User blog comment:CrashingCymbal/Halloween Writing Competition 2013/@comment-8724618-20131026225959

Child At Heart

 Halloween. A time of scares, and shivers, ghouls and giggles. Giggles of glee and delight as we went out to give everyone a fright. Every year, my friends and I would go out Trick-Or-Treating.

 Every neighbour down my street were rather festive, not one neighbour refused to open the door. There was one house that always stood out. This particular house appeared vacant from the outside, as if no one was living there. Completely empty. Hopelessly empty. There was something odd, though…every other day of the year, the house’s lights were always off, and the curtains shut. On Halloween it was different. The lights were on, and the house was even somewhat decorated…strange. No one knew who the man was living there.

 I remember one Halloween though, I saw him. I had been eight at the time, it was 3AM and I thought it would be cool to pull an all-nighter, to brag to my friends in school. I was sitting on my bed, and I decided to look outside my bedroom window and there I saw him. Staggering through the darkness was the isolated man.

 He appeared to be wearing a mixture of Halloween costumes, all put together to make one costume. His costume looked as if it hadn’t been washed for years. What was weird was the fact he almost behaved like a child who was Trick-Or-Treating, despite the fact he appeared about fifty. He knocked on the house’s doors, but of course, getting no response, due to the time. he started to sob into his hands, and frantically hit his head in some kind of crazed manner. It was devastating to watch. I vividly remember him walking over to the wall and….he kept hitting his head on the wall. He kept sobbing and sobbing, muttering and murmuring. I distinctly remember him shouting out something that seemed very peculiar at time, but now it makes sense. He shouted out “mum”.

 ‘On 31st October 2002, Daniel Jackson committed suicide in his home, at the age of fifty one. He lived on his own in a dishevelled house deemed unfit for human inhabitation. His medical history showed that he had a selection of mental health problems, including schizophrenia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was of the mental age of ten due to a traumatic event that occurred when young Daniel was ten. Since the event, he had been mentally ‘stuck’, and was unaware of anything which occurred after this date. He experienced episodes and recollections of the traumatic event which was caused by ‘triggers’ The traumatic event which led to Daniel’s mental health deterioration was the suicide of his mother,  who hanged herself at the age of fifty one on the 31st October 1961.’

 The newspaper report really did add up to what I saw on that Halloween when I was nine. My friend, Josh and I were out Trick-Or-Treating. Josh had been wearing a skeleton outfit, and skeleton gloves. I was wearing the stereotypical sheet ghost outfit. We visited all the houses, and when we got to the end of the street, Josh turned to me and said:

 “Hey, John, what about the scary house? Let’s go there. Come on. It’ll be fun”

 Without wanting to appear cowardly, I agreed. I wish I turned back and went home at that point. When we got to the house, I took one look at its crumbling, broken exterior and decided I didn’t want to do it. Josh stared at me in disappointment but agreed to do it on his own. Josh told me he would meet me at my house after. I turned back, and started strolling home, eating my treats on the way back.

 I didn’t hear from Josh for the whole evening. It had gotten to 2AM and he still hadn’t returned. His mother was getting worried, and so was I. She asked where he might be. My heart raced, I knew I had to return to the house.

 I dragged myself to the house. The front door was open, which was rather unsettling. Hesitantly, I slowly walked towards the open door, and poked my head through. What hit me was the waft of an awful stench. It made me feel physically sick. I looked down to the ground and saw that it was littered with old food packaging, decaying food and excrement. This wasn’t what produced the foul smell though. Oh no. This smell was something completely different. Worse than what decaying food and shit could produce.

  I stumbled my way through, and found myself in another room. The stench got worse. I flicked on the light switch. The walls…they were covered in scribbled writing, looked as if it were the handwriting of a child’s. The writing was frantic and desperate. It wasn’t so much the writing itself which disturbed me, but the content of it. Over and over, the words ‘I just wanted to play’  ‘I didn’t mean to…’ and ‘Mum’ was repeatedly scribbled on the shabby, stained walls.

 My attention was then drawn to the seven figures hanging from nooses. It seems this is where the mysterious stench was coming from. Five of the corpses appeared to be children, who all had one thing in common; they all were missing something from their Halloween costume. Some of the corpses were rotten, teeming with maggots, all bloated and seeping with fluids. Three of the seven corpses were skeletons. They had obviously been left to decay for so long. The corpses were labelled. The children were labelled with what Halloween creature they had been dressed up as, and the larger skeleton was labelled…’mum’ The other adult corpse was Daniel Jackson, who was hanging next to the skeleton labelled ‘mum’ He was wearing the same Halloween costume from seeing him when I was eight, except there was an extra addition….a skeleton glove. Reality hit me, and my God, was it quite a blow. I slowly turned, and I saw it.

 It was the hanging corpse of Josh.d