Billy is preparing to celebrate his 11th birthday. It should be a time of excitement, as his family prepares a very special present. But…something is lurking in the cornfield just outside his house. Someone has arrived, and Billy’s birthday will never again be the same.
On this episode of Smirk, Aaron offers up a Halloween tale of family and murder. Can you make it to the end to identify the theme?
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Welcome to Smirk. A podcast that covers society and culture through a storytelling lens. Part creative writing, part discussion, and always interesting. Each week our hosts brings a story to the show, a story they wrote themselves, which is immediately followed by discussion on the author’s moral or theme.
These stories can cover any topic the host wants to discuss, it can be lighthearted or more serious. No one but the author knows if these tales are truth or fiction, and part of the fun is guessing while you’re listening before the reality is made clear.
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Want to read Aaron’s story “Happy Birthday, Billy” in full? Think you can identify the moral or theme for this episode? Read it below, and then take a listen to the podcast.
Happy Birthday, Billy
It’s October 30th, the day before Halloween.
Billy, wakes up. His room is full of movie posters and family pictures. One wall is adorned with Jason Voorhees, while the other holds a picture of Billy’s mom, Dad, and older brother Jesse.
Billy shuffles around the remote farmhouse with a Cheshire smile on his face. You see tomorrow, Halloween, is Billy’s 11th birthday.
Billy’s mother and father are together, but estranged, living separate lives. Dad works on the farm while mom works in the city 15 miles away, and she gets back late every night. She has barely even acknowledged that tomorrow is Billy’s birthday. Dad is the one who’s there for Billy, always available, always loving.
Billy bounces down the stairs, screaming “here boy, here boy”. He’s looking for his dog, yet wherever he looks, he finds no sign of his beloved golden retriever.
HERE SCOUT!
Billy opens the front door, his face turned immediately a pale white. He found Scout, gutted, laying on the porch.
Hearing his screams, Billy’s Dad comes racing from the barn, and immediately sees the dead dog. He has no idea what to think, unable to fathom who could be so cruel.
It might an animal attack, or it could be the area kids, bullies that pick on Billy a bit too much, he thought.
These four boys that happen to be watching from afar. It sure was them, sadistic bastards. All four teenagers sit crouched in nearby bushes, laughing at their own cruelty, and they immediately turn to discussing further horrific things they can do now to Billy.
One of them turns around, and finds a large man – his face concealed by a mask – standing in his way. The kids, believing their numbers outrank one lone nut in the woods, begin talking smack. One of them whips out the knife that savagely murdered Scout and threatens the man.
“You don’t want to test us, asshat! Get the hell outta here!”
The teen lunges at him, trying to jar the stranger into retreat. It turns out to be a poor strategy, as the man grabs the knife, and swiftly kills that little bastard.
The other three boys run, and one by one, this stranger, this shadow, picks them off in horrific ways. Strangulation of one. Tossing another off a rock cliff. Lastly, a knife throw from 20 feet away. The shadow dispatches all four boys with ease.
Later that night, the local Sheriff finally arrives to take Billy’s statement. As he writes the details down on Scout’s slaying, he fills Billy’s Dad in on the four boys suspected, as they have all been reported missing. The Sheriff, believing these boys to be planning a follow-up attack, warns Billy and his father to be careful.
Throughout the day, Billy has seemingly witnessed a figure in the field outside their farmhouse. His Dad has checked on it several times, but no one ever seems to show up. After the tragedy of Scout, he decides this is simply his mind playing tricks on him.
Billy lays down for bed, his father comes to tuck him in.
“Billy, I’m so sorry about Scout, buddy. They’ll catch those kids, I promise. You just sleep tight, because tomorrow I’ve got a huge surprise for your birthday. You’re gonna love it!”
A few hours fade by, and it is pitch black in Billy’s room when he hears a noise. It’s his window, slowing…opening.
Billy screams, and slams the window shut. His Dad runs in and Billy tells him hurriedly what happened, that a shadowy figure tried to come in his window. Dad runs outside and sees nothing.
At first, he dismisses Billy’s recollection as panic over what happened to Scout. And then, he saw the footprints in the dirt, right outside Billy’s window.
Dad picks up the phone to call the police, but the line is dead. Being a remote farmhouse, cell coverage is near non-existent until you run a couple fields over where the Sheriff’s station sits along the interstate. Dad prepares to leave, just as Mom pulls up.
Dad shoos Billy back into the house and Mom walks in. They catch her up to speed and they all agree that they need to head into town immediately and alert the sheriff. As they head out the door to Mom’s car, their faces turn pasty white, and their mouths drop…the tires are flat. They run to Dad’s car, flat.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO.
They have no choice but to run the 5 miles to the Sheriff’s station. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t seem to be much of a task, but that was before a stalker was obviously in their midst.
Dad grabs Mom and Billy’s hands and off into the cornfield they go. You see, it’s only five miles to the Sheriff’s station, but that’s IF you cut through the cornfield. Billy takes the lead, followed by Mom, with Dad running interference in the back.
As they approach the halfway mark, Billy hears his father’s wailing scream. He turns around to see his mother, but his father is nowhere to be found. Billy turns to run towards Dad when he hears his father’s voice, one last time, blood gurgling from his mouth, “THE BOY!” he screams, and then…silence. Billy and Mom stand motionless for what seemed like hours, and then, they saw the corn moving. It was coming AT them.
Mom and Billy picked up the pace, eventually exiting the field and standing directly across from the Sheriff’s station. They made it!
Billy grabbed Mom’s hand and began walking across the desolate highway towards the station, when suddenly he was jerked back. The shadow had a grip on his mother, strangling the life out of her. Billy began kicking, screaming, PLEADING for his mother’s life. The shadow continues.
Billy, driven by sheer adrenaline, jumps up and rips the shadow’s mask off, scratching his familiar face as he did so. As Mom’s eyes began to lose life, they faded with the very real recognition: her son Jesse was strangling her.
Billy begs his brother: “Jesse, please, don’t do this! It’s mom!”
Jesse turns to his brother, dropping the new lifeless body of his mother to the ground, and in a whisper says, “She’s worse than Dad.”
Jesse reaches out to Billy, now cowering on the ground, ready to accept his fate. Jesse picks Billy up off of the ground, carrying him across the highway. He casually walks up to the Sheriff’s station and places him down to the right of the entry door.
Jesse then hugs him, kisses him on the cheek, and says “Happy Birthday, Billy”. He then disappears into the darkness.
Two weeks later.
Billy has been living with his Aunt Janine since the incident. As the Sheriff arrives, Billy sneaks down the stairs, out the back door, and around to the side of the house where the open window is situated so that he can hear the particulars of the case.
Sheriff explains: “Janine, we still have not been able to locate Jesse. It’s almost as if he disappeared into the wild.”
Janine asks, “Have you learned anything as to why this happened?”
Sheriff replies, “Sit down, Janine.” She does. He continues, “Jesse has been in military school for several years, as you know. He just escaped that morning, the day before Billy’s 11th birthday. But he did leave a note for his roommate.
“What did it say,” Janine asked.
“Basically, it was Jesse’s confession. That Jesse had been molested by his father. When he told his mother what his father had done, she refused to believe him. Jesse then threatened to tell the authorities, and that is when his father shipped him off to military school.”
Janine, crying, then asked, “So why kill them now, years later?”
The Sheriff tipped his hat back, wiped the nervous sweat from his forehead, and said, “Jesse’s Dad apparently had a very specific desire. And it began on his 11th birthday. His note said he would never let that happen to Billy.”
As Billy heard this last bombshell, he looked up, and saw a shadow across the field.
But this time…he smiled.