The rabbit looked up at him. “It is if you’re scared of rabbits.”

Tanith nodded. “You’ve got to admit he makes a good point.”

“You talk funny,” said the witch. “Where are you from?”

Tanith smiled. “I’m from London.”

The pirate frowned. “Is that in France?”

The Mad Hatter scowled. “It’s in England, dummy.” He looked at Tanith. “You’re English. Why do you have a sword?”

“Because I’m an English ninja,” Tanith replied. “We’re just like regular ninjas, except we wear leather and flirt more.”

The kids nodded, satisfied with the definition, and then rattled their buckets again. “Trick or treat,” they chorused.

“This isn’t actually our house,” Tanith told them, “but whatever you find in there is yours to keep.”

The pirate perked up. “Even the TV?”

“Especially the TV.”

The kids glanced at each other, then stormed the house. Tanith waited a moment, watching them approach Jerry’s headless corpse warily. The rabbit hesitated, then nudged Jerry’s head with his fluffy foot. The head rolled in its own blood, and the rabbit shrugged. “That’s so fake,” he said, and turned to help the pirate with the TV.

Get Thee Behind Me, Bubba Moon

very town has a haunted house, I guess, and Bredon, small as it was, was no different. My older brother and his friends used to go up there, dare each other to knock on the door. He told me once that when his time came, he accepted the dare like there was nothing else he’d rather be doing. He’d mocked others for being scared and he wasn’t about to turn around and show anything like that kind of fear in his own eyes.

He said one Wednesday night, at the height of summer, they sneaked out and cycled over by the light of the full moon. Full moons were important for this kind of thing, he said. We were kids, and we knew this stuff. They reached the house a little before midnight and waited until Ryan Sanderson’s brand-new digital watch beeped 11:59. My brother now had one minute to open that gate, walk up that weed-cracked path, and knock on that door. Midnight was important for this kind of thing. That was something else we knew.

So my brother pushed open the iron gate that creaked with rust and age, and he laughed at how creepy it was. Behind him, his friends laughed, too. He pretended the path was one big hopscotch game, and he jumped and hopped the whole way up to the sound of laughter and cheers. But my brother wasn’t laughing any more. He told me he’d nailed that grin to his face when he felt it starting to slide off. He told me the closer he got to that door, the more real it all became. All the stories. All the rumours. All the scary, scary dreams.