Displaced in Mullingar: Halloween is a bit like grim nights in Fermanagh long ago, standing still, hoping the knocking would stop, writes Michael Harding

There's a little boy lives on my street, a Lone Ranger who pedals up and down the footpath like he's being chased by wild horses. He skids at angles on the tarmac of the Gala car park, raising pebbles and dust behind his back wheel. Sometimes he gets so absorbed in imaginary wars that he wears his face like a boiled beetroot; bloated with blood vessels, and as fierce as an American marine on his way to do battle.

"Get-how-ha-me-way!" he spits at sleeping dogs.

When he comes down the street dribbling his football, he lays waste to everything before him: doors, windows, and the mirrors of parked cars are all at risk.

But Halloween really got him going. He was dressed in a black plastic refuse sack, with the false face of a dead ghoul.

And then he knocked on my door.

I was inside with the lights off. I was actually walking around in the dark, denying myself the usual comforts of world news from the BBC, and a hot dinner from the microwave, just to avoid the menace of trick-or-treaters. Halloween sometimes reminds me of grim nights long ago in Fermanagh, standing utterly still behind a hall door, and hoping the knocking would stop.

But the little boy did not stop. He suddenly shouted, "I know you're in there!" I opened the door.

He had a little girl with him; a child with eyes that would abundantly grace a poster of any sentimental musical.

"She's me sister," he said. And they counted, "One, two three," and then in unison screamed, "Trick or treat!" Then he shook a paper bag under my nose. I threw a toffee stick into it.

"Is that all?" he mumbled through his mask, and then turned on his heel, disgusted with the meagre offering, and shouted to his sister to follow him.

After that I fled the house and phoned a friend. We bought a takeaway in the Silver Oak, a new Indian restaurant above the Bridge House Bar, on Austin Friars street.

In my friend's kitchen, where he has lived alone since his mother died, we feasted on jalfrezi and naan breads that would warm the cockles of a Kashmiri heart.

At his kitchen table we had tea, and he cut me a slice of beautiful pumpkin-seed bread, and we talked about the high quality of Polish bakeries in Dublin, which deliver their loaves every day to supermarkets in Mullingar.

The kitchen was a green grimy world, dominated by a huge battery clock hanging on the wall, its tick winnowing the air like a whip.

There was a picture of Michael Collins below the clock; a cheerful swashbuckler of a boy, in full military regalia. I said to my friend, "He looks alive and well." My friend said, "Maybe he is! He'd be 107 if he was still going. He could be lying low in a wheelchair, in some old folks home, smiling at the daystaff every time they bring him the newspaper.

"What d'ye think of him?" he asked.

I said, "I've never seen him on a kitchen wall before." He said, "There's a lot about Mullingar you don't know yet." We talked about whiskey, and single malts, and the dominance of Midleton in the Irish market.

"The best whiskeys," he said, "are Japanese." I laughed; I was getting thirsty.

"Give me something to go with the tae," I said, "like they do in Crossmaglen." He stared at me blankly and said he didn't keep drink in the house. I didn't ask why.

It was only 9.30pm but I decided to go home; the sky was grey and low over Mullingar, and not a leaf stirred in the autumn night. The streets were crawling with revellers in miniskirts, mascara, and black tights. The sky was lit up with erratic explosions, and firecrackers in the distance were driving the dogs insane. I felt I was strolling through a high-school horror movie.

I passed under a cherry tree, whose leaves had not yet fallen. They had turned to a bronze dead colour, almost orange under the street lamps.

Closer to home the Gala was still open and the Lone Ranger sat on the wall, dejected, his false face abandoned on the ground. It was a low brick wall beside the shop. He had a gun in his hand, lying limp in his lap. "How are you now?" I asked. "All right," he said. Then he pointed his weapon slowly at my face and said, "Bang! You're dead!"