He and Willy, his longtime friend and current dorm roommate, had driven to a Halloween party north of their campus. The street was already crowded with cars, but they got lucky when a big white pickup pulled out just as they arrived. Willy didn’t even have to parallel park to get his little Kia nestled in to the curb. As soon as he shut off the engine, music could be heard coming from a house just two down from their lucky spot.

Bill stepped from the car and noted several yard signs touting the presidential candidate of choice for a home owner. He clicked his tongue in disgust before tugging down the tight fitting, purple jacket he’d borrowed from Willy. Bill outweighed Willy by thirty pounds and believed it was perfect for his version of Frankenstein’s monster. He retrieved his rubber mask from the car before closing the door.

Willy walked around to the back of his car, popped the trunk, and swapped his Nikes for a pair of huge clown shoes. He clicked the car fob to hear that satisfying chirp of security before clomping around to where Bill stood. He had driven in baggy yellow pants and an equally baggy yellow and blue striped shirt, festooned with three faux buttons of bright red balls of yarn. A floppy white collar, looking like a sailor’s tar flap, covered his shoulders.

“Cool,” he said, looking at the same political signs seen by Bill. “I wasn’t sure she had any supporters out here.”

“That comment provides the finishing touch for your clown suit,” Bill said. “It doesn’t matter how many she has, here or anywhere, she hasn’t got a chance against my guy.”

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” Willy said, adjusting his multicolored fright wig. The two had been on opposites sides of the political spectrum since junior high and taking good-natured jabs at each other ever since.

“Yes we will, Silly Willy,” Bill said. They both laughed. He’d been calling his friend Silly Willy since their first meeting.

Willy purposefully slapped his shoes as loudly on the sidewalk as he could, turning toward the house. He pinched a red, bulbous ball onto the tip of his nose and said, “Shall we do this, William?”

“We shall, William,” Bill said.

The last thing Bill remembered was a huge spider covering the front of the party house. As he pulled the latex likeness of Boris Karloff over his head, the spider’s eight eyes glowed red and swiveled toward the newcomers.

That memory jarred Bill from his reverie and he blinked a few times before getting to his feet. He tugged the tight jacket down again. It seemed looser than the night before. The bedroom door led to a short hall connecting the living room with what looked like a laundry room in the back. Bill headed for the front.

The scene was much as he expected. Red and blue Solo cups littered every flat surface, including the floor. Cigarette butts floated in a couple of them and a nearly whole one had been stabbed into a bowl of bean dip. As he moved to the front door, Bill glanced to his left to see an equally messy kitchen separated from the living room by a cluttered counter top. Popcorn spilled across one end of it, partially covered by an overturned bowl, and a large red stain covered much of the rest of its surface. It appeared to have dried, but Bill did not – would not – touch it. Other bowls, upright and mostly empty, crowded the small kitchen table.

Bill turned his head, reaching for the door knob, when something cool and fine brushed his cheek. He jerked for the second time that morning and saw a thick spider web dangling from the ceiling. No. It was nothing more than a really thin nylon line secured by a blue push pin. Perhaps nothing more than what was left of a simulated spider’s web.

Finally, the silence of the place struck him like a gust of cold wind. He turned his back to the front door and surveyed the living area, looking for any sign of life. He saw none. He held his breath, listening for any noise. He heard only the faint ticking of the refrigerator. Opening the door behind him, even the clicking of the doorknob seemed muted. He swept the room with his eyes a last time before backing slowly, awkwardly, outside.

A cool breeze tunneled under his jacket, and he pulled it down once more. He reached to button its top and only then realized his mask was gone. As he began to turn toward the street, Willy called from the sidewalk.

“What the hell’s going on, Bill?”

“Damned if I know,” he said. “Hey, where’s the car?”

“Dunno. I don’t see any cars,” Willy said. “Except for that truck.” He was pointing towards the campus. Several blocks down, parked on the side of the road was a white pickup. Bill looked first at the truck and then back at Willy.

“I see you lost your wig. I lost my mask,” Bill said. “Somewhere.” They stood for a moment, looking around like lost children.

Willy patted his head and then turned crossed eyes to his nose. The red bulb was also gone. “So. Head back to the campus? Report my stolen car?” Willy said.
Bill scratched his head and said, “Yeah. I guess so, but… do you have any idea what happened last night? I don’t remember shit after we got to the party. Someone must have slipped something into the punchbowl.”

“Yeah? No. I don’t remember much either,” Willy said. “I woke up on the floor. In the, uh, living room, I think. Saw the mess and came out here. How about you? Did you hear anyone else stirring in there?”

“No,” Bill said. “I woke up in the… what was it?” He scratched his head again and said, “Shit. Now even that’s a little fuzzy. I was, oh, I was in somebody’s bedroom! That’s it.”

“Well,” Willy said. “We should head back, but it’s going to suck walking all the way back to the dorm in these shoes.”

He tried wiggling his toes and looked down before saying, “What the hell?”

Directly over the instep of his left clown shoe was a round hole about the diameter of a snack sausage. He bent to feel it, twisting his finger into the hole. It sunk all the way to the sidewalk below. He tried wiggling his toes again but saw no movement in his shoes. Worse, he felt nothing in either his foot or his finger. His brain recognized the twisting and wiggling, but his body didn’t feel it. He straightened and turned back toward his friend.

Bill was looking down the street in the direction of the campus. His head was cocked slightly to the left. The October sun was bright. The autumn breeze was chilled. Still, something was off. Willy followed his gaze.

“The sound is weird,” Willy said, reading Bill’s thoughts.

“I hear you,” Bill said. “But not much else. I feel the wind but it doesn’t whistle. I see those dead leaves blowing down the street, but I hear no rustle. It isn’t dead silence, but it’s like the sound is dying. Weird.”

“And I don’t feel anything in my foot,” Willy said. “The ground was there, my finger stopped, but I couldn’t feel it.”

“We better move on,” Bill said, heading south along the sidewalk. Willy followed behind; his big clown shoes silent on the sidewalk. As they approached the political signs, Bill stopped and turned to Willy.

“Did you hear that?” he said. “Sounded like a turtle dove to me, down there somewhere. Hear it?”

Willy swiveled his head like a radar dish. “Yeah. Kind of, I guess. Wow,” he continued. “It looks like whoever stole my car ran over these signs.” Tire tracks cut a wide circle in the dormant Bermuda grass, but they weren’t Kia tracks. They resembled truck tires.

“Yeah,” Bill said. He sounded distracted, distant. “Let’s go.”

Willy took a last look at the signs before taking up his position trailing his roommate. He was surprised to again hear the faint slapping of his shoes against the sidewalk.

“Whoa,” he said. “Did you hear… holy shit!” He stopped short as one shoe smacked the cement loudly. Startled, Bill turned to face him.

“What the hell happened to your head,” Willy said, putting his hand up to the back of his own head as an act of empathy. Bill’s hand shot up to investigate and came away with nothing. He looked at his hand and all he saw was an empty palm. He also didn’t see what he should have. His hand was completely smooth. No creases at his knuckles, no scar where he accidentally cut himself as a child. No life line.

He looked into Willy’s eyes to see his friend’s irises fading in and out. Brown to tan to beige to tan to brown.

“What did you see?” Bill said. “I don’t feel anything up there. Is there vomit or bird shit or something?” For some reason, having something yucky in his hair bothered him more than the facts that he couldn’t feel the back of his own head or make out details in his own hand or his friends eyes.

“It was, it…” Willy shook his and rubbed his eyes. “Turn around. Let me look again.”

There, hanging from the back of his friend’s head by a scrap of scalp, was a piece of Bill’s skull. A piece of arachnoid membrane glistened briefly in the morning sun. It looked as if someone had hit him with an axe. It reminded Willy of a piece of cedar he had tried to shave from an old fencepost when he was in the scouts. The image faded quickly back into the uninjured head he’d known for eight years. At first he thought he was just loosing focus, but he knew in his gut that the image was changing, not his perception of it. He didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know what he was seeing, so he said nothing. He walked passed Bill, his shoes flapping louder and louder with each step taken toward the school.

“Hey!” Bill said. “Look at this!”

Willey turned to see three cars parked along the street which had been empty seconds before. He glanced at the back of Bill’s head again and the wound continued to oscillate; gash, gone, gash, gone. The cars too were fading in and out of existence. Saying nothing, Willey turned once again towards the campus. Slap, slap, slap.

Willey could hear Bill hurrying to catch up, and he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Silly Willy,” Bill said. “You okay man?”

Without stopping, Willy said, “Sure. You?”

“I feel good. I can hear those birds better. I’m starting to see things a little better. I can… Willy, you sure you’re alright?”

Something about the way his name was said made Willy stop and turn around. About an inch above Bill’s left eye a bloodless hole had been punched into his forehead. It was the same size as the one in his own foot. Bill didn’t seem to notice, and Willy tried to avoid looking at it. It was doing that strange, alternating manifestation. Instead, he focused on Bill’s trembling lips.

Bill said, “Man, it looks like someone used your back for target…” his words trailed off as his gaze fell to Willy’s torso. The three faux buttons had been joined by four black holes, surrounded by blood. They were obvious exit wounds, but no blood was oozing. No human offal clung to the clown suit fabric. There were just four crimson stains, punctuated with holes the size of that in Willy’s foot. Seven red smudges against a blue and yellow background. They were fading in and out of existence and as painless as the unfelt exit wound on his own head.

Willy saw the fear reflected in Bill’s eyes, again avoiding the hole which seemed now to me more or less permanent. “Let’s go,” Willy said.

They moved slowly, steadily back toward the campus, Bill to the right of Willy. With every step, sounds became louder, images became sharper, reality became clearer. Eventually they could hear muffled voices but saw no people. About thirty feet from the truck they both heard one word clearly – massacre. It stopped them in their tracks.

They looked closer at the pickup and could see how sloppily it had been parked. The front right tire was atop the sidewalk giving it a warped appearance. It also looked older and dirtier the closer they got to it. A faded political sticker was plastered on the left rear bumper and a brand new version of it was on the other side. Willy could see a figure in the cab of the truck but could make out no details. Then his eyes focused on Bill.

A tiny dribble of blood leaked from the hole in Bill’s forehead, etching a track around his brow and down his cheek. That bit of skull still clung to the back of his head, hanging by a slender piece of scalp. But now, some pinkish-gray matter spilled from the gash and the entirety of Bill’s neck and shoulders were awash in blood. Willy’s purple jacket was ruined. The image was solid and indelible, but Bill apparently felt nothing. He was focused on the truck’s driver.

Willy looked down at his damaged clown shoe and saw the hole had remained unchanged. But this time, his front side was covered in blood from his collar bone to below his knees. He also felt nothing. No pain. No panic. He moved toward the truck and put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Let’s go see,” he said.

Every step brought the scene to greater and greater life. When they reached the truck’s bumper, they saw police warning tape stretched from one side of the road to the other. As they approached the cab, twenty or more people began to materialize around them. As those people became more solid, Bill and Willy began to slowly vanish like fog dissipating under the sun.

Standing at the door of the truck’s cab, they could see the driver was dressed as a scarecrow. Fading yellow straw splayed out from beneath an old, red ballcap. His face had been made up to resemble an old burlap sack. He was motionless, and none of the bustling authorities seemed at all interested in him.

Slowly, his head turned toward the two Williams and he began to laugh hysterically. Creepy, over-whitened teeth flashed through the weathered face. His outburst attracted no attention from the gathered crowd. They continued writing figures on their tablets, talking or taking pictures with their phones, attending to their business, oblivious to the horror behind the wheel.

Bill and Willy had no idea what they should do, but both knew they must not be frightened. They looked to each other before turning back to the strawman. Willy reached for the door handle and watched in dread as his hand plunge through the mirage of metal. It was like being unable to grasp a lifeline in a nightmare. Willy’s hand touched the flannel shirt of the scarecrow, and recognizing solid contact, an unexpected rush of hope surged through his fading body.

This time, Bill read the thoughts of his longtime friend and drove his own fading arms through the disappearing door. The two of them grasped the scarecrow’s shirt and its laugh turned into howls of fear and anger. Together, Bill and Willy pulled the apparition from the truck and lifted it off the ground. Meaningless shrieks continued to pour from its mouth as it thrashed against them. Two bloody specters held the faux man aloft for only a moment, a trio of phantoms, unseen witnesses fading from a tragic experience.

“Let’s go home,” Willy said, and the three of them disappeared for good.

The End