A Halloween Tale of Terror

©2010 Susan Noyes Anderson (poetry only)

Suzy McMurphy loved Halloween fun.

She loved scaring her friends most of all.

She gave them the shivers. She gave them the creeps.

Suzy spooked them and made their skin crawl.

She was never a princess, a frog, or a nurse.

Ghoulish costumes were all she would choose.

Her Halloween glee came from tricks, never treats...

and from scaring folks out of their shoes!

Of all trick-or-treaters who came to their doors,

parents dreaded sweet Suzy the most.

Each year, she turned into a demon or witch, but

this year, she turned into a ghost!

Suzy left her warm house with a flashlight in hand,

then she started to slither and slide.

She met up with the neighborhood kids on the street.

They were walking, but she seemed to glide.

It was only pretend; she was wearing a sheet,

but as Suzy swooped up to each door,

she was moaning and wailing and haunting so well

that her pals couldn't take any more.

They said, "Stop it, Suzy! You're freaking us out!"

But she only smiled bigger...groaned louder.

By the end of the night, all her friends were a wreck.

Knees were knocking! (She'd never felt prouder.)

Her bag was full up; it was time to head home;

Suzy sent off her crew with a shriek.

“Say good-bye,” her friends begged. Suzy just shook her head.

As a ghost, she preferred not to speak.

When she turned up her street, Suzy felt a slight chill,

and a gust of wind swept down the lane.

Did the street lights seem dimmer…more ghostly, somehow?

Was that mist?...Was it starting to rain?

Suzy shivered. She knew it was not from the cold

that the hairs on her neck slowly rose.

She tried to quit gliding and run for her door,

but that isn’t the way a ghost goes.

A ghost goes straight up, and that’s just what she did.

Suzy rose, then she floated away.

She skimmed through the treetops and crept like a cloud

to a place that was cold, damp, and gray.

At last, she was home. As she reached for the gate,

it creaked once and then swung open wide.

She gazed at the graveyard in horror and moaned,

but a strange power pulled her inside.

“Welcome home,” the wind whispered, or was it the spirits?

She knew them as voices of doom.

But never had fear known a fear like the one

Suzy felt, when she saw her own tomb!

She reached for the roses that someone had placed

at the foot of her newly dug grave,

then looked at the words on the headstone and read,

while the dread hit her heart like a wave.

“Suzy McMurphy,” it said. “Here she lies…

And forevermore, here she will lay.”

As she felt herself shifting and changing, like vapor,

the ground started calling her name.

In terror, she screamed. “Suzy...Suzy...” she heard.

“Suzy, wake up. It’s just a bad dream!”

The sight of her mom at the side of her bed

was the sweetest thing she'd ever seen.

Her Halloween bag, filled with treats, was right there

where she’d left it a few hours before.

Suzy smiled with relief and then laughed right out loud.

But she froze when Mom said one thing more...

“Here’s the rose that you left on the floor.”

∞§∞

This Halloween tale is dedicated to Jeremiah, Carli, and Bryce...

the most spook-tacular grandkids in the world.

with lot of love always

from their scary old Grandma A.

=)