A Halloween Story by Larry Cohen c 2025
The following is absolutely, true… true as today, right as tomorrow.
My roommate in college was a fellow from Woodside, Queens, NY.
Dave C., my roommate, had no beliefs in anything that he could not see, touch, feel, hear or taste. He didn’t believe in a Higher Power, Life after Death, ghosts, Headless Horsemen, and so forth. Dave was the true empiricist.
One evening around this time in late October, a discussion of Aliens from Outer Space somehow began and became the topic of discussion in what was known as the Common Area of our dormitory.
Everyone had their own theories about the existence or non-existence of Aliens. The discussion became quite heated at times. The theories that my schoolmates proffered included concepts such as the time-space continuum, Einstein’s theory of Relativity, as well as the so-called “Grandfather” and Fermi paradoxes. These college kids knew their stuff. Since my schoolmates seemed much smarter than I was, I was only a listener that night.
Then, Dave, generally a very quiet fellow, began to speak. Since he rarely said anything about these kinds of things, the room became quiet. Dave began.
From what I remember since it was many years ago, I will try to reconstruct, as well as I can, what Dave told the group that night:
Dave’s father, not a man of higher education, worked in a belt factory in Queens. The factory made belts for machinery, not the kinds of belts that were made for the belt loops of trousers. These were industrial belts.
Dave’s father worked on the 6th floor of the belt factory.
One night, Dave’s father was finishing up checking inventory after the factory had closed at 5pm. By that time, all of the other workers had left for the day.
After about an hour of working alone, Dave’s father noticed two unknown men exit the elevator. They both walked onto the floor and approached Dave’s father. Dave said his father described the men as being nondescript both wearing dark suits, white shirts and neckties, and being exactly the same height. identical in every way. They could have been twins, he said. Both were about the same age as Dave’s father, around fifty.
Without any customary greetings such as “Good evening” or even a “Hello” one began to speak as he opened the palm of his hand.
This slow opening exposed some kind of extremely shiny silver metal that seemed to have a putty-like quality since it expanded as this stranger’s hand had opened.
The strange metal had expanded and filled the palm of his outstretched hand.
Only the one with metal spoke, saying, “If you come with us, we will give you this,” as if the expanding silver colored metal were easily recognized as having a significant value.
Dave’s father had no idea what the silvery metal was nor who these men were nor where they wanted to take him.
He said he wasn’t interested. Without saying anything more, both men left taking the mysterious metal with them, leaving the same way that they arrived…on the elevator.
When Dave’s father finished work and started to head home, he called for the elevator which he had to wait for since it had to come up from the ground floor.
Arriving back on the ground floor, he asked the Security Guard who worked the building door after hours who were those two men that had come up to see him.
The guard said there was no one here to see him, adding that no one had used the elevator since 5 pm that night. There was no other way to get to the 6th Floor since the stairs leading up were blocked off at 5 pm as usual. Dave’s father insisted that there were two men who came up and they had to use the elevator to get there. There was no other way to get on to the 6th Floor. The guard explained again that no one had come in or out, nor up or down since 5 pm. In fact, the guard continued, if anyone did come in after 5 pm, they would have had to sign the logbook that was kept in the lobby. Dave’s father went over to look at the logbook noting there were no entries. However, he noticed the date printed in large bold type at the top of the sheet: October 31st.
When Dave finished speaking, none of us said anything but dispersed quickly. After all, it was late October.