by Darmon Richter

Created on: January 24, 2011

Wheezing like an old dog and clutching at the banister for support, Mrs. McArthur made it to the bottom step, her legs shaking with the exertion of the steep staircase. She hadn’t been upstairs in six months, not since her left hip had given up on her.

Instead she slept on a makeshift bed in the dining room, her entire life contained to just three rooms of the once grand old house. She couldn’t even get to the bathroom without a struggle, so had resorted to using an old bedpan, which she emptied once a week. Taking up her walking stick from where it hung at the bottom of the banister, Mrs. McArthur began to make her way slowly and carefully down the hall.

Julie had left four hours ago, after coming in to check up on her frail mother. She was worried after last year, that Mrs. McArthur might be scared to be left alone on this night. It was a sad time, when the young were allowed to terrorise the old like this, she had said. Knocking on strangers’ doors to ask for candy, then dropping firecrackers through the letterbox when they refused.

Reaching the front door, Mrs. McArthur bent painfully down to open the little shoe cabinet in the corner. From it she pulled the car battery she had borrowed from the neighbours, and carefully unwound the cables wrapped around it. After connecting one of the crocodile clips to either end of the brass letterbox, she shuffled agonisingly back towards the lounge.

Julie had suggested putting a bowl of candy on the doorstep, but Abigail McArthur didn’t believe in charity. Not since Colin had passed on, anyway. She was tired and alone, abandoned by her family, and left in this big old house to quietly fade away. If anyone deserved charity, it was her. No spoilt kid was getting a free ride here.

Above the front door her overfull bedpan was balanced precariously on a window box, one of Colin’s old fishing lines hanging down from it, and fixed tight to the brass doorknocker.

Trick or treat? This year she wouldn’t be the victim. This year the trick would be on them, she mused to herself as she settled carefully into the armchair by the window.

This year she was ready.

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