Danny's Last Treat

Children stopped at the old manse, its darkened porch and front-yard pumpkin staring menacingly as they came to the curb and turned away.

Danny was the last to arrive on the dead end street, his bag of candy heavy in his hand. The moon over the trees cast lengthy silver shadows across the dilapidated roof. He, too, began to turn from the house when he heard the unmistakable creak of the front door.

Danny was caught between fear and mystery. Between running back up the road or crossing the dried lawn to inspect the opened door.

Finally he started on the walkway. He mounted old, unused steps. The moon vanished above the awning. He looked around him only for a moment, scared to take his eyes off the darkness growing from the doorway.

"Hello?"

Nothing answered from the darkness. No air moved, though the door opened further, squealing on its dry, rusted hinges.

Danny adjusted his straw hat and stepped inside, and when he had taken several steps into the narrow hallway, the door slammed closed behind him, stuck shut when Danny tried to open it again.

There was an eerie silver light from the corridor, as if someone traveled just beyond the end of the hall with a lamp. Danny bent his short neck to listen to the sound of wind rising from under the floorboards. Did the old house have a basement?

He searched for another door, but as he traveled down the hallway, the narrow corridor seemed only to lengthen, providing no exit. The way he had come had vanished into darkness...walled off and impossible for Danny to retrace his steps.

Beneath his feet the sound grew into a mechanical moan, a whisper of metal, or maybe the grinding of bone. Then the hallway stopped before a small door, just his size, its small black knob shining in the now brilliant golden light. There was the faintest stink of "bathroom" odor.

He set his candy beside the wall and opened the door to the stairs.

Hands free, Danny walked the steps into the dark pit. The walls just beyond the handrails were like black licorice covered in dark chocolate, oiled down with grease and coal. He touched them to know they were there. His face was their opposite, ashen and drained of blood. He was like a luminescent ghost in the eternal night.

He reached the bottom step and felt damp soil beneath his feet. He strained to look into the empty bowels of the ageless cellar.

"If anyone is here, say something!" Danny yelled. His echo was painfully sharp, the room so much smaller than he had guessed. His voice clashed like a cymbal between the stone walls.

"I'm here, Scarecrow" said a small, sly voice from one of the dark corners. "You found your way all right? I'm glad you've come."

Danny's heart skidded, thumped, tumbled. He smelled that musky scent again, that bathroom smell. Mold mostly, probably. Maybe death had been here once, though a long time ago. He walked away from the bottom step.

A dull, heatless light shined suddenly, and gravitated in the middle of the cellar, settling over an empty rocking chair. But the chair didn't sit still for long. It began to rock back and forth, slowly, relaxing its course under empty air.

A shape of a little boy grew from the light, holding Danny's bag of Halloween candy.

Danny thought, I left my candy upstairs. "My candy?"

"I have it here." The boy reached down and dipped his hands into the bag. Danny could hear the rattle of leaves. "It's really good. Would you like a piece?"

Danny moved forward, slowly at first, then quickly. He snatched the bag and stepped back, off balance on his heels.

"I never said you could have any!" Danny's bottom lip extended forward in a sad grimace. The ghost's eyes darkened, the light dimmed.

"I didn't want you for your candy anyway. There's something I want to tell you."

"Tell me?" What does he want to tell me? Danny thought. Some kind of secret from beyond the grave?

"Yes, I'd like to tell you that it's time I get back into the swing of things. You know, be human again."

Danny half closed his eyes against the growing light.

There was a flash of white skull just beneath pale skin, so quick, then gone again.

"I think you'll do."

"Do for what?"

"Do for me, of course. You'll have to trade places with me, that is, and I'll go up in your body and live your life." The ghost-boy grinned, lips pulled up and back in a joker's smile.

"You cannot!" Danny yelled. He threw himself back against the steps and as he touched them they vanished. He lost his balance and fell through to the floor. A sudden throbbing pressure against his brain felt like fingers squeezing his soft tissue. His candy flew from his hands as a half-rotted skeleton, hair sticking on top of its scalp like a wig, strode from where the chair had been.

The light failed, but before it did Danny saw the horror before him. Worse than the skeleton or the fingers prodding his brain, or even the basement, like swimming in pitch. He saw himself, smiling down at him...or whatever he was now.

Danny tried to find his bag. As he searched the floor he laid his right hand over his left and what he felt was the disgustingly cold bone of a fleshless hand.

His hand.

"Come back here!" he yelled.

Had the ghost-boy already gone?

Danny stood. He felt old and decayed, like a hundred-year-old man. He felt like his grandfather.

A laugh came from upstairs, a songbird's twitter. Sharp and mean.

"You'll find your way out someday," the boy called. He had Danny's body now, and Danny had the old bones. "Learn how to use magic. Then wait for someone to arrive."

"And when I get out of here," Danny screamed, "I'll find you."

"Unlikely," the boy said. He was farther away now, almost out of the house. Almost free. "I've been down there for a hundred and fifty years."

The front door slammed.

Danny found a few pieces of candy on the ground and ate them. When they were gone the only thing he wished he had was a little light to see by, and as if by magic, there was a sudden soft glow from the floor. He smiled. Learning already. He found the rest of the candy and sat down in the chair to eat it, taking his time, making it last. He didn't know if anyone would come around next Halloween, but if someone did, that someone would be sorry. Danny sure wasn't going to stick around here for a hundred and fifty years.