Grade 4. My first real Halloween party, and I wanted it to be great.

 

My parents let me spray paint a tombstone on the concrete wall of our unfinished basement, and build a life-size cardboard coffin. I constructed a haunted house of bedsheets the length of the building, with dangling ropes and rubber strips, and simple obstacles to step over, under and around, all much more menacing in the shadows.

 

I hadn't gotten over my fear of the dark, and I was deathly afraid of being in the basement alone (terrified with the lights off), but to make sure I could see well enough to safely guide each guest by the hand, one by one through the haunted space, I sat trembling in the nearly pitch black basement for 20 minutes before the party goers started to arrive, waiting for my mother to send someone down. 

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That's when she was born, the little ghoul in the basement. Since then, she has come back to me every year, usually in late summer, ready to build creatures for Halloween. Sure, she's there throughout the other months, peeking through my eyes, searching for all things delightfully dark. 

 

But it's in August when she whispers "Is it time to sit in the dark?".

 

Yes, Friday. It's time. What friends shall we create this year?