Hudson House [Now available for the Kindle]

Chapter 12

Eric had always loved Halloween. The weeks leading up to the holiday were filled with costume-hunting and prank-creating. Tommy, Ed, and he would rush home from the bus stop on Halloween, jump into whatever costume they had chosen (last year, Eric had gone as an axe murderer complete with plastic axe and blood-stained ensemble), and start trick-or-treating before the little kids dressed as pumpkins and fairies got all the candy. Tommy, who had gone as Michael Myers for the third straight year last year, would lead the group and instigate ambushes on other kids in which they'd jump out from behind bushes to scare the kids and, in some lucky instances, make off with extra candy.

Last year was the first time Tommy had said that trick-or-treating was for little kids and they should pursue more exciting activities. He wanted to keep scaring other kids, of course, and if those kids dropped their bags and spilled their candy, well, then that was good, but what Tommy really wanted to do was join the roaming teenage gangs that traversed the neighborhood every Halloween night, fighting other teenagers in epic battles of shaving cream and eggs.

This type of behavior started the night before Halloween but the three of them were always grounded for "safety's sake." They were also forbidden to go near any of these packs of teenagers and had to be home by eight. By the morning of November 1st, shaving cream and egg shells plastered the streets of the development and any cars unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire. Eric's father had said that teenagers vandalized property on purpose, but Eric didn't think so. What was the point of destroying property? Things didn't scream or cry out when an egg splat on them.

Tommy had smuggled some eggs and a can of shaving cream out of his house. After telling Eric and Ed that trick-or-treating was for little kids, Tommy revealed his weapons. They hung out past their 8 p.m. curfew, and when the gangs took over the streets, Tommy tried unsuccessfully to convince Eric and Ed to take an egg each and stage a surprise attack. Tommy had called them "pussies" but hadn't pressed about it for long. Instead of fighting with and against teenagers, Tommy cracked an egg on Ed's head. Ed then smashed one against Tommy's chest, and Tommy covered Eric's face in shaving cream. And from there it only got messier. When Eric got home, his mother grabbed him, started to scold him, and then tossed him into a waiting bath. He had played with the bubbles like a little kid.

As usual, the three of them had been grounded last night on what the teenagers called "Devil's Night." It was no use arguing that they were almost all 13 which, technically, made them teenagers. None of their parents bought the logic. Eric's father had almost started crying again. Eric didn't press the issue. He had only hoped for a few moments of fun with his friends before they went to Hudson House tomorrow. Returning to that house felt incredibly final, like none of them would ever return. Ever the optimist, or simply the coward unwilling to accept his fate, Eric spent the evening gathering supplies. He laid them out on his floor: Maglite ("borrowed" from his father's tool box in the garage), wooden baseball bat (his father had attested that wooden bats were the only ones worth using), a small silver cross on a chain (a gift from his grandmother that hadn't meant much until now), and a pocket knife (Steve had given it to him as a birthday present last year but Eric had been too horrified to carry it or show it to his parents). He didn't want to fight the house, but he wasn't going to lie down and die, either.

He did not sleep well the night before Halloween. Every hour he awoke in a fresh mist of sweat and the darkness in his room startled him every time-did I fall into the basement? Am I trapped? Is she coming for me? When he finally got up for school, he did not recall any of his dreams (nightmares, surely). His eyes were sore with exhaustion but his body trembled with anxiety. When he got on the bus, the countdown to Hudson House began: sundown was fewer than ten hours away.

The school day surged and slowed; it propelled at the rapid pace of his nervous heart and also fatigued to an agonized crawl. He couldn't pay attention to any of the lessons and Mr. Houston had to tell him twice to take notes in math class. During lunch, the three of them sat together, ate quietly amid the chaos of costumed kids screaming and running around the cafeteria, already high on the candy teachers had been giving out all day.