Her First Halloween - Part Three
An Allhallowtide Tale in Three Parts
Happy All Souls’ Day, Talebones Readers!
The observance of Allhallowtide—a celebration of ancestry, mystery, folklore, and frights spanning October 31st through November 2nd—is one of my personal favorites of the whole year. In honor of this spooky celebration, I’ve decided to share a little taste of Halloween on Ferris Island with you all!
Read Part One, or
Read Part Two!
This three-part story stands alone, but the main teenage characters in this tale have been seen in these previous stories (paywalled tales marked with a P):
Ivy and Ixos (P)
The Last Resort (P)
The Uninvited Guest (last year’s Hallowe’en tale!)
I hope you enjoy this little taste of Ferris Island Hallowe’en!
If you like this story, and you want to see more like it, please let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!
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Ivy swiveled quickly from the peephole, locking eyes with Bailey. “Go to the office and call Caroline and ask for my parents. Her number is on a list next to the phone. Take Lyla.”
Bailey didn’t hesitate, and Ethan—on instinct, as he and Bailey had been best friends and inseparable since they were small—followed after her and Lyla past the kitchen and down the hall to the home office.
Ivy turned back to look through the peephole and her blood ran cold. The glowing eyes in the dark were gone. Instead, the light from the front window vaguely illuminated a woman standing there, her face tipped down so that her features were indistinct, her long hair loose around her shoulders. It was difficult to tell in the gloom, but she seemed to be wearing a simple dress, unadorned. Something old-fashioned.
Ivy knew, somehow, that it was not a costume.
“Who are you?” Ivy said through the door.
There was a pause. Then, the woman replied softly, “You are not safe.”
Ivy could feel Jake standing beside her. It gave her courage to find a convincing fib. “We’re calling the police. They’re already on their way.”
“We mean no harm. But hordes of hungry shades surround your house, child,” the woman said. “Do you not feel them? Have they not been watching you, since night fell?”
Ivy paled. “Go away.”
The woman tilted her head, just slightly, and Ivy glimpsed the corner of a curled lip, the flutter of dark eyelashes.
“We’re here for the girl,” the woman said. “Give her here, return her safely, and there’s nothing more to be done. We will leave you to your night of spirits. This night of all nights.”
The woman had a strange way of speaking, an accent Ivy had never heard before. It occurred to her that it was a deeper, more verdant version of Lyla’s voice.
“How do we know you’re not here to hurt her?” Ivy asked. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, so loud that she couldn’t hear Bailey in the office, didn’t know how she was explaining all of this to Caroline, to her parents.
The woman paused, then asked, “Do you know what she is?”
Ivy shook her head, but realized that the woman couldn’t see her and said, “No.”
“The girl is not like you,” the woman said, more patiently than Ivy expected. “She comes from the Orchard Island.”
Ivy knew of it. You couldn’t live on Ferris Island for long and not know about its smaller cousin, a landmass off the eastern coast connected by one single old bridge. The people who lived on the Orchard Island were strange, insular, shadowy…as far as most Ferris Island folk believed, it was just a weird cult that had been living there for generations. But they grew a proprietary variety of apple that was so delicious, so intoxicating, and—more importantly—so lucrative for the island economy, that you could almost believe the Orchardists were sorcerers.
“She does not know about your world, yet,” the woman continued. “She does not know your customs. One day, she will have a choice to make, whether to stay or go. But not yet. Tonight, she must return home. We are here to take her home.”
Ivy turned from the peephole to look at Jake. “What should I do?” she whispered.
He shook his head, unsure, but reached out to take her hand and squeeze it.
Bailey, Ethan, and Lyla returned from the office, and Bailey said, “Your parents are coming, Ives. Right now. They said it’ll be about fifteen minutes.”
“Lyla,” Ivy said, “the woman outside says she’s here for you.”
Lyla’s eyes welled with unhappy tears. “Is she angry?”
“No. I don’t think so. But she says it’s time for you to go home.”
Lyla dipped her head, sadly. “I only wanted to pretend. Just for one night. I thought maybe they would understand.”
“I know. But people are worried about you.” Ivy invited her to the door, pointed at the peephole. “Here, look through this. See for yourself.”
Lyla obeyed and stood on tiptoe to peek through the small lens. She stared for a moment, wordless, before her brows knit together in confusion and she leaned back away from the door, her face haunted. “I don’t…know her.”
“What?” Ivy felt a chill. “Are you sure?”
Lyla nodded, a look of dread in her eyes. “She’s not from my home. I…don’t know her.”
Ivy took her place at the peephole again, and was shocked to see the woman staring up now, directly at the peephole, eyes large and unblinking, mouth a single solemn line, nose quivering, as though she was scenting the air on the porch. Her hair was unkempt and rough, with strands of what looked like lichen dappled throughout. The skin of her face was a little too perfect.
Like a mask.
“Open the door,” the woman said, and her voice was not the same as it had been. It had a garbled edge to it, now, and the accent Ivy had caught earlier was gone, as if she had discarded it. “Open the door and let us in. It’s not safe to be alone on this night of spirits. Had you not hosted that child of the Orchard within your walls we would have had ourselves a worthy feast of her. There is nothing rarer than her kind. Nothing.”
The knack. The instinct had told her to let Lyla in. This was why: to keep her safe. She didn’t know how she had known.
She had a brief vision of Lyla being stalked and devoured in the dark, alone, but brushed it aside, feeling nauseous.
Ivy replied, voice shaking, just trying to stall for time, “You’re not getting anywhere near her. We won’t let you. And you might not be afraid of the police, but they’re not going to let you hurt us.”
All of a sudden, as if in response, Ivy heard the back doorknob rattle. Jake launched into action, grabbing a dining room chair and running to the back door to cram it under the doorknob, wedging the door in place. But it might have been too little, too late. There was a scraping sound above them, clawed feet scrabbling across the metal roofing. There was a tapping at the windows, sharp nails running across the glass. And Ivy realized that whatever was outside was surrounding them.
“Ivy…” Ethan said, terrified. Bailey made a whimpering noise.
Fifteen minutes for her parents to get here. The police wouldn’t be any faster. Ivy felt her breath catch as the terrible sounds rose in volume and intensity, a rasping, rattling sound like hellish laughter.
But in the chaos, Lyla reached out and took Ivy gently by the arm. Whatever childlikeness she had shown before, whatever wide-eyed innocence she had displayed as she learned about Halloween and candy and costumes, it was replaced by something else, now. Something uncanny.
“I enjoyed pretending,” she said. “But I’m done, now. Open the door. I’ll take care of it.”
Ivy blinked. Hesitated.
“Open the door, Ivy,” Lyla said. It was a powerful command. Something steeped in old ways, older than Ivy understood. “And whatever you do, stay inside.”
Trembling terribly, Ivy—glancing only once at her friends, who gazed back at her with nothing but wild and unruly trust—unlocked the door and opened it.
It all happened in a flash.
Lyla jumped. No, not jumped. She leaped. And in the air, her oversized clothes, tiara, and fairy wings fell into a pile on the entryway rug as she became…something else.
A dog. Lyla became a lithe black dog in midair, all long limbs and sleek fur and ears laid back.
The animal’s bared, sharp teeth met the woman’s slim neck and both tumbled backward into the darkness beyond the porch. The next few minutes were chaos, largely invisible, as Ivy, Jake, Ethan, and Bailey grouped around the doorway and watched in horror. It was like a performance of shadow puppets, indistinct shapes rippling through the yard, the sounds of growling and snapping, crunching and yelping. Hisses of terror. The air shivered with the breath of rage, of old grudges, of ancient conflict.
And then, all of a sudden, it was quiet. The chilly air was deathly still except for a slight drizzle of rain.
The black dog appeared. It approached calmly, limping slightly on one forepaw, and climbed the porch steps. It did not pay any attention to the wide-eyed kids waiting on the threshold, but passed them by, bending to gather the oversized clothes into its mouth before it disappeared down the hallway.
“What was that,” Ethan said, the first to break the silence.
But Ivy couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even move.
A mere minute or two later, Lyla emerged from the hallway, dressed in her oversized clothes. She was flushed, holding her bleeding right arm against her chest, scrapes visible on her face and bare feet. But for all that she had a glint in her eye, a mischievous smile on her lips, as if this was all the most natural, normal thing in the world.
“Tricker treat,” she said.
*******
Once Ivy’s parents arrived home minutes later, breathless with worry, the night moved fast. Phone calls were made to the proper authorities, and Lyla’s family on the Orchard Island was alerted to her whereabouts. It didn’t take long for an official liaison from the island government to show up and ask Lyla and the kids a bunch of questions.
From what Ivy gathered from her responses, Lyla had learned about Halloween from one of her older siblings who had spent time on Ferris Island. Fascinated, she had run away from home and walked all the way across the bridge and down to Seavend, stealing clothes from someone’s unlocked car on her way so that her traditional clothes—green and yellow linen—wouldn’t give her away.
Ivy’s house was simply the first one she had come across along the dark highway with the porch light on.
None of them felt able to talk about the creatures who had come looking for Lyla, or what Lyla had done to save them all. How could they hope to explain? Instead, Lyla simply said of her injured arm that she had fallen on her walk through the darkness, and the kids backed her up.
Before the liaison beckoned Lyla into the car to go home, Ivy gave her the tiara and the fairy wings. She wasn’t sure if Lyla would be allowed to keep them, but she knew she herself wouldn’t be able to wear them, again. It wouldn’t feel right.
The girl took the plastic tiara and tulle wings into her arms like they were the most precious things in the world. Then, she folded Ivy into the tightest, most sincere hug Ivy had ever received from someone who wasn’t family.
“Thank you, Ivy,” Lyla said, near tears, “for my first Halloween.”
Ivy stood at the foot of the porch stairs and watched the liaison’s car disappear down the long, dark driveway and away into the night, feeling strangely bereft. The woods seemed to watch her, leaning close the way they did, sometimes. It was not a malicious feeling, but it was aloof. Uncaring. This world was so, so vast. This island had its own thoughts, its own desires.
Ivy was so very small.
She turned to the open front door. Inside, the house was warm. Safe. Jake, Ethan, and Ivy’s dad were setting up sleeping bags and piles of blankets and pillows on the living room couches and floor in front of the fireplace, laughing about some funny video they had seen online. Bailey had already changed into her pajamas and set up her sleeping spot upstairs in Ivy’s room, and she and Ivy’s mom were chatting in the kitchen, nibbling the last of the treats from the bowls. The wrappers from Lyla’s candy peppered the counter like dried leaves. Jake glanced up mid-laugh from unrolling a sleeping bag and locked eyes with her, smiled, and looked away.
Outside, the night swelled with spirits, cold and watchful on this most unusual night. But inside, there was friendship, deeper than tradition, deeper still than the island’s very bedrock.
Maybe that’s all anyone wants, really. Even wandering souls with wide eyes and hidden teeth.
“Tricker treat,” Ivy murmured, and allowed herself a smile.
Then she climbed the porch steps into the warmth of the house, closing and locking the door against the night.
I called it with where Lyla is from! This was a fun read.
I loved this! What a fantastic Halloween tale! 🎃