With Halloween on the horizon, the people on my block have begun to decorate their houses. Red’s, purples, and orange’s lit up the street and cobwebs lined the asphalt beneath my feet.

The air was crisp and fresh, just how I liked it. I always feel that it was clearing the summer’s damp warmth from my lungs. I tend to take more walks during this season, just to get my blood pumping before the winter settles me inside. And on these walks, I love to take in all of the different ways that people interpret the holiday; some lean more towards fun and ”spooky” if you will, others prefer to terrify their guests. I would say I’m somewhere in the middle.

There has been, however, this one particular house where I can’t pin down their theme on the spectrum. The first day I passed them, they had a little black cat cut out in the window inviting passersby to come in “if they dare”, and I pegged them as spooky. The next day, they had splatted fake blood on the windows, and one of the cats had lost an eye, so I then pined them as more on the scary side of things. And that’s how the house slowly built up its harrowing display; one day they would put up some cutesy decorations seemingly for the kids on the block, and the next day it would be horribly mutilated.

It was…a bit troubling to say the least, but everyone celebrates Halloween differently so I didn’t let it hold me too much.

Coming up on it now, I see that there has been a new addition to the decor. A skeleton, short and squat stood in the back of their lawn by the dying garden. It’s jaw hung open in a perpetual scream with its arm pointing its finger toward the street, as if something were standing right behind me, ready to pounce.

“Cute,” I thought, “if a little tacky.” Then I moved on observing the other houses.

The next day, however, there had been some drastic changes to that single decoration.

It wasn’t blaring obvious, but if you looked closely, the bones were spotted with bits of viscera and blood, as if its skin were freshly picked from its body; but it’s mouth still hung open in that perpetual scream. Almost as if the pristine white that it was the day before was nothing but an illusion. It made my stomach turn, but seeing the track record of the rest of the house, I still decided to think nothing of it.

Day by day, that lawn garnered more and more skeletons, all starting off pristine and placed in a fun little pose, then the very next day being spattered with blood and chunks of flesh. As we came closer to the holiday, those skeletons covered their entire lawn and even some of the walkway to their house.

And day by day, I began to see less people populating the streets on my walks; and the air began to smell of a sickly iron, like old blood.

I tried to tell myself that it was probably nothing, that maybe those people were going on vacations or visiting their families, despite how odd it was that it seemed to be a steady stream of people disappearing, with not a single person returning.

And finally, when it came time for Halloween, the streets were empty and eerily quiet. There were maybe five kids altogether, but I could tell that their parents willed them to stay by their side.

Not a single soul went up to the house who made the street smell of iron and rot.

And though I knew better, I had to see who would put up decorations that actively scared the kids away from their house; the kids were the entire point of Halloween in the suburbs.

So I steeled my nerves, pocketed a knife just in case, and made my way down the block to this house of horrors.

The smell grew almost unbearably thick as I walked up the stairs to their door. My gut twisted with warning, but I willed myself to approach the porch, and ring their door bell. It wasn’t a simple chime that rang out onto the street, however, it was a cacophony of harrowing screams that seemed to go on for far too long.

And the man that answered the door made my stomach drop down to the ground.

He was tall; so tall that his head nearly hit the top of the door frame. Around his rail thin torso was a butchers’ apron that was smeared with blood, and that same sickly iron scent spilled from out of his house. He picked at his teeth with a toothpick that was dwarfed in his hands, and I swear I could see those same chunks between them that rested on the skeletons. His skin was a pallid pale, and his cheeks were gaunt. But his eyes…they will haunt me for the rest of my life.

They were alight with a crazed hunger, as if he hadn’t eaten for days. They were bloodshot, and never once blinked as he continued to stare me down; I wasn’t even sure if he had eyelids. There wasn’t an ounce of humanity in them, and they looked down at me as if I were nothing but his next meal.

“Hello, dear…” he croaked with a wide shark like smile. His voice was smooth and grating all at once, “I haven’t had a visitor in quite some time, why don’t you come in?”

I swallowed my heart down from my throat, “Uh, n-no thank you.” Somehow, I gathered myself to ask the one burning question that I had, “w-why do you have so many skeletons on your lawn? They seem to be frightening the kids.” I said, my voice trembling.

His smile spread even wider across his face, as a small chuckle left his lips, “Well, they wouldn’t fit in the disposable, now would they?” He responded, as if my question was incredulous. “Would you like to join them?”

I ran. All manners left in the dust; I ran back to my house and slammed the door so tight I swear the wall shook.

I now know that all of the missing people in the neighborhood have met an untimely death in the stomach of this thing that lived on our block.

And every night since, I swear I hear that same chuckle just outside my window; and I have this sick feeling in my stomach that I am being watched…