What were his grandkids supposed to be? Who or what were their Halloween costumes intended to reference or represent or depict, however loosely? Danny waited until the children had gone into the kitchen to show off to their grandmother – his wife, Darla – before he asked Trina his costume questions.

               “They’ve told you a million times, Dad,” said Trina. Some of her dyed-orange hair hung down inside of her glasses lenses, mingling with her dark eyelashes. “They’ve been explaining it all to you for over a month now.”

               “Right, I know,” said Danny. He flashed one of his self-effacing smiles at his daughter. The one she would understand to mean, you, of all people, know how I am. “But I guess I wasn’t picturing what they’d look like very accurately. So now that I’m seeing the kids in the actual costumes, I’m second guessing everything I thought I knew about the costumes.”

               “How did you think they’d look?” asked Trina.  

               “I thought they’d look cuter,” said Danny.

               “They don’t want to look cute anymore,” said Trina. “Jarrett is ten. Ginger is eight. They want to look scary or cool or realistic, I don’t know, anything but cute.” She pulled her phone out of the waistband of her leggings and checked the time.

               Darla came out of the kitchen, tightly aproned and with one heavy arm draped over the shoulder of each grinning grandchild. “Aren’t they cute, Danny?”

               “They don’t want to look cute,” said Danny. “They want to look anything but cute.”

               “They can want whatever they want,” said Darla. “But they can’t help but look cute.”

               Jarrett and Ginger didn’t protest, although Danny knew if such a proclamation came from him, it would not fly.

 “Anyway,” said Trina. “I need to run. The party starts in a couple hours, and it’s going to take at least an hour to get into my costume, and then help Craig into his. Thanks again for agreeing to take them out trick-or-treating, Dad! We really do appreciate it, me and Craig both. We haven’t been to a real Halloween party since before Jarrett was born. At least not a good one.”

When she was gone, Danny turned to his grandkids. “You don’t mind explaining your costumes to me once more, do you? Now that I can see them?”

The kids didn’t mind. They seemed to relish the opportunity.

 

Ginger spoke first. “I’m Demoness. I’m the only girl demon. The other demons call me ‘Nessie’ but I don’t like that. It actually makes me really mad. I specialize in spreading feelings of disgust, hatred, and fear. My car is shaped like a long heart and I carry these two blades.” She waggled two plastic knives, their blades curved to suggest they were designed for maximum cruelty.

“A long heart?” asked Danny.

“Yes.”

“But why do you want to be something so evil?” asked Danny.

“She’s not evil,” said Ginger. Her mask, which covered her face from the nose up, was pink like infected flesh. Two horns twisted from its temples. “She’s just doing her job.”

“Just following orders, huh?” said Danny.

“No,” said Ginger. “Nobody tells her what to do!”

Jarrett spoke next. “I’m Leopold Findle. I’m a composer.” He looked like a short, fat, and old man. Trina had dyed his frizzy, butter-colored hair grayer than Danny’s.

“Right,” said Danny. “Like a music composer, I remember that. And what was it you composed?”

“I composed the theme song for Rabid & Poisonous,” said Jarrett. “And a bunch of other stuff, but that’s why I’m Leopold Findle for Halloween. ‘Cause I like Rabid & Poisonous.”

“And that’s a show,” said Danny.

“Yeah,” said Jarrett. He adjusted the fake paunch stuffed into his too-large thrift store sweater.

“How come everything’s demons and blades and poison and being rabid?” asked Danny.

His grandkids, their lovely cuteness concealed within their unpleasant costumes, shrugged.

“It’ll be dark soon,” said Danny. “Where do you guys wanna trick-or-treat?”

“We want to go to New Pinnacle Church’s trunk-or-treat,” said Jarrett. “That’s how you get the most candy. And the best candy, too. My friend Logan went last year and he filled up his bucket with candy and had to buy an extra bag to hold all the candy that wouldn’t fit in the bucket and he filled that bag too and he could have gotten even more candy but his parents wouldn’t buy him a second bag and his costume didn’t have pockets.”

“Sounds good,” said Danny. “In terms of the candy quantity, I mean. But what’s a ‘trunk-or-treat?’ Why is it called that?”

“It’s just in the parking lot at the church,” said Jarrett. “People park their cars and open up their trunks and decorate the trunks and they sit by the open trunks in camping chairs and sometimes they’re wearing costumes that go with the trunk decorations and they give out candy.”

“It’s just in a parking lot?” asked Danny. “You don’t knock on anyone’s door?”

“No,” said Ginger. “It’s just trunks.”

“Do you still say ‘trick-or-treat?’” asked Danny.

“If you want to,” said Ginger. “But my friend Allie said sometimes there’s a big bucket of candy in the trunk and you can just scoop it into your bag yourself and they don’t watch very close to see how much you take.”

“OK, but where’s the fun in that?” asked Danny.

“Getting all that candy,” said Jarrett. “So much of it. That’s what’s fun. And some of the trunks are decorated kind of fun, I guess. That’s what Logan said. But he said since it’s a church thing none of them are very scary. There’s no blood or guts.”

“I have a better idea,” said Danny. “I’ll take you to a neighborhood where rich people live. The houses are all big. Some of them will give out king-sized candy bars, I’ll bet.”

“Will we be able to scoop our own candy out of a bucket in a trunk?” asked Ginger.

“No,” said Danny. “You won’t get your candy from a trunk. There won’t be any trunks involved.”

“Mom said you’d take us wherever we want to go,” said Jarrett, his speaking voice transitioning to a near-whine by the end of the sentence.

“We’ll go to the rich neighborhood first,” said Danny. “And then if you don’t like it, we’ll go to the trunk thing.”

 

Danny waited until it was almost dark, then loaded the kids into Darla’s car so they could ride in more comfort than the dusty back seat of his truck could provide. The route to the rich neighborhood took them past several smaller trunk-or-treats, none of which looked appealing. Not to Danny, anyway. Just a few kids in store-bought costumes and parents milling around in parking lots, and cars with open trunks decorated with streamers, cardboard skeletons, and posters with handwritten messages such as “Boo!” and “Happy Halloween” where the last three letters of “Halloween” were crammed very close together at the edge of the poster. Danny saw one poster stuck to an otherwise undecorated trunk that just read “Haunted Car.” None of the car owners in camping chairs appeared to have dressed up beyond the occasional droopy witch hat.

“See?” said Danny. “That doesn’t look fun, does it?”

“I think it looks fun,” said Ginger.

“Yeah,” said Jarrett. “And besides, we want to go to the New Pinnacle trunk-or-treat, not these other ones. The New Pinnacle one is the biggest. That’s the one Logan went to. That’s the best one.”

“Do you know why people say ‘trick or treat?’” asked Danny. He didn’t wait for his grandkids to answer. “Because in the old days, it was like the kids giving whoever answered the door an option of what they wanted to happen. Either we’ll play a trick on you, or you can give us a treat.”

“What kind of trick?” asked Jarrett.

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “Probably vandalism. But my point is this: how does ‘trunk or treat’ make sense? What could it mean? It’s not trunk or treat. It’s treats from a trunk. If anything, it’s trunk and treat. There’s trunks and there’s treats.”

The kids had no rejoinder.

“Here we are,” said Danny, steering the car between the pillars marking the entrance to the Inviolable Grounds neighborhood. He had expected to be immediately met with the classic Halloween vision of costumed kids teeming over the lawns and sidewalks, scampering into the streets as their harried-but-happy parents shouted at them to watch for cars, miniature ghosts and mummies streaming to and from the front doors of every stately home, sticky hands slipping the least resistible candies up behind masks where they would disappear to the sound of monstrous chewing. But the Inviolable Grounds neighborhood was dead. Danny saw no kids in costume, no kids at all, no people at all. The stately homes were there, yes, but their doors were closed, they were mute, quite a few of them were dark. Even their porch lights were turned off, in many cases, the universal signifier of “no treats here.” Danny’s one worry about bringing the kids here had been finding parking. As things actually stood, he had his pick of curb space and there was no need to re-engage his rusty parallel parking abilities.

“Where is everybody?” asked Danny. He couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. Sensing vulnerability, the kids pounced.

“They’re all the New Pinnacle trunk-or-treat,” said Jarrett.

“Yeah,” said Ginger. “No other kids want to trick-or-treat here.”

“Then that’s even better,” said Danny, marshalling his defenses. “That’s better for you. More candy for you. If you’re some of the only trick-or-treaters the people who live here see all night, they’ll just give you most of their candy. Maybe even all of it. You might get multiple king-sized candy bars per house!”

“No,” said Jarrett. “They probably all knew no one would come. They knew everyone would be at the New Pinnacle trunk-or-treat. So they probably didn’t even buy any candy.”

“So let’s just go to the New Pinnacle trunk-or-treat,” said Ginger. “You said if we didn’t like this neighborhood, then we could go to the trunk-or-treat, Grandpa.”

“But you haven’t even given it a chance yet,” said Danny.

“But we can already tell we don’t like it,” said Ginger. “It looks sad and boring and scary.”

“Halloween is supposed to be scary,” said Danny, latching onto the least objectionable adjective.

“Not like this,” said Jarrett. “Hardly any of these houses even decorated. And look at that one, they have all kinds of decorations but they didn’t even turn any of the lights or inflatables on and it’s Halloween night! ‘Cause they knew there’d be less people here than on the nights leading up to Halloween, ‘cause they knew everyone would…”

“…be at the New Pinnacle Church trunk-or-treat,” finished Danny. “I know, I know. But we drove all the way here. Let’s just try a few houses, see how it goes, and if you two are right, I’ll admit defeat and we can leave.”

“And go to the…”

“Yes, yes, and go to the New Pinnacle trunk-or-treat,” said Danny. “I’d rather be there than hear any more about it, at this point.”

“Good,” said Jarrett. “Then let’s go.”

“No,” said Danny. “You have to knock on three doors. A minimum of three doors.”

Sighing like an autumn night wind, Danny’s grandkids exited the car.

 

Danny led the way up the perfect sidewalk, each segment flush with the segments on either side of it, with his grandkids trailing him. The lawns on their left-hand side were not blanketed with leaves. The only remaining leaves must have fallen in the few hours since the landscapers left. On the right-hand side, there were no cars parked on the street except for Darla’s car, which Danny had parked there. The Inviolable Grounds residents had enough garage space for all of their vehicles. Which, so did Danny, but he and Darla only had the two: her car and his truck. The people who lived here probably had many cars. And garage space for all of them. Or driveway space, at least. There were a few cars in driveways. But maybe those belonged to visitors gathered for a modest Halloween get-together. Danny’s driveway was short and narrow. Two cars parked side by side in Danny’s driveway filled it completely. Whereas some of these driveways here could fit, well, what? Ten cars? Fifteen-

“Grandpa,” said Jarrett. “Are we gonna knock on the doors or not?”

“None of these houses look promising,” said Danny. “I’m trying to find you a promising house.” He was surprised that the sidewalks weren’t better lit. But then he thought about it and decided it was because the residents didn’t walk around their neighborhood at night, and they didn’t want to encourage non-residents to do so, either. They didn’t want lower-class people to come just to gawk, to dream, to envy.

“There aren’t any good trick-or-treating houses,” said Ginger. “None of them look like they’re gonna have anything.”

“We’ll see,” said Danny. “Some look better than others. I still think there are king-sized candy bars hiding behind some of these doors, just waiting for a couple of kids in elaborate costumes to swoop in and scoop them all up.”

“Swoop and scoop,” said Ginger. She allowed herself a modest laugh, the sole note of positivity from either kid since they’d gotten in the car.

“Exactly!” said Danny.

The autumn night wind sighed like Danny’s grandkids exiting the car.

 

If Danny was being honest, the house he eventually picked as the first at which Jarrett and Ginger would attempt to trick-or-treat did not look promising. But he had to admit that wandering around a sleepy neighborhood in the dark evaluating and rejecting every house they passed as “not promising” was probably less fun than even those pitiful trunk-or-treats they’d seen earlier.

“Why this one?” asked Jarrett. “How is this different than all the other ones we’ve seen?”

“It’s just my gut feeling,” said Danny. It wasn’t true, but Jarrett had been accusing him of deliberately stalling to prolong the process of knocking on three doors so that he could postpone fulfilling his promise to drive them to New Pinnacle’s trunk-or-treat once they’d done so.

The kids, their empty treat buckets dangling in their fists, hurried up the house’s front walk, but it was not a giddy hurry, it was a the-sooner-we-do-this-the-sooner-it’s-over hurry. The house, an asymmetrical, light-colored brick giant, displayed no Halloween decorations, but a light shone in an upstairs window, the porch light was on, and a seasonal wreath – fall-themed, not Halloween-themed –  hung on the door.  No cars occupied its driveway, which was both wide and long.

Having arrived at the steps leading up to the door, the kids hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Danny. “You’re not gonna get candy just standing there.”

“What if they don’t want us here?” asked Ginger. “What if they’re mean to us?”

“They won’t be mean to you,” said Danny. “The worst that can happen is they don’t have any candy.”

Jarrett mounted the steps and rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. “That’s one,” he said.

“Ring it again,” said Danny. “Give it a minute.”

Jarrett rang the bell again. Again, nothing happened.

“That’s one,” said Jarrett. “Two to go.”

 

Danny’s grandkids insisted on picking the next house. They said his gut feeling couldn’t be trusted because it had led them to a house where no one was even home, or at least to a house where no one wanted to answer the door.

“Go right ahead,” said Danny. “I’m actually glad you’re taking a more active interest in-”

“That one,” said Jarrett, pointing at the closest neighboring house in the direction from which they’d come.

“Yeah, that one,” said Ginger.

“There’s no lights on there,” said Danny. “That’s one of the least promising houses we’ve seen. You’re just picking that one ‘cause going that way takes us closer to where we parked the car.”

“You said we could pick,” said Ginger.

“Yeah,” said Jarrett. “And we’re actually agreeing on it. Two votes to one, and really it’s two votes to zero because your vote shouldn’t count since you said we could pick.”

Danny followed his grandkids as they cut across the lawns, their progress tracked by motion-sensing lights. Jarrett and Ginger ran ahead of him, eager to hasten the end of his misbegotten idea. By the time he joined them in the shadows of their chosen house’s porch, Ginger had already rung the doorbell three times. “There’s no one here, Grandpa,” said Jarrett. “And we already know which house we wanna-”

Standing with their backs to the door, neither grandchild noticed its opening until they saw Danny’s face change. They turned, saw a dim figure looming over them, and screamed. Danny’s heart jolted, which couldn’t be good for him at this age, but he was also gratified to see his grandkids’ growing smugness explode.

The figure in the doorway turned on the porch light and revealed itself to be a woman in her early thirties, her eyes narrowed in a fixed wince, every line on her face projecting tension. She looked down at the kids and asked, “What are you doing here?”

Jarrett and Ginger’s initial shock had faded, but they still weren’t up to coherently answering direct questions.

“It’s Halloween,” said Danny. “We’re trick-or-treating.”

“I know it’s Halloween,” said the woman. “I can see they’re trick-or-treating. But why are you here? Why aren’t you at a trunk-or-treat? You should go to New Pinnacle Church’s trunk-or-treat. That’s where my kids are. My husband took them. I stayed home because I have a migraine. I was trying to sleep on the couch. I wouldn’t have answered the door, but you kept ringing the bell over and over. I thought it might be an emergency.”

Ginger finally found her voice. “Trick or treat,” she said. A hopeful little demoness.

“So this isn’t an emergency?” asked the woman.

“No,” said Danny.

The woman pulled a face that made Danny want to massage his own temples. “Let me look for the candy,” she said. “We got some on the slim chance that anyone would come by while we happened to be home tonight, but I don’t know if it ever made it inside.” She turned and was swallowed by the internal darkness of her house, impenetrable by mere porch light.

“I never said ‘trick or treat,’” said Jarrett. “Do you think she’s getting candy for both of us?”

“Yes,” said Danny. “I’m sure she understood that Ginger was saying ‘trick or treat’ on behalf of both of you.”

Not that Danny was keeping track, but he estimated that a minute passed. Then, according to his continued estimation, another minute passed. Then came the sound, somewhere far to the left of the porch, of a garage door rising. “I’m over here! The candy’s over here!” Danny could hear the exact degree to which raising her voice was causing the woman pain. He led his grandkids down the porch steps and followed the walk along the front of the house until they came to a massive four-car garage, the nearest bay of which now gaped open. The woman stood at the rear of an expensive car parked nose-in, the glass-smooth cement floor so clean that it did not soil the soles of her thin, white socks. “The candy’s still in the car,” she said. “It’s been so cold that I’m sure it didn’t melt.” She pressed a button on a key fob in her hand that Danny had not noticed until that moment. The trunk of the car beeped, then eased open. “Come on, kids,” said the woman. “Take whatever you want. You can have it all, if you want. I’m not gonna answer the door again tonight, so it’s all yours. I think they’re all king-sized. I told my husband that if he was gonna get anything, it might as well be king-sized.”

“Hold on just a second,” said Danny, stopping Jarrett and Ginger with gentle hands on their shoulders. “I know you’ve got the migraine and everything. And I appreciate you looking for the candy in spite of it. But it’s just, well, I’m trying to show my grandkids the real trick-or-treat experience.”

“That’s wonderful,” said the woman in a way that was neither sincere nor sarcastic.

“Yes, right, so,” said Danny. “Anyway, would you mind taking the candy back through the house and meeting us at the front door again? And giving them the candy there instead?”

“Why?” asked Jarrett.

“Why?” asked Ginger.

“Why?” asked the woman.

“Because I don’t want the candy coming directly from the trunk of a car,” said Danny. “That’s more of a trunk-or-treat thing. And we’re not trunk-or-treating. We’re trick-or-treating.”

 

It was a sullen group that arrived finally at the door of the third house, and Danny was not the least sullen among them. This was the house closest to the car. If they had knocked on the first house they’d seen upon stepping out of the car, this would have been the house. Several interior lights were on, but the porch light was not. A car which had not earlier been parked in the driveway now was. Halloween decorations were not evident until Danny and the kids reached the porch and found an unlit jack-o-lantern tipped on its side behind a pillar. A positive sign? It was hard for Danny to see it that way. He was almost dispirited enough to just give in and take Jarrett and Ginger to the New Pinnacle Church trunk-or-treat without making them knock on the door of a third house, but he decided to follow through just for the sake of future deals he might strike with them, to demonstrate the integrity of his word. Or else it was stubbornness. It really didn’t matter which as long as Jarrett and Ginger didn’t perceive that he’d been defeated. “Who’s going to ring the bell?” he asked.

“I’ll do it,” said Ginger, and she did.

After a short wait, a man in sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt depicting a baseball-bat-toting mascot that Danny could not identify answered the door. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Trick-or-treaters! You’re the first ones we’ve seen all night! And let’s see, uh oh, we’ve got Demoness here. I hope you aren’t here to spread feelings of disgust, hatred, and fear!”

Ginger was delighted to be recognized. She set her empty treat bucket on the porch and drew her blades from their sheaths, brandishing them with shy menace. And it was cute. Danny was thrilled.

“And who else do we have,” said the man, turning his attention to Jarrett. His smile froze on his face, then shattered. “I can’t believe you already feel comfortable showing your face in public again. You really think our memories are that short?”

“Uh,” said Danny. “Heh heh.” He didn’t know what the man was talking about. Was he playing with Jarrett like he’d played with Ginger? If so, this was a very different style of acting.

But Jarrett was fighting back a smile. He seemed to know exactly how to respond. “The charges were dropped!” he said. “All of them!”

The man shook his head. “As if that disproves anything. You might have escaped justice at the hands of the law, but your reputation is shot. No one will ever look at you the same way again.”

“People have short memories,” said Jarrett. “I’ll be back on top soon.”

The man snarled. He leaned out of his doorway and spat into the bushes. Then he looked Danny in the eye. “You brought this scumbag here? To my door?”

“What?” asked Danny. He paused trying to think of something else to say. Then he again asked, “What?”

“You brought Leopold Findle to my front door!” shouted the man. He sounded truly furious.

“You’re offended by the costume?” asked Danny. “I’ll be honest, I don’t really know who he’s supposed to be. Jarrett just told me he’s a composer. That’s all I know.”

“I’m not offended by a costume! I’m offended by the man! This man!” The man jabbed his finger in Jarrett’s face.

Jarrett, no longer playing along, cowered against Danny. “Grandpa?” he said. “Let’s just go.”

“This is a kid,” said Danny. “A kid in a costume. For Halloween. It’s Halloween.”

“You think I don’t know it’s Halloween?” asked the man, his voice falling to a sort of seething whisper. “I’ve got a living room full of high school freshmen watching PG-13 horror movies and eating caramel corn. One of those kids is mine. And the rest are kids whose parents are trusting me to keep filth like Leopold Findle as far away from them as possible.”

Danny was afraid to ask, but he had to. “What did Leopold Findle do?”

“It’s not that bad, Grandpa,” said Jarrett in a small voice. “It’s just money stuff.”

“Oh ho ho,” said the man. “Just money stuff. You would say that.” He bent at the waist so his face was inches from Jarrett’s. “Try some of that money stuff on me or any of the kids at this Halloween party and I will decapitate you.”

“I’ll decapitate you!” cried Ginger. Danny would not have guessed she knew what that word meant, but she demonstrated that she probably did as she hacked at the man’s neck with her plastic blades. She’d probably learned the word from these gruesome shows on which she and Jarrett were so fixated. And now it was sounding like the people involved in making the shows might have serious character flaws, not that Danny was surprised. Anyway, there was a good chance that Danny was about to have a physical altercation with a man at least twenty years his junior. Jarrett and Ginger were too young to be of much real help. And what if the high school freshmen heard the commotion and came to join the fracas?

Ginger landed only two weak eight-year-old-girl strikes with her plastic blades – one on the back of the man’s neck and one on his shoulder – before he whirled toward her, wrenched the blades out of her hands, and sprang back inside the entryway of his house. “My problem isn’t with you,” he said, addressing Ginger. “I know you’re just doing your job. But if you insist on associating with Leopold Findle, well…” He left the end of the sentence to dangle ominously.

Ginger began to cry within her mask. “We just wanted to go to the trunk-or-treat,” she said. “We just wanted lots of candy.”

The man’s face softened. “I don’t have any candy to give to you, Demoness.”

“I know,” said Ginger. “We only knocked on your door so we could be done and leave.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said the man. “I can give you a can of pop. Do you want a can of pop?”

Ginger brightened. “A can of pop? For trick-or-treat?”

“Can I have one?” asked Jarrett. “Trick or treat?”

“Never,” said the man.

“Can I have two?” asked Ginger.

“Are you going to give one to Leopold Findle?” asked the man.

“No,” said Ginger. “I want one for now and one for later.”

“All right,” said the man. “You can have two.”

“Actually,” said Danny. “Her mom doesn’t let her drink any kind of soda or pop or whatever you want to call it. You’d have to ask her why candy is OK, but pop isn’t. But yeah, it’s non-negotiable. I’ve tried, believe me.”

“Then don’t tell her,” said the man.

 

Ginger and Jarrett gulped their cans of pop in the back seat of the car on the way to the New Pinnacle Church trunk-or-treat. The forbidden beverages seemed to have a calming effect on them, a point which would have been interesting to make to Trina if Danny hadn’t been hoping to conceal the details of this entire portion of the evening from her.

“Did that guy really think I was Leopold Findle?” asked Jarrett.

“I honestly have no idea,” said Danny.

“Did he think I was really Demoness?” asked Ginger.

“I don’t know,” said Danny.

With a sudden release of pressure, the kids cracked up, pleased to either have had the quality of their costumes validated or to have met a crazy man or both.

Danny had to park on the street a block away from New Pinnacle Church since a good portion of their parking lot was dedicated to the trunk-or-treat. His parallel parking skills turned out to be rustier than he’d hoped.

“You hit those cars,” said Ginger as they waited at an intersection to cross the street.

“I bumped them,” said Danny. “That’s why cars have bumpers. That’s why they’re called ‘bumpers.’ It’s fine to do a little bumping with them if it can’t be avoided.”

In the end, the New Pinnacle Church trunk-or-treat wasn’t much different than the shabbier ones Danny and the kids had seen in passing through the windows of the car. It was bigger. More people: kids, parents, car owners. Some of the car trunks were better decorated, but many weren’t. Some of the owners had put more effort into their own outfits, but many hadn’t. New Pinnacle Church played music through speakers attached to flood-light-bearing poles arranged at regular intervals around the perimeter of the event, but it wasn’t spooky Halloween music, not even innocuous Halloween music; it was just generic praise music.

Danny trailed after Jarrett and Ginger as they scurried from trunk to trunk, their treat buckets finally filling up, and rapidly. If candy acquisition was the sole goal, then sure, he could see the effectiveness of this approach. But he also noted the fading of Jarrett’s enthusiasm, the dimming of the light in Ginger’s eyes behind her mask. After fewer than twenty trunk-or-treating minutes, Danny saw his grandkids confer, then turn to push through a mob of their peers until they stood side by side in front of him, a small, deflated, and criminal composer and a smaller, disenchanted girl-demon.

“We’re ready to go,” said Jarrett.

“You’re already done?” asked Danny. “You’ve still got some room in those buckets.”

“Yeah,” said Jarrett. “But we’re ready to go.”

“Why?” asked Danny. “You were so excited to come here.”

“It’s not very fun,” said Ginger. “You just go from trunk to trunk and get candy. You don’t even have to do anything or say anything or anything. You just walk up and get the candy, and then other kids are right there getting candy at the same time.”

“And no one knows who we’re supposed to be,” said Jarrett.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Danny. “Home?”

“No!” said Ginger, frustrated, desperate.

“Then where?” asked Danny. “Back to the rich neighborhood?”

“No,” said Jarrett. “Not there.”

Danny didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to help. Jarrett and Ginger held his hands as they all headed back to the car, a walking arrangement the kids hadn’t tolerated in years.

 

They drove from neighborhood to neighborhood looking for something that Danny was now coming to believe no longer existed. Or rather, Danny looked. Jarrett and Ginger just stared out of the windows at whatever crossed their field of vision as Darla’s car slunk up and down the lifeless residential streets. Ginger removed her mask.

“Why couldn’t you just take us straight from your house to the New Pinnacle trunk-or-treat like we asked, Grandpa?” asked Jarrett.

“What difference would that have made?” asked Danny. “It wouldn’t have been any different.”

“Maybe it would have felt different,” said Jarrett. “Maybe we would have liked it like my friend Logan does. And everyone else.”

“You want to like something that you know is bad?” asked Danny.

“I don’t know,” said Jarrett. He sounded miserable. “How would I have figured out that trunk-or-treats are bad if you hadn’t…hadn’t…” He couldn’t articulate exactly what Danny had done, in what way exposure to the rich neighborhood trick-or-treating experience had ruined him. “I’m ten,” he concluded.

“I’m eight,” said Ginger. “And that guy still has my two blades.” She sounded miserable, too.

“Look,” said Danny. “Look!” He swerved to the curb, hitting it with the front tire, stamped the brakes, shifted into “park” with unneeded force. He swung his door open and came as close to leaping from the car as his age and physical condition would allow. “Look there!”

The ranch-style home beckoned from a bygone decade. Quaint jack-o-lanterns, glowing with mischief, lined its front walk. Fake spider webs clung to the wrought-iron railing partially enclosing its porch, and the porch’s own light blazed with as much mischief as the jack-o-lanterns, if not more. Plastic tombstones protruded from the lawn at odd angles, and Danny knew if he were to examine them by the light of his phone, that he would find gruesome pun names engraved – although not really engraved – thereon. He had rarely seen a house exude such trick-or-treating promise. Not just tonight. Ever.

But Jarrett and Ginger could not see the promise. Or would not.

So Danny was forced to ring the doorbell by himself. A couple not much younger than Danny and Darla answered the door together. Together they held a huge bowl brimming with king-sized candy bars. The man puffed a pipe and the tobacco smoke smelled sweet. The woman smiled at Danny to mask her confusion. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We hoped you would be trick-or-treaters.”

“They’re in the car,” said Danny. He turned and pointed at the car, too distant and shrouded in too much darkness for Jarrett or Ginger to be visible. “They’re too disillusioned to come to the door.”

“I don’t blame them,” said the man. “You’re the first person to ring our doorbell all night. They’re all at those trunk-or-treats. Or nursing homes, some of them go to nursing homes. Or pumpkin patches. Or ‘harvest festivals.’ Or black masses.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Danny. “Anyway, would you mind if I took a couple of candy bars for my grandkids? Just so I can show them that there are still places like yours – really good places to trick-or-treat – if you just look hard enough?”

“Oh, I suppose that would be all right,” said the man. “You seem like a good man. Maybe, with a grandpa like you, those grandkids of yours have a chance to grow up into good people.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Danny. “I do my best to be a positive influence.”

“In fact,” said the man. He turned to his wife. “I think maybe we shouldn’t give these candy bars to his grandkids? Not these candy bars. Maybe we should give his grandkids the other ones. The, uh, better ones.”

“Oh,” said the woman. She looked a little put out. “I disagree. But these are the ones we planned to give out. To everyone. Remember?”

The man shrugged. “All right, all right,” he said. “I remember.”

The woman looked at Danny and said, “Feel free to take a third for yourself,” her smile now masking something other than confusion.

 

“Wow,” said Jarrett when Danny got back into the car. “They had king-sized candy bars?”

“We’re not eating these,” said Danny. “No one is.”

“Why not?” asked Ginger.

Danny didn’t answer.

“Where are we going now?” asked Jarrett.

“We’re going to get Demoness’s blades back,” said Danny.

“We are?” asked Jarrett. “Why?”

            “Because,” said Danny. “She has a job to do.”