Halloween Dad
By: Jimmy Marks
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Halloween

Year seven of Dad’s Halloween experiment saw even more extravagances than years gone by. Jeneanne and Dad got married a year before and spent three weeks in Bermuda that May. Jeneanne loved Dad’s Halloween spirit and Dad loved Jeneanne.

Better still, Jeneanne was a Christmas Freak. Not a Jesus Freak, but a Christmas F-R-E-A-K. When she and Dad bought a house in the Summer after their wedding, one of her biggest demands was space for all her “Christmas Cheer”. Between her decorations and Dad’s, the attic, basement and garage rafters were all packed for the holidays. They barely had room to store their winter and summer clothes, and they used to joke about letting us sleep outside so they could take our rooms.

There were a few surprises in year seven. Alethia died that New Years and both Mom and Lonnie were broken up about it. Alethia was the only person in my life who had died up to that point. I didn’t have much time with her but she loved me and I loved her. Dad and Jeneanne talked to Mom and Lonnie a few weeks after the funeral to ask if I’d been as funky at home as I had been with them. Mom got worried, as this was not Dad’s M.O. Dad overlooked things and always saw the bright side.

But the cloud over me didn’t seem to lift. Eventually, they put me in kid’s therapy with “Dr. Dave”. Nobody seemed to be okay with how sad I was. I was fine with it. It passed, in time, and I can’t speak to Dr. Dave’s contributions except that he recommended I give Adderall a try.

Three weeks in, I stopped eating and I was pulling out my eyebrow hairs. Mom and Dad were both in firm agreement that I go off of it.

I was thirteen. I started feeling sad about things other than Alethia. I was angry and hungry and horny all the time. Dad and I were still “best pals”, but he seemed to be shorter with me than he ever had before. He was always on me about homework and my grades, even though I kept a 3.5 GPA. He would always tell me how important school was.

“Must be, or they wouldn’t make me go by law,” I said to him on the drive one day.

“You can take that mouth back to your mom’s house, because I don’t have room for it here,” he snapped back.

He felt bad about it by the time we got to the drop-off.

Dad and Jeneanne got started with their Halloween planning in August that year. They talked to my uncle Gary about their exterior wiring and they started using LED bulbs that didn’t draw as much current. Jeneanne was really good at painting yard decorations and keeping the peace between Dad and I. When September came, Dad asked me and my brother what we wanted to be for Halloween. My brother said “Power Rangers” as he had for years and years. I decided to really shake things up.

“I wanna do wolfman.”

Dad’s eyes twinkled. He started looking up videos on the Internet about how to make realistic fangs out of wax and how to use spirit gum to attach fake hair to my ears. He even thought about contacts with yellow irises but talked himself out of it when he saw the cost. He bought plenty of fake blood, though.

I ripped up a few old flannel shirts and an old pair of Lonnie’s khakis. Mom said she was too freaked out by the test-runs of the costume to even bother looking at me night-of. She managed to keep her composure for a few pictures anyway. Lonnie thought I was, his words, “really cool looking.”

I stepped out of the house with my black claws and face paint and fake hair and fangs and I turned to Mom and Lonnie and asked if I could go out on my own this year. They didn’t think that was a great idea.

My brother and I hit all the regular houses and finally got to Dad’s. Mom and Lonnie headed home to chill, only stopping to have a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie with Jeneanne inside. My brother started tearing off his costume and immediately started gorging himself on candy. Jeneanne grabbed the camcorder and started taping him. “Oh my gosh,” she kept saying and laughed along with him. She worried that he was choking on a lemonhead but he quickly corrected himself and she kept on chuckling at him.

Dad was staked out front. Literally staked, as he was pretending to be a dying vampire that year, lying in the big black plywood coffin. The kids went nuts, between him and the cauldron and the Frankenstein with the light-up eyes. There were big fake bats swinging around on the branches outside, emitting their tinny “OoooooOooOooo” noises. Shrieks of horror poured out of the MP3 player Dad kept specifically for Halloween sounds.

A lapse in candy-seekers came about 9:30 and Dad excused himself into the house to go to the bathroom. Jeneanne was still recording my brother, who by now was doing crazy dances to the “Monster Mash.” I was fiddling with my fangs when Dad turned the corner and took a deep breath.

“Did you tell the boys yet?”

Jeneanne seemed thrown off. My brother quit dancing.

“…no,” she said, startled.

“You didn’t tell them you’re gonna have a baby?”

My brother’s eyes lit up. Jeneanne was stunned and embarrassed, but happy. Dad was beaming.

My chest felt hot. I had to get up.

I ran to the bathroom, Dad grabbing at me as I went by. I threw up and it melted the wax off my canines. Nobody heard me over the “Monster Mash” and my brother shouting “Baby sister! Baby sister!”

My tears ran hot as I rinsed my mouth out. I pulled off as much of the hair as I could and scrubbed off the make-up and stripped off the shredded clothes. My fingernails were still black and there was some of Mom’s mascara in my eyes.

I stumbled out of the bathroom and Dad and Jeneanne were both waiting for me in the living room.

“Are you okay, honey?” Jeneanne asked.

“I’m fine. I think I ate too much sugar,” I said. It wasn’t strictly a lie.

Dad rubbed his palm on my forehead, hunting for a fever. I didn’t fight him but I wanted to.

“You feel a little hot,” he said. “Want a bottle of water?”

I nodded. He ran to the kitchen and Jeneanne sat me in the rocker and pulled the lever to elevate my feet. My ears were still ringing.

How could they be having a baby? Dad’s so old and my brother and I were still so young. Jeneanne was trying to wrangle my brother off of the couch and into bed, a nigh-impossible feat at this time of night with this much sugar in play.

Dad got me a bottle of water and snapped it open with a flick. I started to guzzle it but Dad warned me about being too hard on my stomach. He sat in the quiet, Jeneanne in the background trying in vane to get my brother to quit jabbering about nothing.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“I know this is kinda shocking news,” Dad said, reading my mind. “Believe me, it’s just as shocking for me, too.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Isn’t it great that you’re gonna be a big brother again?”

I shrugged. Dad realized he was playing a losing game so he finally turned off the porch light, the first official act of the dismantling of Halloween.

“I think we’ve done enough for this year. It’s gonna be hard enough getting your brother to sleep.” He went around the corner, turned off the sound system and started hitting his well-planned surge protector switches with his foot to slow down and silence his nightmare garden.

I drank the rest of my bottled water, went back to the bathroom to scrub off a little more of the leftover makeup, then put on my pajamas for bed.

I waited until the night was dark, no longer polluted with the pale green-and-purple light of Dad’s handiwork. I heard Dad come in and chat with Jeneanne for a bit.

“I think he just got overheated,” Jeneanne said.

“I don’t think he took the news well.”

“It’s probably just a shock for him. He’s going through so much already…”

“He should be happy! Right?” Dad couldn’t figure out why I was so disappointed or angry or whatever I was.

When I reflect on it now, I think it was halfway between jealousy and anger. Dad wasn’t satisfied with my brother and I? He wanted a kid he could keep all the time? Hey, news flash, you shouldn’t have left us with Mom. Maybe then you’d have your kids around you every day.

Those kids would get the full Dad treatment, all the time. He’d be “Halloween Dad” all year long. Happy Dad, excited Dad. And we’d get the leftovers on the weekends.

Over time, I’d mature a bit and learn to love my baby sister, and not even bother with the term “half-sister”. I love her the way I love her baby sister, the way I love the baby brother that Mom and Lonnie would eventually have, Mom’s “miracle” baby she gave birth to during my first week of college.

But in that moment, I didn’t see the possibility of love anywhere around me. I felt dark inside. I saw the posters in my room and the light under the door. I watched it get dimmer and dimmer and finally die.

And I waited.

Eventually, a full, bright moon came rising. There, in the dark of my room, four square panels of soft, beautiful light rolled across the floor, centimeters at a time. Soft, chirpy snores rolled out of my brother’s door, left open just a crack. Dad and Jeneanne’s bedroom door was closed. There was no AC on, no heat — the house was well-insulated and had been warming up all evening with the heat of bodies and a fire in the hearth. I was perfectly content in my skin so I slipped off my shirt and yanked off my socks. I was there, bathed in moonlight from the window, cutting a strong-looking silhouette. I felt perfect. Perfect, and mean.

I went to the closet and pulled out the baseball bat Dad and Jeneanne bought me for making Honor Roll the year before. I whisked myself down the stairs, armed, dangerous, quiet as the shadow that laid long in front of me. I unlocked the front door and stood there, somewhat tall and somewhat muscular, tears hot behind my eyelids. But I didn’t cry.

I walked up to the wolfman, the same one that had petrified me for years, and I stood in front of him, bat slung over my shoulder. I hated the wolfman. I hated him. He was always my least favorite. Of course he was, look at him, all stupid and ugly and useless. I let the bat slide down my palm until the butt of it rested on the bottom of my fist. I hauled back and whacked the wolfman right in the jaw. Styrofoam and fake fur flew. With one clean hit, I had knocked the jaw off his stupid, shitty face. Ha ha, wolfman, you’re nothing now. Can’t bite someone like this, can you, you piece of shit. I hit him in the arms and knocked off a few of his fingers. I hit his legs and he crumpled down to the yard, his menacing claws now bent up toward me in a plea for mercy. No mercy. I’m killing wolf men tonight, which isn’t very lucky for you.

I beat the wolfman senseless. Unsatisfied, I went after a few of the jack-o-lantern’s. Bam, boom, bam, right down the line, the careful curves of the gourds splitting and crumbling under the bat. I kicked a few of the fake styrofoam tombstones over. I punched the mummy in the nuts, or where I thought his nuts might be. I laughed to myself, not too loud, but in a way that sounded hideous when I reflected on those moments years later. I stood in the yard, heaving, out of breath, the maker of untold destruction. I took a turn around to view my handywork. There was my dad’s masterpiece, in tatters on the ground. Spray paint, duct tape, glue, glitter, all of it garbage now.

I plodded back up the stairs, sweaty now, even in the cold. I ran my hands through my hot, thick hair and wiped my nose where my sleeve would’ve been. I looked across the porch — there was another figure, black in the shade of the porch, motionless. I decided I would spare the Dracula dummy. He was pretty cool, after all. There, there’s all the mercy you’ll have tonight, I thought to myself. I’m not good enough for you, well, now all this shit’s not good enough, either.

I went back to my bedroom and stashed the bat back in the closet. I laid in bed, shirtless, sweaty, my nose full of night air and my hands raw from the bat and the beatings. I breathed heavily and I fell into a deep sleep. I barely budged until the morning, when I heard my brother crying.

“They broke it?! They broke it?!”

I woke in a daze and stumbled over to my shirt, still crumpled on the ground, and threw it on. The morning was cold and the heat of the house had all flown out the door with my dad and my then-youngest brother.

I looked out of the living room window. It all seemed so much worse in the daylight. There were feathers and fur and cardboard and splintered wood…it looked like a tornado had ripped up and ruined everything around us.

Dad wasn’t yelling or anything, but there was a purpose and silence in his work that made my brother turn right around and not bother Dad with his many questions and comments. Jeneanne was on the phone when I woke up and ditched the call quickly when she saw me.

“Honey, are you okay? Did you hear anything last night?”

I looked at her, dumbfounded. I don’t even think I was playing dumb in that moment — I think I was truly ignorant about the goings-on and my role in them.

She ran over and gave me a hug. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I know this is you and your dad’s favorite thing.”

My heart felt like she had tied a lead sinker to it. This was what Dad and I did, once upon a time. Coming up with these crazy Halloween ideas. Executing them with what little we had. When Dad had nothing, he had Halloween.

Now, he had nothing again.

Jeneanne told me it would be okay. If she knew anything about what I’d done, she didn’t let on. She just got back on the phone with her mom after scuttling my brother into the kitchen for his cereal.

I took a few timid steps outside to the porch. I looked around at the devastation and I looked at Dad. I looked around for Dracula on the porch.

But Dracula wasn’t on the porch. His coffin was out in the yard, but…

Why would Dad move Dracula after the fact? He wouldn’t. Who would’ve put Dracula on the porch while I was out there tearing up everything? No one did.

We didn’t use the Dracula dummy this year. Dad dressed up as Dracula, with the stake through the heart…

I’ll never know for sure, but I think Dad must’ve followed me downstairs that night. He crept behind me, quieter than I was, maybe even holding his breath. He watched me do one of the worst things I had ever done in my life, in perfect quiet, from the safety of the porch. I don’t know, to this day, why he didn’t stop me.

There have been times when I hoped it wasn’t him, but a serial killer, biding his time, holding off from making his move because of the moonlight and the proximity to the house. Deep down, I know who it was. And I know what he thought as I wrecked years of hard work, work that he and I had done together. Now, he was shoving all his ghouls and ghosts into contractor bags. I stood watching, helpless.

“You gonna get down here, give me a hand?” he said without turning around. I felt all my blood turn cold, like he was holding me in thrall. The only heat in my body was in my ears and under my neck, the shame of what I’d done compelling me to go down into the yard and help Dad bag trash.

It was the last Halloween of its kind.