Last fall, I was happy to be a part of the Rooted in Rite Halloween Anthology from Rooted Literary Magazine. You can buy the digital or physical edition of that anthology here, as well as their latest Rooted in Home anthology. Here’s an excerpt from my story, “The Halloween Man”.

He’s haunted me since I was a child, fumbling with a dull kitchen knife against the pumpkin fat. He is the stomachache of sneaky snacks, the guilty thrill of Jolly Ranchers popped quietly at midnight. He’s what you light the jack-o’-lanterns against, the costume you’re too scared to wear, the horror they don’t show, the gore you can’t explain away with latex, corn syrup, and movie magic. If Halloween is a white sheet, then he is the two black holes, sightless and unseen. I’ve felt his presence as far back as I can remember, but I didn’t see his face until I met him, one lonesome October, in the back of a haunted house.

I was almost thirteen and tired of hearing, Aren’t you getting a little too old for this, Will? You can have all the candy you want at home! I knew my trick or treating days were numbered, but each year I wished more and more that Halloween would never end. I was obsessed with horror movies and would rent successive sequels from the video store downtown. My favorites were the slashers, Halloween and Friday the 13th, anything with screaming girls and gleaming knives. Like a lot of kids that year, I was going as Ghostface, while my little brother Nick was going as a cowboy (he’d hide under his blanket for any scary movie that wasn’t Hocus Pocus. We’d already carved our pumpkins and

watched Linus wait all night in his empty patch. I had convinced my mom to show me The Silence of the Lambs, the only horror movie she could stand, and had seen every movie they played on TV that month, carefully recording the ones I didn’t already own on VHS.

One night, during the commercials, I saw an ad for the promised land.

Coming this Halloween weekend to the Marblemount Community Center: A spine-tingling experience not for the faint of heart!

Thrills! Chills! Tricks! Treats!

Dare you enter…The Macabre Manor?