October 31st

Tina slowly opened her eyes and found herself in a dark, stone lair. She lay in a circle of black candles in a round room with a circular fire pit radiating heat from the center. She thought she could see somebody standing in the shadows.

"Who's there?" she called out. There was no answer, so she stood to her feet and walked towards them. This was when she noticed more people. She scanned the wall surrounding her and realized she was in the center of a crowd encircling her, trapping her. She couldn't see any door to provide entrance or exit, and no windows of any kind. It was an impossible room, a hole inside a rock. "How did I get here? Somebody, answer me."

None of the people moved. She approached them, stepping over the circle of candles, and stopped in her tracks as she drew closer. The first person she saw was stiff, like a statue. She moved closer still, and saw the dried blood on his arms. He was dead. She reached out to touch him for her own personal confirmation, and found the flesh to be stiff, encased in some sort of thick material to preserve it and keep it from decaying. She looked to the left and right of the body, and saw a long line of deceased corpses, all of them different. This was when she noticed the pumpkins, sitting on a shelf well above each body. Every pumpkin sat above a different corpse, and each had a different carving in the pumpkin shell, but all had a candle inside, burning strong and shining brightly. 

The body in front of her had a burlap sack on its head like a scarecrow, with a pumpkin above it showing the face drawn on the sack.  The second showed lumps beneath the skin with some holes bored in the epidermis. The pumpkin associated with this one was the face of an insect. She walked around the circle, staring at the bodies, each with a pumpkin that seemed to indicate the manner of death. A number was placed above the head of each victim — the font was elegant and detailed, but the color was dark crimson, and she wondered if these were written in blood. When she reached number seven, she froze. She recognized the victim, although her memories were still cloudy. They had been hazy when she arrived at the hospital, when she was taken away to the psychiatric ward, and she had mere flashes in her memories of her life. The body was in pieces, but she believed she'd had sexual relations with him. When she arrived at number 12, she knew this was beyond mere coincidence. She knew this man — knew him very well and her amnesia faded at the sight of his face. It was her husband, a man named Dale, and he was clawed up by some wild animal. The pumpkin above him had the face of a howling wolf carved into the shell. She knew who she was now, and she knew if these bodies were related to her somehow, she might be in more trouble than she could have imagined. 

"They came back, finally, didn't they?" a voice said. "Your memories, I mean." She spun to face the center of the room and saw a man standing, wearing a black, long sleeved button-up shirt, a black tie, and black pants. . 

"Who are you?" she asked.

"It's been a fun month, wouldn't you say?" he asked.

"What… Why?"

"I would think you of all people would appreciate my work, after all, you helped with four of them."

"What do the men I killed have to do with you?" she asked.

"All death has to do with me," he said. "I am death, after all. I don't wear the cloak and carry the scythe these days, those are way out of fashion, but I still bring death, and every once in a while, I have some fun with my job."

"You killed all of these people?"

"Not directly," he said. "I carved the pumpkins according to different ideas I had, then I arranged for their deaths to follow my design. The job becomes more fun when you make games out of it. You know, some of these people saw the jack-o'-lantern engraving before they died. Had they known better, they could have seen them as a warning, as a sign. They didn't realize they should have feared the pumpkins, or at least should have feared what was on them.
She scrolled thought the numbers and found the last one – 30. Staring at the ceiling she saw one more – the number 31, this one without a body.

"I don't want to be number 31," she said.

"Then you better run," he said with a smile. The stone room disappeared, and she was outside in a forest. Death was gone, nowhere to be seen. She turned around in a circle, and realized she was alone. Suddenly she felt a tapping on her shoulder. Spinning around, she saw Death, this time wearing a robe and carrying a scythe. His hood was tossed back, and she saw it was the same man as before. She ran, and could hear his laughing growing quieter the further she went. Suddenly a cloud of smoke exploded in front of her, and he appeared in the mist as it dissipated. She turned and ran again. A tree cracked and fell in her direction, and she dove out of the way, dodging it just in time. On top of the log stood Death, a huge grin on his face. She sprinted through the woods, zig-zagging around trees and hoping, somehow, she could escape him. She felt something beneath her pushing her up, and before she knew it, she was flying into the air above the trees. She caught a glimpse of the moon as she fell and could see Death's face on it, laughing aloud. She grabbed a branch to one of the trees and managed to keep herself from falling to the ground. She tried pulling herself up onto the branch, but heard it crack. She looked and saw Death standing at the base of the branch. It bent downwards, breaking hallway through until it hung by a few wooden fibers. She lost her grip and plunged to the earth. She felt the wind knocked out of her, but she was still alive. Suddenly there was a weight on her chest. Death stood on top of her, his feet pressing on her rib cage, cracking the bones. 

"Fun's over," he said. She felt a cut across her shoulders, and watched the scythe drip with blood on the tip. The weapon must have been razor sharp, and the blood poured profusely from the wound. She felt another cut on her leg, and knew it was deep, penetrating skin and muscle, possibly reaching the bone. He slowly drew the point of the scythe down her cheek, making a slight scratch, but the weapon burned like fire. 
"Stop," she cried. "Please stop." Death raised the scythe over his head, and she squeezed her eyes shut as it whistled through the air and came down.

***

The pumpkin carver sat in his cushioned chair, his feet resting on a matching ottamon. He puffed on his cigar and read a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The bodies for each day of the month surrounded him. Above him, beneath the number 31, a woman's body hung with cuts still dripping blood. Each droplet fell into a goblet resting on a small table beside the chair. The woman’s head was missing and replaced with a jack-o'-lantern. The face on the pumpkin had furrowed eyebrows, a long, thin nose, and a wide smile. It very much resembled the face of the man sitting in his chair beneath. He lifted up an object that had been sitting on the floor beside his chair. 

"Happy Halloween, Tina," he said to the head before tossing it into the fire.

Go to October 30th

October 30th

Tina screamed from her padded room. The straight jacket held her arms tightly, but she struggled.

"Let me out of here! It was her. She made me do it."

Nobody listened to her pleading, but she knew this was because everybody else was probably doing the same thing. Everybody was crazy here, including her. The original voice in her head was gone. She'd taken care of that when she stabbed that voice in the neck. They said it had been a doctor, but she knew the truth. As soon as she arrived at this place, this… institution, she heard voices again. They claimed to be spirits — ghosts, but she didn't believe them, at least until they started doing things.

She felt the straightjacket loosen and her arms felt free. She pulled them from the long sleeves and slid the jacket off.

"Why do you want me free?" she asked. "Who are you?"

The only response she received was the lock to her door clicking and the door itself swinging inward. She stood to her feet and approached the exit slowly. When she looked into the hall, she saw a woman in a white hospital robe with hair hanging in her face. The woman looked at her with eyes black as night. She held out her hands and showed the blood dripping from her wrists. Tina closed her eyes and opened them. The woman was gone.

It was late at night and the halls were empty. She snuck towards where the corridor turned and looked up at the security camera. Something pushed it so that it pointed in the opposite direction and wouldn't record her.

"Go to the corner under the camera," a voice whispered. She obeyed these instructions, and watched as the camera moved and pointed back down the hall from which she came. She ran down the next hall, seeing a glass window further along and a door leading to the main office. There was a cart with tools on it from where a maintenance worker had been fixing something earlier in the day. Beneath a tool bag rested a drill. Further down the hall, on a small table, a pumpkin sat with a drill carved into the shell. She saw the drill move on its own, wiggling at first, then sliding on the ground towards her. Suddenly two people appeared before her. One was a doctor and the other, a patient, screaming as the doctor hammered an orbitoclast into the corner of his eye and puncturing his brain. The two of them vaporized into the air, and she knew what she had to do. Sneaking past the cart, she picked up a wrench. She ducked beneath the window and tossed the wrench towards the front entrance. The head orderly burst through the door, looking in the direction opposite of her. She was on him immediately, pressing the drill bit against his temple and piercing his skin. It turned and twisted as it entered, going deeper and ripping out brain matter as it moved forward. The orderly screamed for a brief second before he collapsed. She heard footsteps from down the hall and made her way to the door. She didn't know how far she'd make it, but she knew she had to try. She sprinted across the parking lot and into the night.

Go to October 29th                              Go to October 31st

October 29th

He held up the lantern and pierced the black pit of darkness. The tunnel leading into the cave went forward a dozen yards then sloped down into the underground depths.

"Charlie," he called out. "Come here, boy."

He listened for his dog, but all he heard was a chattering sound.

Bats, he thought. Damn.

He walked cautiously into the cavern, the sliver of moonlight providing such a small amount of light that it might as well not have been there at all. Several tiny bats the size of hummingbirds darted over his head. He instinctively ducked.

"Charlie," he called out, walking into the cave. As he descended the slope, he found a shocking discovery — a jack-o'-lantern rested in the cave, a fresh candle inside burning and flickering.

"Who's here?" he shouted. "Have you seen my dog?" There was no response, but he knew something strange was going on. "Hello? Charlie."

Some bats hanging along the cave wall screeched in response to his intrusion. They were the size of crows except their skin was leathery as opposed to covered in feathers. The cave tunnel opened up to a huge room with bats either hanging on the walls or flying near the huge ceiling.

"Are they getting bigger?" he said aloud.  They looked like dark eagles. He grew scared. If these things decided to turn on him, he'd be dead. He looked around at the room, and knew he was in trouble. There were four exits. Charlie could have gone down any of them. He picked one at random and followed it. He could hear bats screeching farther along. Some smaller ones flew over his head, one of them snagging his hair as it passed.

"Charlie," he called out. The tunnel curved to the left, and opened into another larger room, this one filled with huge bat-like creatures the size of grown men. The saw him and ran in his direction. Some of them had fully developed wings and took to flight, while others crawled on the ground or on the ceiling. He turned to run, but stumbled and dropped his lantern. Just before it went dark, he saw his dog against the wall, gutted and torn to pieces.

Go to October 28th                              Go to October 30th

October 28th

Jasmine followed her mother into the department store. It was only a few more days until Halloween, and she was excited. Every time she saw a decoration having to do with this holiday, she smiled and felt an unexplained joy grow within her. They parked in the lot of the department store, a place she loved because it made her feel so grown up, and walked towards the front entrance. Lying by the automatic doors was a jack-o'-lantern with a woman's face carved into it. The face had a "v" shape, clearly meant to be the image of a mannequin. Jasmine smiled, almost giggling at how well designed and obvious the pumpkin was carved. They entered the automatic doors, which slid open as they approached.

Her mother looked at clothes, at shoes, at everything, and Jasmine felt herself growing bored. She smiled while looking at the plastic mannequin, and when she blinked, the mouth changed. She jumped at the statue's lips now curved up into a smile back at her.

"Mommy, look at the statue."

The mother looked at the mannequin, no longer smiling.

"What is it, honey?"

"It smiled at me."

She looked at her daughter with a grin and continued shopping. Jasmine stared at another mannequin, posed with its arms hanging down. She looked at another, its arms reaching up. When she glanced back at the first mannequin, its arms were outstretched as though reaching out. She looked at the mannequin that originally smiled, and its index finger was pressed against its lips, asking Jasmine to remain silent.

Her mother stood next to a mannequin, sliding dresses on a rack, when she felt something hard gripping her arm. The statue's plastic fingers had wrapped around her wrist. Jasmine screamed as her mother hardened, transforming into a plastic statue. The mannequin, now flesh and blood, waved at Jasmine and walked out of the store.

Go to October 27th                              Go to October 29th

October 27th

He was never one to back out of a bet, and this was a big one. Had Matt lost, He would have had to streak through the campus in broad daylight, an act that would likely have gotten him expelled — and Matt wasn’t one to back off from a bet either. Jerry supposed his side of the deal wasn’t too bad, just weird and sort of creepy.

“I want you to dig up Benjamin Cross,” Matt had said. “See if he really has that amulet around his neck and if so, you have to give it to me.”

“It’s a stupid story,” said Jerry. “The body’s almost a hundred years old. It’s not going to have some magical amulet that grants immortality to the wearer.”

“They say he was buried alive, that he never died.”

“After a hundred years, an immortal body in a coffin would have eventually dug his way out.”

“Just dig the damn thing up and look. If there’s nothing, no big deal,” said Matt.

“Okay, if I lose, I’ll do it.”

He lost, and now he stood in the cemetery wearing his Rob Zombie t-shirt and holding a shovel, about to dig up the body of the legendary Benjamin Cross, a man who supposedly sold his soul for a magical amulet he wore around his neck that granted immortality. So long as it hung from his neck, it would burn anybody else’s hand who tried to touch it.  They buried him alive when he killed his wife and three children with an axe, and supposedly he rested in that coffin to this day, trapped and still alive.

His spade pierced the bright green grass, and when he pulled up his first shovelful of dirt, the contrast of the dark brown, near black soil looked so out of place and he knew there would be no hiding the evidence of a grave robbery. He continued digging, scoop after scoop of dirt, deeper and deeper into the earth until he hit something hard.

"Shit," he said to himself. "I can't believe it. After all these years, I'm the one to dig up Benjamin Cross's grave."

He scraped the dirt off the top of the casket, and saw that the lid to the coffin had a huge silver cross adorning the entire surface. He reached along the edges and found the gap that marked the edge of the lid. When he tried to pull it open, it wouldn't budge.

He ran his fingers along the edge of the casket and found a padlock in the center of the long edge. It was very old and rusted, and took two hits with the shovel to break it off. He knew that the lock was very likely placed there for superstitious purposes, but he convinced himself that supernatural forces were not real. He lifted the lid of the coffin and saw a skeleton inside, dressed in a black suit and tie. Around the neck of the skeleton was a thick chain and an amulet with bright red rubies shining brightly from the center of the design.

"Well I'll be damned," said Jerry. "The freaking amulet exists."

He reached for the necklace, then hesitated. If the amulet was real, what else was true? The body was a skeleton, so clearly the immortality part of the legend was false. He shrugged it off and reached for the medallion. The second he touched it, it burned his skin, but at the same time, it attracted his hand like a magnet. He couldn't let go.

The skeleton came to life and raised its head upwards. It made a sound like it was gasping for breath, and Jerry found himself suffocating. A mystic fog transferred between himself and the corpse of Benjamin Cross, and after half a minute, a man stepped out of the hole and smiled. He breathed the fresh air in heavily, and raised his arms in triumph. When he turned to look back at the grave, he saw the fresh dirt and the bright green grass.

"This will never do," he said to himself, picking up the shovel and going to work. He tossed the dirt onto an open casket with a skeleton lying inside, wearing a Rob Zombie t-shirt. 

Go to October 26th                             Go to October 28th

October 26th

Nobody could see him. Nobody could hear him. He was like a ghost, only he wasn’t. She had done this to him. How many weeks had it been since he followed that group, all dressed in dark robes and stepping down those stone steps into the darkened cavern below? He kept his distance, saw what looked like a person tied to a wooden table that they carried with them down the long hall lit with black candles. They disappeared around the corner, and he heard a man screaming. The chanting grew louder, stronger, more exhuberant. He felt an unearthly wind blow past him. It knocked him over, and then she had appeared.

"You aren't supposed to be here," she said, blood dripping down her arms and splashing off the concrete floor.

"Don't kill me," he pleaded.

"I should," she said. "You've seen too much." The unearthly wind blew all around, sounding like whispers. "A much better idea. Probably worse than death. Nobody will ever see you again. You will be invisible to all, like a ghost. No person can hear you or touch you. You can trespass all you want now, and it won't matter — but never come back here. This place is sacred."

Using an invisible force, the witch threw him backwards. He flew through the air and crashed into the wall. When he stood to his feet, he realized he was no longer in the chamber. He was on a street in the middle of town. People walked past him, nearly bumping into him without noticing him. He looked down at his hands, and saw nothing. A woman walked straight towards him, and rather than bumping into him, she passed right through.

Days turned into weeks, and life was torture. He had no human contact, and couldn't touch anything, couldn't pick up anything, couldn't affect anything. He was a ghost for the most part, except he wasn't dead. He still required food and water for nourishment, but he couldn't touch the food he saw, couldn't lift it to place it into his mouth. When he bent down to eat, his lips passed through the sustenance.

Rain poured down after a couple of days, and this somehow replenished all the water he needed, giving him sustainment of life, but he still couldn't get food. He'd jump into a lake to keep his body alive every couple of days, though the hunger caused an aching and a pain that eventually would not go away. It stayed with him, subsiding every now and then but never disappearing completely. Finally, he knew he had to go back, to find that witch, and get her to undo her curse, to fix him so he could finally have relief from this agony.

He walked in the dark, empty chamber. Candles still lined the halls, but they were cold and their wax had hardened into puddles around them. His steps were soundless.

"Will she even know I'm here?" he asked himself. He couldn't hear his own voice. Everything about his existence was silence. In front of him, on the floor, sat a pumpkin, or at least what was left of it. There was a circle on the floor serving as a base, then some sort of rod embedded into this and pointing up vertically. The cap to the jack-o'-lantern was pressed onto the top of this rod just where the top of the pumpkin would have been. Thin wires, almost invisible, protruded out from the rod, and on these were the carved out pieces for the pumpkin's face — it's eyes, nose and mouth. It looked like a reverse jack-o'-lantern, a pumpkin with an invisible shell. Beside the rod flickered the flame of a small tealight candle.

"Of course I know you're here," she said from behind him. He spun around and found himself face to face with the beautiful face of evil. She smiled with a hint of trickery hiding behind her eyes. With the flick of her wrist, he felt himself thrown backwards. He was pressed with his back against a wall, several feet above the ground. "I warned you never to come back here."

"Please," he pleaded. "Help me. I can't eat. I'm starving. You told me you weren't going to kill me."

"And I wouldn't have. I left you still alive. It was the starvation that would have killed you."

He felt his arms being pulled in opposite directions. His legs were stretched down towards the ground, but his body remained stationary. The limbs popped from their sockets, and he screamed.

"You know, they're never going to find your body," she said. "But I'm sentimental. I'm keeping something to remember you by.

He felt a cutting into the skin on his cheeks and forehead. She marked an x in the air with her index finger. With the first slash, his face tore from his head, turning visible and flying across the room towards her. She caught the bloody skin with her other hand. With the second slash, he felt his body ripped apart completely like being quartered by horses. A splash of invisible blood resounded throughout the empty halls.

Go to October 25th                              Go to October 27th