The shape in the bushes watched as the ragged line of ghouls gathered under a large oak tree. The Devil raised a sticky finger and pointed to an old wood-frame house in the middle of the block. The Devil was first seen on Lampkin Lane, stumbling a bit as he led a straggly line of pirates with cutlasses clanking, red kerchiefs tied to their heads and patches strung over bloodshot eyes, treasure bags held open in their dirty hands as if they had only recently been called back from watery graves to claim the booty that was rightfully theirs. Also witches and bone-white skeletons, vampires and ghouls and assorted lesser demons, including a four-foot-tall version of the Devil himself. Which is not surprising, since the dead walked in Haddonfield that night. It was the thirty-first of October in Haddonfield, Illinois. Of mildewed gloves and too-thin socks, of soft newspapers and food that is never hot, of litter dropped in gutters melting into paste, of laundry wilting before it can be folded away, of labels buckling from jars in the musty cupboard and of your own white breathing, alone at midnight, glazing the window and then slipping out through the screen to meet the cold steam settling in the flowerbeds below. Of frost on glass of moist, endless coughs. Of the dripping condensation in chattering drainpipes, of the clutching of wings in the roofs of mouldering garages. Of distant traffic and the laughter of children fading behind you and in front of you all at once of the broken moon drifting like a gauze-covered face. A time of dampness and slow, flaking rust, of barking dogs that are never seen, of creaking lampposts and pale neon signs, of telephone lines that crackle as if underwater.

The morning sun arcs away across the sky, the afternoon rushes impatiently toward dusk, the cutting edge of darkness like the blade of a sundial pointed and turning under eaves and porches. When the earth tilts still further on its axis and the seasons hang suspended between autumn and winter when the very light seems to change and colors deepen mysteriously. It was that time of year when the days are short and the shadows are long.

Halloween III by Jack Martin