Mr. Bones



Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. I dress up in a homemade costume, I hand out treats, and I am the life of any All Hallows' party. Although I eagerly participate, I refuse to decorate for Halloween. It's my mom's fault.

See, when I was about fifteen years old, my mother worked at a local hotel. She was a restaurant manager there. Since she was also a kleptomanic pack rat she took decorations home with her often. One day, she brought home this ugly Halloween decoration. It was a plastic skeleton, dressed in a top hat and tails. The skeleton was about the size of a three-year old child. It was painted a dim ivory, the color of old bones. She proudly held the ugly thing in front of me.

"Isn't it the greatest? Come closer and check it out!" my mother commanded. When I got closer, I shrieked as the stupid thing spoke. Well, to be more accurate, it screamed at me. With glowing redness in its empty eye sockets.

"BOO! EHEHEHEHEEEE! Happy Halloween!"

Turned out the skeleton had a battery pack in it that powered two red LEDs and a speaker hidden in its skull. Real funny, Mom. Scare your kid out of ten years of her life.

I asked her to take the batteries out of the pack. She did so (still snickering at me), placing the skeleton in a display alcove directly across from our front door. Sometimes in the next few weeks, she would randomly put the batteries in again to give me a scare when I got home from school.

"MOM! Take the batteries out again!"

"I didn't put them back in honey!" Her laughing as she said it gave it away. I hated her pranks. It got to the point that I figured out how to disable the battery pack entirely. I clipped one of the connecting wires to the contraption and took out the batteries to make sure.

My mom left me home alone a lot at night. Came with her job. I dealt with it by playing video games or reading as late as I wanted and eating junk food I had hidden in my room. Some nights, though, I had this...feeling. A feeling not quite like paranoia. Paranoia doesn't begin to describe the lung-tightening, throat drying, hair-raising feeling I had. Like I was being watched, and the watcher did not like what it saw. Like if I turned around at the wrong moment, I would be pounced upon by some crazed being hellbent on slashing me to ribbons. One night, while in the throes of this, I double checked the midget skeleton. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't get another scare while I was in this sort of mood. As I picked it up and turned it over, it dawned on me that the decoration was a little bit...heavy. It felt heavier than plastic should be. I knew the hands were plastic; the little bony hands were obviously made from a bad mold, as was the skull. After I confirmed that the wire was still clipped and the batteries out, I opened the tuxedo shirt and felt the "ribs." It didn't feel like plastic. It felt cold, and a little like stone, a little like wood. There were strange grooves in the area where the heart would be, on a normal person. Notches, like something had been forced there.

I had never felt ivory or bone, but those ribs felt like how I imagined bone would.

I quickly buttoned the shirt back up on the doll and flung it into the alcove. I was going to head up to bed, NOW, and tell Mom about this in the morning. Maybe we could take the doll to the police, or give it a proper burial. I turned to head up the stairs.

"Boo."

My head whipped around. The skeleton's eyes were glowing red. After I had clipped its cables and taken out the batteries and what. the. FUCK?!?

I didn't wait for an answer. I ran up the stairs to my room and locked the door. I left all the lights on and refused to come out until morning.

To this day, I will not get a Halloween decoration. I am terrified of where it might have come from, of the stories that such things can hold. Of a doll that wasn't always a doll.