When I was sixteen, I died, and it ruined my life. It was Halloween one year ago when Sweets – the urban legend, and very real serial killer – stalked me, gutted me, and left my body parts scattered across the front lawn of Dyersville-West High School. Always one for dramatics, he’d left my head impaled on the school’s flagpole.
Sweets was typical serial killer fare: a high school janitor – the target of a senior prank gone wrong – cursed to resurrect every Halloween for one night of teen slaughter. He wanted nothing more than to tear open his victims and see their insides spill out in a pool of viscera.
But there was a catch – that same curse protected his victims. When attacked, their insides turned to candy, their bodies into rubber-like replicas, and they’d wake up on November 1st good as new, the grizzly attack only a bad dream.
I didn’t remember my death until I saw my body spotting the school’s lawn like cheap Halloween décor. The teachers assumed it was a prank done in bad taste, and by the time a pair of cops were lecturing me on ‘decency’, the news of my death had already spread throughout the student body. Any semblance of normal high school life was ripped away as my days spiraled into bullying and public ostracization.
I wouldn’t let tonight be like last Halloween. I had a plan to get revenge and build a new reputation as something other than a victim. I’d prove myself to the adults who didn’t believe me and the others who made fun of me. I had nothing to lose – death didn’t scare me anymore.
The sudden sound of footsteps made my heart pound so hard that I worried it would echo down the alley. I peeked out of two holes cut in a makeshift ghost costume that doubled as additional camouflage. It wouldn’t fool anyone out in the open, but it concealed me well enough in my hiding space tucked behind a dumpster.
A looming figure approached the three letterman-jacket wearing others huddled across from the dumpster. I tightened my grip on the knife’s handle as my hand shook and, as quietly as I could, crept toward the figure in the dark.
“What the fuck?” the figure blurted.
I stopped. When Sweets killed me there were a rush of sounds – my cries for help, his grunting with each machete swing, the crack of the blade on bone – but he never spoke.
I pulled the sheet off with my free hand. “Hey,” I said calmly, my voice gritty from hours spent barely swallowing to keep quiet.
The figure turned and I recognized Butch Kelley from school. A year older than me and a head taller, Butch was a senior basketball player whose lanky frame filled out his mechanic’s costume like a dollar store Sweets.
“Dead boy? Shouldn’t you be at home handing out candy or something?” His eyes found the knife in my hand.
“It’s a costume thing,” I lied, waving the knife like a prop. “Ghost of Halloween Past.”
“What is all this?”
I looked past him to where I’d placed the three figures earlier. The mannequins came from an online auction, the stolen jackets from the drama department closet at school. Draped on each figure and stuffed inside the jackets were animal organs and intestines reeking of the beef blood I had poured on. When asked, butchers are willing to sell just about any part of an animal they can, blood included.
“I was trying to… I don’t know. Just, get out of here, please?”
“You’re one messed up kid, dead boy. You want me to leave so you can play with your dolls? Yeah, sure, weirdo.”
Butch started to walk away. Knowing he’d spread this around school, I feared what life would be like if Sweets never showed and Butch gave everyone another reason to tease me.
“Wait, Butch,” I said. “Help me kill Sweets. Help me get revenge.”
He turned, reconsidering the mannequins and the knife. “You’re just going to get killed again. Why would I want to help you with that?”
“If we killed Sweets, we’d both be heroes. You’d get even more popular, and I wouldn’t just be dead boy anymore.”
Butch considered the idea. “I don’t-”.
He choked to a stop like an invisible hand had gripped his throat. I heard heavy breathing behind me before I saw him – Sweets in his ratty jumpsuit carrying a hunting knife down the alley. I flashed back to the year before, that rotted smile less than an arm’s length away, the blacks of his eyes wide behind his half mask. Seeing him again was a nightmare replayed in real time.
Butch stood transfixed, as mobile as one of the mannequins. There was no way I’d get the jump on Sweets now, not with Butch in the way.
Time to improvise.
“Run!” I shouted, shoving Butch and breaking his focus. “Butch, run!”
We took off, masking the sound of the killer closing behind, pausing at the sidewalk outside the alley.
“Shit,” Butch huffed. “What now?”
“You know the park off Hennepin?” I asked, pulling the sheet on. Back in the alley, Sweets swung the knife in one great slash that sent the mannequins clattering in pieces.
“Yeah, yeah, I know it.”
“I’ll lure him away, then loop back and meet you there.” This only worked if we worked together, and that meant putting my trust and my life in Butch’s hands. Against my better judgment, I gave him the knife. “Jump him in the park.”
“Shit, dead boy…” I waited for Butch to back out, to give up and accept our deaths. Instead, he nodded. “Ok.”
We ran in opposite directions as Sweets stomped onto the sidewalk. His hand swiped through my costume, missing me by inches. When I reached the far side of the street I turned back and saw Sweets following Butch.
“Sweets, over here!” I yelled, thinking of anything that would get him to follow.
I ran toward him, passing where he stood only seconds before, and into the alley. I pulled one of the letterman jackets on, the remaining animal gore soaking the sheet. Then, scooping up what remains I could find, I charged Sweets dressed as a high school ghost and tossed organ pieces at him. The first few peppered his feet, but the ones after that bounced squarely off his back.
Sweets mechanically turned and began closing the distance between us. His strides were impossibly long, his speed unnatural. I dropped the rest of the animal ammunition and ran.
My mind raced with images of dying – memories and futures intertwined. I could feel his fingers wriggling through me like strong worms, the saccharine smell of the candy pulled from my stomach still teasing my nose.
The killer behind me was the only constant as Dyersville sped by in a small-town blur. I led him down the street, then into a sleepy cul-de-sac backed up against Hennepin Park’s south end. I cut across a backyard and through a hedge separating the homes from the wooded park. By the time I’d broken through, Sweets had disappeared in the overgrowth. I kept moving, crossing a baseball field, then a gravel parking lot, and following a paved path through the park.
Ahead, I saw Butch fighting another figure and my stomach coiled – Sweets had cut me off and the plan had failed. But as I got closer, I saw the figure was shorter than Butch, far too short for Sweets. Butch spoke as he gripped the boy – a chubby freshman I recognized from school.
“Let me go!” Chubby screamed.
“Dead boy, cover him,” Butch barked. I looked at him confused. “Your costume, cover him.”
I pulled off the jacket and the sheet, wrapping Chubby the best I could as he fought back. I realized what Butch was trying to do – he wanted to hide Chubby in the costume as bait in my place.
Sticks snapped underfoot somewhere in the woods behind me.
“Hide,” Butch hissed.
Nearby, a sign for a natural regrowth section of the park caught my eye and I scrambled into the chained off area. I flattened onto the ground in time to see Butch slug Chubby so hard with a cheap gut punch that I heard the air spill from his lungs. Butch shoved him to the ground, kicked a foot into his gut, and ran toward where I lay.
Chubby writhed on the ground beneath the bloody sheet. He never saw Sweets coming. The knife came down hard enough that the sound of the tip hitting the pavement through Chubby ticked over and over like a metronome. Candy spattered the path and flew off into the grass.
I looked to Butch and opened my hand for the knife. Butch shook his head. Again, I motioned for the knife and again he refused. I never should have trusted him. He slid out of the brush, knife in hand, ready to go for it himself. After everything I’d planned, he wanted to be the only hero.
Sweets dropped the hunting knife he’d gutted Chubby with and was rifling through the candy insides as Butch snuck up. I was crawling under the chain when Sweets barked a wet, raspy scream.
Butch had sliced Sweets across the neckline, but the knife had caught in the monster’s throat. Sweets stood, towering over Butch who now stood staring down the killer without a weapon or a plan.
Sweets went for his knife – turning to find it already in my hands. I shoved it into him and dragged the neck knife down as hard as I could, splitting his corpse in a jagged line. He sneered at me once more, those black gums as rotten as the day he’d killed me, then fell lifelessly onto the pavement.
Butch and I stood in silence, surrounded by blood, candy, and bodies. I waited for a sense of relief to pulse through me and carry away my lingering trauma, but it never came. Stabbing Sweets made me understand him in a way I never thought possible. I understood why finding candy inside his victims was so unsatisfying – it felt meaningless, empty.
“Is he dead?” Butch finally asked.
“I don’t know.”
He picked a piece of candy from Chubby’s rubber body, unwrapped it, and noisily sucked it. “You’re welcome, dead boy.”
I couldn’t look at Butch – I hated him. This whole idiotic night was meant to earn respect from people like him who picked on me for being a victim, but now I realized revenge would never change that. Being a victim is a label they’d always use against me, and there was no changing that.
Not until they became a victim too.
Butch was busy gathering candy into the dirty ghost sheet when I put the knife through his neck. Stabbing Butch – unlike Sweets – felt meaningful, like I was finally earning the reputation I always deserved. His body wouldn’t turn to rubber, he wouldn’t wake up tomorrow, and it was only a matter of time before I was caught. In fact, when I finally looked up, there was a group of costumed kids in the distance coming down the path.
Sweets had disappeared.
Butch’s corpse wasn’t filled with candy, and the more I pulled from him the more I enjoyed every stringy bit. I eagerly picked through him like a kid with their trick or treat haul, then scooped handfuls of candy into his hollowed body and wrote ‘Take one only’ in blood on the ground beside him. Happy with the legend I was leaving behind – that of the candy bowl killer – I slipped out of Dyersville in the dark, counting down the days until next Halloween.