Ghoul's Night Out

Have you ever noticed when fall comes? You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?


You notice when the air, once warm and flowing gently through one’s air like a calm river warmed by the golden rays of sunlight, now becomes more brisk- a sudden biting chill that nips teasingly at your cheeks and nose in the mid-morning haze with teeth of frost, carrying along the rather in-explainable faint odor of rich, browned earth. Or you might have noticed it in the trees, of which were once capped with heavy bushels of hundreds of green leaves, are now wearing patterned crowns of golden orange streaks mixed with an earthy brown and a deep crimson that form hypnotically beautiful patterns that roll and swirl together through country hills and suburban streets, its leaves picked up by spiteful winds that carry it like a forlorn soul under ashen-grey skies, or through fields of golden stalks that quiver and bend in slow waves like a tide slipping in and out of shore.


The world seems more quieter, almost like the Earth had fallen asleep, its beautiful creations slowly changing from the summer green to the cold, yet poetically beautiful brown and red.


Or maybe, you probably noticed it was autumn because of the many decorations you see in the windows of your neighbors, in shopping aisles or even plain city streets. Flimsy plastic skeletons dangling from even more flimsy strings and hooks, with teeth that clatter in the chilly wind. Pumpkins that adorn every entrance and every step like gate-keepers, carved and cut with an elegantly child-like design, casting strange shadows through the haze of an orange tongue that burns for an ephemeral hours inside its hallowed shell. Bags upon bags of sugary candy fills homes and shopping aisles, filling bowls and dishes in such capacity that it overflows in rivers of chocolates, lollipops and gumballs of all shapes and colors.


This, of course, means Halloween is coming.


As everyone knows, either from tradition or cheesy movies, Halloween-or its more formal term of All Hallow’s Eve- is well-known for its strange, almost otherworldly spirit to it. At night, when the moon slowly rolls behind the ashen mists that pours from high in the hills, it is said that from graveyards long forgotten in the rolling valleys, rises spirits and specters and otherworldly frights that bursts forth from distant worlds and from under piles of cold, dead Earth to walk the silent streets in quiet procession.


Of course, this is all just legend. Kid’s stuff designed to put a scare into someone or a tactic to sell you some cheap plastic merchandise for a few measly dollars.


But, there is one certain place that is known for its mysterious occurrences, a place where strange things seem to happen in the dead of the night, where odd shadows dance across the moonlit sky to an invisible rhythm made by the howling of the distant winds.


The place in question, while being rather cliche, is a graveyard, the name and location of the graveyard escapes me at the moment. It is a sprawling cemetery, a great garden of the dead that travels through the bleak fog like an eternal purgatory, littered with silver and grey headstones so old that the names have long since faded away, with large marble tombs and statues that seem to have just risen from the earth below.


At the farthest end of the graveyard, just beyond its borders, stands an ancient house, a house so old and decrepit that it seems almost a miracle it hasn’t fallen in on itself like a pack of playing cards stacked end by end, a house so large and tattered that one could almost see the beauty that it once was, from the courtyard full of overgrown weeds that reach along its timbers like thousands of fingers, from the statues in the entrance path that have crumbled from base to head, to even the windows on the walls, where once inhabitants could open and stand out and view a roaring city of neon lights and sound upon french-style balconies.


They say the house used to be an old opera house or something like that. A place where the rich and elite once gathered to watch hailed operas and plays in the house’s grand viewing hall. No one really knows what happened to the family who ran the place, in all honesty. Maybe they simply got tired of performing and slipped town. Maybe they moved on to better places far away, performing for better audiences in exotic lands. Or maybe they had a little “accident” one day, ran afoul of the wrong guys and paid the bill in more ways then one.


Then again, no one really knows, do they?


This old opera house is where the trouble goes on, they say. Some kids reported seeing strange shadows running back and forth the cracked windowsills. An old man claims he sees lights appearing in randoms spot in the house, with smoke rising from the chimney. But a famous story of the old house is the music they say you can still hear playing from the crumbling dwelling in the dead of night.


It’s old music, you know? The kind you hear if you played an old record you’d find in your grandparent’s basement. It’s a rich sound, like two voices singing in perfect unison, deep booming like thunder, but at the same time seductively sly, warm and smooth like rich caramel, with a warm melody with dotting notes of pianos and whistling. There’s no radios in the house, and it’s said all the records inside have been smashed to pieces.


So, the question remains: what is going on in the old opera house? Is it really haunted? Is there anything there to be afraid of? Or is there really something going on inside the old run-down hall?


Fortunately, there’s an answer to this question, or at least the closest thing you could give to an answer.


According to a little, small-spread rumor, there is someone living inside the old house. No one has anyone seen them, but due to the voices coming from the house at night, it’s said to be a sort of woman, or at least some very high-pitched old hobo.


This woman lives alone in the house, with no family or no friends, not even a pet to keep her company.  It’s hard to say how old this woman is, some say she’s roughly a teenager, while other say she’s in her twenties. Although with no proof, the argument is considered redundant and dropped altogether.


They say the woman has strange-looking skin, which is why she hides inside the old house, as if out of some public shame or personal embarrassment. Her skin is said to be a deep blue, a smooth, cold blue like the deepest ocean waters or like the color of ripe blueberries. Others say she has only one eye, and she covers it with her long, flowing hair. Other dubious sources claims that she’s been injured in an accident, and so lives in the old house from the watching eyes of the public.


The mysterious  woman never leaves the old opera house, or at least to anyone’s knowledge, as no one has ever seen her to be quite sure. She wanders the lonely halls like a wayward ghost, singing to an empty hall of rotting seats and fading posters as if she was a singer too stubborn to let the past go and fade away like everything else in the house.
And that’s the way it’s been for some time.


Until tonight.


Halloween had just rolled in once more, with the unblinking moon slowly vanishing behind a thick cloud of fog, the brisk autumn wind slowly rising to a gentle gale that sweeps through the city streets in a light, ghostly howl. Despite such conditions, many children had found it fit to don costumes of bed-sheet ghosts, paper mummies and old witches in an attempt to capture at least one night’s worth of sweet sugary delight.


Inside the old opera house, the so-called “ghost woman” was in a hurry. She ran around the rooms, finding old worn-out dresses and tattered scarves and worn-down gloves. She tosses on an old dress, one with holes torn in the skirt and cobwebs forming silky patterns along the back corsets, and slips an old pillow case from a water-logged feather pillow.  She ties her long blue hair back into two twin tails, adding a few spruces of expired makeup to her cheeks, and adds a few pieces of torn clothing for extra detail.


Then, with all the quietness of her ghost-like manner, she slips unheard from behind the opera house’s back entrance, silent feet creeping through unattended courtyards, slipping through tangled rose bushes and underneath a rotting old fence to touch the cold cement sidewalk.



Freed of her limited borders, the woman grasps her old pillow case and walks down the street, her eyes looking around cautiously for people ahead and behind her, her walking pace slow and leisurely, her twin pigtails blowing like ribbons in the Halloween breeze, her glowing red eye lit by the domed lamps of streetlights as she passes under them.


After a small bought of walking, she slowly starts to see a group of children ahead of her, sitting on a park bench, their hands full of candy bars and pretzels and other sweets. As she passes, some of them compliment on her costume, nodding in approval and giving her a thumbs-up, which makes the woman crack a small smile, a smile of sly knowledge, as if she had tricked them into believing something.


Ahead she sees a row of houses, all surrounded by mobs of children in costumes and attire, carrying pillow covers and plastic pumpkins filled to the brim with candy.  The woman smiles her small smile again and wanders into the street, curiously darting around, she chose a random house and wandered over to it, gently ringing the doorbell as she swept her costume clean of any unsightly debris.


The person who answers is an old woman, hunched down in an old evening robe, her hands clutching a small bowl of hard candy drops, her eyes glancing up at her guest, with a polite smile breaking across her face.


The old woman says how nice the costume is, and how adorable the woman looks in it. The woman smiles politely and gives a small curtsy, which makes the old woman chuckle. She drops some of the candy inside the bag, before wishing the woman a good night and a happy Halloween.


With that house down, the woman steps out back onto the street, clutching her small pillow case tightly, as if it would slip out of her hands, She walks over to the next house, running up to the patio and gently ringing the doorbell.


This time both a man and a woman answer, they are both young, around their mid-twenties. The man is holding a large bowl, in which is stacked a pile of chocolate bars. Both the man and the woman give a false, yet friendly, shout of horror before laughing at her costume and dropping a large king-sized bar of chocolate into the woman’s bag. The woman politely curtsies  and wishes them a good night, stepping back down off the porch and onto the street.


The next house she went to was larger than the others, with a line of cars parked up and down the driveway. Spooky sounding music hummed out from hidden tape recorder, bed-sheet “ghosts” hung from wooden posts in the ground, lining the path up to the house. Must have been a Halloween party going on inside, thought the woman to herself. With a bit more spring in her step, she walked up to the house and rung the doorbell.


The woman who answered the door wore a long black dress, her face masked behind a plastic mime mask. In one hand she held a large bowl of candy, and in the other hand another smaller bowl which was full of paper notes. Inside could be seen people crowding around tables and laughing, drinking punch and other spirits, some wearing wildly elaborate costumes while some wore only plastic masks and party hats.


The woman in the mask laughed politely and complimented her guest on her costume, showing her the two bowls in each hand.  She explained that each guest had a turn to win the entire bowl of candy, if they picked the winning number from the paper bowl. She sat the two bowls down in front of her guest and watched, a small smile slipping past her mask.


The girl looked down at the two bowls and reached deep into the paper one, her hand moving around for a few seconds before re-emerging with a small note slipped between her index and thumb, with the number of 35 scribbled in pencil across it.


The woman looked at the paper and them smiled, shaking the guest’s hand happily and then taking the bowl of candy and lowering it into the pillow cover, the candy pouring into the bag almost in seconds, nearly overfilling it, making the poor guest almost stumble forwards.


The mask-wearing woman laughed again and reached for another bowl, so this time another lucky winner could try and win the prize, slipping the lucky number back into the paper bowl and giving it a shake to mix it up again, congratulating her guest once more before bidding her farewell and re-joining the Halloween party back inside.


The girl smiled in delight, looking inside her bag and quickly closing it shut, if out of fear someone would see the haul inside. This was much more than she planned to get, which made her feel very happy, but also made her a little sad since she would have to finish up early this time.


The girl walked back down the steps and down the street, deciding to go to at least one more house before turning back in for another night. She walked down the street for a few minutes until she came to a small house just along the corner intersection.


There was no one out on the porch, save for a table and a large orange bowl in front of the door. The lights in the house were on, as a clear indication for someone to come up and get some free Halloween candy. She stepped onto the porch, seeing a large paper note taped to the front of the bowl reading in “blood” red marker: “HELP YOURSELF”.


She shrugged and reached inside the bowl of candy.


Then, she screamed.


Something had grabbed her hand, and pulled her forwards, sending her bumping into the table with a hushed bump.


She ripped her hand away, sending small candy pieces everywhere from the bowl. Carefully, she looked down into the bowl, moving away the candy gingerly to see what had grabbed her.


Directly at the bottom of the bowl, was a fake ghoul hand, rocking up and down on a small trigger mechanism, its rubbery veins pulsing out wild as it shifted back and forth.


With a indignant huff, and a mental note to herself for being so scared of a halloween toy, she scooped up a large fistful of candy and tossed it into the bag, giving the ghoulish hand a light pat before walking back down to the sidewalk.


Funny thing was, she could swear she could people laughing inside.
……………………………………………………………………………..
The woman walked back down the street, passing by flocks of dwindling trick-or-treaters, their bags full and sagging, dragging along the street as they passed her by. Some were sitting on their porches, eating down chocolate bars and trading others for better pieces of candy.  Some of the lights in the houses had gone out, signaling the coming end of yet another Halloween year.


As she walked down the street, passing the final house before it faded back into the outskirts, she noticed something sitting on the side of the road, near the ditch, it’s form barely shuffling around in the pale moonlight.


Upon closer inspection, the woman discovered, she noticed it was a small child, dressed up in a dirty bedsheet costume. He seemed like he had been crying, his hands and knees dirty from the mud, his bag of candy spilled out down the hill and disappearing into the murky water.


The woman stopped, kneeling down next to the boy, giving him a polite smile and asking him what was wrong, making sure not to sound threatening in anyway, lest the boy would run away.


The boy explained how he was walking home from trick-or-treating, when some older kids had pushed past him and knocked him over, making lose most of his candy in the ditch, so he had spent the last few minutes looking for what was left.


The woman smiled again and lightly placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, giving him a sympathetic pat. She hated people like that, people who pushed others around and treating them like dirt. She wanted to do something to help the boy out.


Then, she had a perfect idea.


She took her bag of candy and the boy’s empty bag in the other, dumping some of hers into his own bag, watching the smaller bag slowly fill up to the top.


The boy watched as his bag filled up and then, a moment later, broke into a grin, giving the woman a hug and gently taking his bag of candy, thanking the woman over and over.


With a polite giggle and a “you’re welcome”, she pat the boy’s forehead and told him to head home right away. The boy nodded and quickly ran off, carrying his new bag of treats with him.


The woman smiled again and walked back down the road, slowly passing the distant skyscrapers of the city in the distance, which broke through the dark mist like steel knives, the waving spotlights casting bizarre shadows against the empty street.


After a bit of walking, she found herself back at the old opera house. She quickly jumped the fence and hurried back through the door, locking it behind her as she went.


She ran up the rickety old stairs and down the musty old hallway and into a small room she had fashioned for herself, containing an old large bed, a bookshelf stacked with old books, an old radio and a wall of records that hung from plastic casing all along the wall, a red carpet running from wall to wall, with a large glass door leading out to a small patio that overlooked the city in distance.
Parting back the curtains on her bed, she leap onto the mattress, letting her bag of candy fall out onto the sheets, some of the candy falling out onto the bed.


The girl smiled tiredly and sat against the pillows, happily unwrapping a chocolate bar and nibbling on it through her stitched lips, reminding herself again to cut the strings so she could eat better.


As she ate, a small portion her ponytail popped off, revealing a small hole in the side of her head. From out of this whole slithered a thin, scaly, white snake, its head forming the shape of a dragon’s head, its bright yellow eyes warmly glowing out from the sides.


“So…” asked the parasite in a smooth, accented voice, taking a small piece of candy from the pile, unwrapping it with its teeth before popping it into his mouth. “Did you enjoy Halloween this year, Madam?”


Squigly giggled, licking her lips clean of chocolate before taking another bite. Just because she was undead didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy Halloween anymore. And dressing up was a breeze now, and she always did seem to get a lot of candy because of it.


“Yes, I did Leviathan…” Squigly giggled, raising a bony palm to her lips to silence her self from getting too loud. “I hope next year is even better than this year…”



And with that, Squigly leaned out from her bed and gingerly placed a record back onto a record player, letting the needle drop and scratch up against the record as it slowly came into tune. She smiled in content and opened another candy piece, breaking it apart so her and Leviathan could share.


Outside, Halloween slowly rolled to a close. The streets once became silent, empty, slow streams of midnight mist rolling down abandoned avenues, filling alleyways and street corners with an eerie silence, the color of grey blotting out lights and signs, embracing the world in a cold, comforting embrace.


In the distance, opera music crooned out to the stars.