My carving of Elsa, our Australian Shepherd

Since I was a kid, I have loved Halloween. And no, not just for the candy (although any holiday built around children begging for candy—and getting it—well, most children are probably going to give the day a positive Klout score. (BTW, the “begging for candy” description comes straight from my old man’s lips. I think he may have been the inspiration for Dickens in writing the Ebenezer Scrooge character—seriously, even as a child I stared in wide-eyed disbelief that anyone could possibly harbor negative feelings toward such a hallowed holiday).

There are no more kids in our household, so my wife and I have decided that each year we will stock up on full-size candy bars to give to the kids. I used to love those houses. It’s our way of celebrating the evening (that and the cooler of iced Patron margaritas sitting next to our camping chairs).

I don’t have the energy anymore to dress up or decorate the garage as a haunted house. Truth is, as much as I love the holiday, I never had that much energy anyway.

But I do LOVE haunted houses. Particularly the local productions that pop up every year around this time.

Gold. Pure gold. And every year I do carve a pumpkin or two. (This past season, I made a stencil out of one of our Aussie’s portraits and carved her face into one of the Guthrie Jack-O-Lanterns.)

Stop digressing and get to the point, right? As always, I must tie this to the blog’s theme. Writing. Oh yes, I have a segue for this one, too:

While living in Long Beach, California in the mid 1990s, I entered a short-short scary story writing competition in the local city newspaper (the Long Beach Press Telegram). It was the first time I’d ever entered a writing contest. Imagine the shock and awe when the phone call came through during dinner one night, a week before Halloween, that the paper needed me to come downtown and have my picture taken.

I’d won first place in the adult division!

Okay, not the Pulitzer, but damn, it sure felt great! I think each of we writers have at least one of those moments (else we likely aren’t writers any longer). Not unlike the one or two sweet shots on the golf course that keep the weekend warrior coming back for more punishment, that taste of artistic success—however much of a morsel it may be—hints to us that we might actually be able to do this thing we love (and, perhaps, do it well).

These small victories are important, particularly in the context of a war of rejection and attrition.

So in the spirit of October, and because it is one of my own small battles won, I figured I would subject you, dear readers, to the horror of reading my old story. The plot itself might not give you the heebie-jeebies, but my guess is the quality of young adult R.S. Guthrie’s writing just might. (Yes, even then, I knew it would be R.S., the writer—and stop the snickering about the streaming locks of brown hair; we all get older, don’t we?)

NOTE: I seriously considered whether I wanted to share it. I myself haven’t read it in 15-20 years. I’d like to think my writing has evolved some since then; that I have been weaned from the teat of the almighty mongrel bitch, Cliché. However, if we can’t enjoy our past endeavors (and even laugh a self-deprecating laugh), then we are no better than barbarians. Or maybe just jaded. Either way, I am digging up this ghoulish story to kick off the Halloween Season!

A scan of the old, yellowed, original newspaper.

TREATS

Bart smiled with smug satisfaction. As he lay in the inky blackness of his bedroom, he reflected on his glorious triumph. While the other kids burned shoe rubber, donning their ridiculous costumes and begging scraps of candy door-to-door like unfed mongrels, Bart had scored the big one.

Old woman Mattingly. That senile old bag always left a tub of goodies on the front porch. Never even came out. Still, the rest of the neighborhood kids were scared witless of the creepy old lady and her decaying house.

And that was fine with Bart. What the other jerks left behind was simply more for him.

So he stalked the place, somehow sure that the spectral Mrs. Mattingly would be watching, lying in wait for the first unsuspecting youngster to venture an attempt at fortune and glory. Cautiously he took the stairs, fiendishly tipped the tub into his own sack and, once the selfish act was complete, hastened his escape from the ghoulish house.

He thought to make a clean getaway, but as he rounded the first set of bushes a dark figure leaped into his path. A horrified squeak escaped as Bart found himself face to face with the witchly Mrs. Mattingly. She was thin and pale, huge in a way that had nothing to do with physics, and deep in her gray eyes Bart could see the bowels of hell. She did not utter so much as a word, and when Bart ran she did not pursue.

Probably so old she couldn’t move, Bart thought without confidence, his attention returning to the present. Anyway, he was safe in his own room. And to the victor go the…

A sudden rustling sound somewhere in the murky dark startled all thoughts from from Bart’s head.

What was that?

And he heard it again, this time more pronounced. It sounded like it was coming from his candy sack.

More rustling.

Bart sat up in bed, his slight frame silhouetted against the pallor of the quarter moon outside. Mustering what courage he could, Bart rose and began navigating his way blindly through the room. By the time he reached the sack of pilfered goods the eerie sounds had ceased.

Funny, Bart thought as he peered through the night, this bag was closed when I put it here.

He lifted the sack clear of the desk where he had left it.

Then the rustling returned. The bag moved in his grasp and Bart jumped, spilling the contents to the floor. Without thought, Bart snared a small penlight from a perch atop his desk and turned it to the mess at his feet.

His blood went cold.

Amid the scattered candy bars and assorted hard candy were…Bart felt lightheaded; it was not possible…fingers!

And other body parts. And they were moving! There was an eye that was actually looking at him!

Bart’s head was whirling. The bag had been opened. What if some had gotten free? And the evil stare of the Mattingly woman returned to his mind’s eye. She had sent these things first-class. And he was the courier!

Bart intended at that moment to scream, maybe to wake himself from this macabre nightmare, but before he could succeed, a spindly hand, cold as the bottom of a fresh grave, wrapped around his neck and silenced his cries forever.

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Okay. Enough chortling. The all-out laughing can begin.

Oh to be twenty-something again.

And to recognize a beastly cliché when it climbs out of the grave and chomps you on the ass.

Enjoy your October.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.