"Halloween's nothin' these days," my grandfather used to say. He lived with us for many years in that old house and when I was a little boy, my grandfather would tell me lots of stories. None of them were as good as the story he called Spooky Teeth. My mom always said grandpa's stories were nothing but nonsense and that I shouldn't pay any attention to them. But I knew better.
    "So you want to hear the story called Spooky Teeth again, eh?" he asked me one warm fall day while we were doing some yard work after school.
    "Please," I begged him.
    "Oh, well, I don't know," he said as he emptied a bag of damp leaves into the compost pile. "I've told that story so many times. Besides, I don't think your mother likes it much. You know how she feels about it."
    "Did you used to tell that story to her when she was little," I asked.
    "Uh-huh," grandpa said, "a couple times. But you know what? I think she was scared by it. And your grandmother didn't like it either, because," he said, winking at me, "it's not true."
    "Right, grandpa," I said and winked back at him.
    We both knew it was true. The legend of Spooky Teeth was well known, at least to all the boys in my class, and they could tell you the story at a drop of the hat. I could tell the story, too, but I loved to hear my grandfather tell it because he always added new details to the story.
    "You heard about little Brenner Mosley, the boy who lived in the big house at the end of Mosley Road?"
    I knew I was supposed to say yes, but I'd never heard this part of the story before. I didn't know he lived in a big house at the end of Mosley Road.
    "Yes!"
    "Well," my grandfather continued, "something terrible happened to him when he was just a boy. His horse threw him on the way to school and his sister saw him fall into the channel. She tried to save him but the water was too deep."
    This was the part I knew.
    "And swift," I added. That was a detail my grandfather forgot.
    "And swift," he said. "Because the last thing she saw of Brenner Mosley was his teeth smiling through the murky waters of the channel. He was alive under that water and there wasn't a darned thing she could do about it. Now, you tell me that isn't a horrible feeling."
    "And could she hear him laughing?" I asked. I knew that was another detail my grandfather had forgotten.
    "You bet," he said. "from under the water, the sounds of laughter followed her all the way home. By the time she got there she was half-crazed and people said she never quite recovered from that. People said she was always just a little off because of that."
    We stopped to get a cool drink from the hose and the story stopped for a while, too, but I knew what was coming up next. As often as my grandfather told this story, I never got tired of hearing it. I guess it was because I knew it was true. And not just the first part. Everybody knew that much was true. I mean, you could go to the library and look it up in the newspapers because it was a big story at the time, even though it was over a hundred years ago.
    No, it was the next part that was so spooky. The first couple of times I heard the story I wasn't so sure it was true. But the way my grandfather told it, I knew it was true.
    "Come on," my grandpa said. "We don't have much left to do out here."
    I followed him to the backyard again and we finished raking up the leaves as the afternoon settled down to a cool quietness at the end of that peaceful fall afternoon.
    "You see," my grandfather finally said, "it was them teeth, them spooky teeth that haunted that young girl for the rest of her life. She'd see them late at night outside of her window. Course they never found Brenner Mosley. Far as anybody knew, he could have been just fine somewhere, you know, living his life as normal as you please seeing how his young sister was so off anyway. Could have just been a story she was telling to make up for her brother running off, who knows?
    "Anyway," I piped up, "it's not a true story, is it, grandpa." And I winked at him.
    He winked back at me.
    "Right," he said in way that made me know that was absolutely a true story. "So years later," he continued, "here I am in bed on Halloween night. I was a boy just about your age and I seen 'em. I seen 'em right outside my window. I seen them spooky, laughing teeth as plain as day. Just the teeth, moving up and down as they laughed and laughed and laughed such a horrible laugh. It sounded like it was comin' from the center of the hottest place on earth—and we all know where that is!"
    I nodded, unable to speak because I didn't want to see the spooky teeth myself. And the story this time was completely different than I had remembered it. I didn't know that my grandfather, my very own grandfather had seen the spooky teeth himself. And he grew up in the house where we were now living. And I was sleeping in the room where as a boy, my grandfather slept. There was no reason the spooky teeth wouldn't come to visit me, too.
    "And every time the spooky teeth come to visit," my grandpa continued, "something really, really bad happens. The time I seen 'em, I flunked my spelling test and, by jimminy, I'm a cracker-jack speller. So there. Let that be a warning to you."
    We finished up our yard work and headed back inside. Dinner was waiting for us. Outside, the sky turned dark and cold in a matter of minutes and I kept watching out the window for any sight of them. Once I caught my grandfather's eye and he winked at me and smiled.
    "You know," he whispered so my mom wouldn't hear, "it's not a true story."
    The next several days came and went quickly and finally it was Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. In a way I was scared to death but I just couldn't figure out why. We went trick-or-treating door to door with several of my friends and we all had a great time. Later, after all the candy had been sorted and the candles taken out of the jack-o'-lanterns, I finally had time to relax and think about the day. Halloween: it was so much fun.
    And after I had my pajamas on and mom tucked me into bed, I got to thinking about those teeth, those spooky teeth.
    Well, I must have drifted off to sleep because all of the sudden I sat up in bed, my eyes wide open. There was something outside. Moving. Something white. And then I heard it. The laughter seemed to be coming from inside the house. It was the weirdest thing I had ever heard in my life.
    I looked out the window again and sure enough, I could see something moving. And they sure looked like teeth to me. It had to be the spooky teeth. And the laughter began again. This time it was seeping up from the floor and swirling around and around and around until it settled on me like a heavy dew in the early morning.
    That's when I noticed that it was coming from the heating vent in my floor. And to be sure, it was laughter, but it sounded so familiar to me.
    Quietly I began to follow the sound down the stairs, through the hallway and into the living room where I saw a light on next to the couch. And sitting on the couch was—my grandfather! And he was wearing a pair of headphones and listening to the radio. And laughing.
    Well, he did jump a little when I tapped him on the shoulder but he took off the headphones and wiped away a tear from his eye.
    "Did I wake you up?" he asked. He was still laughing.
    I smiled and nodded.
    "Oh, I'm sorry, Sport. I was listening to something funny on the radio and I just got to laughing and laughing. I'm using headphone so I don't bother nobody else. You just run on back to bed and I'll try and keep it down."
    "Grandpa," I said, quietly, "there's something outside my window."
    "You think it might be . .  . ?" he asked.
    I didn't need to hear him say it. We both knew exactly what it was without saying the words spooky teeth.
    "Come on," he said, jumping up and taking my hand. "Let's see what's out there."
    Before I could say anything, we were outside. I was still in my pajamas and the floor of the porch was cold on my feet.
    "They looked like teeth," I told my grandpa. "I could see them through the window."
    He smiled at me and we walked over to where my window was.
    "This?" he asked, and held up a piece of newspaper that was caught on the railing of the porch.
    I nodded.
    "The wind made it move," my grandpa said. "Nah, I tell you. Halloween's nothing these days. Why, when I was a kid, you'd see spooky teeth everywhere you looked."
    We stood for few minutes on the front porch of that old house looking out over the moonlit Halloween night. Maybe I held on to my grandpa's hand a little more tightly than usual, but I wasn't that scared. Somewhere out in that dark night I knew there must be some spooky teeth or something, but they seemed so far away when I was with my grandfather. Suddenly the moon disappeared behind some clouds and my feet got cold.
    "Let's go," my grandpa said, and we went back inside where he tucked me into bed.