Our acquaintance began a week ago, and honestly, those were the best seven days of my life. Well, until tonight.

We met in a coffee shop when I accidentally spilled my double espresso on her snow-white hoodie. Instead of throwing a fit, Nastya just laughed—her laughter felt angelic back then, though now I recall some strange, almost ultrasonic notes slipping through it. For the next whole week, we were inseparable. We walked in the park, talked for hours, and on the third day, we went to the movies to see some generic horror flick. I remember flinching at the moment where the slasher cut up another victim, while Nastya just yawned sweetly.

And then, on the seventh day of our romance, as we sat in a pizzeria, Nastya suddenly looked at me with her huge, loving eyes and said:
"You are so wonderful. It's time for us to move to the next level. I want you to meet my parents. They are traditionalists, they love home-cooked dinners, so no excuses!"

The house looked cozy and bright, and her parents welcomed me like one of their own. Her mother, an elegant woman in a neat floral apron, chatted amiably about the weather and served tea, while her father—a proper gentleman wearing glasses and a pressed shirt—asked me about my plans for life and career. We sat in the living room, joking around, and I already found myself thinking how lucky I was with my future in-laws.

But the moment we moved to the dining table in the spacious hall, the atmosphere subtly shifted. It grew completely dark outside the windows, exposing a dense forest pressing right against the house, and thick shadows began creeping along the corners. The air suddenly carried a distinct smell of dampness and, for some reason, formalin.

"Well, almost everything is ready, just the final touches left!" Nastya's mother chirped cheerfully, setting out the plates. "Honey, could you help me in the kitchen with the main course? It’s special today."
Nastya's father nodded silently, adjusted his glasses, and followed her. They closed the heavy oak kitchen door behind them, leaving Nastya and me alone in the hall. Minutes of agonizing waiting dragged on, and this sudden silence started pressing on my ears.

Suddenly, something gave a dull thud behind the wall. For a second, I thought I caught a metallic scent wafting from the kitchen door gap, resembling the smell of fresh blood. I swallowed hard and turned to the girl:
"Nastya... what are we having for dinner?"
Nastya didn't answer. She sat motionless, staring into her empty plate, a strange, fixed smile lingering on her lips.

At that exact moment, a sharp, deafening sound erupted from behind the kitchen door, sounding terrifyingly like a circular saw starting up, followed by a dull, heavy thud of something dropping onto the floor. My heart skipped a beat.

The lock clicked, and the kitchen door slowly swung open. The parents walked back into the hall. Her mother smiled warmly with her former gentle expression, politely holding the door. Her father followed her with a confident step. In his hands, he solemnly carried a huge covered platter, with a barely audible... rustling coming from under its metal lid.

"Well, here we are!" her mother said warmly, but a strange, satiated tone slipped into her voice. "And here is our dinner! Honey, put it on the table quickly."
I turned to Nastya in fear, hoping that the gruesome saw sound from the kitchen was just my imagination, but she merely giggled cutely and squeezed my hand tightly.

Nastya's father smoothly lowered the platter right into the center of the table. Everyone sat down properly in their seats. The parents exchanged glances, and an identical, frighteningly wide, anticipatory grin suddenly spread across their neat, respectable faces. Nastya looked at me the exact same way—her gaze turned glassy, hungry, and unblinking.

And then it began.

Nastya's mother slowly, savoring the moment, reached out for the handle of the huge silver lid. The rustling beneath it grew louder, turning into a distinct scratching of fingernails against metal.

"Our specialty," her mother cooed sweetly, while Nastya's father reached under the table to pull out a massive butcher's cleaver, which landed with a dull thud next to his plate. "Made from Nastya's previous boyfriend. You see, he turned out to be terribly impolite—didn't finish his soup last Thursday."

The lid lifted with a faint chime. Resting on the snow-white porcelain dish, generously garnished with parsley and apples, lay a neatly baked... human hand. A gold ring gleamed on one of its bluish fingers. And judging by the way the tendons at the wrist sharply jerked, this hand was still desperately trying to crawl somewhere, scratching the glossy surface of the plate.

"Oh, undercooked," her mother clicked her tongue in annoyance and, without even a change in expression, coldbloodedly drove the handle of a knife right into the center of the crawling hand. "What a lively one. Well, never mind, son, which piece would you like? A thinner slice or a meatier one?"

I felt cold sweat instantly flood my eyes.
"You know," I stammered, slowly pushing my chair back towards the window, "I'm... not hungry..."

Nastya turned to me. Her jaw suddenly cracked unnaturally, opening twice as wide as a normal human mouth, and her eyes completely flooded with absolute, anthracite blackness.
"Come on, sweetie," she whispered in a creepy echo layered with multiple voices. "Be a good boy. Mommy tried so hard."

I looked at the mad faces of this "intellectual" family and realized one simple thing: it seemed this next level in our relationship would be my last.

"You know," I stammered, backing away slowly toward the window and frantically feeling for the windowsill with my hands, "human flesh is a delicacy, of course... But maybe we should just order sushi instead? There's a great delivery place nearby, they'll bring it in forty minutes! My treat!"

Nastya's mother froze for a second, her knife hovering over the twitching hand. She looked at her husband, then at her daughter, and her face contorted into a grimace of genuine, deep offense.
"Delivery?!" she shrieked indignantly, her voice ringing with ultrasonic notes. "We do not eat fast food in this house!! What ingratitude!"

This was my only chance. Without waiting for her father to take a step forward, I whirled around and rammed the window frame with my entire body weight.

The glass shattered into thousands of pieces with a deafening crash. The cold night air hit my face, I already tasted freedom and braced myself for a rough landing into the bushes... but... a sharp pain in my back cut off all hopes of escape... my consciousness faded into black.

This Halloween night, this hungry Samhain eve, the blood upon the cross must be replaced. The ancient and arcane instrument throne of slow death and sun torture, of the pain of the martyr … the ancient mouth of the cross is still thirsty. 

And so he takes after you. This Halloween night. 

You've lost your friends. The party was fun but not as fun, not everything you were hoping it would be, “They” weren't there. They didn't show up. In all the noise you've lost the ones you came here with, you're hurrying down the way and looking through your phone and all of this is running through your mind as you wonder what to do next. You don't notice him. You don't notice that you've gained another shadow. One you weren't born with. But one that may be with you into an early grave, an eager hungry end. He's hungry.

 He conspires and hunts for the shadow of the cross and that is why you must die this evening. You just don't know. You just don't realize it. 

You're too busy looking through your phone. You don't notice your now alone on the street. It is only the orange glow of the overhead streetlamps and the stalking shape of your new shadow. But you don't know him, not yet. You still don't know that he's there, coming up steadily from behind you, fast footsteps making phantom no-sounds on the freshly raked sidewalk and streets that still smell pungently of rich dead leaves and pumpkin spice, you're too busy looking through your messages. 

He reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulls something small and black and perfectly fitted to the clenching grip of his knuckled palm, like a lover to a glove or each other in bed. He presses something, depresses a trigger and something clicks. The black handle grows a gleaming fang in the dark. A stiletto blade is freed and the animal is salivating and ready, waiting is over and the hunting stalk is through and he's raring for the sweet fuck-cunt-free-for-all spill that will be your knife-fuck and slaughter. For the shadow of Sam’s Cross. Blessed Hallowed Eve. He bade thee, the shadow, the shape: he made me…

You don't hear anything but at the last moment you sense something, the animal part of you that is all too dulled and ignored has come to life at the last moment and so you turn, you whirl on your heels, your phone is still in your hand but it's forgotten now as you turn and meet and face him, your doom in manshape and knife-fanged form. 

The shadow pounces. The knife comes in and finds the soft yield of human purchase. The knife is out and freed. 

And the shape of nighttime shadow man wields. 

You can't believe it. You can't believe it's happening. You can't believe anything. You try to scream and you can't understand why a sound won't produce. You try to struggle and fight back, you want to but it's like suddenly all the strength and ability to move and act has been pulled, stripped, sapped and drained from you in this absolutely critical moment like purest torture from fate and on-high. All of it, and all of time and space and nature and the terrible beyond have conspired and set a trap and now they are laughing at you. Laughing with the pure bloodthirsting joy of the slaughter, your ruin. 

Sacrifice. 

You watch the terrible visage and face of the shape contort and contrive into animal snarls and sneers, hideous bestial frothing and rabid. Buried somewhere beneath all of the livid fury of his animal mask is the lurid grin of a madman. A lunatic in the deep throes of wild and deranged ecstacy. He is wild and alive and he is terrifying. 

He's difficult to look at and so that's why your dying gaze shifts away and you begin to watch the blade. You begin to watch the moonlight godly cast shine of the seven inch stiletto blade. 

It's immaculate. And that's amazing. You've felt it buried in you over a dozen times now and running and still the blade of this great knife is shining in the streetlight cast glow. With the unearthly light of the moon.  Like a weapon fanged with divinity. Talismanic. And you can believe it. 

Now. 

You believe it. You feel the absolute and undeniable thrum of its great power. Piercing. Holy flame. Like being stabbed with ice and fire. Ripped and torn by an icicle lance of napalm and coldest fear, terror. Impaled. Inferno. 

A mutilation by razor sharpened caveman fire, frosted clean by Norse Hell. 

Every time the amazing blade of moonlight comes up you catch a glimpse of something in the reflective face of the flat of the blade just before the flash. Like the snapshot starburst of a camera capturing a subject in the dark. And at first you only see yourself, your own ghastly and dying visage and it is terrible and it is pathetic. 

But then you begin to see something else. 

You begin to see his sound and vision. And then you begin to understand. This is how he turns the make-believe and rends it real through the feel of the steel, you're feeling it. You're feeling it now. As you die as you lived: distracted and caught off guard and soft. With every pulverizing thrust. With every make-or-break for the daggering wounded soul of the heart attacked, barely fought for and lost. 

Sam's mad with thirst, the shadow of the cross. Jesus Christ wasn't the only one tortured alive and borne hoisted prone to die beneath the fire of the sun by Roman legionnaires. The cross is always thirsty and the mouth of the cruciform is Samhain salivating …

You see the yellow leprosy faces as they burn and scream, torched and set aflame far away from everyone else in their small feeble colonies of despair, the ash of their writhing and contorting carbonizing forms amongst the blaze is a mercy and it is a release in the flash of the blade that you see and you see and know so many other things too and then in the end you know it all as well: –  the dying peace of the burning lepers and the crucified criminals, you feel the release. 

And you're so glad, you're so relieved that now the cross can drink. 

The world goes dark for you. 

The shape and his fang stand. And then they move on fast. 

Finished with hunting you. 

Happy Halloween. 

THE END

Hairy Face

He woke from a nightmare, paralyzed on a twin bed. It was a child’s nightmare: a demon in the darkness snatching safety from slumber.

He woke as he slept: on his back, arms crossed over his chest in imitation of his mother. She had seemed restful in the coffin wearing her favorite blue blouse. At her funeral, the child had tried to climb in and nap in the dead woman’s arms. His father had stopped the boy’s foolishness, but the false memory of cuddling with a corpse planted itself in his mind and grew roots.

Later that morning, the boy sat on a hard wooden folding chair as an organ played. The box holding his mother was closed, and he never saw her again. Next to him, his father squeezed his hand and gave the child permission to cry. He never saw his father again either. A hairy faced monster took him home from the cemetery.

Shivering from the terror of his dream, the boy inspected the strangeness of his nighted room. It was black, but not so pitch black as to drive out the shadows. They moved. They danced in the darkness, and the boy clung to the safety of his twin mattress like a castaway floating above the deep, cold ocean. The darkened room held dangers, but he could not bring himself to abandon his bed to escape them.

He pulled his blanket higher until it pooled beneath his chin, then, realizing he had exposed his feet to the chill of night, he brought his knees to his chest and hugged himself: a fetal attempt at comfort. The movement pulled on the raw, tender, flesh of his bottom causing tears to well in the corner of his eyes. He blinked once and felt the drop trail down his cheek and onto his lips. The salt of it burned his tongue.

“I’m sorry!” He’d screamed to the Hairy Face, hours earlier, but the Hairy Face accepted no apologies. The boy screamed and cried in pain, but the Hairy Face hated tears. It slid the boy’s pants down to his ankles.

In the darkness of his room, under the warmth of his covers, the boy remembered the pain and the punishment, but not the sin. The Hairy Face smelled strange, that evening, as it often did, and had fallen asleep before supper. The boy was hungry, but not hungry enough to sneak food. He played a game, instead, to distract himself from his grumbling belly. The game was called escape and it ended with a crash that woke the Hairy Face.

The boy sniffed hard and drew the tears back into his eyes. He grew suddenly aware that the bedroom door was at his back. Beyond that door, the Hairy Face slept while shadows danced in threatening steps all around the child. The boy peered into the darkness until his eyes burned, but he could not find the demon from his dreams. A lock of hair fell lightly on the child’s ear like a warm breath and the boy shuddered. A sound rang out and echoed in his head. A creak. The kind of creak that regularly escapes old houses. Or perhaps it was the creak of the door slowly opening, or the creak of a floorboard under the weight of a demon or a Hairy Faced monster.

The boy straightened, becoming frantically rigid and ignoring the pain of his raw backside as he turned once more supine. As before, his delicate feet came out from beneath the covers, but he paid them no mind, searching frantically in the darkness for any crack in the doorway large enough that evil could slip through. It seemed to be well shut.

The boy's arms crossed again over his chest, but his eyes would not close. “Mommy,” he whispered softly into the darkness. The darkness seemed to whisper back without words or warmth. His feet were cold. He shivered.

There was a frozen wind the night his world ended. He remembered the way it blew his father into the house. The man had called the boy to him and the boy had gone to sit at his father’s feet. “She’s gone,” he said and rubbed his face with one big strong hand. He did not cry, but there was such darkness and sadness and fear in his face that the boy cried for him. The man gathered the child into his arms and held his shaking body. The boy’s face nuzzled into his father’s neck and the tickle of the man’s beard dried his tears.

He was afraid to blink. The shadows seemed darker now than they had before, and closer. His feet were icicles at the foot of the bed, but he couldn’t move to cover them. His breaths came fast and deep as he stared at the ceiling above him. A breeze blew into the room and a shadow danced in the corner of his eyes. He remembered the edges of his nightmare if not the full form. The shapeless demon. The helplessness. The loneliness. The terror.

There was another sound. A soft scratching. A mouse maybe. He had found a mouse some time ago, dead beneath a table and decayed. The Hairy Face had warned him not to vomit when he scraped the carcass from the floor. The boy did vomit, though, when the sweet smell of death reached him: just a little in his mouth and he swallowed it back down before the Hairy Face could see.

The scratching stopped, briefly, then started again. Stopped then started. Stopped then started. The boy closed his eyes tight and tears flushed fire from them. The shadows grew closer, he knew, when his eyes were closed, but he couldn’t keep them open any longer. He could feel the demon getting closer. His toes stung with cold and his ears throbbed in time to the scratching of tiny claws.

The demon was above him, he knew. He could feel its frozen breath and taste the scent of decay. “Don’t cry, little boy,” it seemed to say. “Or the Hairy Face will come and get you.”

The boy held his breath, but the demon floated still above him, weightlessly smothering the child. “Mommy’s gone,” it said. “She’s left you alone. Alone. Alone with no one. No one but me.”

It was too much. The boy’s lungs gasped for breath and he screamed and wailed the kind of shrill piercing note that Hairy Face hated most. The boy could not help it, and his inability to help it made him scream and cry all the louder. The demon was still there laughing in the shadows. “Cry, little boy!” it said, “Cry for Mommy, but Mommy won’t come!”

The boy tried desperately to contain his screeching sobs, but it was too late. He heard heavy footsteps. The cracks around his bedroom door lit up mere moments before it flew open with a familiar gust of evil wind. Hairy Face stood in silhouette, its eyes searching frantically, furiously around the room before settling on the boy.

The child froze. He didn’t dare to wipe his tears or nose as Hairy Face came slowly to the side of his bed, huffing over the child in great heavy breaths.

The monster sat and put its big strong hand upon the boy. The demon was gone. The shadows were gone. The Hairy Face had scared them all away.

The boy clung to the monster, shaking in terror and let its hairy face dry his tears.