The air on our street always tasted different on Halloween. Crisp, sure, but also like cheap chocolate and the faint, smoky breath of a jack-o’-lantern. I was leaning against my doorjamb, a giant bowl of candy cradled in my arm, feeling pretty good about my own costume—a passable “DIY Ghostbuster” if I did say so myself.

That’s when I saw him.

He was… magnificent. The best Grim Reaper I had ever seen. Not the cheap, plastic-sheathed kind, but the real deal. The robe was a deep, fathomless black, like a hole cut out of the night, and it didn’t so much rustle as it just absorbed sound. The scythe wasn’t painted cardboard; it looked like real, aged wood and pitted steel that seemed to faintly hum with a note just below human hearing.

He was short, though. Couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. A kid, then. A phenomenally talented, pint-sized harbinger of doom.

He stopped in front of me, silent. No “trick or treat,” just a slow, upward tilt of that iconic skull face.

“Whoa,” I breathed, genuinely impressed. “Dude. Killer costume. No pun intended.”

The skull just stared, its empty sockets seeming to hold a deeper darkness than the robe.

“How’d your parents make it?” I continued, reaching into the bowl and grabbing a handful of mini-Snickers. “The robe feels… real. And that mask! The detail is insane. Is it latex?”

I leaned forward; the candy held out in one hand. With my other hand, I reached out, intending to give the mask a playful pinch on the cheek, to test the material.

My fingers made contact.

It wasn’t latex. It wasn’t silicone. It was cold. Hard. And porous, like very old, very dry bone. I tried to give it a little tug, a “you-scoundrel” kind of cheek-pull. It didn’t budge.

I frowned, my smile faltering. I shifted my grip, my thumb finding the jawline and my fingers curling under the chin. I pulled, gently at first, then with a bit more force. Nothing. It was like trying to pull a mountain off its foundation.

The kid—the thing—hadn’t moved. It just watched me.

A cold trickle of unease dripped down my spine. “Okay, ha ha,” I said, my voice a little tighter. “You got me. It’s a great one-piece deal, right? Helmet and all.”

I released the chin and, in a moment of pure, unadulterated stupidity, I grabbed the top of the skull and tried to twist it like a helmet. Left. Right. It was fused to the robe beneath. There was no seam. No line. No… nothing.

My heart began to thud a slow, heavy rhythm against my ribs. The festive sounds of the street—the shrieks of playing children, the laughter—seemed to fade into a dull roar.

The Reaper slowly, deliberately, lifted a bony hand—not a glove, I could see the delicate carpals and metacarpals, yellowed with age—and pointed a single, phalangeal finger at the candy still clutched in my frozen hand.

“Right. Yeah. Candy,” I stammered, dumping the entire handful into the small, black pouch he proffered. The Snickers bars vanished into the void without a sound.

He then pointed that same finger at me.

“M-me?” I squeaked.

He gave a single, slow nod. The great scythe shifted in his other hand, and the humming intensified, making my fillings ache.

Panic, cold and absolute, washed over me. This was it. I was going to be harvested by a four-foot-tall Grim Reaper on my own doorstep, dressed as a Ghostbuster. The irony was so thick you could spread it on toast.

“Wait!” I pleaded, holding up my hands. “Is this about the thing with the neighbor’s cat? Because I swear, I was just trying to shoo it away from the flowerbeds! I didn’t mean to launch it into the hydrangeas!”

The Reaper tilted its head. If a skull could look unimpressed, this one was nailing it.

It took a step closer. The air grew cold. The smell of cheap chocolate was entirely replaced by the scent of old dust and forgotten stone.

“Okay, okay! My diet!” I cried, desperate now. “It’s mostly lies! I had a whole pizza for breakfast! And I definitely don’t floss as much as I tell the dentist!”

The Reaper was now inches from me. I could see every minute crack in its bony visage. It slowly raised the scythe.

I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the end.

A moment passed. Then another.

I heard a faint, dry, rattling sound. Like stones being shaken in a gourd.

I cracked one eye open.

The Grim Reaper was… shaking. Its shoulders were quivering. That rattling sound was coming from it. It lowered the scythe, and the skull seemed to contort. It was… laughing. A silent, skeletal chuckle that was, without a doubt, the most terrifying sound I had never heard.

It reached into its pouch, pulled out a single, miniature Snickers bar, and tossed it to me. Then it patted me, almost consolingly, on the arm with its bony hand. The touch was like ice.

It then turned and shuffled away, the rattling chuckle fading as it merged back into the shadows between two houses, leaving me standing there, drenched in cold sweat, clutching a fun-sized candy bar.

I looked down at it. My hand was trembling.

My wife came to the door. “Everything okay, hon? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I stared into the darkness where the small, eternal being had vanished.

“Something like that,” I muttered, my voice hoarse. I held up the Snickers. “He… he left a tip.”

Happy Hallowe’en, y’all!

*****

And, you know I would never leave you while neglecting the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.

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