"I can't wait until tonight!" Melinda smiled merrily, pouring the contents of a bag of candy into an orange bowl. Jim walked into the room, buttoning his shirt and yawning.
"Why, what day is it?" He asked, stretching his arms up tiredly. Melinda lifted the bowl and shook it.
"Oh my god, it's Halloween?" Jim suddenly realized.
"No, this is your breakfast!" Melinda told him sarcastically. "How could you forget?"
He walked over to his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head on her shoulder, inhaling the flowery smell of her hair. "Well, when you live each day of your life with a woman who can talk to the dead, you kinda feel like every day is Halloween." He told her, kissing her neck slowly.
She smiled, and pulled away, not wanting to get carried away by the tall, dark handsome man she called husband. "Yes, but the difference is, my ghosts ask for my help, and the ghouls we see tonight will ask for our candy." She told Jim, very matter of fact about it all.
"Oh great! Let's give away our candy stash away to some strangers! Just don't touch my jelly beans! They're mine!" He moaned jokingly, trying not to laugh, and walked into the sitting room.
She loved this day. She always had. It was the one day where she felt that everyone could accept the dead, and everyone could see them walking the streets. Not just her. Even if it was only one night a year. And she loved giving out candy to the local kids and hearing them tell their jokes. It made her feel all warm inside and forget about her gift, just for one night of the year.
"Are you working tonight, Jim?" Melinda asked her husband. She waited on a reply. There was no answer.
"Jim? Did you hear me?" she asked again, putting apples into a green bowl on the kitchen table. There was silence… an eerie silence.
She set down the apples and slowly walked towards the hallway door. "Jim?" There was no reply.
She approached the door of the sitting room and looked in to see if Jim was in there. She thought he was, but he wasn't. She was confused. She was sure he had just walked through here.
"Jim, where are you?" she turned round to walk back into the kitchen and screamed. A face was staring at her coldly, its eyes blood red and its skin brown and rotting, with parts of the flesh peeling off and exposing the bone underneath. The teeth were yellow and cracked and its sharp tongue pointed out at Melinda. It had long messy strands of hair that hung over it's face like cob webs. Melinda closed her eyes and shook with fear, then heard a familiar laugh.
"You should've seen your face!" A voice said mockingly, still laughing.
Melinda opened her eyes and saw the creature grabbing its scalp and stretching the flesh upwards, until its head began to come away from its neck. As the hellish face came off, a beautifully handsome face appeared from the shadows of the mask.
"I thought you were used to seeing dead people?" Jim asked her, crippled with laughter.
"Jim! I am going to kill you!" Melinda shouted, hitting his arm irritably.
"No need, I already look dead when I'm wearing this!" He held up the disgusting mask and Melinda slapped it. The rubber wobbled as her hand hit it.
Jim walked off, still laughing. Melinda smiled and shook it off. "I should've known." She thought to herself as she headed back into the kitchen. Jim had a bunch of old masks in the loft, but Melinda didn't know just how gruesome they looked. "It's a good thing dead people don't look that bad when I see them." She thought thankfully.
She went back to her apples and began placing the rest of them in the bowl. The kids probably wouldn't eat the fruit, but it was worth a shot. Just then, Melinda saw something move at the corner of her eye. She looked round and into the hallway. She couldn't hear anything, but she could see Jim walking up the stairs.
"So as I was saying, are you working tonight?" she asked again.
Jim stopped halfway up the stairs and slowly turned his head. His face looked different, but as he turned it further, Melinda noticed that half of his face was black and burnt, with raw bleeding flesh exposed underneath the realistic wounds.
"Oh, another mask! Do you collect them just to scare me?" Melinda laughed, going back to her apple organizing.
"What did you say, honey?" Jim asked, as he walked into the kitchen from the bathroom. Melinda looked up in shock, seeing her husband passing by, and then looked back to the stairs to see the man with the badly burnt face still staring at her intently. She dropped the bowl of apples and it smashed as it hit the floor. The apples scattered like marbles as Jim jumped with fright.
Jim ran over to his wife who was standing completely still, looking almost paralysed with fear, staring at the empty staircase. "What's wrong Melinda? What can you see?"
Melinda blinked and could no longer see the man. He had vanished, which was not a surprise, but his injuries were horrid. She came back to earth, suddenly noticing the mess on the floor.
"Oh my, I'll get a brush!" She said suddenly, trying to distract herself.
"Melinda, I know you well enough to know when you're seeing something. What was it?"
Melinda looked up at her husband, her eyes deep in thought and still in shock. "I think we have an early trick or treater…"