MicroHorror

Joy Lane was anything but; it was the most desolate street in the whole of Benningfield and that was saying something. Ever since the mill had closed the place had just fallen apart. But the town still had its attractions.

The big house at the end of Joy Lane was haunted and therefore a favorite haunt of thrill-seekers on Halloween. An old man was supposed to have died in the house, of starvation, and kids went looking for him at midnight. But the only thing that was ever found was freshly gnawed bones on the stoop on November the 1st.

Geoff was good at ducking for apples. He had small teeth and a wide bite and he didn’t mind getting water up his nose.

He got up Petey’s nose though, big time. Petey waited for his chance and when Geoff went down for the third time Petey assisted him with a good grip on his ankles. Geoff tried to fight his way out of the tub, but Petey just shoved Geoff’s ankles up towards the back of his head. Then it was simply a matter of waiting till the thud, thud, thud, on the bottom of the tub died away.

“Billy. You sure it’s okay to be in a graveyard on Halloween.”

“Don’t sweat it, Joleen, ain’t nuthin’ gonna happen to ya.”

Billy stretched out on a tomb.

“Stars are real beautiful tonight.”

“You got that right,” said a man’s voice.

“Jesus!”

“And you got that wrong. Name’s Bee Ell Zee, Bub. But you can call me Bee Ell.”

“Where in Hell did you come from?”

“Third furnace on the left. Nah, just kiddin’. I’m from a little place called Limbo, I think you’ll
like it.”

“Joleen?”

“She took off when you disappeared. Just as well. Only got room for one.”

Mickey often used Old Jeffer’s scarecrow to frighten his younger sisters. He told tales of how the straw man could come to life at night and carry off and murder little children. On Halloween he dressed like the scarecrow and laughed delightedly when, out of sheer terror, Sadie peed her pants. Walking into town that night to go trick-or-treating he heard a hoarse voice say “You’re a nasty, spiteful, little bastard.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones…”

As the scarecrow lifted a rock an ugly grin split the skin of its pumpkin head.

“Whatever you say, kid.”

Benny liked trick-or-treating. It was a great way to get candy and maybe scare some little kids. He had a bitchin’ Dracula costume and real fangs that his dad, an orthodontist, had made for him. He rang the condo’s doorbell and prepared to scare.

“Dracula, how quaint,” said the old guy who came to the door. “Fangs and everything. But blood sucking is so passé, so messy. I think this is better.”

Benny saw the man’s eyes light up like car stoplights, just before his own eyes were sucked from his skull, closely followed by his mortal soul.

“Damned dust” coughed Carruthers prising open the heavy oak coffin
and surveying the remains of the undead with contempt.
“You stupidly believed in everlasting life you sad,
blighted, ignorant fool and now you’re dust.
You have come, deservedly, to nothing:
Dirt in a wooden box.”
Turning away, Carruthers felt
a strange unease,
growing inside
him.

Do the dark watches of the night tick? Long, stiff hands twitching to a faltering pulse. Impassive cheese-yellow faces marking humanities progress along that narrowing tunnel of inevitability, the passage of time.

Septimus Snaith reaches for the bottle’s soothing coolness and pours molten fire into a grimy cup. Malt whisky marks the passage of time well enough for his purposes; let his idle mind wander where it will.

He picks up the jeweler’s loupe and screws it again into the reddened socket of his left eye. Before him, on a black velvet cloth, a half-hunter watch lies unclothed. Trembling, it awaits his pleasure. Magnified and unmagnified views jostle for Snaith’s attention as he maneuvers the pin-sharp tips of tiny tweezers. Easing blued steel into the beating brass heart of the watch, he slows the balance-wheel’s oscillation by a fraction.

Leaning back, Snaith rubs at his chest, scraping his cheap cotton shirt over sallow, sweating skin. He has heartburn again. Boiling acid surging out between his ribs to scald the veins of his neck and shoulder. He reaches for another bottle. Milk of Magnesia and Scotch: an eclectic mix. As Snaith sucks the chalky cream from the bottle’s ink-blue neck, the clocks around him whirr, creak, groan and then strike. Twelve emphatic beats.

Midnight: the crossing point between one day and the next. Between one world and the next. A moment of infinitesimal length marked by the scuttle of fleshless feet crossing the divide.

An hourglass slams onto the bench between Snaith’s hands, crushing the half-hunter to dust. The skeletal fist that grips the ebony spindle almost hidden within folds of coarse, black cloth.

Then, even as Snaith focuses on it through the smeared glass of the bell, the last grain of sand slips through the pinched neck and falls, forever.