I almost consider passing up the turn that will lead me windingly to the house, passing it altogether so that I may simply keep driving, driving forever, but I do not because home draws me to it with a gravitational pull. I drive through the intricate iron gate with its fickle latch and come up to the house, observing it like a stranger to see what it looks like from the outside.

When you pull up, the house dwarfs you to insignificance. One can imagine it was once proud and beautiful, but now it is ill kept and fallen, bit by bit, into disrepair, into a great colossal wreck. I think one would not be surprised to discover that my mother and sister and I are all, in fact, ghosts, and that the place has actually been abandoned for years. That would explain the dusty windows, the thorny vines creeping over the facade, and the general air of gloom that presides over the land around it, which the house casts into shadow.

Autumn is especially apropos. Children who visit on Halloween come wanting to see the haunted house. They don’t come for the candy, or if they do, the candy is a kind of prize, not to eat so much as to show where they have been. They will come riding up on their bicycles in zombie makeup or ghost sheets, and push and shove one another closer to the house as a testament to their bravado, through the front gate, until they are finally at the porch and cannot turn back because now they have committed themselves.

Elizabeth always loved trick-or-treating. She and her gaggle of friends would sprint out into the night in their costumes like a flock of hungry birds. My mother would likely be inside watching a black-and-white monster movie over a glass of wine.

As for me, I preferred to stay home. It gave me a thrill to creep to the front door and peek out at whoever stood on the stoop, quivering, their pillowcases outstretched like beggars. It pleased me to watch their faces contort in fear, faces that had previously eyeballed me with whispered looks and corner-eyed glances. Children who muttered nasty things about the strange girls who lived on the edge of the swamp, whose games I tried to join even as they snickered behind my back, or behind their books and magazines—whose snickers and smirks I would like to wipe right off their faces.

What a disappointment it must be when the person answering the door is not a disfigured monstrosity or a minion of the undead, but my smiling mother or little me. But it’s the opening of the door that matters. You don’t know who is on the other side; that’s the thrill, the Parable of the Knocker. I could be anyone. Anyone at all.

One of these days, I’d like to give them a scare. I really would.

How would you like to see a real ghost, children?