Days of Horror

Day 13: Why We Fear This Night

October 31st, 1995. Final Journal Entry.

There's a reason why we should be afraid of this night.

Why the night of October 31st should send shivers down our spine and turn our blood to ice.

When that cursed night arrives, we should all be inside, locking our doors and windows, tucking our loved ones into bed. Making sure the people we care about our safe.

And yet, that is never the case.

On October 31st, instead of staying inside of our nice warm homes, we are out on the streets, playing make believe and rotting our teeth with candy.

Everyone says the same thing. That they do it for the children, so that they can have a chance to enjoy themselves, to have one night when they can run wild.

But the truth is, we do this for ourselves. We dress up in ridiculous costumes and cavort around the streets, pretending that everything is alright in the world.

Pretending that we have a reason to.

But we don't.

We don't have a single reason to celebrate this night.

This holiday may have started out that way, A way for people to forget their woes and be someone else for a single night.

For years, this day was celebrated. All over the world, people had different ways of honoring it.

Some called it All Hallows Eve.

Others referred to it in reverence as the Day of the Dead.

And many more consider it to be the end of summer. The start of fall.

All these different meanings for one simple holiday. One that has so many people excited and full of life.

And yet... it has always been a time of darkness.

In Wales, October 31st marked the end of the year of harvest and the beginning of winter. Or as they called it, the darker half of the year.

A time when the boundaries between our world and the other were thinned.

A time when anything could happen.

And on October 31st, 1963, something did happen.

A six year old boy murdered his sister for no reason. Stabbed her nine times with a knife from their families kitchen.

The boy was locked up. Studied for years. Psychologists would come and go, some giving up immediately. Others stayed for years, trying to get through to this boy.

And then there was me. I was one of those others.

I met him thirty-three years ago. I was told there was nothing left.

No conscience.

No understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong.

I met this six year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and...and the blackest eyes.

Only later did I realize that those eyes...

They were the devil's eyes.

I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.