An Oxblood Thread

Day one of my routine of trying to write 250 words per day.

I can trace the lineage of my fear back through the years, a thin oxblood thread that neatly bisects my teenage years, back to a dreary weekend at the end of October 1986. Trick or treaters weren’t really a thing back then, bar an occasional handful of waifs and strays who would apologetically turn up at the door dressed in a crinkly bin bag and a hat that would slide down their foreheads, covering their eyes as they’d hold out a Netto carrier bag earnestly, waiting for their treat. There were still things around to remind you that it was the time spooky things would happen; things would float by your window, tapping on the panes, asking to be let in. The things that lived in silhouettes, things that disappeared when the lights came on and reappeared when the door was shut and the darkness flooded back, those would come alive more than any other night.I’d heard a noise downstairs, laughing, shouting, and the sounds of things being knocked on the floor. I crawled downstairs, taking care to place my feet at the very edge of each step to make sure that it didn’t creak, and peeked through the bannisters. My parents would tell me later, as I lay in my bed, every light turned on, that the tall, shadowed figure that had glanced at me with peircing eyes, white stage paint and blood red lipstick smeared indiscriminately across its face, was just our parents friend Jack, who I’d met multiple times before.