Trick or Treat
As Lenny Watkins applied the white greasepaint to his face, he was careful not to get any of it into his eyes or on his hair, which he had darkened for the occasion. Once he looked pale and cadaverous, he washed his hands and put on the black suit he had worn to his aunt's wedding and then fastened a long, satin-lined black cape around his neck. Finally, he took the plastic fangs out of their package and put them in his mouth.
The young teenager critically examined his reflection in his mother's full-length mirror. He did not look anything like Bela Lugosi or even Gary Oldman, but he did make a convincing vampire.
No doubt slayer Buffy Summers would approve, he thought.
Once he was satisfied with how he looked in his costume, the boy got an old pillowcase out of the linen closet and headed toward the front door, eager for the night's festivities to begin.
"Lenny!" his mother called from the kitchen. "Wait a minute. I want to take your picture before you go."
Alva Watkins went out to the foyer, carrying her Sony digital camera in her hand.
"This is your last Halloween, and I want to capture it on film."
"Just a second, Mom," Lenny replied, as he reached for the tube of artificial blood in his pants pocket.
He removed the cap, squeezed a few drops onto the corners of his mouth and let the sticky red goo drip down his chin.
"How does that look?" he asked.
"Be careful you don't ruin your suit! Do you know how much it cost?"
"Come on, Mom. You know I'll never wear it again. I'll outgrow it before we have another wedding in the family."
"You heard me, young man. Don't you dare ruin that suit!"
"Smile," she said and then aimed the camera and snapped his photograph.
Alva called one final command as her son ran out the front door.
"Be back home by nine o'clock. You have school tomorrow."
This was to be the last year Lenny went trick-or-treating. By next October 31, he would be fourteen years old and a freshman in high school.
"You'll be too old for Halloween then," his parents insisted.
"Being thirteen sucks!" he said when no one else was in earshot.
It was an age in limbo. Although thirteen-year-olds were expected to act maturely, they were still treated like children. Being fourteen probably would not be much better. Lenny would be too young to drive a car or to get a part-time job (other than a newspaper route), and at the same time, too old for most of the activities younger children enjoyed, including trick-or-treating. In fact, most of the other kids his age had already stopped going out on Halloween, although many of them persisted in egging cars, soaping windows and toilet papering the trees on Mischief Night.
With his long, black cape billowing out behind him, the teenager walked to the end of the driveway, looked in both directions and spied a group of children heading toward Main Street. That was the way most youngsters went since the mom-and-pop businesses along the busy thoroughfare passed out candy on Halloween. Furthermore, the houses in that neighborhood were spaced closely together, and a kid could usually fill his trick-or-treat bag in under three hours.
Lenny, however, was not interested in fighting the crowds on Main Street. Instead, he turned right, not left, and headed toward Federal Street. The houses along that steep, winding road were few and far between and thus did not attract many trick-or-treaters. Since this was to be his last hurrah, so to speak, he decided to boldly go where not many trick-or-treaters had gone before.
Feeling like Captain Kirk commanding the Enterprise, he hiked up the dimly lit road. Along the way, he reminisced about past Halloweens. Like most boys, he had always wanted to dress up as a frightening psycho killer such as Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers or the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface. His mother, however, who forbade her only child to watch anything stronger than a PG-13 rated movie, had always insisted her son wear much more appropriate, family-friendly costumes. Consequently, on previous Halloweens, Lenny had to dress up in what he considered "sissy" costumes such as Garfield, Snoopy, Barney, Big Bird and Jar Jar Binks. This year, at least, he finally had a costume worthy of the holiday.
* * *
Lenny was already breathing heavily from the exertion of walking up the steep incline when he approached the first house on the hill. There were no streetlights along Federal Street, and the small Cape Cod-style structure had no overhead porch light or lamppost at the end of the driveway. He had to walk gingerly through the fallen leaves that littered the front yard so as not to trip over a hidden branch, a rock or a garden hose and fall flat on his face. The teenager also had to be careful of walking through the yards belonging to people who owned dogs. He certainly did not want to trudge through dog poop with his good shoes on.
The house had no doorbell, so Lenny knocked loudly on the screen door. A balding, middle-aged man answered.
"Trick or treat!" Lenny announced as he held out his empty pillowcase.
"We don't usually get many kids up this way, so my wife stopped buying candy a few years back," the man apologized.
Then he guiltily reached into his pocket, took out his wallet and extracted a dollar bill.
"Here you go, kid. Happy Halloween," he added as he opened the screen door and dropped the money into Lenny's pillowcase.
"Gee, thanks, mister!"
Although Lenny sounded like Beaver Cleaver, he felt more like Sweeney Todd. He waited several moments on the doorstep, and then he followed the man inside.
An hour later Lenny was ringing the bell of another house: a raised ranch nearly three-quarters of a mile uphill from the Cape Cod. This time a pretty sixteen-year-old girl, a junior at Woodland Hills High School, answered the door.
"I think you overdid it with the fake blood, Drac," she said sarcastically.
"Who is it, Patty?" asked the girl's mother who was sitting on the living room sofa watching a rerun of Reba on Lifetime TV.
"A trick-or-treater."
"I'll handle this, sweetie," the woman said politely, sending her daughter away. Then she turned to Lenny and explained, "I'm sorry, but we don't believe in celebrating Halloween. It's against our religion."
"What's wrong with Halloween?" Lenny asked impertinently as the woman started to shut the door on him.
"The people in my church believe it's a pagan holiday that began with the Druids."
"Who were the Druids?"
"An ancient religious sect that practiced human sacrifice."
"You mean they killed people?" Lenny asked, pretending to be horrified, yet unable to contain his laughter.
The woman became anxious. There was something about the boy that disturbed her. She and her daughter were home alone, and she had no idea who might be hiding under the white grease paint, black hair dye and fake blood. The frightened mother tried to shut the front door, but Lenny had stuck his foot out and blocked it.
* * *
"It's getting late," Cal Watkins announced after looking down at his wristwatch. "Hasn't Lenny come home yet?"
"No," his wife replied. "But this is the last year he'll be able to go trick-or-treating, so he's probably making the most of it."
She looked up at the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. It was 9:05 p.m.
"He's only five minutes late, dear. There is no need to worry yet. I'm sure he'll be home any minute now."
"I suppose so. Did he go out with a large group of kids?"
"I don't know. Why do you ask?"
"With all the kooks in the world today, it just seems safer to stay with a group."
"Oh, Cal! Lenny is thirteen years old; he's no longer a child. I don't think he's going to get into a car with some pervert."
"That's not the only danger out there, Alva. Look at all those sick people who put razor blades in apples and straight pins in candy bars. And then last year, there were reports of people putting LSD on chewing gum."
Alva shook her head and laughed.
"Every year worried parents bring their kids' Halloween candy down to the police station to have it x-rayed. But have you ever known anyone who actually found a razor blade in an apple or a straight pin in a candy bar? I swear all those stories are nothing but urban legends."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that. What about the tainted Tylenol a few years back? That wasn't an urban legend."
"That was real, I'll give you that. But what about the red M&Ms scare?"
"Okay. Maybe I read the newspapers too much," Cal admitted.
"More like the tabloids!" his wife laughed.
Twenty minutes later, Lenny strolled up the Watkinses' brick walkway. His father was waiting on the front porch for him.
"How did you make out tonight?" he asked, not bothering to reprimand his son for coming home late. "Did you get a big selection of candy?"
"Yeah, I did," Lenny replied, sleepily stifling a yawn.
"Your pillowcase doesn't look too full. When I was a boy, I used to fill mine to the top. Of course, most people these days don't hand out the full-size candy bars, just those little snack-size ones that are gone in two bites."
As his teenage son walked past him on the front steps, Cal Watkins smelled a strong, unpleasant odor lingering on the boy.
"You'd better take a shower before you go to bed, Len."
"I will, Dad."
Lenny went straight upstairs and into the bathroom, not bothering to stop to talk to his mother, who was in the kitchen, making bag lunches for the following day.
"Was that Lenny?" Alva asked her husband when she heard the bathroom door shut.
"Yes. He smells a little gamey, so I told him to take a shower. He must have stepped in something on his way home."
"I hope he didn't get anything on that suit. I told him to be careful!"
"I don't know about the suit," Cal laughed, "but I'd be willing to bet you'll have to clean his shoes tomorrow."
When she heard the shower running, Alva went into the bathroom and picked her son's suit up off the floor. She brought it out into the kitchen and held it up to the light.
"Uh! What did he ... ?"
She looked at her hands in distaste.
"Oh, that boy! He got that damned fake blood all over his suit! I'll bet it's ruined."
"They sell that blood in all the toy and novelty stores. It must wash out."
"It had better! If it doesn't, he'll be sorry. If it doesn't come out in the laundry, I'll take the money out of his allowance to get it dry-cleaned."
The shower stopped, but Lenny did not come out of the bathroom.
"Are you okay in there, son?" Cal asked through the door.
"Yeah, Dad. This blood doesn't wanna come off, so I thought I'd soak in the bathtub awhile to get good and clean."
"Okay, just don't fall asleep."
A few minutes later, Cal and Alva Watkins called goodnight to their son through the closed bathroom door and turned in for the night. It had been a long, exhausting day, and both of them immediately fell asleep.
* * *
The alarm clock went off at 5:45 a.m., and Cal and Alva Watkins reluctantly got out of bed. The sleepy husband headed for the master bathroom, while his wife went down to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. When Cal went downstairs ten minutes later, he turned on the radio to listen to the news, weather and traffic report.
Rather than the usual comic exchange between the early morning deejay and his latest intern, a special news broadcast was being aired.
"Police have no suspects in the brutal slayings of Mr. and Mrs. Philip D. Sanderson who resided at 21 Federal Street. Philip, 63, and his wife, Mary Louise, 61, were found with their throats slashed in their Cape Cod home. If anyone has information concerning these murders, please call the special police hotline at—Wait a minute! This just in. Police have discovered the bodies of at least twelve additional people living along Federal Street. An unconfirmed source has told our news desk that an unknown killer left a trail of bodies in the homes along the steep, winding rural road. These deaths apparently occurred between the hours of 7:00 and 9:00 p.m.—a time when many of the area's children were walking around town, trick-or-treating."
Fear etched on her face, Alva turned to her husband.
"You don't suppose Lenny saw anything, do you?" she asked. "My God! He might be traumatized for life!"
"I'm sure if he had, he would have said something when he came home last night. But he didn't say a word; he went straight upstairs and got into the shower."
It suddenly occurred to Cal that this was not Lenny's typical behavior.
Alva's eyes went to her son's suit, which was hanging from the handle of the kitchen door. Red stains covered the front of the jacket and dotted the pants.
"You don't suppose ... ?" she began before shuddering and becoming silent.
His face pale, Cal got up from his chair and headed for the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. He entered his son's bedroom without knocking. The room was empty, and the teenager's bed had not been slept in.
"Lenny?" he shouted.
He hoped against hope that the boy had risen early and already made his bed—something he had never done before—but such is the wild hope of those in desperation.
"Lenny?" he yelled again, heading back down the stairs.
"Where is he?" Alva asked.
"I don't know. He's not in his room."
They turned in unison to the bathroom door at the top of the staircase. It was still shut. Cal raced back up the stairs with his frantic wife only three steps behind him.
"Lenny, are you in there?" the father called.
He turned the handle and opened the door. His son lay in the bathtub with his head above the water, resting upon his chest.
"He's fallen asleep in the tub," he told his wife with relief.
The bath water was dark red in color, almost maroon.
He must have used several tubes of that fake blood, Cal thought as he reached for a clean bath towel to give to his son.
"Come on, Lenny. Wake up. You've got school today. Lenny?"
There was no response. Cal sat on the side of the tub and tried to shake his son's arm, but Lenny's body pitched forward into the water. Alva screamed. Her husband pulled the boy out of the tub and laid him on the tile floor. That's when both parents saw the teenager's arms neatly sliced open at the wrists.
The grieving mother's heart-rending sobs filled the air as she hugged her son's lifeless body to her breast. Meanwhile, the father reached over and pulled the plug in the bathtub. When the red-tinged water went down the drain, Cal found his straight-edged razor at the bottom of the tub. It was the implement his son had used to end his own life. It was also the weapon he had used to slit the throats of the unfortunate people who lived along Federal Street.
* * *
Less than a week later, the police closed the case of the multiple murders that had occurred that dreadful Halloween night. It was left to the psychiatrists to try to understand the reasons why a thirteen-year-old boy would kill so many innocent people without any provocation.
None of their usual explanations applied to Lenny Watkins. He had not been inspired to commit the murders by the violence in movies, television, video games or rock and roll music, for his mother had always shielded him from such bad influences. He had not been sexually, physically or mentally abused, nor did he have any known neurological or emotional problems.
Many people in the community blamed the holiday itself for the heinous crimes. They felt Halloween promoted dangerous ideas such as witchcraft and devil worship. The head of the local PTA, whose sister had been a victim of the Federal Street massacre, began a petition that demanded the town ban trick-or-treating in the future.
No one asked either Cal or Alva Watkins to sign the petition. The poor parents had their own cross to bear.
On November 1, Alva sent Lenny's suit to the dry cleaners, and on November 3, her son was laid to rest in it at Mountain Laurel Cemetery.
Cal Watkins did not shave for the following three months. When he finally decided to remove his beard, he bought an electric shaver to do so. He could never bring himself to touch a straight-edged razor again, for it would always be a hideous and painful reminder of Lenny's final Halloween.
Look who got into the trick-or-treat candy. (Just don't expect any Godiva chocolate, Salem!)
