The 31st Trick-or-Treater

by Ben Farthing

Three children, Bob reminds himself. He hasn’t given up on Mary. He tries not to resent that his wife did long ago.

It’s not like Maple Creek is a dangerous neighborhood, if you ignore the thirty disappearances last year.

No one spotted anyone who didn’t belong, unless you counted the guy with the jack-o-lantern who only Sam had seen, and Bob had chased that lead as far as it went, which was nowhere. No one else remembered seeing someone with a jack-o-lantern with pink light.

“Missing children don’t come back. After she was gone two days, there was a ninety-nine percent chance she was gone forever.”

His last accusation lingers in the shed, but so does hers. They’d both abandoned Sam, while their whole family was missing Mary.

The Thirty-First Trick-or-Treater. The kidnapper. The violent prankster. Martin Donovan’s murderer.

It’s Martin Donovan himself.

It seems that for Mary, only a few hours passed. But that’s still enough that he’s worried for her mental health.

“Stingy Jack is the same person as Jack o’ the Lantern. He’s from Irish mythology. Stingy Jack was a trickster figure, like Anansi or Coyote. He trapped the devil up a tree and only let him down once the devil agreed to never let Stingy Jack into hell. But when he died, all his dishonest deeds kept him out of heaven, so he wanders the edge of the afterlife. That’s when he became Jack o’ the Lantern. The devil gave him a single burning coal. He hollowed out a turnip and made it into a lantern. Supposedly, he’s always wandering, but the veil between us and spirits is thinnest on Halloween, so that’s when people see him.”

“A jack-o-lantern on each porch.” “That’s where the Halloween tradition comes from. Jack-o-lanterns keep Jack o’ the Lantern away.”

“It’s like a scarecrow for evil spirits. The tradition is from the Celts. It’s older than Halloween. Stingy Jack carrying a jack-o-lantern is a mockery of the tradition, like Christian demons using inverted crosses.”