Originally Published November 1st, 2025 in Flash Phantoms Magazine
Mez and I arrive at Anton’s place as the golden sun sets on a world of copper and plum, a dash of remaining emerald. Mez dragged me here, promising a legendary party.
Rumors were the Chernik family had a few skeletons in their closet- missing persons on the estate, esoteric meetings attended by the upper crust, a fifth brother, kept locked in the basement. Everyone assumed their wealth, which made Carnegie look quaint, was used to sweep these stories away. Their four boys held plenty of ragers on the massive estate, the most raucous occurring on Halloween.
Walking up the driveway, we pass a genuine pumpkin patch, a few lengths of white sheet resembling ghosts, and a cemetery I hope is for show. Most intriguing is the large skeleton standing nearly two stories tall, a common novelty. This specimen doesn't appear to have been acquired from the local hardware store - the bones are worn and cracked, oddly discolored.
I take one last breath of crisp autumn air before Mez, strong despite her sticklike frame, tugs me inside and I am subsumed by the scent of pot and sour alcohol, buried in an ocean of thumping sound. She vanishes into the living room, shouting something inaudible. I pass Elvis, the Joker, and Michael Meyers en route to the kitchen. A bowl of eyeballs sits on the table. Peeled grapes, but these look too real, are the irises different colors? I pour myself a drink. Then Mez is there pulling me into the basement, I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of my ossified self.
More crypt than basement, water drips from stone walls and in the air lingers a smell of decay. In the distance four cloaked figures stand in a circle, between them a husk of a small corpse. There are whispers about a banquet, then chanting begins. Mez looks at me, mouths “Anton”.
Other voices join, swelling impossibly to hundreds while the room remains nearly empty. When the lights go out the chanting stops. A flash and the room is full, shoulder to shoulder with corpses standing in all manner of decomposition. The body in the center of the circle is now a skeletal framework of bleached remains.
Somewhere upstairs there is a giant crash. We run.
The house is empty but music still plays. Mez shoots out the front door and is instantly snatched into the air, screams cut short. I stop just shy of the threshold. Outside, sheets billow in odious moonlight.
Terror compels me to run and by some miracle I make it to the car. Four cloaked figures stand on the roof of the house, watching. And with a crash a massive skeleton emerges from the woods to my left, a trail of Mez’s hair still clinging to its cuticles as it swipes the windshield. I whip the car around as the intervals of bone clicking on asphalt diminish. Depressing the accelerator, I wonder how long I have left.
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