09 Oct Halloween with the Neighbors

Let me start out by saying that I am not a people person.

When the pandemic hit North America it was probably the best damn thing to happen to me.

Most of my time is spent online anyway seeing as I work in data collection for an auditing company. Let me tell you, that wasn’t much fun either given how crazy this year has been.

Anyway, none of that has to do with the problem I’ve been having but I figured that most people start these types of rants off with a few anecdotal notes, so.. there ya go. In a nutshell, I like to be left alone.

This is why when I walked out in early September and saw that my neighbors were already beginning to decorate their house with spooky stuff, like inflatable Frankensteins and ghosts; I was a bit put off.

Now I will admit they do this almost every year. They have four boys, all in elementary and of course they want the holidays to be a big time so why should 2020 be any different?

It’s just that their house sits adjacent to mine, so when I walk out it’s the first thing I see every single day. And now, thanks to these over-the-top decorations, I was going to be seeing even more of it.

Gradually each day they added to the house. A few hanging plastic bats here, some spiderwebs there. I was doing my best to ignore it really.

And I know exactly how I’m going to sound here, being the Grinch of Halloween to some; so naturally, I kept it to myself.

But that ended a few nights back when I started to hear the wails.

They installed large stereo speakers near the attic I think because the screams coming from the attic were intense. It sounded like they had literally managed to get a sound bite from a crime scene.

Let me tell ya, hearing that kind of noise at 3:30 in the morning is a bit alarming.

I instinctively dialed 911 and complained. I wasn’t going to up all night simply because they wanted to turn their place into a haunted house.

Unfortunately for me, the police said that if it wasn’t a serious problem where other neighbors complained that it wasn’t a violation of any noise ordinances in the area.

“You can’t be serious! Just listen to this, how am I supposed to get any sleep?” I shouted holding the phone so they could hear. Maybe that was a bit much, but I was pissed and had every right to be I think.

The operator reminded me that the line was meant for emergencies only and bid me a good night, leaving me frustrated and sleep-deprived.

I went down to my kitchen, got a bottle of Jack, and drank enough to knock myself out on the couch, trying to time the obnoxious screams.

The next day I had cooled down a little and went over to talk to my neighbor after breakfast.

Crossing their front lawn was like going through a minefield, though, thanks to the pop-up ghosts and graves they had placed in their yard. The first few nearly gave me a heart attack as I moved to the door, rapping my knuckles on it to get their attention.

No one came.

I tried again but got no response, so I walked around to the garage and tried there.

It was open and I couldn’t help but notice that their car was gone and there was a large pool of fake blood on the concrete floor. I stepped forward and noted that they had a few other decorations lying around like severed heads and zombie body parts, which I assumed would be placed in the yard. The whole thing smelled of high heaven.

I held my nose and went to the door near their laundry room, trying again to get someone’s attention but again no one came.

I sighed deeply and walked across the fake blood and paused to see where the bizarre smell was coming from. There were trash bags laying near the garage door, soaking wet from the recent storm and I rolled my eyes, realizing it had to be that.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling very neighborly I went ahead and took the trash to the street, and then went back to my house, wondering if any of my other neighbors would care enough to lodge a complaint.

Other than this Halloween nut the other folks around here are pretty ordinary, but none of them live close enough to really hear the noise.

I decided instead that night to try and record it, so that way I could let the authorities listen and prove I was dealing with a nuisance on my block.

Back home I took a shower and got some equipment from downstairs ready to listen, but surprisingly there was no screams that night. Just silence.

I stayed up to the wee hours. I sound so old saying that but it’s true. I was thinking maybe they realized I had called and complained about them so that was why they were quiet, so I called it a night and decided to try again the next day.

It was more of the same. Not a peep. In fact, I was starting to notice that not one of my neighbors was coming out of their house. This guy has four kids, it’s hard to not notice them in the early morning as they scramble to catch the school bus. Especially because the driver of the bus is so courteous he blasts his horn to get mom’s attention for the littlest one to grab a face mask.

But now there was nothing happening. It was that way for nearly a week and I started to grow worried. At first I told myself it was because I hadn’t gotten much sleep, but then I started doubting myself.

What if… the scream I heard hadn’t been some kind of faux imitation?

It rolled around in my mind like a pair of old dice. Trying to figure out what I had heard. What if the wife had been attacked? What if it was a break-in?

Then I thought back to the fake blood and my body got stiff thinking of how I had stepped through it. Had I mistakenly walked into a real crime scene?

The arms. The severed heads. My paranoia was screaming to me, my god how could I have been so blind?

I grabbed my robe and rushed out in the dead of night to go see; using my smartphone to guide the way across the murky suburb streets.

Their house was so quiet now, not even a light on. I started to doubt myself again. Had it always been this quiet? I saw the plastic bats and the pop-up graves and they seemed like they had been there a lot longer than I remembered.

Checking the garage got me nowhere. Now instead of seeing blood, it was spotless. As though someone had come in and cleaned the entire crime scene. It made me internally shiver as a dramatic scene played out in my mind.

Chris, that was the husband’s name. Chris was working in the kitchen, trying to get dinner ready because his wife Janice wasn’t feeling good. It was a plot he had been brewing up for months, I told myself. He was gradually lacing her food to weaken her. And tonight he planned to finish the job.

The scream I heard must have been when she realized something was off. Maybe Chris had decided he couldn’t wait for her to just die. He wanted it swift.

Had I seen him with a pretty young woman around town? Maybe. Yes, I think I had. In that coffee shop near the town square. Was he having an affair?

If I was his age and knew his wife couldn’t perform in the bedroom, I wouldn’t have blamed him. But murder wasn’t the answer.

All these thoughts scrambled through my brain as I stood there in the garage, taking in what had happened. I needed to get inside and check on the wife. What if he had left evidence?

I ran back to my house, my heart racing now as I grabbed a few tools from my own shed. Some of them were missing, but I found what I needed. A crowbar could open my way into their house.

I smashed it open in two tries and stepped into a dusty dreary laundry room.

Trying to turn on the lights had gotten nowhere. Instead, it was obvious that the family wasn’t paying their bills. The house was cold, like a tomb. My footsteps echoed down the empty corridor as I called out to anyone inside. But it looked like the place was abandoned.

I took a step forward when abruptly a fake axe smashed its way out of the wall and I jumped back.

It was just another Halloween prop. But it looked so real. So life-like.

Chris must have just finished placing up more Halloween decorations when he decided to go upstairs and take care of his wife.

The boys were in the den playing video games when they heard the screams. I imagined them running up to check on their mom and then dad panicked.

He must have thought that the games would be loud enough that they wouldn’t hear. Or he had hoped that Janice wouldn’t put up a fight at all.

He had miscalculated and before he knew it, now he had a massacre on his hands.

I walked up the steps, thinking of how he likely had hunted his own children in this house. They must have been so frightened. I could see different places in the wall where they had stopped to catch their breath or skirts in the rug where they had tried to hide.

But their father was consumed with killing now, he was on a mission. Their begging and pleading wouldn’t stop him.

The little one probably went first I thought as I got to the top of the stairs.

The severed heads I had seen in the garage haunted me again as I thought of how he had murdered them. It was beyond repulsive. Upstairs I saw what looked like a hanging corpse, it was upside down from the rafters with its head loose as well and it looked like it was meant to deter visitors from entering the master suite. I ignored the prop and pushed through, desperate to see if I was right about what had transpired.

But the room looked empty as well. Other than more Halloween decorations, it was another immaculate example of how Chris had gone so far to cover his tracks.

What had he done with the rest of their body parts though?

I thought about the trash I had taken out and felt sick. He must have cut up all their bodies and planned to toss them out.

I stood there in a daze, realizing how far he had been willing to go. The poor children turned into shredded cheese just because of his lust for another woman. I couldn’t help but to vomit and shudder as I ran to the bathroom.

As I heaved and caught my breath over the toilet, I checked in there for more clues. He had to have used chemicals on Janice’s body in the tub, I thought as I smelled the weird bleach. Dissolving her with acids would have been easy. But how had he gotten access to anything like that?

Then I thought about my own shed.

Had he broken in and taken my own tools?

Was he trying to… frame me for this? I’m not sure why my brain jumped to that but it instantly made me paranoid and I swallowed hard.

What did I do? I had already contacted the police. Should I file another report?

But they hadn’t listened the first time so now it made me feel like I was going to be a troublemaker. What if I was wrong about all of this? I needed more proof, I decided.

I moved back to the hallway where the corpse was dangling and got a better look at it. My stomach dropped as it occurred to me this was no prop. It was Chris.

I scrambled to find a way to cut him down, hoping to God he was still alive. It seemed unlikely. There was no way that anyone could be after a few minutes, let alone days. But still, I did my best to cut him down and tried to resuscitate him. His skin was blue and his body was rigid.

I felt sick realizing that he had killed himself after finishing his family. It was the only answer that made sense.

Some part of me felt it was deserved, though, if my guess of how events played out was true. There was no way anyone with a conscience could live with themselves after killing their children; I thought.

I took my smartphone out and got a few pictures, the proof I would need to show the cops.

Then I made my way out of there. It felt like the house was haunted now that I knew the reality of what had happened and I didn’t want to spend another hour in there. Not even one minute!

Back home, I tiredly put the final pieces of the puzzle together in my brain. The only part that didn’t make sense was Chris’ lover. Surely she would have come looking for them? Where was she?

I got some shut-eye and tried to not be mortified by the thought that maybe Chris had gone after her too.

The next day I was rudely woken up by the sound of police at my door. I didn’t remember calling them but I let them in anyway.

What they told me had me feeling sick. They were there with a warrant to search my premises. One of my neighbors had reported suspicious activity in the area, and sounds of screaming.

I nearly lost it. Angered that they were taking these reports seriously instead of my own.

But inwardly my stomach was twisting and turning. What if Chris had somehow planted evidence against me before he committed suicide?

The officers combed the house and brought K-9 units to sniff every nook and cranny. It didn’t take long for them to find the trash bags. The ones I was sure that I had taken to the road. Filled with body parts.

The shed was next. They found trace evidence that my fingerprints were all over tools that were used to kill the family.

I started to vomit, trying to find words that made sense. Of course my fingerprints would be there! They were *my* tools for God’s sake!!

I hardly knew what else to show them, so I insisted to the two officers they needed to check out Chris’ house. That was where the true crime had been committed after all.

They questioned me for what felt like hours. I literally was sure I was going to the slammer for this perceived crime. It felt like my life was over.

I was frightened. Shaking like a leaf as I told them what I believed happened.

“This is just a misunderstanding! I pay my taxes. I donate to the city! These people are the ones that are sick!” I stammered. I told them how this had started with the family obsession for Halloween.

My mind started to play tricks on me again as I replayed events.

What if it had all been one massive stunt? What if none of it were real? I was losing my mind, my world was spinning. Were these even real cops? If so, They were going to toss me in a cell and throw away the key. But if not…

I panicked as they kept writing their report and told them I needed to use the restroom. I went to vomit and to think. There wasn’t going to be a way out of this if this was for real. All the evidence pointed toward me. My palms were sweaty and I started to convulse. There *had* to be a way out.

I slammed my fist against the glass, causing shards to break in my hand. My first was bloody now, but my hand was no longer shaking.

In that moment a new version of events played out in my head, one where I was the culprit.

I’m not a people person. I hate my neighbors. Their decorations keep me up at all hours of the night, Halloween and Christmas. This year I had hoped that the pandemic would stop them, but it seemed to spur them on even further.

Had I gone over there to confront them, got into a heated argument, and killed them all? No, it couldn’t be. I didn’t remember doing that.

My reflection showed a twisted and dark smile and it sent shivers down my spine. What *was* happening to me??

I slammed at the glass again, trying to make it break entirely. The police managed to break the bathroom door down and pulled me away.

The rest of the evening was a bit of a blur. They gave me something to calm my nerves and started talking about the event, the reality of what had really happened over the past few days.

My neighbors have been dead for a year now, they said. And another neighbor, down the street; had grown concerned for my well-being when it seemed that I had checked on them more frequently. As though I thought they were still alive.

They had no evidence to hold me, because the trash bags that had body parts didn’t seem to hold any fingerprints, so it could have easily been someone else that had dropped them there.

They had been sitting in my shed, sliced up and mutilated for a year now.

The police bid me a good night, having finished with their wellness check. And I stared out toward the neighbors’ house. It was abandoned, a crime scene from a year ago on Halloween when I had grown tired of their screams and antics.

And as I stared at their decorations I saw their ghosts standing in the front lawn. Glaring at me, pointing at me for their deaths.

I know now how this Halloween will play out, because even though I didn’t anticipate this nightmare; now I’ve become a part of their celebration.