The Child Born of Mist

         I fucking knew I shouldn't have told that kid to fuck off, I knew it, and I did it anyway. The strange sheen in her eyes told tales of sleepless nights and ageless horror, I cringed at the sight of her as I had opened the door, this poor raggedy frame of a child clinging to a malformed plastic pumpkin.
         ''Trick or treat!" she croaked from behind her mask, a half-cocked visage of some unknown character. A sheen white mask with arrows dropping from the eyes and small slit for a mouth, sunken dark eyes that seemed to fall into an abyss stared at me as I asked what she was doing out so late, all the other kids had gone home hours ago.
"Where are your parents?" I asked looking around for a vehicle. The streets were empty and silent, a somber fog was rolling in off the harbour.
"Trick or treat!" she replied again, with an intention that gripped me in the stomach, there was something very wrong with this one.
"I don't have any more candy, the kids made off with the last of it hours ago" I stepped back to close the door, hoping to finish watching the game, but my foot stuck in place.
         She slowly backed away from the porch, shadows falling over her frail body in strange ways and she began to shriek, or growl? Or perhaps both, her mask appeared to float in front of her face and she turned away from me, yet the mask remained. Sullen eyes staring, a disembodied voice crackling through my skull.
"FUCK OFF!" I screamed as I tried to wrench my feet from the floor. I looked back to the street and only the mask remained, slowly bobbing away into the fog, giggling static and screams through the night. Finally my feet were mine again and I quickly slammed the door shut and locked it behind me.

         The rest of the night was torment, somehow I'd lost three hours to that little girl, three fucking hours and yet it had seemed only minutes. The image of her mask floating along of it's own intent had burned itself into my eyes and sleep eluded me. 3 then 5 then 7 AM had come and gone as I stared at the ceiling unable to succumb to rest.
         As my alarm rang off on the bedside table I groaned in protest and shook myself to my feet, determined to leave this feeling of unease behind and go about my day. I walked down the hall to the kitchen, turned on the coffee machine and left to shower, I thought nothing of the skewed photo in the hallway just then, the grog of a sleepless night held it's grasp on me.
         I went about my routine in an auto-pilot fashion, burnt my toast and spilled my coffee at some point then bolted out the door late for work. I knew then that something was amiss as I drove down to the office. The streets were unnaturally calm, even for a village they were never this empty, but then I thought to myself that it was Sunday morning and most people would have the day off. I pulled into the empty parking lot and hiked in. As I lifted my punch card I looked to the clock, it still read 31/10. I brushed this off as a practical joke, someone's idea of a fun Halloween trick.
         I sat at my desk and started my computer, pouring over emails and information, editing and revising, setting tasks and humming along to the drips of the office's coffee machine slowly plunking away the hours until I had decided I'd done enough work for the day. I grabbed my coat and headed for the door. That's when I saw that my hours from the day before had been erased, and so had everyone else's.
         A sense of unease washed over me as I returned to my desk, pouring over my work I realized that I had done all of this yesterday and through my sleep deprived, coffee fueled haste had failed to notice this glaring oversight. I began to panic. I took out my phone and dialed my mother, hoping that in some way this was just a hallucination, a trick of the mind.
         The phone rang through, two, three times before I heard a click and a buzz, then static slowly fading... ... and a voice at the other end, a faint giggling through the noise, then an automated voice "Your call cannot be completed at this time, please check your service and try again."
         I ran for the door and out to the parking lot, dropping my keys as I scrambled to start the car. The first attempt stuttered the car and the second brought it to life, I backed out and headed home. The streets were still empty and the sun was setting fast, ushering with it that same fog from the night before. Cold sweat poured over my hands. I made it within a block from home when I saw her. Standing atop a street light, silhouetted from the underglow, a faint white mask bobbing back and forth watching me. I looked back to the road, a warped cracking serpent of black tar and bubbling paint screamed back at me, I slammed on the brakes as it reared it's head to strike and I managed to jump out of the door as concrete collide with steel, shrieking into the fog of the night.

         I had never run so fast in my life, my house seemed to inch towards me and I felt trapped in a nightmare. As I neared, the lights flickered throughout the house, blinking in rapid succession as if in warning, as if to say it wasn't safe, but to me then it was my only refuge.
         I stood inside and locked the door, eyes wide I sloughed to the floor panting and exhausted. What the fuck was going on? I mustered the strength and made my way to the kitchen to try the landline, someone else must have seen what was happening outside, I could still hear my car being eaten by that monstrosity that was once asphalt. As I lifted the receiver I was relieved to hear a dial tone and hurriedly phoned my mother, the phone rang and I heard her voice, soothing and familiar she asked why I was calling and listened patiently as I explained the events of the day. She seemed surprisingly calm and offered reassuring 'mmhm's between my pauses, helpful 'oh's and 'ah's. I then told her of the girl from the night before, the strange behaviour and being unable to move as the girl walked away, silence hung on the other end, then static and my mother's voice from underneath screaming TRICK OR TREAT!
         I threw the phone into the hallway and sank into a corner in panic, covering my face I tried to wipe the tears from my eyes and I heard an automated voice "Your call cannot be completed at this time, please check your service and try again."
         I steeled my nerves and walked to the living room, I had to see if this was all just a figment of my imagination, a sleep deprived day-dream. I apprehensively reached for the curtains and drew them back to see that the world outside had returned to sanity, children and families were milling about in search of candies, cars rolled by unconcerned by the events I had witnessed. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to the hallway.
         I walked towards the bathroom to shower and clear my head, hoping to shake that strange memory I stepped into the cold water to shock the fear from my system. The lights flickered, there was a knock at the door and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I stopped the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist as the knocking continued to grow in volume.
         As I walked through the house the paint began to wilt away and all the plants crumbled to dust, the knocking seemed to reverberate within me. I opened the front door to a dark empty street drenched in fog. Time seemed to stand as I stood there dripping in my towel, and from the depths of the mists a slight shimmer emerged, a mask, a half-cocked visage of some unknown character danced towards me followed shortly after by the frail frame of a girl, I stood frozen as they approached and she took hold of my hand and led me through the mist, we walked through the streets in tandem and she giggled along until we came to a strange aberration in the night, a shimmering vortex of fractured time.
         The last words I heard as I fell through a twisted chasm of flesh and rendered bone were of the little girl, choking and fractured, echoing through my skull,
                   TRICK OR TREAT!