Halloween Traditions

      “I bet you half a bag of candy I can do it again this year,” Levi boasted.

           Levi is my best friend; we’ve been best friends since our first year in elementary school, and we’re in sixth grade now. Since the third grade, it’s been our tradition to go out together for trick-or-treating on Halloween. No parents, no other friends, just the two of us, and Levi always finds a way to surprise me each year.

           “I’ll take that bet,” I retorted, “There’s no way you’ll do it three years in a row, it’s just not possible!”

           “You’re so on!” Levi said with a mischievous grin. He pulled his mask down over his face – this would also be the third year in a row in which he wore the Ghostface mask from the Scream movies. I’m a little jealous of him about those movies because my mom says I’m still not old enough to watch them, though Levi’s parents let him watch anything; though I have seen some of the second Scream while at Levi’s house getting ready to go out trick-or-treating.

           I grinned back at him as I put on my face mask. I chose to go out tonight as a cliché bank robber, complete with black pants, boots, a black-and-white striped shirt, topped with a black beanie and face mask that goes over my eyes. “You always choose the lamest costumes,” Levi judged with a snort. “Oh yeah?” I scoffed at him, “At least I find a different costume every year. Ghostface is getting old, dude.”

           “Whatever,” Levi said plainly, though I was certain he was still grinning under that mask. He abruptly turned and moved to the front door. Before I knew it, his empty black pillowcase of a candy bag followed behind him and out of sight. I picked up my white pillowcase (on which I had crudely painted a large green dollar sign) and chased after him. “Levi! Wait up!” slamming the door in my excitement as I left.

           We didn’t take long to get halfway up the neighborhood. With how much ground the two of us cover trick-or-treating, one could consider it an Olympic sport. Most of these houses had gotten to know us pretty well by now. They’d say something like, “Here’s Ghostface – Mike and Levi, huh? How’s the haul?” If Levi ever decides to change his costume, I don’t think the townsfolk would know what to do with themselves.

           After about an hour we came to a part of town we weren’t as familiar with. We moved up the walkway of a lazily decorated house, neon green lights circling the front door with a singular plastic skull hanging from the door handle. “This one’s it, bet,” Levi said smugly. Someone stood on the doormat, their back towards us. I couldn’t tell if it was a really tall kid – a teenager maybe – or an adult who couldn’t seem to let go of their childhood. As we got closer to the tall figure, I saw they were dressed like Ronald McDonald. “Hey man,” I said casually to the tall clown. They turned to me with their large, red smile, and winked at us. The front door of the house opened, the plastic skull clinking against the door frame. “Trick-or-treat!” Levi, the burger clown, and I shouted in unison. “Oooh,” the elderly old lady with the candy bucket said from her doorway, “look at these costumes!” she looked up at Ronald McDonald and said, “Aren’t you a little old to be trick-or-treating?”

           “Age is just a concept, ma’am,” the clown said. The old woman guffawed and said, “Amen to that!” and, with a cheek-splitting grin, she took three big handfuls of candy from her bucket, dropping each handful in each of our candy bags. “You kids be safe out there!” we each said thank you as she closed the door and started to walk back down the pavement. “Hey,” Ronald McDonald said, “You guys mind if I tag along with you?” I looked at Levi and shrugged. He shrugged back. “Sure man,” he said coolly, “if you can keep up, anyway!” Ronald laughed – it was a weirdly shrill and high-pitched laugh. His laugh sent a cold shiver up my spine and I became instantly discomforted by the guy, but Levi only laughed back and exclaimed, “Race you guys to the next house!” and took off in a sprint, and the clown followed after. Seeing how unphased Levi was by the clown’s laugh, I shrugged it off and followed.

           After another successful hour of trick-or-treating, our bags had become nearly full to the brim and started to get difficult to carry. “Hey, we should start heading back,” I suggested. Levi paused for a moment, seemingly in thought, then said, “Yeah, my mom is probably gonna expect me home soon anyway.”

           “Where do you guys live? I can walk back with you for a bit,” Ronald McDonald asked with a casual tone to him. I looked at Levi and shook my head in short but quick turns. Either he didn’t see it, or he chose to ignore me. “We live on Melody Drive, what about you?” he answered. I sighed frustratedly. “Awesome,” Ronald exclaimed, “I live around there. We can all go back together.” I slumped my shoulders and, as we all started to head back, I kept tossing suspicious glances at the clown. He didn’t seem to notice though, as he and Levi were locked in conversation about their favorite anime shows. About halfway through our hike, we came to the tree line of the small bit of woods in our town. Instead of turning to walk around it like Levi and I did, Ronald started to walk straight into the trees. “Hey, where you goin’?” Levi called out to him. Ronald turned to look at us and said, “It’s a shortcut. I thought you guys didn’t want to get in trouble with your parents for being out so late?”

           “Nah, screw that man, we wouldn’t see a thing in there,” Levi said with a snort. Ronald held up a finger at him and then fished into his candy bag. His hand came back holding up a flashlight. “See?” he said, annoyed, “It’s fine.” Levi scratched his head, “You just happen to have a flashlight on you?” Ronald McDonald laughed that weird shrill laugh again, answering, “Yeah, I go through here all the time, and I knew I’d be out after dark anyway. Just come on.”

           I still had my doubts, but I had started to trust the clown guy a bit more throughout the night – besides, it really was getting late. “Whatever, I’m not afraid of the woods anyway.” I walked towards the clown in the trees. With how empty the streets had been, he had plenty of opportunities to try something with us anyway. “You coming, Levi?”

           “Nah man, you’re crazy. I’ll see you back at my place, maybe.” He said.

           “Your loss. Come on, Ron.” It had only now occurred to me that I never got the clown’s actual name, but at this point, I figured just calling him by his character was good enough. Levi shook his head, muttering something under his breath, and continued down the pavement.

           I took the lead as Ronald McDonald walked behind me, pointing the flashlight over my head in front of us. “How far does this go on, anyway?” I asked. Ronald said in a hushed tone, “Not far – veer left a little – we’ll beat your friend home by, like, twenty minutes.” I brushed a stray branch out of my way, muttering, “Awesome,” as I started to regret this decision alone on how much I was getting scraped up by these twigs.

           It was starting to get cold. I tried to warm myself by wrapping my arms around me without dropping my candy bag, asking again how long this was going to take, but this time Ronald didn’t say anything. I began to feel uneasy about his silence. The clouds parted in the sky which flooded the woods with bright moonlight, though being more able to see around me did little to quell my rising unease. I pushed another swath of tree limbs out of my way and saw that we came up to a small clearing. At first, I felt some relief standing in this small circle clear of the poking and prodding sticks and brush, but my heart sank as soon as I noticed the large shovel sticking out of the ground in front of me.

           “Alright, Mike, I’m gonna need you to start digging,” Ronald whispered into my ear. I jumped away from him and spun to face him. At some point he had pulled something else from his candy bag – it was a knife. The knife glinted like silver in the pale moonlight, and it was so long that a part of me wondered if it would be classified more as a short sword than a knife. “W-…What?” I stammered. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Ronald’s eyes grew wide and bulged in their sockets, as he screamed, “Dig, Mike! DIG! Or I’ll fucking cut your goddamn face off!” then he kicked me with one red, heavy boot. I fell against the upright shovel, bruising my back as I and the tool fell to the dirt. “Get up!” Ronald McDonald yelled, “Get the fuck up, you little bitch!”

           Every part of my body was quivering, and I worried that my feet weren’t going to listen to me. After what felt like several minutes I finally rose to my feet, the shovel clenched in my hands. I thought about charging at the clown with the shovel, but I was pretty certain that I would still lose that fight – he was so much bigger than me, and I assumed he was faster than me, and before I knew it, I would have that giant knife digging into my head.

           Tears started to run down my cheeks as I pressed the shovel into the ground. “Are you fucking crying? Seriously?” Ronald asked. I didn’t say anything. He looked at my tears glinting in the moonlight, and he released another freakish, high-pitched laugh. “What a fucking baby!” he taunted, “How are you this much of a bitch?” he spat.

           I still said nothing, and aside from the occasional, “Hurry up, bitch!” from the clown, he didn’t say much either. I don’t know how much time had passed, but eventually, I was in a hole that was reaching almost to the top of my head, and I could barely see Ronald McDonald’s face as he grinned down at me.

           I kicked the shovel into the moist soil at my feet, and as I did so I heard a gross squelching sound – it reminded me of last Halloween when Levi had stomped hard on a pumpkin.

           I looked up from my hole and saw the once-grinning and bug-eyed face of Ronald McDonald had gone dull, unresponsive, and numb. A string of bloody drool oozed out of his mouth as his eyes lulled upward. He fell forward.

           Standing in his place was Levi, holding a large and jagged rock that glistened crimson red under the fading moon. I started to scramble out of the hole I had dug myself into. As I emerged, I saw Levi climb on the clown’s back. He raised the rock up and brought it down again. Once, twice, three more times he did so, the gut-wrenching squishing sounds becoming less and less solid with each blow. “What the hell took you so long?” I demanded.

           Levi stood up, took off his mask, and flashed a toothy grin at me. “Sorry bro,” he said with a shrug, “I didn’t want him to hear me coming, so I hung back a bit, and you were hard to find in here. But hey, I found you. And I did it again this year – I think you owe me half your bag of candy.”

           I shook my head in disbelief, “Three years in a row, man. One of these days you’re gonna get caught.”

           “Yeah, maybe, but you can’t deny this one at least deserved it,” Levi cooed, then added cheerfully, “but I’m at least not getting caught this time – thanks for digging that hole man.”

           I burst into laughter, fresh tears running down my cheeks as I wheezed out, “Fuck you man!” and Levi guffawed. “Seriously though, bro,” he said, “Mind giving me a hand?” So we rolled the man dressed as Ronald McDonald into the freshly dug hole and buried him in this secluded clearing in the woods. We made our way back to Levi’s place and sorted through our haul for this year’s Halloween. I admitted to Levi I felt a little used for this year’s Halloween tradition, and Levi agreed it was a bit much, so he said to forget about giving him half of my candy.

We stayed up late, gorging ourselves on candy and watching Scream. It was a perfect evening, and I honestly couldn’t wait to see what Levi comes up with for next year’s Halloween night.