Chapter 2: All Hallows Eve

That Saturday, Tidus and Yuna carved ther jack-o-lantern. It took them 2 hours, but they finished it. It was a picture of a bat flying through the night. The bat was finely carved into perfection. The wings were perfect; the length and width of both wings were the same. Grinning from finishing the time-consuming carving, they put it on their porch. A few minutes later, they were a loud whump.

"What was that?" Yuna asked.

"I don't know," Tidus replied. "I'll check it out."

Tidus opened the door with a creak. He looked down on the porch. There were pumpkin pieces everywhere! Someone had hurled it at their house! Tidus walked back in. He turned to Yuna with anger on his face. "Yuna, give me the police," he said, enraged.

The police officer he reached was obviously stupid and not very emotional. When Tidus yelled at him about the smashed pumpkin, the officer just laughed. "I guess you haven't heard about Mischief Night," he said.

"Uhh... Mischief Night?" Tidus asked.

"Mischief Night. It's a night where kids can wreck stuff and T.P. houses for fun," the officer replied. "Kids are just being kids. Besides, it's not likely for us to catch the culprit if you didn't see him actually obliterate your pumpkin."

Tidus shook his fist in anger, but calmed down. "Thank you very much," he gritted through his teeth.

"No problem!" the officer replied gleefully, and hung up.

"Asshole," he said, and hung up.

Tidus would not be deterred. On Halloween morning, he drove to a store the next town over and bought an even bigger pumpkin. It was carved, lit, and brought out front under Tidus's eye.

The evening came on fast and showed all signs of being a perfect Halloween night. The sun had turned the distant hills a fiery red as it set. In its wake, the moon had risen with a pinkish glow that Tidus knew made it what they called a blood moon. The air was cool enough to sharpen smells and sounds. Tidus picked up the acrid waft of burning wood that told him that several fireplaces were lit.

He had stocked up on candy for the neighborhood kids. Yuna had wistfully suggested that they might get to meet some of the neighbors whose kids came trick-or-treating. By dusk they had already seen some kids out in costume walking around the block. But none of the kids came to their door. Tidus peeked through the blinds and saw a cluster of kids at the house next door. When he grabbed the bowl of candy, he looked out again, and saw the kids heading up the steps at the house on the other side.

Their house had been completely skipped over. It went on like that for the rest of the evening.

The neighborhood kids were out in droves, in costumes ranging from the store-bought to the crudely made homemade. They laughed and yelled as they paraded up and down the street. But in every case they passed by Tidus's and Yuna's house like they didn't even see it there.

Tidus and Yuna had come close to getting only one visitor that evening. Early on, Tidus had seen one kid who couldn't have been more than three or four come toddling up the front walk in his ghost sheet. Tidus had stepped into the foyer, planning to open the door as the child came up the steps. But through the glass panes at the top of the door, he saw a woman- probably the kid's mother- run to the child and yanked him away by the arm before he could even get halfway up the walk.

"What the hell was everyone's problem!" he yelled to no one in particular.

"Give them time," Yuna calmly replied. "Someone will come eventually."

Tidus guessed the kids were just going to the houses of friends and people they knew. It was probably a good safety precaution nowadays.

By ten o' clock, not a single trick-or-treater had come to their door. Tidus had offered to answer the doorbell while Yuna worked upstairs, but it seemed pretty pointless. The cries of the kids and the pounding of feet on the sidewalk had just suddenly ceased. Tidus looked through the front window and saw that the block was completely dark. It was as if everyone just disappeared. Come on, get a hold of yourself, he thought to himself. There's a logical explanation for all this. The neighbors were either sending a signal to the kids that Halloween was over, or they were turning in much earlier than usual.

"That must be it," he said to himself.

Yuna came downstairs. "Why don't you blow the candle out in the jack-o-lantern?" she asked him, and went back upstairs.

Tidus sighed as he put his shoes on. He was almost done tying his shoes when he was startled by a sound from the front porch.

Whummmp!

The stillness of the night had magnified the noise. It sounded like something had fallen on the floorboards. Opening the door, Tidus discovered another jack-o-lantern casualty. Someone had tossed it, candle and all, against the front door. This was worse than the one yesterday. The pumpkin was virtually pulverized. Stringy clumps spattered the door, and flecks of pumpkin dressed the walls several feet on both sides of the frame.

Tidus stared in awe. "No way," he said to himself. "There's no frickin' way this could have happened. That pumpkin was 3 times heavier than the last one. It would have taken considerable strength to make this kind of mess. No little kid out for Halloween could have done this!"

Tidus stood in the doorway, peering into the darkness as though he might see whoever was responsible for this prank. The candle in the jack-o-lantern had been smothered by soppy pulp, and he could smell that smoky, oily odor that he associated with a snuffed candle. But there was another, stronger smell behind it. A sweet-and-sour smell. It reminded him of that mixed aroma of alfalfa, manure, and newly turned earth that he associated with the country. As a kid, he remembered how overpowering it could seem whenever he drove by the recently mown hayfield. It was the first time he smelled it in this town.

What was putting that smell out so strongly?

"God, I'm going to kill whoever did this," he muttered under his breath.

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Will Tidus ever find out who did this to his pumpkin? Could it have been a kid who threw it? Or was it something inhuman? Tune in next time!