House Number 666

This story originally appeared on Crystal Lake Publishing’s Patreon page as part of a Halloween flash fiction contest. Ultimately, this story failed to place in the top five.

After many years of scraping egg yolk off his windows, and after many years of finding toilet paper still hidden in the far branches of his elm tree, Roger Blaine had had enough.

This Halloween, he promised himself, I shall get even.

He prepped and plotted from Christmas until October 30th. Mr. Blaine was a man with time on his hands—his wife and children were both long gone (for different reasons) and he was comfortably retired from the post office—and a deep grudge in his heart. For the better part of two decades, trick-or-treaters had terrorized and harassed him because of his address and opinions on Halloween.

You see, Roger Blaine lived at 666 Elm Street, and children found this morbid combination irresistible. For them, especially the ones far too old to be cavorting around in masks begging for free sweets, the 666 house needed to be the best, most elaborate, and most ghoulish house each Hallowtide. How could it not be? 666 Elm Street was a gift from the devil to his hungry demons, and the fact that grumpy, old Mr. Blaine refused to even put out a single bowl of candy aggravated trick-or-treaters to no end. Even their parents and chaperones bemoaned Mr. Blaine’s resistance to holiday cheer.

“C’mon, at least buy a Freddy Krueger doll or something. It’d be neat to see him sitting on the porch,” they’d tell him in the grocery store.

“Ghost decals are cheap. Hell, at the very least you can put a sign up saying that you don’t celebrate Halloween or something,” they’d occasionally suggest. Always smiling, of course, but Mr. Blaine found it oh so easy to detect malice underneath.

“No,” he would always tell these simple-minded people. “Halloween is a silly holiday, and I will never, ever participate in it. I don’t care how many times your urchins desecrate my family home, but I will never give in.”

That had been his policy until last Halloween when a brood of teenagers, all of them half-naked and covered in fake blood, decided to put the fear of God into his precious Pekingese, Ms. Mirabell. Mr. Blaine had made the poor decision to let Ms. Mirabell “go tinkle” not long after the sun had set on Halloween night, and he had paid for this decision dearly. The wild brood had been watching his house for an hour, and the moment Mr. Blaine let Ms. Mirabell trot off to her favorite bush, the teens had pounced. One grabbed Ms. Mirabell by the scruff while the others screamed and made twisted faces mere inches away from the Pekingese’s twitching snout. The ordeal lasted less than a full minute, and the group scattered the moment Mr. Blaine had uttered the word “gun,” but for Ms. Mirabell, the trauma proved permanent. A full year later, Ms. Mirabell still refused to tinkle outside and jumped at the slightest loud noise.

Mr. Blaine watched his dog suffer and grew crueler as a result. Next Halloween, he promised himself, everyone will pay.

When the colorful leaves fell and when the neighborhood turned a mixture of black and orange, Mr. Blaine’s revenge plan was initiated.

The first trick-or-treaters to ring his doorbell were very young children. He gave them grace and let them go away unharmed. Without candy, but unharmed. They grumbled but walked away in an orderly manner towards the neighboring house.

The next group to darken his doorstep was similarly prepubescent. They also had a rather large chaperone with them that Mr. Blaine recognized as one of the town’s few police officers. This group was left alone.

Then, well after sunset, a larger and older circle of miscreants came and knocked on the house’s door. Blaine watched them through an upstairs window. They numbered six in total, and judging by the racy and vulgar nature of their costumes, they were older, likely high school freshmen.

“Finally, my targets,” Mr. Blaine whispered to himself. He slunk downstairs and made his preparations. Outside on the porch, the teens hooted and hollered and made furious drumbeats on his front door.

“We know you’re inside, Mr. Blaine,” called one in a mocking, sing-song tone.

“Yeah, Mr. Blaine. Let us see your dog,” mocked another, this one female. “I hear your dog doesn’t like Halloween. Is that true?”

A wave of laughter cascaded through the group. One rather timid voice (maybe he had been forced to come along?) let out a half-hearted demand for candy. This was echoed by the rest of the group, who kept up the chant until some other party strolling between the houses told them to shut up. This drew the group’s ire away from the 666 house, and they turned and made ready to harass their new target.

Just then, with their heads facing Elm Street, Mr. Blaine threw open his door and declared to every eyewitness, “Is this the Halloween spirit that you want?”

Mr. Blaine filled the doorway with his body. He took a rubber blade from behind his back that looked real. He put the blade to his throat and made a fast incision. His real throat was buried under a thick padding of pale-colored latex. And when Mr. Blaine cut open his faux throat, the small bladder of colored corn syrup was pierced, causing a wave of fake blood to pour out and discolor Mr. Blaine’s polo shirt.

The reaction was immediate. Everyone, from the six awful teens to other holidaymakers on Elm Street, made various faces of disgust and horror. Most took off running; one or two pulled out their cellphones and recorded the whole thing. Mr. Blaine could hear their active commentary, and he collapsed back behind his front door.

Mr. Blaine’s performance horrified and shocked everyone. This was the goal. However, his performance also had the added bonus of informing Mr. Blaine about the true nature of his standing within the community. No one—not even the amateur videographers—informed the police about the public “suicide.” Mr. Blaine’s neighbors and Halloween nemeses cared enough to make the annual holiday miserable, but not enough to save his life.

Ultimately, he did not care. “To hell with them all,” Blaine bellowed once he was finished cleaning himself up. “I never liked them anyway.” Mr. Blaine celebrated his small victory by turning all the lights off in his house and going to bed early. His performance had been emotionally and physically exhausting, plus it had guaranteed that no more trick-or-treaters would bother him that night.

So, with a grin, Mr. Blaine went to bed to the sounds of a silent Elm Street. His dreams were so sweet and pleasant.

At midnight, an unexpected noise interrupted Mr. Blaine’s slumber. It was the sound of his doorbell.

“What the devil?” Mr. Blaine’s first instinct was to pry open his blinds and look down at the front porch. He saw nothing—no police officers or trick-or-treaters. All he saw was an empty porch illuminated by a single yellow light.

The doorbell rang again.

Mr. Blaine cursed loudly but put on his slippers and trundled downstairs. He wrapped his embroidered bathrobe around his shoulders and threw open the door.

“What do you want?” he screamed. There was no one there to answer his question. The front porch was devoid of any living things.

Mr. Blaine harrumphed and shut the door. He figured it was a last-ditch prank and decided to ignore it. So, when the doorbell echoed throughout his house a second time, Mr. Blaine did not bother opening the door. He yelled out a window for the nuisance to go away.

Then the doorbell rang for a third time. Then a fourth. Then a fifth.

An incensed Mr. Blaine finally answered the door after the sixth ring.

“Stop this right now, or I will call the police! I mean it!”

Rather than an empty porch on an empty street, Mr. Blaine found a dark figure standing before him. The figure was massive, no shorter than seven feet in height. Its blackness was darker than the night surrounding it. Mr. Blaine looked up and saw that the figure wore a large hood that obscured its face.

“Halloween is over,” the homeowner said through gritted teeth.

“That was an unfair trick.” The voice that emanated from the figure was tortured and overly sibilant. It reminded Mr. Blaine of a serpent.

“Halloween is over,” he repeated.

“That was an unfair trick.”

“Well, it’s trick-or-treat, friend. All tricks are unfair.” It was a weak defense, and it sounded weaker because of the obvious fear in Mr. Blaine’s voice.

“It was an unfair trick,” the figure said for a third time. “And I am not to be mocked.”

The figure punctuated its sentence by slowly removing its hood. A milk-white skull glistened underneath the porch light. It was not fake, but real. A real skull, and then a real scythe that martialized out of the air.

Mr. Blaine recognized his midnight caller and screamed loud enough to wake the dead.