bell, book and candy

 

On Halloween 60 years ago, my father left my mother.

   He left for his boss's secretary, though we didn't know that at the time. Of course when we found out she became the evil witch. 

  My mother was prostrated. So I hastily helped devise Halloween costumes for my siblings and took them trick or treating.  Chris was a tree, wrapped in brown paper bags and carrying a branch in each hand. Ben was a sheet ghost, with eyeholes that kept slipping out of place, in the age old fashion of such costumes. Erin, at that time only five, was a gypsy. It was dark as we plied the back streets near our Briarcliff house, dark as my fears. Things I had no control over were changing.

   I thought I had exorcised these ghosts, but memories come back around. 

   And here they are again. Another year. The haunting.