"Treats"

"Jason"

Jason ran, lungs burning, trying to yell for help between sharp gasps of air. His Batman costume felt like such a joke now, running between streetlights, feeling that warm spot of pee on his pants. Where WAS everyone? It had been so stupid, trying to be the big brave kids and go out alone...now he really was alone, and his friends had probably been eaten.

He didn't know this for sure, but when the boogeyman dropped out of a tree and started shoving kids into a wall that was suddenly like quicksand, it was probably a safe bet. He hadn't even been able to do anything, just watch as those long, bony fingers grabbed his two best friends and just...yanked them away, like dolls, barely screaming before the squishy black wall gulped them up. The boogeyman, it hooked his fingers into David's eyes like dad had taught him to hold a bowling ball, and...

Jason was abruptly sick down the front of his costume, the half-digested mass of chocolate looking unsettlingly like the goo that had splattered everywhere while the tall, lanky, naked old man had landed out of the tree. He stopped, stumbling to his knees, coughing and gagging, wailing out a weak scream for help to the dim night. It drifted off, unheeded, the boy unable to even sob, too numb with exhaustion and horror. He barely noticed the footsteps until they were nearly on top of him.

He looked up, ready to beg whatever adult he saw for help. Then he saw the legs. Thin, black, the feet looking pulpy and flat with age, the concrete under them turning cracked and gooey. Jason looked up more, shaking more and more violently. The withered hips, the sticky, soft chest that didn't rise or fall...and finally that nightmare head, looking like some kind of rotten pumpkin, but black and oily as a bucket of tar. The eyes locked on the boy's, as shiny and blank as a flashlight in a basement. The teeth parted, some kind of rolling, slimy blackness shifting inside.

Jason stumbled back, gasping, trying to scream but unable to even breathe correctly. He stared at the boogeyman as he rolled something in the palm of that thin, beaten hand, pulling it between two bony fingers and lifting it to his mouth. The boy thought it was a candy or something, but then he saw the glint of metal.

It was his best friend Anthony's front tooth. It still had the bracket from his braces on it.

The boogeyman placed it between his teeth, gently, the tooth still white and clean in that filthy, dripping mouth. He seemed to hold it there a moment...then his jaw bunched, and the tooth shivered...then burst like a jawbreaker under a car tire. He chewed it twice, then just stopped, still staring at the boy. It seemed to go on and on, Jason unsure if he was even breathing anymore, knowing this was the end, this was what happened when you didn't listen, when you went off alone, the boogeyman came and took you, forever and always...

But he didn't. He turned, seeming to get ready to take a step...then fell forward, slowly, like an old man tripping over a shoe. The black monster almost hit the ground...but just fell through it, like it was made of air, nothing but a black smear left behind on the concrete...and the tiny, corroded bracket from the tooth.

When they found him, hours later, he'd gripped it hard enough to embed it in his palm.