Entry # 20

Halloween Tackle

By Gregory Hart

When I was a kid, I was almost scared of everything that goes bump in the night. The best analogy that I can give you is that of me being like Shaggy and Scooby Doo but without all the eating. Hahaha!!! Anyway there was one Halloween where I dressed up as a ghost and usually my mother was the one who took me trick or treating while my dad gave out the treats to those who came to our house. But this night was going to be different because my mother happened to get sick and she was the one left to give out the treats, while my dad took me trick or treating. He didn't know all the houses that I normally went to so we ended up going to all the houses in the area. So needless to say, I got a lot of candy that year.

There was this one house that went out in the Halloween decorations and with the tricking part of Halloween and me and mom always knew this and because I scared easily when I was a kid, never stopped at the house. Well my dad stopped at this one house even after me telling him not to stop there. After much convincing on his part, I finally caved in. I was thinking at this point, what harm would it do me? Boy was I ever wrong in thinking that.

I get out of the car and begin making my way up to the door, spooky lighting and music playing in the background somewhere. The front yard has an oak tree and in front of the oak tree was a raised flower bed that would now go little pass my knees. I had to pass this flower bed to get to the house.

Unknown to me, the owners of the house had raked up a lot of leaves from the tree and put them into a pile behind the flower bed. In the pile, they had covered someone up underneath them. I'll come back to this bit later. As I continued up towards the house, I heard a bunch of leaves being rattled. I stopped and looked around me, satisfied nothing was wrong, I continued on to the house.

Two steps later, I heard the noise again. This time I stopped and took my time looking around again but this time looking in the tree branches themselves, thinking that a cat or some animal was in it making the noise. When I didn't see anything, I naively continued on to the house for the candy. Here's where the pile of leaves came in. I took two more steps and the next thing I realize is Dracula is coming out of nowhere and he was heading for my direction.

Well, I screamed and began running away from the house. Not only was I was running away from the house, I was running away from the car as well. From behind me I heard the owner yelling at me Hey! Come back here! Don't you want your candy! Needless to say, at this point, I didn't care about the candy. All I was thinking was HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO GET OUT OF HERE WITH A MADMAN CHASING ME AND TO HELL WITH MY CANDY!!! I kept going and wasn't going to stop for anything, including for my dad who was now calling for me to come back to the house.

I would have left the yard too if it wasn't for someone tackling me to the ground to get me to stop running. I was kicking and screaming so hard for them to let me go all the way up to the front door of the house, which come to find out it was my dad who had tackled me. He and the owner of the house spent the next five minutes or so trying to calm me down and explain to me that it was all a joke and there was nothing going to hurt me. 

Well after everything was said and done, my mom had a kick out of telling my dad to listen to me the next time when I said I didn't want to stop there. One thing was certain; he never took me trick or treating again after that. It's one of those memories that I'll never forget. As for all that candy that was still in my bag, it was a miracle that I never lost any as hard as I hit the ground when I was tackled.