By 6 pm, the Ramirez boys had already secured a record candy haul—much better than last year. And they had yet to walk the Turnberry subdivision, where the houses sported three-car garages and the rooflines rose to towering peaks.
As he followed his parents onto Turnberry Lane, Lucas Ramirez, age eight and three-quarters, recurrently glanced down into his orange plastic pumpkin—now overflowing with confections—as if to make sure no greedy ghost had swiped the candy within the intervening five seconds. And there were plenty of ghosts to be wary of—as well as werewolves, vampires, and oblong yellow blobs wearing blue jean overalls. Lucas was himself dressed as a wiry skeleton with reflective bones.
Lucas was once again auditing his candy stash when his little brother, Noah—age six and presenting as a frumpy T. rex—approached him from the side. Noah was walking in lumbering strides and wearing a theatrical scowl.
Noah peered into Lucas’s bucket. “Lucas has three Snickers!” opined the younger boy. “It’s my favorite and I only have one!”
Their parents, walking in front, remained in quiet conversation, oblivious to Noah’s struggle.
“DADDDDDD!” cried Noah.
“Jesus, Noah, what?” said Dad, turning around.
“Lucas has more Snickers!”
“Lucas, please give your brother one of your Snickers.”
Lucas, who felt he was merely the benefactor of good candy fortune (for which one should clearly never be punished) was incredulous. “Daddddd,” said Lucas. “I worked for those!”
“Just one, Lucas. We’re in Turnberry—you’ll get plenty more.”
As the boys’ father negotiated terms, their mother looked at her phone. “Michelle wants us all to meet in the cemetery for pictures when we’re finished with Turnberry.”
Dad grimaced.
“What?” said Mom.
“The cemetery?”
“And?”
“Isn’t that just sort of… I don’t know, tasteless?”
Mom smiled. “I’d think all those spirits would relish a visit from a bunch of children. Wouldn’t you?”
Dad now joined Mom in smiling. “You know, you still surprise me sometimes.”
She gave him a flirtatious wink. “Hallmark of a good marriage.”
The boys, shoving and name-calling, made their way to the nearest house.
* * *
Each of the first three houses in Turnberry offered full-size candy bars: Three Musketeers, Hershey’s, and M&M’s, respectively. But no Snickers. Lucas had gone so far as to place his skull mask over the top of his plastic pumpkin to keep Noah from stealing any more of his candy.
“Maybe the next house will have some, bud,” said Dad, ruffling the T. rex’s felt spikes.
As the sunlight faded from the horizon, a previously azure sky turned deeply purple. A crowd of children appeared behind the Ramirez family, causing Noah to worry aloud that the houses might run out of candy. In the sun’s absence, the crisp autumn air cooled even further, reddening the tips of the children’s noses. But the chill went no deeper—the little monsters were too excited to be cold.
Lucas’s parents had been in conversation all evening—a common occurrence—but presently, and for the first time, Lucas heard a bit of what was being said. His interest piqued, Lucas approached his parents, who continued to walk in front of him and his brother.
“Are you talking about my costume?” asked Lucas.
“What’s that, bud?” asked his father.
“I said, are you talking about my costume? Mom just said, ‘Skeleton.’”
“Different skeleton,” said Dad.
“Oh,” said Lucas, appropriately confused. He now began to listen intently to his parents’ conversation, even as the task was made harder by Noah’s constant badgering.
“I don’t know why,” his father was saying, “but I just like the idea of people being in the ground. Even if we’ll never see them again, I like the idea of people being there. Being whole. I just never thought he’d want to be cremated. And I told him as much.”
“What’s cremated mean?” asked Lucas.
Both Mom and Dad looked down at Lucas with surprise; they hadn’t noticed he was still listening in. Noah made a roaring noise as he passed by his family on his way toward the next house.
Mom eyed Dad, then kneeled down beside Lucas. “It means, when he’s very old, Grandpa decided he is going to be turned back into earth,” she said.
“So he won’t have a body anymore?” asked Lucas.
Mom hesitated. “No, he won’t have a body. But when we get very old, we don’t need a body anymore.”
“Oh,” said Lucas.
“But Grandpa isn’t old,” added Dad. “So we don’t have to think about it for a very long time, okay? I shouldn’t have even been talking about it.”
Lucas gazed down at his legs. “Okay,” he said. Just then the white femurs of his costume lit up, reflecting the headlights of a passing car.
“Why aren’t we walkingggggg?” called Noah from up the street.
* * *
They arrived at the cemetery just after 8 pm. Lucas and Noah were no longer bickering; Lucas had grown quiet since speaking to his parents. A damp mist meandered between gravestones as a caravan of minivans and SUVs pulled into the cemetery parking lot. The doors opened and a motley troupe of beasts both real and imagined raced to the gravestones in preparation for the group picture. Cheered by the large crowd, Lucas and Noah began to run, too. But Lucas had gone only fifty feet before stopping again: the boy had spotted a gravestone that gave him pause. As he gazed, his mother came up behind him.
“Are they related to us?” Lucas asked his mother.
His mother looked around, finally noticing the gravestone in question. “I doubt it. It’s a common name. Into the group, honey. Let’s get these photos and get out of here.”
But Lucas did not move. Once again he looked down at his costume.
This time it was Dad who kneeled beside him. “What’s going on, champ?”
Lucas shrugged.
“Out with it,” said Dad. “You seemed chipper enough an hour ago!”
“I guess it’s just,” began Lucas softly, before hesitating.
“Yeah?” prodded Dad.
“Skeletons are real,” Lucas finished. “I mean, they’re really inside us.”
“You’ve known that for years, bud.” Dad tugged gently at the fabric of Lucas’s shoulder. “You chose this costume!”
“Yeah…” said Lucas.
“C’mon, let’s get these pictures done and we can get home and eat some of this.” Dad rattled Lucas’s orange pumpkin where it hung beside the boy.
They walked over to where the large group of trick-or-treaters had assembled: parents in the back, kids in a long row up front. Lucas and his father stepped onto the end of the row, beside Noah and Mom.
A sacrificial parent stood before the crowd, holding a phone horizontally and requesting everyone's attention. And all obliged—all save one; Lucas's gaze was not toward the camera, but to the left, in the direction of the gravestone that bore his family's surname. As Lucas gazed at the gravestone, he could not help but wonder if the owner of its sunken plot had themselves once wandered these neighborhoods, with their own parents, seeking candy. He then imagined his own name, etched there on the time-worn granite, and felt an eerie chill reverberate through his small body. While distracted by this harrowing thought, Noah nicked a Snickers from his basket. Lucas noticed the theft in his periphery but did not protest. Feeling brave, Noah now stole a second bar. Lucas did not move. The camera flashed, the crowd dispersed, and still Lucas eyed the distant grave.
J.D. Strunk's fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Necessary Fiction, The Coachella Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for The Bellingham Review's Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, and his story "Fresh Coffee" was nominated for Best American Short Stories. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
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