"The House on Cottage Lane" by Ronald Malfi
Cemetery Dance's A Halloween Short Story ebook series
Readers unfamiliar with "The House on Cottage Lane" by Ronald Malfi may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
“There it is,” Cyn said, and we all stopped in the middle of the street. The old house stood before us, blacker than a cave on the moon, slouching toward the earth as if terminally exhausted. Its windows were boarded up and there were great frilly hawks’ nests in the eaves. Beyond the trees, the red lights at the tops of the communication towers throbbed.
“Pretty scary, huh?” I said.
Oliver stared at the house . . . then turned toward me. I waited for him to speak but he didn’t. When he looked back at the house, I could hear his wheezy respiration once more.
“I dare you,” I said, “to go inside.”
Oliver’s sheeted head turned back around to face me. He shook his head furiously.
“We all did it,” Jeremy said. “You gotta go right in the front door, straight through the house, and come out the back. That’s how we’ll know you’re brave.”
“It would be the coolest ever,” Cyn added, flashing a rare smile that hinted at her burgeoning femininity.
Oliver continued shaking his head.
“If you’re too chicken,” I said, “that’s cool. But if you want to hang out with us, you gotta do it. Okay?”
Oliver looked back up at the house. I could tell his hands were fidgeting beneath the sheet, and his breath was coming in exaggerated gasps now. The reflector strips on his costume glowed in the moonlight like lines on a highway. One pale white hand appeared beneath the hem of his sheet, but then slipped back beneath it.
“We’ll wait here for you,” I told him.
Oliver nodded . . . then slowly made his way up to the house. The porch was overgrown with weeds, the wooden planks themselves rotted and cracked. He managed the stairs with little difficulty, but then paused when he reached the front door. When he turned back around to face us, I waved him forward. He turned back to face the front door. He pressed his hands against it, pushing.
“Shit,” Jeremy said beside me. “It might be locked.”
But it wasn’t; apparently, even a pipsqueak like Oliver could manage to shove it open, if just several inches. A vertical strip of blackness seemed to ooze out. At that moment, I knew Oliver was going to chicken out, and we’d have to tote him along with us for the rest of the night . . .
Oliver’s white sheet passed through the opening in the doorway, and went into the house. I glimpsed a final reflection of moonlight off his reflector strips before he was swallowed up by the darkness.
“Wow,” Cyn said. “He did it.” She looked at me, her eyes comically wide in her white-powdered face. “I wouldn’t have done it.”
"The House on Cottage Lane" echoes many U.S. horror short stories. The Hallowween holiday and coming-of-age motifs are a fundamental part of the plot.
It also recalls John Dickson Carr's non-supernatural stories: a trick-or-treater crosses an empty yard and enters an abandoned house; reliable witnesses have front and back doors under observation at all times. When the house is later searched, the boy is not inside. Dressed in an old sheet for a ghost costume, he has vanished and will never be seen again. Except…
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"The House on Cottage Lane" by Ronald Malfi is hands-down the finest story in this ebook series. It shares many tropes with Glen Hirshberg's "Struwwelpeter," but Malfi achieves greater focus for his effects. Complications among the four trick-or-treaters are echoed and reinforced via conflicts with and between parents.
To the reader Malfi's style seems effortless, as is the architectural skill he uses to shape the material. His voice is keyed and pitched at a height matched by only a handful of horror writers today.
Jay
