"Trick or Treat" (A Halloween Tale)

by Emerald A. Behrens

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The smell of smoke was in the air. Beyond the smallest mountain range of the Buttes, the sunset was a haze of deep red, orange, darker purples and blues. In the valley past the orchards and rice fields of the farmers, small towns along the highway were decorated with hay stacks, pumpkins and scarecrows. In bigger towns and cities of the suburbs, children were getting ready in their costumes to walk the safe tree-lined streets for candy while their parents idly supervised them from afar.

In the small college town of Chico, Halloween was a time for parties, mischief and mayhem. College kids, finally away from the supervision of their parents, ran amok in skimpy outfits, pimp suits and political masks. Police were busy patrolling on horseback in the downtown streets where frat houses had their trees toilet-papered ahead of time. All Hallows Eve in Chico was just another excuse for a drunken melee.

Casey followed the other kids to each house in the neighborhood. She was always last, preferring to stay away so she wouldn't be bullied. It never worked. She had learned already this night what happened when she got in their way.

Soon she came to a row of smaller houses, in the poorer neighborhood across from Chapmantown, where the city refused to incorporate the neighborhood of the blacks and Hmong immigrants, so the streets remained unpaved and unlit. This was the working-class neighborhood that had been built after the Diamond Match factory brought in jobs during the early 1900's. Many kids skipped this part of town because people weren't as rich, so there was less candy to be had.

Casey didn't mind and preferred these houses to the snobbish façade of the newly built Doe Mill design. The smaller houses had a charm and warmth without the fake lawns and "Don't let your dog poop here" signs. Many of these houses had overgrown yards where Casey imagined gnomes lurking about with faeries and sprites. Some houses had Tibetan flags and bells along their porch with Peace and Namaste signs.

Behind the charming houses were the poorer bungalows made for single-dwellers usually on welfare or retired people who had no families. Plenty of cats roamed the alleyways here. Casey tried to pet an orange tabby but it ran away, looking back in terror before padding silently off. It ran into the fields beyond the fence where the enormous storage house stood as a forbidding prelude to the burned out remains of the Diamond Match factory, long ago abandoned. A train roared by in the background, whistling its warning to the night sky. Casey shivered and walked on.

Most of the houses here had their lights out. Almost none of them had any pumpkins or decorations out. They clearly weren't expecting children here. The one bungalow that was decorated was empty and no one answered the door when Casey rang the bell. Then she saw another group of kids coming through. They ignored her and went to the one lone bungalow that was closest to the field of the abandoned factory. The older kids talked for a bit then decided to door bell ditch the bungalow. Casey watched as one of them approached. The boy in the Iron Man costume snickered before ringing the bell several times. He laughed and joined the others to run behind the small building.

Casey watched, a frown on her face while the older kids did their antics. Then she heard them scream. They ran past her, almost knocking her down as a man came out from behind the building holding a knife. It was as if he had been waiting for them and he looked furious.

"Goddamn brats!" he cursed and saw Casey. He scoffed at her and went in through the front door, leaving it wide open.

She didn't know why but she approached and was about to knock on the open door when the man came back and faced her.

"Think you're braver than they, are you?" he asked snidely.

Casey didn't answer but felt her throat constrict. She couldn't even talk.

"Come in then, if you dare." The strange man said before he turned and went inside.

She stood out in the cold, lit only by the single yellow porch light, holding her bag that didn't have candy in it yet. The foster kids she had been with had beaten her to it-literally. They hit her, pushed her and kicked her until they grabbed the tiny handful that had been rightfully hers.

Casey looked behind her, the older kids were long gone. The group of kids from the foster house she was with were supposed to stay together; that's what the foster mother, Patty, said. Casey hated the foster house, the foster kids and the belligerent woman, Patty, who referred to Casey as "that strange girl" behind her back.

If anything happened to her no one would know. They also wouldn't care. At ten-years-old, Casey had spent most of her life in the foster system. She only had vague memories of her parents; a drunk mother who beat her and a father who left when she was four.

Casey shivered in the cold then stepped in. The house was very small; only an entryway for the living room which had a futon bed and another room for the kitchen.

"That was a bluff, you little brat! I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to actually come in!" The man looked mad but she stood her ground.

"An open door is an open invitation," she retorted and for a moment the man looked taken aback.

"Well, so it is." He stood looking at her closely then said abruptly, "Shut the door. It's cold." The man went back into the kitchen then said over his shoulder, "I don't have any candy-unless you care for booze."

Casey cautiously stepped over to him. The man was strange indeed. He wore a long sweater that wrapped around him like a cloak. His gaunt, hallow face was surrounded by thin, dark brown hair that hung to his shoulders. Dark brown eyes stared out from frowning black brows and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Everything about him was dark and strange.

"You're not supposed to give me booze, I'm a kid," Casey explained.

The man just laughed. "I could give you apples with razors in them instead. Would you rather have those?" He said cruelly.

"No," she answered.

"Then I got nothing for you." He turned and opened an electric cooking pot and hot steam wafted out.

The smell of food made Casey's mouth water and her stomach growled. The man poured himself some chili soup and in the steamer were strange pumpkin chunks that smelled sweet and spicy. There was only one chair at the kitchen table. It was obvious the man lived alone.

He turned and put the food on the table. "You're still here? Honestly, by now I think you're tempting fate. I could be a murderer for all you know."

He watched her reaction but she answered smartly, "If you murder me, I'll come back and curse you. I'm a witch." She stepped to him as if to threaten him but he only laughed.

"A witch! Where's your broom and hat? You look more like Orphan Annie to me."

Casey was dressed in a shabby hand-me-down dress over her dirt-stained jeans with a worn sweater over it all that came down to her knees. She wasn't even given a mask like the other kids. She had to use her own pillow case to hold what candy she could get but now it was ripped.

Her light blond hair hung in lanky strands around her pale thin face. Her pale blue eyes often showed no mirth or joy of childhood but instead looked sad and haunted.

The man sighed and grabbed a folding chair from behind the table. He set it down shortly and motioned her to sit. "Well, you must be hungry. Candy isn't much of a dinner." He filled a bowl and set it before her. "Call your parents and tell 'em where you are so they don't worry, though I wonder why you're here alone." He looked at her curiously.

"I don't have any parents. I live in a foster home." She took the spoon he offered her and began to eat.

"Oh," he said finally. He looked at her a moment then dug into his meal.

They ate in strange companionable silence. Two strangers at the table.

Casey found it oddly comforting and peaceful. It was probably the first meal she even had away from the prattle and noise of children arguing and kicking her under the table. The man kept his eyes on his food but looked deep in thought. He looked strangely like a wizard from an old fairy tale. The man also wore slim black jeans and strange pointed woolen slippers on his feet.

Casey took the opportunity to look around. There were bundles of flowers and herbs hanging in the window. Prisms also hung from the window above a stone mortar and pestle on a wooden cutting board.

The man finished his meal and went to get more. "What time do you have to be back?" He asked her.

She shrugged and looked in the living room. There was no TV but a vintage-looking record player stood atop a dresser and pieces of jewelry and stones hung from the wall. There were also watercolor pictures tacked up with strange ghostly abstract shapes that ran down in a column. A mirror hung near the doorway next to a clock on a wooden shelf. The old clock tick-tocked the time and Casey saw it was after seven o'clock. Her bedtime was supposed to be eight-thirty but she always read secretly in the closet until nine-thirty p.m.

Suddenly Casey heard a scritch-scratching at the door. It was the back door of the kitchen. It sounded like something wanted to come in.

"Oh honestly!" The man set his bowl down and opened the back door. "Are you back again?"

Casey looked to see if it was one of the kids but instead a black cat slipped in and looked around, as if it didn't know where it was. It gave Casey a cursory glance before it meowed and sat down.

"You hungry too?" The man shook his head and reached into a cupboard. "I'm running a freakin' food bank here." He opened a can and set it before the cat while filling up another small bowl for water. As he set the water bowl down it clanged against the floor in an eerie echo and the cat began to eat its meal.

"What's its name?" Casey asked.

"It's not mine. I just call it Vincent but it might be a girl." He scoffed and sat down to eat.

"What's your name?" she asked him.

"Victor," he said between a mouthful of food.

"I'm Casey."

He pointed to the hot pot, "More food there."

She got up to get more but couldn't reach all the way in as it was up on the counter.

He got up and helped her. "Casey the Witch." He handed her the full bowl and then rinsed out the hot pot cooker before he sat down again.

She watched the cat as it ate, hearing it purr loudly between bites.

"You know why people hand out candy for Halloween?" He asked all of a sudden.

Casey shook her head.

"Candy companies. Money." He finished his bowl of soup. "But really, the reason people make offerings is because of the spirits. The hungry spirits who come back on All Hallows Eve, the only time they can walk the earth again. You feed them to keep them peaceful so they don't curse you-for if you should be so foolish as to deny them a little food and drink, well then, you invite their hellish rage." Victor looked at her askance with wide eyes.

"How do you know if they're spirits? Aren't they just kids dressed up?" Casey asked.

"The spirits can't enter unless invited and unlike children they are not satisfied with bits of candy." He got up and opened another simmering pot, one smelling of spice and cider. Victor took some strange orange and large leafed plants and cut them on the cutting board. He was using the same knife he had chased the kids earlier with. "You must offer real hospitality, shelter and warmth, a seat at the table and home cooked food."

Victor brought over two mugs of steaming apple cinnamon spiced cider and placed the plate of the orange vegetables before Casey. "Help yourself." He took a bit of the orange veggie and sipped the cider.

"What are they?" She made a face.

"Persimmons. Fruit. Try it."

Casey took a hesitant bite but found it wasn't too sweet. It had a mild, almost pumpkin-like taste but soft like a pear. It went well with the hot cider. She felt something brush between her legs and was startled; she almost choked on her cider. It was the black cat and its tail was twisting around her feet as it paced between her and Victor under the table. The cat reached up with its paws to tap at Victor's knee before he reached down to pet it.

"What do spirits do if they're angry?" Casey asked cautiously.

Victor paused between sips of his cider and said shortly, "They get revenge."

"Why?" she asked, "What makes them so angry?"

He put his cider down and looked at her seriously. "They walk the earth filled with the vengeance they carried in their lives and at their time of death."

She didn't know what to say about that so she took another piece of persimmon. "Have you ever seen a ghost?" She asked after a moment of silence.

He took his time before answering, "I thought I did once."

"Where'd you see it?" she asked, thrilled and scared at the same time.

Victor sighed, "I shouldn't be telling you this. It'll give you nightmares."

"No, it won't. At the foster house they always sleep with the light on," she explained.

Victor frowned, "You live around here?"

"Yeah. On Oleander." She thought she could trust him to say where she lived.

Victor petted the cat absentmindedly after it hopped onto his lap. "The house on Oleander..."

"It was for sale but they took the sign down." Casey finished her cider. "Can I have some more?"

Victor motioned the cat off and it gave an indignant meow as he got up and refilled her mug. "I saw the ghost near the doorway here, in the kitchen, before I turned on the light." The steam smelled of delicious spice.

"Was it gross looking?" She took the hot mug from him and put her cold hands around it.

"No, I didn't see its face. It was just a shadow but it looked human as it stood there." He looked to the spot where the ghost had been, then looked back at Casey.

"What did it want?"

"I don't know."

The cat had lain down near the gas stove to keep warm. Its tail twitched absently as it closed its eyes.

"Were you scared?" she asked.

"Yes. I wasn't expecting it." He turned his empty mug in his hands but didn't move to fill it. He kept looking at Casey. "How old are you?"

"I'm ten. My birthday was September 13th. How old are you?"

"I'm thirty-six." Victor sighed and looked at the empty plate.

"You look older." Casey said bluntly.

"Gee, thanks, kid," he answered shortly.

"What did the ghost do? Did it hurt you?"

"The ghost disappeared when I turned on the light but it was very cold in the kitchen."

"That's all that happened? See any other ghosts?"

"I felt a strange presence before. I've always been attuned to the strange and unusual," Victor mused and added, "I saw strange things as a child."

"What sorta things?"

Victor indulged her curiosity, reliving the experience as he told it. "Dark shadows at the foot of my bed when I awoke to scratching at my window," he paused and remembered, "A water monster in a lake filled with filthy water..."

Casey looked at him dubiously, "How did it live there?"

"I don't know." Victor shrugged.

"Did those shadows hurt you?"

"No," Victor thought back to that strange night, "but they had terrified me. I was so scared that I pretended to sleep and felt one of them sit on my bed next to me."

"Did you scream?"

"No, I was too scared. Instead, I closed my eyes and said a prayer, something like, 'God keep me safe, away from harm, keep them away'. I imagined a box protecting me an an angel to guard me." Victor watched Casey as she sat wide-eyed and engrossed.

"What happened after?"

"Eventually I fell asleep. I awoke the next morning and looked at the digital clock I had near my bedside. Its numbers were blinking. The lights had gone off in the night."

"Were those shadows sent by the devil to scare you?" She had finished her cider again.

"I don't know." Victor looked at his mantle clock. It was eight-thirty p.m.. "Shouldn't you be getting back?"

"I don't want to. Can I stay here?"

"No, it's not right. You need to go home."

"I don't have a home." Casey was getting upset. She didn't want to go back to that stupid foster place.

Victor got up and removed his mug and empty plate from the table. He stood at the sink and washed them.

He put them aside and turned to Casey, who was still sitting at the table, holding her cup. "Why did you come here?"

He never had any visitors before on Halloween. Children and their parents always passed him by. He lived alone in his little bungalow, getting by on part-time jobs and seasonal work. The stupid college town he lived in never had much promise and he only moved here for cheaper rent. He hated the people here. He didn't have any friends but kept to himself.

The girl still held her mug though it was empty, as if when she let go she would have to leave.

"Your door was open. No one else invited me."

She sounded so lonely.

"I didn't invite you," he sighed, "Those stupid kids never stop harassing me. Usually, I have to clean up rotten eggs and toilet paper in the morning." He saw the cat at the kitchen door, waiting to go out. He got up and opened the door, watching it run off past the other small bungalows in the neighborhood.

When he picked up the cat's dishes he saw Casey was crying. "Please don't make me leave."

"There is no place for you here," Victor gestured around him. He only had his futon bed which took up most of the living room-slash-bedroom when rolled out.

"I don't want to go. I don't have a home." She continued to cry.

Victor washed the cat's plates. He dried his hands and explained, "The cat Vincent doesn't live here. It comes here sometimes for food and I feed it. Sometimes the cat keeps me company and even lets me pet it. Then it goes. I don't own the cat but it visits sometimes. I actually prefer this arrangement; less responsibility for me."

He leaned against the counter and watched Casey as she sat still.

"But I'm not a cat," she said sullenly.

"You can still visit if you like," Victor said quietly.

Casey looked up at him and finally put the cup down. She got up from the table and stood in front of him. It looked like she had spilled cider all over her sweater and there was a rusted brown stain down the front of it. She was barefoot and clutched the ripped pillowcase which also had a brown-red stain. "I didn't even get any candy, they took it from me."

"Sorry kid, I don't have any candy." Victor answered weakly.

"I didn't like that other man who gave me candy. He lied to me. He gave me a ride in his truck and I told him where I lived but he didn't take me there. He took me over there-" She pointed to the abandoned Diamond Match factory that had burned down some years ago.

Victor knew where she pointed to; the abandoned factory out beyond the fields behind the bungalows off Chestnut street, in Barber Yard.

Casey continued, her voice deadpan and level, "He did bad things to me. Dragged me out of his truck and hit me. My nose was bleeding. He dragged me out- He did something gross."

She looked at Victor and he felt sick.

"Then he put his hands around my neck-"

Victor shivered. He was freezing. He had closed the door when he let the cat out but it was very cold in the kitchen. He shuddered.

"It's not fair. All I wanted was to be a witch for Halloween." Casey looked past Victor, past the door, as if staring into the fields,

"It's not fair.

It's not fair-

It's NOT FAIR!"

She screamed and a vicious wind slammed against the door, blowing it open.

Victor ran to the door and closed it, vaguely wanting to run out the door. Instead he closed it.

He slowly turned around, expecting to see the barefoot girl, Casey, but she was gone.

He walked to the living room sluggishly, as if in a dream. No one was there. He looked back to the kitchen table and saw the cup. He picked it up and found it ice cold. He smelled the inside absentmindedly; there was still the smell of cider.

Victor wished the cat hadn't left. He was still cold and shivering. He didn't want to be alone.

Then he spoke, "I'm sorry- I'm sorry for what happened to you. That should never have happened." He hadn't realized he was crying until a tear fell on the table and his nose started to run. He sniffled.

Victor remembered hearing about a murder of a child later, years later, after he had been in a foster home; that terrible foster home he had to live in, on Oleander street, about thirty-years ago. Recently, the house was sold to a Christian rescue mission but it had been vacant and before that filled with college kids who trashed the place.

The murder happened right before the foster home was shut down and the woman who ran the place moved away, to take in babies instead of children. The girl's body was found near the railroad tracks, past the now burned down Diamond Match factory building. They never found the killer.

Victor heard about the murder in Duffy's Tavern, an old bar where the town lawyers would drink and gossip about past DUI cases of college kids. He never drank much but would sit and read, keeping to himself as usual. He hated how casual the old drunk lawyer sounded when he told the story and wanted to punch the guy but of course, Victor was just eavesdropping and didn't know anyone there.

"You're right. It's not fair." He wiped more tears away.

None of them knew what it was like. The normal people with their jobs and family, safe houses and safe kids. Never a thought for the unwanted children, those abused and left in foster houses, until some goddamn bastard comes along and murders them...

Why did the bad things always come back to haunt him? Why did he have to be reminded, again and again?

"I was there too, in that foster house. I hated it. All the kids picked on me, all I wanted was to be left alone. I didn't get candy for Halloween either-just some rotten apple someone threw on the grass," he laughed ruefully. "I wanted to be a wizard-I wanted powers-the power to get back at those bad people and powers to get me out of there. I was six-years-old." Victor paused, feeling another wave of tears hit him. "Those dark shadows I told you about came to me when I was in an institution-where they had put me because they didn't want to bother with me anymore. I was eight-years-old when that happened. I was molested by other kids and staff, doctors and therapists who weren't supposed to hurt me but they did."

He waited. There was only silence.

"Bad things happened to me. I don't know why they happened but they did. Bad people doing bad things because they don't care and never will." He went on, unable to stop himself. "I hated them. I hated them all. I wanted to get as far away from them as possible. So, I did. I ran away. Lived in horrid shelters and with horrid people until I finally got to live by myself, alone. Then I came back here."

Victor looked around him. The tiny bungalow that was his home at nine-hundred dollars a month. He wasn't on welfare but he barely managed. It was the best he could do.

He had cried himself out then weakly walked to his futon and sat down, holding his head in his hands. He was very tired. The clock chimed nine o'clock and he sighed.

"I thought you were a bad man," Casey said. She sat beside him on the couch. Victor saw her but was silent. "I thought you were going to hurt me but you didn't. You're the only one who was nice to me."

"I'm sorry I scared you," Victor answered softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm not used to kids."

After a moment, she asked, "Can I still visit you?"

"Yes," he answered then saw her bare feet. "Wait, I have something for you." He got up and opened his drawer, getting out a pair of black socks. "Put these on," he handed them to her, unsure if she would take them but she grasped the socks in her hands and slipped them on her feet.

"Thank you."

He sat back down next to her and expected her to disappear but she stayed.

"Why don't you have a TV?" She pointed to the record player radio.

"I read and listen to music instead. I take my laptop to the cafes for internet." He explained.

"What's a laptop?" Casey asked quizzically.

Victor had forgotten when she had died. "It's a portable computer."

"Oh." She didn't seem interested.

He guessed she probably didn't know what internet was either. "When was your... birthday?"

"September 13th. I told you." She kicked her newly socked feet in the air.

"What year were you born?" he clarified.

"1982."

She looked at him and he took a moment to realize if she had lived, instead of being murdered, she'd be older than he. It was the year 2020 now, an age where humans were supposed to have flying cars and live on Mars. Instead, humans were still killing children, murdering each other for oil and destroying the earth. The future was bleak.

What kind of life would she have had? She was murdered in 1992, when he was still in the institution, too helpless himself to help anyone else.

"What were you thinking about?" she asked.

"The past and the future," he answered.

"What about now?"

"Now I don't know what to think," he sighed.

"Know anymore ghost stories?"

"I think I've had enough of those."

Casey looked disappointed. "There aren't any happy ghost stories are there?"

"Actually... I do know one, no, wait, two- from an old show I used to watch on TV called 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?'"

"Will you tell it to me?"

"Sure." They had all night after all. "A teenage girl and her mother move to a new neighborhood after a divorce and find themselves in a poorer neighborhood, living in a tiny flat. The girl has no friends and her mother works all the time. Later on, the girl sees and older woman who lives alone across the hall and goes to visit her on a stormy night, asking for a flashlight because the lights have gone out..."

Victor knew the story well. The old woman turns out to be a ghost, lonely and in need of company. The girl and mother move in with her, getting a bigger apartment and in return the girl keeps the old woman ghost company.

"Did the mother ever find out they were living with a ghost?"

"No, adults are too busy working but I'm sure the ghost was peaceful enough after not to cause any trouble." It was after ten p.m. and Victor got out the blankets before sitting on the couch with Casey who tucked her feet under her. "I think the episode was called Room 304 or something..."

"And the other story?" Casey was wide awake. Ghosts didn't get tired.

Victor began again, almost half asleep. "The Tale of the Crying Boy..." about a girl who finds the ghost boy's jacket and gives it to him and in return he shows her where gold is hidden that he had seen robbers steal before they murdered him.

Victor had dozed off but when he opened his eyes, Casey was gone. It was eleven-fifty p.m., soon to be midnight, the end of Halloween, though Day of the Dead would come next.

He lie down on his futon couch, warmer now than he had been and fell asleep wondering if Casey would come back. He vaguely wondered if he could help her by finding her killer. If that creep was still out there he would be hunted down, then maybe Casey's spirit could rest.

Victor hoped he would see her again. She was good company, for a kid. Other than the cat, he didn't have any visitors. At least the girl had been fed and wasn't barefoot anymore. He had done that much for her.

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October 30th 2017 - November 1st 2017 11:20 p.m.