The UNSPOKEN

October 31st,

Tuesday

11:58 PM

Tales and rumors spread around town when the sun falls into the void. The Town’s Psychic says that on this pitch black night of October 31st 12 o’clock, their readings become nightmarish and unrecognizable. Those who came prepared put on their tin foil hats. Those who were not, are ignorant to the eldritch horrors that lie deep within them. 

Dormant inside all cerebral machinations lie a flickering darkness. A doubt, an anxiousness, a fear deeply carved into the psionic plane. Everyone has that one fear that warps and mutilates their senses beyond recognition, but nothing is more capable of self destruction than the human mind. 

When the shadows creep onto their skin and become a parasitic trigger, an evil unanticipated rises to power. Snap. Screams and panic break the sound barrier and make all eardrums bleed. Hysteria and Paranoia is the driving factor of the madness. The madness of self.

Those caught within the darkness feel a throbbing heartbeat all over their body, their senses are void and null, their vision remains. They scream into the void they now live in as they are met with a tainted reflection.

The reflection taunts, jeers, and chuckles as reality becomes unimaginably horrific. No one knows why this city is cursed to a psychological implosion, but those who survive know that Halloween is a date to be feared for days, weeks, months, years to come.

It’s the day of Halloween, and Bobby hasn’t finished his costume. Bobby is known to be a bit of an anxious person, but tonight is more than usual. 

“Annie, will you hurry up? The sun’s gonna set in an hour!” He’s hunched over the sewing machine, blue fabric draping over the table.

“Will you relax?” his sister says, who was delegated to cutting out the fabric flowers. “It’s not like your costume is high in demand. You’re the only person sadistic enough to dress up as this.”

Bobby ignores her and turns the sewing machine to its highest speed. Truthfully, he hadn’t meant to be this last minute. It’s just that he hadn’t even been planning on dressing up until yesterday. Bobby hates Halloween. He hates dressing up, he hates being scared, he hates bobbing for apples and carving pumpkins and all the things. He wouldn’t have wanted to go trick or treating if it wasn’t for yesterday, when a brilliant idea popped into his head. Now, it is crucial he goes. Now, he is planning to dress up as the scariest creature of all. 

“I never thought I’d see my brother pining to go out on Halloween,” Annie says, starting to smile. “Is there someone you’re wanting to impress?”

Bobby’s ears turn red. “No. Now if you’re not going to help, you can get out of my room—”

“No, no, I want to help, I do,” Annie says, reaching over and snatching the sketch of his costume from his desk. “This isn’t how to impress someone anyway. The yellow hair? Horrifying. The teeth, how is that even possible? And the clothes! Bobby, are you trying to scare the kids out of the street?”

Bobby grabs the sketch back from her. “Everything you just said was something I already knew. Why do you think I’m anxious?”

Annie grumbles and goes back to her fabric flowers. “Why does it have to be done by sunset? You can just go out later in the night.” 

“No, it has to be done by then because—“

He almost said it. Because that’s when she’ll be expecting me. He knows that when he sees her, he has to be in costume. How else will she find him? But Annie can’t know about that. Annie can’t know about the girl. 

“Because that’s when everyone starts trick or treating,” he finishes. “I want to be out at prime time.”

What his sister doesn’t know is that he doesn’t plan to go trick or treating. He plans to go across the woods, where the big hedge that no one gets less than ten feet from is.  

Bobby closes his eyes. This is stupid, his brain says. You’re gonna get yourself killed. He envisions his head on the ground, rolling in his own blood. But then he envisions her, standing there after sunset, waiting for her Romeo. 

The night before: at the edge of the woods. On either side of the hedge. He’d asked her what she was dressing up as. They couldn’t see each other, as usual. The hedge soared far over their heads. All they could hear was their voices, spoken with boyish innocence and girlish delight, of mystery lovers on forbidden night. Bobby knew what was on that other side of the hedge. He knew what this girl was. He’d heard the stories since he was little. But for some reason he didn’t fear her. 

“Juliet,” she said, a little shyly. 

“Who’s Juliet?” he asked. 

“From Romeo and Juliet. The movie, have you seen it?” 

Bobby hadn’t, of course. “No,” he said.

“I’m sure you know the story. You know, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love but their families don’t approve. It’s so romantic. It’s also sad, because at the end they both kill themselves because they can’t be together. It’s a tragedy.”

Bobby was quiet. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but didn’t want to admit it. “Do you have someone else dressing up with you?” he asked. 

“What do you mean?”

“A Romeo. Is there someone dressing up as Romeo with you?”

“Oh, no,” she sounded sheepish. “I’m just going as one half of the story.”

“I can dress up as him,” Bobby said. So quick and so rash, like many boys are keen to do. Because suddenly he was desperate, desperate to see this girl from anywhere other than behind this bush. “What do you think I should get?” 

And so she went on to describe what her ideal Romeo would look like, and while she was talking he memorized it all, and sketched it out when he got home. He’d never seen anything like this boy in his life, this blond-haired freakish boy she’d described. 

Just before they had said their good-nights, they set up a time. 

“I’ll meet you here, just after sunset.”

Bobby has only seen things of her kind in comic books and horror movies. All of his neighborhood has been trained to fear the things on the other side of the woods, the Forbidden Creatures, the ones who came with pitchforks and killed Ray Manson forty years ago, the legend that goes around every Halloween. Word has it that Ray and his friends had been drunk with wine that Halloween, thought it’d be a good joke to see just what the old folks were yapping on about the Forbidden Creatures, and climbed a tree to jump over the hedge. Only his friends chickened out on the last branch, and let Ray sail with a drunken whoop onto the other side. He looked back up to his friends in the tree, hollering and thrusting his arms in victory, as they stared with open mouths behind him. That’s when the pitchfork came, through his back like a stick in mud, and Ray Manson gasped out one last wine-scented breath before his body was hung on a tree near the hedge, by his feet tied like a bat. From then on parents told their kids that if they climbed the hedge, Ray Manson’s corpse would be waiting for them, the smell of wine still lingering from his last breath. 

Naturally, Bobby is scared. By the time Annie and him finish his costume, he is practically shaking. He takes one last look at himself in the mirror and grabs a bag as if for candy, just so Annie won’t question him. 

“Have fun,” Annie says, closing the door behind him. “Don’t do anything stupid. ”

As he makes his way across the woods in his homemade Hawaiian shirt and itchy yellow wig with plaster glued onto his teeth, his brain is screaming at him: All this for a girl? All this for a girl? But then he remembers her voice and her mystery and what’s a boy to do?

One week ago: their first conversation. Bobby had been on a walk in the woods when a ball came flying over the hedge and rolled to a stop near his feet. He stared at it. 

“Hello?” A girl’s voice called. Her voice was clear and sweet. “Anybody there? That’s my ball, please. If you could throw it over, hello?”

Bobby stared at the ball. He’d never seen anything like it. Black and white with this pattern. He picked it up and stepped a few feet closer to the hedge. Then a few more. This was the closest he’d ever been to it, closer than he’d ever dared. 

“Anybody there?” the girl called again. 

And with a heave, a heave worthy of celebration, Bobby threw the ball back over the hedge. He heard it thud on the other side, the crinkling of dead leaves as it rolled. There was a pause. 

“Thank you!” the girl called. It must have been the prettiest voice Bobby had ever heard. 

Then Bobby threw life’s regard to the wind and yelled, “You’re welcome!” 

He could hear the leaves crunch as she got closer, and her voice sounded supremely close when she said, “You sound like a boy my age. Who are you?”

At the edge of the woods, on either side of the hedge. 

“My name’s Bobby.” 

“Why do you live on that side of the woods?” the girl asked, her voice rounded with curiosity. 

Bobby was quiet. He didn’t know if the girl knew what the hedge separated, if her parents too told her stories of a Ray Manson that the things of her kind had crucified. 

“I don’t live here. My father’s work makes him come on this side sometimes, and I help him.” The lies felt big and boorish in his mouth. 

“I see. What does he do?”

“Timber. He um, cuts down trees.” Bobby shut his eyes as he said this one, as if that would make her buy his words. In that moment he wanted nothing more than this girl to keep talking to him, to think they were one of the same. 

“I see,” she said again. “Well, I have to go home now. Before my father worries.”

Bobby still had his eyes shut, his forehead leaned against the bush, the twigs making an imprint on his skin. They said their good-nights and went their separate ways. 

And the girl went home to tell her father. 

When Bobby reaches the edge of the woods, the sun has almost set. The sky is a dark heavy blue except for the yellow hugging the horizon, like it wants to take one last look at the scene before the night act begins. 

There’s a big oak tree a few feet away from the hedge, whose branches hang just perfectly for dropping to the other side. He leaves his candy bag on the ground and begins the climb. He can hear the faint bustle of trick-or-treaters on the other side. 

He gets to the top and shimmies out on the last branch. From this view he can see roofs, decorated with twinkling purple and orange lights, and puffy ghost-looking things that wave around. He smiles to himself a little bit. It doesn’t look scary at all. At least, compared to his neighborhood, where they decorate with blood-splattered walls and blood-splattered … anything.

He’s reached the end of the branch. Below, there is just grass and leaves, and a little beyond that, a sidewalk curves in and the houses begin. Bracing himself, he leaps off the branch and lands in a graceful heap, the leaves cushioning him a bit. He stands up and feels his teeth to make sure the plaster is still there. He makes sure his rumpled wig is covering his ears, then looks around. 

A girl is approaching from the sidewalk, in a white dress with angel wings behind her. “Romeo?” she calls out. 

Bobby smiles, then touches his teeth again, then smiles again and calls out, “Juliet!”

There’s a few things that Bobby doesn’t know. A few things that maybe if he had been informed of them, he would not be about to die, about to have a pitchfork driven into him like a stick in the mud.

The girl’s father is Moss Jr., the son of the famous vampire hunter Moss Sr. who killed one named Ray Manson forty years ago.

Moss Jr. now owns his daddy’s pitchfork, and is making his way along the hedge right now, hidden in the shadows. 

The girl kicked that ball over the hedge on purpose that week ago, because she wanted her daddy to have a use for his brand new pitchfork and she knew she could sweet-talk boys like butter. 

And so the legend goes. Bobby Raven fell in love with a girl from the other side of the woods, and so he went to be her Romeo on Halloween night. The last thing he saw was an angel in white, laughing and clapping her hands, as a pitchfork drove into him from behind like a stick in the mud. 

They hung him in a tree over the hedge, by his feet tied like a bat. Years later, parents will tell their kids that if they climb the hedge, Bobby Raven’s corpse would be waiting for them, his calls for his Juliet floating in the wind. But, for right now, people will call it a cautionary tale, a tragedy that ends in death for a vampire foolish enough to love a human.

The door slams shut behind me and I try to calm my racing heart. I take a deep breath. You’re fine, Oli, I tell myself. You’re outside. You’re fine.

I glance back at the car, through the window and into the backseat that had been my prison for the past three hours. I hate small spaces. No, that’s not a strong enough word—I abhor them. Detest. Loathe. Despise. The walls close in on me, suffocating the air out of my lungs. My therapist calls it claustrophobia. I call it hell. 

My mom gets out of the car and I tear my eyes away from the metal abomination and look up at our destination. Two weeks ago, my mom was trying to find a misplaced check when she stumbled across her great-aunt’s will. In it, she left my grandparents her house, and now that my grandparents are dead, it went to my mom. So, we canceled our apartment lease, piled our life into a U-Haul, and drove to Middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania to a house that had been abandoned for ten years. And now it looms above me in all its rotting, vine-strewn glory.

“Oh, Olivia,” Mom says, and I see that she’s standing beside me, staring at her phone. “I need to go to the DMV to register the car. Do you want to come with me or check out the house?”

I almost snort. “I’ll stay here.”

Mom nods, biting her cheek. “Be careful. I’ll probably be gone for about an hour.”

I smile at her as convincingly as I can muster, and she hands me the house keys, gets in the car and drives away, the U-haul bouncing on the gravel road behind her.

Good riddance. To the car, I mean. Not my mom. 

I look back at the house and sigh. Here we go. I hope I don’t die.

I walk up to the door, grimacing as the wooden porch sags beneath my feet. I hope there’s wood somewhere that we can use to fix it, because I don’t want to break an ankle and I know all too well we can’t afford it at the store, not with the rest of the appliances that will probably need fixing. 

I unlock the door and it creaks open, the breeze sending a cloud of dust billowing up in the foyer. I step inside. 

It’s brighter than I thought it would be. And cleaner, aside from the thick layers of dust covering every surface. Stairs lead up to a balcony on my right, and to my left is a living and dining room. In front of me, a hallway leads to who knows where. I choose the stairs.

They make a questionable amount of sounds as I walk up them, like everything else in the house, but they hold study enough. A long corridor sits in front of me, and I look through the rooms one by one, trying to figure out which one looks nice enough to claim. An amount of time passes—I don’t exactly know how long—and I hear the door open downstairs. I furrow my brow. Mom’s back already? I don’t think it’s been an hour yet.

I shrug and walk to the balcony, looking down into the foyer, and see a figure, tall, slender, with a fedora and a black coat.

That is *not* mom.

I must have made a noise, because it looks up at me and it

doesn’t

have

a

face.

Oh crap.

I run.

Back into the hallway, back into the room I chose for myself. No hiding spots.

I run to the next room. None. 

The next. None.

The next. None. The next. None. I hear footsteps on the stairs and I didn’t think this hallway had this many rooms.

The next. The next. He’s standing at the end of the hallway now and he’s walking

I turn a corner 

(I didn’t think there were corners)

and I run and run and run

glancing into rooms for somewhere—anywhere—to hide.

And then I see it. 

A box. My size. Open and empty.

I dart into the room, into the box, and shut the flaps. I pant. I close my eyes.

The footsteps reach the room.

And stop.

And then there’s a tap, on the very top of the box. It’s quiet, but it reverberates through my very soul.

I snap my eyes open and I feel it, that suffocating feeling, the dark walls of the dark box of the small dark box closing in on me.

I try to push the lid open. I don’t care if I get kidnapped. I don’t care if I die. I just want to be out of this stupid box.

But the lid doesn’t open. The cardboard doesn’t bend. It’s like it’s made of metal, and—tap

and it doesn’t open. And I hear a tap. I try again. I can’t get out. I can’t get out. 

Tap. Tap.

I can’t get out.

I kick at the walls, pound my fists, my heart beating at a speed I didn’t know was possible. The walls are getting smaller. I can’t breathe. I’m going to—

Tap.

They’re getting faster. I scream.

Tap. 

No.

Tap.

I can’t get out.

Tap.

I scream again, and then the air won’t go back in my lungs and it’s run out and

tap

tap

taptap

taptaptap

taptaptaptaptap

it’s coming from all around me and I push and I

taptaptaptaptap

and I’m dead, aren’t I? my own personal hell

I cant get out and it goes taptaptaptaptap

and I scream but it’s drowned out by taptaptaptap

and then it slows.

I’m sobbing. Curled up in a ball and sobbing.

And then it stops. 

I push one final time and the box rips open and I fall out and 

I can breathe.

I lay on the floor crying and breathing and the room is familiar and I’m alone and I can breathe.

I hear the door open and my face twists, and I can’t go through this nightmare again and I—

“Honey?” My mom asks. “I’m home.”