Author's note: This is my entry for the Trick or Treat, Short and Sweet Halloween Writing Challenge 2023.
“I dropped my mask, hold on,” Jeremy said. He jogged back a few feet and picked up the same worn-out Batman mask he had been wearing on Halloween for the last three years.
His cousin's tall slender figure was disappearing into the crowd of Halloween revelers that had gathered on Germantown Ave.
“Elijah!” Jeremy bumped into the back of his cousin, his glasses bouncing off the small of Elijah’s back.
Elijah grabbed Jeremy by the front of his hoodie. “You almost stepped on my sneakers, bitch. You gonna pay for those?”
“S-sorry, Elijah.”
“Listen, I’m going to Chris's place. I’ll pick you up on this corner in two hours. TWO.”
“I thought you weren’t gonna hang out with those guys anymore, Elijah.”
“Mind your business.”
“And I don’t have my phone. Mom took it.”
“I know, so be here.” Elijah turned and walked away.
Jeremy walked up a few blocks until the crowd thinned out and spotted the only house with lights on. He walked up to it and saw that the door was ajar.
He strained his neck but couldn’t see into the house, but after moving up two steps he was able to see just inside the door. A few candies wrapped in plastic were sprinkled there.
“Hello?” His eyes caught onto a trail of more candy that led the way through the house to a padlocked door.
Jeremy walked in, picking up the candy as he went. A light was glowing through a doorway on his left. He walked towards it and stopped when he saw an old man sleeping in a recliner chair in front of a muted television.
Jeremy backed up slowly. He walked back to the front door, but when he flipped the deadbolt and pulled on the handle, the door wouldn’t open.
“Come on, come on.”
A hand closed over his shoulder and Jeremy screamed.
“Shhh!” a voice spat at him. He turned around to face a young woman. “Do you want to wake him up?” She shivered. Her blue eyes were open so wide that he felt like he could count the red veins that stretched around them.
“Let me go,” Jeremy said, looking at the door.
“It’s locked. There’s another way out through the basement. You have to get the key from him,” she said.
“I have to go home.”
“The basement is the only way out. You have to get the key from his pocket while he’s asleep.”
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand.
They stopped in the doorway and watched the sleeping man.
“Is he your dad?” Jeremy whispered.
“No.”
They stood there for a few seconds, the woman still holding his hand. He felt a shiver run through her again.
“You have to get the keys. I can’t do it. I shake too much.”
“Can’t we break a window or something?” Jeremy said.
“They’re all boarded up and…my sister’s down there.”
“What?”
“He has my sister trapped down there and we have to get her out. If you get the key ring then we can go down to the basement and out the hatchway doors that open up into the garden.”
Jeremy couldn’t think of any alternative. “I’ll try.”
The woman backed away into the shadowy hallway.
Jeremy stood in front of the man. He gritted his teeth and reached his hand towards the key ring sticking out of his pants pocket. He pulled slowly until it was free, stopping only for a moment when the man snorted. Then, he moved back down the hallway to the basement door.
Jeremy looked up at the woman and she shivered powerfully again. In the moment before her final convulsion, he swore he could see a flash of blue light twist through her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. Unlock it quickly.”
Jeremy unlocked the padlock. He pulled open the door and was slapped with a rank smell. He put his sweatshirt over his nose and mouth.
“Who’s there?!” A choking voice said from the living room.
Jeremy rushed down the steps and nearly bumped into the woman.
“There’s a flashlight there,” she whispered.
Jeremy scooped up the flashlight and turned it on. He swung it back and forth around the room, trying to take in everything at once.
Finally, the light landed on rusty metal. He moved the light down to a purple, bloated face staring out at him from between the metal mesh of a human-sized cage. Jeremy screamed.
“Who’s down there?” the man screeched from up above.
The light of the flashlight produced more of the atrocity before him. A naked woman’s body was slumped face-first against the cage, her tongue lolling out. Her eyes had popped mostly out of their sockets and rested on her cheeks.
He looked behind him where the young woman had just been standing but she was gone. He took a step closer and looked at the face of the dead body. It was the same woman.
He trailed the beam down to her chained ankles and saw that the skin was blackened there. A live electrical wire from the wall was sticking through the bars. He had been electrocuting her, Jeremy thought.
A gurgling noise made Jeremy jerk the flashlight to the right. Its beam wobbled over a second cage. It held another woman who looked beaten beyond measure, but alive. She stared out at him, but could only cough and spit blood out of her mouth.
The man’s footsteps were descending the stairs.
“I’ll get help!” Jeremy whipped the flashlight around the room, looking for the door. He started to panic but then he looked at the ceiling and saw the hatch doors. He grabbed a chair from the corner and slammed it down under the doors.
“Who’s that?” the man shouted.
Jeremy stood on the chair, wobbled and pushed up as hard as he could. The doors flopped open and he managed to grab the metal edge of the door frame and pull himself up. A hand grabbed at his ankle but he kicked hard and pulled himself forward, digging his hands into the grass.
He ran towards the glow of a street light. Just as he was turning the corner something grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled him back. He screamed and fell backwards onto the pavement.
The old man’s gnarled face looked down at him. He was holding a baseball bat with nails hammered into the end of it. The man raised the bat up over his head and swung it down. Jeremy closed his eyes.
A gunshot fired.
Jeremy opened his eyes and sat up cautiously. The old man was lying next to him with a hole in his head.
He turned to see Elijah standing there, tucking his gun back into the waistband of his pants.
“We gotta get out of here,” Elijah said, helping Jeremy up.
They ran down the street, through the crowd and all the way home.
The next day, Jeremy saw a news piece on the woman the police had found in a cage in the man’s basement. Apparently she had been the only survivor of a string of murders the man had committed. Jeremy and Elijah never spoke of the incident again.