Faceless Fear
My God, I can’t believe this! I followed my children, Sam and Louise. They kept leaving after bed, in the middle of the night. Refused to answer my questions.
“Where were you, damn it?” I’d demanded days ago. “And don’t think I don’t know this isn’t the first time–”
“It’ll all become clear soon enough, Daddy,” eight-year-old Sam said. “On Halloween.”
“That’s right, Pops.” Louise, my rebellious fourteen-year-old, sloshed milk onto her cereal. “On Halloween.”
I threatened to ground them, to spank them, but they’d… changed. A drastic transformation had taken place, and the way they watched me from the corners of their eyes, narrow slits of avarice as if they needed something from me.
But what?
That was three nights before Halloween. The following night I fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake when my alarm went off at ten PM. The same happened last night. Determined not to sleep through this Halloween night, I sat in my easy chair reading, when at ten o’clock I heard the back door, same as the previous nights.
I moved after the noise and, from the back door, saw my children in their nightgowns. I almost called to them, but other children had joined them: the neighbor twins, Lisa and Leslie, and Tommy Durham down the street, walking in groups that merged and grew with others. As I followed, the children grew in number, shuffling steps. They moved through back yards, through the middle of blocks, so I took to the street to circumnavigate fences they climbed. I got ahead of them and hid behind a bush, waiting for the phenomenon of youthful rebelliousness to pass.
When the children approached, through leafy briars I spied blank faces in the silver splendor of tonight’s full moon. Not just blank faces, but no faces! No eyes nor noses nor mouths, just a horde of faceless children, and my two daughters walked among them. I spied Louise by the color of her hair–Sam was too short to spot in the group–and when I saw Louise’s pink nightgown billowing in the night breeze, the lack of eyes, of face, I drew in a breath to scream.
Instead I passed out. I guess I hyperventilated and when I came to, the children had already passed, by now a hundred or so. And I, of course, followed their path to the middle of the schoolyard where I had watched Sam play on monkey bars, like I’d watched her older sister when she was younger. Lured by the impossible–faceless children!–I crept closer, wandering how to help my own kids, kneeling behind a tree, when I saw what they gathered around. The schoolyard was down a hill, and from my vantage point I saw… my God, I saw!–faces piled high in the sandbox. Cherubic features smiling at the night sky, gazing heavenward. But that’s not the worst part.
Next, the children–God, the children!–knelt as if in church. Slits formed where their faces should be; sharp canines erupted with savage growls, and they feasted upon their own faces. The sound of masticating and rending of facial flesh! The wet splatter of blood! I vomited and was glad to be far enough away that they couldn’t hear.
Just then, a little hand lighted upon my shoulder.
“Your face is next, Daddy.” Sam spoke through a slit full of giant fangs, no eyes nor nose. “I’m going to eat it myself.”
I ran back home to dial 911, but the phones aren’t working. And they’re coming, so I’ve written all this down as quickly as I could… and then on to the neighbors–
I can hear them now: screams next door. It sounds like the twins are home eating the faces off their parents and now… the sound of my back door… oh, God! The traipsing of little feet; the wet gurgling of girlish laughter.
They’re at my door! Trying the locked knob, twisting it… because they want my face, they…
