Pumpkin guts filled the trashbag. To take it to the alley, I went forth. There, under the light, I saw a person standing. As I stared: I began to see that what stood there was not a person. It only looked like one.

Trembling, I backed through the fence door. Walking backwards I attempted to climb onto the porch, two steps up. I could not take my eyes from the open gate or turn my back on what I had seen. I missed the third step and fell back.

I was up on my elbows, laughing nervously at myself. I thought that I was just given a fright. It must be that I had seen someone in a costume, standing there, dripping and breathing out a cloud of steamy breath. Its hunched form appeared where I had dropped the pulpy fruit. It sniffed the remains and extended its gory bone hands. Then it took a handful of the orange mess and lifted it to the darkness of its cowl, sucking and savoring it. Then it turned and looked at me where I lay, holding my breath.

My eyes were wide and unblinking as I met its gaze. It stood like it was folded in half, covered in greasy blankets and rags. Its hood concealed its face, where stringy bits with seeds still hung. It gulped and wiped its chin of bone and rotting flesh.

I wanted to scream, I needed to scream, and I could not. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me from my tumble. My lips moved soundlessly, trying to pray or to beg it to go away. It was not a costumed reveler; it was not human.

"As I am now, so shall thee stand." A voice came from it, deep and grinding. It was not a human voice. It was the sound of a thousand maggots feasting and chewing in unison and opening their fangs together to form a sound, speaking to me.

The creature dragged the bag of oozing insides along behind it as it shuffled brokenly away, leaving a nauseating mist where it exhaled. I blinked and took a breath, my lungs aching for air. I rolled over and threw up the fried chicken I had made for myself.

I crawled back inside my house and lay there. Then I felt the delayed panic take over and I had the quickness to sit up and close my back door and lock it. My doorbell rang and I collected myself to my feet, needing to resume my night's activities and forget the hideous encounter.

The doorbell rang once more and there was a modest knock as well. I could hear the children on my front porch saying: "Trick or treat!" prematurely. They wouldn't leave. Mine was the house with the animatronic wolfman and thirteen pumpkins and full-sized candy and gift cards to my bakery. There would be a line to visit my house as there was for the last two years.

I needed a moment to collect myself. I told myself I had some kind of flashback, some kind of hallucination or something. I tried to convince myself that what I had met was not real. I splashed water on my face and sighed. There was another ringing of my doorbell and an adult sounding knock.

I didn't celebrate any holidays because I didn't have any family to visit for Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving. I typically worked on the Fourth of July and all the other days, staying open for folks who needed to get last minute items on big days when everywhere else was closed. My bakery was my life.

Except Halloween.

On Halloween I went all out. It was my chance to be a part of the community and meet everyone in the neighborhood and feel like I was involved in some way. I spared no expense. I even took the brunt of most of the pranks of the teenagers, later on in the evening. I would bring Wolfie into my garage and leave my front gate open and my lights off, making my home an easy and attractive target. I even left them any leftover candy in case they had the nerve to come all the way up to my front porch.

I loved Halloween, everything about it.

"It was just a prank." I forced myself to laugh. "A little early, a good one."

I opened the front door and delivered the goods to all the adorable ghouls and heroes. The mom on my porch thanked me, noticing I looked a little out-of-spirit. I nodded and waited while the next group skipped and skidded up my walkway, past my thirteen pumpkins, each larger and cooler than the one before, as they passed them.

I slowly began to forget the fright and tried to enjoy the best night of the year. It took an hour before I ran out of trick-or-treaters. I sat down in my living room and felt a darkness all around me. It felt cold and watchful, sinister and judgmental. Whatever it was, it was more than just a feeling. Under the bright lights of my home there was a kind of shade, something in the air, thickening it, like invisible smoke, or something.

I asked myself why I would be visited by an unburied atmosphere, and I recalled the words of the creature in the alleyway:

"As I am now..." I said out loud. I tried looking it up, searching it and found a famous epitaph, but not its true origin, just many users posting it in their own words and claiming to have written it:

"Remember me as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, you soon will be. Prepare for death and think of me."

But it was not what the creature had said. I took off my glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose, stressed by the mystery. There were no answers, only formless questions. I somehow already knew the truth; I just hadn't made the association in my thoughts.

I opened my front door and the cold breeze made me shudder. Shivering I went out and unplugged Wolfie. I opened my garage and took him into his lair and then I locked him up. Everything else was fair game, but Wolfie cost more than my car and I loved him. There was no way I would leave Wolfie out to be stolen or vandalized or damaged. I went back into my house and decided to have a beer from the Halloween sample pack I had bought-on-impulse.

I don't drink very often; I usually get sick after just a little bit. I took the pumpkin label out and found a bottle opener after getting a little cut from the lid. It wasn't a twist off lid. I sipped my drink, tasting it gingerly. It was good, a bit too alcoholic for my taste, but the coolness and the relaxing sensation I felt was good. I set the rest of it down and went around turning off my lights.

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It was when I was at my back door that I looked out and saw that the creature had returned. I forgot that it had terrified me and decided, through the glass, that it was just a joke. Intent on getting it over with, I opened the door and stepped outside.

"What is this about? It isn't funny anymore. Go home." I told the thing in my backyard.

I could see some kind of light reflected from the streetlamp, deep in its hood. Its noxious gasses escaped as it spoke to me, and it raised one hand to point at me, bone fingers with shredded flesh clinging to them.

"Home is the grave. Return with me for thou art of my kin." I saw its glistening eyes in the darkness under its hood and I saw the white teeth of its jaw move up and down as it spoke. Its breath filled the space between us with a foul-smelling fog.

I no longer thought I was dealing with a practical joke. My feet were rooted to where I stood. Stiffly I held myself up and tried to reason with the unknown horror by saying:

"Who are you? I am alive, there is no grave for me. Leave me in peace."

"Thou hast promised. Keep thy oath and the morning shall leave thee such peace. I am the debt of thy given word." Menacingly spoke the monstrous grave-thing.

I began to shake and worry. There was nothing for me to remember, I had never sworn anything to anyone. What the creature was referring to, I could not know. My fear was tinged with defiant anger. I was being unjustly detained by some dead and loathsome fright.

"You have the wrong person. I never promised you anything. Go away!" I cried out. I took a step backward into my house and then another, retreating.

The creature hobbled toward me, pursuing me. I shouted my rejections and slammed and locked my back door. I was sweating, despite the chill of October.

In the light of my back porch, I saw it. The rags covered the rotting flesh which hung from its exposed bones. Living things squirmed from inside it, cockroaches and centipedes and maggots. There was no reflection in its eye sockets, as I beheld its terrifying face. The light in there was a baleful flicker of otherworldly candle glow. The rictus opened as it stared at me, and it explained further:

"Thou hath known before of thy doom. In expedient words thou swore to sanctify anyone who would listen and help thee. No more than seven years may pass without keeping thy word. Thou must come with me, to the home of thy patron. Now." The creature was growling, the sound of insects chewing on flesh and bone, the grind of dirt upon the lid of a coffin, for it had no voice of its own. Its voice was the silence of the grave, echoed through the thin veil between ours and the dead world.

Seven years ago? My mind raced, trying to recall what it meant. Then I remembered Halloween of seven years before. I had drank too much at a party, just a few shots and a beer. I had gotten alcohol poisoning and ended up in an emergency room. The whole night was poorly remembered already, but seven years? I had almost completely forgotten.

The creature somehow knew that I remembered, and it somehow brought the memory to my mind in a dreamy fog.

I was lying in a bed in the ER, and I was sure I was going to die. My body was on the bed while I was standing beside it, holding onto it, with one foot in the grave. I foresaw the next moment: the doctor was going to declare my time of death to be exactly midnight. I asked, my spirit talking to the ghosts in the halls and my lips moving, my body not quite dead:

"Someone out there please help me. If you spare me, I swear on my life that I will do whatever I have to do to worship you. If there is a god, if there's anyone listening, I do swear."

"That was a long time ago. I was praying to God! Whatever you are, I am not going to worship you!" I defied the creature.

"No god like that helped thee. Thou made an oathful bargain with the master of thy grave. Within seven years thy grave is filled or thy oath be honored. Which shall thee choose?" The creature forced me to choose between some unknown horror and the end of my life. I knew I had no choice:

"I will honor whatever helped me. What do you want?"

"This night is the night of Samhain. To the hill, to dance, to see the red god rise. Then thy word be fulfilled." Spoke the grave-thing, the fright, the collector of hideous debts.

I opened the door, and it backed up and off of my porch. I was gripped by nameless terrors and the sensations of dread. It occurred to me that I might have chosen to die.

The ragged disguise fell from it and the horrid thing unfolded itself as I gaped and shook in anguished mind-hurtling observation. It spread its bony wings and the sound of its stretching membrane was the creaking of nightmares that linger in the ears. The stench was awful beyond asphyxiation, gagging me and churning through my lungs and into my blood.

I was gripped in the bone fingers and away we flew, hurtling through the black skies and freezing my skin. Below us I saw a bonfire, naked witches and gruesome goatmen dancing and copulating all around. We landed and I was held there, puppeted by my undead chaperone. I was forced to dance until the bells in the village below signaled the local midnight.

Then all the dancers stopped and watched, dripping sweat and glistening in the firelight. The hill was open, and a red light was inside of it. The priests of the god emerged, mummified and wearing their ancient robes. Then, as they turned and praised, their god began to rise.

"Ego veniam ad te in nocte." The wicked congregation spoke in unison. Their words meant: 'on this night I come to thee'. Then the priests said more, translated:

"Come, Sahaithe, the moment of the veil be lifted. Come and choose a seer, a knower of thy secret mystery!" They said together. As the shadow formed from the red light from inside the hill they added: "Hail, Sahaithe!"

For just one instant I was witness to the god of the hill. I began to scream, bursting from my mouth and from my very soul. Then my vow was complete, and I was set free. The collector of my debt took me home and left me where I was when it took me.

Lingering around me was its pestilent miasma. I fell down, the scream and the fumes burning my lungs. The creature fell apart, leaving rotting bones scattered all over my backyard. Its living insides scurried everywhere. I felt no further dread, the night was over.

I looked up, my eyes ringed with morbidity. There was a glow on the horizon. I climbed to my feet and went back in through my open back door and closed it.

As I sat down I realized I knew the words that were said in prayer. I had always known them, it felt like. I knew many things, all the darkest nights that had always had a new seer, a new knower of secret mysteries. I knew how I had come to be in debt to a devil-god and how I had wasted my time waiting for its messenger.

If I had renounced it, I would have enjoyed a peaceful death. If I had refused, I would not know the truth about my beloved Halloween. I knew the sleeping thoughts, the dreams of the god under the hill. I knew my own thoughts, worthless and mortal.

I dreaded the coming of each night, the dreams that came. I knew the horrors of where nightmares come from, beyond graves, beyond even the world of the dead.

I could have no lasting peace. I could not unknow the things that had burrowed into my skull. I would know some time without night. Only in the night did I see and hear for the sleeping god. There wasn't restful night for me anymore. There was only the peace I was promised.

Only the peace that came to me with the rising light of morning.