The sound of another knock at our door woke me from my short nap. The clock read 8:17, still another hour before they would all go home. I stood up and stretched, then another knock came at our door.
“Are you going to get that?” my wife groaned from across the room.
“Yes… yes.” I started to walk, but the pins and needles in my right leg almost stopped me. I opened the door to see it standing there, unblinking.
“Trick or treat!” This one was wearing a scream mask, and was covered in black clothes. I dropped two chocolate bars into his large, pumpkin-shaped basket. He said, “Thanks” and walked away. I closed the door and sat back down on the couch, hoping to maybe get some more shut-eye. Then came yet another knock. I got up quickly, grabbed two more bars of chocolate from our bucket and headed for the door. There were two of them this time. Two girls, one dressed as a princess and the other as a fairy, typical for girls their age. I dropped one chocolate bar into each basket. They were about to say ‘thank you’ but I closed the door. I’ll have more time to relax, too bad if they think I’m rude.
I began to relax again, but instead of napping I thought about the day when Anne and I would have a kid. We would have to send him up to random strangers’ front doors. Then they would give him candy, and I would–
Then I heard another knock. I was too relaxed to even care this time. Let’s convince them we’re not home, maybe they’ll go away. Then they knocked again. I heard Anne groan loudly and get up, and she started for the door.
“Honey, I can–"
She stopped me mid-sentence with a simple, "Shut up," and continued walking.
I heard the door open and the sound of candies dropping into baskets. Then talking. This one was a little girl, and after a few seconds I heard Anne say, “Aww… Poor baby!”
The girl clearly said, “Can I come in?”
My wife responded with, “Sure! I think we have a few bandages.”
I sat up, and the children – there was a boy following the girl – had come in as far as our boot rack. The girl had a green witch mask on, and the boy had a zombie mask. They had no costume except for the masks, just plain clothes. My wife returned with the bandages, the girl held her wrist out and Anne wrapped a bandage around the girl’s small cut.
The girl proceeded to slip off her mask and glare at me. “Nice… contacts,” was all I managed to say. Her eyes were as black as night, and her skin an oddly pale white. She just grinned at me, and I realized something felt off, very off.
“Honey, can I talk to you quickly in private?”
She gave me an odd look, but still said, “Sure.”
We walked into the kitchen and stood in front of the oven, where they could not hear us. “Something’s not right here,” I decided to say what first came to my mind.
“What?” Now she looked at me even more oddly. No response came to my mind. She just said, “You say that every time Delores gives me cookies, or a loaf of bread. Stop being paranoid.” She walked off. Then I heard her gasp. I walked out slowly, only to see two masks and two buckets in the place of two children. The buckets only had two pieces of candy each. The candy we gave them. “Strange; I didn’t even hear them leave.”
“Maybe they didn’t leave.” She only gave me that look again. "Maybe they’re in here somewhere, planning to steal something.”
“Yeah, right! We don’t even have anything worth…” We both heard it. A scratching sound in the back bedroom. We looked at each other, and began to walk down the hallway. Even thought I knew they were just children, I had a very odd feeling about them— probably the eyes.
As we neared the doorway to the bedroom, a loud growling sound came from inside the doorway; it was like a dog’s growl, only deeper. “Honey, did you hear that?” Silence. “Honey?” I said as I turned around. I was alone; in the place of my wife was only darkness. A chill ran down my spine, but I continued walking. I mustered up as much courage as I could, jumped inside and turned on the light. The boy was there, he was clawing at a spot in the middle of the room, as if looking for something.
He looked up, and smiled. His mouth was full of sharp pointed teeth, his eyes as black as the girl’s. I began to back up. “What the fu-"
“Honey?” a familiar voice came from behind me. I turned around, and Anne was standing there. She grabbed the sides of my face and stared into my eyes.
“It will all be over soon,” she said sweetly, as my face began to feel odd. Then I noticed something about her eyes... they were as black as night too. Slowly, everything began to fade away into nothing.
The police came to Daniel and Anne’s house at 1:08 AM that night, after their neighbour Delores Bridge heard screaming coming from within the house.
All that was found that was deemed "suspicious" were the masks, baskets, and a hole in the middle of the bedroom floor which had the skeletons of two small children at the bottom of it, and one silver cross. The skeletons were found in a position which suggested they were killed in some sort of ritual.
After some research, police found that the neighbour Delores had two children, and they had gone missing seventeen years ago.