A Hallowe'en Tale

The boy dressed alone. Still early in the day, but he was excited about the evening. The cd his father had put on before he went out had finished playing some time earlier. Show tunes. Maybe all from the same show, maybe a compilation, the boy hadn’t known. Didn’t like the music, didn’t care. It had been on in the background, as it always was, and then it had stopped. Now just the sound of the waves and the cries of the gulls. Those were the sounds he loved, they were the soundtrack to his sad life.
He fished around in the dressing up box, costumes from years past. Most Hallowe’ens his dad would get him a new costume, but not this year. Christmas had been lonely and bleak without his mother; then his dad had completely forgotten his birthday. That was how it was most days. His father consumed by grief, the boy struggling to get by, feeling like he had lost both parents in the car accident and not just his mum.
Mix and match, that’s what he would do this year. He slipped the Frankenstein mask on over his head and looked in the mirror. Frankenstein, Arabian prince costume, cowboy boots. He smiled weakly then looked down at the box of clothes. It was a work in progress. He slowly took off the mask and raked around through the magical box of costumes.

Late October, a bleak, cold day. Mid-afternoon, the clocks had changed a couple of days previously. Maybe another hour or two of light and then the night would crawl in from the east, across the hill above Kames Bay, and sweep across the town.
‘Like, you know, that guy… What d’you call him again?’
Barney Thomson put on his coat and turned to the others. Keanu was cutting the hair of a small round man who had only recently arrived on the island. Igor, Barney’s deaf, mute hunchbacked assistant, was sweeping up.
‘Which guy?’ said Keanu, neatly executing a tricky manoeuvre around the left ear.
‘The leader of the Fantastic Four,’ said the small round guy. ‘Mr Stretch? Captain Elastic? The Amazing Elongathon?’
‘Not sure,’ said Keanu. ‘I was too busy looking at the babe. Not that I can remember her name either.’
Outside a seagull cried.
‘The Incredible Bender?’ ventured the guy.
‘See you later, Igor,’ said Barney. Time to escape. He smiled at Keanu, opened the door and stepped outside. The debate continued inside, although it didn’t have too many places left to go.
Barney hesitated, turned and looked both ways along the street, then pulled the zip on his jacket up to the neck. The seagull was sitting on the white promenade wall across the road. It stared at him for a few seconds, as he looked back, and then it turned and lazily lifted itself into the air and flew away, back out to sea, the direction it always took. Barney walked across the road and stood at the wall, following the seagull’s flight, as it soared quickly up into the sky, across the small islands out towards Little Cumbrae.
Shuffling footsteps behind him and then one of the old fellas of the town was leaning on the wall, watching the sea and the gulls.
‘Is that your gull again, Barney?’ said Rusty Brown.
Barney smiled and nodded. Everyone in the town knew about Barney’s seagull. Every day it came to the wall across the road from the shop, every day it seemed to watch. It looked the same as every other seagull which swirled and flew and dived around the small seaside town of Millport, yet there was no doubt that it was the same gull every day.
‘Everyone’s talking about it,’ said Rusty Brown.
‘I know,’ replied Barney.
‘They’re saying it’s the ghost of someone from your past. Like one of those people you murdered.’
‘I never murdered anyone,’ said Barney glibly.
‘Whatever you say, Barney.’ He paused, glanced over his shoulder. ‘Mrs McKay from up the road thinks it’s the Princess.’
Barney gave him the eyebrow.
‘Which princess?’
‘Diana. Obviously.’
Barney looked surprised.
‘Diana? She died? You’re kidding?’
‘Of course she….,’ began Rusty Brown, until he realised Barney was being facetious, then he bumped him and laughed gently.
‘Really,’ said Barney, ‘why on earth would Diana be a seagull sitting on a wall in Millport looking at a barbershop every day?’
Rusty Brown sniffed and lifted himself up from the wall, looked up and down the road.
‘Aye, well, there’s weirder shit than that in life, my old friend’ he said and, with a hand clapped to Barney’s shoulder, he turned and walked on up the street, the cold wind rifling his trousers.

Millport Community Council had made an effort for Hallowe’en. A note had gone round to every house, requesting that each household which was willing to receive trick or treating children on the evening of the 31st put a carved pumpkin on their doorstep. Those householders willing to receive children, but without the time or inclination to carve a large gourd, could request a small pumpkin from the council instead.
Knowing they would be steered only in the direction of households which were inclined to greet them, the children of the town were geared up for a long and hopefully successful night of All-American candy grabbing.
The boy looked out the window as a small crowd of children, slightly younger than him, walked by, a couple of parents in tow. A devil, two witches, a couple of Jedi knights, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a Britney Spears. He turned away and took one last look at himself in the mirror. In the end he had gone for simplicity. Pale make-up, black rings round his eyes, dressed in an out-sized white smock, white trousers, white shoes.
He had waited for his dad to come back, all the time knowing that he wouldn’t see him again until he got up the following morning. He wasn’t sure where it was his father went every day, although the man was not a drinker, which at least ruled out the five pubs on the island. He just knew that his dad needed help, but he was too young to know what to do about it.
He closed the bedroom door behind him and walked slowly down the stairs. All the kids had been talking about Hallowe’en at school, but none of them had asked him along. He almost understood. There had been an awkwardness about their approach to him ever since the accident, but the fact that his mother had died while taking him to a Hallowe’en party, had meant that no one had dared to have a Hallowe’en discussion anywhere near him.
Too scared to talk about Hallowe’en. He almost found the notion funny.
He lifted the small orange tub, opened the front door, and stepped out into the cold evening.

Barney knocked on the door and turned to look at the sea while he waited. Eternally drawn to the sea, one of the continuing surprises in his life. Maybe his forefathers had first crawled from the sea onto the beach at Kames.
The door opened. He turned to be greeted by a fairy princess witch and a Bob The Builder samurai.
‘Trick or treat?’ said Barney, unable to keep the smile from his face.
‘We say that to you!’ cried the little girl.
‘What’s in the bag?’ yelled the boy
Barney walked into the house, holding the plastic bag high up so the kids couldn’t see inside.
Igor appeared from the kitchen and waved. Barney, not trusting the Community Council pumpkin system, and hating the continual trawl of kids on a Hallowe’en night, had accepted an invitation to Igor and Garrett’s house for dinner. He could hide in the kitchen while they fielded the calls, their kids escorted round the town in a small collective organised by the PTA.
Dinner smelled good, a hint of cinnamon in the air. The doorbell sounded again almost immediately.
‘That’ll be Mrs Wilson this time!’ called Garrett, and the kids, having retreated to the safety of the television, once more leapt into the hall and raced to the door. Garrett appeared in front of Barney, up to her eyes in pumpkin pie, kissed him on the cheek and followed her kids to the door, where a gang of children, ten strong, a boisterous collection of wizards and ugly stepsisters, spidermen and frogs, awaited.

The young boy trod a lonely path around the town. Every now and again he passed groups of kids, laughing and singing, pushing each other around. He wondered where his dad was. Maybe he had found some solace with another woman. Maybe, the boy often wondered, he just couldn’t stand to be at home with his son, the reminder in flesh of what he had lost.
He wandered slowly up a garden path, a large pumpkin on the doorstep, a haunted house carving, three candles dancing inside. He stopped and looked up at the skeleton hanging down from the doorway and the child’s painting of a witch in the window, and he smiled for the first time in a long while. Then he stepped forward, rang the doorbell, took a pace back from the top step and waited.

The smell of dinner hung in the air, tantalising. However, it was for later, for when the children had returned, armed to the teeth with chocolate and sweets. Barney wondered if anyone had the fortitude anymore to give the marauding hordes of fetid spawn an apple or monkey nuts, the way they had in his day. Probably not. Or those would be the ones that the kids immediately turfed into the bin to make room for more sweets.
The doorbell went again. They were coming thick and fast.
‘Your turn, Barney,’ said Garrett, smiling.
Barney Thomson raised his glass of white wine.
‘Cheers,’ he said. Feeling hungry. Hoping the trail of kids would dry up soon so that they could get on with dinner. ‘Igor, this one’s all yours.’
Igor rolled his eyes then pushed himself up from the table. Dressed in a white laboratory assistant’s coat with an axe buried in his head and a fake scar on his cheek, he hustled up the corridor.
Barney watched Garrett fussing around the cooker for a short while, then raised himself up and walked down the corridor. Glanced out at the front door, where Igor was dispensing E-numbers and toxins to a horde of voracious velociraptors, then walked through to the front room of the house. In darkness.
He closed the door behind him, did not turn on any lights, walked to the window and looked out at the evening. Chill night, cloudy skies, dark tranquil sea. Felt the warm, enveloping weight of melancholy that such surroundings inevitably bring. Looked along the road to see how many more kids there were on the horizon, hadn’t realised that there were so many of them in the town. He left most of the kids who came to the shop to Keanu these days. Filtered them out, happier dealing with the other end of the age spectrum.
Along the road he saw a child walking alone, dressed all in white. Immediately drawn to him, the solitary figure. Saw himself, perhaps. Not that kids had gone out in such large groups when he was young, but he had hated going out at all, and if ever his mother had kicked him out the door, he would have walked alone, ringing as few bells as he felt he could reasonably get away with.
The boy looked sad, the orange tub swinging slowly and mournfully at his side, head turned to look at all the houses which he passed.
Igor’s work completed for the moment, the crowd at the door turned and walked happily back down the garden path. Full of laughs and excitement, scary noises and jokes, jabbering about whether or not Igor’s hunchback had been real. They swung out the gate, on the charge, just as the boy approached. Barney watched, wondering if the lad would be as detached as he himself would have been. Sure enough, the crowd walked by, ignoring him, he paused to let them pass, not even looking at them, and then stopped outside Garrett’s front gate. He looked up at the house, seemed to give it short consideration, then trod a weary path up to the front door. Barney watched him, intrigued. Could he be looking at himself, a simple outfit that his mother would have made him wear, reluctantly playing the part of a kid about town?
The doorbell rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ shouted Barney, and he walked out to the hall. Igor appeared at the kitchen door.
‘Arf?’
Barney forced a smile.
‘I’m on it,’ he said, and Igor shrugged and turned back into the kitchen.
Barney hesitated at the front door, suddenly unsure. What if the kid turned out to be just slightly weird and keen to sing a twenty verse song? He shook his head, smiled ruefully at himself, then opened the door.
The cold evening air rushed in. The garden path ran darkly down to the gate. In the distance he could still hear the laughs and shouts of the children who had just left. Somewhere back towards town a car travelled too quickly along the road. The child who had rung the doorbell, the child in white, was gone.
He stood for a second wondering how he had disappeared so quickly. He stepped forward, looking to see if he was hiding behind a bush or round the side of the wall. But he knew he wouldn’t find him there. Just by his demeanour he could tell that this was not a kid to playfully hide.
Barney Thomson walked quickly down the garden path, stepped out onto the pavement and looked up the road. The child was walking away, in the middle of the road, his shoulders slumped.
‘Hey, son!’ said Barney. In his subconscious he could hear the car approach, but he wasn’t thinking. Curious, concerned. Just not thinking.
The boy stopped and turned. White face. Grey eyes looked through the night at Barney. Barney felt his stomach curdle, his face blanch, his throat turn dry. Eyes and face of such horrible, awful sadness.
‘Oh my god,’ he said. A low mutter.
The boy stared through the night. The sea touched the rocks just down below. Somewhere along the green railings a seagull landed, settled its wings with a flutter, and looked at Barney Thomson.
The car turned the corner, still driving too fast. The boy hadn’t moved. Middle of the road, the car bearing down. At the last second Barney finally clicked into action. His hand outstretched, yet he was twenty yards away. And he was no Captain Elastic. Nothing he could do. He was to be a spectator at death, as had happened so often in the past.
The boy never seemed to notice. The car smacked into him, the frail white body flew up into the air, buckled and broken, tossed to the side. The car drove on.
Barney never saw the driver, never looked in through the windscreen. Just saw the boy being hit hard from behind, his body thrown away to the side, the car speeding, never breaking its pace, as if the driver had not seen the boy. As if the boy had never been there in the first place.
Barney’s horrified gaze followed the car for a second, trying to register the number plate, then he looked back at the road. The empty road.
The boy was gone. The body that had been so easily tossed aside and dumped on the ground had disappeared. Barney walked over and stood on the road, looking around at where he had seen the body fall.
His skin crawled, his stomach twisted, he felt the hairs stand on his head and neck. He walked hesitantly over to the grass to look down on the rocks, wondering if maybe the body had been thrown further than he’d thought. Nothing but darkness and the lick of the waves. He turned back and looked up at the cheery lights of Garrett and Igor’s house, the pumpkin lantern flickering in the doorway.
Mouth still open, heart still pounding, aware that no matter how often he encountered this kind of thing, there was nothing to prepare you for it, Barney Thomson looked along the road. Round to the town, back across Kames Bay. Then he turned and looked up the road, up to Farland Point, the lights of the mainland shining across the water.
And it was there that he saw him, in the distance. The small, frail hunched white figure, walking slowly along the pavement. White smock, white trousers, white shoes.

The old man looked down at the weathered headstone. Every year he came up to the cemetery, every year he promised himself that he would get the headstone cleaned up, every year he left and didn’t get around to it. Maybe this year he would. He should.
‘This time,’ he said softly, bending down and running his hand over the name of his wife, down across the worn stone, his old fingers marking out the name of his son. ‘It’s due.’
He bent lower and rearranged the fresh flowers one last time. Thirty-three years, and he could still see the car’s headlights, still see the look of horror on the face of his wife and son. Thirty-three years and he still cried.
He turned away from the grave, lifted the small bag and walked slowly away along the path between the headstones.