Tomorrow is Halloween

The haunted birdhouse my dad gave me for my birthday. He made it himself.

I recently became a member of Uncommon, a young online community that calls itself “a front porch for the internet.” In creating my Uncommon profile, I was asked to write about some of my favorite things. The first one that came to mind was Halloween. This is what I wrote:

I was born on Halloween. Long before I arrived, my family celebrated this holiday with gusto—costumes, pumpkins, and scares for all ages. As a kid, my birthday parties were always held at home, at our house with its acre-sized backyard full of old sheds and forts and other good places to haunt. When night fell, the costumed party guests had to follow the trail of jack-o-lanterns through the backyard, reading creepy notes and encountering masked ghouls and terrifying traps at every turn. This was my favorite time of the year. After a hiatus when there were no appropriately-aged children in the family, we started the Halloween parties up again, though now I am on the other side of the horror. I set the traps. I wear the masks. I write the notes that lead the new generation of victims down the trail of jack-o-lanterns. I haunt my childhood home with pride. It’s still my favorite time of year.

The witch's laundry — The witch’s laundry

Despite the fact that I’ve eaten way too much sugar this week, Halloween for me as never been about the candy. And although I like horror movies and ghost stories, it’s not really about those either. What makes this holiday special is the way my family celebrates it.

For me, Halloween is opening up cobwebby crates and breathing in the musty smell of ghosts that haven’t seen the light of day in a year. It’s watching my dad pose a dummy with careful precision, adjusting the gloves and boots just so. It’s listening to my brother brainstorm outlandish schemes for scaring his children. (Don’t worry, they’re fine.) It’s watching my mom hang “the witch’s laundry” on the clothesline and hearing my three-year-old niece quote Bram Stoker. “Beware! The dead travel fast!” (Yes, she really does this.) Halloween is running around the backyard at night with my cousin, wondering why it still creeps us out even though we know who the monsters are. It’s seeing my aunt’s costume for the first time. She never tells us what she’s going to be and it’s always something awesome. Halloween means smiling at my husband as he shakes his head at the rest of us. Sometimes I think he must feel like he married into the Addams Family.

It’s looking out into the dark and seeing the glow of a jack-o-lantern face. It’s pointing my flashlight at a homemade tombstone and saying, “Uh-oh… this one’s for you.” It’s removing our masks at the end of the party and all talking at once, each and every monster and victim sharing his or her story and battle scars.

Halloween, to me, means screams and laughter in equal measure.

October is drawing to a close. My family celebrated early this year, and the party was another one for the record books. Everyone survived despite what their tombstones said. Tomorrow is Halloween, and I’ll be at home, handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, scaring them with my fake spiders and bubble wrap, and hoping that they’re having at least a fraction of the fun I had when I was their age.

Happy Halloween, everyone! And thanks for celebrating with me all month. If you missed any of my October posts, you can catch up here:

Next month I’ll be taking a bit of a break from blogging. I’m sure I won’t be completely silent, but it’s time I buckle down and get some serious work done. When it comes to real fear, ghosts and goblins have got nothing on deadlines and word counts. I’ll miss you though! And I promise to be back soon.

The Tomato-Elevator and Other Weird Stuff

One year ago today, my shortest and weirdest horror story was published at MicroHorror. Though I can’t explain why, I’m actually quite fond of it. Here is “The Tomato-Elevator.”

The Tomato-Elevator

The tomato-elevator had accidentally produced a squash, again. The director would be displeased.

The workers sought to find the hiccup in the mechanism, but due to the make-up of the machine, it was impossible to see what went on between the thirteenth rung and the fourteenth without dismantling the apparatus completely. And that was forbidden by the warning label. All they could know for sure was that at rung thirteen, they had a slightly bruised, despondent tomato, and at rung fourteen they had an extremely confident squash.

“Why does this keep happening?” asked Bill, who had only been elevating tomatoes for three weeks.

No one responded, but eyes looked at eyes looked at eyes and none of the eyes were Bill’s.

The eyes all said the same thing. There had never been a squash before Bill arrived.

The director was on her way. Decisions had to be made.

“What if…” Bill licked his lips with the effort of thinking, “…what if we made a squash-demoter? You think? You think maybe at rung thirteen it might…”

The eyes looked at the floor looked at the shoes. The eyes did not acknowledge that this was a good idea.

“Fellas?” Bill inquired at bowed heads, hunched shoulders. “Fellas…”

Arms reached, hands grabbed, fingers gripped. Mouth was covered, limbs were restrained, necessary adjustments were made.

Parts were removed.

By the time the director arrived, the machine had been loaded, the mess cleaned up. The workers wore expressions of complacent boredom which clashed with the beads of sweat forming on white foreheads.

Checkmarks on clipboards, satisfied nods to the symphonic whir of machinery, bland admonishments about time and productivity. The director’s stay lasted only forty-seven seconds. She had left the room before the large, dark, misshapen tomato entered the elevation chamber.

When Bill’s heart went from the thirteenth rung to the fourteenth, it turned into a squash.

Want more weird stuff? My Tumblr has been on a Halloweeny kick this month too. Check out What’s In My Journal.

Here are some things you might have missed:

* The Time I Found a Spell Book in My New Apartment
* How My Halloween Tarot Cards Gave Me a Shock
* My Ideas For a Haunted Water Park (<– Someone please make this dream come true!)

Review: More Spooky Texas Tales

This post is part book review and part personal horror story. Enjoy! 🙂

More Spooky Texas Tales by Tim Tingle

More Spooky Texas Tales includes modern versions of stories about such creatures as the chupacabra and “Skinwalker.” It wasn’t my favorite collection of horror stories, but it did have a few gems here and there. One memorable line came from “Screaming Banshee Cattle of the Night Swamp.”

In this story, a little boy and his dad are driving across east Texas at night, and the father has just told the son the tale of the screaming banshee cattle of the night swamp, those monstrous cows that look just like the rest of the herd until nightfall when they reveal their long sharp teeth, let out piercing screams and pounce upon human victims. The boy, who only half believes the story, falls asleep in the car.

When he wakes, it is dark and his dad is pulling into a lonely-looking diner. Father tells son to stay in the truck while he gets them some food for the road. But not long after the boy is left alone, the night becomes frightening. The wind picks up, the moon disappears behind the clouds, a storm rolls in, and he begins to hear a high-pitched screaming sound. Terrified, he looks toward the restaurant for signs of his father and sees him, sitting at the counter, laughing and joking with the cook. The author writes, “In the diner, life appeared normal.”

Such a simple statement, yet it holds so much meaning for me.

One of my earliest memories is of a recurring nightmare I had when I was around four years old. In the dream, I am playing in an old red rocking chair in the back room of our house, climbing around on it and hanging upside down in it so that my feet point to the ceiling and my head dangles toward the floor. Just a few yards away to my left, my mom and grandmother sit at the kitchen table, shelling peas into a metal pan and talking quietly. To my right, I can see my pappy walking down the back porch, heading to the door to come inside. The scene is normal, peaceful, right.

Then, in an instant, everything changes. No longer is it my beloved pappy coming to the back door. It is the thing—the monster, the creature, the phantom—and it is coming in to get me. Suddenly, I can’t move; I am trapped, upside down, in the rocker. Suddenly, I can’t speak; I try to call for help, but my voice is gone. The nightmare advances in slow motion. Me, trying desperately to move, to speak, to run… the thing getting closer and closer to the door, reaching for the doorknob, the doorknob turning… the panic growing inside me until I awake, drenched in fear.

The only thing about the dream that remains constant, is the scene in the kitchen. Throughout my turmoil, my mom and grandmother continue shelling peas for dinner, utterly oblivious to my horror, and completely safe from it. In other words, In the kitchen, life appeared normal.

Sometimes, when you feel creeped out, whether justifiably or not, you find comfort in being around others, in joining a group that knows nothing of your turmoil and carries on as usual. There is the idea of “safety in numbers” and the feeling that nothing bad can happen to you if you’re surrounded by friends. But other times… there is no amount of camaraderie that can protect you, no crowd that you can blend into to feel safe. In times like these, the terror has targeted you specifically, and there is no way for others to rescue you because they can’t even perceive your danger. And those are most horrifying experiences of all.

I am grateful to “Screaming Banshee Cattle of the Night Swamp” and More Spooky Texas Tales for reminding me of this.