Trick or treat

He’d become used to it after a while, the children coming to the door every October - Halloween. Ringing the bell and calling out for trick or treat, costumed up, the American way - not in his day, never that, but these days…

These days Halloween was an incessant procession of devils and ghosts and ghouls and witches, monsters, pirates, rascals, Russians and rapscallions, a few asses, actors, assassins, the occasional banshee, Bedouin, or beast, with Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein and Freddy thrown in for good measure – all with mums or dads in tow for soft safe keeping. Yes, different in his day - there hadn’t been all this fuss and kafuffle with Halloween back then.

It was simple back in his day - you set the carved, lighted pumpkin on the porch, locked tight the door, said your prayers and went to bed praying for the witching hour to pass and the evils of the world to tire of being abroad. Those evils had been real, not garishly made-up frauds, all wig and plastic axe. No tricks or treats, just the threat of losing yourself to something somewhere. Halloween had been a serious business back then - and Len had taken it seriously.

The knock came late. Small but firm upon the dark green paint. No ring of the bell or rap-rap-rap of the knocker, just a single clear ‘tap’. A solitary dull note - very nearly an order, an announcement demanding that the door be opened.

The small boy stood well back in the shadow as if he had something to hide. Len without knowing why held his breath and waited for the inevitable squeal of ‘trick or treat’. It didn’t come. The boy stood silent not making a sound and still, so still. Charcoal smudged, a study in grey - grey shorts, grey shoes, jumper, and skin - short-scissored hair swept to one side in parting. Unfashionable these days, not like then.

The boy seemed to be made of shadow, a fog, an old faded photograph. Did Len recognise him from somewhere?

Len turned to the table reaching for the toffees in the bowl by the telephone directory - chewy caramels, tongue-blackening liquorices, head-exploding menthols - the sweets of long-gone boyhood. He scooped them up and into his hand - let him have them all, best place them in his cold grey hands, careful not to touch, and make him go away.

Yes, make him go away then set the pumpkin on the porch and lock tight the door. He’d say his prayers and go to bed, waiting for the witching hour to pass and for the evils of the world to tire of being abroad. Give him the sweets and send him on his way, get rid. Send him off with his shadows and greyness and ice cold hands back to whatever old photograph he’d stumbled from.

Len could sense the boy behind him, the boy with the cold grey hands. Those hands were so cold, as cold as the thick casing of ice that clung to the ice compartment inside Len’s fridge - so cold they made a mist in the night air like the mist that formed when Len opened the refrigerator door. Len turned, reaching out in offering to the boy, dreading the cold of those hands, not wanting to get too close, not wanting to touch them.

Len turned… the boy was gone. And then the pain began.

He’d felt the cold move over the threshold and into the house as he’d reached for the sweets that still lay sticky in the bowl upon the table. He’d been too tired to move them. Too tired to do much of anything really, except sit in his chair and watch and wait. Every movement was such an effort, it all hurt so much. The offering of sweets must have been an invitation, an acceptance of the boy.

After a few days it wasn’t so bad having him around. Len had got used to it, like Halloween. Sometimes, in his better moments, when he managed to painfully shuffle from one room to another, he caught a glimpse or heard a whisper. A smudge of charcoal in the dim light of the hall, a scuffling over his shoulder or the sound of scraping on the stair, a shadow half-hidden behind the bathroom door, a rushed reflection in his shaving mirror - the settling swirl of dust high on the landing above.

Yes, it wasn’t so bad. He was used to it – even the ice of the hands when they were on him, easing the pain where they touched as he slept. Len recognised him now, understood why he was here, knew him for what he was, understood his waiting.

Len, wishing the pain away, waited with him.

Later, ignoring the dusty toffees in the dish by the telephone directory, they left together.