It had been quite a night already, and Jimmy Foster was smiling inside his Halloween mask as he placed his plastic Trick-or-Treat bag onto the kitchen table. When he upended it, a cascade of candy, assorted fruits, and—as usual—a toothbrush and a small tube of Crest toothpaste from his dentist, Doc Collette, spilled out across the red-and-white-checkered oilcloth tablecloth.

"Wow! Looks like you got quite the haul there, Jimbo," his mother said. She smiled as she leaned back against the sink, her meaty arms folded across her chest. "Go on upstairs 'n put your p.j.s on. Then we'll sort through everything, 'kay?"

Jimmy nodded his agreement, but he didn't move.

"'N take off that mask ... It gives me the creeps."

But Jimmy didn't remove his "goblin" mask with its lumpy warts and deep wrinkles. He stood there, admiring his pile of treats. He was glad to see a fair amount of Milky Ways and Three Musketeers—his favorites—mixed in amongst the Charlestown Chews, Oh Henrys, and Good 'n Plentys. The real Halloween trick this year—like every year—was going to be keeping Ben, his older brother, away from his candy. His father's sweet tooth seemed to get worse every year around this time, too.

"You didn't have any trouble with the older boys, did you?"

"Nope," Jimmy said. When he shook his head, the rubber edge of his mask scraped against the bare skin of his neck. "We never even went downtown. All we did was circle around the block."

"Good. You didn't use the shortcut through the woods, I hope."

"No way. I never use the shortcut after dark ... I hardly even use it during the day."

"Good thing, too," his mother said.

Jimmy couldn't help but shiver inwardly whenever he thought about the well-trod path that wound through the woods. He usually only took it when he was with one or, better yet, several of his friends. The neighborhood kids scared each other—and themselves—with stories about a troll or some kind of nasty creature who lived under the wooden bridge that crossed the stream deep in the woods and would eat you if it caught you out there alone.

"So the Hopkins twins didn't bother you or your friends?"

"Nope," Jimmy said. "Never even saw 'em."

He couldn't help but be surprised by the odd tone in his voice. It was muffled inside his mask and had an odd, echoing resonance that he hadn't noticed when he was trick-or-treating with his friends.

"Well, go upstairs 'n put on your p.j.s before you even think about having any candy tonight."

"'Kay," Jimmy said as he reached up with both hands to take off his mask. His fingers hooked the wrinkled green rubber below the eyeholes, but when he tightened his grip and lifted up, a sharp, sudden pain pulled at both of his cheeks. He let out a tiny yelp that drew his mother's attention.

"Something the matter?"

Jimmy looked down at his hands, suddenly feeling an odd distance from them. They looked far away ... like they belonged to someone else, and he was seeing them through the wrong end of a telescope. When he flexed his fingers, he had the disquieting sense that he wasn't actually controlling them. Someone else was.

"No ... uhh ... nothing," he said, but the peculiar hollowness in his voice sounded even more intense. A wild shiver swept up his back like a chilly breeze on an October night.

His hands started to tingle with pins-'n'-needles as he raised them and, thrusting his head forward, slid them under the edge of his chin. When he tried again to lift up the edge of the mask, the stinging, tugging sensation got worse. It was like pulling a Band-Aid off an old wound and taking most of the scab with it. He let out another louder yelp as tears welled up in his eyes.

"Honey? ... What's wrong?"

"I can't get my ... my mask's stuck."

He had to fight back waves of panic even as the strangled, hollow sound of his own voice frightened him all the more. It reminded him more of a growling dog than a person. Trembling inside, he looked at his mother, positive he could see confusion and maybe even a hint of fear reflected in her wide-eyed expression.

"Come here ... Lemme help you with it," she said, walking over to him and kneeling down on one knee so she was on eye-level with him. Framed by the black eyeholes of the mask, her face loomed frighteningly close. The harsh brilliance of the kitchen's overhead light made the careworn lines in her face and the tiny red capillaries that twined like red threads across her nose stand out in frightening, cartoonish detail. Her blue eyes glistened like wet marbles as she reached out to take hold of the mask. The veins and tendons in her hands cast shadows like dark pencil smudges on her pale skin.

Jimmy couldn't stop feeling strangely detached from himself as he watched her hands move toward his face in weird, flickering slow motion. When she touched the mask, he didn't want to believe he could actually feel her touch on the mask, but it felt like she was running her hands across the bare surface of his face.

"Hmm," his mother said, frowning as she slipped her fingers under the edge of the mask to get a good grip and started tugging it back and forth. "It's on kinda tight."

When that didn't work, she slid her hands around the back of his neck and tried to lift up the back edge, but the burning slice of pain that shot up his scalp made him yelp again. He jerked away from her violently, throwing her off balance.

"It's really stuck," he said, trying—and failing—to keep the rising panic out of his voice. Tears sprang from his eyes. The air inside the mask got suddenly too hot to breathe. He tried to suppress the sudden conviction that he was suffocating. Whatever his mother had done, the mask felt even tighter now. Then he noticed something else that even through his panic struck him as rather odd. He was crying, but as impossible as it was, he could actually feel his tears, hot and scalding, sliding down the outside of his mask.

His mother reached out again and took hold of the mask on either side below the ears. Her eyes narrowed as she lifted it up, but now it felt like she was actually ripping the skin away from his face. The pain was like nothing Jimmy had even experienced before.

"What did you do, get some gum or somethin' stuck inside there?" she asked, her frown deepening.

"No ... No," Jimmy said, shaking his head wildly from side to side. He kept telling himself not to panic, but the fear of being trapped inside this mask was getting steadily stronger. He knew he had to calm down so he and his mother could figure out what to do next. She'd take care of him like she always did, wouldn't she? Or was he going to have to go to the doctor's ... or maybe have the police come to the house and cut the mask off?

The kitchen door suddenly flew open, and Jimmy's brother, Ben, entered. He was wearing a half-hearted attempt at a hobo costume, something so he and his friends could justify trick-or-treating even though they were in high school. Ben was carrying an old pillowcase that sagged heavily with treats. He was smiling as he hefted it up onto the kitchen table.

"That's all you got, wimp?" he said, sneering as he looked at Jimmy's stash. "Heck, I ate that much on the way home."

"'N don't come crying to me tonight when you've got a stomach ache, either," his mother said.

Jimmy wanted to say something, too. He wanted to tell his brother that he was more than satisfied with what he'd gotten, that he wasn't a greedy pig like Ben, but he was too frightened to speak.

"We—uh, we're having a bit of trouble with his mask," his mother said, but Ben seemed not to care. As if he hadn't even heard her, he said, "I gotta take a wiz," and tromped down the hallway to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him and locking it.

"Aw'right, now," Jimmy's mother said, settling on her knees in front of him. She pulled Jimmy closer and, leaning forward, carefully inspected the mask all around. Jimmy watched her, frighteningly aware of the rubber eyeholes he was looking out of. "You got it on, so it's gotta come off, right?"

"Right," Jimmy said without much conviction. He couldn't stop thinking how distorted and strange his voice sounded.

This time when she grabbed the bottom of the mask again and started to lift it, his face felt like it was on fire. He let out a shrill scream that set his mother back on her heels. She looked at him, pale and trembling, as she slowly shook her head from side to side.

"Did you, like, Super Glue it on or something?" she asked.

"No ... Nothing like that. Honest," Jimmy said.

Seeing her through the eyeholes of the mask was like looking at her from the end of a long, dark tunnel. And as he stared at her, another thought—an impulse, really—took hold of him. He had no idea where it came from, and it nauseated him, but there it was. He had to fight back a sudden urge to lunge at his mother and bite her. He couldn't stop staring at the white, flabby flesh of her arms that was hanging out from her short-sleeved blouse, and all he could think about was sinking his teeth into that mass of warm, blood-filled flesh.

The thought terrified him, and he tried to look away from her; but she reached out, grabbed him by the upper arms, and held him tightly.

"Don't you go anywhere, mister," she said. "I'm gonna get the scissors." Her voice had an echo-chamber effect that made it difficult for him to understand what she said, but he was too scared to move.

His mother went to the kitchen cabinets and slid open the top drawer. Jimmy watched, fascinated by how, when she moved, she left a blurred streak of light behind her like a jet's contrail.

From a long way away, he heard the sound of rushing water. It took him what seemed like forever to realize that his brother had flushed the toilet. Jimmy looked past the kitchen table and down the hallway as his brother exited the bathroom. He moved with the same strange, sludgy slow motion his mother did. By this point, Jimmy's pulse was thumping wildly in his ears, sounding like someone using a jackhammer on a tin roof. He winced with every step his brother took as he ran upstairs and then slammed his bedroom door shut.

"Ahh ... Here we are ..." his mother said, her voice coming from far away.

A bolt of terror as clean and sharp as a fork of lightning shot through him when he saw the pair of scissors in her hand. She gripped the handle so tightly the knobs of her knuckles went white as she started toward him. The cutting edges of the scissors telescoped in his vision until they looked like polished steel blades six or more inches long.

Jimmy was filled with the sudden irrational fear that his mother was going to kill him right then and there. He wanted to back away from her, but it was like he was standing ankle-deep in thick, heavy mud. He was convinced he was going to die, that his mother was going to slice him open there on the kitchen floor and let him bleed to death, but he couldn't move. He narrowed his eyes and winced, feeling the rubber mask mold to his expression as he prepared for the sudden jab of pain. He prayed that it would all be over quickly.

"Here, now ... Lemme see," his mother said. She spoke mildly enough, but her voice sounded like a tape recording played at so slow a speed every word dragged out for what seemed like several seconds.

It took some effort, but his mother wedged her fingers under the edge of the mask and brought the scissors around to position them for a quick snip. Jimmy cringed, anticipating the pain. When the cold metal touched the mask, it was as if the blades were pressing against his own skin. His mother shifted from side to side, positioning herself carefully as she pulled out the edge of the mask as far as she could and then snipped.

Jimmy let out a piercing cry that even Old Lady Harding, the old woman who lived next door and was hard of hearing, must have heard.

"You guys all right down there?" Ben hollered from upstairs.

"We're fine," his mother yelled back, but all Jimmy could think was that he was definitely not fine. That single clip had felt like a cold razor slicing across his throat, and now blood—his blood!—was seeping from the edge of the mask and trickling down his neck.

"What the Dickens?" his mother said as she leaned forward and inspected what she had done. Blood smeared the blades of the scissors. "Did I nick you?"

Jimmy was too frightened to speak. His throat had gone bone dry. The pain radiating from the cut spread a chilly numbness across his face and down his chest. The thin trickle of blood was searing hot against his flesh. He found it almost impossible to take a breath. It was as though huge, unseen arms had wrapped around his chest and were squeezing the life out of him.

"Oh, my God! You're bleeding," his mother said. Her voice was so low and dragging he could barely understand her. "Lemme get something to clean you up. God, I'm so sorry."

His mother let go of his arms and stood up, moving toward the counter to get a paper towel. When she turned on the tap, the sound of running water hissed like a nest of snakes inside his head.

"How the Devil did you get that damned thing on so tight?" she asked as she knelt down again and dabbed at his neck.

Jimmy watched her the whole time, frightened by the look of concern that spread across his mother's face. Frowning, she leaned close to him and inspected the wound, but Jimmy already knew what the problem was.

It wasn't his neck that was bleeding.

It was the mask.

Worse than that, the mask was now a part of him. His mother had cut the mask as if it was his own flesh. After a long moment, she leaned back and looked at him with an expression of confusion on her face.

"Are you playing a joke on me here?" she asked.

Her voice was still horribly distorted, but he could make out what she was saying. He wanted to lash out at her and sink his teeth into her throat for what she had done to him, but he checked himself. Raising both hands to his goblin face, he ran his fingertips over the dark, wrinkled surface. It felt absolutely no different from when he touched his real face ... or what used to be his real face.

"No," he said, hearing the chest-deep growl rumbling in his voice.

His mother heard it, too, and she pulled away from him with genuine shock and terror on her face.

"Jimmy? ... Are you all right?"

Jimmy was desperate to answer her, to reassure her, but he was afraid of what would come out of his mouth if he opened it. He wished he could tell his mother he was just fine, but he couldn't. He wasn't sure how or why this was happening to him. It didn't seem real, but it definitely was not in his imagination.

Maybe he shouldn't have lied to his mother earlier, he thought.

Maybe he should have confessed that he hadn't avoided the shortcut through the woods tonight like he'd told her.

But even if he did admit that, one thing he could never tell her or anyone was what he had done to the Hopkins twins when he met up with them on the narrow wooden bridge in the woods. Jimmy might be one of the "little kids" in the neighborhood who was always getting threatened and beaten up by the Hopkins twins, but tonight he had caught them unawares as they were crossing the bridge on their way downtown to go trick-or-treating. When Jimmy leaped out from underneath the bridge wearing his goblin mask, one of them—he had no idea which one—had run off, screaming like a little girl.

That part had been hysterical.

But Jimmy couldn't remember exactly what happened next. It was all a blur, but somehow, the other twin ended up with a carving knife sticking out of his back from between his shoulder blades. He only got about twenty feet away from the bridge before he fell down, sprawling face-down on the path, his head cocked to one side. After twitching a little and making a weird bubbling sound in his throat, he stopped moving altogether.

Jimmy hadn't been with any of his friends like he told his mother. He knew he had been alone out there in the woods by the bridge, but he didn't remember having a knife. He had no idea where that came from.

But maybe what was happening now with the mask was the price he had to pay for lying to his mother and for what he must have done to one of the Hopkins twins tonight.

He was only ten years old, but he now realized that maybe his years of living in a home with a loving mother and father were over. Even though his big brother was a royal pain in the butt most of the time—well, all of the time, actually—he generally liked it here at home. He didn't want to lose what he had.

But now, he feared, he would have to go back into the woods and start living under the bridge because—who knew?

Maybe some night the other Hopkins twin would be foolish enough to go out there again ... or maybe someone else ... maybe his older brother would be foolish enough to take the shortcut through the woods after dark. Then he would get to do to him what he had always imagined.

Jimmy made a terrible snarling sound as he backed away from his mother. He said to her, "I'm sorry, Mama," but he could tell by the horrified expression on her face that she didn't have the faintest clue what he had said. Truth to tell, even to his own ears his voice had sounded more like the angry snarl of a rabid dog than a human being.

He was staring at his mother, confused and frightened as he tried to understand the sudden change he had experienced. Once again, he was filled with a powerful compulsion to latch onto his mother's neck and sink his teeth into her warm flesh.

But he didn't do that.

He couldn't.

Not to his own mother.

Instead, he turned and, howling like a coyote in the light of the full moon, burst out of the house. The door slammed shut behind him, sounding like a gunshot. He ran across the front yard and down the street until, breathless, he came to the turnoff onto the shortcut. Then he plunged into the woods and made his way through the darkness along the shortcut until he came to the wooden bridge. Once he got there, he decided to hide under the bridge and sit there in the deepest shadows, listening to the gurgle of running water and the songs of the night birds, and waiting ... waiting to see what happened next.