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A Halloween Treat

ChanMan

By ChanMan
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ChanMan

ChanMan

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I have a small treat I'd like to give my friends here for Halloween. Something you may not know about me is that I have entered.. and won... a literary contest for horror stories. While I can't exactly post the winning story here without risking losing my publishing rights to "public domain", I can post another story....

 

So go get you a nice frothy adult beverage, get comfortable, and enjoy the tale!

 

 

Precisely

 

He had the greenest lawn in town. Even now, on Halloween, when all the others had long since gone over to the tan-yellow of autumn, his was a luxuriant, vivid green. It took a great amount of care and a precise regimen to maintain this precise shade of green. He had spent years working on his lawn to achieve this precise effect. Across the front, turn left, down the side, left again… always counterclockwise, stripe by stripe. His little red Snapper mower with the U-shaped white handlebars chugging around, the same as it had when he bought it brand new out of the front display window from the local Western Auto. Halloween? What was it that guy on the radio had called it? Beggar-ween, that’s it. Sorry excuse for begging, and a sad lesson to teach our future leaders… and with the disappearances over the years, it was hard to imagine parents letting their younglings out for the annual event. Trick or treat, indeed! The trick, as far as he was concerned, was to keep the little beggars off his lawn, with their foot-balls and base-balls and infernal flying disks. The treat was… well… he had other things to tend to at the moment.

He finished up his lawn, making sure to place the Snapper precisely 18” from either wall in his storage shed, and began to set out his final Halloween trappings. On the old oak tree by the entrance to the drive, precisely 8 and one half inches beside where he placed the flattened witch that looked like she had absent mindedly flown into the tree on her broom, and at precisely 3 and one half feet from where the roots met the ground, he placed the sign he had made clearly stating in blood dripping letters “Spook House This Way”. He wanted to attract a certain clientele, and that height provided the perfect viewpoint for them. He placed foam board tombstones at precisely 7 foot intervals along both sides of the driveway, each turned at the precise angle to allow the best viewing of the epitaphs. “Here lies Riley Pratt, A falling safe squashed him flat”; “Here lies Lester Moore, shot to death with a .44, Sheriff found him on the floor, no Les no more”. They were really just a little something to slow down the procession… and to heighten the effect and feelings. He wanted them to be hooked on that adrenalin rush brought on by fear and excitement. It made it so much easier later. He placed small paper bags with candles along the walkway, alternating black and orange, with jack-o-lanterns on the black ones and black cats on the orange, all set precisely 18 inches apart to provide the precise viewing angle to maximize the effect of the candlelight… and draw attention to the porch. The entire front porch he lined with those electric jack-o-lanterns you could buy at Wal-Mart for a precise sum of $2.97. Their faces alternating between comical grins and woeful moans, he placed them precisely 6 and one half inches apart to make it easier to hide their cords as he ran them to the plug bar hidden behind the “Actual Life Size” bubbling cauldron he set precisely 5 inches to the right of his front door. It was always a big hit, and provided the precise amount of distraction. Oh yes, ask anyone in town and they will tell you that crazy old man at the old house on Elm street did Halloween up right. You catch more flies with honey, it’s said.

He hurried inside, stopping to make certain the comical ghost doormat with the little cartoon bubble saying “Boo!” was precisely straight and covered up the cuts in the concrete just in front of the door. Couldn’t have the little beggars stumbling across anything they had no business knowing about. He went straight through the house to the small garage he had decorated as a haunted house. The two small windows in his doors had cheese cloth ghosts rising eerily out of them. Made with balloons and a precise amount of starch, they had been positioned at the precise angle to not only seem as if they were not connected to anything at all, but to block anyone who might want to peek inside. Dime store cobwebs stretched at precise angles to reflect the recessed blue lighting that flickered on and off. When coupled with the sound of canned thunder, the effect was quite like a small thunderstorm had erupted in the backyard. But the walkout door was the real piece d’resistance. Fake blood was splattered in precise streaks across the door and bloody handprints walked from the glass to the knob as if some poor tortured soul had blindly searched for the way to the salvation within. This was always the exciting part for whoever the “Lucky” little beggar was who got to see the “Spook House”. The excitement built by all the trappings of this most horrible of holidays culminating in finding out that there was, in fact, more to see out back, sometimes he had to physically keep them from running ahead and bursting in! Opening the door, he went inside and visually checked his “trick” to make sure all was prepared. The sledgehammer behind the door created a precise 20 degree angle to the wall, the shadow forming a precise right triangle as it ran from the handle, down the wall, and across the floor to connect again with the head. They never saw it coming, you know. Always too fascinated by the bloody meat grinder and various bone saws arranged in surgically precise order on the work bench. The dried blood looked so real. And, of course, the 50lb. bag of lime… when used in precise amounts it helps keep the smell down.

Having ascertained that all was well in the “Spook House”, he went back inside the house and made his way to the front room. He checked the small console mounted by the front door; pressed the yellow test button and watched as the little red numbers on the small digital readout appeared, counted backwards from 10 to 0, then winked out again. He pressed the tiny little button labeled “0 scl” and watched as the numbers appeared again, this time alternating between 1,0 and -1, until finally settling on 0 and vanishing again. The few folks who had been allowed into his home and saw this little device assumed it was an alarm console. With crime the way it is these days, no one could be too careful. He chuckled as he thought of the day he installed it… how he carefully patched the drywall to hide the holes he drilled to run the wiring… how he almost got stuck as he navigated the crawlspace beneath his porch and having to fight back giddy girlish giggles at the thought of being stuck down there… or having to be rescued. He slipped the switch to the “on” position and opened his front door. He gently stepped onto the “Boo” doormat and watched the little red numbers jump from 0 to 10… then 13… 15 as he pressed more firmly. Yes, that would do nicely. He would need the scale to be perfectly calibrated before the little beggars started showing up for their hand outs. Precise calculations required precise numbers… and precisely 113 pounds… when stripped of the costume, candy and such, then de-boned and mixed with a precise amount of lime, dispensed in precise measurements over a precise schedule… would keep one’s lawn a perfectly precise shade of green well into the autumn.

 

 

Happy Halloween!!!

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surfpup

surfpup

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Good stuff, ChanMan! Thanks for the excellent spooky story. A friend of mine put a collection of stories like this together and published it as a novel. He's doing quite well with it now - doesn't even have a day job these days. Keep it up, man.

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xchrisbobisx

xchrisbobisx

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im usually pretty slow with stories.

so this guy rigs up a hammer to bash in a kids head who runs into the "fun house" to use as fertilizer in his lawn? what would the mat on the ground be used for? to weigh how heavy the kid is? so im assuming the hammer would only trigger if the kid weighed precisely 113 pounds? how does he get away with it?

ahhhhh oh well great story! =)

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ChanMan

ChanMan

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im usually pretty slow with stories.

so this guy rigs up a hammer to bash in a kids head who runs into the "fun house" to use as fertilizer in his lawn? what would the mat on the ground be used for? to weigh how heavy the kid is? so im assuming the hammer would only trigger if the kid weighed precisely 113 pounds? how does he get away with it?

ahhhhh oh well great story! =)

 

Glad you liked it!

 

Target of opportunity. Hammer is in the bldg out back... the "Spook House". Lures them back there with "there's more back here".

 

 

How does he get away with it, indeed??

 

 

Muahahahahahahahah!

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