Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

It had to be a great house for candy. Anyone who decorated their house that much for Halloween must have great candy, and lots of it. Old-style carnival posters filled the yard, proclaiming the wonders of Doug the Dinosaur Boy, the Real Jack Pumpkinhead, the Mysterious Black Widow, and Kate the Lion-Tailed Girl. Each poster was carefully framed, its yellowing paper sealed behind glass. Each one hung from a stake driven deep into the dew-damp grass. They stood, arrayed like a band of goblins, guarding the house. That house itself — so white and plain by daylight — was draped in shadows that dripped from the branched fingers of old oak trees. A simple, single-toothed jack-o’-lantern grinned its candlelit grin from the porch, and right at the top of the steps, a real, honest-to-goodness, enormous witch’s cauldron smoked and steamed. There had to be great candy in there.

The problem was that there were no lights on in the house, no lights at all, and so the little pirate stood on the sidewalk, shifting from foot to foot, trying to decide whether to go up and knock. In the glass frame of every poster, his reflection danced nervously.

The little pirate’s mother had warned him not to go up to any house that didn’t have its lights on — and especially not to go up to this house. This house had been empty for years and years, but just last month someone had moved in. Grown-ups never talked about the new owner except in whispers. The little pirate watched the cauldron steam. He was sure he had heard his mother whisper the word witch .

It didn’t help that the moon was full, that the last dry leaves on the trees rattled like tiny bones in the cold wind, and that somewhere in the darkness, an owl was hooting. These things didn’t help at all.

Finally, the little pirate decided not to try it. As he turned to go to the next, friendly, well-lit house, a shadow moved among the deeper shadows of the porch, and a smooth, clear voice spoke: “And what are you tonight, my dear little monster?”

The trick-or-treater froze. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman’s voice: younger than his mother, older than his babysitter. The voice spoke quietly, but still he could hear it clearly over the soft bubbling of the cauldron. “Well?”

The trick-or-treater began his shuffling dance again. He looked down at his costume, as if to be sure: at his oversize white shirt, his black pants, his buckled shoes; at the shiny plastic hook that hid his left hand. He felt the eye patch and the bandanna he wore on his head. Finally, uncertainly, he croaked an answer. “I’m a pirate?”

The woman in the shadows laughed. It was a friendly laugh, not the sort of gurgling chuckle you might expect to hear from a darkened porch on Halloween night.

“That I can see,” the voice said. “But which one? Are you that Blackbeard, Edward Teach, who died with twenty-six bullets in his body and his beard full of other men’s blood? Or perhaps you’re Jean Lafitte, the voodoo master of New Or-leans, who used his own dead sailors to guard his treasures? Or even — no, you couldn’t be — so bloody a man as Captain William Davey, a man so evil he named his ship The Devil ? They say that before he was caught and dangled, he made his crew swallow his gold and jump overboard, so that they could bring his treasure back to him in Hell, ten thousand doubloons clinking in their bellies. Are you such a man as that?”

The trick-or-treater’s ideas concerning pirates came mostly from Scooby-Doo . The names the shadowy woman had rolled out to him spoke of blood, and he didn’t like them. He tried, quickly, to think of a name for himself, a good piratical name, but now all the names he could think of sounded like they belonged to very, very bad men. At a loss, he looked down at his feet and mumbled, “I’m a pirate.”

“And a fine one you are, too. But you weren’t going to pass me by, were you?”

“Your light’s a-pposed to be on.” The little pirate felt that on this point the Halloween rules, as they had been explained to him by his mother, were quite clear, and he felt confident enough to assume a reproachful tone.

“I know,” said the voice, unfazed even by this clear admission of rule breaking. “It burned out. Don’t you want a trick-or-treat?”

The little pirate’s father was fond of this exact same trick question, and so he knew the proper follow-up: “Which one?”

The voice laughed again. “A treat. For you — most certainly a treat. All you have to do. ” The voice paused for a very long time, as if waiting for an owl to hoot eerily in the silence — which, at last, one did. “All you have to do is reach into the pot.”

The cauldron still bubbled and steamed but did not choose this moment to do anything threatening, like spitting out a shower of multicolored sparks or allowing a greasy gray tentacle to slither briefly over its lip. Uncertain, but drawn on by the promise of treats, the little pirate began inching his way up the walkway. “What’s your name?” he asked. With a name, he would at least be on firmer ground.

“Oh, no,” the voice purred. “You’re not supposed to tell names on Halloween. It’s dangerous. You don’t know what might be listening. Do you?”

The shadow that spoke from the shadows finally stirred and stepped forward into the light. A young woman appeared, with long golden hair and tawny skin, wearing a red lion-tamer’s jacket and a black top hat. She also had a long, golden-furred tail that swished idly back and forth behind her.

“But Long John Silver,” she said, “where’s your parrot?”

The little pirate looked at the poster nearest the house: Kate the Lion-Tailed Girl looked exactly like the coolly smiling woman standing over the cauldron.

“You’re in the poster,” he said.

“Yes. ” Kate winked. “Well, don’t you have something to say?”

The pirate only looked down at his hook.

“Trick. ” Kate prompted.

“. or treat?”

“And which would you prefer?”

“Treat, please,” said the pirate quickly.

“Of course!” Kate opened her arms in a wide gesture of welcome. “Go ahead. I’ve got very good candy. Reach in. I won’t move a muscle.”

The little pirate climbed the steps to the porch, much more slowly than many a real pirate had climbed the stairs to the gallows. He stopped on the last step, refusing actually to stand on the same porch as the lion-tailed girl. Her tail, he saw, was twitching much faster now. He tried to look into the cauldron, but all he could see was white smoke bubbling inside it.

“You said. good candy?”

“Very good, I said.” Kate grinned.

The white cloud inside the cauldron spat out a tendril of mist, and the pirate shrank back. The candy he’d already collected rattled inside his plastic pumpkin: not very much so far. And the cauldron was very, very big. There was a lot of room for a lot of candy. Finally, he screwed his courage to the sticking place and, squinting his eyes tightly, reached into the pot. His hand sank beneath the surface of a cold liquid. He’d expected heat and snatched his hand back. It was covered in strawberry syrup, but it wasn’t strawberry syrup. He knew what it was. He knew what it was, it was—

“Oh, how silly!” Kate laughed. “You said treat, didn’t you?” Cat-quick, she reached into the cauldron herself, and her hand came out, not scarlet, but clutching a crinkling mass of candy bars. She held it out, patiently waiting for the little pirate to hold up his pumpkin. Trembling, he did. But before she dropped the treasure, she tilted her head and asked, “But are you sure you wouldn’t like to see what the real trick is?”