Incall Only - Must Have Flesh - Chapter 3

After a quick meal of pigs in a pop-n-fresh blanket, we performed the annual square-off ritual. Three things that no matter where we are, what his costume is, or who we are with are points of contention and must be dealt with before a single door is knocked or door bell rung. The first: What would be worn under his costume.

“I want you to be warm!” I called to him.

“I’ll look like a freakin’ oompa loompa.” was the impatient reply but he begrudgingly agreed to at least wear a long sleeve t-shirt under his costume. The score was Mom – 1. Boy – Zip. Next up: The obligatory parental candy inspection.
“Mom.” Poking his head out of his bedroom to give me full weight of his rolling eyes. “We live. In. a. Nice. Neighborhood.”

“So did John Wayne Gacy”. I muttered. The hormones of motherhood flooded my brain with every deviant candy possibility and urban legend I had ever heard regarding needles in Nestle Crunch bars, razors in apples, and ratpoisoned popcorn balls.

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter. You want the candy? I see it first.”

After one of those sighs that only teenagers can pull off, a sullen “Fine” was punctuated by the reclosing of his door.

Two for two…all right. The force was strong with this one however, so I did not expect to win the last and most important argument surrounding the method by which we would cover the neighborhood and I was okay with that so I decided not to bother.

The door opened and he emerged, the perfect example of an undead teenager. Well…a zombie undead teenager. He had yet to make any kind of foray into Goth, which would require a whole new, emotionally angsty wardrobe. We had a hard enough time find clothes as it was. The liquid latex we applied under his makeup was peeling nicely, and the fake blood around his mouth delightfully goulish. My one regret was not having some Oreos in the house to blacken his teeth a little.

“Ready?”

“Yup”.

“Flashlight?”

He patted his front pocket. “Check.”

“Pillow case?”

He held it up to me with an expression that translated clearly as “duh” but he thought better of it. “Check.”

“Where will you go if we get separated?”

This time his answer came as a whine and I gauged his level of frustration by how long he drew out the word “Mo-oooooo-m”.

“If we get separated I’m going to the corner of the street I’m on.. Can. We. Go. Now?!”

“Okay.”

He proceeded out the door in front of me and I deftly lifted his sweatshirt to see if there were any flattened rolls of toilet paper or any other such mischief making devices tucked into the back of his pants. I found none.

“Mom.” One word spoke volumes. Don’t check up on me like a baby. Why can’t you trust me? Don’t touch my clothes. All the suspicians that moms have that teenage boys think are unwarranted, but to be truthful, I’d caught him in enough deviant behavior in the past to warrant such double checking. Case in point: The box of pizza bagels he said were eaten, but I found two weeks later under his bed. I only recognized them for what they were because the bagels on the edge of the plate had dried out to the point that any mold seeking purchase was met with a granite-like façade. The center of the plate however, was without shape, and as black and fibrous as the results of a spray-on toupee I had once seen on a three a.m.
infomercial.

A warm breeze had kicked up on the street which except for street lamps was normally claimed by shadows. This night it was Vegas of Halloween decorations, glow sticks, and flashlights. I steeled myself for two hours of hurry up and wait as he dashed from door to door while I entertained myself with the costumes of the smaller children and their chatter as I passed them in groups.

The usual mischief of kids too old for candy who instead turned to tricks involving eggs and toilet paper seemed to be non-existent and Ian was even remembering to say thank you and smile. Wider smiles for the senior citizens who answered the door always netted more candy, or so he had told me.

All seemed right with the world until we came to the home of an Indian doctor I had seen several times walking his Golden Retreiver while his small son Sanje rode his bike. I always enjoyed meeting them on the sidewalk and listening to them prattle in Hindi above the plastic rattle-scrape of the boy’s training wheels. The doctor lived in a brick, square-fronted abode that looked as though it might have been a row-home common to a mill-town at one time, but because of time and deterioration of the homes around it, it stood alone amongst newer Cape and Ranch-style domiciles.

On the way up the walkway, we bisected a gaggle of witches, princesses and a Power Ranger and I overhead the doughy looking man in charge of rounding up this motley crew say “Maybe they went to the bathroom.

“But Uncle Mike…the light was on and the door was open.”

“I know.”

Another little voice piped up. “It smelled in there.”

“I couldn’t smell anything if I wanted to” was Uncle Mike’s reply. “You gave me your cold. Besides, their Indian. You were probably smelling curry or something.”

“But Daddy-“ a third small voice chimed in.

“Never mind guys” he interrupted. You’ll have plenty of candy. Hey look, it’s Mrs. Bailey’s house. She used to give out whole candy bars when I went trick-or-treating.”

I followed my son up the walkway and stood a little closer than I might have. As I look back on it, I should have listened to my inner creep-out meter but at the time, I was more worried about Dr. Visweswaran than I was about myself. The light was indeed on and I looked around the porch area just in case the good Dr. had decided to jump out and scare the older children. No bushes were available and no decorations shielded a mischievous neurologist from view. Just inside the door, a bright orange bowl emblazoned with purple bats and green scarecrows sat on a straight-backed wooden chair.

I took Ian’s arm and he shook me off. “What the-“

“Get behind me.”

“What?”

“Get behind me.”

“Why?”

I wasn’t in the mood to explain myself, but I had seen enough horror movies and been to enough haunted houses to know that if something lunged, I wanted be between my son and whatever might be advancing.

On the cement doorstep, I realized that the princess had been right. It did indeed smell in there. At first I couldn’t place the odor, and then it hit me almost physically as I craned my head around the half-open door. It wasn’t curry. It wasn’t cardamom. Not even close. The odor that had taken up residence in my nostrils and assailed the smell centers of my cortex was the unmistakable result of the decomposition of something that had once had parents.

“Jesus.”

“What?”came my son’s voice from over my shoulder. “Oh God-what the hell? You couldn’t have warned me you were gonna let one?”

Ignoring him, I pulled the neck of my shirt over my nose and mouth and waved Ian back away from the door. “Go to the end of the sidewalk and wait for me.”

“Why?”

“Do it.”

If this was some elaborate haunted house thing, Dr.V had outdone himself and I wanted to check it out for myself before sending my son into the fray. Nervously, I stepped into the foyer without touching the door, lest it creak and warn whatever costumed ghouls awaited me. The creepy piano music that seems to accompany the entrance of every hapless, solitary victim into a house with untold horror looped in my head as I summoned as much bravado as I could considering that the air inside my shirt was quickly losing it’s useful oxygen.

A floor board creaked behind me and I jumped, jostling the bowl of candy and knocking it off it’s perch as I whirled on a zombie in a white sweatshirt.. The bowl skittered across the hardwood floor on its edge, leaving a trail of dumdums, tootsie rolls, and bottlecaps behind it.

“Jesus, Ian.” I should have realized that my son, who never does anything I ask him the first time, would not have listened in this case either.

“Heh. I scared you.” His already green face turned slightly greener as the something-dead smell hit him and he followed my lead of covering his face with his shirt. “God, that smells like the time Dad hit the deer…you know the one that had already been hit like…fifty million times already and was splattered all over the road…and its head was..”

“Ian;” I cut him off. My stomach was already turning and I didn’t need a visual reminder of how a smell like this comes about.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“I get it.” I assured him and reminding him to stay behind me, I took another step into the house. “Dr. V?”

More imaginary piano music. Ian called out to the boy. No answer. I felt for my phone in vain, realizing that I had left it on the coffee table in the rush to get out the door.