Outside, there is a slight chill in the air. Somewhere, costumed children flicker from house to house, squealing with the anticipation of a potent, yearly sugar rush. Candles gutter in the wind from behind carved faces. The bars are full of the sloppy, intoxicated, and underdressed, a casualty of the marketing genius who had first decided that Halloween could be an excuse for nominal adults to dress like streetwalkers. Some festive soul had even hung a bucket of candy on the automated chain gun emplacements out front; it was a juxtaposition of the light-hearted and lethal that made my skin crawl. Before this was Halloween, it was a holiday where it was said the dead would walk, where the veil between the world and the underworld gave way like a haunted-house cobweb.