It was a dark and stormy night and the rain fell in buckets.
Thunder occasionally shook the tiny house where Samantha lived with her grand parents. This Halloween, there were no trick-or-treaters, the storm was too fierce. Well, almost none.
Samantha lived on a narrow street lined with tall horse chestnut trees. The trees were beautiful except that every fall they shed their fruit all over. They were beautiful conkers, but the scary little boy who lived across the street collected them and threw them at everything that moved. Even, sometimes, at Samantha.
He had never hit Samantha, but she was fairly sure he could if he wanted to, and that was annoying enough. Just yesterday, one of the flying missiles had bounced off the porch right next to Samantha and she had cried out in surprise and a little fear. Samantha’s Grandmother had gone to talk to the boy and his Grandfather, but the angry message had fallen on deaf ears. The Grandfather had pretended to be deaf. Samantha was not convinced, though he did use sign language with his grandson.
Bram, the conker thrower, lived with his father and grandfather, but mostly with his grandfather because his father was away a lot. He was away right now, visiting the Space Station. He was an astronaut.
Samantha was having tea with a few friends. She said calmly, “There was talk of aliens in school today, did you hear it?” “Huh? Do you believe that stuff?”, Fareeda asked, with a forced nonchalance. After a short pause, “Where?” Rachel answered, “I heard. In our neighborhood, supposedly.” Then,
they heard a loud crash from upstairs or the roof and all the lights went out.
Samantha looked outside, and the lights were out only in her house, the other houses were lit, dimmed by the rain. Her friend Rachel suggested they go see if the lights worked in other parts of the house. But no one moved. Then they heard what sounded like bumping on the stairs
“Is your Grandmother ok?”, Rachel asked.
“She’s not here”, Samantha answered. “She went to the store to get a surprise dessert for us.”
All was quiet in the house. The three girls, holding hands, walked slowly into the kitchen and the office. They heard and saw nothing. They couldn’t see anything because none of the lights worked, but Samantha knew where the candles were, and she fished around in the junk drawer and found one. Then she reached up and pulled down the matches and … they went back to the dining room to their tea. The candle was lit, and suddenly it didn’t seem as scary as it had been. Everything would be all right.
Except, where was Grandma? She should have been back by now. They hadn’t heard any cars in the street for a long time. It was too quiet. They turned back to their candlelight tea with not much enthusiasm, when
they heard someone on the back stairs, followed by
what seemed to be someone trying to get in the back door.
Then there was an inhuman sound and a scrabbling sound as if someone were trying to dig through the wall.
“Sam!”, Rachel spluttered. “What is that? It can’t be your grandmother.”
“I bet it is Bram trying to trick us”, answered Samantha, trying to be brave.
“I don’t think Bram can make sounds that low, more like a bear,” suggested Fareeda. “Do you think one escaped from the zoo? Should we look on Google News to see if there is anything about escaped animals?”
“I don’t think it would get to Google News that fast”, said Rachel, “we should check KIRO 7 news, they would have it.”
There were noises from the back stairs. But no one moved. They were all listening intently, trying to reassure themselves that it was nothing to be afraid of.
All was quiet except for the pouring rain, and they began to calm down. They started nibbling and taking small sips of tea. Ah… the great restorer, tea.
“It’s crazy to get scared over funny sounds”, suggested Samantha tentatively. “Just because it is Halloween, we hear sounds and imagine them into fantastic beasts.”
“But for all three of us to imagine the same way, isn’t that odd?” countered Fareeda.
“Group hysteria, or shared hypnosis is a real thing,” said Rachel knowingly.
“But who is hypnotizing us”, asked Samantha and Fareeda together.
A long pause, as each girl thought about it, and thinking the same thing, that they were trying to not be scared.
They heard a few taps on the front window. They looked around the room and at each other. Then a sudden bell
followed by a loud rumble of bouncing stones across the floor.
Silence for 15 seconds. “Is there someone in the house?”, whispered Rachel in a strangled voice.
“Those are conkers”, answered Samantha. “Maybe Bram snuck in the house, trying to trick us. I’ll go see.” But she didn’t move.
Then there was a sound on the front porch stairs, someone coming up to the door. No one moved. “Can’t be a trick-or-treater, can it?”, whispered Samantha. They knew it wasn’t. It sounded more like the beast that was at the back door.
Then, after someone or something pounded on the front door, they heard
“Is Bram in there?” from outside.
“That sounds a little like Bram’s father, but he is in space, and he doesn’t sound right”, worried Samantha.
“Maybe he fell out of space and landed on the house, and he is a little deranged,” said Rachel.
“I think you should open the door,” said Fareeda.
“Maybe we could do it together?” asked Samantha.
And they took the candle and slowly went to the door and opened it.
“Ah, there you are! I came back early, I fell off the space station. Had a little trouble seeing where I was going”, said someone with yellow eyes, looking toward the kitchen, where Bram stood.
“You’re not my dad”, Bram said slowly, and the stranger disappeared.
The girls locked the door quickly. They went back to their tea and ate hungrily. Bram joined them and ate all the peanut butter sandwiches. He asked “Where did all those conkers come from?”, pointing to the conkers on the dining room floor. He said that all of his conkers were at home hidden in his closet so no one would steal them. When he walked in the back door just now, these were already on the floor.
Fareeda finally asked very quietly, “Who was that at the front door?”
“Some creep from 8th grade who has been trying to scare me. He knows when my father is away. That is why I came to your house to try to fool him, but somehow he found out.”
After a pause, Rachel asked “Are you sure that was him?”