United Halloweens

In my early years, Halloween was cute chubby smiling pumpkins and tottering around in a pink tutu or lion suit before being pushed in my stroller trick-or-treating with my two older brothers and parents.   A little later, Halloween was scary pranks, craving pumpkins, ghost stories with flashlight beams pointed up at chins and pillow cases full of candy from hours of running door to door to door.  Few years more, Halloween turns into pure horror movie marathons with deranged killers, paranormal hauntings and flesh-eating creatures sharing pizza and bags of store-bought candy with my best friends.  Next are the Halloweens filled with boozy drinks called ‘The Witch’s Tit’ and ‘The Black Widow’ while wearing X-rated costumes with Satan horns and kitty ears.  Then, Halloween was family, finishing sewing and gluing pirate and princess costumes together into the wee hours of Hollow’s Eve, spending an entire Saturday in the corn maze and buying apple cider.  In my final gray-haired years, Halloween became a pain in my ass, grandchildren hollering and swinging cheap orange plastic pumpkin buckets everywhere, the gross home-made cupcakes they drop off to me with gummi-worms and half-eaten Oreo Cookies on top, and all that’s on TV is the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown or re-runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  This year, Halloween is different, I’m now a ghost.  

I am not my 88-year-old earthly self, with gray hair, wrinkles and frail from kidney and heart failure.  When I do want to show myself, a blurry but shadowy image of a younger healthier version appears, but most of the time, I stay in the invisible.  The others say once I get a few haunts out of the way—I will feel more comfortable in my own ghost skin.  Alive, I had to behave and catch my mood and reactions before insulting everyone.  It weighs on you, a real burden to carry around, not being able to express yourself always having to limit expectations.  Now, if I feel annoyed, I cause trouble in small little reminders or scare some common sense into people who need to reevaluate life.  Now that it’s Halloween, more assertive measures need to be taken and the magical mystical holiday takes all the blame.   Halloween haunts are for supporting all groups of the after-life, a day where our kinds are united.   

During my life, I found it insanely frustrating when people only looked out for themselves and choose to live selfishly.  During the first few months after my death, I concentrated on the thoughtless.  A fender bender for the idiot tailgaters, a lost wallet, purse or cell phone for the ungrateful, a missed job promotion for the two-faced, a forwarded text or nude picture to the spouses of cheaters and a minor kidnapping scare for the irresponsible parent.  October is the month that all ghosts coveted, it’s the time that we didn’t have to hold back.  We could actually play around with more of the supernatural using the spooky holiday as distraction.   Many ghosts even plan for Halloween a full year in advance, following and stalking their prey, taking mental notes of all their fears.  I felt a little lost with my first Halloween.  Not sure who to make my meaningful target.  It’s frowned upon if you only focus on your exes, high school bullies, bosses, beautiful and rich celebrities, rivals, heartbreakers and the mean people in your life.  The more creative you are and the most people you can correct or scare straight the better.  The day of the dead was fast approaching and I needed to come up with something to impress the others.

The used car dealership was an idea, it’s owned by Harry Wormwood, a short funny man with a mustache and balding head, his mother calls him Danny DeVito sometimes at Church Bingo, but no one has thought of looking into that.  They seem to enjoy ripping off first time car buyers, young families looking for a second car and newly divorced women, not real worthy of a ghostly intervention though.  Marty and Wendy Byrde, a nice-looking couple and their two children moved here from the Ozarks, bought a run-down motel to renovate and the seedy strip joint on the corner of Bateman and Linney Road.  These cash businesses are being used to launder Mexican drug money.  But, they aren’t really hurting anyone though, not yet at least.   The local gang of misfits, Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, have been causing a lot of trouble lately, terrorizing people and stalking older teenage girls.  I think they are going through a phase and will eventually grow tired and become bored of causing chaos.  I have to find something better though.  

There aren’t any rules or guidelines for us to follow and no known ramifications of doing a half-assed job.  I have always had a good work ethic and don’t want to sell my first Halloween short.  It’s going to difficult for me as it is, as I am not that brazen and don’t have my scare tactics down how I would think they should be.  Every day though, I feel more and more like a real ghost who is sneaky and frightening as I gear up for this Halloween challenge.   

Halloween’s 24-hours started and I decided to spend the time like any other day, letting the challenges come to me. I warned three young adults away from a camping trip they had planned to uncover the legend of the Blair Witch.  All of us ghosts know that she just wants to live out her days quietly in the woods making her stick art, she'd kill those kids if they interrupted her.  

Next, I warned a sensitive and withdrawn high schooler named Carrie to wear a bold red dress to her senior year prom next May--no sense in making a future telepathic supernatural monster feel more embarrassed than she needs to be. I remembered how high school was—evil, very evil, so I was happy to help her.  For a Halloween extra, I slipped her the 1-800 number to report her abusive mother.   

By lunch time, I wandered the Pet Sematary leaving cat nip and kibble around the gravesites.  I then uploaded The Ring’s video onto YouTube, boosted the Facebook ad for the Overlook Hotel’s Halloween special rate, and printed off flyers to pin all over town explaining there will be a ton of trick-or-treat candies in the street’s rain drains—first come first served.   

As evening approached, I saw Steven King, the author, sat down at the coffee shop for inspiration for his next book idea.  Looking over his shoulder I noticed he had some great thoughts brewing, but I had an eery pitch for him to read. Eventually, he stood up and walked into the Men’s restroom, and it only took me a moment to grab his pen and put my brilliant idea in his handwriting.

A bio fiction—based on real events. A ghost who does great humanity feats, striving to make the town she lives in a better place all year around--expect for Halloween.  That will be another #1 New York Times best seller and a blockbuster movie in about a year, I thought to myself.  

Dusk was upon us, children were running house to house screaming ‘trick-or treat,’ cars honked noisily and music played louder as parties started.  I came across three young sisters, one a blond, one a redhead and last a brunette; playing with an Ouija board in the middle on the grave yard, sitting by the engraving tombstone that read, “SANDERSON.”  These three had a lot of potential, I could just tell.  I crept up to them, staying invisible, and I placed one finger on the reader and pressed down to force the board to spell out the curse they’d need later on in life.  When I was done, they sang together pointing at different kids they encountered on their walk home, “I put a spell on you and now you’re mine.”  

I had time for one last job for my first Halloween.  It was close to jam packed club's closing time.  I placed huge boxes by the front and back doors, filled with hundreds of small hand-held sized dolls for the ladies dressed for the holiday.  Some of the dolls looked like Raggedy Ann, with red yarn hair and a linen apron dress, some looked like a vintage porcelain doll with curled blond hair and a fancy dress and some were of a fun orange haired doll wearing a striped colorful shirt and jean overall.  The sign read, ‘LADIES Please Take An Annabelle Doll Home To Love.’  For the boys’ boxes, I placed different face masks, some looked like they were made out of leather but resembled real human features, some were made of a hard resin that covered the nose up past the ears, breathing holes were punched out for the nostrils and it had three 3 inch bars covering the open lip and mouth area, making it impossible to bite anyone or have a snack, some were a simple dirty white sack mask, with cut out eye holes and a black markered hand drawn smiles for the face—ensuring the person who wore it would certainly stay a stranger.  The sign above the men’s boxes read,  ‘GENTLEMEN Please Take A Spooky Face Mask.’