Howl in One

Hear the story read by the author.

In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. Every year the church holds a Halloween festival for the children on the Sunday before Halloween. The teen youth group usually plans their own event at the same time. Karen Winslow, the teacher of the preschool Sunday school class known as the Guppies, is in charge of the children’s festival. Each year she tries to think of something special and original to do. Usually her ideas involved enormous amounts of thankless effort. This year she had her most special, original, and thankless idea yet: creating a Halloween themed miniature golf course!

Karen was not incapable of learning from past experience. On the morning of the festival she enlisted her Sunday school class to help her build the golf course. This had the advantage of reducing her set up effort for the festival and eliminating the need for a lesson plan for Sunday school. It had the disadvantage, however, of greatly increasing her clean up time after class.

Karen gathered shoe boxes, PVC pipe, tin cans, Halloween decorations and various odds and ends to use for construction material. Then she allowed each child to create and decorate their own hole on top of several large pieces of carpet remainders that she laid out in the social hall, late October being a little cool for an outdoor festival in Normal.

Four year-old Mary Boyer loved Mrs. Winslow’s project and immediately set out to create the biggest, bestest, scariest hole she could. It was a complex amalgam of pipe and cardboard covered in plastic spiders and skeletons and topped, rather incongruously, by a pink unicorn Mary had cut out of a coloring book and glued to a piece of cardboard. The whole thing was held together with half a jar of paste. The other half of the paste from the jar was distributed liberally on Mary’s clothes and in her hair. But she was proud of her masterpiece and the other kids were duly impressed. She dubbed it “Pinkhorn Manor.”

The youth group, meanwhile, had decided to watch a scary movie for their Halloween party. Pastor O’Donnell insisted it be rated PG-13 much to his fifteen year-old daughter Katie’s chagrin. But Katie found a movie that promised lots of creepy chills and would, not at all incidentally, give her a good excuse to cuddle up with her boyfriend Joe. She was further chagrined, however, to learn that her father had recruited church secretary Tammy Billings to act as chaperone for the youth group party.

When the time came for the festival to begin, Karen brought out a bucket of old golf balls and several putters she’d borrowed from members of the congregation. Each hole was a tin can placed behind whatever contraption the child in question had constructed. Karen divided the children into foursomes and kept score on a rolling white board in between dodging runaway golf balls.

Mary was in a foursome with Sierra Smith. Mary had fairly good hand-eye coordination for a girl her age, but tended to hit the ball too hard, no matter how often Karen said, “Gently, Mary, gently,” through gritted teeth. By the time they reached the hole Mary built, the fifteenth, she was three strokes behind Sierra.

Mary did not like to lose, especially to Sierra Smith.

Meanwhile, up in the youth group room, Katie’s plan was going along quite well. At first whenever Katie got too cuddly with Joe, Tammy cleared her throat pointedly until the teens created some space between them. But as the movie progressed, Tammy found herself caught up in the tale of a small town party clown possessed by a vengeful spirit. She quit paying much attention to the volume of air separating Katie and Joe. Truth was Tammy kind of wished her husband Ralph was there to cuddle up to.

Joe, meanwhile, was finding it a little difficult to enjoy the romantic opportunity. He tried to act like the cool, calm protective boyfriend. But that creepy clown was freaking him out. He came up with a reasonably effective strategy which involved focusing his gaze on a point just above the television any time the spooky string music started playing. If he didn’t look directly at the screen, he didn’t jump too much when something scary happened.

Back down on the 15th hole, Sierra Smith had just scored a hole-in-one. Mary stepped up determined to match the feat. She hit the ball and it ricocheted off the side of the elaborate edifice of Pinkhorn Manor. Frustrated, she lined up for shot two. That one entered the piece of PVC pipe that led through the structure but somehow emerged from the top instead of the back, knocking the unicorn into the air and bouncing back almost to the original tee off point.

Mary wound up for shot three, determined to get the ball through Pinkhorn Manor even if it meant punching a hole in her creation. She swung and the ball entered the PVC pipe on a perfect trajectory. But the force of the hit caused it to skip over the tin can when it emerged from the other side. It ricocheted off a plastic bucket filled with water and apples for bobbing, then bounced off the wall and arced up through the open door to the youth room.

Joe was staring intently at the wall above the TV while on screen the possessed clown crept up behind a pretty young housewife who had the misfortune to be home all alone. The golf ball sailed in and bounced off the top of Joe’s head.

Joe screamed.

The scream was high and piercing and caused pretty much everyone in the room to levitate off their seats, spilling drinks and overturning bowls of popcorn. Joe was supremely embarrassed by his outburst once the cause of the blow to his head was discovered. But despite the knowledge that it was a wayward golf ball and not a clown’s hand, he couldn’t seem to stop trembling.

Once order was restored, Katie cuddled up to Joe again; but now she was the one playing the part of cool, calm protector. Joe held her extra tight. Tammy almost cleared her throat to intervene, but Joe’s pale face looked so pitiful she decided to let the two teens be for a little while.