Chapter Text
“It’s fun, Sissy, I swear. They’re just a couple of spinsters who get a kick out of messing with us,” a boy, around eleven years old, wearing a hockey mask pushed back on top of his head and wielding a machete made of cardboard and duct tape tries to explain to a much smaller girl in a long dark dress and cape, who stands hesitating outside the old, creaking iron gates that are wedged open just enough for a single person to pass through. “Now come on! We have to catch up with the rest of them!”
“I think they’re married…” another kid corrects him as she squeezes through the gate ahead of them. She’s painted her face like a skull, and the white makeup glows a little more wickedly in the yellow-orange of the last light on the street when she beams back at them through the dark iron bars.
“Why do people call them sisters, then?” the boy asks, crossing his arms in front of his chest defiantly.
“I dunno…” She shrugs, then sticks her tongue out at him, a startling pink against the black of her lips. “Do you think you’ll at least make it to the door this year?”
“Yeah…” he mutters. “The only reason I didn’t last time was because of all those stupid crows!”
The little girl’s eyes go wide, and she takes a tentative step toward the gate. “Crows…?”
“Yeah!” Skull-girl exclaims. “Well...ravens, actually. Last year, they had real ones up in the trees and they’d swoop down at you and try to steal your eyeballs…”
She makes claws with her hands and tilts her head, looking at the little girl and creeping herky-jerkily and bird-like back toward them.
The younger girl takes a deep breath, her eyes shining with strange delight in the gentle green of the glowstick hanging down around her neck.
But then the older girl abruptly turns her attention to her brother and leaps at him.
“Hey!” he shrieks. “That’s not funny! I’m like, really scared of birds! Ever since I saw that stupid old movie…”
“Nah…” Skull-girl winks at the younger girl and she has to stifle a small giggle. “They were fine. The worst they did was grab a couple pieces of candy. I think they like the shiny wrappers…” She turns and grins menacingly back at the boy through the bars.
The little girl watches as he shuffles his candy around in his bucket, trying to hide the pieces wrapped in foil. She looks down at her own bucket, and is pleased to see that she has quite a few shiny pieces sitting right on top. Skull-girl nods approvingly and offers her a hand as she steps the rest of the way into the overgrown yard of the estate.
“Hey, wait up!” the boy calls out to them, pulling his mask down over his face as they begin to make their way up the path through the thick hedge.
...
“Morana, quick!” Striga calls out over her shoulder. “Come see all these wretched little creatures who’ve made it through our maze!”
The children giggle nervously, shuffling around in front of the door as they try and get a better look inside the mysterious old mansion.
Morana appears with a tray of delicious-looking candied apples, all different kinds with various edible decorations, wrapped up in cellophane. “Oh, your costumes are magnificent!” she exclaims.
“I’m a gremlin!” one of the children declares gratingly from behind a plastic store-bought mask.
“Why, yes! You are!” Morana places a caramel-dipped Granny Smith apple in the child’s bucket, and then the other children line up, holding their own baskets out for a fancy homemade treat.
“And I’m an undead skeleton!” the girl with the skull makeup exclaims proudly when it’s her turn.
“Very spooky…did you make your costume yourself?” Morana asks. “Or perhaps someone else raised you from the dead?”
“Well, my dad helped me with the makeup…” the girl confesses, as Morana selects a red apple drizzled with white chocolate from the tray for her.
“And what are you, little one?” Striga asks, eyeing the little girl who hangs back from the cluster of children crowded around the door, looking hopefully up at the trees.
Her gaze turns wide-eyed at Striga, then she glances sheepishly over at Morana, who is staring expectantly at her, as well. She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, except a set of false glow-in-the-dark teeth with fangs that are far too big for her.
“She’s a baby,” the boy in the hockey mask groans. “This is her first time trick-or-treating with us. Mom said I had to bring her along.”
Striga nods and places an apple in the boy’s basket.
“Oh, but she has been very brave to have made it through our maze!” Morana insists. “She deserves a treat, too!”
The other children puff up their chests a little, elbowing and accusing each other of wanting to turn back at the spider nest or the spooky tree or the two empty coffins in what looked to be freshly-dug-up graves.
“Vamp...vampire…” the tiny girl finally murmurs, after re-inserting and adjusting her teeth. She pulls her cape tightly around her shoulders and tries to narrow her eyes menacingly at them, and quickly becomes embarrassed and tries to duck back behind her brother. But he’s already following the other children down the porch steps, leaving her to face ‘The Sisters’ alone.
Striga raises an eyebrow at her, and smiles, revealing just the tips of her fangs. “The best costume we’ve seen all night, wouldn’t you say, my love?”
“Yes,” Morana nods, grinning at the girl to reveal her own sweetly-fanged smile. She looks down at her tray of apples. “Oh yes...I think this one, most definitely…” She picks up a beautiful blush-colored Pink Lady with flecks of gold leaf and stripes of caramel over the clear glossy candy coating and places it in the little girl’s basket.
“Fank you…” the little girl lisps through her oversized fangs, and then spins around, hurrying to catch up with the other children, who are already discussing their next stop -- the Becker house, where the old widow is known for handing out full-size Baby Ruths and, being that she is practically blind, you can usually grab more than one.
“Don’t forget to brush those fangs, darling!” Morana cries out to her. “With all these sweets, you wouldn’t want them to fall out before you've had a chance to grow into them!”
The little girl turns around to wave, but the two women have disappeared. Instead, a large black bird stands on the porch, its eyes fixed on her as it tilts its head curiously, accompanied by an oddly elegant-looking brown bat swooping above it, chittering excitedly. She swears she sees the raven wink one dark glowing eye at her before the odd pair take off together into the night.
...
“Did you see the apple they gave Josh’s little sister?” the gremlin asks one of its ghostly companions.
“Yeah. It’s not fair she got the prettiest one!” the ghost huffs beneath her sheet.
“They probably just felt sorry for her,” a kid wearing a single sequined glove and a red leather jacket waves dismissively.
“My mom says not to eat any candy that isn’t factory-sealed,” one of the other children, dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and carrying a broom says. “You never know what someone might have done to it. There are a lot of sickos out there...”
“Oh, come off it, Lindsey! Last year they gave out those fancy little coffin cakes filled with jelly and nobody dropped dead or choked on any razor blades...” Skull-girl, who has already unwrapped hers and is about to take a bite, says.
"Yours had jelly in it?! Ughhh...mine was super dry and just tasted like dirt!"