The first house he came to, there was a garden party on the lawn. A bunch of people in funny costumes were drinking and carrying on over his costume, he was the most adorable werewolf of the night. They told him to go ring the doorbell for his treat.
He went up on the porch and pushed the button. The door opened. He looked up and wet his pants.
Its skull was a black orchid that opened and breathed mist in his face. A straight-razor claw unfolded from its radiator ribcage to hold out a box of Cracker Jacks.
Gary stumbled backwards on the porch, stepped in an overripe pumpkin and lost his balance. He fell on the ragged old couch on the porch, sank into it, felt the cushions tense underneath him like muscles, felt its arms wrap around him and clasp over his pounding heart—
He hurled himself off the couch, stumbled down the porch and across the lawn, explosively wailing and hot piss splashing down the insides of his legs.
Behind him, a big grown-up got up off the couch, wrapped in the old sheet covering it, and ran after him screaming, “Fucking kid peed on me!”
Gary ran to the edge of the property and turned around. The adults were all bent over with laughter, dropping drinks and swatting each other on the back. Dracula and Darth Vader and Wonder Woman and kids in stupid rubber costumes that said “Barbie” and “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” on the front laughed and pointed and laughed.
“Thanks for being a good sport, kid.” An old man in a pirate outfit tried to give him a fistful of Tootsie Rolls, but Gary’s terror had already turned to hot, righteous rage.
“All of you can go burn in Hell!” he shouted, and he ran, he was running, he was almost home, but he had no home, but next Halloween, he’d show them all—
Gary crashed through the turnstile at the exit to the Devil’s Dungeon. Wenda and Leah were taking the tickets. Burt looked at him expectantly.
“Something wrong, boss?” Burt asked, toothbrush clamped in his teeth as he discreetly averted his eyes.
Gary pulled the cape across his velvet pants to hide the wet spot. His heart was still pounding, but—
None of it was real, it was just a vision. But not of the future, he knew that. It was just a vision to test his resolve.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, looking out over the crowd of monsters and mistakes and empty vessels waiting to see the light. Or at least the fire…
“Open the doors,” said the Devil. And in his heart, he prayed for the strength to show them where they were going.
That Small, Furry, Sharp-toothed Thing
Paul Dale Anderson
Some smart marketing genius labeled the “new this year” Brown Jenkin Halloween Costume: “Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s scariest character ever.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but one seldom expected truth in advertising.
Brown Jenkin appeared briefly as a minor fictional character in Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” published by Weird Tales in 1932. He was a small, furry, sharp-toothed witch’s familiar, part king-sized rat and part tiny human that supposedly died at the end of the story. He was scary. But nowhere near as scary as most of Lovecraft’s other creations.
Consisting of little more than a child-sized—one-size-fits-all-children ages three through ten—zippered synthetic-fiber bag with oval holes for arms, legs, and face to fit through, each Brown Jenkin costume came covered with what felt like real brown-colored human hair. The brown was an odd hue, like rust on nails or stains from dried blood.
Each cheaply-made costume sold for under twenty dollars. That coarse brown hair had to be fake fur. Although strands did look and feel like real human hair, there weren’t enough heads in the whole world to provide all that hair.
The accompanying feral face-mask appeared human-shaped with two oversized plastic fangs, not unlike a vampire’s, and those teeth also looked and felt incredibly sharp and real. The mask sold separately for an additional nine-ninety-five. Kids loved the costume because the combined effect was breathtakingly menacing. Few if any children, or even their parents, had ever read a word of H. P. Lovecraft’s actual works. But the name itself—familiar from television, motion pictures, and derivative mythos tales—invoked an unexplained chill, as if Lovecraft and Halloween and inescapable horror were synonymous.
Those marketing gurus certainly picked a winner this year. Brown Jenkin costumes sold out within a week of initially going on sale. Orders continued to pour in by the truckload, and sweatshops in the Far East added multitudes of 24/7 shifts of child laborers to be worked to death to meet demand.
As evidenced by a man-sized mouse with big saucer-shaped black ears who greeted kids at fantasy theme parks, children worldwide possessed a natural fascination with anthropomorphized rodents. On the night of All-Hallows’ Eve, they would eagerly don Brown Jenkin costumes to become little sharp-toothed furry things. I refused to allow my own two children to be among them.
You see, I’d actually read the entire Necronomicon as a graduate student in Massachusetts, back when I worked part-time as Library Assistant in the archives of Miskatonic University Library. I knew Brown Jenkin wasn’t the Devil’s pawn.
He was Cthulhu’s.
I dared not permit my own children to dress and act as Nyarlathotep’s messenger on a night when veils between worlds were thinnest. Although eight-year-old Davey and seven-year-old Julie pleaded and begged, cried and cajoled, and finally threatened, I steadfastly refused.
Linda, my blissfully ignorant wife, chided me for being overly harsh and rigid. “Why not let Davey and Julie enjoy a pagan holiday? What’s the harm in it, John? Let them have fun while they’re young. Heaven knows, they’ll grow up soon enough.”
“No,” I said, remaining resolute.
Little did Linda know that I, in my own impressionable youth, became so enamored of Lovecraft’s weird tales of elder gods and witchcraft I fervently sought out forbidden books—the dreaded Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, the fragmentary Book of Eibon, and the suppressed Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junz—to read first-hand in their original incantations at Arkham. My duties as a student Library Assistant required me to accompany scholars researching those ancient texts into the archive’s vaults to assure they did not steal or damage priceless and irreplaceable artifacts. Many tried to do so. Therefore, I was required to leaf through each book or manuscript while wearing pristine white gloves before returning the work to its designated shelf. Of course, I read whenever possible.
By the time I graduated, I’d digested them all. I knew, for a fact, the fabled Lovecraftian mythos was not pure myth but hinted at a truth far beyond human understanding. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.
Lovecraft was, however, wrong about one essential. The oldest and strongest kind of fear was not fear of the unknown but fear of the known. Knowing what to expect and knowing there was nothing I, or anyone, could do to stop it from occurring, wasn’t simply horrifying but utterly terrifying.
As Halloween approached, fear gripped me with icy tentacles. Incredible visions—daydreams and nightmares—filled my head, awakened weird memories in the back of my brain. I grew feverish. Linda complained I cried out often and talked nonsense in my sleep.
Only I was certain it was far from nonsense. It was prophecy.
Each trip to the local pharmacy, grocery, or department store brought me face to face with sold-out Brown Jenkin displays near the front of a store. “We can’t keep them in stock,” a harried clerk at checkout informed the young mother in line ahead of me. “As soon as we get a new shipment in, it sells out. Come back next week. We may have more then.”