As Halloween approaches I am always reminded of the following story from my childhood growing up in the city of Vallejo.
One rainy afternoon, the year I was 10, I was walking home from school by myself.
It was 1968 ? the year the Zodiac killer stole Halloween. Imagine being one of the “kiddies” that a self-proclaimed stalker of human prey had targeted to “pick off” one by one as we came bounding off the school busses.
Imagine being 10, eating your Cream of Wheat in the morning, the Vallejo Times Herald in front of you and reading in bold black headlines that the Zodiac had killed again.
Imagine phrases like “Shot in cold blood.” “Strikes again.” Slain.”
Imagine knowing someone who knew someone who knew the latest victim and the fear and trauma to your psyche that no adult could shield you from. It was in the news; it was the news. It was everywhere. School busses arrived to school by police escort and stood guard as the kids, my friends, disembarked. Imagine thinking the new little pink and brown jumper my grandmother bought for me to wear on the first day of fifth grade could be the dress I might die in. Imagine imagining it being covered in blood. Imagine imagining what being murdered would feel like and playing the whole scenario over and over in your mind and concluding that it might not be so bad; at least the Zodiac didn”t torture his victims. He got you by surprise, a deadly surprise that would be over before you even had time to realize what was happening.
So there I was, walking home from school. Home wasn”t very far, maybe a block. But it seemed an eternity, walking with legs that felt like lead weights, trying to keep my patent leather shoes dry, keenly aware of anything amiss and out of the ordinary.
For some reason I thought I had to appear unaffected by it all so as not to draw attention to myself, I guess.
Still there was no spontaneous breaking into song, as I was normally wont to do, and I certainly did not idly pass the time of day with silly games like Step on the crack, break your mother”s back.
My mother worked but I had my instructions. Come straight home. Don”t talk to strangers. And then, at the corner of Calhoun and Rogers Street it happened, my imaginary brush with the Zodiac.
A grey car pulled to a stop. A man with short hair, glasses, pushed a stack of papers off the passenger seat and they fell onto the wet sidewalk and into the rushing gutters.
“Perhaps you can help me.” He said. For one frozen moment in time I almost did. It was the goodness in me I suppose. The willingness of an innocent child to lend a hand and the notion that grown ups were supposed to keep kids safe.
And then I ran all the way home without looking back.
I ran around the house so I could enter through the back door so he wouldn”t know where I lived. But I lived in fear for years afterward and to this day I have trouble with Halloween costumes that emulate murderers.
Tammy McDonnell
Kelseyville
