Rowdy said, “I wish Halloween lasted forever.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” replied their mother.
Riley and Rowdy Hankins were sitting in their living room looking out the window completely oblivious to their favorite movie playing on the TV. “How much longer till it gets dark?” They both asked the question at the same time. It didn't happen all the time but tonight they both were of one mind. Julie Hankins was walking into the room with a bowl full of Halloween candy to set on the table next to the front door and smiled as she looked at her twin boys. They were so excited about Halloween this year. They had been wearing their costumes for hours. Riley was wearing The Dark Knight costume and Rowdy was dressed as Indiana Jones. They each had a plastic jack-o-lantern bucket to contain the treats they received. Rowdy said, “I wish Halloween lasted forever.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” replied their mother. She was always warning them that somehow the things they wanted could be bad for them.
On this Halloween evening two ten year old boys sat watching the sunset in anticipation of venturing into the darkness and having an adventure in their quiet suburban neighborhood. The windows of the house were open and they could feel the cool October air and hear the sounds of Halloween begin to make their way into the evening. Next door the shrieks of the plastic zombie could be heard as the neighbors tested it on the front porch to be sure it was functioning for the onslaught of trick-or-treaters. Children began to show up dressed as monsters and superheroes and pirates and all sorts of various cartoon characters. The boys could wait no longer and screamed “It’s time!” and headed for the door.
Just before they could open the door and escape into the night something grabbed each of their arms. “Just a minute you two!” said their mother as she handed them each a flashlight and handed Riley a stopwatch set for ninety minutes. “When this goes off I want you home!” She handed Rowdy a cell phone and as he put it in his pocket she told him, “If anything goes wrong or your plans change or ANYTHING you had better use this.” Then she ran through a list of things to do and things not to do and she kissed each of them on the forehead and they were out the door. They never heard her tell them not to eat any of the candy till they got home so she could check it to be sure it was safe. They were off on their ninety minute adventure.
They had visited a half dozen houses or so when they decided they needed to get something more important than candy taken care of. “We gotta scare somebody!” They were near a big bush in a dark yard and there was a small group of kids coming their way. They slipped behind it and waited. They began to laugh and the more they tried to stop the harder they laughed. Riley kicked Rowdy in the shin. “What did ya do that for?” Riley was laughing hysterically now. “Trying to make you stop laughing…I can’t stop till you do!” Now they were both making a ton of noise and as the kids got to their hiding place the boys jumped out onto the sidewalk and screamed. The kids just laughed. “We could hear you guys all the way down there” as they pointed up the sidewalk in the direction they had come.
The group of kids made their way on down the sidewalk and the twins sat in the grass eating a candy bar. Then they spotted a lone trick-or-treater dressed in an old sheet with a cheap plastic ghost mask on approaching on the sidewalk. They made their way back behind the bush and waited. The ghost found its way into scare range and the two boys jumped out screaming and the ghost jumped a bit and began to laugh. It was a good laugh. It was the kind you like to hear. It was a laugh the makes you laugh too. The kind of laugh that can make you feel better if you are in a rotten mood. One of those laughs that you want to be around. Riley and Rowdy joined in the laughter. It couldn’t be helped. The three boys stood on the sidewalk and shared one of those moments in life that doesn’t come along often enough.
When the laughter died down Riley found out the ghost’s name was Bradley. Rowdy immediately shortened it to Brad and Riley changed it to B-Rad and they invited him to be a part of their Halloween. Bradley didn’t take his mask off and the twins didn’t really want him to. They had never met him before and not knowing what he looked like added to the mystery of the night. All they knew was that his hair was dark brown and he was about their height. They didn’t even know if he was thin or pudgy because of the loose fitting sheet covering his body. Instead of a plastic pumpkin he carried and old pillow case to collect candy. Rowdy thought that was cool because it would hold like ten times as much as his bucket.
The night was cool and damp and the three boys decided they had all of the candy they needed. Riley looked at the stopwatch and saw they still had forty-seven minutes. That didn’t seem possible. Their buckets were full of candy and they had frightened several groups of the kids in the neighborhood. It seemed as if they had spent hours with their new friend Bradley and they really liked him even though they had no clue what he looked like. They still had plenty of time to get into some good old-fashioned Halloween mischief.
They thought about doing the old flaming bag of poop but no one wanted to pick up any poop and they were all not allowed to have a lighter or matches but if they could pull it off the twins thought that old Mr. Phelps was the perfect victim. He was the guy in the neighborhood that was always worried about kids in his yard and he didn’t have anything to do but call parents about what their kids were up to. Rowdy could remember the spanking that he got on one July 5th after his dad had to buy Mr. Phelps a new mailbox. OUCH! The porch light at the Phelps house was turned off; the unofficial signal that no candy was available here, but there was a jack-a-lantern flickering next to the front door. They decided that the old grouch wasn’t getting off that easy and went up the walk to the door and rang the bell. The curtain moved in the nearby window as the Grinch of Halloween peaked out to see who was ignoring the “NO CANDY” signal. They tried one more time but he refused to come to the door and they headed back to the sidewalk across the street.
Bradley reached into his pillow case and dug around through the candy. He removed a roll of duct tape and began to laugh. The other boys had no idea what he was up to but they began to laugh along with him. Bradley had also pulled a piece of hard candy out of the pillow case. He took a piece of duct tape off the roll about six inches long and stuck the candy to the center of it. He motioned for the boys to wait here and slipped up to Mr. Phelps’ door. He quickly put the tape over the doorbell with the candy pushing against the button. The doorbell rang continuously as Bradley ran to where the boys were waiting and they all hid behind a nearby tree. Mr. Phelps finally came to the door and they could hear the obscenity quite clearly where they were hiding as he took the tape off his doorbell button. Bradley began to laugh right out loud and they were sure that old man Phelps could hear him but he just pulled the top off the jack-o-lantern and blew out the candle and went back in the house.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Bradley jumped up and ran across the street and onto the porch, grabbed the pumpkin and ran back to them. He proudly held it in his arms. It had the routine triangular eyes and nose and toothy grin illuminated by the candle inside. Rowdy was confused because the candle wasn’t lit when Bradley went to get it and he certainly hadn’t had time to light it. He didn’t even have matches or a lighter with him or they would have done the flaming bag of poop trick. But soon his ADD kicked in and they were walking along happily with their orange prize laughing and making jokes and punching each other and eating candy.
Suddenly they stopped in the darkness and Bradley carefully sat the pumpkin down. He knelt beside it until he was satisfied with the way it sat and jumped up and started running leaving the boys behind. They began chasing him even though he had gotten out of sight. They ran out through a gate and realized they had been in the cemetery. They were both glad that they didn’t know they were in there because they would have been plenty spooked. They kept following the happy laugh that had become the single identifying feature of their new found friend and finally he was in sight. He was running across the street.
Rowdy stopped to yell out “Bradley!” when a car going way too fast for a Halloween night came barreling around the corner. Bradley turned to look at it just before it hit him. His body folded up around the front of the car and the tires began to scream as the driver tried much too late to halt the car. As the car decelerated Bradley flew away from it and out of his shoes. Bradley hit the pavement with a horrible thud and slid on the asphalt another twenty feet. Soon everything was still. Bradley lay on the street with candy scattered all around. The driver still sat in his car trying to gather himself enough to get out and do something. The boys watched the door open on the car and the driver slowly moved out.
It was Mr. Phelps. He staggered around to the front of the car. The boys shifted to their gaze to Bradley. There was one problem, Bradley had moved. He wasn’t there. Rowdy asked Mr. Phelps, “Where did he go?” Mr. Phelps just stood there in shock. He looked at the front of his car and it was undamaged. There was no evidence of the accident at all except for candy strewn around on the road.
“Goddamn you kids!” shouted the distraught man at The Dark Knight and Indiana Jones. “What kind of trick is this to play on an old man? I thought I killed a kid! I’m going home and calling the cops.” He got in his car and drove off too fast and was soon out of sight.
Riley and Rowdy walked around looking for any sign of where Bradley had gone. Riley said he didn’t think he saw anything and Rowdy had to agree. Their imaginations must have been going crazy. They looked at the street one more time and even the candy was gone. Riley glanced at the stop watch and there were three minutes remaining. The two confused boys ran home and didn’t say a word on the way.
They burst in the door a couple minutes later and their mom welcomed them home as the look of concern she was hiding melted away. There was nothing like the hugs of two little men to make a mom smile. Rick Hankins was watching ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ on TV and asked the boys to fill their dad in on the lowdown on the night’s activities. They told him it was fun and he could eat some of their candy and hurried off to bed. He thought that they must have gotten into some trouble they didn’t want to talk about and laughed and went back to his movie.
The boys tossed and turned in their sleep that night. They worried that Mr. Phelps may have seen them well enough to recognize them and that the police were on their way to arrest them. The sugar from eating too much candy kept making their eyes pop wide open. The shock of watching a friend get hit by a car and disappear gave them nightmares. It was a horrible night for sleep but they had wanted an adventure this Halloween. Mom had told them to be careful what they wish for many times. They would remember it from now on. They wondered what Mr. Phelps had wished for.
The next morning was Saturday and they were able to sleep in a little while. They ate some cheerios for breakfast and went outside. Rowdy was the first to talk. They hadn’t spoken to each other since Bradley disappeared. “Wanna go look for Bradley?” Riley nodded and they walked out of the yard and headed to where they had last seen him. As they passed Mr. Phelp’s house they noticed the curtains were all drawn and his car wasn’t in the driveway. It must have been in the garage because they noticed the living room curtain move and saw the old man’s beady little eyes peering out at them. They quickly looked away. They didn’t want to ever deal with him again.
When they arrived at the spot where the accident had happened there was no sign anything had happened there at all except for two black marks where Mr. Phelps tires had skidded to a stop. Rowdy looked over at the gate to the cemetery and Riley knew they were going to go look for the jack-o-lantern. They wandered inside and walked a very short way s and there it sat smiling at them. Behind the grinning pumpkin was a white sheet draped over a tombstone. They walked over to it and could see something inside through the eyeholes. Rowdy pulled the stem and opened it up to see inside. There was the cheap plastic ghost mask that Bradley wore. Riley lifted the sheet from the stone to reveal the writing underneath. It read: “Our Son, Bradley Hammond, June 13, 1959-October 31, 1969”.
Someday they would go to the library and try to find a photo of Bradley. It would be nice to put a face to the name, but for now the two brothers would just have a memory of a ghost and a Halloween adventure they would never forget. They often wonder how many other Halloweens Bradley has come out to play. How many other boys have had the same adventure? Sometimes on October 31st, in the midst of all the screams and music and the sounds of Halloween, Riley and Rowdy can still hear that unforgettable laugh and wish they could go hang out with their faceless friend from the past one more time but they always remember what mom said, “Be careful what you wish for.”