garden path, dropping candy wrappers and stepping on to the flower beds, and they pounded the door with ungrateful little fists and pressed their syrupy fingers all over the door bell. They barely gave so much as a passing glance to the decorations my wife so carefully arranged, and their costumes rarely looked as if any effort had been made. They stood on the porch and stretched out their greedily little arms with bags open, declaring, 'trick or treat, trick or treat, give us something good to eat!' And not a damn one of them ever said a meaningful thank you. It made my blood boil, but my wife enjoyed it! She spent countless hours, and stupid amounts of money, to make the house look festive and spooky. She would find the biggest pumpkins she could, at least three, and hollow them out and carve their faces and put little candles inside. Throughout the night she would keep nipping into the garden to make sure the candles hadn't been blown out by the wind, and to admire her own handiwork as well, I think. She always kept a box of matches in her pocket, and if any of the candles had gone out, she would call me in to the garden and have me cup my hands so she could light the match and relight the candle without worrying about the wind. I would mutter and grumble about what a waste of time it was, but I never said no. Who could say no to her? Certainly not me. I secretly liked how pleased she was to see them light up again. 

"Thank you love," she would say warmly. "Don't they look grand?" 

It's not that I was an especially negative person, and I was certainly no grinch when it came to Christmas, I enjoyed Christmas. I really didn't mind Easter too much either, if I was being honest. The thing is, kids didn't come traipsing through my garden and banging on my door to look for their easter eggs or their Christmas stockings. Occasionally we got a few Christmas Carolers come knocking, but they were mostly adults, like us, and they stayed off the flowerbeds and knocked on the door politely. 

My wife loved all holidays. She wasn't a very religious person, not really, just quite superstitious. That's why she put so much effort into Halloween, superstition. 

"If we don't put out enough lights," she once said to me, after I had complained about the number of pumpkins she'd carved, "The spirits might not be able to find their way." 

"I don't want damn spirits finding their way into my garden and my house," I'd grumbled. "Who do we know that's even dead?!" 

"Well, there's your parents, for one and -" 

"My parents?" I'd scoffed. "They never paid us a damn visit when they were alive, I doubt they're going to start now." 

"Then what about my mother?" 

"Your mother felt the same way about this nonsense as I do," 

"That doesn't mean she won't come to visit me," she had smiled. 

Grumpy as I was, I didn't have the heart to try and quash her hopefulness. Despite their differences, she and her mother had been close and I knew how much she missed the woman. The first year after her mother died, my wife had looked for signs of her everywhere. A flower that bloomed before the rest, a robin in the garden, a missing set of keys, anything even slightly out of the ordinary was attributed to her mother, or her mother's spirit. Eventually this trend faded away, but her belief in the idea of an afterlife never did, and every year since then, she'd taken special care to make sure the Halloween pumpkins were in the best spot possible, to clearly light the way to our garden. 

Speaking of pumpkins, that was another thing I didn't like. For weeks after Halloween we'd be eating pumpkin everything; pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, even roasted pumpkins with our Sunday lunch. I didn't much care for the taste of pumpkin, but this never deterred my wife. 

So with the annoying children, the wasted efforts on decorating, the endless supply of pumpkin dinners, and all of my wife's silly superstitions, I really felt like my aversion to halloween was justified. 

I don't feel like that anymore, not since last year. My wife managed to change my opinion, in fact, now I look forward to the holiday each year. She always did have a way of winning me round, but I don't think she even realised it in the end. 

I had been wandering around for quite a while, in fact I was lost, though I didn't really want to admit that to myself at the time. Rather than admit the truth, I just kept on wandering about, looking for something familiar, I don't know how long I kept that up for, but all of sudden I started to notice the decorations and the children… I'm pretty sure they were children; their costumes were a lot more impressive than the cheap thrift store things I'd grown used to, some of them were actually pretty frightening. I was going to ask one of the older ones for help, but to be honest they left me a little nervous… imagine if they weren't really kids at all, what would I do? Instead of speaking to anyone, I just put my head down and kept walking. The coldness seemed to have snuck up on me, and suddenly the pavements were strewn with dead leaves and the air had become a sharp, unhappy wind. I was almost certain that I was in the right area, the streets felt familiar to me. All around me the houses were adorned with cotton spiderwebs and cardboard tombstones and carved pumpkins. Pumpkins! Nobody carved pumpkins quite like my wife, all I had to do was find our garden, find those nuisance pumpkins… The trouble was that every single house I passed by had at least one pumpkin sat in the garden. The little candles shone from their eyes and mouths and they had an oddly comforting glow, though every time I went for a closer look the light seemed to grow dimmer, and I realised that it was not the right pumpkin, not the right house. 

I can honestly say that I was ready to give up, I figured I would just have to stay lost until someone came and found me, though who knows how long that would take. Would anyone even be looking for me? 

The bigger question, the one that I had been ignoring the whole time, was what the damn hell I was doing out here in the first place? I couldn't remember. I had been somewhere warm, somewhere familiar, and then there was a little lapse in time and suddenly I was out on the street, walking around without a purpose, and the only thing I knew was that I needed to get home. I really needed to see my wife, and it sounds stupid to say but I felt like if I didn't find my way back, I was going to miss my chance. With this sensation looming over me, I reminded myself that I couldn't give up; I had to keep looking for our house, I had to keep looking for those little lights. 

As I pushed on it became busier, the little terrors were everywhere, running and shrieking and flailing their arms. I recoiled in fear, but they didn't seem to notice. I saw others as well, who looked lost like me. One of them approached me and asked which way was home, but he couldn't tell me the address, he didn't seem to be able to remember. 

"You need to look out for the pumpkins," I said. "The little lights in the pumpkins." 

"Oh we never bothered with those things," he answered dismissively. "Waste of time, just brings more kids to the door and we never have candy to give them, we don't believe in all that." 

We didn't talk any more than that, he just wandered away from me, his head constantly turning and turning to look at all the houses he passed by. I set off again as well, and though I saw many more like myself, none of them spoke to me and I got the sense it would do me no good to speak to them. I just walked, avoiding groups of ghouls and witches, and keeping my eyes peeled for any sign that I was headed in the right direction. I realised that I was on the right track when I noticed the temperature change. The cold night air began to shift, becoming slowly warmer and softer around me. It felt as if someone were layering me with blankets, my fear began to subside, I started to feel safe, protected even. The further I walked the stronger the feeling became, until eventually I saw them… There were four little lights ahead of me, they were glowing softly but I knew that all the warmth I was feeling came from them. I quickened my pace, no longer taking any time to avoid the monsters around me. As I drew closer, the lights did not dim or grow cold as the others had, in fact they grew brighter and warmer until I felt like I was walking right into a warm pool of summer sunlight.

After my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that I was standing in my garden. I saw my flower beds, the little rose bush that always needed pruning because it kept trying to grow across the gate, the bird table my wife had insisted on for the little robin who kept turning up after her mother had died. I saw four pumpkins, carefully, beautifully carved. Each one housed a little candle that gave off such warm, welcoming light that I had never truly felt more at home than I did right at that moment. I was so mesmerised by those pumpkins that I almost didn't notice my wife standing beside them. 

"I found you!" I said, my voice barely audible above the patter of tiny feet and hollering voices on the street. My wife didn't turn to look at me, she didn't seem to have heard me at all, she was just standing there staring at her pumpkins, a wistful look in her eyes. 

"You wouldn't believe how lost I was," I moved after her as she started back towards the house. 

"For once I'm glad you put these stupid pumpkins out, they helped me find my way home!" 

She didn't reply… She hadn't heard me, she couldn't hear me… 

A sudden blustering wind came ripping through the warmth of the garden and the little candles were blown out. I felt the coldness come seeping back into me, and the strange sense of not knowing quite where I was. Had I become lost again? 

No… Wait… There was a woman in front of me, turning hurriedly to inspect something… I knew her… My wife! That's who I had been trying to find this whole time, and here she was, but she looked sad, or was she worried? Her face was crumpled into a little frown as she looked at something. She went digging into her pocket and took out a box of matches. Ah, the pumpkins, of course. She bent over them and struck one of the matches, but before she could light the candle, along came the wind and snuffed out the little flame. 

"Oh bother," she sighed and struck another match, but it had barely lit before the wind whipped away the fire again. She lit another, turning her body to shield the match from the wind, but it didn't help, before she could get the wick to take, the match was silenced again. My wife sighed and her shoulders dropped in defeat. 

"Don't give up, love," I said gruffly. "Have another try," 

"Last try," she muttered, though it was to herself, and not me. She moved closer to the candle and took another match from the box. As she struck the light, I reached up and cupped my fading hands around the flame. My wife flinched as she heard another spiteful breeze come rushing past, but the flame held, flickering gently. She stared at the match with amazement, and then seizing the opportunity, moved it to the first candle. After that, we lit the other three and she stood back to admire them. 

I had a strong longing to put my arm around her, but I figured it wouldn't do much good, so I just stood beside her. 

She was quiet for a little while, but eventually she took her eyes off of the pumpkins, and I could swear she looked right at me. 

"Thank you, love," she said warmly. "Don't they look grand?"