A small Halloween story (English version)

He hated Halloween. He couldn’t find a reason for that holiday to exist.

When people died, they were gone forever — no one walked the earth one day a year, no soul lingered behind, because there were no souls.

A human being was like a machine that, when its functions reached their limits, simply stopped working — and just as computers ended up in the trash for spare parts, so did humans end up in the ground, becoming food for worms.

Souls... what nonsense, he thought.

He chuckled as he got on his bike to ride home. The light had already faded long ago — it was close to eight in the evening. A workaholic to the bone, he was always the first to arrive and the last to leave.

After all, no one was waiting for him at home, nothing but a black cat that appeared from time to time demanding food and affection.

It stayed for a while and then left, its tail swaying with every step. That cat drove him crazy — it had been there when he bought the house a little outside the small town he had moved to six months earlier.

The real estate agent had joked that the cat came as part of the deal, and while at first he thought she was kidding, the way the cat acted like it owned the place made him suspect it might have lived there with the previous owners.

The house had been uninhabited for over fifteen years and had belonged to a family that had been wiped out after their eldest daughter disappeared.

They told him it happened on a Halloween night — she went out with her friends and never returned.

The girls didn’t know what had happened to her; most of them couldn’t even remember that night. They searched endlessly, but her disappearance cast a shadow over the house and the family.

First, the mother died, having stopped eating. Then the father from a heart attack. And finally, the younger son, who simply didn’t wake up one morning.

The agent said the black cat was there for every death, waiting patiently outside — and since then, it only appeared once in a while.

He thought all that was nonsense. There was no way the same cat was still alive. The family had died of grief, and the cat was probably just a descendant of another black cat.

He put on his helmet, but before he started riding, he saw her…

She was beautiful — maybe twenty-two at most, with long ebony hair and dark eyes that gleamed even in the dim light.

She always wore a black dress. He had never seen her in another color, and he sometimes thought no other color would suit her anyway — only black could bring out her beauty.

She turned toward him and gave him a sweet smile. His heart raced.

He rarely saw her, and always fleetingly, but this time he intended to follow her — he wanted so much to talk to her.

He started pedaling furiously, weaving between people and cars. A woman cut him off, and he nearly fell, barely regaining his balance.

When he looked up again, the beautiful girl was gone. He cursed under his breath, ignoring the woman who was apologizing.

“Did you see where the girl walking in front of you went?” he asked sharply.

The woman looked at him as if he were insane.

“What girl?”

Her answer troubled him, but he didn’t linger on it.

He continued, irritated, until he found himself among towering trees and a dirt road that served as a shortcut.

He switched on his bike’s headlight — the roadlights didn’t reach this far.

He froze when he saw the black cat sitting in the middle of the path.

He stopped just before running it over, his heart and stomach tightening with dread.

The cat licked its paw, meowed softly, and began walking toward the cemetery on the other side of the woods.

It paused for a moment to glance back at him, as if to make sure he would follow — and he felt he had no other choice.

He took his flashlight but left the bike behind.

He stumbled as he tried to keep up, his breath short.

Part of him thought he should turn back, but his brain refused to command his legs — they carried him straight to the cemetery gate.

He froze there, realizing how absurd it was to be following a cat, but the cat’s sharp meow forced him to take two steps forward and enter.

Every sound around him vanished. Nature had gone silent, except for the cat’s mewing.

He took a deep breath and moved forward, his knees trembling.

He saw movement near a family grave — the tip of a black tail disappearing behind the tombstone.

Cautiously, he approached, ears buzzing with fear, and froze when he saw the cat standing before the faint shapes of a couple holding each other, with a boy of about eighteen beside them.

He couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.

He turned toward the tombstone and gasped when he read the name engraved on it — it was the same as the family who once owned his house.

He turned back, shaken, just as a strange light enveloped the cat.

He wanted to run, but invisible hands seemed to hold him still.

Before his eyes, the cat began to transform — until it became the beautiful girl who had stolen his heart.

She fell laughing into the arms of her family, and he staggered backward, his mouth open in a silent scream.

Her gaze met his — it froze him in place — but it was her smile that made him finally scream with all his might.

He turned and ran like a madman, thoughts spinning around the black cat and what he had just seen.

Was someone playing a trick on him? Was he losing his mind?

He found his bike where he had left it and rode off without hesitation.

He felt relief when he reached the light again — even more so when he arrived in his neighborhood, full of kids in strange costumes, knocking on doors and filling their pumpkin buckets with candy.

He passed them, still shaking. The stories his coworkers had told him must have gotten to his head — there was no other explanation.

He laughed at himself, got off the bike, and pushed it toward his house — the only one not decorated for the holiday.

Someone had thrown toilet paper over his bushes, and two kids passing by called him “grumpy.”

He wanted to answer back but kept quiet and walked to his door.

He froze when he saw the black cat sitting on his doormat, staring at him with deep, dark eyes — as if to tell him that this time, he couldn’t just run away.

He stood near it, hand trembling as he unlocked the door, unable to process what he had experienced.

“Are you coming in?” he asked.

The cat replied with a soft meow.

He chuckled and stepped aside.

The cat brushed against his legs, slipped inside, and entered the house without looking back.