Oh, Katie believed in him for sure, the Halloween Man. Him with his long skinny-spindly arms and sharp-toothed mouth and eyes sunk deep in skull sockets like softly glowing embers, charcoal red. Him with his long coat of tatters, smelling of tombstones and grave dirt. All spider-hairy he was, the Halloween Man.
“You made him up!” said Jan the first time Katie told her about him. Jan was nine, a year younger than Katie, but she could run faster and jump higher. “He isn’t real.”
“Is so,” said Katie.
“Is not.”
“Is.”
“Isn’t!”
William F. Nolan
