Mom set the oven for thirty minutes at three hundred and fifty degrees.
“You boys be safe! Say please and thank you! And keep those glow sticks where you can see them so you don’t get hit!”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “We know, mom.”
“Love you, mom!” Johnny, his kid brother, called as the door closed.
The boys stood on their front stoop and looked over their nice little suburban neighborhood and dreamed of candy and anarchy. Tommy pulled the glow stick from around his neck and chucked it into the bushes. Johnny opened the firewood box and pulled out their night’s supplies: an extra jack o’ lantern bucket full of raw eggs, a paintball gun, and a plastic grocery sack full of dog poop. Tommy took the paintball gun and led them down the driveway.
“Trick or treat isn’t about saying please and thank you,” Tommy told his little brother. “It’s an ultimatum. Give up the treats, or we’re giving you the tricks. If they don’t fill up this bucket…” he hoisted up his empty plastic jack o’ lantern, and said, “we empty that bucket,” and pointed to the one full of eggs.
“Yeah!” Johnny said, enthusiastic because
a. he was a spaz, and
b. it was Halloween. He had a right to be excited.
And tonight, they were more than just some dumb kids in a dumb town. Tommy was a space marine complete with satchels, gadgets, a plastic HALO helmet, and the paintball gun their mom didn’t know about. Its bottle rattled full of only red pellets because the red ones looked like blood. And Johnny was a mutant troll warrior.
As they strolled down the street, Johnny slashed the hollow plastic troll axe through the air with one hand and swung the bucket of eggs and sack of wet dog turds in the other hand. It was the neighbor’s dog’s poop, but was in their yard so it wasn’t like they stole it. Who knew what they’d actually do with the dog poop, but Tommy knew it could come in handy.
“This is the one night each year where the kids are in charge,” Tommy preached to his younger brother. “Think about it. All the parents have to stay home. All the kids are set loose to run free. They have to follow our rules. That’s what Halloween’s all about.”
“And we get candy!” Johnny said.
#
Every kid with half a brain knew the rich people gave away the best candy. And the first house they went to? Oh, baby! It had those big brick pillars on either side of the driveway, a fancy mailbox, a shining new SUV in the driveway… Other kids were hitting up other houses, just randomly as if the little ramblers would pay out the same as this mansion.
But... the driveway was long and they were getting kind of far away from the rest of the kids. Big trees towered over the boys and bare branches dangled above their heads. The security lights on the garage were bright and harsh in their eyes. Tommy checked his CO2 tank and clicked off the safety on the paintball gun. But when they came around the garage he saw the front door was open and a pair of jack o’ lanterns were lit on either side of the steps.
There was a mom in the doorway and two other kids at the door. Cool. All good. Only… the kids weren’t standing up. They were lying down. And the mom… The mom was crouched over them. Tommy shielded his eyes from the bright lights and stepped closer for a better view. Johnny, the little moron, marched on without a care. Tommy had to follow. Couldn’t let his little brother go ahead without him.
It wasn’t until they stepped past the bright security lights that the doorway came into full view. The two kids, one a Disney Princess and the other a Hogwartz wizard, were sprawled out on the concrete. Their joints were twisted in weird directions like human pretzels. Dark fluids drizzled down the steps, brownish and aromatic and bitter. The smell reminded Tommy of deer hunting with this dad. Hunting and… was that pumpkin pie?
The mom came up from her crouch and snarled at the boys like a mean dog. Her arms were smeared red from fingers to elbows. She held one of those kid’s arms in her hand. But the arm wasn’t attached to anything. It dangled flesh and sinew from it’s ragged stump. In the mom’s other hand was one of those disposable coffee cups, the plastic lid missing and the contents dribbling out. She drooled blood. Not fake Halloween blood. Not red pellets from a paintball gun either. Real, stinking, brilliant, human blood.
It had to be a gag. It had to be just dumb grown-ups trying to scare them. It couldn’t be real. Tommy looked to his kid brother Johnny, whose face was pale and whose sneakers were edging backwards, and Tommy knew this was no joke.
Johnny screamed. So did Tommy.
So did the mom.
Tommy raised the paintball gun and pumped a dozen pellets into her already stained knit sweater. She didn’t seem to notice. The brothers turned and ran.
So did the mom.
It was the fastest Tommy had ever run in his life. Track and field day? Soccer practice? The presidential fitness day? Forget about it. He’d never run this fast before. His HALO helmet fell off and he never even thought of going back for it. And his kid brother ran just as fast. Their sneakers slapped and echoed against the blacktop. The driveway was so long. The mom was still coming, and she’d catch them before they escaped back into the neighborhood. Tommy knew it. Johnny knew it too.
And then, Johnny dropped his troll axe, skidded to a stop, snatched an egg out of the bucket, and faced down the mom. He had one chance. One shot. Like David versus Goliath. Like Thor versus Thanos.
“Johnny!” Tommy called.
Johnny threw the egg. It wobbled uneven through the air and smacked the mom square between the eyes. Shell and white and yolk exploded on her face. Driven by momentum and insanity, she fell to her knees and skidded along the driveway, shredding holes in her yoga pants as she ground to a stop. She screamed and raked the yolk out her eyes with sharp nails.
“Come on!” Tommy grabbed his brother by the arm and yanked him hard towards the mouth of the driveway.
#
They didn’t quit running until they were a block away from the brick pillars. Tommy had to grab Johnny to get him to stop. The inertia spun his brother around so that they were looking face to face. Johnny panted like an animal. The green and red troll make-up was streaked with tears. His eyelids couldn’t have been pried any wider.
“Johnny! Johnny, listen! It’s okay. We’re okay. We got away,” Tommy said. “She’s long gone. She won’t hurt us.”
But Johnny’s eyes were fixed on something over his older brother’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “Look.”
It was only then that Tommy saw the rest of the neighborhood.
Children were sprinting and screaming across yards and through cul de sacs. Little plastic accessories and masks and bits of costumes littered the streets and sidewalks. Abandoned and overturned Halloween buckets spilled candy over the pavement. A few kids stood paralized in shock. A few others laid motionless, face first in front lawns. Pillars of smoke and fire rose into the burnt orange sky above the houses.
“It’s the pumpkin spice!” an older kid called out from the middle of a four way stop. “They’re all spiced up!”
The boy only had enough time to say those nonsense words when a minivan plowed through the four-way stop, through the boy, and into a telephone pole. The kid splattered between the thick wooden post and the crumpled minivan hood. Something inside the van pushed the windshield out convex. The engine revved and whined in the night.
Tommy dropped his empty bucket, raised the paintball gun, and crept up to the minivan like a Medal of Honor operator.
“Tommy?” Johnny called after his big brother.
“We have to see,” Tommy said. He kept his sights on the wreck.
The boy pinned between the bumper and the post used to be a vampire with a cape and fancy pendant on his chest. His plastic fangs sat in a crevasse between the hood and the windshield along with bits of broken glass. He wasn’t Undead anymore. Just plain dead now, which was exponentially more terrifying.
The minivan’s sliding door was open. Inside, it was dark. Nothing moved. The transformer on top of the pole sparked and rained embers down around Tommy. He peaked in the open driver’s window and saw a lady’s head lodged into the windshield. Her chest was smashed into the steering column. No seatbelt. There wasn’t much blood, but there was that same smell from the big house’s front stoop.
Pumpkin pie?
He reached in the open window and picked up a paper cup off the dash. The van’s interior was covered in its spilled contents.
“Tommy? What is it?”
He took one whiff. “Coffee. Pumpkin Spiced Latte,” he said, only knowing the name from riding with Mom through the drive-thru.
“He was trying to warn us,” Johnny said, talking about the boy between the van and the telephone pole.
A chorus of screams came from down the block. Tommy snapped the paintball gun up into the high-ready. Johnny clutched another egg. Four more kids went sprinting past the minivan, ghosts and ghouls scared off by a much more dire threat: a raving wild-eyed teenage girl in Ugg boots and a fleece sweater. Tommy rapid-fired the gun with two fluttering fingers. One of the red pellets hit the girl in the temple and she toppled over, face planting into the pavement. Chunks and crumbs of a muffin exploded from her fist. Once down, she didn’t move.
The four other kids kept running. Their trailing screams echoed off the vinyl-sided houses behind them. Tommy crept up slow to the shrapnel of the muffin. He sniffed it, but didn’t taste it.
“Pumpkin flavored,” he said and threw the chunk at the limp girl’s head.
They backed away slow, and when Tommy felt safe enough to take the gun off of her, they ran.
#
A block away, they slipped into an unlit backyard and into the narrow gap between a tool shed and a privacy fence. It was dark there and hidden from the street and the fires and the screaming.
“It must be something in the flavoring,” Johnny said. “Some chemical got spilled in the factory and made its way into all the pumpkin-spiced food.”
“That’s crazy,” Tommy told his younger brother. “There’s gotta be something more to it than that. Like a government conspiracy, or a cursed burial ground, or a comet that passed too close to the Earth.”
“That stuff is in everything,” Johnny went on. “Grown-ups love crap that tastes like pumpkins this time of year. Tommy, we have to get back home.”
“No. We should stay here. It’s safe here,” he explained. “We’ll bust into this shed and hide till morning. Going back out there; it’s suicide.”
“No,” Johnny said. “We have to get back home.”
“Why?” Tommy asked his kid brother.
“Cause mom’s baking cookies.”
#
The boys knew every backyard shortcut and alleyway in the neighborhood. All Tommy had to do was keep them away from the busy streets and they’d be fine. Sure, they could hear the sounds of car accidents and sirens and cries from blocks away, but if they could stick to the shadows, maybe they could make it back home alive. They still had the paintball gun, a few eggs, and that bag of their neighbor’s dog’s turds.
Beyond the privacy fence was a paved bike path. The sunset drained the last glow of the day and surrendered to the shadows. There was no light back here, just a long straight path running between backyards. Tommy looked both ways and admitted only to himself that he was completely turned around. Which way led home, and which way led to more pumpkin spiced madness?
“I know the way,” Tommy lied. “Follow me.”
They walked, one way seeming as safe and as dark as the other. Everything was silhouettes and soot-black shapes.
But something up ahead was making a lapping, slurping sound. Tommy squinted but couldn't make it out.
“What’s that?” Johnny asked.
“Gimme,” Tommy said and grabbed the glow stick from around Johnny’s neck. He underhanded it down the path.
It tumbled and bounced and came to rest in front of a dog. A yellow lab. The friendliest kind of dog that could ever be. It was even on a leash. A leash that led to a dead man laying in the middle of the path. Another one of those styrofoam coffee cups laid just inches from the man’s limp hand. There was a dull tan puddle. The dog licked and slurped away.
“Oh shit,” Tommy said.
“Good puppy,” Johnny said.
The dog looked up and growled from somewhere deep in its torso.
“Run!” Tommy yelled.
The dog took off, its nails scraping and digging against the blacktop, its retractable leash clicking and paying out more and more length with the deadman at the trigger, unable to lock it down.
Tommy saw a chain-link fence and careened off the path. He vaulted over the waist-high obstacle with one hand on the rail and the other holding the paintball gun. Johnny dove, landing belly on top of the fence. The dog ran out of leash inches from his brother’s shoes. Canine teeth and jowls and froth snapped at the rubber soles. The dog’s whole body strained against the taunt leash. Tommy scrambled to grab his brother and pull him over. Then the dead man moaned.
He wasn’t dead after all.
The man came up to his knees, looking at his dog and the boys. The little bit of movement gave the yellow lab just enough slack. The dog lunged and clamped down on Johnny’s flailing ankle.
“Tommy!” he cried.
Tommy grabbed Johnny by the collar of his mutant troll warrior costume and pulled with one hand. His other hand unleashed a fusillade of blood-red paint pellets at the dog’s head. The lab released, and they went tumbling into the lawn. The man moaned and stood up. The dog pounced into the chain link fence, its teeth gnashing into the metal. Tommy could smell pumpkin on its breath.
He came up to a knee and fired more paintballs, alternating between the dog and the man. Over his shoulder, he called to his brother. “Go! I got us covered!”
Johnny was surrounded by a bucketful of spilled eggs. He took one white orb, chunked it at the man, then took his brother’s advice and made a break for it. Tommy saw him go was quick to follow.
They ran around the house, through the front yard, and into the next street.
Johnny’s sneakers squeaked to a halt against the blacktop. Tommy almost ran straight into him, but the curse he had on his tongue for his younger brother died fast.
The neon lights of Burger Boys colored the brothers orange. Half of the windows were busted out. Blood-red handprints spotted the glass that wasn’t. There was an abandoned car left running in the parking lot. Inside was a cage match of insane grown-ups tearing each other apart. The fast food joint had been advertising their Pumpkin Spiced Shakes for weeks.
Johnny’s third grade English teacher clawed up from one of the booths. Blood and malt matted her hair.
“Miss Carlson?” Johnny said.
Miss Carlson’s head floated on her neck, her eyes aglaze, until she spotted the two boys. Then she locked on, stretched out her arm through the broken window, pointed at them with one orange-painted nail and cried out, “Children!”
Like a pack of wolves picking up a new scent, the other adults inside Burger Boys turned their heads in unison. Soulless eyes found fresh meat. There was a moment of relative silence. Police sirens wailed blocks away. Somewhere a kid cried. Behind them, a dog barked, but between the street and the dollar menu everything was quiet.
Miss Carlson jabberwocked up in the booth and leaned further through the broken glass. She screamed again, “Children!” It wasn’t a plea for help. It was a meal order.
Burger Boys vomited the grown-ups from every door, drive-thru window, and missing pane of glass. Miss Carlson led the charge.
“Quick! The car!” Tommy yelled.
The family sedan with the running engine was in the parking lot, closer to the pumpkin spiced horde, but it was their only chance. Johnny put his head down and ran. Tommy kept his fingers on the trigger of the paintball gun as he followed. The man and the dog chased from behind. The mob rushed towards them. The paintballs knocked down a few adults, but not enough.
Johnny dove into the passenger window of the car. Tommy jumped and slid across the hood. He got behind the wheel and slammed the door just before a nice old grandpa missing an ear and an eyeball could rip his throat out. Other grown-ups piled against the old man and smashed against the back windows. The yellow lab and the man with the leash jumped on the hood. Both of them barked and tried to bite through the windshield, their teeth clacking and scraping on the glass. Miss Carlson collided into the passenger door and started clawing through the open window. Her Pinterest manicured nails with little leaves and pumpkins painted on them dug into Johnny’s cheek and drew blood.
“Hey teach!” Tommy yelled. She looked up and saw nothing but the barrel of the paintball gun. “Conjugate this!”
Half a dozen pellets painted her face red and knocked her back out of the car. Tommy slammed the sedan in reverse and plowed over four or five adults. There were a few still clinging onto the luggage rack, but when Tommy threw the car in drive and stomped on the gas, they fell away like dried leaves from a tree.
#
“Johnny, are you okay?” Tommy asked.
His kid brother stared straight ahead as they rolled through the neighborhood, more zombie than troll warrior. “You… You shot my English teacher.”
“Hey,” Tommy said. “What are big brothers for?”
Johnny cracked a smile. “Thanks.”
“What did I tell you? It’s Halloween. Tonight, the kids are in charge.”
“What about mom and dad?” Johnny asked.
Tommy’s stomach sank when he thought of it. Dad had gone out. He was a big tough guy, so he should be safe from all the fancy lattes and muffins and cookies and cheesecakes artificially flavored like pumpkins. Mom on the other hand, the cookies in the oven were ginger pumpkin sugar cookies. The oven was set for thirty minutes when they left. If the clock on the dashboard was right, they didn’t have much time.
#
Their part of the neighborhood was quiet. Their house looked okay. No screams. No dogs. No broken glass. Sure little Ricky Roberts from two doors down still dressed up as Spiderman laid dead in the gutter, but everything else seemed okay.
Tommy parked the car in the driveway and killed the engine. The chaos and clamor of the night was further away now. Almost quelled. He didn’t bother to shut the car door. Neither did Johnny. The noise could draw more pumpkin-possessed adults. They crept up the front steps real quiet.
Johnny worked the latch and gently pushed open the front door. The hinges creaked and whined. On the TV, Charlie Brown and Linus waited for the Great Pumpkin. Nothing else stirred. The boys stepped into the warm light. Tommy closed the door behind them.
“Mom?” Tommy called out, aiming the paintball gun.
“Mom, we’re home,” Johnny said.
No response.
The house reeked of ginger pumpkin sugar cookies. The oven door was open. Noises came from around the island counter. Scarfing, scraping noises. Tommy and Johnny encircled the island to find their mom on hands and knees over trays of half-done cookies spilled out over the linoleum. Her fingers burned and seared as she scraped fistfuls of dough off the hot metal. She chomped and fumbled clumps in and out of her mouth like she was the Cookie Monster.
“Mom… No…” Johnny sobbed.
Her head snapped up at them. She hissed.
“Mom?” Tommy said, his fingers ready on the trigger.
She lunged at him like a cat. Tommy fired the gun but it didn’t matter. Two shots hit his mom. Two more splattered against the wall. Six more pelted the ceiling as she tackled him to the floor. The gun tumbled across the living room carpet.
“No!” Johnny wailed.
Mom clawed and snapped her teeth wildly as her feverish animal eyes glared down at Tommy. Johnny jumped on her back and tried to pull her off, but it was no use. The pumpkin flavor mix had filled her with inhuman strength. Her nails raked across Tommy’s face and cut furrows of blood. Johnny pulled on her hair as she tried to sink her teeth into Tommy’s neck. Another rabid dog, tight on a leash.
“It’s the pumpkin spice!” Johnny yelled. “We have to get it out of her!”
“But how?” Tommy was out of ideas. It took every bit of strength he had just to keep her from eating his face. Then, over her shoulder, he saw his little brother’s eyes light up. Johnny reached down to his belt and plunged one hand deep into the plastic grocery bag. Still riding mom's back like she was a bucking bronco, he pulled out a mound of wet fresh poop. Tommy could see Johnny gag, and as the wet drizzled out between his brother’s fingers, his own stomach lurched. Hopefully, their mom would have the same reaction. Johnny reached around their mom’s head and crammed the handful of dog poop straight into her open maw.
As soon as it was past her teeth she spat and hacked. Tommy reached up and clamped her mouth. Johnny came back with another handful and crammed through fingers and lips as she screamed through their hands and sprayed the mess through her teeth, but when she tried to suck in air to scream again, she choked down more of the wet brown filth. Johnny held on tight like a rodeo cowboy as she wretched and bucked. She clawed at their hands. Her nails cut skin. She convulsed. Johnny cried. Tommy scrambled out from underneath her.
She bucked once more and Johnny fell off. Tommy reached for the paintball gun and trained it on their mom. She hacked a big wad of poo onto the carpet. Her stomach lurched up into her throat. Johnny scurried away from their mom and next to his older brother. They watched her wretch.
First it was just dog poop. Then came the cookie dough and the coffee. She heaved and struggled to breathe. Then came the tater tot hot dish they had for lunch. Tots. Green beans. Hamburger chunks. It was a good deep vomit. When it was all out of her throat and onto the living room carpet, she collapsed into the mess.
“Mom!” Tommy called and scrambled over to her. He dropped the paintball gun, lifted her head out of the puddle, and rolled her onto his lap. Johnny came too. He brushed aside her hair that clung to her messy cheek.
“Mommy?” Johnny said.
She coughed and sputtered. Her lungs hacked twice. She spit a green bean onto the floor.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Boys?” she said.
“Mom? Is it you?” Tommy asked.
“Where am I? What happened?” she asked as if waking up from a dream. “Where are your glow sticks?”
They cried and wrapped her up in hugs. The pumpkin spice was out of her. They’d done it. They were safe. The two boys and their mom held each other tight in that mound of mess and vomit and paint pellets and dog poop and love. Things were going to be okay.
When the front door opened, the three of them lifted up their heads.
Dad’s steel-toed boots clunked against the floor. His big duck cloth coat hung lopsided off his shoulders. In his arms was a twelve pack of Boston Brewery Pumpkin Spiced Ale. He sucked down the dregs of a bottle and tossed it aside. He looked up at his family and smiled a devilish orange grin.
“You boys be safe! Say please and thank you! And keep those glow sticks where you can see them so you don’t get hit!”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “We know, mom.”
“Love you, mom!” Johnny, his kid brother, called as the door closed.
The boys stood on their front stoop and looked over their nice little suburban neighborhood and dreamed of candy and anarchy. Tommy pulled the glow stick from around his neck and chucked it into the bushes. Johnny opened the firewood box and pulled out their night’s supplies: an extra jack o’ lantern bucket full of raw eggs, a paintball gun, and a plastic grocery sack full of dog poop. Tommy took the paintball gun and led them down the driveway.
“Trick or treat isn’t about saying please and thank you,” Tommy told his little brother. “It’s an ultimatum. Give up the treats, or we’re giving you the tricks. If they don’t fill up this bucket…” he hoisted up his empty plastic jack o’ lantern, and said, “we empty that bucket,” and pointed to the one full of eggs.
“Yeah!” Johnny said, enthusiastic because
a. he was a spaz, and
b. it was Halloween. He had a right to be excited.
And tonight, they were more than just some dumb kids in a dumb town. Tommy was a space marine complete with satchels, gadgets, a plastic HALO helmet, and the paintball gun their mom didn’t know about. Its bottle rattled full of only red pellets because the red ones looked like blood. And Johnny was a mutant troll warrior.
As they strolled down the street, Johnny slashed the hollow plastic troll axe through the air with one hand and swung the bucket of eggs and sack of wet dog turds in the other hand. It was the neighbor’s dog’s poop, but was in their yard so it wasn’t like they stole it. Who knew what they’d actually do with the dog poop, but Tommy knew it could come in handy.
“This is the one night each year where the kids are in charge,” Tommy preached to his younger brother. “Think about it. All the parents have to stay home. All the kids are set loose to run free. They have to follow our rules. That’s what Halloween’s all about.”
“And we get candy!” Johnny said.
#
Every kid with half a brain knew the rich people gave away the best candy. And the first house they went to? Oh, baby! It had those big brick pillars on either side of the driveway, a fancy mailbox, a shining new SUV in the driveway… Other kids were hitting up other houses, just randomly as if the little ramblers would pay out the same as this mansion.
But... the driveway was long and they were getting kind of far away from the rest of the kids. Big trees towered over the boys and bare branches dangled above their heads. The security lights on the garage were bright and harsh in their eyes. Tommy checked his CO2 tank and clicked off the safety on the paintball gun. But when they came around the garage he saw the front door was open and a pair of jack o’ lanterns were lit on either side of the steps.
There was a mom in the doorway and two other kids at the door. Cool. All good. Only… the kids weren’t standing up. They were lying down. And the mom… The mom was crouched over them. Tommy shielded his eyes from the bright lights and stepped closer for a better view. Johnny, the little moron, marched on without a care. Tommy had to follow. Couldn’t let his little brother go ahead without him.
It wasn’t until they stepped past the bright security lights that the doorway came into full view. The two kids, one a Disney Princess and the other a Hogwartz wizard, were sprawled out on the concrete. Their joints were twisted in weird directions like human pretzels. Dark fluids drizzled down the steps, brownish and aromatic and bitter. The smell reminded Tommy of deer hunting with this dad. Hunting and… was that pumpkin pie?
The mom came up from her crouch and snarled at the boys like a mean dog. Her arms were smeared red from fingers to elbows. She held one of those kid’s arms in her hand. But the arm wasn’t attached to anything. It dangled flesh and sinew from it’s ragged stump. In the mom’s other hand was one of those disposable coffee cups, the plastic lid missing and the contents dribbling out. She drooled blood. Not fake Halloween blood. Not red pellets from a paintball gun either. Real, stinking, brilliant, human blood.
It had to be a gag. It had to be just dumb grown-ups trying to scare them. It couldn’t be real. Tommy looked to his kid brother Johnny, whose face was pale and whose sneakers were edging backwards, and Tommy knew this was no joke.
Johnny screamed. So did Tommy.
So did the mom.
Tommy raised the paintball gun and pumped a dozen pellets into her already stained knit sweater. She didn’t seem to notice. The brothers turned and ran.
So did the mom.
It was the fastest Tommy had ever run in his life. Track and field day? Soccer practice? The presidential fitness day? Forget about it. He’d never run this fast before. His HALO helmet fell off and he never even thought of going back for it. And his kid brother ran just as fast. Their sneakers slapped and echoed against the blacktop. The driveway was so long. The mom was still coming, and she’d catch them before they escaped back into the neighborhood. Tommy knew it. Johnny knew it too.
And then, Johnny dropped his troll axe, skidded to a stop, snatched an egg out of the bucket, and faced down the mom. He had one chance. One shot. Like David versus Goliath. Like Thor versus Thanos.
“Johnny!” Tommy called.
Johnny threw the egg. It wobbled uneven through the air and smacked the mom square between the eyes. Shell and white and yolk exploded on her face. Driven by momentum and insanity, she fell to her knees and skidded along the driveway, shredding holes in her yoga pants as she ground to a stop. She screamed and raked the yolk out her eyes with sharp nails.
“Come on!” Tommy grabbed his brother by the arm and yanked him hard towards the mouth of the driveway.
#
They didn’t quit running until they were a block away from the brick pillars. Tommy had to grab Johnny to get him to stop. The inertia spun his brother around so that they were looking face to face. Johnny panted like an animal. The green and red troll make-up was streaked with tears. His eyelids couldn’t have been pried any wider.
“Johnny! Johnny, listen! It’s okay. We’re okay. We got away,” Tommy said. “She’s long gone. She won’t hurt us.”
But Johnny’s eyes were fixed on something over his older brother’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “Look.”
It was only then that Tommy saw the rest of the neighborhood.
Children were sprinting and screaming across yards and through cul de sacs. Little plastic accessories and masks and bits of costumes littered the streets and sidewalks. Abandoned and overturned Halloween buckets spilled candy over the pavement. A few kids stood paralized in shock. A few others laid motionless, face first in front lawns. Pillars of smoke and fire rose into the burnt orange sky above the houses.
“It’s the pumpkin spice!” an older kid called out from the middle of a four way stop. “They’re all spiced up!”
The boy only had enough time to say those nonsense words when a minivan plowed through the four-way stop, through the boy, and into a telephone pole. The kid splattered between the thick wooden post and the crumpled minivan hood. Something inside the van pushed the windshield out convex. The engine revved and whined in the night.
Tommy dropped his empty bucket, raised the paintball gun, and crept up to the minivan like a Medal of Honor operator.
“Tommy?” Johnny called after his big brother.
“We have to see,” Tommy said. He kept his sights on the wreck.
The boy pinned between the bumper and the post used to be a vampire with a cape and fancy pendant on his chest. His plastic fangs sat in a crevasse between the hood and the windshield along with bits of broken glass. He wasn’t Undead anymore. Just plain dead now, which was exponentially more terrifying.
The minivan’s sliding door was open. Inside, it was dark. Nothing moved. The transformer on top of the pole sparked and rained embers down around Tommy. He peaked in the open driver’s window and saw a lady’s head lodged into the windshield. Her chest was smashed into the steering column. No seatbelt. There wasn’t much blood, but there was that same smell from the big house’s front stoop.
Pumpkin pie?
He reached in the open window and picked up a paper cup off the dash. The van’s interior was covered in its spilled contents.
“Tommy? What is it?”
He took one whiff. “Coffee. Pumpkin Spiced Latte,” he said, only knowing the name from riding with Mom through the drive-thru.
“He was trying to warn us,” Johnny said, talking about the boy between the van and the telephone pole.
A chorus of screams came from down the block. Tommy snapped the paintball gun up into the high-ready. Johnny clutched another egg. Four more kids went sprinting past the minivan, ghosts and ghouls scared off by a much more dire threat: a raving wild-eyed teenage girl in Ugg boots and a fleece sweater. Tommy rapid-fired the gun with two fluttering fingers. One of the red pellets hit the girl in the temple and she toppled over, face planting into the pavement. Chunks and crumbs of a muffin exploded from her fist. Once down, she didn’t move.
The four other kids kept running. Their trailing screams echoed off the vinyl-sided houses behind them. Tommy crept up slow to the shrapnel of the muffin. He sniffed it, but didn’t taste it.
“Pumpkin flavored,” he said and threw the chunk at the limp girl’s head.
They backed away slow, and when Tommy felt safe enough to take the gun off of her, they ran.
#
A block away, they slipped into an unlit backyard and into the narrow gap between a tool shed and a privacy fence. It was dark there and hidden from the street and the fires and the screaming.
“It must be something in the flavoring,” Johnny said. “Some chemical got spilled in the factory and made its way into all the pumpkin-spiced food.”
“That’s crazy,” Tommy told his younger brother. “There’s gotta be something more to it than that. Like a government conspiracy, or a cursed burial ground, or a comet that passed too close to the Earth.”
“That stuff is in everything,” Johnny went on. “Grown-ups love crap that tastes like pumpkins this time of year. Tommy, we have to get back home.”
“No. We should stay here. It’s safe here,” he explained. “We’ll bust into this shed and hide till morning. Going back out there; it’s suicide.”
“No,” Johnny said. “We have to get back home.”
“Why?” Tommy asked his kid brother.
“Cause mom’s baking cookies.”
#
The boys knew every backyard shortcut and alleyway in the neighborhood. All Tommy had to do was keep them away from the busy streets and they’d be fine. Sure, they could hear the sounds of car accidents and sirens and cries from blocks away, but if they could stick to the shadows, maybe they could make it back home alive. They still had the paintball gun, a few eggs, and that bag of their neighbor’s dog’s turds.
Beyond the privacy fence was a paved bike path. The sunset drained the last glow of the day and surrendered to the shadows. There was no light back here, just a long straight path running between backyards. Tommy looked both ways and admitted only to himself that he was completely turned around. Which way led home, and which way led to more pumpkin spiced madness?
“I know the way,” Tommy lied. “Follow me.”
They walked, one way seeming as safe and as dark as the other. Everything was silhouettes and soot-black shapes.
But something up ahead was making a lapping, slurping sound. Tommy squinted but couldn't make it out.
“What’s that?” Johnny asked.
“Gimme,” Tommy said and grabbed the glow stick from around Johnny’s neck. He underhanded it down the path.
It tumbled and bounced and came to rest in front of a dog. A yellow lab. The friendliest kind of dog that could ever be. It was even on a leash. A leash that led to a dead man laying in the middle of the path. Another one of those styrofoam coffee cups laid just inches from the man’s limp hand. There was a dull tan puddle. The dog licked and slurped away.
“Oh shit,” Tommy said.
“Good puppy,” Johnny said.
The dog looked up and growled from somewhere deep in its torso.
“Run!” Tommy yelled.
The dog took off, its nails scraping and digging against the blacktop, its retractable leash clicking and paying out more and more length with the deadman at the trigger, unable to lock it down.
Tommy saw a chain-link fence and careened off the path. He vaulted over the waist-high obstacle with one hand on the rail and the other holding the paintball gun. Johnny dove, landing belly on top of the fence. The dog ran out of leash inches from his brother’s shoes. Canine teeth and jowls and froth snapped at the rubber soles. The dog’s whole body strained against the taunt leash. Tommy scrambled to grab his brother and pull him over. Then the dead man moaned.
He wasn’t dead after all.
The man came up to his knees, looking at his dog and the boys. The little bit of movement gave the yellow lab just enough slack. The dog lunged and clamped down on Johnny’s flailing ankle.
“Tommy!” he cried.
Tommy grabbed Johnny by the collar of his mutant troll warrior costume and pulled with one hand. His other hand unleashed a fusillade of blood-red paint pellets at the dog’s head. The lab released, and they went tumbling into the lawn. The man moaned and stood up. The dog pounced into the chain link fence, its teeth gnashing into the metal. Tommy could smell pumpkin on its breath.
He came up to a knee and fired more paintballs, alternating between the dog and the man. Over his shoulder, he called to his brother. “Go! I got us covered!”
Johnny was surrounded by a bucketful of spilled eggs. He took one white orb, chunked it at the man, then took his brother’s advice and made a break for it. Tommy saw him go was quick to follow.
They ran around the house, through the front yard, and into the next street.
Johnny’s sneakers squeaked to a halt against the blacktop. Tommy almost ran straight into him, but the curse he had on his tongue for his younger brother died fast.
The neon lights of Burger Boys colored the brothers orange. Half of the windows were busted out. Blood-red handprints spotted the glass that wasn’t. There was an abandoned car left running in the parking lot. Inside was a cage match of insane grown-ups tearing each other apart. The fast food joint had been advertising their Pumpkin Spiced Shakes for weeks.
Johnny’s third grade English teacher clawed up from one of the booths. Blood and malt matted her hair.
“Miss Carlson?” Johnny said.
Miss Carlson’s head floated on her neck, her eyes aglaze, until she spotted the two boys. Then she locked on, stretched out her arm through the broken window, pointed at them with one orange-painted nail and cried out, “Children!”
Like a pack of wolves picking up a new scent, the other adults inside Burger Boys turned their heads in unison. Soulless eyes found fresh meat. There was a moment of relative silence. Police sirens wailed blocks away. Somewhere a kid cried. Behind them, a dog barked, but between the street and the dollar menu everything was quiet.
Miss Carlson jabberwocked up in the booth and leaned further through the broken glass. She screamed again, “Children!” It wasn’t a plea for help. It was a meal order.
Burger Boys vomited the grown-ups from every door, drive-thru window, and missing pane of glass. Miss Carlson led the charge.
“Quick! The car!” Tommy yelled.
The family sedan with the running engine was in the parking lot, closer to the pumpkin spiced horde, but it was their only chance. Johnny put his head down and ran. Tommy kept his fingers on the trigger of the paintball gun as he followed. The man and the dog chased from behind. The mob rushed towards them. The paintballs knocked down a few adults, but not enough.
Johnny dove into the passenger window of the car. Tommy jumped and slid across the hood. He got behind the wheel and slammed the door just before a nice old grandpa missing an ear and an eyeball could rip his throat out. Other grown-ups piled against the old man and smashed against the back windows. The yellow lab and the man with the leash jumped on the hood. Both of them barked and tried to bite through the windshield, their teeth clacking and scraping on the glass. Miss Carlson collided into the passenger door and started clawing through the open window. Her Pinterest manicured nails with little leaves and pumpkins painted on them dug into Johnny’s cheek and drew blood.
“Hey teach!” Tommy yelled. She looked up and saw nothing but the barrel of the paintball gun. “Conjugate this!”
Half a dozen pellets painted her face red and knocked her back out of the car. Tommy slammed the sedan in reverse and plowed over four or five adults. There were a few still clinging onto the luggage rack, but when Tommy threw the car in drive and stomped on the gas, they fell away like dried leaves from a tree.
#
“Johnny, are you okay?” Tommy asked.
His kid brother stared straight ahead as they rolled through the neighborhood, more zombie than troll warrior. “You… You shot my English teacher.”
“Hey,” Tommy said. “What are big brothers for?”
Johnny cracked a smile. “Thanks.”
“What did I tell you? It’s Halloween. Tonight, the kids are in charge.”
“What about mom and dad?” Johnny asked.
Tommy’s stomach sank when he thought of it. Dad had gone out. He was a big tough guy, so he should be safe from all the fancy lattes and muffins and cookies and cheesecakes artificially flavored like pumpkins. Mom on the other hand, the cookies in the oven were ginger pumpkin sugar cookies. The oven was set for thirty minutes when they left. If the clock on the dashboard was right, they didn’t have much time.
#
Their part of the neighborhood was quiet. Their house looked okay. No screams. No dogs. No broken glass. Sure little Ricky Roberts from two doors down still dressed up as Spiderman laid dead in the gutter, but everything else seemed okay.
Tommy parked the car in the driveway and killed the engine. The chaos and clamor of the night was further away now. Almost quelled. He didn’t bother to shut the car door. Neither did Johnny. The noise could draw more pumpkin-possessed adults. They crept up the front steps real quiet.
Johnny worked the latch and gently pushed open the front door. The hinges creaked and whined. On the TV, Charlie Brown and Linus waited for the Great Pumpkin. Nothing else stirred. The boys stepped into the warm light. Tommy closed the door behind them.
“Mom?” Tommy called out, aiming the paintball gun.
“Mom, we’re home,” Johnny said.
No response.
The house reeked of ginger pumpkin sugar cookies. The oven door was open. Noises came from around the island counter. Scarfing, scraping noises. Tommy and Johnny encircled the island to find their mom on hands and knees over trays of half-done cookies spilled out over the linoleum. Her fingers burned and seared as she scraped fistfuls of dough off the hot metal. She chomped and fumbled clumps in and out of her mouth like she was the Cookie Monster.
“Mom… No…” Johnny sobbed.
Her head snapped up at them. She hissed.
“Mom?” Tommy said, his fingers ready on the trigger.
She lunged at him like a cat. Tommy fired the gun but it didn’t matter. Two shots hit his mom. Two more splattered against the wall. Six more pelted the ceiling as she tackled him to the floor. The gun tumbled across the living room carpet.
“No!” Johnny wailed.
Mom clawed and snapped her teeth wildly as her feverish animal eyes glared down at Tommy. Johnny jumped on her back and tried to pull her off, but it was no use. The pumpkin flavor mix had filled her with inhuman strength. Her nails raked across Tommy’s face and cut furrows of blood. Johnny pulled on her hair as she tried to sink her teeth into Tommy’s neck. Another rabid dog, tight on a leash.
“It’s the pumpkin spice!” Johnny yelled. “We have to get it out of her!”
“But how?” Tommy was out of ideas. It took every bit of strength he had just to keep her from eating his face. Then, over her shoulder, he saw his little brother’s eyes light up. Johnny reached down to his belt and plunged one hand deep into the plastic grocery bag. Still riding mom's back like she was a bucking bronco, he pulled out a mound of wet fresh poop. Tommy could see Johnny gag, and as the wet drizzled out between his brother’s fingers, his own stomach lurched. Hopefully, their mom would have the same reaction. Johnny reached around their mom’s head and crammed the handful of dog poop straight into her open maw.
As soon as it was past her teeth she spat and hacked. Tommy reached up and clamped her mouth. Johnny came back with another handful and crammed through fingers and lips as she screamed through their hands and sprayed the mess through her teeth, but when she tried to suck in air to scream again, she choked down more of the wet brown filth. Johnny held on tight like a rodeo cowboy as she wretched and bucked. She clawed at their hands. Her nails cut skin. She convulsed. Johnny cried. Tommy scrambled out from underneath her.
She bucked once more and Johnny fell off. Tommy reached for the paintball gun and trained it on their mom. She hacked a big wad of poo onto the carpet. Her stomach lurched up into her throat. Johnny scurried away from their mom and next to his older brother. They watched her wretch.
First it was just dog poop. Then came the cookie dough and the coffee. She heaved and struggled to breathe. Then came the tater tot hot dish they had for lunch. Tots. Green beans. Hamburger chunks. It was a good deep vomit. When it was all out of her throat and onto the living room carpet, she collapsed into the mess.
“Mom!” Tommy called and scrambled over to her. He dropped the paintball gun, lifted her head out of the puddle, and rolled her onto his lap. Johnny came too. He brushed aside her hair that clung to her messy cheek.
“Mommy?” Johnny said.
She coughed and sputtered. Her lungs hacked twice. She spit a green bean onto the floor.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Boys?” she said.
“Mom? Is it you?” Tommy asked.
“Where am I? What happened?” she asked as if waking up from a dream. “Where are your glow sticks?”
They cried and wrapped her up in hugs. The pumpkin spice was out of her. They’d done it. They were safe. The two boys and their mom held each other tight in that mound of mess and vomit and paint pellets and dog poop and love. Things were going to be okay.
When the front door opened, the three of them lifted up their heads.
Dad’s steel-toed boots clunked against the floor. His big duck cloth coat hung lopsided off his shoulders. In his arms was a twelve pack of Boston Brewery Pumpkin Spiced Ale. He sucked down the dregs of a bottle and tossed it aside. He looked up at his family and smiled a devilish orange grin.