TAPP Project

Happy Halloween

Halloween had finally arrived and Anna was elated. She never understood how Halloween wasn’t considered a national holiday. It was the most wonderful time of the year for her. It was a night to forget about the troubles in the world and just relax and have as much fun as possible. Dressing up in costumes, going to dances, trick-or-treating (even though she was twenty-three) and being with friends. Much of this would be difficult to accomplish this year, since she had recently just moved thousands of miles away from anyone who knew she even existed due to her husband’s job, but she was determined to make the best of it.

She had begun hanging decorations, such as sizable spiders, spooky skeletons, and scores of fake shadows illuminating from her trick lanterns. The doorbell rang and she grabbed her bowl of candy that resembled a jack-o-lantern wearing a witches hat, ready to greet the young kids dressed up as anything they dreamt of, only to find that no one was at the door. She just smiled to herself and returned back into her home. Anna knew better than anyone the joys that came over people on this night. She had pulled quite a few pranks back in her high school years herself on this very night. She had just sat down with Charles Dickens in her hands, glancing around and admiring her excellent decorations, when there was a huge obnoxious bang at her door. She jumped a bit and dropped the book to the floor. Pranks were one thing, but vandalism was something she wasn’t about to tolerate.

When she opened the door she was greeted by a brisk evening air that was accompanied by an eerie silence. She walked out onto her porch and walked all the way to her mailbox at the end of the driveway, looking both directions to see if she could catch the culprit. Although the night was just beginning, she found it weird that there were no kids wandering around in costumes. When she turned around a few short seconds later, she saw what had made the bang. Sticking straight out from her door was a cleaver with a little flag no larger than her cellphone that read, “HAPPY HALLOWEEN!” This wasn’t something she was used to seeing, especially when it came to obstruction, but she simply took it out of her open door and threw it away, refraining from calling the cops or her husband.

A couple hours passed and she still sat alone. It was a quarter to ten o’clock now and she had not had one visitor. She had been passing the time by decorating the rest of her upstairs, but now she was bored again. She decided to return to the couch and finish her book, but for some reason she couldn’t find it. Anna couldn’t quite remember what she had done with it before someone had stuck a blade in her door, but hadn’t she just dropped it right in front of the couch? After a couple minutes of searching, she gave up and made her way to the kitchen. She had decided to just go ahead and eat supper and go to bed. She had had enough of this day what with no trick-or-treaters, no friends, and no husband. She was ready for it to come to an end. She was dead set on following this through when she found her book sitting on the kitchen counter. Any other girl might think to themselves and say, “Oh, I must have accidently set this here, silly me.” Anna knew better . . .

She turned around swiftly as if she could catch whoever may have moved her book, but saw nothing but her own decorations. Her breathing had become unsteady and she was all of a sudden terrified. “Please, just leave and I won’t call the cops!” She hollered. She thought back to how all this could have happened, and then remembered walking out to the street, leaving her door wide open. She slowly backed up to her phone, being sure to keep an eye on the playground she had set up before her. She picked up the receiver and dialed her husband. “John! You need to come home!” Anna barely got these words out before she started crying hysterically.

“What’s wrong!?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’m alone in our house right now. Someone moved my book!” She heard John take a big sigh after she had said this.

“Are you sure you didn’t just forget where you set it, Anna?” Men are so stupid, she thought to herself. Anna grew furious after hearing this.

“Don’t you dare patronize me! This isn’t a horror film where the dumb bimbo overlooks all these obvious signs until it’s too late. This is real!” She had said this while almost shouting through the black tears wheeling down her face and caking her cheeks in mascara. A few seconds of silence had gone by after she said this when she heard the ‘click’ on the other end. He had hung up on her! She screamed his name as if he would reply back after hanging up the phone, when in fact he did.

“Calm down, sweetheart! I’ll leave right now and come home, okay?” he said.

“I-I thought you hung up?”

“Why would I hang up? I’m leaving right now and I’ll be home in ten minutes! I’m hanging up now.” And with that he was gone. Anna had heard a receiver be put down as clear as if it was in the same room! Or in the room next to her with the other phone . . . She was about to go and peer into the next room when the TV began blaring its same static tune. She just stood where she was standing for the longest time. What was going on? She was still sobbing a bit when she brought up the courage to go into the room the TV was and the other telephone. She held in her hand the stainless steel kitchen knife her mother bought for her last Christmas, which just happened to be eleven inches long and unbelievably sharp.

She peeked around the corner so slowly she was afraid that whatever was in her house would see her before she saw them. She decided to just get it over with and hurled herself around the corner with the knife raised in her right hand, ready for anything that may happen. When she looked around the room she cursed under her breath at herself for the nightmare she had turned her house into. There were at least half a dozen fake shadows placed all around her room from the decorations she had set up earlier. She began to cry again and made the decision to get out of her house and go to a neighbor. She scrambled for the door, sweat and tears beginning to mix together on the side of her jawline. She went to open the door but the door knob wouldn’t turn. “This can’t be happening! Help!” She screamed while still trying to jerk her door open. She peered through her peephole in her door, yet there wasn’t a single individual nor any cars to be seen. She left the door and decided to run to her room upstairs and lock the door until John came home. She turned around with her back to the door and stared into her very own haunted house. Her sanity was starting to fade and she lost her composure entirely for a brief moment. She charged at the TV, which was still making that horrible static noise, and cranked the knob in disgust to silence the damn thing. She saw the movement out of the corner of her eye. It was so quick she barely even saw anything. But there was no doubt she saw something. It took her a few seconds to realize that she had stopped breathing! She was frozen where she stood. Her body had gone ice cold and she wasn’t sure if she could move her legs even if she wanted to. She had become petrified when she saw one of the shadows crawling on their hands and feet across the far side of the room, with incredible speed, in the reflection of the black TV screen. She wasn’t alone after all.

She had changed her previous plans and turned to the window, willing to throw herself through it to get out of this nightmare. However, when she made it to the nearest window and yanked open the drapes, she was met with two eyes glaring back at her. The black coated figure began banging on the window and screaming at her in a high pitched laugh. A wide smile had split across his face, revealing his golden studs which had replaced every single one of his teeth. “WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD, SWEETHEART!” The man hollered to her, still banging his fist against the window while laughing hysterically. He was wearing a black hoodie which was covering most of his face. He began licking his lips malevolently while examining Anna from head to toe. “You ready to have some fun?” He asked her. Without even thinking, she pivoted and hauled ass up her stairway, screaming and sobbing the entire way. She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She was standing behind the door, waiting, with her hand still clutching the knife tight enough to turn her knuckles white to match her ghostly face.

She heard the shattering of the window downstairs and then footsteps stomping every which way. They began bursting open every door in their search for her. “Where are you Anna? Don’t hide from me!” They called to her. Anna knew that she would only have a brief moment to take care of this when they came through her door at the end of the hall. She raised the knife over her head, and when the door flew open, she brought her hand down hard. She brought it down as hard as she could and continued to bring it down on top of the man over and over again. She brought it down one final time and left the knife stick where it was and fell to her knees, her shoulders quivering furiously from her sobbing and the shock of it all. It was over now though, the nightmare was over.

She stood to make her way downstairs to call the police, beginning to think she should have called them in the first place instead of her husband, when she happened to notice the shoes the attacker was wearing. A sick twist began rising in her chest and grew stronger the longer she thought about it. She reached down to remove the dress hat the man was wearing, which still had the price sticker stuck on the inside of the brim from when she had bought it earlier that week as a Halloween present. She should have just removed her heart instead of the hat. For half of it was laying on the floor with the knife still sticking out of his back. She took a few steps back in severe trauma, she couldn’t think or act anymore. Her brain had officially shut down and gave in to the pure terror that she had been fighting against all night long. She was so torn apart that she almost didn’t notice the hot breath smother the back of her neck, the massive hands beginning to enclose around her waist, embracing her against their own body. She didn’t make a sound, didn’t try to run away, not even attempting to fight back. She had given up her fight. She was just about to turn around when she heard the whisper in her ear, just inches away, say, “Happy Halloween, sweetheart.”

**This project was in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Maylath's Trans-Atlantic and Pacific-Project.**