By Rebekah Conard
Mom and Dad left Siobhan in charge on Halloween night. She had turned 16 in May, and her parents finally decided she could watch her brother alone for a few hours. Siobhan enthusiastically agreed. She was definitely old enough to babysit, and her parents were definitely not too old to go out to a Halloween party. Siobhan had even held it together when her parents entered the room in their “Mr. and Mrs. Dracula” costumes. The outfits were silly, but her parents looked happy, and as long as Siobhan didn’t have to be seen with them, that’s all that mattered.
She waved goodbye to them as they stepped out into the chill October air. Once the car was out of sight, Caerwyn entered the living room dressed in a classic “sheet ghost” costume. It was a low-effort job. The eye-holes were jagged and fraying as if the scissors went in without a plan. Siobhan wondered where he got the sheet – hopefully from somewhere it wouldn’t be missed.
“What, that’s it?” Siobhan remarked.
Her brother shrugged. “Everyone likes ghosts. Where’s yours?”
“I don’t need a costume to stand on the sidewalk and watch you ring doorbells.”
“Or,” Caerwyn rocked on his heels childishly, “you extra don’t need one if you stay here and hand out candy.”
Siobhan smiled. She could tell the boy was pouting and giving her puppy-eyes somewhere under that sheet. The two of them were pretty close for teen-and-tween siblings. They certainly hadn’t inherited their parents’ trust issues. Caerwyn was 12, and a good egg. Siobhan knew he could take care of himself. Her friends had siblings his age, and most of their parents felt comfortable leaving them alone. Several of them would be trick-or-treating in packs tonight.
“Who’re you going with?”
“Jason.”
Siobhan crossed her arms. “Just Jason?”
“Yeah. That’s okay, right?”
Jason was an idiot and a brat, but she supposed he was harmless enough. He wasn’t a bad influence so much as an annoying one. She’d have felt better if a few other kids tagged along to rein him in. Siobhan sighed and found her brother’s shoulders through the formless sheet to give him a squeeze.
“Stay on the sidewalks. Don’t go anywhere dark or sketchy. Don’t get separated from Jason. And if anything weird happens, come right home. You don’t get me in trouble; I don’t get you in trouble. Got it?”
Caerwyn nodded vigorously.
“Good,” Siobhan finished, “and you owe me a full-size candy bar.” She gave him a gentle bonk on the head and left Caerwyn to his Halloween plans.
—
The first hour of trick-or-treat was pretty standard. Siobhan camped near the front door with an iPad streaming a marathon of Courage the Cowardly Dog on some YouTube channel with a god-awful bouncing watermark. The doorbell would ring, and she would answer. She got goosebumps up and down her arms every time, but it felt like part of the Halloween experience. At least, that was the excuse she’d give her parents if they’d been here to tell her to put on a sweater.
Siobhan knew most of the kids who showed up. The little kids were all cute. Most of the parents in the suburbs could afford to splurge on a costume from Spirit Halloween. There were lots of Marios and Disney Princesses, and, somehow, Minecraft was still popular. Many of the older kids wore DIY costumes of characters she didn’t recognize – and a few she did, to her chagrin. She couldn’t decide whether she loved or hated the Skibidi Toilet who asked the candy be thrown directly into the bowl around his neck. Points for creativity, I guess, she thought as she rewarded herself with a cherry Lifesaver. Siobhan paid herself a candy tax after every trick-or-treater.
Around the top of the second hour, she answered the door to two sheet ghosts: one with black mesh over the eyes, and one with crudely cut eye-holes. Without missing a beat, Jason thrust out his candy-sack with a chipper, “Trick-or-treat!” Siobhan sneered and gave him the candy as Caerwyn pushed past her into the house. Jason followed up with a rehearsed, “Thank you!” before following the other ghost inside, tracking a few crumpled autumn leaves onto the carpet.
“What happened? You run out of houses already?” Siobhan asked warily.
“Um,” was the only reply from her brother. Then came a bizarre squealing sound accompanied by an odd motion from beneath Caerwyn’s costume. Siobhan whipped the sheet over his head.
He was holding a baby. It stared at her with wide eyes.
“What the f–” Siobhan checked her language instinctively, though the boys probably wouldn’t care if she swore. “What is that?”
Jason answered, “I think it’s a baby. You know, those little people –”
“I can see it’s a baby. Why do you have it? Whose is it?”
“Good questions,” Jason began again.
She interrupted him. “Not you. Caerwyn, what happened?”
“We went trick-or-treating at the trailer park,” the boy admitted sheepishly.
Siobhan rolled her eyes and turned off the light above the front door. Mom would blow a gasket if she found out. She had some opinions about the kind of people who live in trailer parks. Siobhan didn’t share those opinions, but it was still a place they were specifically asked to avoid.
“The lights were on!” Jason interjected.
“Yeah, most of the trailers had their lights on. So, it was legal trick-or-treating,” added Caerwyn.
“What happened?” Siobhan demanded again.
“Well, one of the doors opened right after the first knock, and this old lady poked her head out and was like, ‘Trick or treat!’”
“And Caerwyn said ‘trick’!” Jason tattled with his hands cupped around his mouth.
“No, you said ‘trick’, dumbass. Sorry –” Caerwyn looked down and apologized to the baby, who had been listening intently whether or not it could understand him. “Anyway, she handed us this baby and shut the door. She wouldn’t open up again so we just left.”
“And you brought it back here?”
“Well, you said to come right home if something weird happened! I think this qualifies as weird.” Caerwyn hoisted the baby to emphasize its weirdness.
“Yeah,” Jason agreed, “what would you want us to do, just leave it there by itself?”
“Jason. Go home.” Siobhan pointed to the door. If you had given her a week, she couldn’t have come up with a single way in which Jason could improve the situation.
“Make me.” He opened some candy and put his feet up like he owned the place.
Fine, whatever. She closed in on her brother. “You cannot be this stupid. Neither one of you thought it was a bad idea to walk away with someone’s baby?”
“It’s ours now, right?” said Jason. He tossed candy wrappers on the floor.
“Jesus, you’re stupid.” Siobhan was about ready to kick that kid. She fished a light jacket out of the closet and shoved her feet into a pair of sneakers. “Come on. We’re taking it back.”
—
The sidewalk ended in a large, damp pile of leaves beneath a failing streetlight. The flicker attracted the attention of the baby, who babbled as it craned its neck to look over Siobhan’s shoulder. Was that the first sound the baby had made since leaving the house? Siobhan supposed she should be thankful it was a quiet kid. During the walk, Jason and Caerwyn had taken turns trying to spook the baby or make it laugh. They eventually gave up after receiving no reaction. The group kicked their way through the leaves and entered the park.
A few mostly-neat rows of mobile homes stretched out before them, about half of which had their lights on to invite trick-or-treaters. Every lot they passed had at least one jack-o-lantern or pumpkin. One doorway practically had an army of pumpkins with colorful marker-drawn faces and scribbles. A small woman sat in a lawn chair making origami trinkets for a group of fascinated kids. Jason spotted an unattended candy bowl and made a beeline for it. The Sharpie-and-cardboard sign said, “Please Take 1,” but the boy chose to interpret it as “one handful.”
The light was off over the door of the trailer the boys led Siobhan to. She didn’t feel comfortable knocking on an unlit door – on Halloween, that felt illegal. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that she was the “grown-up” here, and her errand was more important than candy. She shifted the baby’s weight on her shoulder and gave the door a sturdy knock. There was no answer, so she tried again. Still nothing. The curtains were drawn with no light behind them, and nothing could be heard stirring inside. As Siobhan was about to knock for a third time, Jason decided he could do it better. He banged on the door rapidly and loudly with both fists. The noise seemed to bother the otherwise stoic baby. It squirmed and let out a tiny wail of protest.
“That’s enough.” Siobhan found Jason’s shirt collar through the costume and dragged him away from the door.
A screen door slammed and the kids nearly jumped out of their skins. Turning, they saw a man emerge from the neighboring trailer. “The HELL is all this about?” he grumbled.
Siobhan shook her head, searching for words. “Oh, my god. We’re so sorry. We didn’t mean to disturb –”
“You! You get out of here with that thing!” He made a swinging gesture as if to shoo them away, but didn’t come any closer.
The baby had locked a piercing gaze on the man, who was doing his best to avoid eye contact. Admittedly, the baby was a bit creepy. Siobhan’s arms were getting tired from carrying it, and she was beginning to lose patience with the whole ordeal. “Sir, do you know who lives here? They –”
“No-body!” he shouted, “No-body lives there. No-body woman and her devil-spawn. Away!” He repeated the last word several more times, getting louder and angrier.
Hearing the creak of squeaky hinges, Siobhan turned. Jason held the trailer door open as Caerwyn rushed inside. “Door’s open!” Jason said triumphantly. Siobhan, too flustered to argue, followed the boys into the mobile home. Safely out of the neighbor’s line of sight, she moved to peek through the curtain. The man crossed himself several times before retreating into his home.
“Yo, what a fuckin’ kook.” Jason laughed, sounding cruel and dumb.
Without really thinking about it, Siobhan wheeled around and stomped on Jason’s foot. “Shut. Up.”
“Oww –”
“Shut up. Zip it. Please? Thank you. I am so done with you.” Siobhan marched a few paces away from him. Caerwyn gave Jason a hard slug in the arm to prevent him from mouthing off at her.
It was a very standard looking mobile home. The decor was several decades removed from modern, but that’s what most old peoples’ homes looked like in Siobhan’s experience. It was clean, but it didn’t give the impression that anyone lived there – not fulltime, at least. There were no photographs or personal touches to speak of, not even Halloween decor. Siobhan walked the main room from end to end without finding any clues about the occupants, if there were any.
Caerwyn took his costume off and tucked it under his arm. He looked at the baby, and it stared back at him, unblinking. “Can you give us a hint or something?” he asked, probably not expecting an answer. The baby seemed to heave a small sigh before turning its gaze to a door leading deeper into the house. Caerwyn crossed the room and opened it.
The door should have led to a bedroom, a bathroom, or maybe a closet. Instead, a narrow staircase of tightly-packed earth stretched down into some darkness beneath their feet.
“Do mobile homes usually have basements?” Caerwyn asked cautiously.
“I… don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe?” The way the door opened directly into the void led Siobhan to believe this was not an intended feature of the small structure. She stretched out a hand and found the air cooler on the other side of the threshold. “I don’t like this,” she concluded.
Caerwyn took a step back. “I don’t wanna go down there.”
“Don’t be a wuss,” Jason teased. He stood behind the others and peeked over their shoulders into the darkness.
“Then you go,” Caerwyn insisted, giving Jason a gentle shove toward the stairs.
“Fine, I will.” The sheet ghost bounded down the stairs and briefly vanished from sight. A few moments later, Jason called up to them, “There’s nothing down here. Just a crummy old basement.”
Siobhan handed off the baby. She wanted her hands free, just in case. “I’ll go first. You take the kid and stay about two steps behind me. If anything bad happens, turn around and just go, okay?” Caerwyn nodded, and they began the descent.
It was a claustrophobic staircase with no handrails, but Siobhan could easily steady herself against the dirt walls if she needed. There were more stairs than she expected. She should have thought to count them. They emerged into a room, or something like a room. It was nearly featureless: bare dirt floor, cavern-like walls, no windows, no doors, and no furniture. The only thing there was to see was a perfect ring of off-white mushrooms encircling most of the space. The air was cold, and it seemed they had hit a dead end.
Jason wandered the far end of the room, occasionally kicking or stomping a mushroom. In Caerwyn’s arms, the baby squirmed uncomfortably with each squashed shroom. It eventually turned around and snuggled its face into Caerwyn’s shoulder. The boy patted the baby’s back absentmindedly. “So, what now?” he asked.
Siobhan stepped into the circle and something shifted in the atmosphere. An ice-cold hand touched her right shoulder. With an effort, Siobhan turned to look but saw nothing. Then a second cold touch settled on her left shoulder. She could barely move and her breathing became heavier. She tried to turn, and it was as if her head was in a box packed with sand. It took work, but it gave, little by little. What felt like minutes later Siobhan’s chin was parallel with her shoulder, and she could push it no further. She saw a small puff of vapor. Was it her breath?
Her head was stuck, but she could still move her eyes. Siobhan pushed them as far to the left as they would go. In the furthest reach of her peripheral vision, she thought she saw something. Panicked, she snapped her attention back to center. A face? She slowly pushed her gaze again to the extreme left, and angled it low. At the very edge of sight there was a face – part of a face. One side of a winkled old face, whose skin seemed somehow both dark blue and bright white. One crooked nostril flared, and one wide, unlidded eye stared up at her from just behind her shoulder blade. Siobhan felt sick. She shut her eyes tightly and tried to speak, but her lips were frozen shut.
What do you want? she shouted in her mind.
A tiny voice floated on a chill breath of frost, into her left ear and out her right.. “We gave you your trick.” The hand on her left shoulder squeezed. The next sentence flowed from right to left. “Now give us our treat.” She felt the squeeze on her right shoulder.
“Siobhan?” Caerwyn’s concerned voice broke the spell. “What do we do?”
The baby reached its little arms towards Siobhan. She snatched it from her brother and looked for a place to put it down. The room was still empty. “Hey,” she said to Caerwyn, “can I have that sheet?” He handed it over, and Siobhan bundled the baby in it before setting the child down in the middle of the circle.
“Jason, I need you to stay here and watch the baby.”
“Ew, no thanks.”
“Jason,” Siobhan said more forcefully, “this is getting too weird. I need you to stay here with the baby in case somebody comes for it while Caerwyn and I get help. The police station is in walking-distance.”
“Why should I?”
Siobhan shook her head. “I will give you all of the leftover candy in the house after school tomorrow. You just need to sit here for, like, an hour, and keep the baby safe.”
Jason thought about it. “That, and twenty bucks.”
She smiled. “Okay. A buttload of candy and twenty bucks. Tomorrow.”
He grumbled and sat on the ground next to the baby. “Fine. Don’t keep me waiting.” Jason poked at the baby curiously. The baby refused to look at him.
It was dark outside when the siblings emerged from the mobile home. Trick-or-treat had finished and the residents of the park had turned out their lights. Fallen leaves swirled around their feet as they began their walk in silence. Eventually, Caerwyn spoke.
“We could have taken the baby with us.”
“Yeah.”
Caerwyn waited for more, but Siobhan stayed quiet. “The police station is the other way,” he observed.
“You want the cops to tell our parents we kidnapped a baby from the trailer park?” The sarcasm was natural to her, but Siobhan wasn’t amused. She hoped Mom and Dad were partying too hard to think of heading home yet. She wanted a few hours of peace to enjoy her Halloween before it was truly over.
Caerwyn didn’t answer, and there was another long pause. This time Siobhan broke the silence. “You okay leaving Jason back there?” There was a hint of uncertainty in her voice.
“Yeah. I need better friends, anyway.”
That got a laugh out of Siobhan. “You really do.”
—
After school the next day, Siobhan took the long way home to sneak a peek into the trailer park. She wasn’t surprised to find an empty lot where the strange mobile home had been the night before. A pair of sheets, dusty brown with dirt, lay in the center of a ring of oddly colored grass broken up by the occasional mushroom. Siobhan collected the discarded costumes. Whether or not she had done anything wrong, she’d feel better if no evidence was left behind. As she left the lot, she noticed the neighbor had poured a heavy line of salt on the boundary between the two properties.
What did come as a surprise was returning home to find Jason and Caerwyn together on the sofa playing some game on the Xbox. Siobhan stood in the entryway and gawked. No, that’s not him. This Jason was sitting up straight with his feet politely on the floor. This Jason was quiet, paying close attention as Caerwyn explained the controls of a game she’d seen them play a dozen times. Siobhan didn’t say a word, but the boy – if it was a boy – must have felt her eyes on him. He turned sharply to face her. There was something different about the eyes, like the color was just a little wrong, or they opened just a bit too wide. Jason’s face smiled at Siobhan – a strange, knowing smile.
Caerwyn looked up and greeted Siobhan with a big shrug and an amused expression. Siobhan shrugged back and left the room. The creature’s smile had been off-putting, but not overtly threatening. She decided to leave well enough alone for the time being. If nothing else, at least this Jason would be quiet.
About the author
Rebekah Conard is a writer of short stories, flash fiction, and occasionally, poetry. Her preferred genre is horror, though sometimes she can’t help but write something cozy and real. Some notable works found on Vocal include “She Was Emma” (horror), “Excalcifate” (flash fiction), and “Sleeping Through Thanksgiving” (nonfiction). Rebekah resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and enjoys crochet, cross stitch, and video games. She has a cat named Lily, whom she adores