The Overwhelming Itch: A Halloween Story

An itch. That’s how it always starts. An itch in the back of my neck. No, in the deep recesses of my mind, where no conscious thoughts can reach. And it’s subtle, most days. Quiet. Can barely tell that it’s started until the need to scratch it is overwhelming. Until there is nothing to do but tear through my own skin at the base of my skull to reach it. And once I’ve lost all semblance of control, once I’m tearing into the back of my neck like a madman, time stops. Freedom. Hunger. Blood. And I’m back. Just as I was before the itch. Just where I was before I scratched. And, for a time, the itch is gone.

There are rumors of course, stories of the curse of our small mountain town. A curse that spanned generations and twisted the men of town into monsters once a month when the call of the valley was too strong. But the specifics are somehow always more vague the deeper you look into it. Like the surface level speaks of the monsters as massive, wolflike creatures that hunt and kill all without remorse. And yet, start to look into the accounts and they range from bears to wolves to crocodiles. One or two even speak of the monsters flying. And some accounts speak of wholescale slaughter, while others talk about the monsters stalking past as though seeking out something in particular. Looking deeper into the monthly thing, the stories never actually mention anything like this. They only note the time, and most of the accounts occur on the first moon of the lunar month, when just the faintest sliver of a crescent can be seen in the sky for barely an hour after nightfall. But other accounts occur at other times of the month as well, with no real indication of why. These inconsistencies in the story always led us who looked deeper into the curse to think that the whole tale was just that, a tall tale told to the children to keep them from wandering off into the woods at the edge of town at night. And then, after one night that I did rush home through those very woods that lead down into the valley, I started to feel the itch.

That evening was one like any Tuesday. Senior year, I was hurrying home from football practice. Running through the forest shaves three or four minutes off of the trip, so I always went through it. After all, the stories were just stories, and nothing bad had happened before. The sun was still illuminating the sky to the west, though it had long descended past the mountain’s side. as I rushed through the forest. And the thin sliver of a moon sat in its place, faint as the fading light of the sun seems to blend the moon into the background of the sky. But the sliver hung there. A poor omen in town, but physically speaking it happens once a month and bad things don’t happen around there nearly so often. The next thing I remember is pain, a burning sensation in my mind. I make it back home, exhausted, well after dark. Collapse into the woods, while the glow is still above. There is a sharp pain in my side. I sit up on our couch thirsty. The odor of blood is so vibrant, so intense, that I can taste it even lying down yards away. Worried parents ushering me into bed. A water glass shattering in my hand as I grab at it, half asleep. A faint whisper in my ears of safety.

Then I was awake the next morning. Everything is as it was before, no blood, no pain, the only indication that anything happened is the shards of glass in the trash can. At the time, I could not even piece together that much from the night. Just the pain and the blood. The rest comes back to me, in bits and pieces, and never in the right order. I went to school as normal, did practice as normal, and ran home as normal. It wasn’t until the football game that weekend, I started to notice the itch. Subtle, but very present. Being a defensive lineman, my initial thought was that this itch gnawing quietly at the back of my mind might just be an abnormality caused by subconcussive episodes, or whatever the doctors call it when you hit your head hard, but not hard enough to get your bell rung. And so, I ignored it. Talking about it would only serve to get me benched next week. Instead, I tried my best to push it out of my mind. But it’s always just out of reach of the conscious mind’s efforts, just beyond where I can avoid feeling it in my soul. And so the itch started to build. From a mental thing, to a physical one. A quite real itch under the skin of my neck. For weeks, I am intermittently scratching at the back of my head where it meets my neck.

Then, on the new moon about a month after that night, the Thursday before gameday, as I am jogging home slower than usual, it becomes too much. More than I can handle. I rush out of the trail, so people don’t notice my weakness. Collapsing to the ground as I scratch at my neck, I smell my own blood before I notice the pain. I can even see the chunks of skin falling to the ground. Then the waves of pain start to hit. My fingertips begin to feel a wet, membrane surface that I can’t, no don’t want to, want to rip through. As my fingers tear the skin off of my head, I can feel something else rip as well, as my tailbone pushes through my muscle, fat, and skin and begins to wriggle its way out, thrashing against the forest floor. I don’t remember much after that, only that the pain did not subside for some time. And the taste of blood. And before dawn, I woke up, at the side of the path, naked. No injuries on my neck or rear, or face where I tore into myself. No flecks of skin around me. No one noticed me lying at the side of the road. Slowly, I got up and jogged home, keeping my eyes out for any people that might be up before dawn as I was still naked. Sneaking into my room, I get dressed and lie down for a nap. Only upon lying down, do I realize the itch is gone.

The next day, after the game of course, I did bring someone in on what I was only assuming to be my psychotic break for the last month. As I was finishing getting back into my everyday clothes, I went out of the locker room to meet up with my old friends, Dylan and Felicia. I’ve known Dylan since we were in preschool together, and Felicia since kindergarten. I trust they won’t tell anyone, not without checking with me first.

Felicia was finishing putting away her camera while Dylan waited, in the bleachers by her. “Where are you two miscreants headed?” I joked as I approached.

“Good game, by the way,” Felicia replied, as she ignored my question. Dylan chuckles. Me calling them miscreants was like a stove calling a pan hot, the only time it really happens is when I prod them into it. She specifies why she is commenting on my performance at all, “And that swim move is going to look good on the school athletics home page.” Felicia is a brilliant photographer, an okay journalist and writer, but she most certainly does not care about sports beyond her friends’ excitement about their respective sports of choice.

Waiting for her to zip shut her bag, I sigh, and say in a hushed tone, “Can I talk to you two about something?” I wait a beat before adding, “Off the record, and out of the rumor mill,” to Felicia and Dylan respectively.

“Sure,” Dylan says, looking confused. I look over at Felicia, waiting for her to agree as well. She swings her bag over her back and gives me a nod.

I take a deep breath and slowly speak. “So, know how I’ve been acting kinda weird these last few months?”

“You mean a bit unfocused and scratching yourself like you’d got the chickenpox?” Felicia asks.

“If you want to be specific about it,” I say, shaking my head and sighing. Of course she noticed. I continue, “I think I may have had a bit of a psychotic break.” As we walk through town to the diner where we frequently go for celebratory pancakes, I explain to the best of my foggy recollection the weird memories from a month ago, the itch, and what happened the night before. It is fragmented and mostly nonsense, but they nod along, trying their best to understand.

As we settle into a booth, Dylan smirks and posits unseriously, “Maybe the curse has finally come and found you for all your sins.”

“You sin way more than me,” I joke, “Why aren’t you having the mental breakdown?”

“Because my sins are more fun,” he jokes right back.

Felicia shakes her head, then furrows her brow. “You know, I think I read somewhere that it’s pretty normal for people to block out and like, struggle remembering traumatic events. Maybe something happened that night and you’ve just been pushing it down as you do for too long so it exploded out.”

It would make sense, but what could have happened. I voice the flaw. “I mean, it would have to be traumatic enough to mess with my head, but the next morning I was fine and back home.” Then, as I think about it, I remember what lingered in my mind, both times. The thing I remembered most distinctly. “And who’s blood was it, since I wasn’t injured.”

“I can ask around, see if anyone turned up in the Urgent,” Dylan offered.

I smile and nod. Good, if anyone can figure this out, the three of us putting our heads together can. When I returned home that night, I had hope.

The next day, Dylan told us the possibly good news: No injuries in the urgent care or reported that were bleeding badly. Sunday, Felicia gave her news, much less possibly good. Last month, the day this all started, there was a dead body found in the woods. With lots of stabbing wounds, though not seemingly in vital places. And covered in blood that wasn’t his own. She’d snuck a peek at her Mom’s report on the death, and at least some of the blood was O, but it seems to come from numerous sources.

Then, Monday came and I shared the worst news yet. Worse than my being a possible witness to a murder. “The itch. It’s back,” I say to my friends, before asking in a hushed tone in the school parking lot. “Do you think I’m going crazy?”

“Don’t be silly,” Dylan offers unhelpfully, “Going implies you haven’t been here from jump.”

Felicia shakes her head. “Not helpful,” she says. Then to me, she adds in a more serious look, “No. You’re just going through something you’re struggling to understand.” Holding her hand on my shoulder, she reassures me. “We’ll figure this out.”

Then, a few weeks later, as I arrive back home after midterms. The moon high in the sky, full. And all of a sudden, the itch starts to intensify exponentially. Like something is trying to break me as soon as possible. I message Felicia and Dylan that something is happening, I’m heading to the woods and I hope they can meet me and tell me what it looks like from their perspectives. I don’t see them when I get to the woods and start to scratch. Start to tear. Start to smell the blood. My blood. Start to feel the white hot pain.

Then I’m in Dylan’s mom’s jeep, in the back seat. Dylan is with me, getting me dressed in some of his spare clothes, while Felicia is driving us into town. “What was it?” I ask.

“Remember that joke I made?” Dylan said, clearly scared. “About the curse?” And he pulls out Felicia’s camera. The video is up, as though they’ve been watching it repeatedly to try to understand. And I watch as I, in the woods, tear off all of my skin, revealing a slick, darkly colored, slimy membrane underneath, some sort of tailed lizard, then eat my own skin and torn clothes, look directly at them and the camera, before scurrying down into the valley with a purpose. “I’m not so sure it’s a joke anymore,” he adds as the massive thing I’d become fades into the dark woods on the small screen of the camera.