by Vinnie Hansen
Here is the last of our Halloween short stories for this year. You can find all of our Halloween/Spooky stories for this year in our Terrific Tales Section.
“And, Johnny, don’t drag your little brother up that hill.” Backlit on the porch, our mom planted hands on hips.
My big brother Johnny sighed and snapped his white pillowcase in the black Halloween night. It cracked beside my ear.
“I mean it, Johnny.” But our mom’s shoulders sagged, her gumption worn thin over the years by our four older brothers. Especially Bill, who had a way of landing in jail.
The gravel on the road crunched under our shoes as me and Johnny headed to town. The temperature dipped toward freezing and hurt my eyeballs, making the stars shimmer in the sky. Johnny had let himself be stuck with me so he could trick or treat. He was a little old for it on his own.
When we were down in the draw, out of sight of the house, Johnny said, “Take off that stupid mask.”
“Why?” It was a cool store-bought tiger mask.
“So you can see.”
“I can see.”
He clutched the shoulder of my orange shirt painted with black stripes and spun me away from town—toward The Hill.
I slid my mask onto my forehead. “Mama said not to go up there.”
“Ouu, Bradley.” Johnny bent his arms up and twittered his fingers. “Mama said not to go,” he sang in a girly voice.
Our father had fought in World War II and ten years later had named me after General Bradley. It could have been worse. He could have named me Patton.
I followed Johnny off the road. He pulled apart the strands of barbed wire fence so I could step through. I clutched my black tail so it wouldn’t snag. Being six years older than me, Johnny pressed down the wires and stepped over.
Away from town, at the end of our pasture, atop the steep hill, stood Crazy Joe’s house. Crazy Joe, which we weren’t supposed to call him, had been in war, too, but not World War II like our dad. He’d been in The Great War. He had one good arm, and under his stub arm, used a diaper pin to hold a rolled-up sleeve. Normal guys in our town cut their hair close to the scalp, but Crazy Joe had long gray hair that stuck out wild like he never combed it. Crazy Joe wasn’t quite right in the head.
As we crossed the pasture, I carried my tail lifted up so it wouldn’t drag through cow patties. He deserves to be let alone, our mom warned. But that wasn’t what chiefly filled my head. What chiefly filled my head was the vision of my dad with a belt. Crazy Joe was a vet, not an object of ridicule for a bunch of worthless whelps.
“Duck down,” Johnny hissed.
We’d reached the base of the hill. Atop it, a light shined from an upstairs window. Enough of the peeling white paint remained that we could make out the house. Behind it a windrow of skinny junipers jagged like teeth in a black silhouette against the dark sky.
“What are we gonna do?”
Johnny’s hand rustled into his trousers. He stretched his hand toward me. It was too dark to see. I touched the contents—small paper cylinders with strings—and a pack of matches. Leftover firecrackers.
“I don’t like this.”
“You are such a pansy ass.” Johnny crouched and started up the hill. “Now be quiet.”
Dry buffalo grass swished against our pant legs. Even though we were trying to sneak, I feared Crazy Joe would hear our footsteps in the silent night. A cactus pricked my ankle, and caused a curve in my straight path up. Ahead of me, Johnny huffed.
“Hurry it up.”
My heart pounded. It didn’t seem like a good idea to scare a crazy guy who took out his false teeth and placed them on the counter of the Park Inn Café. From his collapsed cheeks, he’d mumble, “Those things chaw my mouth like it’s some damn Wrigley’s gum.” What if he decided to shoot us?
At the crest of the hill, Johnny waited for me. The outline of Crazy Joe’s beat-up Ford truck hulked in the dirt yard. We moved forward like soldiers sneaking up on an enemy. The stripes on my shirt trembled.
Johnny pushed my mask down. “Now it’s time for disguise.” He pulled the pillowcase over his head.
“How you gonna see?”
He took a penknife from his pocket and gouged the pillowcase.
“Dad will kill you,” I said. “If you don’t poke out your eyes first.”
“You are such a worry wart.”
“Tootsie rolls will fall out of those holes.”
He slid the knife back into his pocket. “Let’s go.”
We left the cover of the truck and entered the open yard.
Before Johnny could light even one firecracker, the door to the house flew open, cracking against the siding.
“Haaaarrrraaaaagh!” Crazy Joe growled and leaped down the two steps.
Johnny jumped, turned and sprinted. I ran, too. I’d barely reached the truck, when my tail swung around my ankles. I fell, skidding, palms first, across the dirt.
Crazy Joe reared up like a bear. In his good hand—raised into the sky—an ax glinted in the window’s light. “Little juvenile delinquents!”
As the blade fell, I rolled away, shrieking. The ax smacked into the ground. Heart banging, I scrambled to my feet. My body slammed to a halt. The ax had pinned my tail into the dirt.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I screamed. “I didn’t even wanna come.” I struggled to pull loose. As I yanked free, the safety pin inside my pants that secured the tail popped open and poked my butt.
Crazy Joe swooped down for the ax. He lifted it over his flying witchy hair.
But I was sliding down the hill, slipping on grass stiff and slick with frost. My body tumbled. Cactus jabbed into my hands.
“Johnny!”
A slight echo bounced off the hill. My eyes stung with tears. Crazy Joe’s door banged. At least he wasn’t pursuing me. While my heartbeat quieted some, I took a moment to unfasten my tail completely, leaving it in the pasture. I hurried home, swiping away tears.
Johnny and I slept head-to-foot in a twin bed. Our brother Frank had the other one. Neither brother was home when I crawled under the homemade quilts. I didn’t think I would sleep . . . .
A thud awakened me. I cracked open an eye.
With his back to me, Johnny was stripping off his sweater. “You awake?” he whispered.
He’d thrown his pillowcase loaded with candy onto the wooden floor. I pretended to be asleep. He slipped into his end of the bed. “I know you’re awake.” He yanked the covers off me to prove his point.
I ignored him.
“Okay, fine,” he muttered. “But if you tell mom anything, your ass is grass, and I’m the lawnmower.”
I waited. It didn’t take long before Johnny was breathing the sound of sleep. I leaned over the mattress and scooped up a handful of candy. Enough for some revenge, but not enough to be missed. I spilled it inside the bottom of my pillowcase. I eased the covers back up and pulled them just enough to expose the shoulders of Johnny’s long johns.
Then I lay awake, thinking about the ax, imagining it slicing my neck. The blood spurting out like when we butchered chickens, my body twitching across the dirt of Crazy Joe’s yard. The floorboards creaked as my brother Frank crept in. Still I lay awake.
At dawn, my parents stirred—downstairs my father thumped to the door out to the privy. The smell of coffee drifted up the stairs. The screen door squeaked as my dad returned. The cast iron skillet scraped across the stovetop. Pancake batter sizzled against popping lard.
When my father left the house, my shoulders relaxed against my pillow. Soon after, the downstairs screen squeaked again as my mom went out to collect eggs. I heard voices in the yard. Padding to the window, I peeked down.
I froze. My mom was talking to Crazy Joe. Mama stood, gently swinging the pail in her hand.
Had he come to rat us out? I could retaliate by telling Mama about the ax attack. She wasn’t about to like that much.
I slid down the stairs to the back door. I cracked it and pressed my ear to the opening.
“Oh my goodness, Joe,” Mama said. “That’s not what we agreed to.”
“I know, Vivian, but I didn’t think just going Boo would scare the bejeebers out of ’em. And the older boy—Frank. . . .”
“No,” Mama said, “that was Johnny.”
“Well, Johnny, he took off like a jackrabbit.”
I peeked through the crack. The pail dangled from Mama’s forearm as one hand twisted the fingers of the other. “Poor Bradley. I wondered why he came home with no tail and no candy.”
My mom knew that?
“Well this oughter keep him from turning out like Bill.”
Mama heaved a sigh. She called Bill, long gone from the house, a “reprobate.” I didn’t know what that was, only that Mama worried the rest of us might become one. Maybe for good reason. She had known the whole time Johnny would turn right around and disobey her.
Mama’s body became still. Her head turned infinitesimally toward the house. I held my breath. Had I pressed too close to the squeaky screen door?
“Come with me to the chicken coop and I’ll get you some eggs,” Mama said, with a false note of cheer.
“You don’t need to pay me, Vivian, but a feller can hardly refuse a couple of fresh eggs.”
Opening the door to the coop, Mama paused. The hens clucked at her arrival. “You know, Joe,” Mama said, “my biggest mistake?”
“Well, no,” Crazy Joe said, clear like he had in his teeth.
“Maybe this will put the fear of God in them,” Mama said, “but my asking you to scare ’em will boost their notions about you.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Vivian.”
At the thump of feet meeting upstairs floorboards, I gently shut the door. I climbed the stairs amazed with my newfound knowledge. Mama knew everything and Joe wasn’t so crazy after all.
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