Two masked figures walk alongside me right at the edge of the forest; one to my left and another to my right. They don’t try to talk to me as they walk with me. I can feel them though, they’re eyeing me just as I am keeping them within sight. Because even if they say these people don’t leave the forest, I cannot trust the masked ones to always follow their rules. I keep my breathing soft and my footsteps light, too afraid to even make noise.

My house sits at the end of this dirt road, a small farmhouse surrounded by the forests and a cluster of neighbors. I sling my grocery bag higher up my arm and tuck myself in as small as I can around it.

Regardless of if the masked ones are passive, there’s still this apprehension. A tingling in my spine, like a sharp nail grazing the front of my neck.

I look over to my left at the owl masked one and he mirrors me by looking right back at me. He’s wearing a blue sweater vest, khakis, and loafers. The one to my right is a white rabbit mask, a woman. She wears white, shiny flats; a 1950s style swing dress covered it blue and white polka dots.

The masked ones never speak and they’ve been here for as long as anyone can tell. They are nothing like us though. They don’t move like normal people. They walk too stiffly. They never speak and no one has ever seen one with its mask off. There isn’t anyone stupid enough to try to find out. But they appear human under their pretty animal masks.

I remember the first time I’d ever seen one. It was my first day of third grade. A boy named Nicolo had moved in with his family next door. They lived just on the other side of our small field so he would come over often and we often walked to school together.

As we started down the country road to the bus stop, it rained lightly. I remember how the ground squashed under my sneakers. The smell of damp leaves and concrete seeping together.

I jumped from puddle to puddle as Nicolo trailed behind. I turned to make sure he was still behind me when we were halfway to our stop when I saw him staring into the dense forest. He stood just as the edge of the concrete as a hand reached out to him palm up. It beckoned to him, but said nothing. At least nothing I could hear anyway.

At the time, I’d never seen a masked one before. I’d only heard the tales from other kids or adults warning me away from the forest. Except there one stood at the edge of the forest with only its fox mask and the front of its blue button-up suit outside of the forest. But its hand and arm extend just to the edge of where concrete and grass meet.

Even recalling it now makes me feel dread. I always remember it happening like a video game glitch. At first, too slow as I watch Nicolo reach out to just poke the hand. How he leans forward a little too much while trying to focus on the hand. Then the rest of it moves too fast and he’s gone. The blur of the moment they touched and the moment Nicolo disappeared completely out of sight always happens as if time suddenly jumped and I’d missed the moment. It was Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam right before my eyes. Me, eternally the audience stuck watching two creatures on the cusp of touch true knowledge.

The second other way I’ve known them to act out of character is Halloween, but everyone knows this one. It’s the one night of the year we all hate the most.

I make it to the opening off my dirt driveway and the two masked ones stop following me as they hit the end of the forest area. I turn only once to make sure they’ve stopped there.

When I get inside my house I hear my grandma in the kitchen towards the back right just past the archway. The yellow light of the kitchen shines into the room. I walk in and see she’s already dressed up in her best clothes.

She turns to me with a frown on her face, but it’s not me she’s upset with and I know it.

“You need to change,” she tells me.

“I know, I know,” I kiss her on the cheek as I conceded to her.

“This isn’t to be taken lightly,” she lectures, “ it’s almost twilight.”

I walk to my bedroom door and block out the rest of the lecture.

When I finish dressing I find my grandma polishing the items I had gone to get from the neighborhood association.

A bluejay mask is already laid out for me on the table she’s sitting at. Her mask is of a racoon this year.

My grandma gasps and rushes to put her mask on as she sees the two masked ones that followed me home emerge from the forest with their postured gaits.

Her old, withered hands shake from the nerves so I come up behind her and stick it on proper.

The two masked ones reach our porch just as I stick mine in place. I sit down opposite of my grandma and stay as still as possible.

The two masked ones, the white rabbit and owl, turn the knob of the door. My grandma rushes to the door and opens it. The two masked ones hold out their hands and my grandma gives them each a piece of candy. They nod to her and walk away just as a small group of children come up to the door with their parents. Everyone is wearing an animal mask of some sort.

The act of passing out candy and dressing up used to be fun for everyone, until the masked ones started seeing it as an opportunity to come out and wander among us. I never knew when they began to come out, but it was before even my grandma’s childhood. The first few times it happened the town didn’t believe it was actually them. They’d never left the forests before. Then they began to lure children into the forests once the night turned to dawn. That year supposedly had the highest amount of child disappearances.

When people took it as a sign to stop celebrating Halloween they would hear the scratching and clawing of the masked ones at the door. Some claimed they’d even heard them whispering: “trick or treat” over and over again. The issue of the noise caused us to start it back up again.

The part where we all dress up like them is something I’m unsure of as to why it began. My guess has always been that someone did it as a joke and it caught on as a bigger part of the lie. But no one stops it because what if it’s become tradition now.

I hold the bowl of candy as my grandma distributes a piece to each masked one at the door.

When my grandma finally goes to bed I take over for her. At around 2:30 a.m. I hear a knock on the door. Usually the trick or treating stops after the midnight hour passes. I’m about to open it when a voice speaks up on the other side.

“Trick?...Or Treat?” a young boy asks me.

I know that voice.

“Nicolo?” I ask tentatively.

“Trick? Or Treat?” he asks again.

I open the door but it’s empty. Instead there are a ring of masked ones outside my home. They’re standing at the edge of the forest again.

I rush out into my dirt driveway as they all press a bit deeper into the darkness of the forest.

“Where is he,” I shout at them, angry for what they did to Nicolo.

“What do you even need with children, huh?” I shout at them.

They stay silent for awhile, until a fox masked man steps out from the density of trees. He stands boldly on the grass just outside the tree lining.

“We don’t just take children,” a warped and echoing voice speaks up. It’s like a chorus of people talking as one voice.

I narrow my eyes at the fox mask as I realize he is the one who took Nicolo. I open my mouth to call him every ugly word in the book when he speaks again.

“I can show him to you if you like.”

He extends his forearm out and lifts his hand for me to come and take.