"The Museum of Child Murderers"

It is Halloween and I am visiting "the Museum of Child Murderers", which seems to be a house much like the one I live in. A small boy dressed up as Shrek walks before me, I suppose he is trick or treating. He has an all-over green bodysuit, which looks in fact like the Hulk, and a Shrek mask which covers his whole face. He goes across the threshold and into the dark corridor inside, disappearing into the depths of the building without a word.

The Museum of Child Murderers is not dedicated to murderers of children, but to children who have been convicted of murder, usually of other children or by starting fires.

But it also houses these children themselves, who have arrived in dormitory rooms, like hotel rooms, off to the side. I go in to check on them, after all they're only kids, but in spite of myself I find that I become very creeped out by them.

Some of them are very silent and withdrawn, and simply stare at me unsmiling when I check up on them. In one room filled with single beds like a makeshift hotel room is a family of two boys and a girl who have been convicted of murder. They seem like fairly normal kids, and I seem to have interrupted some game. When I enter the room, they pause to watch me and stifle their laughter. One of the boys grins at me, a mischevious gleam in his eye. The girl is standing up on the bed beside the curtained window. They know I am scared of them, and pretending not to be. I don't know the specific crime of each child but I know that one set a fire which consumed a building and led to deaths, and another group lured a little girl to an abandoned factory and crudely garroted her with wire.

In one room at the back there is a group of two or three children who seem to be dressed in Victorian or Edwardian garb. Before I walk in I can hear them chattering excitedly to each other in what sounds like German, but when I walk in they grow hushed and whisper among themselves, stealing knowing glances at me. A new and irrational idea begins to worry me; What if some of these children are not just convicted child murderers but the spirits of murdered children which have somehow been revived?

The main exhibits of the museum are in the murky, shadowy main corridor. These consist of large blown-up photographs of children who appear to wearing crude Halloween costumes and facepaint. The costumes and make-up look cheap and shoddy, and the photographs of unsmiling children are black and white and haphazardly arranged. One little girl is supposed to be a "witch", but her costume is just a black shapeless shawl and her face is smeared with dark paint, and she looks unhappily out of the photograph. I notice with unease that among the pictures on the wall is a picture of myself as a child, looking scared.