A harrowing Halloween

'There's a witch at the start of my route and a haunted house halfway through. Can you handle that, Squirt?”

I nodded with a gulp.

My older brother, Gary, and I were underway on my sought-after adventure of accompanying him on his Sunday morning paper route. A proud eighth-grader, he had resisted the humiliation of a tag-along ten-year-old sibling. But then Mom interceded on my behalf. Gary was stuck.

In the early morning darkness of that Halloween Day of 1948, we made our first stop at an apartment house near downtown Guthrie Center.

'Okay, kid, this is your chance,” Gary taunted. 'The witch lives at the top of these stairs. Just drop the paper on the door mat.”

'Aren't you … uh… going with me?”

'Nah. You said you could handle it. I'll wait here.”

Reaching deep for courage I climbed the long, dimly-lit stairway. When I reached the top and looked up, a stooped woman with a withered face and a long black gown was waiting. 'I've been looking for you,” she said in a cracked voice.

A pallid hand with prominent purple veins and gnarled, bony fingers reached toward me.

Thoughts of Hansel and Gretel flashed in my mind.

I dropped the newspaper and fled down the stairs, two steps at a time.

'I saw the witch,” I gasped to my brother.

'You're lucky she didn't grab you,” he replied with a toothy grin.

I indeed felt fortunate, and proud of having survived my first paperboy test. The only remaining trial was the haunted house, or so I thought.

We worked our way up Tower Hill, so-called because of the location of the town's water tower at the top, dropping newspapers at a series of front doors. All went well until we reached a two-story, ramshackle house illuminated by a full moon.

'This is the haunted house,” Gary announced.

Seeing was certainly believing. The crumbling wooden structure was starved for paint, its front porch rotting, many of its windows boarded or cracked and flanked by drooping shutters. A faint light from inside added to the spooky atmosphere.

'Does anyone live there?” I asked.

'Look, dummy, do ya think I would deliver a newspaper to a vacant house?”

Gary's response was logical, as was an obvious follow-up question: 'Who?”

But I didn't want to know and didn't ask. The decrepit house reminded me too much of a Frankenstein movie.

'Put the paper by the door on the front porch,” Gary directed.

Reaching once again for courage, I made my way up a long, broken sidewalk leading to the sagging steps of the decaying porch. Tall pine trees, whirrrrring in a crisp Iowa breeze, lined either side of my route. When I reached throwing distance, I hurled the paper onto the porch and beat a retreat to my waiting brother.

'Good job,” he said. 'We're half done. Let's take a break.”

Gary crossed 12th Street with me on his heels and entered the town cemetery next to the water tower. I stayed close to my bold brother as he took a seat on a tombstone.

'Here, sit down beside me,” Gary offered.

I took a seat on the cold granite. Dark clouds crossing in front of the moon created an eerie appearance of movement on the ground. A ghostly calm surrounded us as my usually talkative brother went mute, leaving only the sound of the wind whistling overhead through crooked, swaying tree limbs.

Gary turned his head one way and then another, apparently looking for something. He finally spoke: 'Ya know, Squirt, with a full moon it's a perfect night for grave robbers.”

I clinched my teeth to keep them from chattering. More silence followed.

'Did you see that?” Gary whispered.

'Wh…wh…what?” I stammered.

'I don't think we're alone. Somebody's behind us.”

'Where? Where?”

'Look out! Here he comes!”

A cold hand grabbed the back of my neck.

'Yeow!!!” I shrieked.

With an icy shiver triggering my legs into full speed, I zoomed out of the cemetery, down Tower Hill, and home in record time.

My paperboy aspirations were placed on hold that Halloween morning. And my wily big brother must have smiled as his skullduggery eliminated the indignity of a tag-along kid.

' Carroll McKibbin is a native Iowan who now lives in San Luis Obispo, Calif., as a retired Cal Poly dean. Comments: cmckibbi@calpoly.edu