Two years ago, I stopped celebrating Halloween altogether. I don’t answer the door for trick-or-treaters, I don’t decorate, and when people ask me why, I usually change the subject.
What happened that night is something I’ve only told a handful of people, but I think it’s time I wrote it down.
I was home alone on that Halloween because my husband was out of town for work. I’d spent the evening handing out candy until around nine thirty, then locked up, turned off the porch light, and figured I was done for the night.
Around eleven, I was loading the dishwasher when I happened to glance out the kitchen window and saw him standing in my backyard.
The motion sensor light had clicked on, and there he was in a full Scream costume with that white mask glowing in the dark. He was holding something long at his side, and even from inside the house I could tell it was a machete or something close to it.
I froze for a second, trying to tell myself it was just some drunk college kid who’d wander off, but then he took a step closer to the house and I knew something was very wrong.
I grabbed my phone and backed away from the window, my hands shaking so badly I almost dropped it twice before I managed to dial 911.
The dispatcher asked what my emergency was and I told her there was someone in my yard, someone in a full costume holding what looked like a machete, and she told me to stay calm and stay on the line because help was coming.
I was trying to keep an eye on him through the window without getting too close when he suddenly turned and disappeared around the side of the house. For a few seconds I didn’t hear anything, and then there was this massive crash from the front of the house.
Glass exploding everywhere, loud and sharp. He managed to smash his way in through one of the living room windows.
I ran without thinking, the dispatcher still talking in my ear but I wasn’t processing what she was saying anymore. I made it to my bedroom and slammed the door, locked it, but I knew that flimsy lock wasn’t going to hold.
My dresser was against the wall and I shoved it with everything I had. It barely moved at first, just scraped an inch or two, but I kept pushing until my shoulder screamed and finally got it wedged against the door.
I could hear him inside the house now, his footsteps slow and heavy on the hardwood.
They got closer and closer until they stopped right outside my bedroom door, and I stood there in the dark with the phone pressed to my ear while the dispatcher told me the police were three minutes away.
I remember feeling so terrified that I felt like I was going to pass out.
The knob rattled once, then twice, and then nothing for a few seconds. I thought maybe he’d given up, but then the first kick hit the door and I jumped back against the wall. The wood cracked but the door held. Another kick, then another.
The frame was splintering and the door kept bulging inward, but the dresser caught it each time. He was grunting with the effort now, kicking over and over, and the dresser was sliding maybe an inch with each impact but it was holding.
I backed into the corner and slid down to the floor because my legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore. He just kept kicking, the sound deafening in that tiny room, crack after crack after crack like he was going to break through any second.
Then I heard the sirens, faint at first but getting louder fast, and the kicking stopped immediately. His footsteps took off running, getting fainter as he headed back through the house, and then nothing.
The police found the costume dumped on a front lawn two houses down later that night. The mask, the robe, the gloves, all of it just lying there. They never found the machete and they never found him either. No prints, no witnesses who saw his face, absolutely nothing to go on.
My husband got home the next morning and I’ve never seen him look so shaken up when he walked through the door and saw the boarded-up window and the splintered bedroom door frame.
He wanted to move immediately, said we could pack up and be gone within the week, but I refused because I couldn’t let that person take my home away from me.
We got a security system installed, cameras on every corner of the house, and new locks on every door and window. He checks them all every single night before bed, sometimes twice.
But sometimes I still hear that sound, the kicking and the wood splintering and the dresser scraping across the floor.
I’ll be at work or the grocery store and something will trigger it and suddenly I’m right back in that corner, waiting for the door to give.
