theurgy All around him the house seemed to settle into the darkness, as if the sunlight that streamed through the windows during the day was just an illusion. The dark, the quiet, the emptiness surrounding Bret was the reality. He stared at the foot of his bed, where the clown would surely rise up after it slid out from below. The clown wouldn’t be his father in a mask – there would be something much worse framed in the moonlight shining through the window. Something with wild eyes and a white skull face. It would start to laugh, and laugh. And then... It took some time for Bret to realize he was alone in the house. He was sweating fiercely, and a bead of greasepaint rolled into his eye. He cursed, wiping his eye. Then he looked around. “Arlen?” No reply. Bret glanced at the clock. It was past midnight. He’d been sitting in front of the computer monitor for almost twenty minutes, staring at the final frame of the video. The doorbell rang downstairs and Bret jumped in his chair. What the hell? It’s way too late for trick-or-treaters. Creeping downstairs, he peeked out the front window through the lowered blinds. It was dark on the porch. He’d unplugged the spotlights and extinguished the pumpkin, but there was enough light from the street to see anyone, if they were there. He threw the front door open. The enormous jack o’ lantern was sitting on the porch, turned to face him. “Boo!” A voice shouted over the muffled thud of sneakers against concrete from the other side of the hedge. Kids running down the street, laughing and hooting. Bret’s first instinct was to chase them down but they were already long gone. Instead he kicked the pumpkin with the heel of his clown shoe. He felt the rind buckle, but it held together. Bret kicked it again, in the face, hard enough to make it roll across the porch and tumble down the steps to the grass. “Next time it will be your heads”. Back inside the dark house, Bret pulled the door shut. He locked it behind him. Christ, he sounded just like his dad. The old man would have screamed at the kids, though, at the top of his lungs. Let the whole neighborhood now how pissed off he was. And he probably wouldn’t have let it go for days, or even months. If there was one thing his father had been good at, it was holding a grudge. Bret put a hand on the railing to go upstairs when the doorbell rang again. Over and over, frantically. He sprang at the front door, struggling to flip the deadbolt in his rush. As he flung the door open, the bell stopped. No one was there.
49