Devils night

Devil's Night. The night before Halloween. All Hallow's Eve… Eve. Some call it "Mischief Night"… but those who do, miss the point entirely.

They even tried to change the name to Angel's Night in Detroit. They hosted entire teams of volunteers to try to prevent the hundreds of building and home fires that would be set. The volunteers would patrol neighborhoods beginning at dusk, with the goal of creating a presence that would stop the monsters from lighting the fires to begin with. And if they lit one anyway, the Angel's Night volunteers would have immediate contact with authorities to send the closest fire department to extinguish the problem.

Sure, it worked for a while. But that only allowed the public consciousness to regain focus on the true meaning of Devil's Night. It's not about fires. The fires are simply a distraction. A redirection.

Some say it's the one night every year that you can do literally anything you want, and it would be accepted by your community as part of the price of living. You give for 364 days, and you take for one.

In my town, it's not uncommon to see armed residents on the rooftops of their homes and businesses, brandishing shotguns from the time it gets dark until the rooster crows in the morning, signaling that it is once again safe to go about your daily routines.

But, that never stopped us. We knew where to go and where not to go.

My usual group and I went out after 11 pm to begin the night's festivities.

Brent was 16 and just got his license, so he was driving us that night. In the trunk, we had bags full of toilet paper, eggs, paintball guns, and a few other goodies.

We all met up at Brent's place, where we pushed his dad's Delta 88 down the street until we were at a safe distance, at which point, Brent jumped in the driver's seat and started it up. We all piled in and headed off.

"You really think it's safe to take your dad's car without asking?" I asked Brent.

"I do whatever I want, he doesn't have to know," Brent replied.

We had a list of appointments we had to keep throughout the night. First up was Mr. Johnson, from Johnson's Corner Store. This guy was always a jerk to us. Whenever we'd enter the store, he'd start bitching.

If I took more than 15 seconds between entering and taking what I want to the register to pay, he'd start up again.

"You sure you have money? What are you trying to find? Are you stealing from me?"

If any one of us looked at a magazine, he'd yell "You gonna read it or you gonna buy it? Put it down or pay for it."

We parked down the block from his house to avoid detection, and took just what we needed on foot.

We covered his tree in toilet paper, then each launched an egg at his windows as we took off running. Just when we had reached the car, we heard Johnson come out of his front door and scream something at us. I don't remember what it was, but I'm sure it was something like "You gonna pay for those eggs?!"

We did. We did pay for those eggs. And we bought them from someone else's store, just to add insult to injury.

We were gone before he had any chance of figuring out who it was. And it was too dark to see faces that far away, anyway.

After that, we completed hits on 3 more run of the mill jerks, all well deserving of it.

There was Betty, the town busybody, who was always trying to get everybody in trouble for everything. She once claimed to my parents that my friends and I had thrown rocks at her windows. It wasn't true. I had never even been near her house, let alone thrown anything at it. I didn't even know where she lived at the time. I got grounded for a month for it, because my dad believed her without evidence, and didn't believe me. Since I had to pay for a crime that I didn't commit, I figured it only fair that we actually commit that crime now, to make it even.

Next up was Mr. Shailin, who was always trying to get teen girls to come hang out with him at his house. He would regularly try to become friends with them by giving them music or movies that he knew they liked. He even tried it with Joey's sister. Joey took the honors of the first egg at this guy's house.

We also did a nice drive-by egging of Travis Becker's house. Travis was a 17 year old who bullied all of us and anybody else who was smaller than him at school. You know the type… Football player, shiny teeth, thinks he's god's gift to women. We didn't want Travis' parents to be mistaken about why their house was targeted, so we made sure to yell some obscenities with the name "Travis" attached to the end as we were making our getaway.

Pretty great night, so far.

Here's where things start to get hairy.

Next on our hit list was Mr. Farley, a history teacher from our high school. He's the teacher who was always into everybody's business. If you were having a friendly tiff with someone in the hallway, he'd be the one to threaten detention for everyone involved, regardless of who did what. He was also that teacher who would stop and question you if you were in the hallway during class, whether you had a pass in your hand or not.

In fact, once when I was using the bathroom during a class, I could swear that he came into the bathroom to harass and scare me. I was in a stall when I heard the door open, and I heard his familiar stomp/walk coming in. I heard him using a urinal. But, instead of hearing him walk out the door afterward, I heard nothing. I didn't even hear him wash his hands. Like he was just standing there, waiting. Waiting for me to come out of the stall so he could demand to see my pass, or otherwise question what I was doing there. I even think I heard him \*sniffing\* and getting closer to the stall door. After that sound stopped, I hurriedly got myself together, opened the door, and expected to run past him. But… he wasn't there. Somehow, he left without me hearing it.

Farley lived down a dirt road in the area of town where you'd expect to see a lot of fields, maybe even a few farmers.

We parked down the road. It was pretty scary, to be honest, because there were no street lights out here in this country-fied area of town. We were basically walking through complete darkness in the middle of the night, where anything could happen and nobody would see it. The only lights were dim porch lights on some of the sparsely placed houses in the distance. After we walked for maybe 10 seconds, I turned to look back at the car, but it was so dark that I couldn't see it anymore.

We had a special package for Farley. This wasn't a completely original plan, but we thought it would be funny to see him fall for it.

Earlier in the night, while Steve cleaned up the gifts that his dog left in the backyard, he prepared a brown paper sack full of this magnificent treat, reserved for Mr. Farley.

Steve set the bag on the porch, took out a lighter and set it ablaze. The rest of us launched an entire carton of eggs at the house, one by one, and then started running back toward the car.

As we were running, I turned to look over my shoulder, and saw Farley open his front door, look down at the flaming bag, and then turn his head in our direction… and just… stare.

He didn't bother with the flaming bag. He let it burn. He knew what this was.

A few seconds later, I took another look over my shoulder to see Farley's shadow backlit by his porch light. He jumped off of the porch and ran in our direction.

"Oh god, he's coming!" I yelled.

"What?!" yelled Joey.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the car appear to emerge from the darkness as we ran toward it. We all jumped in, and Brent started it up. As the tires were spitting up dirt and we were starting to pull away, there was a loud thud from behind.

When I looked back, the rear window was splattered brown. Farley had thrown Steve's doggy bag at our rear window.

"Go! Go! Go! Get out of here!" Joey screamed.

We fishtailed down the dirt road and sped toward freedom.

"Holy…" breathed Steve.

"What the f…" added Joey.

"Did he see any of our faces?" asked Brent.

"I don't know…" I answered.

We were all silent for maybe 20 seconds.

Our silence was then interrupted by a loud bang. Something hit the car.

"Oh f… what was that?!" exclaimed Brent.

I looked out the side window. Something was trailing us.

"There's something out there." I said.

"My dad is going to kill me! He loves this car!" said Brent.

"This car is a piece, dude," said Joey.

"Oh, I'm sorry, your car is so much better! Oh, that's right, YOU DON'T HAVE ONE." Replied Brent.

I reiterated, "Guys… shut up. There's something following us."

"What?" replied Joey.

"I don't know. It looks like an animal, or something."

"Dude, we're doing 50 miles per hour, what runs that fast?" said Brent.

Nobody answered.

We were quiet for several minutes.

"I'm done for tonight, this is crazy," said Brent, interrupting the silence.

"Let's just go to the field," I said.

The field was what we called the playground on my street. We would hang out there at night, for lack of other places to go.

We parked the Delta and went and sat at the table that we always use.

"There are huge dents in the back and the side of the car," said Brent.

"That was crazy," said Steve.

"That's an understatement," said Joey.

"That guy is nuts!" I added.

"I'm dead. My dad is gonna kill me when he sees that not only did I take his car without asking, but got it destroyed by some crazed lunatic," said Brent.

"Ok, Cameron. I just hope he didn't identify any of us," said Joey.

We sat in contemplation for a few minutes.

I was staring off into the distance at nothing in particular, when I noticed a shape in the darkness that appeared to be moving.

"Guys, what is that?" I whispered.

"What?" asked Steve.

"That. Over there. It's moving." I replied. (Whispered)

Everyone turned to look.

After we all started staring, the thing looked like it realized we had taken notice of it, and it started moving faster… and it was obvious that it was moving in our direction.

"Run!" Brent screamed.

Everyone jumped up and took off toward the car.

Brent attempted to get in the car to make our getaway, but it was too late. The thing was upon him as soon as he stopped running to open the door. Whatever it was, it was on all fours. It toppled him like he was nothing. Brent let out a blood curdling scream, which was cut off after only a split second by the thing tearing his throat out.

The rest of us kept running, away from the car.

The three of us took cover in a backyard of one of the nearby houses. There was a barn in the back that we took shelter in, and tried to block the door by pushing a small tractor in front of it.

"What are we going to do? I don't want to die," whispered Joey.

"Shut up and wait for morning," replied Steve.

UPDATE:

This is Joey. I'm finishing Bobby's story for him. I found this typed into his phone in the morning. He can't finish it himself, so I'm doing it to honor him.

Last night, in the barn, we started hearing a deep growling sound from outside. It was moving around the building, and stopped in front of the door, where whatever it was… started knocking quietly. We all sat frozen in place, trying not to even breathe.

Bobby looked at us and whispered, "Shhhhh".

I stood up as quietly as possible to see if I could see anything outside of the dusty window on the side of the barn facing the door. Whatever this thing was, it was large like some sort of animal. It was 6 feet tall, even though it was standing on all four legs.

Steve and I climbed up to the hay loft in the barn to hide. Bobby stayed hidden on the lower level, even though we asked him to come with us. I don't know why he stayed down there.

It was then that the thing outside of the barn started… speaking. In a very low, gravely, inhuman sounding voice, it said, "This isn't going to look good on your permanent high school record, boys. You don't want to get in trouble, now, do you?"

We all stayed silent.

"Bobby…" it said.

I don't know why he did it, but Bobby replied.

"Mi… Mister… Farley?" he said.

The thing laughed quietly from outside the door, then said, "I knew you'd do the right thing, Bobby. Let me in, and we'll talk about this."

Steve and I whispered down to Bobby, "No! Shut up! Do not get up!"

But, Bobby ignored us. I think it must've been his good nature, wanting to turn himself in and take his detention as punishment. He got up slowly and walked toward the door.

"Yes… that's it. Open the door, Bobby," the thing said.

Steve and I pleaded once more through whispers, "No! Don't, Bobby! Stay away from the door!"

But, we were too late. Bobby's sense of morality overtook him. He pushed the tractor out of the way and opened the door.

I covered my mouth with one hand, and Steve's with the other, to prevent us both from accidentally making a sound.

From our angle, all I could see was a large, dark shadow, backlit by moonlight, staring down Bobby. This thing was not a person. It was something… else.

It walked slowly through the door while Bobby walked backward, matching its pace.

"It's important that you find the true meaning of Devil's Night, Bobby," said the thing in its terrible voice.

"This isn't about you, or your friends," it continued.

"It's about us. The people of this town will surely remember… after tonight."

And with that, it overtook Bobby. There was nothing he could do to fight it. It was over in an instant. Bobby now lay silent, while the thing enjoyed its meal.

After the thing finished, it moved back toward the door, then stopped just before exiting, and without even looking back, said in its demonic voice, "You boys make sure you're in school on Monday," and then left through the door from which it entered.

Neither Steve nor I spoke a word until sunrise. We climbed down from the hay loft. All that was left of Bobby was his clothing and his phone. I picked up his phone and put it in my pocket.

Steven and I quietly walked outside, each going our own way home.

I'm from Detroit so that's why I had to put something about Detroit in here