Another Halloween Without Sheila

I had replaced the porch light with a red bulb. I had the bowl of miniature candy bars on the table next to the front door. Most of the lights in the house were out. The only one I left on was the lamp on the table next to my chair. In other words, I was ready for Halloween. The only thing missing was Sheila.

I lost Sheila on Halloween three years earlier. She was hurrying home from the grocery store when a speeder ran a light and plowed into the side of Sheila's car. She died on the spot. We were to be married just a month later. I was devastated. I quit going to work and almost lost my job. I drank myself stupid every night and nearly became a road casualty because of it. Somehow I avoided killing myself or somebody else.

Fortunately, my boss is a kind and wise man. He told me to take some time off and get myself straightened out. Temporarily without a job, I had the time to go off into the mountains. I packed some food and booze and drove up to the cabin my boss had loaned me. In my pack I also carried my pistol. There were dark thoughts in the back of my mind that I didn't consciously acknowledge.

It was winter in Northern California. The weather had been mild. As soon as I got to the cabin, though, the snow began to fall. I didn't care. I had my booze and enough food to last a few days. The pantry held even more freeze-dried food if I ran out. I started a fire and promptly set about getting shit-faced.

I passed out in my sleeping bag on the floor in front of the fireplace. When my eyes squinted painfully open the next morning, I was shivering. I poked at the ashes and found some leftover embers. I stuck some paper into them and blew up a flame. Soon the fire was driving the cold back into the log walls.

I stumbled to the door intent on going out to pee. When I opened the door, however, I found myself facing a solid wall of white! The snow had fallen so hard it had drifted up to the roof of the porch. I went from window to window pulling back the curtains. All the north and east sides of the cabin had roof-high drifts. Only on the south and west sides could I see anything, and that wasn't encouraging. The snow was at least waist deep on the open ground. I turned on the battery powered radio and learned that I was in the middle of the worst freak storm in years.

The weatherman said it would be at least three days before it would warm up enough to melt enough to make travel possible. Well, I thought, three days was what I'd planned on. I put my concern aside. Other than being required to pee in a bucket and toss it out the window, I was fine. I fixed myself a breakfast drink and broke some eggs into a hot frying pan.

By noon I was feeling drowsy. I napped. I read and I drank. I spent my time there drunk from morning to morning. After three days I was getting a bit concerned. I was almost out of booze but the snow had shown no sign of going away. I realized I might have some tough times ahead of me.

In total, I spent eight days alone in the cabin. I ran out of bourbon after three. The next two days I spent a lot of time talking to myself (though I didn't realize it at the time). By the time it had warmed and melted enough for me to be able to push enough snow away from the door to get out to the truck, I had pretty well had "the cure". I had lost my craving and reached closure about Sheila's death.

I actually enjoyed the bright sun and the scenery as I drove carefully down the mountain. I went back to work and made up for the lost time. Sheila and I had closed on the house before she died, so I completed the decorating and moved in. I purposely did things in different ways from what Sheila and I had discussed. We'd never lived there so I didn't have to overcome those memories. The first Halloween was tough, the next one a little easier. Now it was Halloween again. I sighed and put thoughts of Sheila out of my mind as the first little monsters rang the bell.

The little kids are always first. After dark, the age of the trick-or-treaters rose. About 9:30 the bell rang again. I went to answer it. There were five adult sized ghosts, witches and a teenage werewolf in a mask and a local high school letter jacket. I passed out the candy and noticed a figure out in the yard under the big oak tree. I would never have noticed it, but it was dressed all in white.

When the teenagers turned and clomped down the steps I waited with the door open. I was waiting for the figure under the tree to approach. It didn't move. I raised the bowl high and waved my hand in invitation. The person raised both arms in a gesture of refusal and backed away. In the depth of shadow under the tree, it disappeared. I shrugged and closed the door.

A few minutes later another group showed up. Once again I saw the figure in the shadows just outside the ring of red light cast by the porch light. Again it receded and disappeared. I was beginning to be concerned. If the guy didn't want candy, what did he want? I closed the door and locked it. Then I went to the back door and sneaked around the house. The figure was back in place just watching the house. I had a flashlight in my hand. I pointed it toward the figure and clicked it on. The figure erupted in a flurry of white veils and drapery. It definitely disappeared then.

In the seconds before it went away I was able to see that it was somebody dressed in what looked like a bridal gown. Believing that, regardless of his (her?) intentions had been, my sudden surprise and flashlight had discouraged it. I stepped up to the front door and found that I had left my key inside. I walked around the house and went in the back. I locked that door behind me.

Back in the living room, I sat in my chair and read. The bell remained silent long enough for me to drowse off. I dreamed of Sheila in her bridal gown walking down the aisle to where I waited for her. When I woke up around 2AM, my cheeks were wet with tears and I heard my voice moaning for Sheila. I shook out of my dream and wanted a drink for the first time in almost two years.

I turned off the porch light and went up to bed. It took a while for me to get to sleep. I dreamed again of Sheila. This time we were leaving the reception and running to a waiting car. Then we were in our honeymoon suite. Our dream lovemaking was as erotic as it had been in real life. Over and over my erection rose up hard and strong in response to the heat of her mouth. Over and over I plunged it into her hot body. When in the dream she rose to her hands and knees and told me to put it in her ass, I felt the vice of her sphincter grip it. We finally collapsed against each other and slept.

My eyes opened and I couldn't say for sure at first whether I was still dreaming. My cock hurt. Reaching down I felt the stickiness there. Realizing I was truly awake, I thought I'd had a wet dream. Then I noticed the smell. Decay. Death.

I sat up and turned my head. Then I felt a weight in the bed next to me. In horror I looked down. Only her hair told me it was Sheila. The rest of what I could see was rotten, putrescent and decomposed. I tried to catch my breath without much success. The stench of her decayed body filled the air. I edged away slowly, my mind trying to hold on to the ragged edge of sanity and make some kind of sense of things. I slid my leg over the edge of the bed and my foot hit the floor. I tried to stand but my legs would not hold me. I fell to my knees and tried to get my legs to work.

My face was level with the mattress. All this time I could not tear my eyes from the horror that lay there. In the back of my mind I knew, but I was unable to face the fact consciously. When I finally got one foot flat under me and pushed up I began to stand. As I watched, The dripping melon of skull rotated. The face of the thing turned toward me. There were no eyelids left, and nothing inside the orbits of the eyeholes. The lips were nearly gone so the teeth were visible.

The jaw opened and a hissing emerged with a fetid puff of air. The thing hissed, "Don't you want to make love again, darling? Where are you going?" When it sat up, leaving parts of itself sodden on the sheets, My trembling legs collapsed again and a curtain of deepest black mercifully descended over me.

A hot, bright light woke me. The sun was pouring through a gap in the curtains and falling directly onto my eyes. A vague discomfort was in my mind. Then I remembered. I sat bolt upright and looked at the bed. The blankets were in disarray from my own presence there, but there was nothing else amiss. There were no pools of drying bodily fluids on the mattress or pillow. The pillow did seem to hold the echo of an indentation, but that was all. I took a deep breath and let it out. There was no odor, other than my own.

I rose to my feet and looked around the room. Everything looked normal. I sighed again writing it off as a particularly realistic, particularly grisly nightmare. I padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I lifted the toilet lid and seat to pee. When my hand contacted my cock, I froze. I looked down and saw that it was covered with a patchy, grayish crust. My pubic hair held clots of the same stuff. I began to tremble.

The steam from the shower filled the air and clouded around the ceiling. I couldn't tear my eyes from my cock. I didn't have a wet dream. There was too much of it, and in the wrong places. I spun around and looked back into the bedroom. On the carpet next to the far side of the bed lay a dirty white veil! Somehow, it had all been real! Then I heard a wet-sounding step on the stairs in the hall. Another. Then the voice came again, with the same sibilance. "Hal? Trick or treat, Darling..."

That black curtain returned and mercifully took me away...