"Devil’s Night" by Richard Chizmar
Cemetery Dance's A Halloween Short Story ebook series
Readers unfamiliar with "Devil’s Night" by Richard Chizmar may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
The mayhem in "Devil’s Night" by Richard Chizmar happens at Halloween by coincidence. The initial killing, and the bloodbath that follows, are the result of mortal high school love, murderous jealousy, and contempt that surpasses the pathological.
Still, Chizmar's first-person narrator, a young school teacher and new family man, does autumnal North Carolina fine:
As I passed through the neighborhood, I noticed that most every house on most every street had some type of Halloween display or decoration.
Glowing pumpkins rested on porch railings, smiling their jagged jack-o-lantern smiles, slanted orange eyes winking at me in the wind. Mummies and ghosts and witches and zombies guarded shadow-webbed front yards, daring me to stop the car and trespass. Corpse-shaped mounds of leaves protruded from in front of countless homemade tombstones, silent remembrances of the dead and buried.
I thought of my own narrow strip of front yard—adorned with a glow-in-the-dark graveyard and a fishing line-suspended Grim Reaper—and I grimaced. Josh and I had a blast setting the whole thing up two weeks ago, but it didn’t seem very funny anymore. In fact, none of the houses looked like very much fun at all.
In less than twenty-four hours, Sparta—and towns just like it all over the country—would be celebrating Halloween. There’d be trick-or-treaters and costume parties, candy apples and haunted houses . . .
But that was tomorrow.
Tonight was Devil’s Night.
A night for mischief, as my father used to say. Yes siree, he’d whisper, his eyebrows dancing, Halloween may be a night for make-believe ghosts and goblins, but you’d better be sure to turn on all the lights and lock your doors on Devil’s Night. Because that’s when the real monsters lurk . . .
And then my mother would hush my father with a swat of her hand and all us kids would giggle and we’d finish our dinners with smiles on our faces and nervous, thumping hearts in our chests.
A night for mischief . . .
"Devil’s Night" was an engrossing read: short sectional divisions, direct speech, and a mystery that quickly and professionally unravels. I anticipated a supernatural ending, or at least spectral comeuppance for the villain. But no, it's just human monsters, even on the Devil's night.
Jay
Audio version here.
