Night of The Living Dead

Remember when you read me ghost stories and it was dinnertime but I had no intention to eat? When I was saving myself for the mounds of Kit-Kat bars and candy apples and popcorn balls and Reeses and I had no idea what "calorie counting" was? It was my fourth year in a row being a witch but this year was different because I wasn't going green. I was done hiding behind globs of emerald makeup. Oxford shoes and spider web tights and a bell sleeved black sheet-like dress. My eyelashes were thick black creepy crawly bug legs and my midnight lips looked even better once the lipstick got on my teeth.

You dressed as a Dead Sea captain like always. I guess the Angersola's don't like change. Your face paint was a masterpiece with your black eyes and stitched up lips and ghastly bruises all over your cheekbones. Your jet-black hair was wild and your old naval jacket covered in fake crimson blood. You were unrecognizable.

This year Halloween was going to be different. No more trick or treating on Pleasant Street where people left baskets of fun sized M&Ms outside their front doors to be emptied before we even set out by middle school kids who didn’t wear costumes. I was finally old enough to go downtown with you.

I had a minor panic attack when I realized my Sky Dancers bike didn't go with my ensemble but we were already running late. Witches are never late.

I raced you down Liberty Street past all of the monstrous colonials with the fake cobwebs covering the doors and candles in the windows. Twilight was looming over Chester and the tinted cream crescent moon was coming out of hiding. The skeleton trees were fading to black. My bike pummeled through the orange and brown leaves but you were faster. The air smelled of smoke and pine needles and Hershey bars.

We didn't pass one car during the ten-minute journey so I spent most of it riding the yellow line. I was walking now and you wheeled both of our bikes along either side of you. We passed Trooper Brown and he nodded hello as we passed the barricades into the chaos that stood before us. No cars would be entering downtown Chester tonight.

The sea of kings and pirates and Elvis' and devils filling the twisted two-lane road made me grip your hand as you parked our bikes next to Simon's Marketplace near about ten others. I could see high flames over the stonewall up ahead. Drumbeats rumbled behind my ribcage and rattled in the back of my throat. I couldn’t tell what was louder, my beating heart or the beating drums.

Everyone around us was unfamiliar to me at this mysterious masquerade. Noticing my evident shock you bent down next to my ear and explained that, “Halloween’s not only about ghouls and candy corn, it’s about being someone different.”

I understood why you wanted to hide. Why you coveted the cover of darkness and the costumes and the ambiguity.

Everybody in Chester had his or her own stagnant reputation. Nothing got past anybody. This was the one night when the only thing anyone would be judging was the amount of effort put into your attire.

I always knew you loathed everybody knowing everybody else’s business. Like when we found out people were praying for you at church because of the ambulance outside of our house and the hospital stay and the antidepressants and the iv drips and your car sitting in our driveway for weeks unused. People looked at us differently at the grocery store.

Moms went out of their way to say hello to me at school and I had to go talk to somebody during recess that probed me with questions. But at the bonfire, you were no longer my father, you were the Dead Sea captain and none of that happened to you.

The Dead Sea Captain didn’t have to take Escitalopram because he lost his job. He was a sailor with his own three masted zombie ship. Out in the ocean he was freed of the confinements of land, the suffocating pressure of society.

The Dead Sea Captain would have never thought to take too many pills. Maybe that’s because he was already dead.

The street was lined with dozens of orange jack o lanterns of varying sizes. They lit a scorching path straight to the bonfire. I proudly explained to you that every single student at Chester Elementary had carved one and I searched high and low for mine. The lopsided cat face with the sunken triangle nose and half opened eyes finally stared back at us. I told you it was Dutchess, our cat, and you replied with a chuckle and an "obviously, it looks just like her."

I couldn't let go of your hand as we approached the inferno without the risk of losing you. Orange and red embers danced to the drums high above our heads. Somebody on stilts dressed as a giraffe waved at me from the sky above. I tried to figure out who it was but it was useless. Everywhere people were shouting out "hi's" and "hullo's" over the drumbeats to one another and I tried to tell if anybody really knew who anybody else was with of all of the glitter and makeup and wigs. I guess everyone had something to hide.

We got apple cider out of an enormous metal bathtub and you stepped on my feet a few times. You could tell it was too much for me so we went back to the safety of the Dutchess pumpkin.

My friends were standing near their respective jack o lanterns dressed as Princess Barbies and ballerinas. My Morticia like gown made me the sore thumb but I wouldn't be caught dead in those tight pink unitards anyway. I grabbed my pillowcase and went door to door at each and every art gallery and boutique and restaurant with them in toe.

I received French hard candies from Du Village and homemade fudge from Simon's. The Norwegian artists gave out oddly shaped chocolates and almost every restaurant abided by the two-handful-rule. When my pillowcase was sufficiently stuffed to the brim I found you at the Pattaconk Tavern with the other dads.

You were standing there, covered in fake blood, black curls going mad, with your dead eyes and ghoulish face drinking from the mug you kept at the bar. I knew it was yours by the faded Red Sox stickers that sat over the Pattaconk logo. So at ease conversing with the other costumed patrons, you had taught me to love the mystique and mystery of Halloween and tonight I learned why. At that moment I wanted to tell you that if you wanted, you could be the Dead Sea captain everyday. At that moment I hoped you would dress as him forever.