I know how to escape him.
It is only much later, as I lay in bed, halfway between thinking and sleeping, that I have a vision of the demon that is Bragg writhing out of his fresh grave, dragging its way down the streets, past the trick-or-treaters, like a zombie homing pigeon, stupidly moving until it turns on my driveway, shambles up the walk. I’m gone in the vision, safely hidden behind my mask and the night, but the door opens in half speed. Bragg’s on the porch. Mom is standing at the door, a bowl of candy in hand. I’m not home; Mom is.
I sit up. The clock says three fifteen. All is still. I can’t tell Mom she has to be out of the house on Halloween. She won’t believe me.
School passes in a blur. Some kids wear costumes, but the school forbade Halloween parties a couple years ago because some school board members don’t like “references to the occult.” This year they’re fighting to get a five-minute time for “silent reflection” before our first class, which everyone knows is a sideways attempt to get prayer into the schools. The costumes the kids do wear are lame. No witches or ghosts. I hear at the high school the tradition now is to dress as pimps or whores. The school hates that, too, but it won’t get you suspended like a vampire costume might. Mom says it’s the better-real-sex-than-imagined-satan thinking she finds so twisted.
“What’s more likely,” she says, “that a kid will get a venereal disease or join a coven?”
By the time I sprint through the two routes, little kids are already on the street, their parents moving them from door to door. It’s raining again. Hoboes and firemen and cute tigers run across the lawns, their plastic pumpkins in hand. Heading for home, I lean hard on the pedals, sending spray everywhere. I figure I have only one chance to get her out of the house, but I have to play my cards just right.
Ten minutes later, I stand at the door wearing the werewolf mask and a heavy coat. The air’s acquired a wintery bite, and the mist could turn to snow anytime. Mom looks at me wistfully, a bowl of candy on the table beside her chair.
I wait. For the longest time she doesn’t say anything. The only way to get her to safety is if she talks.
Finally, though, when I’m just on the verge of telling her the truth, she says, “You’ll be too old to go out soon. You’re getting so big.”
Generally I hate it when she talks like this.
Two girls wearing rock star outfits come up on the porch behind me. I drop candy into their bags and they run off. The streetlight at the corner turns on.
“Mom,” I say. I’d been thinking how to word this all day. “Do you remember when you used to take me trick-or-treating?”
She smiles. “Sure, Scotty. The first time you were so small, I pulled you in a wagon.”
In the dusk outside, voices cry out. High laughter. But it feels colder by the second. Samhain is the end of the warm season, Bragg’s mother said. What’s happening in the cemetery now? Is there mist above his grave? Has the fresh sod moved just a bit? Shifted maybe or pulsed? How much time do I have?
“Well, I figure I’ll be too big to go out next year. I’ll be in high school. So, I wondered, would you walk with me this year?”
Her eyes tear up. “Scotty, that’s the nicest invite I’ve had in months.” She leans forward as if to get out of the chair. “Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather be with your friends?”
“They’re going to the mall,” I say. My fingers are crossed behind my back for luck.
She waves her hand at the bowl by the door. “What will we do with the candy?”
I exhale a sigh of relief. “Leave it on the porch. I’ll make a sign.”
By the time we’re out the door, night has fallen fully. The mist is half rain, half snow, but there isn’t any wind. As we head up the street, I can hear the trees dripping onto the carpet of leaves beneath them.
I let Mom lead the way. “There ought to be a full moon,” she says. I look up, blink against the mist. The clouds are a deep gray blanket, alive with shadowy shapes. We move several blocks. Some of the houses are dark. I don’t ring their doorbells. Groups of kids pass us, some with larger figures in tow. Parents I figure. A car approaches, driving slowly, its round headlights cutting wide, white swaths in the wet air. They’re not square like most new car headlights. Bragg drove a ‘59 Buick. I grab mom’s hand and pull her onto a lawn. The car rumbles by, its driver leaning forward to look through his windshield. Not Bragg.
“You’ll get your shoes muddy, Scotty.”
We walk for another hour. Despite the chill, I’m sweating beneath my coat. How long do I have to keep her out? Does Samhain last until dawn, or is it over at midnight? When do the doors close? I check my watch: nine forty-five. There are fewer kids now, but I wonder about them. Maybe they’re not all kids. A single figure walks toward us, no trick-or-treat bag. It lurches. I’m still holding Mom’s hand.
She says, “Ouch, you’re squeezing too hard.”
The figure closes distance, its feet dragging on the sidewalk. I hedge to the street side to give it room.
“Nice night,” Mom says when it passes. The figure looks at her without speaking. The distant streetlight barely gives illumination enough to cast a shadow, but I shiver anyway. No glint of eyeballs. No flesh over the teeth.
“Good costume,” I say after it’s past, my voice barely quivering.
We take a random path, climbing steadily. I haven’t rung a doorbell for a while now. We’re just walking, not saying much. I hope Mom’s willing to stay out as long as I am. She’s told me a million times that she wishes we did more stuff together. Now we’re into an older neighborhood. The trees are huge, and the sidewalks to the front doors are long. I wonder how the paperboy gets the papers to the porch. With a start, I realize we’re going toward the cemetery at the top of the hill, but we can’t turn around. Any minute I expect Mom to say her legs are tired, or that we should head home.
She says instead, “I suppose if you lived your life by candlelight and campfires, when you didn’t know what lived in the woods outside your village, you would have to believe in gods.”
The temperature drops ten degrees while the slushy rain turns to ice crystals bouncing off my shoulders and the werewolf mask. Bragg is appearing in our world. I know it. Where the sidewalk had been wet, it suddenly is slippery. Ahead, at the end of the block, the cemetery gates loom. Instead of the comforting drip from gutters and bushes and trees, the ice hisses against the grass.
No streetlights. No moon. I shouldn’t be able to see the cemetery gates. Every house is dark, but I can see them anyway. They’re backlit. Somewhere behind them, a green glow permeates the fog. We walk forward. Mom is silent.
The green light coalesces, becomes a shoulder, then a head, rising above the gates, twenty feet tall. I want to weep. Inside me, everything turns bitter and liquidy. But there’s nothing to do. No time to hide. It’s too big. Its eyes are made for seeing in the dark.
I stop. The demon Bragg swings his head from left to right, as if orienting himself. Of course, the last thing Bragg knew, he was driving away from the girls’ house, laughing probably, probably planning to come back later, when the brother was gone. He might be thinking, where am I now?