Be Very Afraid : “The Last Halloween”

It was almost midnight when John Colville checked his watch for the last time. As he read the time in the weak glow from a street light, a cold sweat began to gather at his armpits and back. Finally, when he could postpone the event he so dreaded no more, he drew in a ragged breath, swallowed hard and said in a solemn, quavering voice to his son, “It’s time.”

Under his plain white sheet ghost costume, Martin Colville sniffled.

“No, Dad. I don’t want to go home. Not yet.”

“I know, I know,” the older man choked out, hard-fought tears blurring his view of the darkened houses that bordered the sidewalk they were on. “But there’s no one awake to trick or treat. Besides, I have to get you back. I’m sorry.”

The boy began to cry softly.

And his father, knowing how much his son loved Halloween, knowing how much it hurt the boy when he’d told him that this was to be their last Halloween together, wordlessly slipped his hand into the boy’s and held it tight, as he used to do not so long ago.

They walked that way until the empty streets of the small town were almost all behind them. Away from the town the air stilled. A silence fell between them, broken only by the lonely echo of their own footsteps.

After a time, Martin spoke.

“Dad, why did you leave me and Mommy? Was it because of the accident?”

John Colville nodded. “The car crash changed everything, I’m afraid. I wish I could be with you and your mother. But I can’t.” He hesitated, then asked. “H-how is your mother?”

The boy shrugged. “Oh, you know. The same. She didn’t want me to come tonight. Says it’s wrong. She likes me to stay there with her.”

Then his tone changed, becoming more serious. “I don’t like it there. Everybody’s so old.”

John winced and shut his eyes against the images that came unwanted in his mind now.

Martin looked up at his father. “I wish we could be a regular family again. Like it used to be.”

The elder Colville nodded, his eyes resolutely focused on the shifting shadows at their feet.

And on they walked.

After a while the sidewalk they were on was met by a long private driveway that flowed down from an arched security gate of spiked wrought-iron bars.

Turning, they walked up the small incline until they stood before the locked barrier.

John knelt before his son and lifted off the ghost sheet.

“Well, here we are,” he said with a forced cheeriness.

Avoiding his son’s gaze, he straightened the boy’s crooked bow tie and rubbed away a smudge of dirt from his collar. Then he abruptly pulled up his son’s hands, frowning as he rolled the boy’s fingers in his hands, each tiny fingernail a dark crescent of crusted dirt.

“You need to be more careful, son. These hands are filthy.”

Their eyes met. Martin’s face twitched under his father’s gaze.

“I don’t want to go back. Mom always gets mad when I’m with you. It’s not fair. Why can’t I stay with you? Why? I hate it! I hate d--”

“That’s enough, Martin!” John grabbed his son by the shoulders and shook him. “I don’t belong with you. Can’t you see that?”

He swallowed, struggling for words. “That’s why there can’t be anymore Halloweens. We need to move on--all of us.”

There was a quiet between them, then the boy’s face crumbled and he fell sobbing into his father’s arms.

The older man drew the trembling little boy to him and held him tightly to his chest. After a long moment, he kissed his boy for the last time and released him. “Goodbye, son.”

Martin stepped back. His little lip quivered.

“I miss you, Dad,” he said quickly, then darted away.

For a long time nothing happened. Then John Colville exhaled a long, deep sigh.

And as he did, felt a strange mixture of relief and sadness flood over him as he watched his son slip between the gate’s iron bars and disappear into the waiting darkness of the cemetery.