The Grim Reaper's Replacement

Every year, by September 25th, my nondescript little house in the suburbs can often be mistaken for a haunted old shack or a graveyard. My mother would ravage the stores and buy everything she could fit into two or three shopping carts (not to mention my father's, brother's, and my arms) from the Halloween decoration outlet store and dump it on our roof, our porch, and our front lawn. My poor neighbors often woke the day after our Halloween shopping spree to find my father tossing a fake corpse over one of the branches of the oak in our front yard.

And no matter what the theme of the year, standing in a place of honor beside our cobweb-covered door, was a life-sized, black-swathed statue of the Grim Reaper, complete with scythe and motion sensors that, when triggered, would make its eyes glow red and whisper, "Have a happy Halloween... It may be your last..." We were thrilled every time people would bolt off in appreciative terror.

A month before Halloween when I was thirteen, my father opened the attic door and the Grim Reaper tumbled down on top of him. With the last of its batteries from the previous years, it said, "Have a happy Halloween," and its head rolled off.

It was damaged beyond repair. It was with great sadness that we packed away our old deathly friend in a box that we placed on the curb for the garbage man. In its memory, we kept its scythe, and my father vowed to be a ghost every Halloween for the rest of his natural born life; he believes that the Grim Reaper wished to take his life that day and died trying to do his duty.

But bereaved or not, the problem of what horrifying character to put beside our door still remained. We scoured every store for a replacement, but each Grim Reaper fell short of the glory ours had had.

A week before Halloween, we were desperate, and in a last-ditch attempt at holding onto our Grim Reaper statue, my ten-year-old brother Chase chose a huge black robe and a skull mask for his costume, and took up the statue's scythe. Chase was a full six inches shorter than the statue, his robe dragged the ground clumsily, and the scythe's blade waved comically over his hooded head, but he stood heroically beside the door despite the family's giggles.

Hidden in the oversized robe, Chase was able to lean against the wall and appear motionless. He didn't have the sinister presence that we missed from our beloved Grim Reaper statue, so people didn't notice the small Grim Reaper by the door.

Until a contest judge came by.

Every Halloween, our neighborhood had a contest, and we always came out on top for the Scariest House category. It was always the Grim Reaper statue that most impressed the judge; no decoration from any other house was as scary.

The judge looked over the house with a practiced eye as he walked up our fake blood-spattered walkway. He took in the cobwebs, the graves, and the coffins with an appreciative nod, then stopped when he saw the new Grim Reaper beside our door.

"Kind of takes away from the sinister feel of the house, doesn't it?" the judge asked my mother as he leaned down peered closely at my brother's mask.

This was the moment Chase had been looking for.

"Does it?" Chase asked him in a gravelly voice. "Well, how about this?"

He lifted the scythe high and the judge screamed like a little girl, stumbling backward off our porch and straight into an open coffin beside the walkway.

We won the contest that year, and Chase has been our Grim Reaper ever since.