In the entire neighborhood, there was only one house all the kids avoided on Halloween. It was the house with the red door. Three stories high, it loomed behind dead trees and a black, wrought-iron fence, its windows blocked up by thick curtains. A single car sat in the driveway, covered by a faded, gray tarp, though no one had ever seen the car in more than ten years. In fact, no one had seen the woman who supposedly lived there, either, though the lights inside the house did occasionally turn on and off.
There was a rumor going around school, that the few kids brave enough to knock on the red door had been rewarded with armfuls of vintage comic books worth thousands of dollars. Remnants from the old woman's son, who had either died or moved away. Dennis, in his second year of middle school, decided to find out if the rumors were true. He was determined, in fact, that the night before Halloween, he got dressed up in his homemade mummy costume and walked to the house with the red door.
Pushing open the iron gate, the rusted hinge giving out a long, painful moan, he crept past the car with the gray tarp and made his way up the longest ten stairs of his life. Dead tree branches rattled in the wind. With his heart pounding beneath his mummy wrappings, he rang the buzzer next to the red door and waited, empty candy bag in hand. With any luck, he thought, he'd be walking away with that bag filled to the brim with priceless comics.
When the red door finally creaked open, Dennis was surprised to see a younger woman than he'd expected standing in the doorway. She was fifty or sixty at most, her face lean and tight. She wore a black dress, with a red shawl draped over her shoulders. She pulled it closer as she looked down at Dennis with an unreadable expression on her face. Her eyes were dark and cold as she studied him. Dennis tried to speak, but no words came out.
“Is it Halloween already?” the woman asked. Dennis shook his head, hoping his plan hadn't backfired. “An enterprising young boy, you are. No one ever comes here, you know.” Dennis nodded and said, “I know,” his voice barely a squeak. As she leaned in closer, he felt his chest tighten under his costume. “Tell me, clever boy, do you have all your teeth yet?”
Dennis nodded, having forgotten all about the comics. If all she was going to give him was candy, he was more than happy to take it and run away from that place as fast as possible. From seemingly nowhere she produced a black bowl, and began filling his bag up one handful at a time. He stared at her, unable to look away from her dark eyes. When she finally stopped filling his bag, heavy now in his hands, she slipped back inside the house. Before the red door shut, the woman glanced at Dennis once more. “Tell your friends there's plenty more where that came from,” she said, a vague smile on her face before the shadows took her back.
Dennis walked away in a daze. Past the covered car, past the dead trees and through the gate of the wrought-iron fence, he went back the way he came, retreating toward home. When he finally thought to look in the bag, to see what kind of candy the woman had given him, his stomach tightened. His throat nearly closed up at the sight waiting for him inside.
He was holding a bag of teeth.