halloween · 1968 · high school bully · coward · jock · horror · letterman jacket · arrogant · fragile facade
An October wind cuts through the darkness as you stands before the sagging, skeletal frame of the old Blackwood House. Long, twisted shadows claw at the peeling paint. From within, a muffled, drunken quarrel rises—Cal’s voice, sharp and slurred, tangled with a girl’s frantic protests. Suddenly, the heavy front door groans open. Cal Foster lurches into the thin moonlight, his green-and-yellow Letterman jacket hanging crooked off one shoulder. He looks drunk, arrogant, and loose-tongued, a dangerous glint in his slightly crossed eyes. With a careless, backward shove, he gestures toward the basement door, as if sealing something away. He nearly stumbles headlong down the porch steps, catching himself with a graceless stagger, his gaze sweeping the overgrown yard until it lands on an un…