The Skeleton Boy

On a crisp Autumn night in 2002, Thomas “Tommy” Brown disappeared. Everyone in Milltown over the age of twenty-five claims to remember it, though I doubt all of us younger ones really do; sometimes a story gets repeated so often that your recollection and your imagination start to blend. One thing I know for certain is that my brother, Sean, sure as hell never forgot it.

Ghostly fog mingled with the descending dusk that night; it would have been genuinely creepy if it hadn’t been Halloween. It’s funny; everything about All Hallows’ Eve is supposed to instill fear, yet something about kids dressed up like movie characters as they roam together down streets lit by smiling jack-o-lanterns feels so…safe, quaint even. It’s all a sort of mockery of dread and mortality itself; the skulls are plastic, the tombstones plywood, the ghosts are sheets, on Halloween, death is ever-present, yet feels its tamest. A child would never walk around knocking on strangers’ doors most nights, but this one night a year, it’s almost expected that the real monsters will stay at bay.

I'd love to say that sense of security was what convinced Mrs. and Mr. Brown to let their son walk around town alone, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. I don’t know many details about Tommy’s homelife, but it doesn’t sound like it was great. Supposedly, he’d often come to school wearing the same clothes as the day before, looking like he hadn’t bathed in weeks, with a candy bar or bag of chips in his pocket for lunch. My brother, Sean, once joked that Tommy must be the clumsiest kid in the world, because he was always covered in bruises. As far as I know, the only people in town who’d ever seen the adult Browns were the workers at the local liquor shop.

School life wasn’t much better for poor Tommy. You know how mean kids can be. They’d make fun of him because he smelled or because he didn’t have anything of value to trade at snack time. To make matters worse, the teachers weren’t too fond of the kid either. He had poor grades, never got anything signed by his parents, rarely did his homework, and would swear and act out in the middle of a lesson exchange for a giggle and a few minutes of attention from his peers. I recall hearing that by Halloween night, Tommy had already been suspended twice that year for fighting in the schoolyard. Today, we’d call Tommy a kid in obvious need of help, but back then, we just called him troubled.

So, I suspect when Tommy put on his homemade Halloween costume – baggy black clothing with strips of white masking tape placed on top to look like a crude skeleton – and grabbed his garbage bag to go out trick-or-treating, his parents didn’t even notice. As Tommy walked along streets artificially lit in orange, green, and purple by mechanized decorations programmed to cackle like witches and howl like werewolves, I doubt a single adult thought of him at all.

But my brother and his friends did notice him as he walked by my house.

“Hey, it’s that weirdo Tommy!” a girl named Hannah laughed as she pointed out the window. I watched her curly golden hair and azure Egyptian Queen costume vanish behind the other kids’ backs as they all ran to the window, as if this were a freak show. Sean was in the crowd too; his red hair and Shrek costume made him easy to spot among the sea of kids. He was the youngest in the crowd at ten, still making him a full two years older than Tommy was, but Tommy’s infamy preceded him. I wanted to see this boy who inspired such a commotion, too, but I was only five years old and very shy, so I hung back, squeezing my stuffed dalmatian in one hand while playing with the sparkly pink tulle of my Princess costume in the other.

My mom came into the room to see what all the fuss was about. “Mom! Mom!” Sean said, unable to contain his excitement. “That Tommy kid is out there! The one I told you about!” There was a maliciousness in his eyes I’d never seen before. It seemed to infect the whole crowd, possessing them.

My mom looked out the window and tutted. “What sort of parents…?” She muttered, her voice trailing off before the thought was completed. After a moment, she sighed and concluded with, “That poor child.”

“Tommy?” Sean replied, looking confused. “That kid’s a freak…”
My mother rubbed her temples before looking out at Tommy again. Her eyes had a knowing sadness to them, as if she could see his torment in a way no one else did. She looked as if she wanted to teach her son some profound, dark truths about the monsters that live behind closed doors, but instead she just said, “You leave that skeleton boy alone.”

My brother looked down at his dinosaur-patterned socks as he meekly agreed to obey her command, to which my mother nodded and left to put away dinner before taking me out Trick-or-Treating. My brother, being much older, was able to plead his case to be allowed to go with his friends without direct supervision – so long as he stayed close enough that my mom could keep an eye on him.

Twenty minutes later, we’d left the warmth of our house and entered the celebratory atmosphere outside. Everything was going great. My mom accompanied me from house to house as I ran up to neighbours doors and loudly yell, “trick or treat!”, after which I’d shyly play with my bedazzled tiara as my the adults told me what a pretty costume I had and waved to my mom before finally putting some candy in my plastic jack-o-lantern so that I could skip off to the next house. In the distance, my brother and his friends moved between houses more quickly and confidently, sharing laughs and jokes. During all of this, Tommy quietly went between houses too, getting candy from adults who seemed anxious to be rid of him.

According to Sean, it was his friend Zack’s idea to slip away from my mom’s surveillance and follow Tommy as he headed up the hill toward the cemetery.
“Come on, we’ll just prank him a bit!” Zack said, adjusting the mask on his Ghostface costume. “Nothing too bad. It will be fun! Your mom won’t even notice we’re gone.”

“I don’t know…” Sean said, looking around nervously as if his mother might pop up at any moment and scold him.

Hannah rolled her eyes, “I knew he was too young to hang out with us,” she said to Zack as if Sean couldn’t possibly hear her.

“I’m not!” Sean replied defiantly.

“Then prove it!” Zack replied.

So, they scurried across Mrs. Milton’s lawn, through Mr. Bowman’s back yard, and onto a footpath lined by thick bushes that allowed them to catch up to Tommy unseen by anyone else. They stifled giggles between them as they snuck closer and closer to their prey.

The fog got denser as they approached the cemetery. My brother said it was like walking through a spectral blanket. The air was as cold and damp as a stream in a winter thaw. Everything was so silent and dark, as if the friends were alone in the world, yet there, in the middle of the asphalt walkway, was Tommy.

My brother swears that, at first, the plan was just to sneak up on him. They were all supposed to run ahead, hide behind some of the bigger granite tombstones near the exit, then jump out when he passed. Just some innocent fun. They got to those tombstones, crouched down, and waited for their victim to pass…

When they popped out, they startled Tommy so much that he jumped six feet in the air and pissed himself. The kids watched as yellow liquid ran down to Tommy’s white socks before forming a puddle under his feet.

There was a moment of silence while the kids all registered what they were seeing, and then the gates of hell flew open on poor Tommy Brown.

“Eeeewwww!” Hannah shrieked as the kids started laughing.

Soon, Zack and a boy in a Freddy Krueger costume named Allen were pushing Tommy back and forth. “Hey Tommy, you should consider wearing a diaper!” Allan said mockingly.

Tears welled in Tommy’s eyes.
“Oh no! Is the big baby going to cry!” Zack said, mirthlessly miming tears.

Instead, Tommy’s face turned vermillion, and the next thing anyone knew, he was punching Zack in the face.
“What the hell are you psycho!” Zack screamed, putting his hand to his lower lip to wipe away blood.

Tommy may have been a scrapper, but when Allan yelled, “Get him!” the little boy didn’t stand a chance. He was no match for a swarm of kids three to four years older than him. They punched and kicked at Tommy, first in his stomach and legs, then in his face, till the kid was black, blue, and red all over. Allan and Zack then dragged Tommy over to the puddle of piss and pushed his face into it. Sean claims he begged his friends to stop, and had nothing to do with the brutal assault, but I don’t know if I really believe that. At any rate, Tommy was soon unconscious on the damp ground.

That’s when the group heard a twig snap behind them.

Their blood went cold as ice as they searched around for the source of the sound. If someone witnessed their assault, they could all be in big trouble, even if their target had been the lowly Tommy Brown.

“Hello?” Allan called out. No one answered. Away from the decorations, the full creepiness of the night finally took hold. The fog became a beast that was swallowing them whole.

That’s when one of the kids let out a blood-curdling scream.

“Allan?!” Zack called out, panic filling his voice. The fog was so thick now that you could hardly see your own hand in front of your face.

Next, Hannah disappeared with her own terrified, shrill cry.

Screaming, the kids all started to flee, leaving Allan, Hannah, and the unconscious Tommy behind.

In the chaos, Sean slipped on some mud, hitting his head against one of the tombstones. He thinks he blacked out for a second or two. When he came to, his heart pounded in his chest so hard that he could feel it in his ears. “Is anyone there?” He said in a whisper as he crawled between rows of graves.

Eventually, he found an area where the fog had partly dissipated enough that he could see Zack standing there, wide-eyed with knees shaking like tuning forks. A dark river of pee ran down his black costume onto the ground.

Next thing Sean knew, spindly, pearly-white hands emerged from the fog, pulling on Zack and dragging him into their oblivion as he kicked and screamed in vain. Sean heard a sizzling sound and smelled an acidic, burning smell. He covered his mouth to keep from crying out in terror. Quivering, he curled up in a ball, covering his head. He could feel hands moving through the air above him, sweeping over his arms and back…
Then, at last, the fog retreated. In the distance, Sean swears he saw it take the form of humanoid alabaster creatures. Their skin was swirling and translucent like smoke, and their bodies had no features, as if they were living chalk drawings. They were gathered around a dazed-looking Tommy, who was sitting on the ground, rubbing the back of his head.

They stood there, examining the boy, who looked so terrified that Sean feared the kid might pass out again.

Then, Tommy looked more relaxed – comforted, even. He smiled, and happy tears ran down his face. Sean heard no sound but claims the creatures looked like they were talking to the boy. They reached out their hands to Tommy, and Sean expected to see the kid’s skin sizzle and melt, but instead the white form remained soft and harmless, like a cloud. They helped Tommy to his feet, then, hand-in-hand, walked into the darkness, where Sean claims they all dissipated like mist – Tommy included.

When the police came, they found five badly burnt bodies strewn around the cemetery. No one knew what to make of it, but the coroner concluded a lightning strike must have hit them. Supposedly, that would explain why their outsides were melted.

They found my brother, too, still cowering beside a tombstone. He had been through such a fright that he went mute for nearly a year and refused to discuss the night for almost two decades after that. When he finally did talk, no one believed what he had to say anyway.

The one person they never found was little Tommy Brown.

My mom says that sometimes, when it’s misty out, she thinks she can see Tommy in the distance, skill wearing his skeleton costume. She claims it must just be her mind playing tricks on her, or a bit of wishful thinking, but I don’t think so. I think the world of humans and solids was just so harsh that Tommy joined the fog that night.