4 ... Gabriel Morrisenjoyed the feeling of drifting slowly down in quiet darkness and
surrendered to it. The farther I fell, the more isolated my conscious-
ness became. Soon I had completely forgotten about my previous
turmoil. I only experienced myself falling down what seemed to be a
narrow tunnel of darkness within my own mind.
Eventually I began to slow down. Finally I became still again amidst
a vast darkness. I began moving around within this darkness to figure
out where I was and stumbled across a memory. I was three years
old, it was Halloween, and I was trick-or-treating with my father. We
came to a dimly lit house with a long front walkway. My dad stood
back near the street to let me walk up to the door on my own.
I walked timidly toward the door. It seemed like such a long way
and I was a little scared, especially with the dull front porch light.
Finally I got to the door, reached up, and rang the doorbell.
It chimed pleasantly, reassuring me. The door opened, and a wom-
an was standing there, reaching into a big brown paper bag of as-
sorted candy on a small table by the door.
“Trick-or-treat!” I said, proud of myself for having met the chal-
lenge, raising up my own quarter-full bag of candy.
“Why, aren’t you a cute little boy,” she said. “Well, here you go...”
She dropped a few pieces of candy into my bag.
“Don’t forget to say thank you,” my dad called out from the street.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re quite welcome,” she said as she smiled and slowly closed
the door.
I turned to step down from the front porch. Just then, a shadow
loomed over me as a man leapt out from the darkness of a nearby
bush—arms raised overhead, mouth and eyes wide open, and gave
a blood-curdling scream, like a banshee about to pounce on his vic-
tim.
I screamed, terrified, dropped my bag of candy and ran crying to
my father.
“Hey, kid, c’mon—I was just joking around,” the man said, sud-
denly feeling apologetic.