*** Author's note ***

I wrote The Face of Fear for a Halloween-themed anthology here on Wattpad. Don't go look for it, it was taken down some time ago. 

Now, this anthology was the first time anyone had ever asked me to write a story for a specific purpose, and although I was honored by the invitation, coming up with an idea was a daunting prospect. I'd always written whatever story was in my head at the time, I'd never had to come up with something to meet the needs of someone else's project before. I spent a good week turning the prospect over in my mind until inspiration finally struck.

When this story came out on an October day in 2014, it received a mixed reaction. Many readers didn't like how ambiguous the story was. They wanted to know exactly what the main character was going through and why. Personally, I think those answers would have eliminated any sense of horror. Fear lives in the dark spaces of the unknowable. It's far better for each reader to fill in the blanks with their own imagination.

Without answering these questions or getting into spoilers, what I will say about this story is that it's about alienation. It's about finding oneself on the outside, separate from the society you thought you were a part of. It's also about how societies can react to outsiders with fear, hatred, and violence. This is just a distilled and exaggerated version of what happens every day in schools, neighborhoods, and governments. People fear a monster, and they end up making monsters, both of themselves and others.

To republish the story in this collection, I set to clean up the grammar and the more sloppy passages, but I got carried away and gave it a major overhaul. Even going so far a to tweak the ending and spin it in a different direction. This was always a tale I looked back on fondly, but I think it's better for the changes. I hope you will agree and enjoy the end result.

After the door opened, the costumed children on the stoop screamed and fled down the walk. Gary Brice slowly loosened his grip on a handful of candies, letting them fall in a slow rain over the bowl while the trick-or-treaters disappeared into the night. He stood in the drizzle-laced October air for some time, listening to their high-pitched howls of terror fade in the distance.

With sudden selfconscious, Gary traced his fingers over his face, seeking out a splatter of gravy, a spray of acne, or even a wayward booger. He found nothing but his slightly dry skin and a couple of days worth of stubble. But he couldn't shake the memory of the way they'd focused in on his face right before dissolving into senseless panic.

It must be a prank. A modern take on the flaming bag of dog poop. Something meant to annoy and bewilder adults on Halloween. One of the brats probably had a camera hidden in their mask to capture his stunned reaction. It would be up on YouTube any minute.

But despite these reassurances, he shuffled through the living room to his dingy, little downstairs bathroom to check himself in the mirror.

The cheap compact fluorescents in the fixtures made him look washed-out and a little green, but they always did that. The sickly light played over the angular bends of his young but not particularly attractive face. His nose was too broad, lips too thin, eyes marred by permanent bags. Same as the day before, except the beard was a bit thicker, and his eyes were a little more bloodshot. All perfectly normal. There was no reason for the children to scream like that.

Gary returned to the sofa and the sitcom rerun he'd been watching. The bowl with his half-eaten dinner was waiting for him. The package had optimistically called it "beef stew." Straight from the microwave, the edges had been blisteringly hot, while the center had stayed arctic cold. During the interruption, all the residual heat had left it, and it began to coagulate. He dug his spoon in, seeking out the gray-brown chunks and pushing aside the white mushy ones.

The bell rang again.

Both Gary and the sofa groaned as he rose. A glance through the peephole revealed a princess, a witch, and a Ninja Turtle, all less than four feet high.

This was the first Halloween since Gary moved to Harwood and into this house. If the recently insolated shack could be called a house. Somewhere in its past, it had been a hunter's cabin. Far from civilization, the hermit preyed on the creatures in the nearby marshes. Later, when it was no longer so remote, the shack had been given plumbing and electricity to turn it into a summer cottage. Now, with Harwood being a full-fledged town with a competitive housing market, a flipper had put in a furnace and a layer of spray foam, elevating it to house status.

Before he moved out here, Gary had lived in an apartment and wished he could give out candy on Halloween—to watch the faces of children light up when he added a little loot to their bags. However, he was over already considered turning off the porch light once this next group left.

"Trick-or—" The chant broke off in shrieks of primal fear. The princess and the turtle bolted, leaving the witch gaping and frozen with fright. After a drawn-out heartbeat, she followed. Her legs in their black tights flailing cartoonishly.

The three of them sped to a tall figure lurking by a tree on the side of the road. Harwood had come a long way, but streetlights hadn't yet made it out here to the part of town that long-time residents still called The Swamp. So, in the deep black of the October night, their savior was nothing but a vaguely male silhouette.

The clamor of the children seemed to confuse the man, but he was soon moving up the walkway with a swiftness that communicated anger and aggression.

Gary's instinct was to close and lock the door. But he wasn't in the wrong. They were. This father's rotten kids were playing some dumb prank on both of them. Gary gritted his teeth and stood his ground. Let him come. He would let this father know precisely what kind of rotten brats he'd raised.

Before he reached the stoop, the man spoke. "What the hell did you do?"

Then, their eyes met.

The father jerked as his feet took one more step while his shoulders reared back. His eyes and mouth went wide as if synched, and all the heat and purpose drained from him.

"Oh, Christ." Gary sighed. "Not you too. Aren't you a little old for this?"

"Look, I... I don't want any trouble. Okay?"

Gary stepped out of the house, emboldened by the man's quavering voice.

Keeping the distance between them, the father retreated, almost tripping and falling in his haste.

"Stay away from me—away from us." Scrambling in a clumsy jog, he screamed at the kids, "Run! Run!"

Gary called after them, "This isn't funny!"

* * *

The wipers cleared away the splattering rain but missed a dead leaf with each stroke. It stubbornly held to the glass, sickly yellow and pocked with black pustules of rot. On the side streets, he dodged herds of goblins and superheroes. The trick-or-treaters became thinner where the traffic got busier and kept to the sidewalks, making the wet drive less stressful.

Gary's hoodie had kept his hair dry before he reached his car, and now, it kept people from getting a good look at him. But every now and then, another driver would see beyond the murk of weather and the shadows shrouding him. They paled. If they shrieked, he didn't hear. Although one did swerve, nearly causing a head-on collision with a minivan.

His car was idling at a light when a toddler Snow White crossed in front and stared up through the windshield. Her mother had to drag her forward as the wailing started and tears spilled over her face.

The woman's raised her umbrella to find out what had startled the girl, and Gary saw her as though she moved in slow motion, her scream both dreaded and inevitable. When the light turned green, he squealed out, nearly sideswiping a slow turning car.

What the hell is the matter with me? He asked himself for the thousandth time.

The clinic's parking lot was surprisingly full for seven at night, and the only spot Gary could find was far from the brown brick building. The lot was lit with dim sepia-colored lamps that failed to cut through the drizzle, but the glass doors revealed a comforting, bright square of white against the night.

Earlier, after two more groups of trick-or-treaters had recoiled at the sight of him, Gary began to get seriously worried. In the thin Harwood phonebook, he found a toll-free number for the Med-Info Line.

They kept him on hold listening to music interrupted every minute by the message: "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line." The voice was robotic and unfeeling and twice the volume of the droning renditions of seventies hits. The overall effect seemed intended to compel listeners to hang up.

When a woman finally answered, she asked, "What's the nature of your emergency? Are you injured?"

Gary leaned towards the bathroom mirror, pulling down the lower lid of his left eye. He'd been checking out every detail of his face. Baring his teeth. Looking at the underside of his tongue. Posing in different positions. He couldn't find one defect that hadn't been there most of his adult life.

"No, I'm not injured."

"Are you in physical or mental distress?"

"I feel fine, but people keep..." He could bring himself to say, screaming in terror at the sight of me. "Telling me I don't look well."

"What are your symptoms?"

"I don't have any. At least, I don't think so."

All they could suggest was for him to see a doctor. So, he'd come to the all-night clinic. But sitting in the parking lot, he began to worry what the reaction would be. Would they think he was crazy and wasting their time? Or scream like everyone else?

Gary wished he had a friend to talk to. Harwood was a lonely place. Sometimes it felt as though he was the only single man over eighteen in the entire town. It was a place for families just starting out or for empty-nesters living out their golden years. It wasn't meant for people like him.

Work was just as isolating. The only job he'd been able to get was working the seven to four shift at a self-storage facility. He sat alone in a chilled room selling boxes and bubble wrap and occasionally renting out lockers. His big excitement was when someone lost their key, and he had to use the big snips to cut the lock off. This procedure also had to be done when lockers were abandoned, but his supervisor handled those cases.

Steeling himself, he left the car.

The rain wasn't heavy, but the damp pervaded the air, giving it a steamy quality completely at odds with the cold that cut through his sweatshirt. He held the base of his hood closed, keeping his neck warm and nothing but his eyes visible.

He stepped into the line for the intake nurse. It wasn't long, but the waiting room was packed. It appeared that Halloween had launched an epidemic of minor injuries on Harwood's younger population.

Gary focused his eyes on the floortiles and stood nearly hunched over, only straightening when he reached the window. But he kept his hood pulled closed.

"Is this your first time here?"

"Yes," Gary answered.

"You'll have to fill out this form." The woman behind the glass shoved a clipboard through the slot. "What's your emergancy?"

"My face. There is something wrong with my face."

She looked up with interest. "What's wrong with it?" When he didn't move, she demanded, "Sir, please show me your face."

Gary was seized by a battle between two equally strong fears. Either the receptionist wouldn't see anything out of the ordinary, and he'd stand there like some nut, feeling foolish. Or... something really was horribly wrong with his face.

He pulled the fleece hood back. The nurse's eyes widened, and her lips drew taut, but she didn't yell.

"I see," was all she said. She reached for the phone. "Just wait one sec."

She'd seen something—something with his face that prompted her to call a doctor immediately.

Was there some subtle sign of disease that her professional eye detected? Or was it something simpler—more obvious? Maybe the news was reporting symptoms of a ghastly pathogen that he'd somehow missed.

She hung up, and her focus stayed on the phone, its small switchboard blinking with waiting calls.

Gary's anxiety boiled over. "What is it? What's wrong with me?"

The nurse toward his voice, but her eyes were squeezed shut, tears seeping from their corners. She propelled her rolling chair away from the window with her feet, and her body folded into itself, trembling.

The thought slammed into his brain: she didn't call a doctor.

Gary's head whipped around. A security guard came marching down the hall toward him. The chubby man clutched a taser to his chest. The black menace of the weapon stood out against his baby-blue shirt. Their eyes met, and the man's steps faltered. His wrinkled face melted into a silent moan of terror. But he didn't retreat. He merely waited, fortifying himself to act.

For a tense moment, their eyes remained locked, each trying to predict the other's next move. Around Gary, the mood of the waiting room shifted from abject boredom to panic.

People were rising from their chairs, gasping, pushing their way to the back wall away from where Gary stood. There was a cattle-like quality to their unified fear. With Gary's attention on them, their horror galvanized, and the volume of their distress rose. The sick and injured shied from him and formed a tight mass of people herded in by a curtained picture window and a row of seats bolted to the floor.

The terror of the others seemed to bolster the guard's courage, and he approached Gary with his taser thrust out as far in front of him as he could reach.

"I've done nothing wrong." He tried to sound reasonable, but his mind was full of confusion, fear, and anger, and all his emotions came out in those few words.

The guard lunged. Gary half sidesteps and half stumbled out of the way of the electrified prongs. He looked to the doors, judging his odds of escape. At the same time, the guard made a similar calculation about his chances of zapping Gary.

Before either made their move, pain flared through Gary's lower back. The ground rushed up, and he slammed one knee down onto it. Above him, a man in an orange vest and a flimsy plastic hardhat hauled his arm back for another punch.

Like the static charge of a taser, adrenaline charged his muscles with numb purpose, and Gary scurried to the exit.

Others found courage at the sight of him fleeing, and they peeled away from the crowd. Some picked up makeshift weapons. No longer trying to get away from him, they came for him.

Gary flung himself at the glass doors and the night beyond.

* * *

Another shot cracked in the air, more primal than thunder. Gary dove over a low ornamental stone wall and belly-flopped into weeds and frost-hard dirt. He buried his head in his hands, inhaling the desiccated rain-soaked vegetation. Two bullets slammed into the other side of the wall, lighting the night with flares of sparks.

Gary looked up and wiped rain and blood from his eyes. His pursuers were getting closer.

The small group from the clinic had grown into a mob. They'd gone from a few people chasing him with murder in their eyes and barking guttural cries to something organized. They enlisted friends and random people on the street to join in. Runners kept on his tail and relayed his position using their cell phones. They directed cars to cut him off. When he started to flag, and the distance between them shortened, he could hear them.

They said things like: "Headed down Twenty-First toward Church. Block off Second Avenue. We can get him there."

And the threat was no longer a beating or a taser. Some of the men hunting him were armed. One dressed as a cowboy with rhinestones and kerchief had brought a revolver. Another in a plaid shirt or dressed as a lumberjack had a hunting rifle.

Gary Brice was beginning to figure out there were worse things than having people running from him in fear.

They were still afraid of him, but the fear had become distilled into the purest sort of anger. The people of Harwood no longer just wanted to get away from him. They wanted him eliminated from their world.

Panic-fueled delirium helped Gary push past his body's capabilities and keep running. His spit tasted of blood, and his lungs burned with acid. The muscles in his legs begged him to stop, but he drove himself onward.

Emerging from behind a one-car garage and onto a dark sidestreet, he stumbled out in front of a group of teenagers in costume toting pillowcases filled with candy. Two saw Gary and bolted. The third, a hobo with a burnt cork beard, picked up a stone from the gutter and pitched it at his head.

The impact made a thock sound, and Gary reeled to the side. His eyelids refused to open again. Charging forward blind, knowing he couldn't afford to stop, his legs tore through shrubs. The pain blossomed in his skull, and he doubled over from nausea. By the time he could see straight and got his bearings, he had backtracked to a street he'd been chased down earlier.

A woman was sprawled out in the road. A porch light glinted off a puddle of crimson next to her head.

Gary stopped, gripping his knees, and drew in air, nearly convulsing with each gasping breath.

It was just the two of them on that lonely part of town. Everyone else on the street were locked inside their homes, the normal nocturnal state of those who lived in the suburbs.

The woman stirred faintly, making halfhearted movement with her arms to raise herself, but they didn't come to anything. She must have been in on the hunt and had gotten trampled in the chaos.

Good, he thought. Serves her right.

Gary skirted past, keeping far from her reach while he headed toward home. He was preparing to run again when she sobbed. It was a dying animal sound filled with pain and despair.

It drained his resolve. He couldn't leave her alone, hurt, in the middle of the road.

He shuffled to her and crouched down. "Miss, do you think you can move? Let me help you."

Her eyes were pressed tight in anguish. They opened into slits, dark and watery. "Help." it was the barest of rasps. Then gaining volume, her voice rose to normal, then grew into a scream. "Help. Help me! It's here! Get it! Heee-lp!" She cut through the silence with a piercing wail that could compete with any car alarm to wake people from their comforts and bring them to their windows.

As though summoned by magic, the rev of car engines and the squeal of brakes on slick pavement grew closer. Instead of heading in the direction he of home, Gary made for the yard of a darkened house. No car was in the driveway, and a heavy blanket of leaves covered it and the lawn. He cut through as he once did as a boy, playing vandal with friends, fleeing from a neighbor whose house they'd TP'ed.

The owners must be incapacitated or on vacation, and autumn had claimed the yard. Racing to the corner of the yard's wooden fence, Gary's sneakers slipped on the greasy leaves. A scraggly cedar that smelled of cat piss gave him some sagging support and helped boost him up for his climb over the fence.

Teetering on the top, one knee pressed into the rough edges of the boards, the other suspended out in midair, Gary clung on while splinters buried themselves in his fingers. An automatic spotlight came on at the back of the next house, warming him in its harsh flare. His exposure inspired an enthusiast whoop from the street. In the next second, the ground beat with the pounding of many feet.

Gary lost his balance and went over. The landing jarred him, and when he tried to get up, his body didn't feel as though it was put together properly anymore. He crawled forward, scurrying through the mud and muck.

Gary just wanted to get home. To lock himself inside and to be warm and safe. Maybe in the morning, everything would be back to normal.

But he was beginning to doubt if he'd ever see home again.

* * *

Eventually Gary did make it home, but it didn't prove to be a refuge. They amassed outside as if they could sense his presence through the solid walls.

Bloody, bruised, muscles burning from exertion and adrenaline, he leaned in the doorway to the kitchen, trying not to be seen. His clothes were stained and tattered, soaked and freezing. He wanted to shaower and crawl into bed, but he could hear them roiling around the house--a malignant hostile horde.

He hadn't even been in his house for five minutes when a burning bottle crashed through the window, covering the living room in shattered glass and spreading flame.

Knowing he had to leave, Gary kicked the backdoor open, slamming it into a man dressed as a postal worker and knocking him backward down the steps. He wondered if this was his postman or just a costume. He could no longer be sure. The real and the pretend had bled together. And everyone he met wore a mask of pure hatred regardless of their costume.

The onrush of new oxygen caused the flames to erupt in a noxious ball of heat and light. With this infernal display behind him, perhaps Gary looked like the devil himself because the mob in his backyard shrank away from him and opened an avenue for escape.

Still, Gary had to bodycheck a vampire out of his way to get through. A werewolf in a black dress tried to grab his arm, and his right hook caught her furry jaw. And when a pint-sized Freddy blocked his way, Gary lashed out with a flying kick to the boy's stomach, knocking the air from his lungs. He might have been knocked to the ground had Gary been wearing shoes. But one got lost to the mud on the way home, and he'd taken the other off to make running easier.

His socks seemed to dissolve on the stones and hard grass as he raced for the scrublands behind his house.

The marshes were a network of protected wetlands, and until recently, they'd been teaming with life. The sound of frogs had kept him awake throughout the hot summer nights, and the birds woke him every morning. With winter coming, it had grown deathly quiet. But people didn't like its boggy terrain or its thick mucus-like odor, so they left it alone.

No people. No concept had ever sounded so good to Gary.

He glanced back once to see skeletal trees lit by a pillar of flame that had once been his house.

His feet crashed through frost-covered puddles and stumbled in unseen hollows. With each step, the brush grew denser, and he was drawn deeper into the gloomy swamp. The homicidal crowd slowed or else lost heart and didn't follow. Whatever the case, soon Gary's only company was the stars and the dried stalks of reeds and cattails. Which was fine by him.

When a stream cut across his path, he dropped to his knees and drank the fresh, icy water, pouring it down his throat and splashing it on his face. Time dropped away and lost its meaning. He knelt there unmoving until a dark spot on the far bank resolved itself into a hole. The water was shockingly cold but revitalized his sore muscles as he splashed, then waded over to the cave or burrow. Gary had to get down flat to slither into the tight space.

Embraced by the earth, the autumn night did not seem so chilled. His body relaxed in the comfort and safety of the narrow tunnel. Pressed in on all sides like a swaddled infant, he felt as though he could sleep.

In the slow dozy thoughts before he drifted off, Gary decided this would be his home from now on. He would learn to survive in these marshes. He'd eat plants, catch fish and frogs, maybe even snare birds. When night came, or danger presented itself, he'd retreat into the life-enriching earth.

In time, the residents of Harwood would forget about him.

If he let them.

Maybe he wouldn't only eat fish and birds. And years from now, the townspeople would tell children on Halloween to stay out of the swamp. They'd warn their young ones that if they strayed off by themselves in that dank, dark marsh, the terrible creature of the swamp would get them.