At 5:29 p.m. on Halloween, a boy appears on Laura Niemi’s doorbell camera.
He isn’t there.
Not yet.
Seventeen minutes later, he rings the bell for real.
The next face belongs to her daughter’s date.
The third time, the camera shows blood.
Hands. A sleeve soaked to the elbow.
Someone running for the door, screaming for her.
The porch outside is empty.
The timestamp reads 7:43.
Laura has seventeen minutes to stop it.
Seventeen minutes to cause it.
—
This year’s Halloween story came out of a dig through obscure folklore — one old belief I’d never heard of, and I wrote this new short story. About 3,600 words. It’s finished and goes out to everyone here on Halloween.
If you’d rather not wait: reply to this email or leave a comment, and I’ll send you the whole thing in a day. You’d be reading it two months before anyone else. I’ll ask you one question about it in return — a one-sentence answer is plenty.
Reply by Sunday, August 28.
—Dennis
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