My Scary Story

by Laurissa

This month our theme here at the Working Stiffs is scary or spooky stories. Well the story that I’m going to tell you is a true one, and it happened to me. It was Halloween, and my family had just moved into our house that summer before the start of the new school year. I was fifteen, too old to trick-or-treat, but wanted to do something that made the day feel like Halloween. I had been feeling a bit down that fall and a little like a fish out of water as I was, once again, the new girl at school. At least that’s how I recall it, so I asked my parents if I could pass out the candy. Looking back on that night, I don’t remember where my sisters and brother were. However, I knew that my mother was somewhere in the house as was my father.

Of course back in the seventies, trick-or-treating didn’t occur during daylight hours, but when it was actually dark. We didn’t have many trick-or-treaters that night and I remember feeling disappointed. That was when I noticed a lone trick-or-treater coming up over the slight hill and across our front yard. I felt warning signs go off as I noticed that this wasn’t a small child but definitely a larger child, maybe a teenager, walking on his knees wearing a black ski mask and what appeared to be some sort of a military fatigue jacket. The details becoming clearer as he or she came closer to the glow from the front porch light.

I tried to calm myself by saying that this was a teenager, like me, wanting to eek the last little bit possible out of the holiday, and was trying to appear as a child in order to still get candy, but my heart was still racing. Since we were new to the area, I didn’t have any idea whether or not this was someone from the neighborhood.

I didn’t want to insult this person by closing the door, as he or she had already seen me standing there, although my better instincts were screaming to “SHUT THE DOOR!” Instead I just stood there as they crawled up on the front porch, still on their knees. When he said “trick or treat” in a distinctly deep adult male voice, and held his bag out, I noticed that these were not the hands of a teenager holding the bag, but of a man. My heart pounded into overdrive. It was pounding so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think. I took a very shaky handful of candy and I tried to form the thought that I would hurriedly drop it in his bag so that he would soon leave. All the while, I was thinking don’t let him see that you’re afraid.

As soon as I held the candy out to his bag, he lunged forward, grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go. I wrenched my hand out of his grasp and ran away from the front door back through the house headed towards the back door. I couldn’t scream. All that I could do was, to run. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. He was now up off of his knees, as I heard his footsteps pounding after mine and his breathing muffled from the ski mask. I remember glimpsing my mother, as I ran by, sitting on the couch in the family room, putting her hair up in rollers with the TV on and a book or magazine in her lap. I remember this so clearly and my not being able to scream or say anything, I was so afraid; I was running for my life. He was after-- me.

I burst out the back door onto the driveway, letting the storm door slam shut, running to who knows where. The back storm door then immediately slammed a second time as he followed. It was then that I distantly  heard my father laughing and hollering at me to stop running, and I turned to see my dad holding a ski mask wearing a previously unseen fatigue jacket.

And people think that the parents of teenagers have it rough! :-)