It was a Wednesday.  Or maybe a Thursday.  When you reach my age they all pretty much run together until the weekend, and then those days go by faster than anything your prostate has a say in and you’re back in the workweek before you know it.  No, all I really knew was that it was night time, and more importantly it was Halloween night.  Nothing worse in my opinion; buncha goddamn kids running around demanding candy and egging your house if you don’t come through.  Don’t even get me started on the adults:  if you need to dress up as a nurse to get laid that’s on you, not me.  And no one’s looking to see a hot cop my age, sister, believe you me.  Nope, Halloween can go fuck itself; I hightailed it to my buddy Dave’s bar.  Dave likes Halloween less than I do and likes most people less than he likes Halloween.  I knew I’d have the place to myself so I set the dog loose in the yard, (oh you better believe I’ve got a fence around it), and headed out.  House needs paint anyway, and it’s set back far enough from the road that if a kid does land an egg on it I’d probably have to tip my hat to the little bastard.

Except I didn’t have the place to myself.  When I got in and took my usual seat at the far end of the bar, (I like to see who comes in before they see me), there was another guy slouched across one of two what Dave calls booths.  You ask me they’re barely more than picnic tables but no one’s coming to Dave’s (and that ain’t the name and don’t expect me to tell you the name either), for the atmosphere.  From the looks of things he’d been there a while.  Had a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey on the table next to him, half of it apparently working it’s way through his liver, and a mostly-empty pitcher next to that.

I ordered a shot of Jack with a Pabst chaser and nodded over at my unexpected companion.  “What’s his deal?  Hate Halloween too?”  Dave shrugged.  “Don’t know ‘im.  Ain’t been in before that I know of.  He’s been here a couple of hours; kinda bitching to himself but he’s paying cash so far as I’m concerned he’s good.”  I shrugged and had Dave flip the TV over to the hockey.  I’d finished my shot and sent Dave off for another one while I nursed a beer.

“Sports fan, huh?”

There was only one direction that question could have come from and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more from it.  I gave a grunt and nod, hoping that would be the end of it.

Nope.

Next thing I know the bottle of whiskey is next to me left elbow, then the pitcher, then the owner of both was clambering up the stool.

“Bet you’re wonderin’ why I’m here on a night like tonight.”

“I wasn’t, but I bet you’re gonna tell me.”

Dave came over with my second shot and gave a look indicating that he’d be happy to tell this character to leave, but I’m a sucker for a new story, at least to a point.  I gave a half shake of my head and signaled for a second beer.

My new friend was concentrating on getting his next shot into the glass.  All things considered he wasn’t doing too bad a job at it, but still bad enough that Dave was going to 86 him quick if he saw it.  Dave’s bar is a dump but Dave doesn’t tolerate people spilling booze in his place, cash customer or no.  I pushed over some napkins and told him to clean it up or he’d be out.

Kid sort of snapped too.  “Bet you’re wonderin’ why I’m here on a night like tonight.”

“Still no, but you’re clearly gonna tell me so get started.  If I’m gonna hear a story I want to know quick if it’s any good.”

Kid looked at me for a moment and drained his shot.  Didn’t even grimace.  “How about a story that involves death, bloody bottles, and terror?”

Shit, had me hooked.  “Go ahead sport.  That’s got me at least on the front doorstep.”

Kid snorted and swigged his beer.  “You sound like my old boss.  Hook ’em early or get the fuck out.  Didn’t care what we wrote about, just get ’em hooked, make it entertaining, and don’t waste his time.  I miss that fucker.”  He took a deep breath and I noted a catch in his throat.  Christ, if he was gonna cry I was gonna help Dave throw him out.  “See, the thing is mister, I’m a writer.  Came out of school, hooked up with a little operation and started right in.  We had some pretty good early success but were still under the radar and definitely understaffed.  We needed to hire some new kids, and we did.”

He paused at that line and reached for the whiskey.  His hand was shaking, and not from the booze.  “Those goddamn kids.  They didn’t deserve it.”  He took his next shot right out of the bottle.  Slammed it down on the bar hard enough to get Dave’s attention but I waved Dave off.  Kid had my attention.

Kid took a moment to get his shit together and then just went for it.  “We hired two hot shots right out of Columbia and another kid out of Missouri who was some sort of editor for their paper.  Sports probably.  The Columbia kids were nerds, but they could write.  Missouri was another story; I’d seen some of his stuff and told my boss to pass, but the word came down that the kid was related to Somebody with a capital ‘S’ and that his hiring wasn’t a request.  So we hired the fucker.”

He took another swig from the bottle, which was getting pretty low.  I signaled Dave for another.

“They finished their first week and we took ’em out.  They thought we were going to celebrate, you know, strippers and blow and we were, Mister, I swear we were, but first we had to have ’em run the gauntlet.”

“The fuck does a gauntlet have to do with writing?” I asked.

“Nothing.  Just a polite word for hazing.  It was Halloween, just like tonight.  We figured we’d take ’em out to a haunted house, scare ’em a little, then go out and see some tits, drink some beer.  Knew just the place too.  There was boarded up place called KSK down the road from us.  Rumor was it’d been a pretty cool place until everyone got murdered there in a sudden massacre.”

He gave a little snort.  “Well, everyone talented anyway.  You never can get rid of all the sugar you spill.”

I had no idea what he meant and told him so.  He waved me away.  “Doesn’t matter.  If you don’t know you’re probably better off.  Fact of the matter, or at least what we thought was the fact, they’d gotten wrapped up in something too big for them to handle and when it all went to shit people got hurt.  In our business if you’re not up for whatever you’re likely to get run out of town, or worse.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, no shit, but dumb or not they were shut down and their building was creepy ass wreck.  No one had been in it for years.  Looked like an archive of death, or at least hardcore gay porn, when we pulled up.  We told the Columbia kids that they had to go up to the top floor and retrieve a hard drive that Drew had run out and stashed at lunch.  ‘Course it was light then and damn near midnight now.  Truth be told I’m not sure I would have gone in there then.  Place was spooky as fuck.”

He poured the rest of the pitcher into his glass and took a big drink.

“But those kids did.  They weren’t happy about it but they did.  Problem was they didn’t come back.  Even taking the stairs and going slow they should’ve been down and back in 15 minutes, 20 tops.  At 30 we started getting nervous and at 45 we were ready to call the cops.  Something wasn’t right.  I had my phone out when Missouri, who’s been swilling Jager all night, announces that he’ll get them back and runs in.  Kid couldn’t write but he was quick and before we could move he was through the plywood we’d pried off and disappearing into the dark.”

Kid finished his beer.  “This is where things go to shit.  Missouri didn’t come back either.  We waited another 30 minutes.  We had to do something but no one wanted to do it.  We drew straws; I won.  Or lost.  I don’t mind telling you I nearly shit myself as I pushed through the plywood.  I had a flashlight but it didn’t do much besides create shadows that looked like Death himself.  Place was trashed; garbage all over the place, cobwebs, graffiti.  Window sills were absolutely disgusting.”

He shuddered, took a long pause.  I nudged the new bottle of whiskey towards him and he drank off the top.  Dave had edged over to hear the story and even he didn’t give a shit.  But you can bet that I’d just bought that entire bottle.

Kid looked at the bottle, considering another shot.  He pushed it away.  “I’d gone up three floors when I started to hear the tapping.  It sounds scary, I know, but the first thought I had was that the three of them had gotten together and tried to set us up.  I dashed up the next three flights and then wished I hadn’t.  Columbia kids were nowhere in sight and I’ll just tell you now, we never found them.  Missouri was lying on the floor, hair gone white as snow, tapping on the floor with an empty bottle of Bud Light.  Bottle was covered in blood.  Missouri didn’t have a drop on him.”

“I screamed and that got the rest of the crew off their asses and up the stairs.  Credit where credit’s due, when the chips were down those guys had my back.  We got Missouri down and to an ER, but he never woke up.  Doctors couldn’t tell what happened to him; no signs of injury, organs intact, brain intact, but it was like he was just frozen.  Died the next day.”

Kid put his head down and started to weep.  I’m not a big fan of other people but I put a hand on his shoulder.  Hell, I felt bad for him, but more than that I wanted to hear how it ended.  Dave was with me and pushed the bottle to the kid.  “On the house”, he said, which on other nights would have been the strangest thing I’d heard.

Kid took a big drink, and I mean a big one.  “We went about our business.  Never really talked about it.  Probably should have but how the fuck do you bring that up?  The next week our company got bought out by a bigger firm.  Didn’t know what the fuck they were doing but didn’t stop them from meddling.  And then things got worse.  Every year, on Halloween, one of the guys who’d been at the KSK house would be found somewhere, tapping on the floor with a bloody Bud Light bottle, hair white as snow.  Dead the next day, never having said a word.”

He pushed away from the bar, got off his stool, and grabbed the bottle.

“Tonight, gentlemen, I’m the only one left.”

With that he took the bottle and staggered into the night.  Never saw him again, never heard what happened to him.  The next day I went back to Dave’s and we poked around the alley behind the bar.  No sign of the kid, other than a badly smudged business card that read ‘Deadsp…'”

Author’s note:  This story was inspired by, and largely ripped off from, this story, which my mother read to me when I was but a wee Cornblower and it scared the shit out of me for a good three years afterwards.  I don’t know who the author is, unfortunately, but hat tip to them.