This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Verastahl on 2024-10-17 21:08:14+00:00.
Last Halloween, I opened the door to find a half-naked woman weeping on my front porch.
It was already past-nine, so later than most of the neighborhood kids would be prowling around for candy, but I still felt a mixture of surprise and annoyance that this lady had shown up without a kid in tow. Not that her costume wasn’t elaborate in its own odd way—she was wrapped from mid-thigh to mid-chest in thick layers of dirty, bloody medical gauze—somewhere between a healing surgery patient and a slutty mummy, I remember thinking. There was another pad of gauze over her mouth, secured by silver duct tape above wet, mascara-dripping eyes that pleaded with me as soon as I opened the door.
Even as I was taking all of this in, she was thrusting her hands toward me—a plastic trick-or-treat bag in one and a cell phone in the other. Jesus, she was wearing handcuffs too? Where did she even come from? None of the adults in the area had ever dressed up like this before. That’s when I noticed she was shaking the lit-up cell phone at me, and only when I focused on it did she hold it still. There were words there.
Please give me candy. I have been abducted. They are watching and listening to everything. This is not a joke. If you don’t give me candy, something very bad will happen. Please give me candy.
Trick or treat.
I read the phone’s message twice in mild disbelief, laughing a little as I looked back at the woman. “I don’t know. I mean I don’t have a lot of candy left, and what if some kid comes…”
This woman was really crying. Really shaking now that I was acting like I wouldn’t give her any candy. She looked terrified. It had to all be an act, it was Halloween after all, but Jesus, why did it feel so real?
The woman couldn’t really talk through the tight pad of gauze, but I could still tell from her muffled noises that she was begging me to help. Looking back to the phone in her hand, I realized she was still holding it up. Maybe just so I could see the message. Or so someone could watch me through the camera.
Pushing the thought away, I forced out another laugh as I took a step back and reached for the bowl of candy in the hall. “Hell, the kids’ll just have to be disappointed. This is one of the best get-ups I’ve ever seen.” I kept my voice light, but my chest was hammering and I felt like I could hardly breathe. It had to just be a costume…a prank of sorts, right? But then why did I feel like the phone was watching me? Why did she start sobbing harder in what looked like relief as she held out her trembling bag for candy?
Gripping the edge of the bag gingerly, I tipped the remains of the bowl in. “There you go.” I stepped back and put my hand on the door, eager to close and lock it as soon as I could. “You can tell your captors that you scored them some Snickers for their troub-“
The girl had stopped shaking and crying as soon as the bowl was empty—I hadn’t noticed it right away because I was focused on being pleasant while I shut the door in her face, but she had gone still and silent when the last candy bar fell in to the bag. And then when I started my retreat, she slowly reached back with both hands and hooked her ring fingers into the band of tape around her mouth, yanking it down so harshly that I let out a barking yell of sympathetic pain.
That’s when I saw what was behind the gauze. No lips—they had been cut away at some point recently, the crenellated ruin of flesh left behind still raw and red and oozing. This opening framed brown gums and yellowed teeth, and as I stumbled backwards, the woman lunged forward, clicking her teeth in a frenzied chatter as she caught me and hooked her handcuff chain behind my neck.
We fell together to the hallway floor, and while she wasn’t very large, her weight and the impact were enough to drive the air from me for a moment as I tried to get enough breath to fight her off. That moment was all she needed to jam her mouth onto mine and send a long, sour-tasting tongue between my lips and teeth as she began to cough something into my mouth.
Shuddering, I rolled to my side and shoved her away hard, bending forward enough to send the handcuffs raking over the back of my head and my left ear hard enough that I felt wet heat as I started to bleed. Still, I was free from her, and I just needed to get up and get away and God my throat was burning and I could barely see from the tears in my eyes from pain and fear and…
I was halfway to my feet when I looked back to see her already standing, her eyes dark and wild as she grinned at me. It took me a moment to realize she had one of the cuffs off now, and was holding it open in the other hand like a makeshift hook. Adrenaline flooded me as I started to turn towards her, planning to tackle her before she could catch me in the back or side.
But she was too fast. Before I could get in position and launch myself in her direction, she had already raised the open cuff like a reaper’s scythe and brought it down across her neck, ripping it wide. I let out a scream as I stumbled to the side instead of into her, scrambling to my feet again after crabwalking away from where she was twitching and dying at my front door. I watched her for at least a couple of minutes before being satisfied that she was dead, and only then did I move to the kitchen to get my phone and call 911.
I wanted to stay away from her, but I didn’t dare. Grabbing a butcher knife, I went back to the hallway as I talked to an annoyed-sounding 911 operator that was reiterating to me that if this was a prank, I could be charged with a crime.
“This isn’t some fucking prank! This crazy woman attacked me and then killed herself. And you need to send someone right fucking now!” Either my words or my voice seemed to convince the woman, as she started asking my name and address then, and within five minutes three patrol cars were on my front lawn.
In the month that followed, the police investigated the woman’s suicide and the murders. Because before coming to my house, she had visited two other houses the next street over. They assumed neither house had given her candy, as her bag only seemed to have candy matching what I’d given her, and because the families in both houses had been slaughtered. They thought it likely she’d had accomplices, but they had no leads.
Apparently the phone had been wiped remotely before the cops arrived, and the only fingerprints they could find were hers. Well, fingerprints wasn’t the right term. Each of her fingertips had been deeply branded with a little smiling jack-o-lantern that had obliterated any identifiable print and her teeth were all titanium implants. They were checking for DNA matches, but so far she didn’t match any database or missing person’s profile.
The more time passed, the more certain I was that they’d never find anyone else. And the more glad I was that I’d lied about the last thing I saw or heard. Because as I’d stood there yelling at the 911 operator that night, staring down at that bandaged lunatic’s body, I realized that even at the end she’d kept the phone pointed toward me. Clutched in a deathgrip, it stared at me dispassionately as I finished the call and hung up, despite the operator asking me to stay on the line. I had barely dropped the phone from my uninjured ear when a voice came rising up to me from the other phone on the floor.
Happy Halloween.
What does the ghost say?
****
The last year has been very hard. I moved to a different state and I’ve cut myself off from everything online that could lead someone to where I am. I work from home and I pay for everything with either cash or an online account that is tied to a secondary address three hundred miles away. My friends and family think I’ve gone crazy or have gotten on drugs, but they don’t understand. I’m cutting myself off to protect them too. Because I know they know all about me—even if they didn’t before last Halloween, the phone was recording me, at my house, giving all my information to 911. I have to stay hidden.
And it’s seemed to work. I’ve hardly slept as Halloween grows closer, but I’ve tried to focus on just getting past that. If I can make it to November 1st without any issues, I can finally exhale and start to relax, at least a little.
Then this morning, I woke up to find a small black card on my bedside table. My blood was already thundering in my ears when I saw the silver jack-o-lantern on the side facing up, some desperate corner of my mind whispering excuses or things that it wasn’t when I already knew what it was—the other shoe, finally dropping.
Then I turned it over, expecting to see some threat or sinister warning of what was to come written on the other side.
Instead it was blan—
The voice was soft but loud as it spilled out from under my bed.