2:50 am and John Thigpen was awake. He had been sleeping comfortably, dreaming a blurry collage of mildly erotic events. Clinging desperately to the fading imagery, he now straightened a tie, wrapped himself in a parka, and braced for the cold that awaited him outside.

Thigpen half-walked, half-skated down the driveway to the Scio, NY municipal car which was encased in icy film, thanks to all the freezing rain. There’s no other cold like early winter Upstate, he told himself as his nostrils instantly froze and his lips began to crack and bleed.

He struggled to open the ice-sealed door decorated with the town crest and the motto: “Scio, a great place to live”. In gold paint just below the slogan was his own signature: “John Thigpen, Sheriff.”

Shaving the ice from the windshield with his trusty scraper, Thigpen recalled a comment made by Wade, his deputy, and the only other cop in all of Scio. Wade thought that the slogan and signature on the car door gave the impression that the “Great place to live” line was attributed to Sheriff John Thigpen himself. Thigpen tried to tell Wade that “A great place to live” is what the town council decided upon when it came to a vote. The other options were: “We don’t have streetlights, so keeps yours on!” and “I’ve got the farm in me. Do you have the farm in you?” “Go Bills!” was also quickly shot down, in spite of the grass roots support it had received.

“Haw!” commented Wade in that oddly southern sounding accent that upstate New Yorkers have, “You should’a changed the slogan to ‘Scio, a great place to live… ‘cause nothing ever happens here!”

That might have been the case at one time, but Wade’s phone call moments ago would be a sign that something had indeed happened in the sleepy farm town of Scio.

Thigpen slid from the driveway onto rural route 15. Three miles and he would be at Wardell’s farm. Wade had awakened the sheriff earlier to report that Ed Wardell was claiming some of his cattle had gone missing. Ordinarily that would not have been enough to roust Thigpen from his warm bed. It was Wade’s tone. Something was up.

Thigpen nervously keyed the radio as snow fell, streaky white in his headlights.

“Alright Wade, I’m almost at Wardell’s place. Brief me again on what is going on there. It better not be a bear. If it‘s a raccoon, I‘ll kill you…and it.”

Some static and then Wade, his words coming out in a whisper: “Get here now, Sheriff. I don’t think I can hold them off….”

The radio went dead as Thigpen pulled into Wardell’s long, winding driveway. He killed the lights, slowly passing torn cattle carcasses and blood stained ice as he neared the Wardell house, which was dark and silent. Thigpen unsnapped his holster as he got out of the car.

A scream rose from the snowy night, and behind a frozen pine, a shadow stirred.

It isn't true, that ghosts don't exist.

The personalities of people are too strong just to fade into smoke when the body is sealed under cold, sodden earth. They seep into the walls of houses, into the bark of aging trees. Spirits, after all, don't have their bodies anymore, and they are drawn as hopelessly and as hungrily to warmth and life as a moth is drawn to a candle flame. I know.

I've seen things in the woods at night, and in the darkened stairwells and creaking porches of my childhood. Only on nights too cold for the cicadas, only on nights so black that the darkness is a heavy, pressing thing on your skin do you see things. When I was a child, on cool nights between summer and fall, when not even a car's headlights washed over me from the country road, I thought the night was the beginning of the world. The blackness was like existing before everything else, and I used to think this was how it must have all started: blackness, heavy with meaning, and strange creatures grasping at existence. I could feel hands scratching at my arms and legs in the woods at night, trying to make my body their own. And on nights when my parents were deeply asleep, I would creep out of my bedroom and sit on the top-most stair, looking down into the tar-black well. Somehow, in the backer-than-blackness, I could see someone standing down there on the bottom step, silent and motionless. The person wanted to come upstairs, where the night-light glowed in the wall and where I sat quietly, alive, breathing, being. It had only to climb the stairs.

But many times I sat on the top step and it stood on the bottom and we looked at each other and it did not move. Maybe that feeble little light repelled it. I don't think it would have ever climbed those creaking stairs one by one, if my mother hadn't died. After she was gone, though, things were different. When I sat quivering on the top step, chin on my knees, I knew that my mother was down there in the blackness instead of sleeping quietly upstairs, and even though I was quaking inside and out with fear, part of me wanted to be taken as well. I wanted to stand up and leap forward and fall, tumble into dark.

And so I put the night-light out.

"Why do we fear the dark?"

Tom heard the voice directly in front of him speaking in measured, even pleasant tones as he tugged once again at the leather straps that bound him. His wrists and ankles were strapped to an uncomfortable wooden chair. He squinted to try to see through the deep shade of black that surrounded him, but the room was so dark that he couldn't even make out the outline of the person speaking to him.

"Personally, I think it's an extension of our natural fear of the unknown."

He tried to yell out, but the gag over his mouth reduced his words to an unintelligible mumble.

"After all, in the dark, everything is unknown. You don't know what's out there... or what to expect."

With those last four words, the voice suddenly came from his right. Tom swung his head around, trying to make out some details of the speaker. It was no use. His eyes weren't adjusting to the darkness. He still couldn't see a thing.

"And that uncertainty fires up the imagination. It activates the cynical part of our nature that prepares us for the worst. And it fills the dark with all sorts of terrors."

The voice faded slightly, as if the speaker was moving away from him. Tom's panic subsided a bit and he focused on the sounds in the room, trying to pick up any background noise that might give him a clue as to where he was. Then he heard the scraping of metal against metal just inches from his head and the fear rushed back in even stronger than before. He pulled harder against his restraints.

"Ironic, isn't it... how that primal instinct intended to protect us can also become one of our biggest weaknesses."

Tom felt a hand suddenly reach from behind, grab a handful of hair and yank his head back. It was followed quickly by the sensation of cold metal against his left cheek, a sharp edge pressing hard against his skin but stopping just short of cutting the surface.

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his head as his breathing hastened involuntarily to short, panicked bursts. In his mind’s eye, he could picture it traveling down to the steel and then creeping along the side of the blade, fighting gravity until it finally fell to the floor with a blood red splash.

“But you, my friend, have every right to be afraid. Because this will be a night you remember for the rest of your life… however long that lasts.”

Melissa stirred under her blankets, not yet fully aware, but she was waking. Something was pulling her from sleep, and she felt her mind rising slowly to the surface of consciousness. There was something wrong. Something new here. Melissa shifted her weight in the bed, and realized what it was. There was someone behind her. Still half dreaming, she could feel the weight of another person in her usually solitary double bed, curled just behind her back, cupping her body closely as she lay on her side. She felt his warmth, his shape, and as she felt a hand slide stealthily up over her hip and around to her belly, she was suddenly wide awake.

Melissa's mind began to race; there should be no one here, the doors, the windows, what had she left unlocked? How did he get in, what did he want, my god... As the body behind her pressed ever tighter to her, she tried to turn to it, and found that she could not move. Eyes wide open, bright with fear, she could see her reflection in the mirror across the room. There was nothing, no one behind her, but she could still feel it. The hand against her stomach, holding her close, gliding so slowly and persistantly upward, yet she could make no move to stop it. Her hands were free and helpless above the bed covers, useless to her in their paralysis.

She felt heat at her neck, breath, and she struggled to pull away. Unable to move, unable to scream, Melissa was shrieking madly in her head, never taking her eyes off the motionless, lone woman in the mirror. A woman who lay so peacefully she might've been sleeping but for the glaring whites of her eyes shining back at her in the dark.

As soon as she woke up, Rachel knew something was wrong. When she opened her eyes, she should have seen the sun shining through her window; instead, she saw nothing. Her room was never this dark. Even in the middle of the night, her Hello Kitty nightlight kept the shadows away. Something was wrong.

Not only was it too dark, her bed was much too hard and cold. Rachel tried to reach for her teddy bear and found that her arm wouldn’t move. She could wiggle her hand, but her wrist was strapped down to the bed. Something was very wrong.

Today was not supposed to start this way. It was her fourth birthday after all. Mommy should have been there when she woke up. Mommy was always there when she woke up. Rachel started to feel angry. Why would Mommy do this? It wasn’t nice. Where was she? Rachel opened her mouth to shout, but stopped herself. Maybe Mommy hadn’t done this. Maybe if she screamed Mommy would come and save her. Or maybe whoever had put her here would come. Rachel started to feel less angry and more scared. A tear spilled down her cheek and splashed onto the cold stone.

Maybe this was just a dream. Sometimes Rachel had nightmares. She couldn’t always remember the dreams, but she knew they were scary. She also knew that when she woke up she could yell and Mommy would come and make her feel better. Rachel squeezed her eyes closed and tried to wake up. When she opened them, it was still dark. Since she couldn’t pinch herself, she bit her lip. She still didn’t wake up. Rachel wanted to cry out, but Mommy couldn’t come into her dreams. Rachel had to wake up first. She was getting more and more frightened. She bit her lip harder. A drop of blood spilled down her cheek and splashed onto the cold stone.

As her eyes adjusted, Rachel noticed that the darkness was not complete. She could see a faint light from an area near the floor. Rachel decided that was a door. If she screamed, Mommy would come through that door and take her home. But Rachel was too afraid to scream. What if Mommy didn’t come? The quiet sounds of a little girl’s sobs echoed through the room. It hurt Rachel to look at the door and not see it open.

In her four short years, Rachel had always been able to rely on Mommy. Mommy always made the pain, the tears, and the hurt go away. Mommy would come soon. Rachel tried to quiet herself and wait. She waited for what seemed to be hours. Finally, the door started to open. It made no sound, but the light immediately illuminated the room. It hurt Rachel’s eyes and she could only see the shadow in the doorway.

“Mommy?”

He moved the flashlight side to side, slowly moving forward... following the steady rhythm of blood drops on the pavement accompanied by gobbets of flesh that appeared from time to time, at the edges of horizontal swings of the body as the murderer swayed his booty. The fog was getting heavier: as long as it didn't turn to rain, he could continue to follow the path left by the killer.

He just knew he was following a path. Who the victim was, was unknown to him; killed by whom, he did not know; where this path would take him, he had yet to discover. Just his luck to be following such a path while a lunar eclipse was happening. Blood in the sky, blood underfoot. The air was thick with the smells of the city: motor car exhaust, industrial chemicals, squashed worms on the road after a heavy rain. Just as well. It helped to mask the smells of the murder he was following.

He stopped, and shone his flashlight on a hunk located on the pathway. It was the forefinger and thumb from a right hand, still joined together. So relaxed, now that tendons couldn't be holding them tight against whatever foe they were fighting. And such a delicate hand they came from. Her manicure was beautiful. A sea-shell pink nail polish finished the look, now too, too, pink for such whitened, drained fingers. Alas, it's a lass.

He straightened his back and reached into his right pocket for his cigarettes. This wasn't going to be easy. It never was, when they were as young as his daughter. He always wanted to think of her as grown-up and independent, but cases like this always drove her back to childhood in his mind. And made him feel vulnerable.

The smell of the match changed the night for him. It stopped being Hallowe'en, and became just another night of investigation. Standard procedures to be followed. Leads to be developed, people to be questioned. Paths to be followed. First of all, paths to be followed, in spite of the moon, in spite of the fog, in spite of the desire to go home and call his daughter.

A dull achy pain was the first thing that reached her consciousness. Still asleep, she became aware of the heaviness of her body. Sleep slowly shifted itself away from her like a tide moving out to sea. Painfully she sat up and looked around. The shock felt like the whole world had zoomed up behind her and thumped into the back of her head. Oh God, the blood. Her mouth hung open as she looked around the scene. A forest. It was dusk. She didn’t know how she'd got there.

Blood dripped down the bark of a tree beside her.

She began to whimper involuntarily, but couldn't stop herself looking for the source of the thick dark liquid that was splashed across the surrounding area. She stupidly patted her body up and down, checking for a wound. Stupid because whatever this blood came from couldn't possibly still be alive.

Having pulled herself to her feet, she struggled for ideas of what to do next. Explore the scene or cut and run? Being unable to decide on a direction to hurl her feet, she stood shakily and moved only her head to look around. The ground was littered with shorn off tree branches, a few items of clothing, and a shoe. All were drenched.

The sudden sound of a chainsaw squealed through her head. Her pupils dilated violently and she gasped as her feet carried her body as fast as she could go in the opposite direction.

This is exciting. It’s not that tough dragging the canvas bag. It weighs about a hundred pounds. This is great.

I’m six feet underground. The tunnel leads to this hallway. There are two more doors; one for the black room, one for the white room. The black room is always first. That’s the plan. I drag the bag in there.

Everything’s painted black. A narrow concrete bench runs along one wall. There’s a drain built into the floor. The sprinkler heads, cameras and speakers are all recessed into the ceiling. There are no lights in here. It’s totally dark, damp and dead.

The other room is painted white. The bench that runs along the wall in there is wider. It has a thick, soft cushion on it. There’s a thick, white cotton robe and soft warm fuzzy slippers. There’s even a toilet in the white room. That room is for the good girls.

Between the two rooms is a double Plexiglas wall. Between the layers of Plexiglas is a blackout curtain. I have a remote in my pocket that opens the curtain. Now the black room isn’t so dark. This is fun.

The hardest part is finding girls who look like Anna. With money, time and the right equipment I can find them, track them, and get them when I want them. You can never tell how long a girl will last, or whether she will be good or bad.

I don’t worry much about getting caught. Totally random stranger abductions are hard to solve. No phone calls or internet searches to trace. Everything has to be visual and personal. Nobody but me involved. Two heads make a monster, as the saying goes.

Once the padlock is off I open the bag. She’s been in there for more than thirty-six hours and she’s made a mess of herself. That won’t matter. I have to grab the bottom of the bag and sort of shake her out of there. She stays curled up. Her eyes are tightly shut, which means she’s awake.

She’s fifteen years old. Thin, but not too thin. She has white skin and a nice white smile. Her blonde hair is straight and parted in the middle. Under her pajamas is a willowy, athletic adolescent body. And the arctic blue eyes, the high cheekbones, for that eastern European aristocratic look. Just like Anna.

My little knife is very sharp. Every stitch of clothing is off in a jiffy. Now she whimpers. Her eyes stay closed. There is perhaps nothing as wonderful as the time up to and including the first kiss. I kneel down close so I can whisper in her ear.

“I’m going to call you Anna,” I say. “If you are a good girl you will be warm and dry and in the light. If you are a bad girl you will cold and wet and in the dark.” She starts to cry, but silently. That’s so sweet. “Are you going to be a good girl?”

“God bless it, you look like such sweethearts,” the crone warbled as the children’s eyes locked onto the wooden bowl that sat on a small folding to the woman’s left. “And what are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Elvis!” the first child declared.

The old woman’s face bunched up. “Elvis?” she scoffed. “You mean that rhinestone covered harbinger of the devil, who came to spread the satanic verses of his so called rock-and-roll to the world?” She ignored the scowling parents and turned towards the second child in line. “And what might you be?”

A child of four dressed in a peach jumpsuit with a twirled pipe cleaner stapled to the rear and a snubbed nose fixed to her skull via a rubber band gleefully chirped, “I’m a little piggy!”

“Oh, so your parents decided to dress you up as an icon of gluttony who spends every waking moment of its life wallowing in its own filth.” The decrepit creature’s eyes strayed towards the third child. This one was slightly younger than Elvis—-eight years old, she guessed—and had an unfamiliar face. Probably one of Elvis’ friends.

An overgrown brow pulled itself up the old coot’s forehead. This one was nothing more than a red hooded sweatshirt and a pair of black denim pants. In fact, the only indication that he was wearing a costume at all was the pair of horns that protruded from is forehead, one of them skewed slightly to the left. ‘Probably a poor kid Elvis’ class,’ she thought to herself. “And you—-should I even bother?” she sneered.

The parents and other children gave their elderly neighbor a confused look. The third child grinned and opened his mouth to respond, only to be cut off by the male-adult whose daughter was now on the verge of tears. “Listen,” he said with the combination of reason and conviction he’d earned through eight years of Harvard law; “I realize you’re trying to help us—-and we really do appreciate your concern—-but this is the one day of the year the kids can get away from the real world and just have fun.”

The old woman pursed her lips in consideration before reaching for the bowl.

The two local children released a merry cheer. The old hag always bought the best candy, and only gave it out to people dressed up as shepherds and lambs, in hopes of driving people away from the darker side of the holiday. When the bags of the first two had been filled with the exotic treats, Elvis and the pig turned to leave.

“And what about you?” the old woman enquired as she held out a hand full of candy to the child in the sweatshirt, standing there with his hands lodged in his pockets, the sinister grin never having left his face.

The family stopped in their tracks at the unholy shriek that escaped the old woman’s body alongside her last breath as she collapsed to the ground.

Her eyes shot open with a start and she gasped, as if she had been suffocating; her hands gripped the sheets as if trying to grasp anything substantial. Her breathing was heavy and strained, and the darkness gave her a feeling of unutterable void. She could remember nothing about what she had just been dreaming; from it remained only a lingering feeling of dread, a stifled desperation, like fading thunder in the distance. Gradually, her breathing subsided and she lay back and closed her eyes again.
But sleep didn’t come. The silence which soothed her just a few moments before now became deafening: a din of nonexistent noises, a blare of nothingness. She stared into the horrifying nothingness around her, and felt an anxiety building up inside, in the pit of her stomach. She felt cold and hollow.
The wind blew outside with an eerily melancholy whistle. But… what was that? She heard something else, a sound mingling with the wind, a cry — no, a wail, so faint, so vague that she ascribed it to her imagination. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. Just her imagination. She turned over to her side and shut her eyes.
But she was uneasy now. She tried to reprimand herself for being so silly, afraid of the dark, but her disquiet would not go away. She could still hear the wail, faint, faint, but very clearly there; or was it? She covered her head with a pillow, trying to stifle the sound. She kept it there, shutting off all noise for a couple of minutes. She slowly raised the pillow and put it under her head again, and everything seemed fine. But suddenly she became aware of it again, and much louder this time. It was a muffled moan of desolation, like from the bottom of a deep, dark well in an abandoned town, and it gave her a feeling of indescribable despair. It also felt close. She didn’t know how she could tell, but it was close. Horrifyingly close.
She covered her head with the pillow now, sobbing with fear, but she couldn’t silence the terrible wailing. It was still as loud as it was, even louder. It seemed to be in her room — not as if whatever it was had left its dark well, but as if it had brought its abyss along with it. It screamed in her ear, and seemed to fly around her, an emptiness closing in on her. She curled up into a fetal position, holding her legs, closed her eyes tight and just prayed, pleaded that it would go away.