It’s Halloween

It’s Halloween. I like Halloween. I like dressing up and getting candy. I don’t think I’m too big for it yet, but my older sister does.

She does not like Halloween. She likes pink lipstick, makeup, boys, and her phone. Yuck. My parents say it’s part of growing up. If that’s the case, I don’t think I ever want to grow up. I’d rather stay young, forever and ever.

My costume this year is really cool. Much better than last year. Last year I went as a ballerina. I hate ballerinas. But mom said I act un-lady-like enough as it is. Whatever that means. This year I’m going as a knight. I have chain mail, a helmet, a sword, and everything. It’s all plastic, but it still looks pretty cool.

Grandpa helped me pick out the costume. He teaches literature at the school with all the big kids. He tells me the best stories at bedtime about knights and fire-breathing dragons, witches and wizards, myths and magic, and fairy tales. My older sister used to listen to them too, but she’s too old for bedtime stories now.

That’s what she says anyway. Grandpa always gets a sad little smile on his face when she says that. He thinks I can’t see it, but I do. I still listen to them. I still know them to be true.

My older sister has to go trick-or-treating with me. Mom and dad say I’m too little to go by myself, but my older sister argues that I’m not too little. I agree with her. I’m not too little. I was little last year. I’m eight now, and my older sister is thirteen.

Mom and dad say she still has to go with me. If she doesn’t, then she can’t go over to her friend’s house next weekend. She takes me with her and rolls her eyes when mom and dad can’t see her.

“It’s not nice to roll your eyes,” I tell her. Now she’s mad at me too, but we’re still going trick-or-treating together.

There are a lot of houses on our street. Some of them are decorated and look really scary. The people who live in them are dressed up too. My older sister is not dressed up. Some of the adults tell her she is being a spoilsport. She rolls her eyes at them too. My older sister likes rolling her eyes.

I get lots of candy from trick-or-treating. Lots of people like my costume. They tell me I look very brave with my sword. I tell them it’s plastic. They laugh at that for some reason.

My sister is getting bored. She keeps checking her phone as we go up to each of the houses. We’ve been to so many of them. Maybe like ten. My older sister tells me that we’re done trick-or-treating, and it’s time to go home.

I don’t want to go home. I’m getting lots of candy. I want to keep trick-or-treating.

My older sister tells me that since she’s thirteen, that practically makes her an adult and that means I have to do as she says. I tell her it does not, and she says, “Yes it does, stop being a little brat.”

I start to cry, even though I’m not little, and I’m not a brat. I don’t like crying. Why does my sister have to be so mean? It’s Halloween. We’re supposed to have fun on Halloween.

I think my older sister feels bad about making me cry. She rubs my back and says, “Cheer up, let’s go to the next house.” Still sniffling, I walk up to the next house, the old house all the way at the end of the block.

It’s getting dark out. The street lights aren’t working here for some reason. They flicker, like a flashlight about to die. It’s scary but I don’t tell my sister. I’m not too little to go trick-or-treating, and besides, tonight I’m dressed up like a knight. I have a shiny sword and everything.

The old house looks empty. The sidewalk is cracked and uneven. I hop over the crack because I don’t want to hurt my mom. The grass is brown. It’s supposed to be green. The paint on the house is cracked and peeling, like my skin the time I played out in the sun for too long and got sunburned. There are some flowers planted near the front door, but I think they’re dead. Whoever lives here really knows how to decorate for Halloween.

My older sister doesn’t seem to see any of this. She’s still on her phone as we walk up to the front door. The knocker is shaped like a goblin from one of the picture books Grandpa used to read me when I was little. I reach up for the knocker on tippy-toe, but before I can touch it, the door swings open. It is very noisy, like a squeaky wheel on a shopping cart, or a really rusty hinge being opened.

An old woman is standing hunched over in the doorway. She is in a dark black dress with pointed shoes and striped socks, red and white. Her fingernails are long, very long, and they look sharp as knives. I’m not supposed to play with knives. Her skin is wrinkled and yellowed with age, kind of like what my grandma’s skin looks like. Her nose is long and crooked at the end, and her hair is gray like ash, and wispy. Her eyes are dark and they seem to burrow into ours like she can see right through us.

She smiles at us, and for a moment, it looks like her teeth are very sharp, sharper than her fingernails, sharper even than knives. She looks like a witch. But that isn’t nice to say, so of course, I don’t tell her that.

“Trick-or-treat,” I manage to blurt out in a rush, forgetting why my older sister and I were there for a moment. I hold out my bag of candy, hopeful. My bag is already quite full and it is getting heavy. But not too heavy.

“Treats, certainly,” the old woman cackles, but she isn’t looking at my bag of candy. She’s looking right at my sister and me. “Won’t you children come inside?”

And now, my older sister looks up sharply, tearing her eyes away from her phone. “No, I don’t think so”, she says quickly and puts her hand on my shoulder. “Come on,” she tells me, “We’re leaving.”

The old woman just smiles at us, but there is no warmth in her smile. Smiles are supposed to be warm. Hers was a cold smile. My older sister and I stiffen and freeze under the old woman’s gaze. We can’t move. The old woman still smiles and beckons us forward. “Oh, but I insist,” she says in a soft voice.

My older sister and I are sitting in the old woman’s living room. I don’t know how we got here. I think the old woman really is a witch. One moment we were outside, the next we are sitting down on a ratty, chewed-on couch with the stuffing falling out in places. It looks like it got bit by a wild animal.

The old woman’s living room is filled with cobwebs and candles, so many candles are all throughout the room. Some of them flicker with a strange light. Sometimes it’s green, sometimes it’s blue. Strange symbols are painted on the walls with red, the color of blood like when I fell down and skinned my knee one time.

The old woman is in the kitchen behind us. Even though our backs are turned to her, we can still feel her eyes on us from time to time. It makes me feel cold, so very cold. We can’t move from sitting on the couch.

My sister’s phone doesn’t work in the old woman’s house. It keeps saying no signal. The old woman let me keep my bag of candy, but she took my sword and the rest of my costume. I don’t think it would have done anything anyway. It’s just plastic.

We can hear the old woman muttering to herself as she turns on the oven and makes noise by clanking pots and pans together. She is wondering how we will both fit in her oven. I do not want to be in the old woman’s oven. I do not want to be in the old woman’s living room. I do not want to be in her house at all.

I want to keep trick or treating. I am scared.

I look over at my older sister, sitting next to me. She looks scared too. I haven’t seen my older sister look scared for a long time, maybe since she was ten or eleven. She sees me looking at her with wide eyes, and somehow, she manages to smile at me.

“It’ll be alright,” she tells me, but I know she’s lying. I can see it in her eyes as she starts to cry.

I don’t like it when my older sister cries. I’m holding my bag of candy tightly with white hands. They’re shaking. I let go of my bag of candy and hold on to my older sister’s hand instead. She holds onto it tightly. My hand shakes a little less.

“Just a moment, my pretties,” the old woman calls from the kitchen. “Not much longer now and I’ll be ready.”

My older sister squeezes my hand and whispers, “Don’t worry, everything will be alright. I have a plan. Just be ready to run when I tell you to.”

I don’t know what my sister is planning, but I want to believe her. I want to trust her that everything will be alright. She is older than me. She’s practically an adult, and adults know what to do in times like these. I squeeze her hand back and nod my head.

She smiles back at me. “I’m sorry I called you a brat earlier,” she says. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I forgive you,” I say because I do. I love my sister. I tell her that.

“I love you too,” she tells me.

Suddenly, the old woman is standing right in front of us. I think she appeared out of nowhere. And now, I know she’s a witch. She smiles down at us, but again, it’s a cold smile. I do not like that smile.

“Into the kitchen, my treats,” she instructs us.

My older sister and I are walking toward the kitchen. It is a small kitchen. The old witch must not have a dishwasher or parents, because dirty dishes are everywhere. If she had parents, they would have made her clean the dishes. And maybe put them away. The smell is awful. It smells like rotten eggs like the ones dad threw away because they weren’t good anymore.

The old witch stands behind us. There is no other way out of the kitchen. We are trapped.

“Get into the oven, my treats,” she orders us.

I do not want to go into the oven. I start to cry.

The old witch does not like me crying. “Be quiet!” she snaps. “Do as I say!”

I stop crying. I feel strange. My feet start to move me toward the oven. So do my older sister’s. We both struggle, fighting back against our feet, but it’s no use. We are at the open oven door. I can feel the heat. It hurts my face and dries my tears.

“Get in the oven,” the old witch says again, more earnestly this time. Behind us, she licks her lips hungrily.

“Wait, I have a problem!” my older sister cries desperately, and we both stop moving forward.

“What is it?” the witch asks, a note of frustration in her voice.

“We’ll both never fit inside,” my older sister tells the witch. “You’ll have to cook us one at a time.”

I don’t know what my older sister is doing. I do not want to be cooked at all.

“Nonsense!” the old witch scoffs. “I measured the oven myself. You’ll both fit, now stop stalling.”

“Did you measure it twice?” My older sister asks again. “I’d hate for one of us to climb in and find that the other couldn’t fit as well.”

The old witch hesitates, and then grumbles to herself, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check again. Measure twice, cook once, as the saying goes.”

She shuffles past the two of us and leans toward the oven, squinting at it. My older sister grabs the bag of candy from my hand and swings it at the back of the old witch’s head. Hard. There’s a lot of candy in my bag. It makes a loud CRACK as it hits the old witch.

With a strangled cry, the old witch stumbles forward, pitching headfirst into the open oven. And now, the cry becomes a shriek of pain. It fills the kitchen. But we can move. My older sister leaps forward and slams the oven door shut.

Then she turns to me and takes me by the hand. “Run!” she shouts, and we run.

We run out of the old witch’s kitchen, we dash out of her living room and out her front door. We leap over the crack in the sidewalk and we keep running. The old witch’s shrieks fill our ears. I still hear them. We keep running. We don’t stop until we get all the way to our home.

“How did you know that would work?” I ask my sister, gasping for breath.

“I remembered Grandpa’s stories,” my sister tells me. “Witches always fall for tricks like that.”

We laugh and then start to cry. When our parents find us outside on our front porch, we are both still crying. Our parents ask us what happened. We tell them everything. Our parents don’t believe us.

They both get mad at my older sister. They tell her to stop encouraging me to believe Grandpa’s made-up stories and fairy tales. We are both in trouble now. I don’t eat any candy, even though it’s Halloween night.

The next day, after Halloween is done, my older sister and I go back, looking for the old house at the end of our street, to prove to mom and dad that we were telling the truth. We look for it, but it’s no longer there. There is no old house at the end of our street. There’s just an empty lot with brown grass.

I don’t know what happened to the old house or the witch who owned it. Maybe the house disappeared because she didn’t make it out of the oven. Maybe it vanished because she did escape. Mom and dad still say we just made the whole thing up. But my older sister and I know what we saw. We know what happened to be true.

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