The Celery Stalks at Midnight Part 1

It was hunting.

It was the thing that parents feared the most; that he might come and take their precious children away in that one moment they weren't watching. Turn to stir the pot, check your lipstick in the rearview mirror, tie your shoes; look up and she is gone, gone. There was no stopping it, no way to protect your darling chick from the shadow of the raptor. He took whom he wanted and you just hoped that your luck was better than your enemy's. Or your neighbor's.

As an adult, you can vaguely remember at time when you were younger that you, too, were once his prey, but then you grow up, he is obscured from memory. But children are aware of him, fear him in the night while curled under their favorite quilt, hoping that the love that grandma put into its construction will be a talisman to ward off his lurking gaze.

It never is, by the way.

You dismiss your child's fears of the boogey men hiding under the bed, hoping that leaving the light on in the hallway to soothe your fear that he is in the dark, waiting.

That doesn't work, either.

While most children are actively afraid of him, there are a certain few who feel is presence more than others, who become mildly obsessed with the monster. He stalks through schoolrooms, waiting to find the right child.

This is how he hunts:

On this day, he walks down an aisle of Ms. Stratford's second grade class glancing over shoulders at the students quietly writing Halloween stories at their desks. The room is warm, and there is the faint smell of crayons and dirt and pencil shavings. He comes to a desk and reads:

The Celery Stalks At Midnight, by Joel Cheney

One time there was a boy who didn't eat vegetables. He would throw them away and his mom didn't know or she would have been mad. But one night the vegetables got mad and after he went to sleep they went to his room and killed him and threw his body away.

He had found his next victim.