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The Guardian of Halloween was a Mystery to everyone.
No one knew whether they were a boy or a girl or something else entirely.
No one knew whether they were loud or quiet.
No one knew what they looked like and what they didn’t.
And that wasn’t because no one had never met them.
Oh no, no, no, no. That wasn’t the case at all.
EVERYONE had met the Guardian of Halloween.
Every spirit and helper had met them at some point.
That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that no one could ever quite agree on anything about the spirit.
Some said the spirit called themself Spooky Hollows and that they just grinned and said “wouldn’t you like to know?” whenever some asked them what they were.
The ones who claimed that also claimed that the spirit had wild Jack-O-Lantern colored hair and black eyes and a wild smile that drew people in along with their extravagant outfits.
Others would agree that they wore extravagant outfits but that the rest of the description was wrong.
Those ones would say that the spirit was a teen named Trixie Hallows who loved to pull tricks and that he flirted with everyone but had eyes for no one other than his lady death.
They’d say he had slicked back green hair and white eyes and pointy ears and freckles that looked out of place on his almost paper white skin.
Others would say his name was Scaredy Hallows and he was jumpy and much too shy to flirt to anyone’s faces. They’d say his skin was green and his hair was curly and black while his eyes were gray.
No one could agree on the spirit’s actual looks, personality, or first name.
All anyone could agree on was that the spirit’s last name was Hallows and that was that.
And nobody knew why.
Nobody but Jack, that was.
Because Jack knew the truth.
There wasn’t just one Guardian of Halloween— there were six.
And he was the only spirit who had met them all.
There was Spooky Hollows and Trixie Hallows.
A pair of bestfriends who had been turned into Guardians five minutes apart.
Which, Trixie claimed, made him the older of the pair.
Spooky vehemently disagreed with the notion.
The two were just like what people said they were.
And more.
They also fought like cats and dogs and claimed that the two of them, Eve, and Scaredy were quadruplets.
They both had approached him on his first Halloween as a spirit and didn’t leave him alone all night.
Not that he minded.
The next Halloween, he met Scaredy—who was just as timid as people described until he got more comfortable around him half way through the night and started teaching him the very horrible jokes that made Bunny twitch to this day.
His style was darker than the other two but somehow also the same.
And he promised that Jack would never be alone on Halloween again.
And Scaredy was right. Because the next Halloween, he met Eve Hollows who didn’t care what people called them.
Eve, who was paler than the moon with sharp teeth and glowing red eyes with black hair that touched the floor even in a braid.
Eve, who dressed in dark clothes and wore collected every shiny thing they saw and who had bat like wings and horns.
Both of them claiming that they were quads with Trixie and Spooky, and that they had known each other before they had become spirits.
Jack wasn’t so sure about that but he wasn’t about to ruin their fun.
Next he met Sweets, who was somehow even more timid than Scaredy was.
She looked much like the stereotypical depiction of an angel and acted just as sweet as one, too.
Though she also had candy hair pieces and wore a candy print outfit at all times.
She liked handing out candy to children (like Spooky except for the fact that she didn’t go to hang out with random people watching horror movies inside of their homes).
She also sighed when he told her about Trixie and Scaredy’s jokes and preference to hang around the parties and shook her head when he told her how Eve liked to scare those she deemed bad.
She reminded him a lot of Tooth in a way.
The last he met was a spirit named Sam with red and green hair that was cut right down the middle, orange skin, and yellow eyes and was dressed the most plainly out of the Halloween guardians.
A spirit who shrugged and said Jack could call them whatever because he didn’t even remember what his name was before they were Sam and didn’t even know if they had one.
Sam liked handing out candy apples and decorated brownies to everyone they came across and didn’t mind answering the questions Jack had as long as it didn’t ruin the others’ fun.
Sam said that they had been around before the holiday was ever called Halloween and that they almost didn’t survive the dark ages.
They said Sweets had been the next one to become a spirit/guardian of Halloween and that Scaredy, Trixie, Spooky, and Eve had all come into existence at the same time not long before Jack himself was created.
Sam also said that they never corrected the other spirits because they all thought the confusion was funny—especially when they didn’t happen to like the spirits who they were making confused.
Which made sense to Jack, who promised to never tell their secret.
There were six guardians of Halloween.
And they were Jack’s friends.
And nothing would ever change that.