The Night before Halloween

 

Sylvia was busy looking for the keys to her car when the man came by. His left hand was covered in plaster, and he was painfully holding a large-sized bag.

‘Pardon me, miss, but can you please give me a lift? It’s really tiresome and painful to carry this bag.’ The man said.

It was the 30^th of October, and the streets were nearly empty save for the shadows casted by the yellow one-eyed streetlights. Sylvia became a bit annoyed – she had spent a very busy day back at Walmart, entertaining the Halloween customers who came almost every year – to buy pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns, vampire teeth, bats, spooky lights, fake blood, fake body parts, skeletons for decorations – the sight was now literally memorized by her. At first she used to like the enthusiasm of the New Yorkers – she had joined the departmental store back in October 2011 – but now it was getting on her nerves. Seriously, did people not get tired by buying the same cheap stuff every year on repeat?

(Jesus and now there’s this man)

So, it was with a bit of annoyance and a slight bit of that ‘helping hand’ instinct in her (she really wished it didn’t exist) that she replied back to the man, ‘Sure.’ The man’s eyes lit up – it was a strange glow under the yellow sodium streetlights. The man was in his thirties, tall, slender-looking, and was wearing a gray shirt and blue jeans. He then asked Sylvia whether she could give him a lift back home. He lived just three blocks away from where the Walmart. Had she lived somewhere else and not in the same location, she would have declined it…

While they drove towards their destination – with a cool wind beginning to blow outside and tossing the yellow autumn leaves, preparing for tomorrow’s festival – the man introduced himself as Rudolf Attenberg. Born in Germany, he had immigrated to the States and settled in New York when he was nine – about twenty years ago. He was an amateur violinist, and loved classical music more than anything. It did not come as a surprise therefore, when the man started bobbing his head to the tune of Frederic Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’ which was being played on the radio.

Sylvia was beginning to get a bit uncomfortable. This man had a weird aura about him – something was not right.

Moving on to another topic, the man said, ‘You know, I love Halloween – I like the festival so much. So many people dress up so creatively to celebrate ghosts, demons, ghouls – the whole lot of them! Do you believe in them? Neither do I, but it is so said that weird and bizarre things happen the night before Halloween – things which can’t be explained at all! Hehe!’ he gave off a little laugh at the comment. It was really now getting uncomforting to Sylvia, who was now feeling a sense of dread spreading over her…

(god i hate this damn festival like sheesh man)

She breathed a sigh of relief as she reached the man’s house – it was just three houses away from where she lived.

‘That will be it. Let me get off over here, miss.’ The man said, as he opened up the door and got out. Sylvia was about to get out too, when she noticed that the man had left the large bag he was carrying in the backseat. On calling him, he smiled and said laughingly, ‘I don’t require that anymore. It wasn’t mine at all in the first place. I had been to the hospital – my left hand, as you can see, had been fractured very badly so it needed a plaster – and that was when some stranger and gave it to me. You open it – I wanna see what’s inside.’

Holding the taser hidden in her back pocket, Sylvia slowly opened up the bag, only to reveal a horrific sight.

It was the decapitated body of a man! The head, legs, and arms were all packed up in a pool of blood! But that wasn’t the worst part of it. Sylvia gasped as she saw that the man was exactly the same person she had given a lift.

Rudolf Attenberg!

She quickly turned around to where he was standing. There was no one, except the shadows casted by the yellow one-eyed sodium streetlights, and the scattered autumn leaves, which slightly waltzed in the cool wind…

Just then, the radio of her car suddenly filled the air with the jarring, dissonant noise of violin strings, accompanied by distant church bells ringing twelve times – it was the 31^st of October.

The night of Halloween.

Wasn’t it said that weird and bizarre things happened on the night before Halloween? Or was it just imagination? 

Or was it...

***

M.Macabre

09.10.2021

Writer’s Notes:

This was written as a short story of 10 marks back in my Language exam last September. It has been modified a bit (there were some grammatical fidgets here and there…)

By the way, it got a 9… 😊