All Hallows’ Eve

Halloween, and the gallows humor of the dead. It opens on the kind of person who celebrates Halloween every year, and on the night heaven’s gates open for the dead. The first third is the holiday itself: trick-or-treat, the jack-o’-lantern, gargoyles, skeletons in closets, zombies saving the diabetics for dessert. Then the jokes darken into real questions — the call of the void, the king and the pawn going into the same box, which takes more courage, dying or refusing to. By November the leaves are falling and the voice is plain. It ends where every good ghost story does: one day we will all be forgotten, so live while you can.