Television stations blasted Brown Jenkin commercials incessantly, at least every quarter hour, and my poor children were constantly bombarded with images of small, furry, sharp-toothed things toting bags overflowing with delicious treats on Halloween night. Davey and Julie wanted to be exactly like those kids in the commercials. They grew to hate me. I could feel resentment eating away at our already fragile parent-child relationship.
“You’re being totally irrational,” Linda said, repeatedly taking their side against me. “What harm is there, really, in dressing up for Halloween? Everyone does it, for Christ’s sake! You’re acting like a superstitious fool, John, making life miserable for all of us.”
She didn’t know what I knew. How could I tell her? How could I make her see what I saw?
“Too many fever dreams,” she would say. “You’re not well, John. You must see a doctor.”
“A shrink? You think I’m crazy? You think I need a psychiatrist?”
“You need something. Something to help you sleep. Go see a regular doctor. Maybe a physician can give you a prescription. You haven’t slept soundly for months, not since Halloween displays first appeared in stores. You toss and turn. You cry out. Sometimes you get out of bed to wander around like a zombie, and when you wake you have no memory of where you went or what you did. That’s not good, John. You can’t go on like this. I can’t go on like this. If you don’t see a doctor, I’ll take the kids and leave.”
Reluctantly, I agreed to see a doctor. Not today, but soon. I promised. Scout’s honor. “Hope to die if I lie,” I told her.
As the days passed and each night became dark longer than the night before, I grew ever more anxious, more fearful. I was certain something cataclysmic was about to happen. Those Brown Jenkin costumes were but a portent of terrible things to come.
Visions of giant rats and bloodied children filled my feverish dreams. I swore my children would not be among those sacrificed on All Hallows’ Eve. I would prevent it. Or I would die trying.
No matter how much they cajoled, pleaded, cried, or acted out, I stuck to my guns. No Brown Jenkin costumes for Davey and Julie. If they wanted to dress up for Halloween, they should dress like Count Dracula or Cinderella. I really didn’t care if they celebrated Halloween this year or any other. All I cared about was keeping my children out of the clutches of Cthulhu and his minions.
For was it not written in those ancient texts that on certain nights like All Hallows’ Eve, doors between worlds opened wide and the call of Great Cthulhu could be plainly heard by all creatures bearing the mark of the beast? In my visions, during my most fevered dreams, I saw children dressed as small, furry, sharp-toothed things responding to that call for sacrifice like rats dancing to the eerie tunes played by a fish-faced Pied Piper.
I dreaded Davey and Julie might be among them.
Linda kept insisting I see a doctor, and I finally relented and visited Doctor Jared Hornsby, our family physician. My boss told me to take a week of accrued vacation time to get well, because I sure as hell didn’t look good. He said my work had recently plunged downhill, and if I didn’t fix whatever was wrong, he’d be forced to fire me.
Doctor Hornsby determined my physical and mental health had rapidly deteriorated from recurrent panic attacks, diagnosed me as suffering from general anxiety and seasonal affective disorders, and prescribed powerful medications to help me relax and induce sleep. “Take two of these tiny tranquilizers in the morning and one of the huge horse pills every four hours.” He wrote another script for sleeping aids. “Take one tablet an hour before bedtime. You need to sleep, John, if you want to get well. These should do the trick. If they don’t, we’ll simply adjust the dosage until they do.”
I thanked the doctor and visited the local pharmacy to fill the three prescriptions. I couldn’t help but notice the store’s Brown Jenkin display had recently been replenished. When I came face to face with the object of my anxiety at checkout, the fear I felt threatened to consume me.
How could a child’s Halloween costume drive a grown man mad?
I don’t remember what I said. I don’t remember what I did. Later, I do remember police snapping handcuffs on my wrists and leading me to a patrol car, then placing protective hands on the crown of my head so I didn’t crack open my skull on a metal doorframe and sue the police department for brutality.
I was photographed, fingerprinted, and spent the night in jail. Linda bailed me out the next morning after she explained to authorities that I suffered from occasional panic attacks and I’d be fine once I began taking appropriate medication. In fact, I was in the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions when I experienced another panic attack. I didn’t know what I was doing when I smashed the Halloween display, tore dozens of costumes to shreds, and nearly torched the entire store. Since it was obvious I was indeed ill, and I had no previous police record, I was released into my loving wife’s custody. Linda wrote a check for damages, and the pharmacy dropped all charges.
“What on earth got into you?” Linda demanded as she drove me home. “I swear, I don’t know you anymore, John. You’re not the man I married.”
She made me take all my meds. Then she put me to bed and left for her job downtown. If my job were in peril, she said, she definitely needed to retain hers.
Fortunately, I had the rest of the week off from work. I followed the doctor’s advice to the letter. I took my prescribed medications religiously, got plenty of sleep, and began to feel more like myself.
Until, alone in the house all day while Linda was at work and Julie and Davey were in school, I perceived furtive scrapings and scratchings within the walls.
It sounded as if something tried desperately to get inside the bedroom from outside, something that couldn’t open doors but was nonetheless determined to reach and destroy me.
To tear me apart like I had torn those Brown Jenkin costumes apart.
One part of my mind said it was only my own overactive imagination while another part insisted the scratching noise was real. We lived in a nice, quiet middle-class neighborhood out in the landscaped suburbs, the house relatively new. Rats had never been a problem before. Why now? Why did I hear such noises only two days before Halloween?
I got out of bed and attempted to track those scraping and scratching sounds to their source. There! I heard it again! Scratching. Like tiny claws tearing away at drywall.
Our bedroom was on the second floor of a modern two-story Cape Cod. The children’s rooms were directly across the hall. Did rats climb? Had they climbed up inside the walls to get to me? To get at my children? Was no one safe? Was no place, not even the marital bed, sacred?
Don’t be silly, my rational brain coaxed. Maybe it’s time to take more meds. Double the dose. That’s what Doctor Hornsby would recommend. No need to call him. No need to shell out another co-pay. Just do it.
Get an axe, the other part of my brain urged. Rip into the walls and find the little bastards. Chop them up. Make mincemeat of them. Get them all before they get you.
Torn between two minds, I did nothing as the scratching sounds continued from within the walls.
Those clawing noises became even more frantic when the kids came home from school. They ceased entirely, however, when Linda arrived home from work shortly afterwards. She found me standing in the bedroom staring at the wall. The room was unearthly quiet.