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For forty-one Halloweens, the retired mailman across the street gave out the most famous popcorn balls on Wheeler Avenue. In 1997, from his hospital bed, he asked his neighbor for one last favor: hand out his treats, and save the single popcorn ball left on his counter for the boy in the fireman suit.

In this original horror story, a single mother looks back on the Halloween she sat on Mr. Eberly’s front step in his place. He was the man who had shoveled her walk and fixed her furnace with a coat hanger the winter her husband left, and who taught her daughter Maddie to whistle with two fingers. Every other day she let herself in with the key under the ceramic frog to water his forty pots of African violets, from underneath, the way his index card said. His voice on the phone was weak and thick, as if he were talking through a dish towel, but his instructions were clear: the popcorn ball was only for the boy in the fireman suit, and only if he asked for it by name.

A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Halloween night, a kind old neighbor, and a promise kept exactly as asked. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you.

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All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.