If Your Kids Go Out to Trick-or-Treat — Don't Let Them Go Down Wicker Street

It started out like any other Halloween. My friends Ted, Joe, Kevin, and I were a team every year, and we'd perfected the art of getting the most candy by any means necessary.

We all met up outside Joe's house. He lived right across the street from me. Ted and Kevin were only a few blocks away. They stashed their bikes in Joe's garage and we set off down the street just as dusk was thickening into night, a bloated orange crescent moon pushing up through the clouds on the horizon.

The plan was to hit as many houses as we possibly could. Our weapons of choice: jumbo pillowcases that would be stuffed to the brim by the end of the night if everything went the way we wanted.

Spoiler alert. It didn't.

Ted was wearing a black-and-red striped sweater with a Freddy Krueger mask, and on his hand he had a gardening glove with butter knives taped to the back of it. Terrifying, I know. Kevin was wearing a pale blue mechanic's uniform that said Bob on the breast pocket, with grease smeared on his hands and nose — he left smudges of it everywhere he went. He had a tool belt around his waist with wrenches and screwdrivers dangling off it. Joe was wearing a Chewbacca mask and a furry costume that looked like it was made out of old brown shag carpeting. Or maybe a couple dozen used wigs.

All of us kept pulling our masks off between houses, because they were way too hot and sweaty to walk around in. I kept envying Kevin, who was the only one of us who hadn't bothered with one.

"Told you guys you'd be sweating your faces off in those things," he said, smirking at us as we peeled them off for the dozenth time.

"Yeah, well, my costume doesn't really work without it," Ted said, looking down at his Freddy getup.

"Mine either," I said, holding my Batman mask in my hand. It kind of ruined the illusion if I didn't wear it — made it look like the Gotham City Detective had forgotten his cowl and pointy ears at home. It was just a cheap plastic mask with tiny holes cut for seeing and breathing. My costume was mostly homemade, too, except for the flimsy plastic breastplate with the Batman symbol on it.

"At least mine's a real costume," Joe piped up. "Kevin's parents are so poor they couldn't afford one. Where'd they buy that mechanic shirt for you, the thrift store?"

His voice had that joking-around lilt to it, but I could tell he wasn't really joking. I didn't say anything, because I'd actually gotten parts of my own costume at a thrift store and I didn't want the attention swinging my way.

Kevin didn't say anything back. He just went quiet and brooding for a while. I felt bad about Joe's cheap shot. He'd been a jerk to Kevin all week over some argument I wasn't part of. But I knew Kevin well enough to know Joe was going to pay for that insult eventually. Kevin never let anything go. He'd bottle up his rage and then detonate it in these brutal outbursts. As we walked to the next house, I couldn't help remembering the time I'd been on the receiving end of one.

Once, during recess at school, I'd said something to him as a joke — something so harmless I can't even remember what it was. Kevin had been upset by it, but he didn't say a word at the time. Instead, he waited a few minutes until my back was turned, and then kicked me as hard as he could in the ass. The only problem was, he missed my ass. The toe of his shoe went between my legs and nailed me square in the balls. I couldn't sit down comfortably for months.

"You're on my list now," he'd tell people when they pushed him too far — and none of us were ever completely sure whether he was kidding.

We worked our way around the neighborhood near our homes, spiraling outward, moving with the practiced efficiency of kids who'd done this many times before. We skipped the dark houses with blacked-out windows, and the ones where we knew they'd hand out raisins or apples or — God forbid — dental floss. Our route had been planned for weeks. We had all the best houses from the year before mapped out in our heads, the ones that gave out full-size chocolate bars and cans of pop and goodie bags.

The results were better than we'd ever managed. By eight o'clock our pillowcases were practically overflowing, and we had to stop at my house to unload the excess. My mom handed us garbage bags and we heaped our candy into them under her worried gaze. I could practically see her adding up the dental bills in her head as I shoveled a few Tootsie Rolls into my mouth, and then we headed back out, hoping to squeeze in one more hour of pillaging.

"Be safe," she called after us. "Don't eat any more candy until I get a chance to go through it all! I have to check for razor blades!"

"Okay, Mom!" I yelled back, pedaling off with a Starburst already jammed into my crowded mouth.

With no good options left nearby, we rode toward the other end of town, where the houses sat farther apart and looked less promising. They all looked the same to me. I didn't care which road we took.

"How about this one?" Joe asked, stopping at the end of a street I didn't recognize.

"Yeah, sure. Doesn't matter to me," I said, hopping off my bike.

We still felt like bandits after a flawless heist, ready to hit one last big score.

We parked our bikes at the end of the little road — Wicker Street — locked them to some small trees, and set off on foot through the unfamiliar neighborhood. Looking back, we should have just gone home satisfied with what we had. It was already getting late, and most of the other trick-or-treaters had finished for the night. There were only a few stragglers still out.

I hadn't spent much time at this end of town, and it felt foreign and strange as we walked along the street lined with tall trees, our pillowcases empty once more.

The weird thing was, every house around there was blacked out. Not one of them was lit up or decorated — no cobwebs, no skeletons, no jack-o'-lanterns. No spooky music drifting from hidden speakers. No neighbors dressed as scarecrows waiting to jump out at you. And no other kids walking around. Not on this street.

The four of us walked silently up the dark road. A handful of lamp posts lit our path, but I noticed a lot of them were dead or flickering with a dim, intermittent blue light. We passed through long stretches where I could barely see anything except by moonlight.

Something scurried past us in the dark and made me jump. Part of me really wanted to turn around and run home, but I ignored the feeling and kept walking with my friends, each step shakier than the last.

None of the houses looked welcoming to trick-or-treaters, and I was starting to get nervous. At least, I was.

"Maybe it's getting too late," I said. "What time is it, Kevin?"

He was the only one of us wearing a wristwatch, but he pretended not to hear me. He was still sulking over Joe's cheap shot about his costume. I decided not to push it and guessed it was around nine-thirty, based on when we'd left my house.

That was usually when people started turning their lights off and calling it a night, wasn't it? And yet this whole neighborhood felt awake. Aware of us, despite the darkness. Like there were eyes watching us from every direction.

"You guys want to start heading back soon? Looks like we already hit all the good places," I said, hoping my voice didn't sound as nervous as I felt.

Ted was about to answer when Joe pointed up ahead. I heard a faint screaming sound and figured it was one of those Halloween sound-effect tapes.

"There's one house lit up at the end there. Come on, let's see if they've got anything decent, then we can cut down the next street on the way back to the bikes."

We all agreed and kept walking down the unknown road, and the houses got darker and dirtier and more run-down as we went, more decrepit. The trees and bushes around the homes seemed more deformed too, the thick vegetation crowding closer and closer together until you could barely see the houses behind the trees anymore.

Finally, we reached the place at the very end. A squat, old, gray house that looked like a giant poisonous mushroom, its sunken black roof forming the cap. Gnarled, twisted fruit trees surrounded it, and the sour-sweet stink of rotting crabapples hung in the air as we walked up. Out front, a hand-written plank sign had been hammered into the dirt on a wooden post, covered in strange letters and symbols I couldn't read.

We walked right past the sign without thinking much of it. The screaming sounds were coming from inside again, louder this time, and I figured whatever Halloween sound-effect tape they'd bought must have been expensive, because it was a really well-produced recording. The shrill cries coming from inside sounded completely lifelike. Realistic.

A woman in dark, tattered clothing was standing on the front porch waiting for us, grinning with crooked brown and yellow teeth. Her face looked ancient — covered in boils and warts, with a greenish cast in the moonlight. Quite a mask, I thought at the time. It was so realistic-looking.

She pushed open the wooden front door and it swung wide with a squeal. Strangely, she held it open, like she was welcoming us in as guests.

"Greetings, young ones! Greetings! And blessings from the dark one on this glorious Samhain to each of you."

"Uh, thanks," I said, suddenly very uneasy. "Trick-or-treat?"

We held out our pillowcases and the old woman cackled with obvious delight.

"Oh my, what wonderful creatures! But you will have to come inside to get your candy! We've set up a little maze for you — the winner gets a special prize!" Her voice was cackling and singsong, full of mirth with something else buried underneath it. Anticipation, maybe.

The four of us climbed the crumbling porch steps slowly, carefully. I noticed the entrance of the house had been modified — taped off with black-dyed bedsheets, with an open cardboard box leading into another one, and then another. We were going to have to get down on our hands and knees to go through.

Past the first cardboard box tunnel, all I could see was darkness.

"In there?" I asked. I was first in line, and I didn't like the look of this at all. But Joe shoved me from behind, impatient to get to the candy at the end of the maze.

"Go, man. Stop being such a wuss."

I got down on my hands and knees and started crawling slowly forward into the black.

Joe, Ted, and Kevin all followed behind me, and I could hear their breathing echoing around me in the narrow, cramped space, along with my own.

Soon I couldn't even see my hands in front of my face. Pitch blackness surrounded me on every side as I shuffled forward on my hands and knees, the hard floor rough and uncomfortable underneath me.

My heart started pounding as the darkness somehow got even darker, and I heard the soft click of the door shutting behind us — as if someone had locked it as quietly as they possibly could.

"Guys, I don't like this," I said, still crawling forward slowly. "Can we just go back?"

"Oh, shut up, you wuss!" Joe said in that mocking voice of his. "Keep moving. It's just a stupid fake haunted house. The old bat will probably jump out and try to scare us at the end. Just pretend you're surprised."

I didn't have much faith in his theory, but I figured I didn't have any choice but to keep moving.

Cobwebs stuck to my face in the next section, and I noticed it smelled old and musty in there, like the box maze had been standing for a long, long time. Dirt and little pebbles bit painfully into my knees. I felt a spider — or some kind of bug — crawling through my hair and down my back, and I let out a yelp that Joe immediately made fun of me for.

I tried to convince myself it was all just scare gags, even though I knew that was wishful thinking. I kept crawling, sick to my stomach, getting more worried with every second.

Then, suddenly, I felt something breathing on me from my right — a hot, humid stink of bad breath in my nostrils. I could hear something very large moving around, inhaling and exhaling in the blacked-out maze.

My hands flew up instinctively to shield my face and smacked straight into the cardboard box, which was still surrounding me on every side except in front and behind.

"What the hell?" I muttered, disoriented.

"Keep moving, asshole," Joe said from right behind me, annoyed that I'd stopped. "It's hot as hell in here."

He was right. I realized it was getting warmer.

I shuffled forward, telling myself I'd just imagined the feeling of something huge looming over us, breathing its rotten breath on me. The claustrophobia was awful — the boxes seemed to get smaller with every movement. Then, suddenly, the tunnel split into three different directions.

"Whoa," I said, stopping in my tracks. "Hey, which way do I go? There's three choices — forward, right, or left."

Nobody answered.

I turned my head as best I could in the darkness.

"Guys?"

Still nothing. No response. And somehow, I could sense the emptiness of the tunnel behind me. My friends were gone.

Terrified now, and desperate to get out, I tried to turn around. The walls around me were cardboard, I'd thought — but they were solid somehow. Completely unyielding.

And it was far too narrow to turn around now.

My heart racing, my breaths coming fast but somehow feeling like no air was reaching my lungs, I kept moving forward, ignoring the left and right options. The rational part of my brain kept insisting everything was fine — that this was just a game, that my friends had gone down some side tunnel I hadn't noticed. Or maybe the woman running the maze had snuck them out to scare me, or changed the maze behind me so we'd gotten separated.

All of those thoughts sounded reasonable. But I knew none of them were what had really happened.

This wasn't an ordinary house, and this wasn't an ordinary maze. That was the truth. I'd known it before I'd even stepped inside. I should have trusted my instincts, I told myself bitterly.

The hot, humid air was hard to breathe, and I could feel sweat pouring down my face, stinging my eyes.

Crawling on, the tunnel went on and on, sloping gradually downward.

The blackness around me was oppressive. Suffocating. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face from an inch away, which terrified me more than anything — I hadn't even known a place could be that dark, that completely lightless.

I heard a loud, piercing scream from up ahead, and the voice behind it was familiar. Joe.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THEM!?" I screamed, furious and terrified of what was coming next, unable to hold my temper. "LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE!"

There was no reply. I only had one choice: keep moving forward.

The maze kept branching off into side tunnels, but I kept heading straight toward the sound of the screams.

I felt the presence again — hot breath on my neck, the sensation of being watched.

"Who's there?" I asked, hoping nobody would answer, hoping it was just my imagination. But instead, I heard a voice. It sounded ancient. Deep and powerful. Dark and poisonous.

"You're almost at the end, boy. But when you get there, you'll have to make a choice," the voice told me, its S's stretched out and elongated, like a snake was speaking to me. "You'll have to pick one of your friendssssss."

"Pick one of them for what?"

I asked, but the presence was already gone.

Suddenly, I started to slide. The floor was sloping so steeply downward now that there was no stopping it. I fell faster and faster, with no sense of how fast I was going or how close I was to the ground, and I started screaming.

I landed hard on the ground, hurting my tailbone, my jaw slamming shut painfully.

The space had opened up and I could stand, at least. There was a dirt floor under my feet, and I got the feeling I was in a basement.

"He's here," a whispered voice said from the other end of the room. Other hushed voices answered, too quiet to make out.

It was so hot. I was pouring sweat, my eyes darting desperately for any light that might mean a way out was nearby.

"Please, just let me out. I don't want to be here anymore," I begged, unable to stop myself from crying.

The whispered voices were moving closer. They seemed to be chanting something under their breath, and whatever it was made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my stomach turn.

I could hear my friends sniffling and crying in the background, too.

A flame suddenly flared into view as a door with rusty hinges swung open like a mouth in the darkness, even though nobody was standing anywhere near it. It was a wood-burning furnace, I realized — its orange glow flickering and throwing the room into dull light, letting me see the horrifying details of what lay around me.

My eyes swept the space and I saw my friends, bound with ropes, laid out on flat wooden boards. They were tied down, unable to move, being dragged toward the fire by some invisible force.

Ted, Joe, and Kevin started screaming when they saw me. Their faces were red and sweaty from being so close to the flames.

The chanting, whispering voices were all around me now, surrounding me, speaking furiously right into my ear — their voices only audible inside my mind.

They told me what had to be done. There was only one way out for us. Only one thing would satisfy them.

"No, I won't. I won't! You can't make me!" I yelled, and the voices ignored my protests, whispering harsh, threatening things, telling me what would happen if I refused to listen.

The fire was getting hotter by the second. It would only settle down once it had been fed. Only then would it be satisfied. At least for now.

I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed a butter knife from the glove of Ted's Freddy Krueger costume and started sawing at the ropes holding him down. The fire was getting bigger and hotter by the second and there was no way to slow it down. All I could do was keep cutting.

Crouching back as far as I was, the flames burned my eyebrows and left me with scars I still have today. But Kevin and Joe got it worse. Especially Joe.

With the flames growing larger and larger, Joe's skin began to melt. It sloughed off his face and he wailed and screamed for someone to make it stop.

I cut as fast as I could, but the ropes were thick and strong. It felt like it was taking hours to get through them. Meanwhile the howling screams of agony went on and on. Kevin, though, was strangely quiet. As if he were listening.

After I finally cut Ted free, I noticed Kevin had gotten out of his bonds too, using the screwdriver from his costume's tool belt to cut the ropes. He looked frantic — his face horribly burned and mangled, his smoke-reddened eyes wide and crazed.

He made no move to help Joe. I couldn't help thinking about the fight the two of them had been having, and the insult Joe had thrown at him earlier.

Stumbling over toward Joe, I saw Kevin standing there with the wrench gripped tight in his fist. He stood over him for a moment, watching him scream and melt.

Then he brought the wrench down hard on Joe's forehead, caving in his skull. The sound was like a hammer smashing a watermelon. He brought it down again. And again. And again. Blood spattered through the air and sprayed everywhere.

I ran over and grabbed his wrist, trying to stop him, but it was already too late. Joe was dead, his face unrecognizable, utterly destroyed by the swings of Kevin's wrench.

"Only way. It was the only way," I heard him mutter quietly afterward. "Had to do it, or they wouldn't let us leave…"

A dim light suddenly became visible, and I realized we were alone again. The whispering, chanting voices had fled — temporarily satisfied by the sacrifice of our friend, it seemed. Part of me wondered if they'd ever really been there at all. But whatever their physical presence, there was a powerful magic surrounding that place, strong enough to make people do its bidding.

Dull blue light was filtering through the boards above us at the edge of the room, and I moved toward it, desperate to escape the blistering heat of the furnace room. Except it wasn't really hot in there anymore, I realized. In fact, it was quite cool, which made me shiver as the sweat turned cold on my skin.

I bumped into a ladder and started climbing, pushing up the trap door at the top and gulping down fresh, cool air in heaving breaths.

Ted and Kevin followed me up, and we realized we were standing in the ruins of an old, burned-down house — neglected and abandoned in the middle of a forested area.

Disoriented, we started walking back toward the lights of the nearby neighborhood, which we could glimpse through the thick trees. We were a long way from it. I couldn't help wondering if most of Wicker Street had just been some kind of conjured illusion.

With some alarm, I noticed Kevin still had a blank look on his face, showing no emotion at all after what had just happened. I looked at Ted and saw he was badly shaken, unable to speak.

I wanted to ask them what we were going to do now. What were we going to tell Joe's parents?

Instead, I said nothing. I was too scared of Kevin to confront him after what he'd done.

The three of us never really spoke again after that night. Except in the police interviews.

Kevin said one last thing to me as they led him away in handcuffs.

"You're on my list now, Jordan. And I'm putting YOU at the very TOP."

I haven't slept well lately. Not since the news. I just found out — they sent me a letter, as a courtesy.

After all these years, Kevin is finally getting released from prison this Halloween.