A Halloween Treat

“Scritch, Scritch”
A short story by Kevin Polman
Copyright (text and art) © 2023 by Kevin Polman (Fort Worth, TX)

Billy heard the soft padding of feet as he stared at the dark ceiling. He looked at the bedside clock.
2:13 am.
He saw eyes in the dark near the bedroom door.
Grandson Evan.
“Hey, buddy. Can’t sleep?”
“Can’t go back to sleep.” Evan was visiting for the weekend. A grandfather-and-grandson get-together. Mimi was off on a road cruise with her middle-aged posse. “Pop Pop, can you get up now? Can we play cars?”
Might as well. I was awake anyway.
Not sure what woke me up.
“Yeah. Could you hit the light switch for me?”
Incandescence flooded the room.
“Want a snack?”
“No. I’m not hungry.”
“Okay. Let’s take a look at those cars.”

They dragged out the big box of Hot Wheels that Billy had been collecting since he was a kid in the late 60s.
An original Hot Wheels Fan Club member.
Owner of a cherished Boss Hoss.
Using wood blocks they constructed a room-wide parkway with main roads, side roads, and parking areas. Evan loved designing this sort of thing.
A natural engineer.
Billy let him do most of the work and just hung around, rolling a car back and forth, pushing a block here or there.
“It’s okay,” Evan said. “I’m better at this than you are.”
Billy smiled to himself. At some point he sat back in his easy chair and read a book. Minutes later he looked up. “How’s it coming?”
No answer.
Billy shot Evan in the butt with a dart gun.
“Hey!”
“Hey nothing. You know how this works.”
Evan had the habit of not answering questions when he was lost in his thoughts. Sometimes he was just being rude. They had a system.
No answer — shot in the butt.
“How’s it coming?”
Evan looked up and grinned. “Good!”
“Okay then.”
Billy read some more of his novel about a middle-aged man’s messed-up life.

2:47 am.
“Do you think there are werewolves outside right now?” Evan looked over at Billy, eyes a little wider than normal.
A part of Billy hidden way down inside was tempted to say, “Yes, I keep one in a cage in the back yard. In fact, I’m a werewolf myself. So is Mimi.” Just to shock him, maybe scare him a little. This was like something Billy’s father would have done. For his personal amusement. Probably because his father – Billy’s grandfather — or maybe his dad’s older brothers had done this to him. Billy remembered a time when his dad had allowed him to see Outer Limits late one evening after his mom had gone to bed. They sat in the dark living room watching an episode that terrified Billy. After the show, his dad asked him to carry the garbage out to the can at the side of the garage. The dark side. With a cruel grin on his face, his dad pushed him to do it even after Billy had refused. He ran out, slam dunked the trash bag into the can, clanged down the lid, and raced to the back door of the house, all the while imagining that he heard the breathing of a grisly alien at his heels. When he got to the door, it was locked. His dad let him bang and shriek for several seconds before he opened it and let him in.
Those are memories you cherish for a lifetime.
“Do you know what a werewolf is?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Yolanda said there were werewolves at the farm.” Yolanda was Evan’s cousin on the other side of the family.
“Really? Werewolves at the farm?”
“Yeah.”
“When did she say this?”
“Once when I was there we were walking back from Great Grandma’s house to the main house, and she told me.”
“Was it dark?”
“Yes. Like it is now.”
“And she told you there were werewolves?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “We heard one.”
Despite his amusement at this tale from a seven-year-old, Billy felt a little shiver run along his spine. He’d been to the farm once.
Remote. Dark as pitch at night. Perfect place for werewolves.
If you believed in that sort of thing.
“What did it sound like?”
“It was a…” Evan thought. “‘Scritch, scritch.’”
“That sounds like an insect.”
“That’s what I told Yolanda. She said, ‘Yeah, I know, but listen.’” Now Evan trembled just the slightest bit.
“And?”
“Something growled. Like a dog, but worse.”
“Worse how?”
“It sounded hungry.”
Billy looked sharply at the dark window in the room, thinking he’d seen movement.
Cool it, old man.
“Hey buddy, I’m gonna go wash my face. You keep building, and… if you hear a ‘scritch, scritch,’ just yell out, and I’ll come running. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Let’s practice.” Billy made a scratching sound with his nails on the wooden surface of the table.
Evan grinned. “Pop Pop!” he yelled.
“Okay. That’ll work.”
Later, as Billie dried his face with a towel, he heard, “Pop Pop!” He stared at his eyes in the mirror.
A little worried, are you?
Scared, maybe?
“Coming!” He hung the towel and walked back to the living room. Evan’s face was white, his eyes were wide, tears were imminent. “Evan, what’s wrong?”
“Something looked in at me.”
Billy narrowed his eyes at the window. “Nothing there now.”
“Well, there was. It was tall. It had red eyes.”
Billy wanted to make light of it, but he couldn’t. Because it didn’t feel light. It felt unavoidably dark.
Did you just hear a scritch?
No! Stop imagining things.
“Let’s go outside and clear this up.”
“No, Pop Pop! I don’t want to get eaten by a werewolf!”
Good Lord, that Yolanda!
“Look, we’ll both carry flashlights. Big, black, metal flashlights. Werewolves hate them. If you whack a werewolf with one of those, they disintegrate. Just ask Yolanda. And I’ll carry my Louisville Slugger. We’ll probably find out it was just a possum or a fox or a coyote, maybe even a stray dog or a raccoon, and then we’ll both feel so much better.”
Evan look doubtful. But he trusted his grandfather.
A little voice spoke that Billy didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to acknowledge once he’d heard it.
Do you trust yourself?

Quietly, they crept out the front door into the semidarkness. Much of the yard was lit by a distant streetlamp, but there were deep shadows off to the side.
“Remember about the red eyes,” Evan said.
“Yeah, okay.” Billy prayed he didn’t see any red eyes staring from the tall photinia shrubs on the dark side of the yard.
Photinia. Now there’s a plant made for werewolves. Out of control as can be. Some of the leaves are red or red-tipped. Blood-red. And nothing kills photinia. The summer can be hot and dry as the Sahara, they just keep growing up and up like trees. The winter can be so cold that it kills most of your outside plants, but those photinia? They live forever, like… werewolves.
“If we’re going to do this right, we’ve got to check out the trees over there.”
“You mean where it’s dark?” Evan asked, wide-eyed.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
“I don’t know…”
“Otherwise we won’t know, and we’ll just hide inside, ready to poop our pants.”
Evan giggled.
Poop jokes. Guaranteed to lighten the mood of any seven-year old.
Side by side they slowly made their way into the darkness.
What was that? I did NOT just hear that.
Billy was inclined to believe that he had heard the faintest of noises, a barely audible…
Scritching.
No.
“Did you hear it?” Evan whispered with a shaky voice.
Billy hesitated. “Yes.” Then, looking in the direction of the gate to the back yard, he thought that he saw a pair of red dots, glowing just above the fence line.
My imagination is killing me.
“Did you see that?” Evan whispered, more urgently this time.
“Yeah. Let’s shine our flashlights on it. At the same time. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“On three. One… two… THREE!” The flashlights clicked on, simultaneously flooding the area just above the fence. Something that might have been a rather large head ducked down.
Either that, or we’re both so hyped up about this that I’m seeing things.
“Did you see that head full of hair?” Evan asked.
Did you hear… did you see… did you see? Third time’s a charm.
Billy grabbed Evan’s hand and walked quickly and decisively back to the door to the house, opened it, got them inside, and closed it.
Click, click, click. All three locks engaged. Not that it would matter if there was a… werewolf… out there.
This can’t really be happening.
“Hey buddy, let’s watch some TV.”
“Seriously? What about the hairy monster outside?”
“I think we’re imagining things. I’ve been seeing a lot of raccoons lately.”
“Didn’t look like a raccoon to me.”
“Still… TV for a while?”
“Alright, but nothing scary.”
Okay by me.
Billy put in a video about little dogs dressed in human clothes that did good deeds. It was one of Evan’s favorites.
Ten minutes into the video, the power went off, immersing them in complete darkness.
Damn!
“Pop Pop?”
Billy said, as calmly as he was able, “Hold my hand, we’re going to go get our big flashlights.” They’d left them on the kitchen table. In the darkness, it seemed like a mile away.
“In the dark?”
“I know exactly where they are. We’ll just have to move slowly.”
Billy guided them to the table, felt around for the flashlights. Just before he found them, he distinctly heard the rattle of the front door knob.
Oh, man.
“I heard it, too,” Evan whispered.
When the whispering starts, you know it’s time to worry.
Billy whispered back. “Don’t turn on your flashlight.” He clicked his on, but limited the light to an orange glow by covering the lens with his hand. “Follow me.” Billy guided them to a storage closet inside the den down the hall. On the way, he grabbed something that was hanging on the wall.
Once inside the closet, Evan whispered, “What did you get from the wall?”
“One of Mimi’s silver spoons. From her collection.”
“Which one?”
“Doesn’t matter. A Yosemite National Park spoon.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“Yes. Once. A long time ago. When I was about twenty years old.”
“Why’d you get the spoon?”
They stopped whispering when they heard furniture being moved somewhere in the house.
“It’s silver,” Billy said in a voice that was barely audible. He searched inside a wooden box on a shelf in the closet. “We’re going to shoot it out of this.” He unwrapped a 357 magnum from its oil cloth.
“A gun!”
“Shh.”
Things got suddenly quiet in the house.
“How are you going to shoot a spoon out of that?”
“Well, the handle is skinny enough that I can insert the spoon into the barrel, then blam! – when I shoot a regular bullet it should push the spoon out like a… small, round harpoon.”
“Seriously?” Evan had a look on his face like he couldn’t quite believe he was entrusting his life to a man who was planning to shoot a spoon out of a gun. “Why do you need a spoon if you’re already shooting a bullet?”
“It’s made of silver. Silver is supposed to kill werewolves. Plain bullets don’t.”
Evan hesitated. “What about large metal flashlights? I thought you said that would work.”
“Well, I kind of fudged on that one. That was before I thought there really was a werewolf. Bottom line: Flashlights won’t do jack diddly.”
“So…”
“So. The spoon is our best shot. Literally.”
“I see.”
They heard a noise. It was close. The same room as the closet.
Is that labored breathing I hear? Like from a big, hairy, hungry lycanthrope?
“You ready, Evan?”
“For what?”
“We’ve got one shot. That’s it.”
Evan whispered, “This reminds me of the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“The movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford?”
“Yes.”
“You saw that movie?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“With Dad. A while back. A month ago.”
“My son let you watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
“Uh, yes.”
Billy wondered how well Evan understood the ending.

Billy had seen the movie when he was middle school age. He’d watched it in black-and-white when it was aired on regular network television. Those were the days of the golden era of westerns, in Billy’s opinion, and he was delighted with anticipation as he sat with his parents in the semi-dark living room watching the opening credits. He remembered laughing with his mom and dad at Paul Newman’s famous line, “The fall’ll probably kill ya!” just after Sundance had revealed that he couldn’t swim and just before the two jumped off a cliff into the river. Butch and Sundance were such likeable characters, as portrayed by Newman and Redford, that you WANTED them to survive, to SUCCEED in robbing banks, and to NOT be killed. Never mind that the real-life Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid were probably sociopaths who took advantage of many people. The movie’s ending in which the two outlaws are trapped by a battalion of Bolivian soldiers who fully intend to shoot them to death was upsetting to Billy. It was almost as bad as seeing John Wayne murdered in The Cowboys by that sniveling goon played by Bruce Dern. Since the movie never showed the actual killing of Butch and Sundance – unlike The Cowboys’ graphic depiction of John Wayne’s death – Billy had always held that those two wily rascals got their way out of a seemingly insurmountable jam like they’d done so often before.
“Don’t they get shot at the end?” Evan asked.
I guess he understood.
“Well, you don’t actually see it. Maybe they made it out alive.”
“I don’t think so. That’s not what Dad said.”
They were quiet, listening to something rooting around in the room. Finally, Evan said, “We’re going to be okay.”
Billy was surprised at his grandson’s confidence, given the situation at hand. “How do you know?”
“Because you’re my Pop Pop and you’re amazing. Dad says there isn’t anything you can’t do.”
“Well… but werewolves. Kind of a new area for me.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”
We’ve got this.
You’re an amazing Pop Pop.
Hold on to that.
Whatever was out there was racing all over the house now. They listened to it scritch and clatter and growl and snort. A light bulb popped when its lamp was knocked off a table.
“This is pretty scary, Evan.”
“I know. We’ll be okay. We’ve got your spoon harpoon.”
“Say, why do you suppose werewolves make a ‘scritch, scritch’ sound?”
Evan thought about it. “I think it’s their claws scratching on things.”
“Like rocks on the ground?”
“Yeah. Or fallen trees.”
“Maybe they’re scratching their butts.”
“Yeah, their big nasty werewolf butts.”
They both started giggling.
“Shh. It’ll hear us.”
“We’re going to have to go out there soon. And face this.”
“I know.”
“Give me a big hug.”
Their arms wrapped around each other for a few moments, then they separated.
“Let’s do this.”
“No more messing around.”
“Right. You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Slowly, they pushed the closet door open, their wide eyes staring into the darkness, the werewolf sounds louder now. Man and boy, grandfather and grandson, bound in love and courage and resolve, they ventured out into the zone of danger with a power that seemed to surpass that of the supernatural creature they would soon fight until it was destroyed… or they were. No matter the outcome, they were ready. Whatever happened would change them forever.
Billy whispered into Evan’s ear, “I love you, Evan.”
Evan whispered into Billy’s ear, “I love you, Pop Pop.”
They moved forward, arm in arm.
Scritch, scritch.

THE END

Goings-On

October 28 – I performed a live soundtrack for a haunted house at Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts. Nearly four hours of distorted electric guitar accompanied the appearance of various horror movie ghouls as teenagers walked (and ran) through the “house.” The goal was to raise money for the junior class. Quite fun, actually.

November 10 – I’m playing one of my compositions at Take Five, a cozy coffee-house-style talent show at Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts. My fourth year to perform at this event. 6:30 to 8 pm.

November 14 – I’m doing a book sale/signing at Dance Celebration at Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts. Hours of dance performances. Book sales will contribute to FWAFA’s dance program. 5 to 9 pm.