Lulu was a witch. The look complete with a long black dress, black boots, her hair loose. She had spent an hour in the bathroom gluing on eyelashes and painting her eyelids black. Following her sister, Emmie was a witch too. Always a half-step behind, her outfit was already tangled, creased, bent. Emmie couldn’t keep things pristine for very long. Jake followed his daughters out the door and through the neighborhood, watching the sisters’ bright orange plastic jack-o-lanterns bounce and fill up with ‘Fun-Sized’ candy bars, licorice, gummies, and all kinds of brightly colored sugary treats. Jake had dressed as Frankenstein’s Monster. Thick heeled workbooks, ripped jeans, a skin tight green cable-knit sweater, gelled black hair, a fake scar crossing his forehead, and two bolts that he had made out of papier-mâché. In his get-up he towered over every parent on the street. The sun just about to set, the temperature hovered around 40F. Chilly. They walked north down 58th street, along all the 1920s brick two story homes with the big lawns, leaded windows, and neatly trimmed shrubs. The kind of homes where university professors live. All decorated to the nines: little white shining skull lights strung up on the porches, fake foam gravestones with cheesy sayings propped up in the lawn, silhouettes of ghosts in all the windows, black cats, cauldrons. But this neighborhood went even further. They roped off the streets, closed to traffic, and went a little Halloween crazy… each consecutive year topping the previous. Creepy, yet funny music blared from huge speakers audible for 10 blocks in every direction. A car was parked off-kilter up next to a tree like it had hopped the curb and crashed in a mess by the plastic skeleton behind the wheel. Chalk art riddled the sidewalks. An inflatable haunted bounce house had been plopped in the middle of the street, and every house looked like it was in the running for The Gaudiest Halloween Decoration Award. He checked his phone. Nothing. Where the hell was Christine? Jake thought as Lulu and Emmie ran up another sidewalk, their hair bouncing behind them. She was supposed to have met them there for the exchange, but she was already 15 minutes late. “Trick or treat,” the girls said in unison. A makeshift tunnel of foam bricks had been constructed in front of this house. Standing on the porch was a man in a John Deere hat, overalls. He held onto a real chainsaw, tied to and dangling from his hip. Chainsaw Man was asking Jake’s daughters what kind of witches they were and Emmie, per usual, was giving him an earful. As he waited, Jake’s attention wandered. The street could’ve been a movie set, one of those flicks from the eighties or early 90s that featured a motley group of outcast kids finding a treasure map or opening a portal into another dimension and then all hell breaks loose. He looked down at his fingers and they were twitching, sore from the…