The light above the door glowed with an eerie green that I hadn’t ever seen before. The odd hue did nothing to help my nerves as I stepped up on the porch and swung the heavy door-knocker. I could hear each strike echoing from inside the great old house.
The green light flickered as someone approached the door from the other side. Then it turned red as the large door started to open.
I was scared.
“Hello,” said the completely normal looking man who opened it.
“Hi,” I stammered.
The man craned his neck to look at the sanguine bulb above my head. “Damned novelty Halloween crap,” he declared. “That’s supposed to be orange, you know,” he told me.
“I see,” I said, still tongue-tied. This certainly wasn’t what I’d had in mind.
“Well, boy, best not stand there gawking, why don’t you come in?” he said.
It wasn’t phrased as a request, but it wasn’t unfriendly. I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.
“You must be Jeremy,” he said. He slid a pair of ornate glasses from his forehead to give me a once-over. “Here about the job?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Follow me. My workshop is down in the basement.”
By now I was rubbing my arms to conceal the goose bumps, but I still couldn’t give a name to a specific fear. I considered leaving, running out the door, maybe screaming like a little girl, but I’d come too far to back out without at least finding out what this guy had to offer. I walked along behind the man as he led me along a wood-paneled corridor and down the narrow stone steps to his shop.
“Here it is,” he declared excitedly as he threw the lever to turn on the lights. They snapped on in sequence, bright and blindingly white.
I gasped.
He laughed.
“I’ll take it. I’ll take the job,” I managed.
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