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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/APCleriot on 2024-10-14 00:36:30+00:00.

I didn’t understand the object Freddy shook in my face or why he was so excited.

Halloween night in ‘87 wasn’t as illuminated as today.

“It’s a picture,” he yelled, and spat into my face. “Look! Look!”

I put my pillowcase down and held his wrist gently to see the fuss: a Polaroid picture with Freddy in his sad pirate costume.

When I looked more closely, however, I saw the singed boy beneath. Polaroid Freddy looked burnt to a crisp. His skin gone. The eyes melted away.

Freddy snapped the picture from my fingers. “Isn’t it cool?” He studied it again. “Like a magic trick. Best Halloween ever. Right? It’s cool, right?” He continued to bully me for validation, as ten-year-old boys do, until I relented.

“It’s cool, Freddy. Where did you get it?”

“You know Mr. Malcolm’s house?”

“Super green lawn guy? Tells dirty jokes to us at the bus stop? The weirdo pervert? That guy?”

Freddy nodded enthusiastically, missing my intended sarcasm. Everyone usually avoided Mr. Malcolm’s house on Halloween and every other day. The man constantly invited kids inside for “candy and conversation.” I don’t know if anyone accepted that offer. I hope not.

“Yeah,” Freddy confirmed, “but there’s a young guy on the porch. Probably his nephew or something. He’s got on a mega spooky demon mask, and he’s got a camera, and he takes your picture, and it prints out all freaky like mine and-”

“Whoa, Freddy,” I said. He was getting overexcited. Freddy had something wrong with him. A weak heart maybe, though I can’t recall exactly what we were told other than he could die should he get too worked up. Our teachers told us to look out for Freddy. So I did. “It’s great. Calm down.” I started breathing with him and held his hand.

He smiled. “Thanks man. Wanna see?”

I smiled back. “Yup.” The photo had creeped me out, but also fascinated me. I didn’t want to be the only kid who missed out on something cool.

Judging by the line extending down the walkway, bending at a right angle onto the sidewalk, it seemed I might. There had to be fifty kids waiting for their photo.

Polaroid pictures aren’t fast. They don’t present an image until at least ten minutes have gone by.

The guy on the porch wore a thin mask with horns that really seemed to grow from his forehead. A mouthpiece displayed jagged teeth. He carefully placed the undeveloped photo on a shoe rack at his side. You don’t shake Polaroid pictures. You wait.

And so we waited.

He could have simply given the white rectangles to the eager kids before the image showed, but he didn’t.

Instead, after taking a trick-or-treater’s photo, he sat cross legged on Mr.Malcolm’s concrete slab of a porch and stared at the child. Some kids tried to talk with him. He didn’t answer. Others waited in silence, bearing the stranger’s gaze with admirable defiance. One little boy began to cry. His parents ushered him away before he could collect his photo.

I remember thinking how fortunate I was that my parents let me trick-or-treat on my own. I would get my photo. I would endure the awkwardness of the adult gaze.

Time ticked on. It was late. Some kids gave up, and left the line, to my delight.

Freddy yawned, and said he had to go. I thanked him for telling me about the Polaroid man. I probably wouldn’t have come down Ferry Street otherwise. Mr. Malcolm creeped me out too much.

Luckily, a few other school friends were revealed by the departures: May DeFranco and Vicky Rand. They’d already gotten their photos, but hung around because May’s little sister wanted one too.

“Can I see?” I asked, pointing at the photos. They were grotesque, and I could hardly bear it.

May’s body appeared popped open, entrails spilling from her guts and onto splintered remnants of bone and muscle. Only the pink princess dress she wore as her costume identified her as the corpse in the photo.

Vicky’s was far worse. Her dead body had been tied at the wrists and ankles. Her pale face appeared stunned at the mutilation of her body. The top half had been pulled apart from the bottom, and there were more tortured dead around her in a dark field.

“Cool, right?” Vicky said. “It’s like Freddy Krueger or something.”

“You’ve never seen Freddy Krueger,” May said. I hadn’t seen A Nightmare On Elm Street either. I never have. At the time, I assumed the contents of the photo were typical horror movie stuff. I wasn’t ready for it, but I wouldn’t let my discomfort show.

After May’s sister got her photo, more kids thought better of risking their worried parents’ wrath. They left, and after one more boy got his photo, my turn came at 11:42 PM. My parents were probably pissed off by eight. So I figured, wrongly, I wouldn’t be in more trouble for continuing to stay out way past the time I should’ve been home.

Though I did have second thoughts, especially when I realized no other kids remained. I would be the last, and I was alone with the devil masked man.

“Don’t smile,” he growled.

I adjusted my face quickly to obey.

He snapped the picture, and sat on the stoop. We waited. The last leaves on the trees hissed a warning in the wind. Their dead brethren skittered away down Ferry Street. I could hardly breathe as he stared.

There were no visible eyes in the sockets of his mask, only oily voids, an unfortunate trick of the dim porch bulb. It had to be. The feeling in my stomach called for a quick escape.

“I think I need to go,” I told him.

His hand gripped my wrist hard.

I squirmed. “It’s okay. I can pick it up tomorrow.” He did not let go. His face, that mask, got close to mine. He was perfectly quiet. No inhalation or exhale as he forced me to stay put. “Please,” I begged, “I want to go home.”

In the half inch space between our noses, he slid the developing Polaroid. This close, I could barely see anything. Then the devil’s mask appeared in the photo. Then I or what would become of me materialized: the Polaroid featured us together, his hands around my neck, my face empty of life.

I yelped and pulled away. He let go, and I fell onto the walkway.

He stood up, and tossed the photo with precision. It landed beside me on the grass. Further details of the horror were revealed. A swath of blood matted my hair, and soaked the front of my costume like a gory bib. The man in the devil mask had done more than strangle me according to the image.

I backed away, a reverse crab walk of cumbersome doom. He hadn’t moved because he could catch me anytime he liked. His first step knocked his camera off the stoop. It clattered, and a piece shot away from the impact. He didn’t seem to care.

“P-please,” I pleaded with him.

I don’t remember the specifics of how I got up and ran down the middle of Ferry Street. I only recall the chase was brief because I made a mistake, and got cornered in the variety store parking lot. The store, Brother’s Variety, had been closed for hours. There’d be no help there. The streets were empty. Most people were asleep.

How I knew this or thought about it in such a terrible moment came down to dumb luck. I backed into a pile of leaves bunched up with fake spider webs that had blown off someone’s house. Stuck, I raised my arms defensively and caught the time on my digital watch: the wrong side of midnight by twelve minutes.

His fingers caressed the sides of my neck. I closed my eyes, and started trembling uncontrollably. Pain would be next. Great pain. The photo promised. And death.

“No!” I tried to shout, but it came out like a squeak. “Halloween is over! It’s over! It’s done! You can’t!” I don’t know what I was saying or why.

But the fingers retreated, and he took noiseless steps backwards over the cracked tarmac. When he reached the sidewalk, he spoke. “See you next year then.” As if it had been a prank all along, he walked away, casually.

It took far too long for me to go the opposite way. Eventually, I managed a slow jog, working through the blocks to home, where my mom waited in the front window, worried and angry.

Punishment was left up to my father. When he returned from searching for me, I told him about the photo and the guy in the mask. He received the information passively before grabbing his baseball bat and calling his brothers.

Together, they went to Mr.Malcolm’s and discovered the busted door in the backyard. The old man had died in his chair, completely naked; my dad told me this last detail some years later. Police were called but nothing came of whatever investigation might have followed.

My parents had, and have, no faith in the Bridal Veil Lake PD. Hence the reason he called his brothers and picked up his bat that night.

Evidence of the devil masked man existed, of course. Many kids had their photos taken. No police, or adults, asked about it, as far as I know. Mine had been left on Mr.Malcolm’s lawn. But Freddy, May, and Vicky said they still had theirs at home.

Freddy’s, however, likely burned up in the fire the following Christmas. His dad made the mistake of using a space heater in the garage. All of them, including Freddy, were dead the day before Christmas Eve.

I refused to go trick-or-treating the next year, and every one after that. My parents understood, and didn’t pressure me. Within a few years, I aged out of the tradition, but still wouldn’t risk going out for a walk on Halloween night.

“See you next year then.” And, if not, the next, or the next, or the next. He waits. I know because every photo has turned out to be true.

Vicky simply disappeared before her nineteenth birthday, and while …

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