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use it to give out candy. You can just carry it up to the door with you. It'll scare the crap out of them," I said with glee. Sam came in then, just as I put the first coat on over Patrick's eyes.

"So, uh, what are you doing?" Sam asked.

I explained the whole thing to him and he rolled his eyes. "Don't you think that's a little mean spirited? I mean, you're purposefully trying to scare these kids. That's not very nice."

"Oh, please, "Patrick said. "Remember when we used to go trick-or-treating back in Warren County? People dressed in some pretty scary-ass costumes back then, if I remember correctly. Mr. Henderson almost made me poop my pants until I was twelve years old. He always had some sort of fake knife sticking out of his head, or something. Besides, it's Halloween. People expect to be scared. It's what they want. We're only giving them what they want," Patrick said.

"Okay. Whatever. I'm not going to be there that night, anyway, I told Gary that I would pick up an extra shift at the music store so he can take his kids trick-or-treating. So knock yourselves out."

Which is what we did. Adena got into the swing of it, too, of course. She had found an old white dress at the Salvation Army for fifty cents and splattered it with red paint, and stained her hands and forearms red to match. Jude, who was spending Halloween night at the hospital, had found her a rubber butcher knife to carry. Adena and Patrick walked up to the door together and greeted the first batch of kids. They looked to be about twelve or thirteen years old.

"Want some candy?" Adena said in a high-pitched, slightly crazy voice. She reached into Patrick's hollow head, which looked remarkably like him except for the long purple tongue I had made stick out from between his fake lips. One of the girls screamed, and then they all ran away.

"Was it something we said?" Patrick yelled after them, holding out his "head."

To our credit, we didn't scare the really little kids who came up with their parents. I was dressed as a perfectly tame gypsy woman (I had blacked out one of my front teeth, though- I couldn't let Patrick and Adena have all the fun) and I took the little ones candy. However, if they were over eleven or twelve years old, they were fair game.

The next morning was Saturday, so most of us were still asleep when the doorbell rang at eight a.m. Jude had just gotten in from work at seven o'clock and was crashed on the couch, so he was the one who answered the door. The yelling that ensued

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