Yokai

Yokai (妖怪) are a class of supernatural monsters, spirits, and demons in Japanese folklore. They are not easily categorized, encompassing a wide range of beings, from mischievous spirits to fearsome monsters, and even objects imbued with supernatural power. Yokai often blur the lines between the natural and supernatural, and are frequently featured in Japanese art, literature, and popular culture. 

More images here.

And click here to learn about a Yokai event occurring in Philadelphia.

Kaidan: An Evening Of 100 Spirits

Man, I know almost nothing about this, but I'm extremely curious.

And it's coming to Philadelphia in September.

The Hyaku-Monogatari Kaidanki is a Japanese, Heian-era pastime of telling ghost stories to one another of increasing intensity with the hopes one of these spirits does not appear in your parlor. Drawing from the rich history of Japanese folklore and Victorian spiritualism this is a parlour and stage magic show encased in the mysterious and often eerie world of yurei and yokai. The production is a multi-media and performance evening combining illusions, history, storytelling, bunraku, kabuki, noh, and more to weave a creepy web of scary stories each paired with a performance or art piece to transport the audience to a time of onmyōji and 10th Century court pastimes. Educational, beautifully macabre, distinctly Japanese, and entertaining of course. Featuring Schreiben the Conjurer as he takes you through this peculiar world of spirits, investigating it through a Westerner’s perspective while tackling biases and misconceptions to spirit the audience away to another time and place in our world’s history.

Click below for details...

Summer Voice

When I was in high school, my dad spoke to the priests that ran the school and mentioned that his son was looking for work during the summer break.  I wasn't.  Something to pass the heated months of boredom he said, and something to give me some experience.  They told him I could help out the maintenance crew (a bunch of rough kids whose parents saw summer work as a form of punishment).  We'd be doing things like cleaning the rooms, buff-waxing the hallway tiles of the three-floored school, and sanding and staining every single wooden seat in the auditorium.  My first job was painting the heavy iron doors in the school's boiler room.  It was a good assignment, as it was pretty solitary, and it kept me away from those older kids.  I think the priests knew I was a little different than those guys.  And I think they knew I was grateful for that distinction.

Turns out I really liked the job.  And I liked the structure.  I got up early, ate breakfast, packed my lunch, and headed off to work.  It was only a mile from our house, so I would walk to the high school every day.  A large old cemetery lay between the house and the school, so that became my shortcut.  

Cemeteries are strange places.  They never made a lot of sense to me.  My father used to say that a person should remember deceased loved ones in the comfort of their own homes and not where they're planted in the ground.  We rarely agreed, but I agreed with him on this one. 

Now walking through a cemetery twice every day for two whole months makes a person slightly desensitized to the notion of hundreds of bodies buried all around you.  And numb to the grieving.  I saw a lot of sad people that summer. There was one guy in his thirties, I think, sitting on the grave of what I assumed was his wife, or maybe a sibling.  He was crying quite hard as his two small children played and laughed nearby. 

I saw a woman on her knees and elbows just staring at the grass of the cemetery plot as if willing her loved one to return from the dead.  When she saw me coming, she acted as though she were just clearing leaves from the grass and said 'hello' as I passed.  I saw people placing flowers, flags, sea shells, coins, and candles.  On the last week of the job and the last week of summer break, I saw the old man.

Surprisingly, I never saw any elderly people.  He was the only one.  The grave he was visiting was alone in a very private and secluded section of the cemetery.  It was hidden between thick mature shrubs and an old stone wall.  The gravel path curved nearby, and only for a brief moment could I see him through a break in the wall, where a very narrow set of slate steps led down to this singular plot.  His back was to me, so he never saw me pass.  And this portion of the path was more grass than gravel, so he never heard me either.  

The old man was speaking.  And laughing.  And that made me pause for a moment.  I crouched down behind the wall and watched him.  He was gesturing with his hands as he spoke.  Not in a crazy way, but in a very relaxed and comfortable manner.  I smiled and shook my head, and I started to get up to leave when I heard the other voice.  The voice of a woman.  

He was definitely speaking to someone.  He would tell a story and she would laugh.  He would ask a question and she would answer.  For the life of me I could not see where this other person was located. The area where he was standing wasn't that large, and the tombstone was very low with very little room behind it for anyone to sit or hide.  But this is the weird part - the voice seemed to be coming from the air around the old man.  It was very clear and didn't seem to be affected by the sound of the wind through the trees, or by the birds chirping, or by the loud calls of cicadas.  It was extremely clear, and I could hear it more distinctly than the old man's voice, now that I think about it.  I liked the voice.  I found it to be very kind and gentle.  So I listened.  I listened for a long time that morning.  I learned that they were once married and had a very long life together.  They talked about holidays and vacations and how they first met.  They spoke of their children.  The stories they discussed went back over sixty years.  

I can't really say why I wasn't afraid when I processed exactly what was happening.  The simple answer is that it was because of that voice.  It was completely and totally soothing.  And it was extremely difficult pulling myself away.  I was very late for work that first morning.

In the days that followed, I made sure I got up extra early.  It became a daily ritual of rushing to the cemetery and crouching down behind that wall.  And listening.  Listening to two people who were, and continued to be, in love.  My parents were never ones to express their emotions or maybe they just didn't show them in front of their kids.  But listening to these two people reminded me of something I heard a really long time ago when I was very young.  It was an early Sunday morning, I was in bed, and I had just opened my eyes.  I smelled coffee in the house and the sun was up.  And I heard my parents down in the kitchen.  I couldn't make out the words, but I could tell they were having the best time.  I heard my dad's voice followed by laughter from my mom.  I would hear my mom's voice flare up and then both of them laughing after.  Sounds odd to say that hearing your parents laughing was a rare thing, and I felt like I was in on the world's greatest secret that morning.  I was never so content being a part of that moment.  And that's how it felt to me now, crouching in an old cemetery.  I was part of a special secret.  Of someone else's intense happiness.  And the world allowed this strange incredible event to occur.  And it allowed the old man, and now me, to be a part of it.  

I listened that day until it was time to head off to work.  I slowly rose from my spot behind the wall.  Making sure to stay low as I usually did, and still listening to their conversation.  But on this morning, I lost my balance for a second and leaned too hard against the old stones of the wall.  I felt it shift slightly and heard one of the larger rocks on the other side of the wall come loose.  It fell onto the slate steps leading down to the old man.  The voice stopped mid-sentence.  And so did everything else.  The wind, the birds, the cicadas.  The only thing that I did hear was the voice of the old man, calling to his wife.  It started out quietly, and then rose to a panicked frantic pitch.  He called her name so many times.  He pleaded her name.  Then he just started wailing.  And I ran.  I ran so hard.   

On the first day of school, I cut through the cemetery again, and walked by the old stone wall, and the steps.  I knew the old man wouldn't be there.  So I didn't even look.

Click the photo when you're done reading the story.

Exhumed

In the end, a four-day rain gave up my family's secret.

Secrets

My grandfather was the first one to arrive at the second crash site. He said he saw their bodies. Called them 'little people.' He knelt next to the smallest one, only three feet long, and scooped it up and wrapped it in a blanket or a towel. He placed it in the jeep. The driver just stared at the crash debris. And the bodies.

He said he kept it in his footlocker, wrapped up. Never looked at it again.

After he died. My grandmother told me the story. Said that he wanted her to tell me after he passed. I asked if they still had the trunk. She said "Oh yes. It's in the cellar."

And she handed me the key.

The Shrill

The Dead returned.  Billions of corpses began to move, convulse, groan, and then, quite horribly, shriek.  It was a high-pitched and piercing sound.  The world called it The Shrill.  And it was the extent of their cruelty.  There were no armies of dead, no brain-seeking deceased hungry cannibals.  Just the shouting from frail, weak frames which made no attempt to stand.  Cemeteries around the world became places of the unholy deafening Shrill.  Layers of earth muffled the shrieks, but the sheer volume of the deceased in one condensed location created a terrifying chorus that never stopped.

It was a sunny, windy day in late October.  I stood on the other side of the river across from the city's acres-wide cemetery.  I listened to the shrieks carried on the wind and over the water.  I remembered some lines from an old poem by T.S. Eliot.  He wrote

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Image by tombnails.

Toad's Barrows

I always heard the tales about Toad's Barrows, but figured they were just some kind of ghost story.  Well, today, deep in the woods on an early morning walk, I think I found them.  At first the markers blended in with the trees and leaves, but then I noticed they were all around me, and spreading off into the distance, deeper into the woods.  I got out of there pretty fast.  And only got this one photo.

The Weeds

We called her old house The Weeds.  To this day I have never seen a home so entirely overgrown with what I think was every variety of weed and creeping vine that has ever existed.  Dandelions, crabgrass, sumac, ragweed, and thistle all grew to sizes unseen by most people.  There was an old rock garden which now appeared to be an ancient weathered graveyard, the stones coated in layers of colorful moss and fungus.  And the mushrooms.  In every dark spot under the old wild shrubs and tired branches of dying trees you could see them.  Hundreds and hundreds of bleach-white mushrooms.

During the day, the house existed in perpetual dusk due to the constant shade from the parapet of trees surrounding the property.  Crickets' calls were long and low, like the croaking of frogs.  We imagined a large swamp somewhere around the back of the place, though none of us ever dared to confirm this fact.  Well, until the day Sonny disappeared.

To be continued...

Image source.

Onion Grass

I wanted to tell this story before I forgot.

A while back, I learned that the old farmer who found it would eat breakfast at the same diner each and every Wednesday morning. I made sure I was there that day, and waited until he stood to leave before I kindly pulled him aside and asked him if the story were true, and if he’d show it to me. I had been warned about his tired indifference to this request, since most of the people in this side of the state had asked him the same two questions. After I introduced myself, he seemed a little confused, or hard of hearing, and asked me to repeat my name. After I did so, he told me I should follow him to his farm.

It was late October, so the drive to his rural home was a welcome change from my daily life of routine. I was feeling proud of myself for taking this chance and actually following through with a personal goal, even though it might have been perceived as a peculiar one. I watched his old truck ahead of me, slightly swerving on the bumpy dirt road, kicking up clouds of dust that quickly floated off across brown acres of brittle bent corn. According to some folks in the diner, it had been a very dry season and I wondered about this old farmer in front of me, and if his life had been affected by the drought. Admittedly, I know nothing of farming, and my life of gray walls and cubicles started to feel something of an embarrassment to me. A feeling which started with our handshake back at the diner. This old man's hands were massive things. His life of hard work created them, and my hand felt dwarfed and weak being gripped by his.

We turned onto a gravel road lined by enormous sycamore trees. Their patchy flaking bark reminded me of the pieces of a puzzle. They seemed to get taller, wider, and whiter as we got closer to his farm. I watched him drive through an open gate past the last two trees. He parked under a rusty metal carport attached to the side of his barn. Both structures looked like they were pushing into each other, and his garage was winning. The barn looked tired. And unsafe. It was bursting with old farm equipment, tires, hoses, rows of rusted paint cans, and the frames of two old tractors.

And I hoped that he wasn't keeping it inside.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Cuts

Anyone who ever sat down in front of a pumpkin with a desire to give it a face knows the feeling.  It's intimidating.  Feels something like a living canvas in front of you, hoping that you don't screw up its one big break, as it spent the summer growing for this very moment.  I was never one to pre-draw the face on a jack-o'-lantern-to-be.  Just always felt wrong to me.  And I'm not sure why.

So there I was on Halloween morning, sitting in front of a tableful of orange beauties my wife and I had brought home from a farmers' market a week prior.  And there I was feeling the intimidation and self-doubt.  The frustration gave way to a frozen panic of sorts.  Sounds silly to put it that way, but that's how it felt.  Halloween felt ruined by this daunting chore in front of me.  Orange doubt.

Then the welts started to form.

It's difficult to explain what I was seeing, but imagine very distinct raised lines forming on every pumpkin.  Very slowly, and just high enough to be seen.  The morning sun created tiny shadows on the orange skin, and it was truly breathtaking.  For there were faces, perfect faces, on each pumpkin.  Perfect is the only word that fits what I was witnessing.  Though it seems too small to describe what was happening.  Each face was comprised only of four outlines - two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.  And that's the difficult part to convey...  only four cuts, four openings, but they were each arranged in such a way as to create stunningly perfect traditional Halloween faces.  The faces were, or, rather, were to be, gleeful, sorrowful, sinister, terrified, playful, and wicked.  It was truly art.  True art.  Overwhelming beauty and perfection,..minimalism making the Exquisite.  And I had an almost uncontrollable urge to begin cutting.  I'd say it was more of a compulsion to cut, but that would suggest that it was against my wishes, and there was nothing further from what I was feeling.  I HAD to cut,... I wanted to cut.  I needed to cut.

So I began, excitedly gutting the pumpkins and nervously half-expecting the strange raised lines to be gone when I blinked my eyes.  But they remained.  And waited for my knife.

Dusk came and we moved the pumpkins to the porch and began lighting the waxy candle stubs inside each rounded masterpiece.  Faces of flickering candlelight came from every corner of our old porch.  We placed some on the floorboards, some on wooden chairs, on ceramic flowerpots, and on each of our creaky wooden steps.

I saw movement down the block and heard laughter and a very faint "Trick-or-treat!"  Even after all these years, that moment of the official start of Halloween trick-or-treating made my stomach fill with butterflies.  We prepared our large candy bowl and quickly made our way to our usual positions for handing out candy - two very old and very flimsy (and ugly) folding beach chairs - a Halloween tradition of ours.

Again, I can't properly convey the reactions of anyone who saw the jack-o'-lanterns.  I'd say it was one of overwhelming excitement and wonder.  An almost physical reaction that made folks run to our house upon first spotting the pumpkins.  Then they'd stop at the end of our walk, try to take it all in, and then slowly approach the porch.  Candy seemed to be the last thing on anyone's mind.

People lingered, studied each face, and tried to articulate their feelings.  Effusive and grateful, their words proved what I was already feeling upon first seeing the slowly-appearing faces - that this was Halloween magic.  Actual magic.  And I'm not ashamed to admit I was taking full credit for the incredible designs.  After all, the faces appeared to me.

It was the absolute most incredible evening.  Crowds of people patiently awaiting their turn to view our exquisite gallery of Halloween.  The sounds of laughter and children running filled the air.  There were loud Oohs and Aahs every time the wind blew, as it caused the faces to flicker and dance, to wink and wince, to snarl and spit.

Just before midnight, the vast crowd, us included, now waited as each candle was slowly extinguished.  Like melting snowmen, the candles inside the jack-o'-lanterns were now smooth flat pools of liquid wax, with tired dimming wicks.  They were dying, one by one.  As each pumpkin passed on, the crowd would applaud and shout, saying things like "That one there was my favorite!" or "Oh No!  There it goes!"  It was both exhilarating and bittersweet.  And it seemed we all knew we were witnessing a very special event.

The last of the pumpkins expired, and the crowd thinned until it was just me and my wife.  We looked at each other and laughed, trying to fully process the whole affair.  An intensely strong sense of satisfaction settled in.  The night was over.  The exhibition was over.  The gallery was closed.

I crawled in bed exhausted but restless.  I laid on my side and did what I always did to help me fall asleep - I listened to my wife sleeping, watching her smooth bare back in the moonlight, as she lay slowly breathing.

Then the welts started to form.

Mother

The sound came from my mother's mouth, as she lay dying.  A terrible lonely sound.  A foreign sound, like a deep low clicking and gurgling.  They told me it was the death rattle. And that I could expect her death within the next twelve hours. 

And they were right.

That was the first time I had ever heard such an ugly sound.

The second time was five nights after her funeral, as I sat alone in her small empty house.

 Image by Corinne May Botz.

8:18

My neighbors are quiet people.  I rarely see them, but when I do there's always a friendly wave or a warm smile.  We almost never interact, so when they asked me over for dinner I was a little surprised.  And truthfully a little uncomfortable - I had gotten used to our somewhat antisocial relationship.  I had grown accustomed to our distance.  I'm a bad liar, so it was easier to say yes than to make up some excuse. They told me the night and the time and I told them I would be looking forward to it.

                        

I'll admit that I had a very nice time.  We didn't say much during dinner, but I felt welcome, comfortable, and relaxed.  Closer to 8:00, I noticed they had begun glancing at a clock on the wall.  Often, and with great discomfort.  And then with a palpable panic. 

They feigned reassurance when I asked about their change in demeanor.  They both attempted to explain their behavior in overlapping dialogue.  I found this particularly unsettling.  Over their frantic words, I announced my appreciation for their hospitality and began to stand.

But then he asked, "Do you believe in ghosts?"

I was startled by the question and very uncomfortable.  I wanted to leave.  Badly.  I answered his question and told him that I had an open mind to such things.  And he asked me to sit.

He told me that he and his wife have had experiences.  He said that their house had a presence...a ghost.  He said that it came often.  Every night in fact.  He said it started in a corner of the basement, came up the stairs, opened the cellar door, and walked through the living room, into the dining room, and through the furthest wall.  He pointed at the wall next to where I was sitting.

I realized this was the purpose of the invitation.  They wanted a witness.  Needed one.  I could only think of two questions:  What does it look like?  and When does it happen?

He answered my last question first:  At 8:18.  Every single night.
We looked at the clock on the wall - 8:12.

Then he answered my first question:  We don't know what it looks like.

When I asked him to explain, he told me they had both been unable to look at the presence.  He said he and his wife have tried all these years, but can't.  I found this absurd.  And the entire story, which I had actually begun to believe was now either a hoax, a distasteful joke, or a delusion of two very disturbed people.  I pushed back my chair and stood.

A noise.  From under our feet, in the basement.  They looked down at their plates.  I looked at the clock - 8:18.

I could hear deep slow labored footsteps.  They sounded miles beneath us, but I knew that wasn't the case.  And then I felt the vibration.  A sickening wave of a nauseating low hum forced me hard into my chair, my legs and knees weak and useless.  I could hear the basement stairs creaking underneath a massive shifting weight.  I wiped cold sweat from my face.  The nausea was unlike anything I had ever felt.  I heard the knob of the cellar door be gripped, and then turned.  Slowly.  The door began to open.  The vertical crack of darkness from the creaking door seemed to release an even more intense low frequency hum.  I tried to stare into the darkness, to see.  To see IT.

But the putrid vibration was overwhelming.  My body contracted.  My legs and arms were drawn inward.  My entire body gripped the chair.  I could feel the muscles of my face contorting, and my eyes, as much as I fought to keep them open, closed.  Tight.

I could hear It.  Moving across the wood beams of the living room floor. They seemed to be groaning and splitting.  The sickening waves of vibration seemed to rattle every loose object in the house.  I wanted to cover my ears, but the piercing hum kept me frozen in place.  I tried to scream out, but the muscles of my jaw refused.  So I listened to it, coming closer and closer.  Ripples and waves of the sickening sound covered me.  I felt myself on the verge of fainting.  And I welcomed it.

But then It was gone.  I opened my eyes.  Just the three of us, in a quiet undisturbed house.  Nothing seemed out of place.  Except for the open cellar door.

That was three months ago.  We haven't spoken since.  And each night, despite making every effort to be busy or out of my house altogether, I find myself standing at the window which faces their house.  Looking out across our ordinary lawns.  Staring at that wall.  At 8:18.

Image source.

Winter

She said the winter forced the Woods to give up its secrets. And she was right. The remains were exactly where she said they'd be.


Image by fridolin_x3.

Night Shift

I work the night shift. I've always worked the night shift. The night is a different world, hidden behind bedroom curtains for most. But not for me. 

In the middle of a very warm October, and in the middle of a long stretch of empty street, I left the broken-down bus behind, and figured I'd walk the rest of the way. That's when I saw the house, up on an overgrown hill, at the top of a steep and cracked driveway. My bus had passed that house every night for as long as I can remember. And every night I'd see a faint steady glow from a low window closest the driveway. The glow of a television I had assumed. The house hadn't looked so abandoned and desolate from the inside of my bus as we shot past every night. But now, standing at the bottom of that long driveway, the pale greenish light seemed very out-of-place among all that ruin. And I was a little surprised when I caught myself halfway up the driveway walking towards it. It was steady, not fluttering or pulsating like the light from a TV. Just steady. 

I crouched down by a basement window well which had been mostly filled with leaves, with only the upper portion of the window visible. I couldn't see the source of the light at first. It seemed to be coming from deep inside the basement. The bushes around the house were too thick and overgrown to look for another window with a better view, so I lowered my feet into the window well and slowly knelt down onto the leaves. With most of my body crammed into the well, I found a missing window pane among the filthy cloudy glass and peeked inside. I felt the moist coolness of the basement air on my face.

The basement was filled with the light. So bright and still. There was a large wide rectangular box in the center of the basement floor. More like a wooden frame, it was lidless, and each side only a few inches high. And it was overgrowing with tiny mushrooms. Hundreds and hundreds of bulbous growths. Glowing. Luminescent mushrooms. One side of the wooden frame had rotted away and even the loose spilled dirt was loaded with the glowing mushrooms. 

I stared at them for a very long time. Before I saw her. Sitting in a chair. An old woman, hands folded on her lap, her old rocker facing the mushrooms. As my eyes adjusted to the strange light, I could see that her mouth was open - very wide. But it wasn't that at all. Her lower jaw was missing. And I could see the texture of her skin, flakes upon flakes, like a dry crust. Her eyes were shut tight. I could see more and more detail of her cracked pained face... 

Then she slowly turned to look at me. 

I froze. My face still pressed through the missing pane. And the only noise my shallow breathing. But her head hadn't turned. She hadn't moved. It was the light. The odd green light was shifting. Slowly shifting, crawling, across the basement walls. The light grew brighter, more intense. The old woman was now in total darkness. And the light - it was directing itself...focusing....on the broken basement window, and on me. 

I could see tiny particles in the light, floating slowly in tiny waves. I inhaled a moist fungus scent. Putrid and foreign. A night scent. Spores. I could taste them. I could feel them. I pushed away from the window. Pushed myself out of the window well. Stumbling. Then running. Trying to clear the taste. To outrun it.

 

I ran. Hating the night air. Hating the darkness. And just wanting the sun to rise.

Stones

Statement of Elizabeth Anne Frayley
October 29, 1962

I saw the commotion. A few children throwing rocks at something small and cornered. I'd had it out for them since they smashed my azalea bush last spring, and I figured they found a grounded bird, so I headed over there to stop them. But it was a tiny person. A person! Like you and me. But four inches high! They were throwing stones at her. I grabbed the tallest boy's wrist before he could throw another rock. But they killed her. Can you imagine that? A tiny person. And they killed her.


Image source.

Rain

Ed told us to wait at the abandoned hospital, at the old steps of the main entrance. It was October 30th and it had been raining for the last four days. The river and all the creeks were swollen and overflowing. The water was loud and peach-colored from all the mud it was carrying. Giant tree stumps and massive logs would shoot by, surfacing and rolling over to briefly show their shiny black bark before disappearing downstream. Lord knows where they ended up. And it was still raining. Hard. And we were sick of it. We knew Halloween was going to be a wet and ruined one. So when Ed had said that Halloween would be a day early this year, we would have waited anywhere he told us to wait.

And there we were - at the old hospital. Listening to the rain streaming down onto the marble steps, onto the leaves of overgrown weeds and trees, and gurgling down broken roof tiles and spraying out over missing gutters. We weren't waiting long when we spotted Ed approaching, walking down our old bike path through the property. He was carrying something in his arms. It looked like an oversized shoe box, rounded at the ends. As he got closer, we could tell it was a wooden box, very old and worn. He placed it on one of the steps and answered our unasked questions. "It's a baby coffin!"

Ed said that the river had swallowed up the oldest part of the town cemetery and had washed away the small hills and tombstones. Caskets were being torn from the ground and he said he found his when he was riding his bike the day before. The small box had been sitting half in the water and half on the yellow centerlines of a road which was currently under the swollen banks of the river. So he scooped it up and took it home. We never knew him to lie, so we circled around the object and listened to his story. He told us the police were aware of the damage and that local farmers had reported a few large caskets which had been floating above their drowned crops. He told us he was going to show his parents the coffin, but something had stopped him. A sound.

Ed told us he heard a scratching sound from inside the casket. And that at first he thought it was probably a rat which had climbed through a small hole in the old wood to get away from the rising water. But the surface was unbroken, and the two clasp locks were still tight, corroded and now one piece with the wood of the box. When we excitedly protested, he simply told us to listen for ourselves.

At that precise moment, the rain stopped.


Image source.

Free

It was on the lawn of a small white bungalow. By the road. There was a cardboard sign taped to it, with the word "FREE" written on it. We passed it a couple of times one weekend and decided that if we saw it again on our way back that we'd load it into the car and take it home with us.

And that's how it ended up in our house. And that's when everything started - the sounds, the whispering. The smell. We discussed throwing it out or burning it in the yard in our fire pit. But I think we both knew that it would only make things worse.

So we're going to put it out on the lawn.
With a sign.
Just like they did.


Image source.

Torment

Then it started using my mother's voice, and I hated it for that.


Image by CANADIAN_COPPER1.

Trick

In the last year of his life, I sat with my grandfather on his porch steps on Halloween night. A bowl of candy between us. The neighborhood had turned and most of the elderly neighbors who kept tidy little homes were now gone, either in nursing homes or dead (he said the latter were better off). The houses were either given to grandchildren or sold to people who just didn't care what the neighborhood used to be. The manicured lawns and smooth clean sidewalks were gone. My grandfather was the last of his kind. And his clean little house was too. 

It was an exceptionally warm Halloween. And humid. We sat handing out candy to costume-less teens and loud young parents and their children who forgot to say trick or treat, or even thank you. The kids came in tiny clusters in-between long empty lulls, which suited me just fine. We didn't talk much. We never did. So when he took a deep labored breath and said that he needed to tell me something, I knew something was wrong. So I whispered ok and kept staring ahead, down the empty street. 

He told me on Halloween night when he was ten years old, he played a prank on an elderly widow up the block from where he used to live with his parents. He said it was something he heard about in school. A bag placed on a porch and lit on fire with a match. Inside the bag, the droppings of a dog - a big old dog with a big old appetite. He laughed when he told me that part. After the fire was lit, he rang her doorbell and ran. And hid. He saw the curtains flick a bit and the widow peek out. Then the door opened. She came out onto the porch and stepped right over the bag, as if she didn't see it. The robe or housecoat she was wearing caught fire. Quickly. He said she just sorta stood still while it all happened. He told me he ran in plain sight down the block, in the center of the street, and into his house. He told me the widow had died. 

But no one saw him. And he never told anyone. And he was never blamed, or even questioned. Some kids came up for candy and I watched him drop a few pieces in each of their bags. They were the last of the night. My grandfather scooped up the candy bowl and slowly stood. Before he went in the house, he turned and said that Halloween was over. 

And I guess it finally was. 

Crawl Space

The crawl space was packed with dust and webs, and spiders. And hundreds of tiny egg sacks, dangling like the plump ends of cotton swabs. In the summer, the space was loaded with movement. Tiny shiny spiders on needle-thin legs, plicking about in the stifling heat.

My father would amuse himself and roll a baseball under the house and demand that we crawl in and get it. And we did. Because we had to.

Image source.