"Hate Halloween," said Killup. "Hate being bothered.

Doorbell starts ringing and goes on forever. Drives me crazy."

Michael looked at his father, slightly shaking his head.

Maybe he was the meanest man on the block, but he was also a lonely old widower.

"Go home with me," Michael said, b.u.t.toning his overcoat.

"I invited you."

Killup shook his head. "Those kids would burn down the house if I didn't stay here and protect it.

There's no end to the trouble they cause. When are you coming back?"

"Tomorrow after work," said Michael. "Your refrigerator's almost empty. Five eggs, half a pound of swiss cheese, a tub of whipped b.u.t.ter, and half a gallon of b.u.t.termilk. Choles terol City. I filled the thing up on Sat.u.r.day. Have you been stuffing yourself lately?"

"I'm hungry all the time," said Killup. "Nothing else to do except eat."

Michael reached into his pocket, took out a piece of the cheap candy he'd bought, untwirled the purple cellophane wrap per, and popped it into his mouth.

"It tastes terrible," said Michael, grimacing. "So don't eat it all yourself." He opened the front door, stepped out onto the porch.

"Not a chance," said Killup. His father had already pushed the door half closed, as if to show how eagerly he antic.i.p.ated Michael's departure. "Bring me some waffles tomorrow night. Real frozen ones.

Not the kind you pour out of a carton.

Michael straightened the lapels on his father's cardigan.

He saw that the rip in the shoulder seam was wider than two days ago. In the voice that parents employ to demand a clean room of a ten-year-old, Michael said, "When I come back tomorrow, I want to see all that candy gone, you understand?"

Killup made no reply but silently adjusted the sign that read, NO SALESMEN, CENSUS TAKERS, OR RELIGIOUS FANATICS so that it covered the doorbell.

"If you're not nice to those kids tonight, you're going to deserve anything they can do to you," Michael warned his father. He uncovered the doorbell again, then stalked off toward his car in the driveway.

Killup's only good-bye to his son was to shut the front door more loudly than was at all necessary. The dull red oak leaves swirled up for a moment, then settled again on the narrow, railed porch of sinking boards.

"Trick or treat," said the child in a fuzzy white suit and a slick white mask with white plastic whiskers and a big wicker Easter basket that danced before Killup.

"I'm sick," Killup said. "See my brace? Why are you bothering me?

Didn't you see I didn't turn on the porch light?

Go annoy somebody else."

"Trick or treat, mister," said the Rabbit again, as if it might have thought Killup's brace and invective were only a sort of Halloween costume for adults.

"I don't have any candy," said Killup, the candy clearly visible on the table behind him. "Wouldn't give you any if I did."

He slammed the door in the Rabbit's whimsical face. The Rabbit didn't run off but quietly reached into the bottom if its Easter basket and withdrew a can of flourescent orange spray paint. The Rabbit shook it as quietly as possible, then thumbed off the cap. Its white-gloved finger was on the b.u.t.ton when the door suddenly flew open again. Killup took an admo nitory swipe through the air and scowled at the Rabbit.

"I know your tricks. Don't even think about spraying this door with that paint. I've already called the police, and they're on their way."

The Rabbit ran off into the night. Killup smiled his first real smile of the day and quietly shut the door.

He padded back toward his chair in the living room, moving not much faster and with little more ease than he'd shown earlier when he'd tried to make his son feel guilty about not helping him lock the windows. Killup was genuinely a weak man.

If he wanted to look to the left, he had to turn his whole body that way. Any movement of his neck caused a sharp pain that was followed by a dull pain that turned into a headache. His chair was placed so he could look directly ahead at the television. Here he stayed all day, ignoring the doorbell, ignoring the telephone (unless he thought it might be Michael), getting up only to go to the bathroom or to fumble in the kitchen drawer Michael kept full of cigarettes. Just as he was easing himself down into his chair again, the door buzzer sounded once more.

He sat down, determined to ignore it.

It buzzed again. Then again, too insistently to ignore.

This one wore a clown's suit, with a woolly white wig and a peaked cap. The Clown's mask was dead white with splotched red cheeks and a wide, lurid grin.

"Trick or treat, mister . . ."

"Go home," said Killup. "There's no candy here. No free food. No treats. And if any of you kids soap my windows, I'm calling the police. After I shoot you. After I bang your head against that porch rail.

After I pour hot grease down your throat with a ladle."

He slammed the door.

The buzzer sounded again immediately.

Killup flung open the door. "I thought I told youa""

"Trick or treat" said the Devil. Pointed ears, slanted eyes, diamond-shaped mouth, and painted flames on his suit.

"Did you just change masks?" asked Killup. There was no sign of the Clown.

"Trick or treat," said the Devil, holding open his bag.

Killup slammed the door.

The doorbell buzzed again immediately.

"Trick or treat," he heard through the closed door.

"Trick or treat," emphasized with a stomping on the floorboards.

"Go to h.e.l.l! You little monster . . . Go to h.e.l.l!"

There was silence for a moment. Killup sighed.

"Trick or treat, Trick or treat, Trick or treat!"

"Candy?" cried Killup grimly, glaring at the closed door.

"You want candy?"

He grabbed up one of the three bowls of candy and strode off to the kitchen with ita"despite the pain the motion and speed caused in his neck and in the joints of his hips. He pulled honey from one of the cabinets and poured it over the candy. He took a plastic container of white glue and squirted it over the honey. Once again the refrigerator door opened of its own accord. He smeared a large dollop of mayonnaise over the honey, then broke open the largest of the five eggs on the top. He stirred the contents of the shallow dish with the blade of a rusting knife. The buzzer still buzzed. The Devil still chanted "Trick or Treat" and stamped his feet on the porch in a nauseating rhythm.

"I have candy," Killup said with grim glee as he opened the door.

"Goblin candy."

The Devil cringed backward, but Killup grabbed the edge of his bag and spilled the mixture into the sack over the Devil's other loot. Killup laughed as the Devil stalked off into the night.

"Tell your friends!" Killup called after.

Evidently the Devil did warn the other trick-or-treaters, for the buzzer didn't sound again. Killup watched sitcoms and didn't laugh. Killup watched a movie made for television that was about a disease he'd never heard of and fell asleep before any of the actors died of it.

The door buzzer jerked him awake.

"Eleven-thirty," he complained, looking at his watch.

"d.a.m.n kids."

He listened for the buzzer to repeat. It didn't. The television showed only static. He changed the channel but couldn't find a picture. He turned off the set and lit a cigarette.

He inhaled deeply. The buzzer sounded again.

Even stiffer than usual with sleep, Killup rose from the chair and went cautiously to the window. The buzzer sounded again. He pried open the slats of the blinds and peered out.

The porch light was on, though he was certain he'd turned it off. Dull red oak leaves blew down the length of the porch.

The hanging swing rattled on its chains. But no trick-or treater was therea"neither Rabbit, nor lurid Clown, nor painted Devil.

"Good," he said, turning away. The blinds snapped back into place.

The buzzer sounded again.

"Tricks," Killup breathed in anger as he stalked toward the entrance way. A chill October wind blew open the front door just as he reached for the k.n.o.b.

"Trick or treat," said the Goblin. It wore a belted, hooded robe. The toes of its shoes turned up and were belled.

Its mask was dark, elongated, and furrowed. The eyes behind it were tiny, black, and twinkling. A stiff taila"operated by batter, Killup surmiseda"swished right and left behind the Goblin. Swished the way a cat's tail sometimes swishes, in leisurely contempt.

"No," said Killup. "You're not getting any candy. It's too late. I don't have any left. I gave it all away.

Never had any to begin with."

He slammed the door and shot the bolt in the lock. "Trick or treat," sounded the Goblin from outside.

The k.n.o.b turned, the door jarred against the bolt. The Goblin was trying to get in.

"Trick or treat."

"Go away!" Killup cried. "It's almost midnight!"

"No!"

Killup went to the door, turned the bolt, and flung the door wide. "It's too late to be out trick-or-treating!" he cried.

He looked down the length of the porch.

No Goblin.

The Goblin was obviously hiding in the dark bushes beyond the railing.

As soon as he shut the door again, the Goblin would return.

"It's nearly midnight," Killup called into the darkness.

"Go home! Tell your mother I said you were a wicked child."

He waited a moment. Silence. Stillness. He waited another moment.

Still nothing.

He slowly pushed the door shut. He slowly shot the bolt into the lock.

The Goblin kicked open the door.

Sere leaves and a cold wind blew in on Killup.

"Trick or treat," said the Goblin, and, holding his bag of coa.r.s.e burlap open before him, took two deliberate steps into Killup's house.

In the light of the hallway the trick-or-treater's mask seemed a very fine piece of the modeler's work.

The furrows deepened when the Goblin spoke. The flesh around the black, twinkling eyes creased when the Goblin grinned at Killup.

The Goblin's gloves were on a par with the mask, eight inch fingers, gnarled skin, scales and ridges that bent and stretched as the Goblin delicately plucked a single candy from one of the dishes on the table.

The Goblin delicately dropped the wrapped candy into his burlap bag.

He reached for another.

Killup grabbed at the Goblin's hand angrily, in order to pull off the glove and expose the childish hand beneath.

But the Goblin was quick, twisting its hand so that it s.n.a.t.c.hed not another piece of wrapped candy but Killup's wrist.w.a.tch, nearly pulling it over his wrist, over his palm, sliding it past his fingers.

Terrified and incensed by this intrusion, Killup grabbed the Goblin by the shoulders and tried to push him out the door.

The Goblin slipped out of his grasp and fell backward on the floor. Before Killup could react, the Goblin turned the neatest of neat backward somersaults and was upright upon the threshold.

Then, with hardly a bending of the knees, the Goblin leapt up and backward, neatly balancing on the rotten porch rail. It was not something Killup could have done as a child. It was not something he had ever seen anyone do.