The Bone Ghost
by Jan Stinchcomb
Alcohol drenches the memory that never leaves me, which is why I have to stay stone-cold sober tonight. I am the neighborhood watchdog. Come on now, it’s your favorite holiday, my neighbors tell me. Celebrate. Lighten up. They can’t see me as a little girl on Halloween night, skipping through my suburban neighborhood, collecting candy, while my big sister supervises from the sidewalk.
There’s one house, scarier than the others, but not in a Halloween-festive way. There are no dancing plastic skeletons, no ghosts hanging from the trees, no witches in the window. A gray lifelessness hangs over the place. Not this house, my sister says, his wife just died, but I am driven by sugar lust and curiosity.
A white-haired man opens the door and stares down at me as if he cannot fathom my purpose. I recognize the sour smell coming off his body, the sweaty face, the bloodshot eyes. Under the porch light I whisper a weak trick-or-treat, my body going cold as we hurtle off-script. What do you want? he asks behind a cloud of bourbon fumes. It’s all I can do to open the pillowcase I am using to carry my candy. Doesn’t he know it’s Halloween night? He takes the pillowcase from me, and I think for one horrifying second he is going to steal it, but instead he opens it wide and sticks his head inside. Then he comes up for air, howling.
What is she doing in there? Wild-eyed, he stares at me as if I have the answer. Then, in a whisper: I didn’t mean to push her.
I look inside the pillowcase and see a tiny, snarling woman of bone, and right away I understand she is his wife. His dead wife. She turns her head and pierces me with one black eye. I snatch the pillowcase back because it has my candy in it, and then I go running, past my shocked sister, all the way home.
I clutch the pillowcase in a tight tangle in my left hand so that the bone ghost can’t escape.
My memory is faulty. I see my parents and sister storming through the house, frantic, before convening in my bedroom. The police arrive to do their homework of asking questions and writing things down. The world turns into a maze of unreliable adults and impotent authority figures. I never learn what happens to the drunk man.
I wait until everyone leaves my bedroom before I relax my left hand and let the pillowcase fall to the floor. I expect the bone ghost to come scurrying out, but she is gone.
My candy is ruined, a tiny bite taken out of every single piece. I shove it under my bed and throw it all away, later, when Thanksgiving approaches.
I never figure out where the bone ghost went.
I don’t share this story with anyone. I never visit that house again. My parents don’t speak of the incident, and neither does my sister. I can’t forget, however, the power of the devil’s brew on Halloween night. Nightmares become communal. Apparitions cross that thin veil. The bone ghost jumped out of the man’s head and into my candy, and who knows what became of her. I am too cautious to tempt fate, too vigilant, so I stay sober on Halloween.
Jan Stinchcomb is the author of The Kelping (Unnerving), The Blood Trail (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have recently appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Atticus Review, and Ligeia Magazine. A Pushcart nominee, she is featured in Best Microfiction 2020 and The Best Small Fictions 2018 & 2021. She lives in Southern California with her family. Find her at janstinchcomb.com or on Twitter @janstinchcomb.
