Make Malden Great Again
A Halloween Story
I love Halloween.
Always have.
I grew up in a small town in
southeast Missouri. A vibrant little town of about 5000. Main street
lined with busy mom and pop shops and a single screen movie theater
(where I saw such classics as Blacula, Children Shouldn't Play With
Dead Things, and The Green Slime). A quiet little town surrounded by
cotton, corn and soybean fields. But what I loved most about Malden
was that it was a town that loved and embraced Halloween. The
downtown store windows were painted in Halloween themes by high
school art students. Jack-o-lanterns were carved and set out except
for houses that you knew not to visit. Whether you were young or
old Halloween always kicked off with the parade. Sidewalks full of
parents with children dressed in cheap plastic masks, older kids
dressed as vampires, werewolves, witches and mummies. The parade was
your standard small town parade, the high school band followed by
floats, Shriners driving around in little cars, the Halloween queen,
and a firetruck with someone dressed in a weird costume of glowing
orbs and tendrils throwing out candy. With Halloween officially
started kids scattered to roam the streets unattended for hours. Once
we outgrew trick or treating we'd spend the night rolling or egging
houses and avoiding the local police. It was a great time to live in
Malden.
No one ever talked about the occasional child that went
missing.
This next part I've never
shared with anyone and spent years convincing myself that I'd dreamed
it.
My junior year in high
school I was out with some friends egging teachers houses and we had
gotten separated when the police showed up and we scattered. I had to
walk by the cemetery that was near my house. This was an old cemetery
with ancient trees and a gloom about it even during the day. I always
tried to avoid it, it seemed oddly alive. But that night I had no
choice unless I wanted to take a chance on getting caught by the
police. As I was taking the back way around to get home I heard
chanting and noticed a green glow coming from the oldest part of the
cemetery. As I got closer I saw a small group of people standing
around a fire chanting. Some of the faces I recognized but some I
didn't, the mayor, a bank president, the school superintendent, a
couple of business owners and several councilmen. The low chanting
was mostly unintelligible except for the phrase Yog-Sothoth repeated
several times. In the middle of the circle by the strange green fire was a
squirming, whimpering burlap bag. As the chanting grew louder
everyone in the circle stepped forward and held up a long bladed
knife. I took off running and didn't wait to see what I knew was
coming next.
I've grown up, moved away,
raised a family, and don't make it back to my hometown very often but
I've seen it suffer the same fate of many small towns across the
country. Slowly decaying, the movie theater long gone, empty store
fronts and overgrown lots lining main street, a declining population
as folks leave for lack of jobs. I've heard the combination of
reasons – the bypass around town diverting traffic, Walmart,
decline of family farms, bad decisions by city government, but I know
they aren't true. I've read one by one the obituaries of the town
fathers I saw standing in that circle so many years ago. I know the
real reason, I know.
I've grown nostalgic for my hometown and the
Halloweens of my youth. Halloween has become big business. The rush
and excitement of going from house to house replaced by trunk or
treat, homemade costumes replaced by slutty this and slutty that
store bought outfits, the simple eeriness of a single candle lit
Jack-o-lantern on the porch replaced by tacky and overdone yard
decorations.
So on this dark moonless
Halloween night I've come home.
I've come home to make
Malden great again.
