A Hallowen Short

“Do it. Do it or I’ll tell the whole school you’re a coward!” He felt hands pushing him. His feet touched the cold bathroom tile.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Susan?” he looked into the mirror. With only the dim light of the lava lamp from the next room, everything was lit in an eerie, dull blue glow. He could see his pale face reflected in the foggy mirror. The cold made the edges cloudy and mysterious.
“You are a coward, Josh,” Susan said, crinkling her nose. “I don’t know why I don’t just tell the school anyway.”
“No, no, I’ll do it.” He looked into the mirror, silent. Usually whenever he was awake he was constantly talking. It didn’t matter what about; he always had something to say. But at this moment, the world was hushed, as if it was a great event that for once in his life, Joshua D. Bens was at a loss for words. He glared at the mirror, as if staring angrily at it would somehow make it shatter into a million pieces.
“Say it,” Susan said hoarsely. “Say it.” Josh was considering trying to scare Susan into letting him go, but she already had him in her clutches. “Say it, say it, say it.” Her voice cracked as it took on a low tone. A shiver came into his toes, traveled up his spine, and into his brain, driving out all reason.
“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” he whispered. He felt dark and powerful. “Bloody Mary.” Nothing happened. The fog crept up on the mirror a little more. Susan sighed dramatically.
“Well, Gina owes me five bucks. Goodnight big bro’.” She shuffled out of the bathroom and climbed into her bunk. Josh sighed and pressed his forehead to the mirror. It was so cold, much colder than it had ever felt before. He breathed onto it. He peeled his chilly skin off the glass and began marching to his bed. He stopped a moment before stepping out of the doorway.  The fog on the glass, it hadn’t retreated when his warm breathe touched it. He whirled around, blinking rapidly. The top half of a body was visible in the mirror. She had long, dark brown hair. But it was stringy and disheveled. Her skin was tinged with a sickly, rotting turquoise color. Her mouth hung open, revealing yellow teeth, old. But her eyes, there were none. Just black holes, with blood, oozing out, like jelly out of a donut. Josh’s jaw dropped open. His voice cracked sharply and he squeaked.
“S-Susan. Susan!” Nothing worked. All his systems just sort of shorted out. No blinking, no breathing, to twitching, no screaming. He could hear the heavy breathing of his sister. Please don’t let me die here. I don’t want to die. The figured stayed there, faced turned toward him, mouth agape in a silent scream. Josh’s vision started fading. The figure was receding with the fog. But more fog was creeping into his eyes. Now he could only see darkness, and feel the cold tile underneath him.
The next morning was a nightmare. He woke up in the bathroom, realized what had happened, and immediately ran to the toilet and vomited. After he had finished cleaning his bowels out, he turned to see his sister, dressed, and staring with her head cocked at him. She pointed to his face. He touched it with a clammy hand, panic rising. Oh my god, am I dead? Pleas tell me I’m not dead. He wasn’t. But he could feel the imprint of the floor tile on his cheek. His mother had a break down when she heard he got sick and slept in the bathroom all night (at least, that was Susan’s story; she didn’t want to get in trouble for forcing Josh to pull the classic “Bloody Mary”.) He didn’t feel like arguing, which was strange, because normally Josh would start babbling on about how ridiculous her story was and how he could point out all the different ways she was lying and the flaws in her tale. But he didn’t, even though he knew he could win, he didn’t. The image of the woman in the mirror popped up every time he tried to speak.  
“You haven’t been talking at all this morning sweetheart, is something wrong?” His mother knew he was a talker, she knew because his father was the exact same way. He was always going on about knew inventions and discoveries and how he was going to change the world. “Oh sweetheart, you must have rolled over onto something sharp last night.”
“Whut?” he gurgled through a mouthful of soggy cereal.
“You have a scratch on your throat. You didn’t notice?” He reached a hand to his throat. His finger traced a thin line from just under the right side of his jaw, to the left.
“No. I guess I didn’t.”  The rest of the morning was spent trying to convince his mother that he could go to school. She finally agreed to take him after he missed the bus, and was panicking because he had a major assignment due that day.
He found his sister at the lunch table, happily counting her money over and over again. She hummed a tune from the Nightmare Before Christmas.
“You know Joshy, Halloween is in three days. You better be ready.”
“You might want to give that money back to Gina, Suz, something did happen last night.” Her eyes grew wide.
“What, what happened? Was there a ghost?” She stopped, then a suspicious look crossed her face. “Wait, I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to scare me. I know nothing happened, I was there stupid head. And even if something did happen, there’s no way I’d tell Gina hat,” she muttered.
“I heard that!” Gina shouted, offended. Susan just shrugged and pocketed her cash. Josh tried to find the most dramatic, complicated, over exaggerated way to tell the story, but the words wouldn’t come out. He had to settle for the short version.
“Last night, after you went to bed I saw a dead woman in the mirror. I think it was Bloody Mary. She was just awful. Then I passed out on the floor.” He was out of breath after that one sentence. Susan raised an eyebrow.
“Just awful? Wouldn’t you normally describe her as, horrific, a picture of pure terror, or a figure that made my blood run ice cold?” Josh couldn’t even force a sarcastic comment out his throat, so he settled for a nod.
In class he answered the teachers in short, simple sentences and never spoke unless spoken to. Some kids avoided him like he had the plague, which is probably what it seemed like to them. Josh was always the one that started conversations, never the one that ended them. It was unheard of for him to go more than five minutes without at least bursting into song. By the time he got home it felt like he had been talking nonstop for a week. His throat was dry, no matter how many times he had asked for a drink that day. He grabbed an ice pop and switched on the television. A black and white horror film played across the screen. He hardly saw it, hardly heard the terrified screams. His hand shot up to the scratch on his throat. Still there, standing out against the rest of his smooth unmarked skin.
His dreams were filled with the bloody woman, tearing at his flesh, gripping his throat. She pulled every word from his throat, ripped every scream from his thrashing body. Her yellow, pointed teeth gnashed and she hissed. It sounded like a cobra.  He woke up in a cold sweat and automatically turned to the bathroom. Every time he awoke he just glimpsed the fading image in the mirror, each time a little sharper, a little more evil.
The next few days his vocabulary diminished to three letter words and a few grunts. On the morning of Halloween, his voice was completely gone. Not hoarse, not raspy, gone. Silent. No sound emitted from his throat as he struggled to scream. He avoided everybody for the rest of the day until that night. He climbed into his costume, preferring to change in his closet instead of the bathroom. He was still terrified the door would swing open and he would see her, standing there, dressed in rags ready to kill him just like she had every night in his dreams. The black cloak he donned and the scythe he wielded now seemed to useless and lame. His sister greeted him outside the house.  The sun was setting and children were pouring out of houses, dressed in their Halloween attire. None of them seemed frightening to him, they were all childish. He dug a notebook and pen out of his candy bag. He scribbled something ton it, then handed it to Susan. She read it out loud.
“I can’t talk. I think this has something to do with that lady I saw in the mirror.” She rolled her eyes and tossed the pad of paper back to him. “There is no way. Now come on, before we miss out on all the good candy.” The houses they hit didn’t satisfy Josh anymore. Not even the haunted house at the end of the block that made the top football player wet his pants held any horror for him now. Susan came out sobbing, but cheered up when he offered her his jumbo candy bar he got as a prize for not coming out shaking like a dog who just got tossed around by a couple of bears playing football in a hurricane. He stared blankly at their house, then grabbed his sister by her chocolaty fingers.
“What gives?” she whined. “I’m not done yet.” He didn’t say anything, just kept staring determinedly at their house, looming ahead. It was dark and deserted, as their mother had left the house to go pick up their father at the airport. He ran up the stairs, flicking on every light on the way up. “What’s with the death grip J?” she said, finally shaking him loose. He wrote in shaky handwriting.’ I have to get my voice back from Bloody Mary’. She stared at the paper with a so-you-think-I-was-born-in-crazy-land?-look. “Okay, but first tell me your plan.” She griped.
He stopped for a moment to write his response. ‘We have to get her to show up in the mirror again. That’s the only way I’m guessing.’ She nodded. “But how? If you have no voice, you can’t say the words, can you?”  
‘You say it.’ Her eyes bulged.
“Me? No way! You think I want to end up like you? Get one of your crazy friends to do it.” He stared at her with hard determination. She gritted her teeth. “No. No no no. NO.” He stared harder. “No. Noooooh alright.” Before she could change her mind he pushed her into the bathroom. She blinked at the foggy mirror. “Bloodymarybloodymarybloodymary,” she said so fast Josh wasn’t even sure she said it. “Okaythat’sitlet’sgo.” Josh grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Bloody Mary was there. Susan turned white. Two screams split the night, Susan’s shrill scream of fright and Bloody Mary’s harsh wail. Josh opened his mouth to find himself screaming too. Bloody Mary faded and Josh’s scream grew louder. Finally, all that was left were the two of them staring at a slightly foggy mirror, screaming their heads off.
“That was scarier than any haunted house will ever be,” Susan gasped. She pondered this fact for a moment. “Come on; let’s go back to that haunted house on the end of the block. I’ll bet we can get more giant candy bars. Josh couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder at the mirror on their way out. No Mary. He sighed.
“Alright Suz, since I have my voice back, do you want me to teach you about the Periodic Table on the way there?”
“Do tell,” she said in an amused tone.


Josh yawned. Susan had gone home hours ago, but he had stayed up long into the night, playing pranks on the neighbors with his friends. He walked down the middle of the street, looking up at the moon. Something furry streaked past his feet.
“Whoa!” he shouted with surprise. He looked to the yard the fuzzy bundle had dashed for. It was a cat, he could tell because of the eyes. He couldn’t actually tell what color it was until it crept into the moonlight. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, because it looked as if there was nothing there, but it was just a black cat. It blended in with the night. He shrugged and kicked a stone in the road. He inspected his load of candy. He was going to enjoy this. His ears picked up the sound of something. It sounded like the crunching of gravel. A bright lighted flashed behind him. He turned sharply on his heel to see headlights flare and hear the sound of a horn blare in his ears.