"Trick" by Gerard Houarner
Cemetery Dance's A Halloween Short Story ebook series
Readers unfamiliar with "Trick" by Gerard Houarner may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
"Trick" by Gerard Houarner turns the clichéd Halloween horror tale on its head. There are no twelve and thirteen year olds learning valuable life lessons at the sharp and bloody point of experience. A young boy does appear, knocking on the protagonist's door, but he is there to facilitate the maturing of a retired, middle aged soldier who finds he has no home -- and no role -- anywhere.
 Roger started working at the pop-up costume store the day after arriving in town. Halloween guaranteed he’d be busy, and he already had another manager’s job lined up at a department store for the Christmas season. That gave him time to line something up long-term, if he could see himself living in this part of the country for a while.
 It was hard to see living anywhere out of uniform, out of the service. Without a mission. It was even harder to live with the hurt of no longer being needed.
To begin with, Roger is completely unconcerned that he has no cell phone and no working apartment doorbell.
....He’d never liked buzzers when he’d lived off-base. Like ringing phones, they seemed like signals disconnected from their source. Who really knew what was on the other end of the line, who was pushing the button? The solid rap of knuckles on wood was a promise of something real like a voice calling out the right name , a hand on the shoulder. A hand, taking his to bring him home.
With "Trick" Gerard Houarner made-new the horror story of urban existential isolation and accidie. Typical trappings of suffocating solipsism and psychological annihilation – so entertaining in the hands of Ligotti and William Browning Spencer – are given a rest.
Many are called, but few are chosen.
Jay
