Harry’s Horror

Harry was distinctly restless this day. He did a lot of pacing and moaning. His wife, Mary, became distinctly disturbed by his bellicose behaviour. It was symptomatic of Harry’s horror.

Mary checked his medication dispenser. The pills that helped modify his mood were gone. The question was, did Harry actually swallow those pills? She thought perhaps not, given his mood.

Harry had spent the past week setting up his Hallowe’en display. This was one thing he retained from his childhood memory: How to make a great scary show. He included everything: carved and lit pumpkins, floated ghosts, activated Zombies from the attic, and even laid out the vampire coffin he’d constructed in his active days, designed to actually swallow up the more curious and brave passerby who got close enough to trip the wire.

Other than that, Mary lamented, these days Harry couldn’t even change a washer. The only thing he was missing, and she had to remember not to comment on it, was the spider cobwebs. Harry hated spider cobwebs. He related them to an unfortunate incident at his university initiation. And about that, he never revealed the details.

Come evening and Harry was putting on his cap. This was his walking hat, so he obviously intended to go somewhere. The where was always guesswork, and since Mary was so much smaller than Harry, she was unable to stop him. So she shadowed him around the house as he donned his favourite red plaid walking jacket – the one with all the pockets – and she donned her favourite blue plaid walking jacket. Harry pulled on his shoes, and Mary pulled on hers.

Harry was on a mission. What that mission was, was yet to be revealed. Mary tried to take pleasure in the surprise, and she always made the most of the involuntary exercise on Harry’s sundowning walk-abouts. After all, there had to be two sides to everything, even this.

Harry trudged methodically down the half-lit street, becoming as blurred to others as did the Hallowe’en decorations in each yard he passed as the light of day continued to fade and the fog drifted in. And at each display, his physical demeanour became more agitated.

Mary became worried that she might have to call for help this time. At one point Harry appeared to go into convulsions as he walked straight into a mesh of cobwebs strong across the sidewalk.

Harry’s ripped himself free, stood trembling for a moment. Several people went to him and tried to calm him, but Harry shook them off and forged ahead.

Mary explained to them: “He’s out trying to face his fear. He’s frightened of cobwebs.”

Then, when Harry turned the next corner, Harry came face to face with a walking pumpkin head that roared through its gaping mouth and over its bleeding teeth and waved his cobwebbed hands in Harry’s face.

“BOOoooooahahahahahahah!!”

Harry felt his blood freeze. He whirled around and ran, knocking Mary into a field of floating ghosts which set off a cacophony of horns and bells and whistles and a chorus of Boos.

Harry bolted, arms and spindly legs flailing at the air like a drunken Ichabod Crane’s, and practically galloped the six blocks back home, moaning loudly the whole way. The fog swirled behind him like a jet stream in a wind storm.

“Well thank you, Sir Gallahad,” Mary muttered as her feet wiggled and waggled above the giant pumpkins and caused the hanging ghosts to waver about.

The hullabaloo brought the giant pumpkin head, the couple of the house with their trick-or-treat containers, as well as the surrounding trick-or-treaters, man, woman, and child, to her rescue.

Mary thanked them profusely, apologized for Harry, and skittered on home.

What she found there was both profoundly funny and very pathetic. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Instead, she beckoned the gathering crowd of neighbours and trick-or-treaters to come to the aid of the needy.

And Harry was needy, for Harry was indeed facing Harry’s Horror. He was bobbing with terror, yet he seemed to be laughing at his own fate. For there he hung, suspended, arms outstretched and legs still in running formation, his face and his body stuck in a wall of spider cobwebs as if it were ™Velcro.

He was half screaming, half whispering, “Spider, spider go away, I’m too skinny to eat. Spider, spider, go away, don’t you dare to come another day…”

“I’m so sorry,” Mary told Harry once they had extricated him and got him calmed down. “But surely you can see now that spider’s cobwebs are not really traps.”

Harry was resolutely not convinced. But he was calmer.

“Who…who…?”

“Who put up the cobwebs? Well, Harry, do you remember last spring when we were invaded by all of those baby spiders? And you were facing your fears, and you helped them to escape? Well, maybe it was them?”

Harry was not amused. Then he went quiet.

“Mary.”

“Yes Harry?”

“I did … good thing?”

“Yes, Harry, you did a very good thing to save the little spiders’ lives.”

Harry finished his cocoa and went to bed quietly. Harry’s Horror was quiet. For now.

hwbryce/Harry’s Horror/Oct 2016

CREDITS: Top picture – http://eurai.deviantart.com/art/Bring-It-38434801
Bottom picture – https://www.google.ca/search?q=confused-clip-art-1263986.png&espv=2&biw=874&bih=688&tbm=isch&imgil=GgUoLYJiiOc5rM%253A%253BdtWTFUgxs5gfaM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.clipartkid.com%25252Fconfused-black-people-cliparts%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=GgUoLYJiiOc5rM%253A%252CdtWTFUgxs5gfaM%252C_&usg=__Z8vCbMpZn6HJvBupPBdSSOctbgA%3D&dpr=0.75&ved=0ahUKEwiQ5oa6yu_PAhUQ1GMKHTprAnUQyjcIKQ&ei=avgLWJCJCZCojwO61omoBw#q=stuck%20in%20cobwebs&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg%3ACdZRteHIAV-sIjhrPPIcdtAj46GIzTHprxL9XZg-bi2hhSYlAbWK9qNwVHBrMobXBVMyNAc5lieIM4jBMHRVj30uyioSCWs88hx20CPjEQttRx16CLoxKhIJoYjNMemvEv0R9yrFBCTtKCEqEgldmD5uLaGFJhGEEuXLod4nHioSCSUBtYr2o3BUEb42VTM1VhYpKhIJcGsyhtcFUzIR4QV-LpRWFJgqEgk0BzmWJ4gziBHh5naYdQn5UyoSCcEwdFWPfS7KEZQSeujn_1vdI&imgrc=1lG14cgBX6z1HM%3A