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October is halfway over and that means one thing: Halloween! Shops are decorating, neighbors are covering their homes in fake spiderwebs, and pumpkin patches are showing up everywhere! Some neighbors seem to be avoiding the holiday and those have become targets for a few pranks. So what are you doing to get ready for Halloween Night?
Despite himself, Robert Bastion rather liked Halloween. It was not particularly in character for him, as far as anyone else would think from the outside, but he had a soft spot for dressing up and enjoying the creepy and fun themed night. Maybe because it was some of the few good memories he had from his childhood, growing up in homes that never really wanted him. He’d managed to find a good one by the time Halloween rolled around one year, and things felt as close to perfect as they ever could have been. If not for the accident to come, he could have lived there and been happy.
His mother, at the time anyway, had loved holidays. She decorated for all of them, but she always told him Halloween was the best. What could be wrong with a night where getting into trouble was okay? A time where you were rewarded with candy, all but gold for a child his age, for being scary and playing outside after dark. She told him to be safe, but to have fun, and even handed him a roll of toilet paper with a wink. In case he made a mess, she said.
His shop lent itself well to creepy. It was full of old things, after all, and some of them were a little bit unsettling. Classics of horrors, like dolls and rocking horses. He put up a window display that was fittingly nightmarish, with cobwebs and appropriately exaggerated shadows. He draped more cobwebs and fake, but real enough looking, spiders to accompany them inside the shop. He kept the lights low, and the music soft and ambient with sudden bumps and bangs when some unsuspecting shopper seemed primed for a jump. People seemed to enjoy his little shop of horrors, and he’d even boosted sales because of it. Everyone liked to be scared.
Robert liked that. He also liked to test just how far their want to be scared went. Tonight, he was sitting at his front counter, wiping down the display from the day’s grubby hands, waiting for any late night stragglers to wander in. Then his patrol would begin, and he could really give them a scare. He had a button that locked the front exit remotely, and the unsuspecting guest would think it was part of the Halloween game.
How very wrong they would be. He planned on approaching them, though what he said would have to come in the moment, and they would laugh nervously at him and tell him it was a good game, a good trick. They would say they were scared and ask him to unlock the door, maybe offer to buy something for the trouble. He would smile at them, and tell them the truth. They would not be leaving that night with everything they came in with. Maybe he would just take energy, or maybe he would add their starseed to his collection in the back room.
That would be his treat, for the tricks they endured. His mother had been right, so many years ago, about how fun Halloween could really be. He wondered, if only for a fleeting moment, if she would agree with how he interpreted her encouragement. Then again, if she had managed to live long enough to see this moment, it likely would not be happening this way. He would be a different person. Maybe a happier one, not one driven by vengeance and jealousy. Maybe. In a way, he was glad she had died.
The bell on the door jingled and the old door creaked as it was pushed open, a curious, almost apologetic face sticking in and silently asking if the place was still open without saying anything. He smiled at them from across the store, motioning with his hands for them to come inside.
“Welcome to Old as Time.”
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