The Castaway Hotel - 6 - 15. Chapter 15 - Trick-Or-Treat

While we waited for the day of Cody’s doctor appointment, Graham came to me with another concern, but this one was of a more personal nature. “Dad, I need to talk to you again.”

“Sure, Graham, why don’t we go for a ride,” I suggested.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” he told me. I grabbed the keys to the Grand Am and the two of us got in. Graham started talking to me the minute the engine started.

“Dad, Cody wants us to suck each other’s dicks, but I’m a little scared,” he blurted out. “What if whatever he has is contagious? Wouldn’t that mean I could catch it?”

“I guess it’s a possibility, at least until we discover exactly what, if anything, is wrong with him,” I confirmed.

“You think I’m wrong about this?” he wanted to know.

“I won’t know until the doctor gives Cody his physical,” I told him, “but I trust your instincts enough to check it out thoroughly.”

“Okay, but I just thought I should let you know,” he continued.

“I’m glad you did. Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?” I followed, since I wanted to make certain Graham had a chance to cover everything that was bothering him.

“Yeah, there is something… kind of,” he confirmed. “Cody and I were fooling around the other night and I told him I thought he would have looked cute when he was younger, before he had hair around his dick. Now, he wants me to shave him there and I don’t know if I should.”

“I don’t see any problem with that,” I replied, “if it’s what he wants and you’re willing to do it.”

“But I don’t want to use anything sharp down there. What if I slip?” he countered, as a look of horror was registered on his face.

“What if I got you an electric razor to use instead?” I offered. “That should be safe enough for you to even shave his scrotum, if you’re careful.”

“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that,” Graham agreed. “That should work nicely. Okay, Dad, you always seem to know what to do. Thanks, I’m glad I came to you again.”

It didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but it obviously was for him, so I was glad I could help too. If what he had told me about Cody was accurate, his observation would have a much bigger impact than my meager assistance. He might even be saving a life. I hope it’s not that serious, but it might be a possibility. I’ll be sure to let him know how important his contributions are, once we know all the facts. I’m hoping it might even make him feel better about his gift.

Now, I was more grateful than ever that Graham and Cody had become so close. If it turns out that there is anything wrong with our newest family member, it will be important for him to have someone he can depend on and be by his side the entire way. Having that kind of support has helped others in the family get through a crisis before, so I’m hoping it will also work for him. Since he’s only been with us for a sort time, I felt having a close attachment to one of the other boys would be a major asset in his behalf.

Even though I was worried about Cody, I had to put the issue aside for the time being and keep things as normal as possible. I was afraid if things changed too much, the boys would get suspicious and start discussing what might be wrong amongst themselves. If they did, I was afraid they’d come up with even worse possibilities than what we were currently facing. I certainly didn’t want anything to alarm Cody, even if he wasn’t sure it had anything to do with him, until we are positive about what was wrong. If we’re lucky, it will just turn out to be a false alarm.

In order to distract and occupy the boys, I wanted to come up with something special for Halloween this year. I would start off by incorporating some of the best facets of what we’d done in the past, while attempting to come up with enough new twists to make it even more interesting and exciting than our past efforts. Although I still wasn’t convinced we could top what we’d done in the past, it certainly wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

The boys had enjoyed last year’s Halloween so much that they pleaded to do something very similar again this year. I told them to think about which parts they liked best and write them down, but I also asked them to think of ways to improve those aspects, to make them even better. I also requested they think about the activities they thought were lame and try to find ways to make them better too.

Once the boys agreed to do that for me, they went off and started making their lists. Before long, I had what they’d jotted down, so I compiled a master list of the things that were mentioned most. Using this to guide me, I began thinking about what else I could do to exceed the boys’ expectations.

Although each of them was excited about what we were going to do, no one wanted to tell Cody what was going to happen. They agreed it would be best if we allowed him to experience everything for himself. They would try to keep him from seeing what we were up to and then have him go through it, just like one of the visitors to our home. He wasn’t happy about not being included in the planning, but after I told him it was only so he could fully appreciate what we were doing later, he finally began to take it in stride. In fact, he was now anxiously waiting his turn to go through our Haunted House too.

Once again, we arranged everything so the trick-or-treaters would have to enter through our backdoor. We waited until the day before Halloween to put out our tombstones from the pervious year and made our little cemetery. Once that was completed, we set up our haunted rec room, which our visitors would pass through next. The rec room was lit with black lights, to give it a surreal feeling, and filled with the moans, groans and other pre-recorded weird noises that we hoped would amuse and unsettle our guests.

We had placed the pine coffin so it would be in full view as everyone entered, so they would have an unobstructed view when Dracula popped out of it. After that, they’d have to pass a skeleton and a headless corpse to get to the basement stairs. They had to go there to get their treats.

As they went down the stairs, they’d have to make their way through the artificial spider webs we rigged up. These webs were arranged so they would drag across the unsuspecting guest’s body as he passed by. Once they reached the bottom of the stairway, they would be directed toward the treat tables, where the next surprise awaited them.

We had strategically placed one of the boys under the table again this year, with his hand extending upward, through a small opening. This made it appear to be just a bloody stump lying on the surface. As the children reached to get the goodies, the hand would move, or grab a hold of them, as they reached for their reward. When this happened, the basement would echo with the screams of the surprised victim, which would in turn cause others to scream in response. Those sounds would be mixed with laughter from my sons and the other Halloweeners, which would soften the mood slightly.

In the end, the costumed visitors concluded the rewards we gave them were worth being frightened, so they didn’t think twice about what we asked them to do. In fact, before they left nearly everyone thanked us for being so creative and making the experience unique.

The treats they received were the same as the previous year, and consisted of white chocolate eyeballs, gummy worms, thumb lollipops, pretzel bones and white chocolate and jujy tongues. This was all designed to add to the flavor of the night and give them something more to remind them of their trip through our Haunted House, when they consumed these goodies later.

The boys took Cody through our haunted house first, before anyone else arrived. Since he hadn’t seen what we were up to, he was totally surprised by the elaborate nature of our preparations. He was enjoying the whole effect, including Dracula’s coffin and the spider webs, but he was unprepared for the hand that grabbed him, as he went to retrieve his treats. He became our first screamer of the night, but he also instinctively fought back. This meant he tried to break free by punching the arm and scratching it, which allowed him to get away.

The other boys thought this was hysterical, except for the boy at the other end of the bloody stump. Sammy was now crying out in pain and his hand was actually bleeding, since Cody had dug his fingernails into the back of it. After seeing what had happened, I got a clean cloth and put pressure against the injured areas until the bleeding stopped. Then I held an ice pack against it for a short time, to numb the pain, and this made Sammy feel considerably better.

After discussing how he was feeling, Sammy decided his injury wasn’t too bad and wanted to continue on. He suggested we leave his arm like it was for the remainder of the night, for added effect. He thought the redness, scratches and dried blood would increase the visual impact it would have on our guests. After receiving his reassurance and since there was no more actual bleeding, I merely sprayed it with a clear antiseptic, to keep it from becoming infected. Sammy wouldn’t let me bandage it until later though, because he didn’t want to lessen the effect.

Once Cody realized what he had done, he apologized for his instinctive reaction, but we all told him we’d kind of expected it might happen sooner or later. The problem was, he reacted so quickly and so forcefully, that we didn’t have time to stop him. After that, we let Cody take his treats and move on. Once he went back upstairs, he volunteered to be one of the guides, so he could watch the others and see if they reacted the same way he had.

There were a couple of other differences this year, as this was the first time we had a handicapped trick-or-treater. The boy’s mother had been told about our haunted house the previous year, and when she learned we were going to do it again, she contacted me. She told me she thought her son would really like to see it, if it was possible to accommodate for his special needs. After I assured her we could and would make appropriate arrangements, I informed her how it would work.

I’d take her son up and down the basement stairs personally, but she’d have to bring him early, before we expected the other kids to arrive. This way, we’d be able to give him the personal attention he would need and I was certain he would have a good time.

They showed up while we were taking Cody through the Haunted House, so they waited until he’d finished. They were waiting for me at the end of the driveway, and I was immediately intrigued when I saw his costume. He was dressed as a die (like in one of a pair of dice), with his head popping through the single hole in the ‘one’ side of the die. It mostly hid his wheelchair and I thought it was a very creative costume. Eagerly, I went down to introduce myself.

Once the formalities were concluded, I got behind him and grabbed the handles to his wheelchair, which were poking out the back of the die. I pushed him around to the back of the house and through our graveyard, while his mother followed. As we moved along, she spent her time enjoying her son’s reactions to everything we did. The boy got a kick out of the cemetery, laughed at the coffin when it opened and informed me he liked our sound effects.

As I tipped his wheelchair back and began to take him down the basement steps, the fake spider webs brushed against his skin and he screamed out, “What was that?” After I explained what he just went through, he began to laugh and told me he hadn’t expected that.

Now that we were in the basement, I told him to take whatever candy he preferred. As he reached for something, he saw the hand move and slammed his body back into his wheelchair. His eyes were wide and his questions stuck in his throat. I quickly explained it was just one of my boys under the table, which caused him to begin to relax. Once he’d regained his composure, he told me that was the best effect of all.

After he had collected all of his treats, I pulled his wheelchair back up the stairs and took him out to their vehicle. As we went, his mother thanked us, many times, for doing this for her son. Her son made sure to thank us too, before they got back into their van and went off to continue trick-or-treating.

Since the others would be showing up soon, I now had to get ready to play my part. In addition to the other things I’d mentioned, I had added another surprise. Originally, this one was designed solely to ensure everyone went around to our backdoor, instead of trying to enter through the front. For this purpose, I had a scarecrow costume made for me, complete with straw sewn in at various points, to look like I was losing my stuffing. It also came with a white bag head, with small slits for eyes, to conceal my identity.

In addition to the costume, I’d also had a stuffed scarecrow dummy made, which looked identical to my costume. I had set this on the porch, in an old rocking chair, prior to Halloween, to get passersby used to seeing it. This would condition them that it was part of our props and they wouldn’t suspect anything more.

After our handicapped boy and his mother left, I raced inside and put my costume on. Once I was appropriately attired, I snuck out the side door and made my way to the porch, where I sat down on the lawn chair previously occupied by the dummy. My purpose for doing this was so I could tell those who came to the front door to go around to the back, but I sat as motionless as I could until I was required to speak.

As one family headed toward our front door, and just as they were about to push the doorbell, I moved and told them, “Go around to the back, that’s where they’re expecting you.”

When I moved and spoke, everyone jumped and screamed, but once they got over their initial fright they began to laugh. As their laughter died down, the mother told me they really believed I was just a stuffed scarecrow propped up on the rocking chair. Seeing it was working as well as I’d hoped, I continued to surprise and scare a number of other visitors who approached the wrong door first.

As the night wore on, I was just about ready to give up and go back inside when a pack of young hoodlums approached our house. I recognized them immediately, as boys who were constantly in my office when I was principal. Since I knew they were troublemakers, I watched them carefully, without moving a muscle. There was definitely no love lost between these boys and me, as I had been called upon to discipline them many times before for the stunts they had pulled at school.

As I watched them, I started to add two and two up in my mind and came up with the answers that had eluded us concerning previous Halloweens. Over the past couple of years several things had been done to our house during this holiday. It was never anything serious or dangerous, but these incidents were extremely annoying and we could never figure out who the perpetrators were. Now, it was all beginning to make sense.

The first year, they had egged our cars and house. If you didn’t realize it, if you don’t clean the egg off quickly, it will actually eat away at the paint and take it down to the bare metal. Last year, they put shaving cream all over our doorknobs and on the porch, in front of the door, and they smashed several jack-o-lanterns we had carved. They smashed a couple of them on the porch, a couple more on the sidewalk and then smashed the rest of them on our cars. I always wondered who would have the motive or meanness to perpetrate such acts, but I never heard any rumors or discovered any facts linking anyone to these acts. At long last, I now knew who had done these things.

As they got closer, I began to overhear snippets of their conversation. “Get the bag of dog crap ready,” one of them told another. “You sure it’s soft enough to make a mess?”

“Yeah, I got some fresh stuff, but I sprinkled water on it too, to make it nice and juicy. I’m glad they have plastic bags we could use for this, cuz it would have broken through a paper bag.” That comment caused the others to laugh.

“Well, I want to smear it all over his porch and his cars,” I heard their leader say. He just happened to be the boy I’d had the most trouble with in school. “I just wish somehow he’d know it was me doing this, to get even with him for all the times he gave me detention or when he called the cops on me.”

“Hey, we’re all getting even with him, not just you,” another told him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but I ended up going to juvy because of him, after he called the cops on me,” he emphasized. “That didn’t happen to any of you.”

The boy was right, I had called the cops on him, but that was because I discovered he had been part of a small group that had vandalized our school. He and one other boy were sent away for what they’d done, not merely because they had broken into the school and destroyed things, but because they had also started a fire. When they were questioned later, the other boy admitted they were actually trying to burn the school down, to cover up their crimes and to make it so they wouldn’t have to attend classes for a while. If there were others involved, they never squealed on them, but I now suspected some of these boys might have been in on that too.

Slowly, they continued to move toward the porch and the first boy carried the bag with the dog crap in it. Just as he was about ready to dump some on my porch, I made my move. I jumped up from the chair and screamed, “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

The boys were all so startled by my sudden and unexpected move that they jumped backward, to get away from me. The boy with the bag of dog feces reacted quickest and spun and leapt away from the porch before the others did. Unfortunately for him, he had already positioned the bag to dump its contents before he attempted his escape, and that’s exactly what happened. The dog poop in the bag spilled on the ground in front of him, as he flew through the air, and then he landed in a pile of it. The remainder of the canine feces covered a rather large patch of ground just in front of his face.

As he struggled to get up, I noticed the bag was one of those large, heavy duty plastic bags department stores use and there must have been one hell of a lot of dog shit in it to cover so much ground. Unfortunately for him, the mess also covered his body.

As the first boy fled, the other boys quickly followed suit and jumped off the porch too. As they landed, they either slipped in the accumulation of dog poop or got knocked off balance by one of the others. Either way, it seemed they all ended up on the ground, covered in dog feces. One of the boys had even knocked the first boy down again, as he tried to stand up, and forced him into the pile of crap yet again. It seems their plan had backfired this year and the joke was on them, literally. Hopefully, this will discourage them from trying anything of a similar nature in the future.

The hooligans had made so much noise after I startled them and while they were trying to flee that some of my boys came running out of the house to see what was going on. By this time, however, the other boys had scrambled away from the house and were fleeing down the street, so I explained what had happened. After hearing my story, and doing a little giggling of their own, they wanted to chase after and catch these boys. However, I refused to allow them to go and told them the perpetrators had had received their own form of punishment for what they had tried to pull. I felt it was sufficient retribution this time, so we let them get away.

As we reflected upon everything that had transpired, it all began to seem funnier and funnier. Even though they hadn’t witnessed what happened, they could picture it in their minds, so we all had a good laugh about it before we went back inside.

Before we called it a night though, I suggested we get a few flashlights and go out to clean up the rest of the mess. I didn’t want anyone else to step or fall into it in the morning, but even that sounded funny to the boys. However, once the disgusting nature of the task I was asking them to perform began to sink in, they began to complain.

“Why should we have to clean it up?” Pat asked. “We should just go get the ones who did this and make them do it.” All the others seemed to agree with him.

“Do you really want to stand around and smell them while they’re doing it?” I asked. “The smell of what’s left behind is disgusting enough, but if you mix that with their sweat from running away, it would be far worse.” This elicited a few more giggles from the group, as they realized those boys were probably pretty ripe at the moment.

“Well, they did deserve it,” Dion stated, quite dryly.

“Yes, they did,” I agreed, “but do you think any of their parents are going to allow them to enter the house looking or smelling like that?”

The boys found that question hilarious and began to laugh again, while acting out what it would have been like for those boys once they reached home.

As far as I was concerned, I just hoped these scoundrels had learned their lesson from this episode, but knowing their history, I felt they would repeat their mistakes or come up with new ones.