Second Skin
On Halloween night, the old graveyard behind Miller’s Farm stirred with a sound like rattling dice. From a cracked tomb, a skeleton crawled out, its empty sockets gleaming with cold hunger. It wandered toward the town, where laughter and candlelight filled the streets. The skeleton loved how the living looked — warm, soft, full of color. So it began to collect… not bones, not trinkets — but skin.
One by one, it found the stragglers — a boy lost on his way home, a man cutting through the woods, a woman waiting for her ride. Each time, it peeled away what it needed, wrapping the stolen skin over its rattling frame, patch by patch.
By morning, the town awoke to see a stranger among them — pale, stiff, smiling too wide. No one noticed the seams along its neck, or how its hands looked too tight, as if the skin had been stretched to fit.
And every Halloween after, someone new appears — always a little quieter, always a little colder… and always wearing a face you almost recognize.
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