“Mark! Did you get the candy ready to go? Kids are going to be showing up soon!” Jess yelled out from the kitchen.

“Yes, everything is good to go, honey!”

I would love to give you more back story, fill you in about Jess and how we met, how we fell in love and ended up together, but I’m not sure that’s important right now. What’s important is what happened to us last Halloween. My life changed that night, and not for the better. Halloween is two days away, and you NEED to be warned. Please Please PLEASE do not open your doors after 11. I don’t care what you hear or what you see. Lock your door, stay inside, turn off the lights, close your eyes, and pray that they don’t come for you too.

Last Halloween was supposed to be just another run of the mill Halloween. My wife Jess and I lived just outside of town in a small, rural neighborhood. We weren’t out in the farmland, but we had lots of space and we were only about 15 minutes out of town. Our house usually had between 8-10 trick or treaters a year, and since we’ve been here for close to six years, we had our Halloween routine down to a bit of a science: enough full-sized chocolate bars for the kids, with plenty leftover for us while we watched cheesy horror flicks. The trick or treaters were usually wrapped up by 8pm and we would finish our movies and be up to bed by 10.

The night started as any other Halloween had. Our scary movies were cued up in the living room and we had enough chocolate bars to eat ourselves into a coma. Looking back, I wish we had.

We had barely put out decorations that year, which for us was strange. We had a couple of pumpkins and some spider webs draped from the gutters, but that was it. Nothing compared to our usual display. We had been away a lot and with our new jobs and work had us both putting in long hours.

We were just settling in on the couch to start the first movie of the Saw series when we had our first knock on the door.

“Oh this will be Chris and Anne with their kids! Come hand out the candy with me!” Jenn said excitedly as she jumped up from the couch.

After giving the kids their candy and chatting with Chris and Anne for what felt like forever, we settled back into the couch. As the evening went on, the regular crew of neighborhood kids made their way to our house, and by the end of dinner time, the trick-or-treaters were done. Eight kids this year. Pretty standard.

Somewhere around the start of the 3rd Saw movie, Jess started falling asleep in my lap. I never understood how she could fall asleep watching horror movies. I woke her up and we made our way up to bed. Despite watching people trying to escape unimaginably horrific situations for the past few hours, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

“Dinnnngggggg….Dongggggggg”

The sound of the doorbell being rung woke me up immediately. Jess sat up, startled. “What time is it??” she asked wearily.

I looked at my phone. 11:01. I was confused, mad, and concerned all at once. It was a Sunday night, and being up past 11:00 was late for us.

I dragged myself out of bed and went downstairs to grab the candy bowl, which thankfully, we hadn’t completely finished off. Before opening the front door I flipped the porch light on and took a look through the peephole.

There were three boys, who based on their size, I assumed to be teenagers. They were standing at the bottom of the stairs that led up to our front porch. Two of them were standing perfectly still with pillowcases outstretched, while the other had a sheet over him with no eye holes.

The two boys with pillowcases were wearing very strange costumes. It’s hard to explain, but something seemed off about them. They had dark face paint outlining their eyes and mouths that somehow distorted their faces and made them look slightly swirled, if that makes sense. On top of their heads were small pairs of branch-like horns.

The kid with the sheet over him had a leash in his hand, and much to my confusion, he had it attached to the belt of a kid who was on all fours. The kid at the end of the leash had his head on the ground and it looked like his costume had been all torn up.

I quickly opened the door, but before I could say anything, the two kids with pillowcases simultaneously whispered “Trick or Treat!”

My mind was racing but I felt like I was frozen on the spot. As my head cleared, my anger set in and I yelled at the kids, “What the hell are you doing?! Let him go!”

The boys holding the pillowcases tilted their heads and smiled at me. Their faces seemed to be turning in a constant spiral. I felt hypnotized. Suddenly, in a moment of abrupt chaos, the boy on the ground ripped his collar off and lunged at the other boys. The boy with the sheet on gave the kid a quick kick to the ribs and then he and the other two boys took off running down the driveway.

I snapped out of the strange state I was in and went to check on the boy on the ground. As soon as I got close, his head snapped up and he looked me dead in the eyes. His eyes were cloudy and there was blood coming out of his mouth. He scrambled to his feet and took off running down the driveway.

I closed the door and sat down on the couch. What just happened? I had never seen teenagers in this neighborhood before, not to mention teenagers acting like that. It must’ve just been some kids who came from town to cause trouble.. Now that I thought about it, I was surprised that we hadn’t had teens causing trouble in our neighbourhood on Halloween before.. After calming myself down I decided I should just go back to bed.

I was halfway up the stairs when the doorbell went off again. The ring was slow and deliberate, “diinngggggg…donnggggggg.”

I turned around and ran down the stairs. I wasn’t going to let a group of teens torment us on Halloween. Without looking through the peephole, I ripped the door open, ready to tell off these teenagers.

No one was there. I stood on the porch and looked around. Were they hiding? I ran down the steps and looked under the porch. No one. When I turned around and looked down the driveway, I could see two figures sprinting away.

How did I miss them when I first opened the door? For a split second, I considered chasing them down the driveway. I watched them head for the road when I saw something that made my heart stop.

There was a parade of people in halloween costumes walking down the road. They were all walking in straight lines, almost like they were marching. What looked to me like more than a hundred people, all heading the same direction down our road.

What is going on? Maybe the cops broke up a party.. Maybe the highschool kids came from out of town.. My mind raced as I tried to justify what I was seeing. As I tried to make sense of this, something terrifying happened.

Every single person on the road suddenly stopped walking. They turned to face my house, all of them looking right at me. I turned around and sprinted up the steps and quickly locked the door.

“Jess! Wake up! Something weird is going on!” I didn’t want to scare her, but I felt at this point we needed to do something. Jess got out of bed, and groggily made her way down the stairs.

“What’s going on, honey? You’re freaking me out. You know I don’t like it when you do this kind of stuff to me”

“I don’t really know.. But there is a huge group of people outside all staring at our house.” I opened the door to show her, but when I stepped out on the porch and looked at the road, no one was there. “I swear.. There were hundreds of them all lined up on the road!!”

I think Jess could tell I was being serious by the way my voice was shaking. I told her about the teenagers and the boy on a leash. We decided that at this point, we might as well stay up for a while.

I put on a pot of tea and started re-heating some leftover cherry pie that we had in the fridge. We were both feeling pretty freaked out, so we decided to switch from our horror binge to The Office to try to lighten the mood.

“Diinngggggg……Donnnngggggg”

We both froze on the couch and looked at each other. This was starting to get scary. I told Jess it was probably just the teenagers again and got up to look outside. I took a look through the peephole.

I still have a hard time explaining what I saw. Out on our front lawn was a man. He was wearing a suit with a black top hat and he was dancing. He was incredibly tall and moved in a very strange way; it was stiff and erratic. His legs were so long it looked as if he were wearing stilts. Somehow, it seemed like his legs grew and shrank as he danced. His spider-like legs stretched across my lawn as he danced back and forth, all the while staring right into my eyes. He had a wide grin plastered on his face, and despite his erratic movements, his expression didn’t change.

“Mark what the hell is out there?!”

Jess’ voice snapped me out of the state of shock I was in. She came running to the door to see what was going on, but when she looked out the peephole, there was nothing there. I tried to explain to her what I saw, but she didn’t believe me; she thought I was just trying to scare her. The more I tried to explain the man on the lawn, the more frustrated she got with me. Eventually we both agreed to drop it and go back to the couch to watch the Office. Before we even got to the couch, the doorbell rang again,

“Diinnngggggg….Donnngggggggg.”

Jess looked at me, clearly terrified. I told her to go wait in the living room.

I slowly approached the front door. What the hell am I going to see out there this time…? I got to the door and slowly brought my head towards the peephole.

There was a man standing just a couple feet from the door. Standing next to him and holding his hand was Liam, one of Chris and Anne’s kids. The man was wearing a white t-shirt that said “Hi” across the front. The strangest thing about him though, was his skin. It was perfectly smooth and almost looked like a plastic mask. He had a huge smile on his face that revealed a smooth row of perfectly white teeth.

“Hi Mark! Liam and I are here for some candy! Trick or Treat!!”

“We don’t have any candy left,” I said loudly through the door. “What are you doing out here so late with Liam? I’m calling Chris and Anne right now!”

“Oh that’s fine with me! I’m staying with them right now. I’m going to be Liam’s new parent for a while!”

“Yeah well whoever you are, you can expect to see the police soon. They will be on their way to Chris and Anne’s shortly!”

“Hehehehehe.” The man let out a strange laugh that made my blood run cold. He turned with Liam and walked off the porch, heading down our driveway hand-in-hand.

“Jess, call the poli-” Before I could even finish my sentence, I heard a loud thud at the door. “Hey man, I told you already, the police are on their way!” I brought my eye back to the peephole, expecting to see the strange, smooth-skinned man again, but he wasn’t there.

It looked like the teenagers from earlier, but they had different outfits on.

Thud!

One of the teens was throwing rocks at the door. I looked down, and saw that the rest of them were beating the hell out of another boy who was face-down on the ground. The way his body was responding to the kicks and punches told me the poor boy was no longer conscious. I ripped open the door and screamed at them to stop. As soon as the words left my mouth, they all froze and started staring at me. I started to panic and yelled something at them about calling the cops, though I’m sure they could hear the fear in my voice.

I closed the door and locked it, grabbing my phone out of my pocket to call the police. I continued watching the boys as the phone rang. One of the boys was reaching into a pillowcase he had with him. To my horror, he pulled out a cat, which I realized pretty quickly was dead. With a grin, he threw it towards the house. It smashed with a loud crash into the door. Right afterwards, the boys took off running, leaving the one kid unconscious on the ground.

“911, what’s your emergency?” The dispatcher said through the phone.

My mind was racing and my voice was shaky, but I did the best job I could at explaining what was going on. The dispatcher asked me if the kid in my driveway was breathing, but I was frozen with fear and refused to check. He let me know that there was a patrol unit in my area already, and they would be over right away. Strangely, the dispatcher didn’t ask me to stay on the line and hung up immediately. Must be a busy night..

Almost as soon as he hung up, I saw the lights of a police car pulling into my driveway.

The cruiser was swerving erratically as it drove up my driveway, running over our plants on either side of the driveway. It skidded to a stop about 20 feet from the porch. The doop of the cruiser opened and a cop stepped out. He briefly looked around, and then playfully skipped over to the kid lying on the ground. He cocked his head to the side and stared at the kid. It felt like this went on forever. He must have stood by the kid’s side, just staring at him for at least 5 minutes. I was still frozen with fear. I wanted to call out to the cop, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

The cop finally moved, and I watched in confusion as he pulled off the kid’s shoes. He took his own shoes off and put the kid’s shoes up next to his feet. They were tiny next to his feet, which I then realized were bare and filthy. When they didn’t fit, he shrugged and threw the shoes down at the kid, hitting him in the back of the head. He turned his attention to the house and started walking towards the porch.

Walking maybe isn't the best word.. He wasn’t skipping this time, but the way he walked was very “bouncy”, and he had a big goofy grin on his face. When he got to the porch he leaned over the dead cat, staring directly at it with his face only a couple of inches away. He scooped the cat up in one hand and then banged on the door.

“Marrrrrrkkkkkk, is this your cat?? What happened to the poor guy!?” He banged on the door again.

“I’m here to help Maaaaaaaarrk!! I’m with the police!!” He hadn’t lost the big goofy grin on his face, the dead cat still limply hanging in his hand.

“Marky Marky Marky! I thought you wanted help?!” He put his eye right up to the peephole. “If you don’t want your cat anymore, I hope you don’t mind if I keep it!”

He took a step back from the door and was looking at the dead cat in his hand, “Please Mark???”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t comprehend what was going on. None of this made sense. “Get the hell off my porch!!” I yelled.

The Cop simply shrugged and then started to open his mouth. It just kept getting bigger and bigger. His head seemed to be expanding as his mouth opened wider and wider. He brought the cat up to his mouth and ate it in one bite. His mouth closed as he started chewing. Within seconds, he had swallowed the entire cat.

I turned to the side and vomited all over the place. We have to get out of here, I thought to myself. I could hear Jess crying, so I turned and ran into the living room. We had been streaming The Office, but somehow there was now an infomercial playing on the TV.

“Mark what is going on?!” Jess asked shakily.

I’ve never seen commercials on a stream before, let alone late night infomercials. The man in the commercial was talking about a set of kitchen knives, and I swear I heard him say Jess’ name. I moved further into the living room, mesmerized by the man in the infomercial.. As I got closer to the TV, he started talking to me.

“Hi Mark! Do I have the KNIFE for you!!” The man was brandishing a large, rusty kitchen knife, cutting up a random mess of raw meat on a dirty cutting board.

“It cuts like a charm! Maybe you can use it to get rid of that whore Jess! I promise it’ll get the job done!”

I went to shut the TV off and there was another knock on the door.

“Better get that, Mark!” said the man on the TV,

I shut off the TV and ran over to the door. “Jess, we need to get out of here now! Go into the garage and start the car, I’ll stay at the door.” Luckily our garage was attached to the house, so I wasn’t worried about sending Jess on her own.

I looked through the peephole to see if the cop was gone. Somehow what I saw was even worse. The man from the infomercial was standing over the unconscious kid in the driveway. He had the rusty knife from the infomercial in his hand.

He looked at me with a smile, and started to dismember the body of the boy. He cut through his limbs effortlessly and then started cutting organs out. He threw all the “parts” that he collected into a cooler that had “STEW” crudely written on the side. I could feel the vomit coming again as the man continued sawing into the body, all the while still looking at me with a smile on his face.

I turned and ran towards the garage. My heart sank when I came through the door. Jess was trying to start the car, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. Of course, my truck was in the shop. Jess was crying in the driver's seat, the engine repeatedly trying to turn over. I motioned for her to pop the hood, as if I knew anything about cars.

Well, I definitely won’t be fixing this.

Underneath the hood, every line, cable, and tube I could see was severed. As if that wasn’t enough, there was candy scattered all over the engine. It was jammed in every nook and cranny that I could see. Halloween candy, and not the classic individually wrapped candy bars that most people hand out. Old-fashioned hard candies wrapped with jack-o-lantern and eyeball decorated tinfoil. The ones that everyone tried to trade away as kids.

I grabbed Jess out of the car and pulled her in close to me. I wasn’t sure what my plan was.. barricade us upstairs? Make a run for it and try to get to a neighbor’s house? Call for help?

I tried calling some of my friends, but every number went straight to voicemail. I decided to dial 911 again. The phone rang for what felt like forever. No answer. A pre-recorded message began playing, “We can’t answer the phone right now, all of our services are busy getting candy! Call back later and we’ll be happy to help! Happy Halloween, Mark!!”

I led Jess out of the garage. Clearly getting help from someone else was not an option right now.

As we walked down the hall, I noticed that all of our framed photos had changed. Jess’ face was morphed into a ghoulish scowl in our wedding photo. The portrait of my parents was horrible. My Mom had a large rusty knife like the one from the infomercial and was stabbing my Dad in the stomach. Some were even worse; too graphic to mention.

At the end of the hallway was the largest photo in our house. It was a shot from a beach we stayed at on the East coast. Now, right in the center of the beach was the man from the infomercial, lounging in a beach chair with the same awful grin on his face from earlier.

As we reached the kitchen, Jess let out a startled scream. There was a clown standing in our kitchen. He was wearing bright yellow pants and a comically big bow tie. For some reason, he was aggressively making peanut butter and jam sandwiches. There were extra-large jars of peanut butter and jam on the kitchen counter, and the clown was quickly and messily throwing sandwiches together. His hands were moving so quickly that it looked fake.

“Would anyone care for a midnight snack?!” The clown said as he turned to look at us.

I started walking backwards towards the garage, not turning my body away from the clown. We’d have to make a run for it through the garage door. I grabbed Jess’ hand as I started moving backwards, but she didn’t budge. I pulled harder, but couldn’t move her an inch. It was like she was attached to the ground.

Suddenly, Jess pushed me aside and started clapping her hands. She was laughing maniacally and jumping up and down like an excited kid. I stared crying, terror flooding over me as I fell and scrambled backwards.

“Jess, what are you doing?! We have to go!!”

It was like she couldn’t hear a word I was saying. She stopped clapping just as quickly as she had started and walked over the clown. He smiled and handed her an absurdly large plate filled with sandwiches. She took one and smashed it into her face like someone who hadn’t eaten in weeks. She grabbed another one and did the same thing.

The clown groaned with pleasure and started to eat as well. They furiously scarfed back the sandwiches, crumbs flying all over the place. I considered grabbing a kitchen knife to attack the clown, but there was something about him that made me know I wouldn’t be able to kill him. I knew it couldn’t die.

“Jess please! Snap out of it! We need to leave now!”

My words fell on deaf ears. I don’t think she even knew I was there anymore.

I turned around and ran for the garage. It killed me to leave Jess, but I didn’t know what else to do. I got into the garage and shut the door. I had to think of a way to get Jess out of there. My mind was all over the place.. I couldn’t think straight.

My phone dinged as a text message came in. I looked down at my phone.. I had a message from a contact simply marked as ;-] . I unlocked my phone and opened the message. It was a selfie of my wife with the clown beside her. She was a mess, peanut butter and jam all over her face. There were tears streaming down her cheeks, but she still had a huge grin on her face.

I heard sirens in the distance as my phone dinged again. Another message from ;-], this time without a photo. It read “Should I fuck your wife, Mark? We both know she’s a whore.”

The sirens were getting closer. I heard circus music playing from my phone. My vision started to blur and my head was spinning. Darkness slowly creeped into my vision and I passed out on the floor.

I came-to on a stretcher. I was being led out of my house by a group of paramedics. There were police everywhere. As I was wheeled by the kitchen, my blood turned to ice. My kitchen was covered in blood, and in the middle of the floor lay Jess, or I should say, what was left of Jess. It makes me sick just thinking about it. I will spare you the details.

The police report from that night said nothing of a butchered body in the driveway. No sign of forced entry into the house. No fingerprints or sign of anyone being in the house. There was no record of a police unit being dispatched to my house earlier in the evening. No complaints from neighbors about rowdy teenagers. It was like I imagined the entire thing.

Of course, I was the only logical suspect in my wife’s murder. It didn’t take long for a jury to find me guilty. I’m currently in a high-security prison, almost a year into my life sentence. Lucky for me, I get an hour of internet time every week. It’s getting close to Halloween, so I figured I should try to get this message out to you all. Please don’t answer the door if you get trick-or-treaters after 11PM. Lock your doors and stay in bed. Don’t engage with them. Ignore it at all costs.

I’m writing this as I get my hour of time in the rec room; this is the first time I’ve told anyone the details of that night. Just writing about it has filled me with a sense of dread.

I was about to wrap this up, but the TV in the rec room just turned itself on. The knife infomercial from that night started playing. The same man from a year ago stood with his collection of rusty knives spread out on the counter, but this time there was a lady standing next to him. She turned around to face the camera. It was Jess, her face covered in blood.

“Don’t worry, honey, we’ll be coming to see you soon! I hope you like sandwiches!!”