A "Halloween" Story

Night Flyer on Newville Street

by Amy Adams, Copyright 2014

          When people started disappearing from my block, I always assumed old Mr. Todd got them.  He was a elderly, cranky man who always threatened to get us kids good if we made too much noise playing kickball on the block, or running up to people’s houses, knocking and running away, you know, things kids like to do.  But when Mr. Todd himself died, I didn’t know what to think. 

First the people 2 houses down mysteriously left and 2 days later, the police came and put that yellow tape around the borders.  The papers said all they were found in their house was a pile of old bat’s nests.  I was scared good then, so once the sun started going down, or Mom called us kids in for supper, I didn’t go out again.  But there was always something new that reminded me of the dark, even inside.  Dracula was on one night, and I almost bit my new teeth out for fear that the noises outside the window were bats, not the normal sounds of leaves from the trees overhanging the eaves, or an occasional mouse.

Then about a month later, 2 new families disappeared but no one knew what happened to them either, because they left sometime before sunrise, no forwarding address, no nothing.   They each had 2 children that me and my sibs liked to play with - little Petey, 8, Sarah, 5, and the other family had 2 boys, Farty Artie, we used to call him - who was 10 and the mastermind of many of our hijinks, and Markie, 9, fun troublemakers and tons of fun.  Petey and Sarah were fun too because they would follow along with whatever great thing Fartie Artie and Markie could dream up. One night, we captured a bunch of frogs down at 2 Pipes, what we called our local drainage outlet, and let them all out on Mrs. Haybridge’s yard.  The scream we heard a few minutes later sounded like a crazed polecat.

After that last prank though, the street got really quiet.  Other, less troublemaking kids seemed to avoid our family more and more, and we kids were left to our own devices – which wasn’t always a good thing.  We would try to think of stuff we all liked to do together, like mixing vinegar and baking soda in the basement, and making homemade rockets, or tying our parents’ shoes together and hanging them out the window to make an “escape” ladder when they came to paddie-whack us because they couldn’t find their shoes. 

But after awhile we craved our missing peers’ company.  My brother Stu went over to the Nudnicks across the street and rang their doorbell one day after school.  Little Danny opened the door but when he saw me he said he couldn’t come out and shut the door.  When Stu reported back to me, me and him went to the neighbors catty-corner to us, the Brathavens, and knocked.  Little Tommy’s mother answered this time, and she said Tommy was not to play on the street anymore.  She had a look in her eyes that made us wonder what was going on.  We persisted and said, “but we just want to play, can’t you let him come out for a little bit?”  We tried to stare her down but the look of fright in her eyes confused us and eventually we gave up and left. 

After awhile I gave up trying to get my remaining friends from the block to come out and play.  I was getting older anyway. That coming year I was entering 4th grade, and I wanted to complete my dinosaur display entry for the school science fair.  I spent a lot of time in the basement, making models of tyrannosaurus rexes out of clay.  My sister Clove, who liked plants, tried to decorate my exhibit with plastic flowers she found in the garage that my mother had stuffed up on some shelving.  So I had a floral dinosaur exhibit.  It looked kind of beautiful.  The time I had formerly used to play with my neighborhood friends was now devoted to my various scientific projects in the basement, and getting in scrapes with my siblings. 

Then one day, my parents called us all up early before our usual dinner time.  I knew something was up, but I wasn’t sure what.  They looked very serious, and Stuart, Clove and I sat down in our respective dinner places, to hear what they had to say.

“Children,” my father began.  “We’re going to be moving.”

“Not us too!” cried Stu.

“Yes, us too,” mother seconded.

“But why” asked Clove.

“You’ll know soon enough.  Tomorrow morning, we’ll be getting up extra early and starting our packing.  The moving conveyance will be here at 4 am.”

Stu said to me as lights went out at bedtime, “I knew it was too good to be true, Roger.”

“What?”

“This thing, this street, this life.”

Later that morning, a round disk was seen curling out of sight, as it took off from Newville Street at Downing Trailer Park where Clove, Stu, Roger and their parents had so recently lived.  The craft was seen flying at at least 6,000 miles per hour before it disappeared out of sight, and out of the galaxy.

When the new family moved in, all they found were a bunch of clay dinosaurs and an old bat’s nest.