Non Fiction

It was on the blustery eve of August 27th, a Saturday when the air was still crisp and warm, the humidity settling over the suburbs making it just unpleasant enough to not want to be outside, when they first noticed the glowing orange lights emanating from the perimeter of their neighbor’s lawn. They simultaneously double-taked, rubbing their eyes to make sure that what they were seeing was indeed a reality and not some strange side-effect of the sticky air.

Their eyes had not deceived them, nor had the air played any tricks. The house across the street was indeed fully decorated for Halloween, more than two months early, decorated in a fashion that far overdid what any Halloween display should be.

“Do you think they got their months confused?” Donna asked her husband Jake as they continued to gawk at the array of dangling skeletons, crucified witches, creeping spiders, and ominous tombstones that engulfed the yard. Although none of the individual decorations were terrifying on their own, the collection was a bit haunting, at least in Donna’s eyes.

“I’m not sure what to think,” the incredulous Jake responded, “other than that these people have completely lost their minds.”

Jake and Donna White hadn’t ever really met their neighbors. Their interaction had typically been limited to casual glances when bringing in groceries or mowing the lawn. Occasionally, they would even exchange a wave of recognition as they pulled into the driveway, and once, the man of the neighboring family, whose name they thought was either Jared or Duncan, had even asked Jake for a jump start when his van had died in the middle of the street. Jake of course happily helped out his neighbor, but he never bothered to learn for sure what the man’s name was. It didn’t really matter though; none of their interactions required a name.

The Whites had been living on Morton Street for a little over a year. It was an odd little street, its mouth in the middle of a short bypass road and only running for a mere block before dead-ending at a set of frequently used railroad tracks that stereotypically separated the good part of town from the bad. Of course, since it was the separator, things were about halfway between good and bad on the street. The houses weren’t completely rundown, and none of the windows were boarded up, but there were plenty of extraneous cracks on the sidewalks and streets, everyone’s roof sagged a little, no one’s grass kept its green, and all of the windows on the street were in desperate need of replacement. Aside from the general appearances of the homes and yards, other than the Whites, it seemed that people rarely left their homes—Jake and Donna had only ever seen one household come home with groceries, and neither had ever seen anyone leave dressed up on a Sunday morning. They weren’t even sure if anyone on the street actually had jobs. It seemed the only time people actually went outside was to just sit on their porches, and they only did this when it was exorbitantly hot, which made no sense to Jake or Donna considering that every house on the block had air conditioning.

Morton Street also had a high turnover. Homes rarely went up for sale or rent, but somehow the inhabitants of the homes changed frequently. Last year, Donna had heard loud banging coming from the house next door at midnight on Christmas Eve, a banging that sounded like the loading of heavy furniture into a large truck. She jumped from her bed with a startle, expecting to see Santa Claus on the roof with his reindeer, but instead all she saw was their next door neighbors loading a U-Haul with heavy furniture. The next morning, the neighbors were gone, no trace of them left except for some trash piled on their curb. They never heard from the family again, although Jake thought he saw them driving through the neighborhood once a few months later. The dead-end street wasn’t really something that people usually happened upon by accident.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the Halloween decorations, even odder than their timing, was the fact that they existed at all. The Whites thought back to Christmas when not a single house on the street had decorated, which had in turn prompted them to scale back their decorations significantly. The house hadn’t been decorated last Halloween, nor had it ever been decorated with even so much as a banner or a flag, and the people living in the house had resided on the block longer than the Whites had, so Jake and Donna simply could not figure out the reason for this sudden enthusiasm in Halloween. If there had been a neighborhood memo, it hadn’t arrived at the White’s house yet, nor had it seemed to arrive anywhere else.

Jake and Donna asked around, telling their friends, family and coworkers about the absurdity of the early Halloween decorations. No one had ever heard of anything like this, which left Jake and Donna really wanting to know the secret behind the Halloween bug that the neighbors had caught. They would have asked one of the neighbors, but they really didn’t know any of them well enough to ask. After much dinner table and bedtime discussion, the couple agreed that they would just have to find out for themselves.

On September 19th, Jake and Donna decided to launch their full-scale investigation. The plan was quite ingenious, at least Jake thought it was, but it was his plan after all, so it only made sense that he would have found it ingenious.

The plan was that Jake and Donna would invite the neighbors over for an early autumn barbecue. While Donna was inside entertaining the couple, Jake would be outside cooking the meat. Of course he didn’t need to stand there the whole time the meat was cooking, so he would slip away for a few moments and sneak into their house to investigate the cause of the Halloween enthusiasm. He wasn’t really sure what he would find, but he was sure he would stumble across something. The only potential problem was that they might not leave their house unlocked. Then he would have to break a window, and he definitely didn’t want to do that. After all, he wasn’t a felon, and he wasn’t about to start the criminal life now.

The plan was entirely Jake’s idea.

“I’ve got a great plan,” he had told his wife.

Once she had heard it, she told him, “There’s no way that will work. Why would they come over to our house for a barbecue? We don’t even know their names.”

“They’ll come because they are invited. It’s free food. Why wouldn’t they come?”

“Because they don’t know us and they probably don’t like us and we probably don’t like them.”

“Of course they don’t like us. They don’t like us because we have never had them over for a barbecue,” he reasoned.

“You’re just gonna open a can a worms here. If you invite them over, then the other neighbors are gonna find out and start talking bad about us,” she reasoned back.

“Well, then what the hell? We’ll just invite the whole damned block over. Brats for everybody. Throw on some ribs, too. It’ll be one helluva feast.”

“I’m not having all of those people here,” Donna said with disgust. “Think of all the cleaning. And we don’t know any of them. Who knows what kind of people they are. I don’t want them to see my house.”

“Alright, then we’ll just invite the Halloweens,” he said with a smile.

The next day, Jake walked across the street to the Halloween house and knocked on the door using the spider knocker that had been hung for next month’s occasion. After a few moments, the door mysteriously swung open, creaking slowly as it revealed an open foyer. Jake looked around confused for a moment before he heard a soft voice say, “Man, this door really needs oil.”

The comment was quickly followed by a slightly louder but no more confident, “How can I help you, neighbor?” The man obviously did not know Jake’s name either, which made him feel much better about offering the invitation to the stranger.

“My wife and I wanted to invite your family over for a barbecue this weekend,” Jake said to the mid-heighted man that now stood before him, wisps of stringy blondish hair sweeping across an oily forehead.

The man stared at nothing in particular as if he were deep in thought. “Hmm, this weekend you say,” he whispered almost inaudibly. “Well, I think we’re free on Sunday afternoon. Does that work for you?”

“That would be wonderful. Around 1 o’clock then?”

“We will be there. Need us to bring anything?”

“Nah, we’ll have it all taken care of.”

“Shelia will insist. We’ll bring some dessert.”

“Alright, if you must.” With that, Jake walked away from the awkward conversation without saying goodbye.

“How’d it go?” Donna asked when he returned.

“He’s weird, but he said yes,” Jake said while rolling his eyes. “Oh, and Shelia is bringing dessert.”

“Lovely. At least we know one of our guest’s names.”

Sunday didn’t come quickly. It was like the week before a child’s Christmas. Every night they had to stare at those orange lights and hanging goblins. Every morning as they left they drove past the makeshift graveyard. Their minds oozed with curiosity, and there were times that Jake just wasn’t sure that he could wait that long to learn the truth.

When Sunday finally did come, the guests arrived promptly. Jake and Donna opened the door and greeted their guests with the awkwardness one always has when talking to someone they have met but don’t really know.

Donna spotted it first. In Shelia’s hand was a plate of Halloween cupcakes. White cake, orange frosting, sugary ghost toppings. As the Whites led their guests to the living room, they snuck each other a “What the hell is wrong with these people?” glance.

“Where should I put these cupcakes?” Shelia asked with a proud smile.

“I’ll take them,” said Donna, eagerly reaching out her hands. “Can I get you two something to drink?”

The man spoke first. “Do you have any fruit punch?”

Jake looked at him strangely, studying him, wondering what kind of grown man asks for fruit punch at a neighbor’s barbecue.

“Sorry, we’re fresh out. But I do have some lemonade,” she said hospitably.

“That’s okay. I’ll get by,” Mr. Halloween said with great disappointment, as if every household had gallons of fruit punch on hand.

“I can run home and get some, dear,” Shelia suggested. “Donna, you can come with me and help if you would like.”

Donna was stunned to know that Shelia knew her name. Jake’s eyes widened. This was something they hadn’t bargained for. This was a golden opportunity that required no sneaking or breaking in. Donna gladly accepted the invitation, leaving Jake alone with Mr. Halloween, a little jealous that his wife was going to learn the secret first.

“So, I noticed you haven’t decorate yet,” the man began almost immediately after the wives had left.

“We haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Jake said with a subtle roll of his eyes. “Let’s watch the game,” he said in a manly voice as he picked up the remote and switched on the television to a commercial as he wondered to himself what the game was going to be.

The two sat in silence watching beer and shaving cream commercials. By the time the game was back on, Shelia had returned, but she was alone.

It took Jake a moment to notice, and once he did, he immediately asked, “Where’s Donna?” in a bit of a panic.

“Oh…” Shelia began with a slight nervous glance at her husband, who hadn’t even looked up from the television. “She went to the store to buy some ice for the fruit punch. We can’t drink fruit punch without ice.” Shelia seemed confident and proud of her response.

“But we have plenty of ice here—” Jake began.

“We don’t use ice from tap water,” Shelia quickly interrupted.

It was at that point that Jake noticed the red stain on Shelia’s yellow shirt. “What’s that?” he gasped with a shaking finger outstretched.

“Oh…” she started again, glancing down at the red stain on her shirt that was seeping into the cloth right under her breasts. “That’s just…that’s just some fruit punch I spilled.”

It then occurred to Jake that her hands were empty. “Where is the fruit punch anyway?” he inquired fearfully. He stood up from the couch, without waiting for a response, and walked to the front door. Peering out the windowpane that lined the brown door, he noticed that both of their cars were parked out front. Donna clearly hadn’t gone to the grocery store. The nearest store was over two miles away, and while she was certainly capable of such a walk, it would make no sense to travel so inefficiently when company was over. Besides, by the time she walked the distance in the unseasonably warm 80s, the ice would have mostly melted.

“Oh, we left the fruit punch in the fridge to chill until she comes back with the ice,” Jake vaguely heard Shelia say as he stared out the window, past the cards and at the mysteriously decorated house. Through the glass, the house was distorted and unevenly shaped. It truly looked haunted. He knew something was amiss, but he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.

Perhaps it was all just a practical joke. Donna may have set up the whole thing, including the early Halloween decorations. She was just trying to pay him back for the many practical jokes he had played on her in their still early years of marriage. There was no other way to explain the idiocy of decorating for a meaningless holiday over two months early. This had to be just a joke, and he wasn’t about to appear the fool. As difficult as it would be around these odd strangers, he would have to play along.

“So, I see you guys are really into Halloween,” Jake said cheerfully as he turned away from the window to the couple. The man’s eyes were glued to the television and it didn’t seem that even a muscle had twitch, yet Jake suspected the man had no clue what was going on in the game. Shelia was standing by the open seat next to her husband on the couch, half staring at the game and half staring at the man, seemingly unsure what to do next.

“It’s the new Christmas,” Shelia said in a robotically joyous voice, her eyes still gazing halfway between the two objects.

Jake was dumbfounded by her response. Was this woman really comparing a day of witches, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins to the birth of Jesus? Even from a nonreligious standpoint, handfuls of candy and costumes couldn’t possibly top mounds of presents and family togetherness around the Christmas tree. These people were clearly lunatics. He didn’t want lunatics in his home, but he didn’t really know how to get rid of them.

“Well, I guess we’ll wait for Donna to get back before starting the food,” Jake said as he plopped into his recliner.

Almost at the precise moment that his butt hit the comfortable leather of that chair, the man on his couch said to the wife, “I’m really thirsty. Can you go get the punch now? I’ll drink it warm if need be.” The words came out almost spitefully, as if he blamed Jake for the suffering he was about to endure.

“Okay dear. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said with a mischievous smile.

Shelia showed herself out the door as the two men sat silently in their respective seats. Neither even looked away from the TV as the door shut behind her. After she had left, Jake contemplated asking what the hell was going on, but he decided against it.

When Shelia returned, punch in hand, the man was sitting alone on the couch, staring at the blank television screen that reflected his motionless image back. “Where’s Jake?” she asked. The man shrugged. “Do you want to drink this here or at home?” She held up the punch. He stood and walked to the door, his wife following him. They walked across the street together, hand in hand, and when they reached the front steps that were lined by dormant orange lights and foam gravestones, the man planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek and said, “Happy Halloween.”

That night, the Halloween lights did not brighten the always-darkened street.

By the time the Whites were found in their own basement—a week before Halloween—the decorations had all been removed.