19:46 ... 8:30 p.m. ... 1464 hours ... tricks and treats.

Tonight the Fox Network is replaying the scariest show I ever saw on TV -- "Home" from the X-Files. I saw it in 1996 when it was first shown, for the last time. Or so I thought. I was home. Alone.

The flimsy doors were locked. Igor wasn't due back from his trip for a few more hours. I watched what I could, muted what I couldn't, and looked out the window at the cold, black, deserted street while the terrifying scenes on the TV screen played on.

The last screams from the show were fading away when I heard the scratching and fumbling at the door. Our front door.

Actually, the screams were more lost than I knew because unbeknownst to me, the tape machine was grinding and scrabbling and eating the very tape I thought I was recording for Igor's later viewing pleasure. Now the horrific un-degaussable memories would forever be mine, all mine, alone.

Until tonight.

And ... shhhh ... as I type ... the show is playing in the other room and I can hear it. I will never watch it again. Worse, I will never be able to forget it. Soon I will hear that horrible Johnny Mathis music again and again I will hear the lost screams of the sheriff and his wife as she's pulled out from her hiding place under the bed.

When I was too little to matter, I spent many a Halloween locked in our darkened house with my brother and sisters, staring out the window at the cold, lamp-lit streets. My mother worked; we were poor; she couldn't imagine giving candy to a bunch of ill-behaved strangers knocking on our door.

Holidays sort of over-stessed our mother.

So we had to hide and crawl around and pretend we weren't home when the doorbell rang and the little knuckles knocked and knocked and knocked. Then, when the urchins and the hop-goblins and the kids from my class turned away in disgust and stomped down the porch stairs, we would peek out the window, making boo-hoo circles of mist from pressed noses on the chilly glass.

 

I'm afraid that I have to tell you that we used to live in the dark house that people feared. Sometimes screams could be heard through the closed glass. Sometimes glass broke. People knew, but they always crossed the street.

So you grow up and you move away and you carve out a pumpkin for yourself and you pile up the expensive candy in a basket by the door. Years pass. Bells chime. Kids come. Kids go.

Our house in this new neighborhood is always over lit during the holidays and the path through the darkness to the wide-open welcome is lined with candles and flickers and twinkly lights.

That first time I watched "Home" in 1996 I felt the cold chill of a hand from the past grabbing at my heart and ruthlessly spinning back the arrows on the clock face to 1956. Suddenly, my facade crumpled and my house felt dark again and the credits were crawling up the screen when I heard the distinct sound of somebody fumbling, mumbling with the front door knob.

The mutants on the TV screen had just broken into a house and clubbed the occupants to death with a baseball bat. Johnny Mathis sang from an old car radio and the years were falling away. Bad things were rising from their scrapbook tombs.

I grabbed a fireplace poker and waited in the dim hallway.

Lucky for me, Igor had arrived. On the wings of a tailwind, keys misplaced, hands laden with luggage and baggage and treats from the airport.

Everyone loves to be scared on Halloween, unless you're not kidding.