Aiden O'Flynn

The cat’s black fur shimmered in the full moon’s light as it left a trail of bloody footprints. Like rose petals dipped in wax, scarlet stains scattered doom across the porch’s splintered boards and led to where the boy’s body lay illuminated by a toothy jack-o’-lantern.

A throng of curious neighbors gathered around the caution tape wrapping the border of the white Victorian home—no one got in without police clearance. Beside one of the patrol cars, Henry’s mother, Lois, wept into her husband’s chest; Terry Murphy was doing his best to console his wife’s tears. The mania was already beginning to take hold, intermittent sobs were sprinkled with fits of laughter, and he knew it was only a matter of time before she was pegged as a suspect.

“What the hell happened here?” a detective demanded while examining the victim.

“Sir,” a blue-coated officer responded, “it appears the body was stabbed by a sharp object, possibly a knife.”

“Any sign of the murder weapon?”

“None, sir.”

“Keep looking.”

The detective approached Terry and his wife, notebook in hand, and asked, “So, you two arrived home and found him like this on the porch? And where were you coming from, again?”

“Office party for my work?” The response was blunt and raspy.

“And where did you say you work again?”

Terry considered the word again and recognized this cop already knew what he did for a living. The sleuth was digging for clues, sniffing him like a bloodhound searching for drugs.

“For Northwest Bank about a mile up the road.”

The detective glanced through the report the arriving officer had written. “I see, and you were there between the hours of six and eight, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Terry huffed. “It’s all right there in the notes your man took when he got here. There’s no use in asking us the same questions. Will you just give us some answers? Who would’ve done something like this—who killed my son?”

Like a slow elevator, one of the detective’s eyebrows raised. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out.” He glanced at Lois who was fighting a laughing spell in her husband’s arms. “You say your wife’s bipolar? And she was with you the entire time you were gone?”

“There’s no way she could’ve done this. She was within eye contact of me for most of the party,” Terry defended.

“Most of the party? I never said she did this. Are you suggesting something I should know?”

“People use the restroom at parties,” Lois blurted through a mouthful of salty tears.

Terry’s arms tightened around his wife, attempting to shield her from the detective’s suspicious nature. “Of course, it was most of the party. She’s friends with many of my coworkers’ wives. Why would I have been watching her the whole time?”

“You tell me.” The sleuth jotted some notes onto his notepad and then continued his questioning. “So, did your boy have any enemies? Anyone that might’ve wanted to hurt him?”

“No, not at all. Can we skip the stupid questions? He was mostly a good kid—a good son, with good grades, had no bullies, many friends, and was very popular at school. When we left Henry, he—he was fine, do you hear me? Happy, dammit, he was waiting for his friends to carve pumpkins. It was supposed to be a good time, and now…”

“No need to get angry, Mr. Murphy. I have to ask these questions. It’s the best hope we have of finding your child’s murderer.”

“Sir,” an officer came running down holding a plastic bag with a bloody knife inside, “we have the murder weapon.”

“Good work, sergeant.” The detective took the bag and examined its contents. “Where was it?”

“Inside the jack-o’-lantern, sir.”

“Very good. Keep gathering evidence. I want the place dusted for prints, and photographs of everything before we clean up.”

Terry glanced at the pumpkin his boy had been carving. The eyes were like those of a wild animal flashing inside a dark forest. Just looking at the thing sent a shiver down his spine. He was shocked his child could muster creating such an ugly creature. He found himself captivated, as if he were under a spell, the flicker of those eyes hypnotizing him; he imagined silver steel sliding into his son's chest. At the same time, the white noise of the people around him started sounding like the whisper of wind.

“Mr. Murphy?” the detective spoke, pulling Terry from his trance.

The distraught father gazed at the investigator and realized he was displaying the bag’s gory contents. “I’m sorry, I—I can’t believe this is real.”

“Understandable. What I asked was if you recognized this weapon.”

Like needles poking all along his spine, the sight of the bloody blade chilled him to his core. There, in the detective’s hand, was the device used to slash his son to bits. Covering the inside was not just anyone’s blood, it was his son’s life running down the bag’s interior walls. He recognized the weapon immediately.

“That’s one of our kitchen knives, pulled from the wooden block resting on our counters.”

“Sergeant?”

The man who had found the weapon returned to the detective’s side. “Sir?”

“I want prints taken in the kitchen as well, especially around the cutlery block.”

“You got it.” The officer hurried toward the front door, and, as he did so, tripped over the jack-o’-lantern, sending it rolling.

Terry winced as the pumpkin knocked against the wall of the house, and watched as the clumsy cop returned it to the porch’s stoop.

“Please try to be careful not to disturb any of the actual evidence, sergeant,” the detective hollered, shaking his head before returning his gaze toward Terry. “Now, give me the names of the friends your son was supposed to carve pumpkins with tonight.”

***

His cigarette’s tip burned, mimicking the haunting glow of the jack-o’-lantern. Terry had quit smoking years ago, but always kept a pack hidden in the basement for when he was stressed. The night of his son’s murder seemed like an appropriate time to spark up bad habits.

Lois was in the bedroom upstairs; gentle whimpers fluttered like bats out of the open window. Terry was glad his wife finally settled down. He doubted she would ever find rest, but the heartbroken mother eventually tired from emotion and lapsed into unconsciousness. Still, she tossed in her sleep as if lying on a sloped conveyer belt.

Silver tendrils of smoke left his lips, dissipating into the bright night sky, and Terry contemplated, I thought bad things only happened during full moons on Fridays, not Mondays.

He choked on the fact his son was gone. The porch had been cleaned by forensics, and the police had left hours before, but he could still see the dark stains where his son’s blood had been spilled.

Something creaked like an old spring in the shadows, and he stood. Everything stayed silent other than the crickets chirping and the stilted sound of his breath. He squinted deeper into the darkness and noticed movement beside his neighbor’s hedge.

“Who’s out there?” he demanded with a hushed voice.

A silhouette appeared in the night, and, without a sound, it darted toward him.

“You better not come any closer. I have a gun and I will shoot you,” Terry lied.

The ink blotch stopped and held up two arms before a voice permeated the darkness, “I’m sorry, Mr. Murphy. It’s Billy—Henry’s friend from school. Please don’t shoot.”

“Dammit, Billy. You about gave me a heart attack. What’re you doing out here? It’s nearly three in the morning.”

Billy came closer and revealed his freckled face under the moon’s light. “I know, Mr. Murphy. I’m sorry, I didn’t think anyone would be up. I just wanted to see where it happened.”

Terry sucked the last of his cigarette and pulled the pack from his pocket before lighting a new one with the end of his first. He exhaled another lungful of smoke, and then replaced the wrapper. “No harm, no foul. I bet the curiosity is eating you up.”

Billy eyed Terry’s pocket, and then asked, “Think I could have one of those?”

Terry glanced down to where his cigarettes were peeking from his pants and shook his head. “Absolutely not. Your parents would kill me.”

“Like Mrs. Murphy would kill you?”

Terry sighed, and then pulled the pack back out and gave the boy what he desired.

“Fine, you got me. But, in return, I need you to tell me just what the hell happened here tonight. I know you were supposed to go trick-or-treating with Henry.”

Terry offered his lighter and Billy lit the cigarette before responding, “I don’t really know, sir. To be honest, I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“But you were here at some point?”

“Yes, me and the guys were supposed to meet before we set out. Henry was determined about carving pumpkins, but the rest of us weren’t interested, so we left him here.”

Terry bore into the boy. “You know, I can still smack that smoke out of your hands and tell your parents I caught you. What aren’t you telling me?”

Billy sucked at his cigarette like a pacifier. “Wow, these are strong.”

“Answer me.”

The wail of the cat whined in a nearby backyard, sounding like a spirit rising from the mist, and Billy glanced over both shoulders as if something watched him in the night. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

Terry’s cheeks grew hot. “Try me.”

Billy pulled something from one of his pockets and handed it to him. It was a slick piece of cardstock from what Terry could tell by feel alone. He examined the square blotch and realized he was holding a hard copy of a picture, but the details were shadowed.

“What am I looking at here, Billy?”

The boy returned the man’s lighter and asked, “Have you ever heard of Aiden O’Flynn?”

Terry sparked a flame and examined the picture under the light. There was a pumpkin sitting on top of a grave, the stone reading the name Billy had just said.

“The serial killer?”

The boy nodded. “Not just any serial killer, the Halloween Hacker.”

“Sure,” Terry said, letting the flame extinguish, filling the porch once again with black, “he slaughtered like fifty people over the span of a decade. I think Henry mentioned him a few days ago; we’ve been watching a lot of murder docs lately.” Terry paused. “That was like sixty years ago. What does this have to do with anything?”

Billy shrugged. “All I know is Henry found that picture at the library a week ago and had been going on and on about carving pumpkins ever since.”

“So what? Why do you even have this? Didn’t you tell the cops?”

Billy bobbed his head. “I did, but they said it wasn’t important, that they didn’t have time for ghost stories.”

“I don’t blame them.” Terry attempted to hand the picture back to Billy, but the boy held up his hands in surrender.

“Keep it. I don’t want anything to do with that thing.” He twisted his neck back and forth as the cat shrieked some more. “I need to go. I’m really sorry for your loss, Mr. Murphy.”

Billy darted off, dropping his cigarette in the yard before disappearing behind the hedge’s shadow, his bike squeaking into the distance.

Terry followed into the grass and retrieved the still-burning cigarette the boy had abandoned. “Stupid kids, sneaking around—middle of the night.” He pinched the tip out before placing the butt inside his pocket so his wife wouldn’t find it. “No damn respect for the dead—expects me to believe some old story like that?”

As he walked back toward his house, the burning gaze of the jack-o’-lantern stared at him; an image of the kitchen knife pulling crimson blood from his son's chest flashed into his mind. “Oh, yeah? Why don’t you give me your best shot, tough guy?” He stood with his arms out to his side, taunting the toothy pumpkin. “Yeah? That’s what I thought.”

He returned to the porch and sat defeated on the steps beside his son’s creation. Tears landed on the stoop as if from a broken faucet, and he swatted at the sting in his eyes. Twelve years he had poured himself into his son, and now Henry was gone, murdered of all things. Stories about parents losing their children due to disease had always made him cringe, but to lose a son to a person’s hand was so much worse. Out there, somewhere, the murderer breathed easy, and the thought burned Terry’s insides like a steam engine filled with too much coal.

He pulled his lighter and the photograph of Aiden O’Flynn’s grave from his pocket and brought the picture into focus. The headstone was weathered, the level of the grass around the sight was unkempt, and the pumpkin rested among the blades as if it were an egg cradled in a nest.

Sighing, he questioned himself, “Why am I even looking at this thing?”

Terry.

He scanned for the source of the eerie call, but no one stood nearby. Still, only the crickets chirped.

“Who’s there?”

Terry.

“I’m not playing, cut it out. I have a gun and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Terry.

He gazed down at the jack-o’-lantern and studied its face, now confident it sat askew, staring at him through the corner of its eye.

“Okay, who’s messing with me? Billy? Are you out there again?”

The pumpkin hissed like a broken valve.

Terry, flip the picture over.

“Ridiculous—is there a recorder inside this thing?”

He pulled the lid of the jack-o’-lantern’s head and peeked inside to see nothing but the ravaged shell. There was no source of light, yet the orange interior glowed as if the sun were blooming within it.

“What the hell?”

He replaced the lid and gaped into space as needles returned to his spine, their frigid bite gnawing each vertebra like a meat grinder. His wrist rotated, flipping the picture over before moving it into the light of the jack-o’-lantern’s eye. There, written in a calligraphic hand, were three unknown words.

“Maraigh tú anois,” he read aloud. “What the hell does that mean?”

Maraigh tú anois, the pumpkin repeated.

The picture morphed, and the grave was crowned with a carved pumpkin resembling the one beside him. Terry pitched the photo and grabbed the jack-o’-lantern with both hands before staring deep into its eyes and screaming, “What do you want from me?

Maraigh tú anois.

Maraigh tú anois.

Maraigh tú anois.

“Stop! Please, don’t make me…”

The jack-o’-lantern lifted from his hands and floated into the air, causing Terry to leap from his seat. The chills in his spine became agonizing, and his feet glued themselves to the floor, the strength to run disintegrating.

The moonlight projected a hazy body below where the pumpkin hovered, and the apparition took a step toward him before leaning down inches in front of Terry’s face. The toothy grin widened and the eyebrows furrowed with wicked delight.

Kill you now, Terry.

Ice slid across his throat as something hot started dripping below his chin, and Terry’s knees went limp. As he fell onto the porch, the moon’s beam blinded him, filling his eyes with red stars, and he began choking like a fish pulled from a stream.

His head rolled over as the cat’s wail began to grow shrill, piercing his ears. As his watery vision grew murky, he caught a glimpse of where the jack-o’-lantern had returned to its perch, its fiery eyes still watching him, and next to it the black cat stepped over where his hand was gripping a bloody kitchen knife.