“I know jujitsu, Laurie,” Ray said indignantly. “I can apply pressure points, chokes, and holds to use the opponent’s force of attack against them.”
Both Karen and Laurie replied simultaneously, “Shut up, Ray.”
Ray meant well but this argument was between Karen and her mother.
Laurie descended the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, she said, “The bus crashed.”
Karen shook her head, confused. “What?” Okay, now her mother talked in non sequiturs. Or was it some code only she understood?
“I have a plan,” Laurie continued. “We’re going to get him before he gets us. Where’s Allyson? We have to get out of here. Now.”
“What bus crashed?” Karen asked, trying once again to grasp her mother’s madness. “Mom, no one’s coming after us.”
“Maybe you should put down that gun?” Ray suggested in a calm voice, clearly open to the possibility that Karen’s mother was unstable and potentially dangerous.
“You need help,” Karen said to her mother, with a nervous glance of her own at the revolver. “You’re not welcome here until you get it.”
As always, Laurie had her own agenda and was unwilling to listen to reason, only to the scared voices in her own head. “Evil is real,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel true terror. To be powerless.” Her voice softened. “I don’t ever want you to feel that way. I only want to prepare and protect you.”
The same excuse for her mother’s aberrant behavior Karen had heard a hundred times. The same fears and obsession. She was a broken record of paranoia, a danger to herself and—Karen was forced to admit—possibly to others.
Karen had spent her whole life trying to avoid the behavioral traps that had ruined her mother’s life and deprived Karen of a normal childhood. Rather than a role model, her mother had become an emotional cautionary tale for Karen.
“And I just want to prepare dinner for my family,” Karen replied, trying to steer her mother to the prosaic realities of daily life. She imagined the internal conversations her mother must have with herself and how often the words that bubbled to the surface and escaped her lips made no sense to the rest of the world. “The world is not a dark place. It can be full of love and understanding, and I don’t need your psychotic rants to confuse me or convince me otherwise.”
That had been the heart of their mother–daughter dysfunction. Karen had grown up believing she was a disappointment to her mother for not embracing Laurie’s skewed view of evil around every corner, which waited for one momentary lapse in vigilance to strike. To live a happy and full life she’d had to ignore all her mother’s expectations. She couldn’t live the life her mother deemed necessary, so she’d chosen to live her own life her way, by her rules. Her mother was a reminder of everything she’d rejected. But sometimes, her mother was a reminder of everything the two of them had sacrificed by going their separate ways. Karen refused to apologize for the life she’d chosen, even if it had meant rejecting her own mother.
“You need to leave, Laurie,” Ray said. “Or I’ll call the police. I will.”
Looking first at Ray and then Karen, Laurie nodded with resignation. For now, at least, she recognized that she wouldn’t sway them to her way of thinking. From personal experience, Karen knew it wouldn’t stick. Her obsession came at them in waves, like the tide, never completely gone.
Laurie walked between them and stepped through the open doorway. Pausing on the porch, she turned back and asked, “Did you get a gun?”
Karen walked to the doorway and grabbed the edge of the door in her hand. “Of course not,” she said. It never ends with her! “Get out.”
Before her mother could say another word, Karen swung the door shut and flipped the deadbolt.
21
As the red-and-orange-streaked sunset faded to darkness, children prowled familiar streets in costume, clutching bags filled with candy, some so heavy with sugary loot younger kids had trouble holding them aloft. Some children stumbled along behind plastic or rubber masks, turning their heads to compensate for blinkered vision. Others wore blinking lights clipped to their costumes as protection against distracted motorists. Friends exchanged tips on which houses had the best candy and the rare few giving out full-sized chocolate bars.
Parents followed the youngest, pushing strollers or carrying heavier bags between homes to give their kids a break. They walked with flashlights, occasionally reminding the youngest to say the magic words each time a homeowner answered the door. Most welcoming homes sported a jack-o’-lantern or two and artificial cobwebs stretched across plants or around doorframes. Some parents took photos on their phones of the more imaginative decorations: a ring of ghosts holding hands around a simulated fire, novelty dismembered body parts dangling from ceiling fans on covered porches, front yard cemeteries with dark foam tombstones behind zombie hands clawing up from the ground. Most of the photos appeared on social media before the neighborhood photographers returned home with their exhausted children.
Young teens sporting minimalist costumes—smudge-faced hobos, sports-jersey jocks, zombies with gruesome makeup and ripped clothing—carried converted pillowcases and ran from house to house as if hoping to get through the trick-or-treat process as soon as possible, some feeling the first stages of embarrassment in pursuing what would soon be deemed a childish activity. To compensate, they rebelled in their own way, setting off strings of firecrackers every block or two—POP! POP! POP!—shrieking with laughter as they ran from imaginary pursuers.
Startled by a nearby series of exploding firecrackers, Jared, dressed as a cowboy with a boombox small enough to hold on one shoulder, stumbled and dropped his candy bag, spilling his treats across the sidewalk. Oblivious to his accident, his friends rushed along without him. As he dropped to his knees, putting down his boombox to scoop the spilled candy back into his bag, he looked up and called, “Hey, wait up!”
None of them heard, and they continued without him.
Redoubling his efforts, he leaned forward and made a scoop out of both arms to pull the rest toward his bag all at once. While collecting the final pieces, he heard someone breathing louder than him. As he climbed to his feet, lugging his bag and the boombox, a dark shape moved from behind a tree.
Determined to catch his friends, Jared lunged forward—
—as The Shape stepped in front of him—
—and bumped into him, this time managing to hold onto his bag. A quick glance up revealed a pale face that neither smiled nor frowned, no reaction at all—a mask!
Jared might have thought the man too old for trick-or-treating, but he’d seen other parents walking the streets with their kids in full costumes or masks to get into the spirit of the night. Slipping past the unmoving Shape, Jared ran after his friends, shouting back, “Sorry, mister!”
After the collision with the boy The Shape turns to watch him run away—and sees a woman with a flashlight walking behind her house toward a dark utility shed. A moment later, an overhead light switches on. Wearing a red robe, her hair in curlers, she lifts the lid of a freezer and removes a frozen chicken. With the flashlight in one hand and the chicken in the other, she leaves the shed light on, walks out of the shed, and tries to close the door with her foot. On stiff hinges, the door stops short.
As she returns to her home through the back door, The Shape walks toward the light spilling from the open shed door. Unhurried, breathing steady…