by A. W. Jantha
He blinked groggily. “Where’s Dani?”
Winifred gave a joyful shout as she led her sisters across the night sky, the three of them soaring high above Salem. The world below was full of so much more light than when she’d last been alive, including a slender lighthouse north of town that emitted a steady revolving beam. And yet it felt familiar and wonderful to have wind whipping through her curls and over her ankles and to have the smell of salt and frightened children in her lungs.
“Use thy voice, Sarah,” Winifred called over her shoulder. “Fill the sky. Bring the little brats to die!”
Sarah peeled off then, veering down so her words would carry to prepubescent ears. Even from her height, though, Winifred could hear the sweet strains of Sarah’s voice:
Come, little children,
I’ll take thee away
into a land of enchantment.
Come, little children;
the time’s come to play
here in my garden of magic.
The song filled Winifred’s mouth with the taste of her mother’s maggot-apple pie. It was the treat she had always asked for on her birthday, both because she loved the sweet fruit and the flaky crust and because she loved to watch her mother’s hands powdered with flour as she crimped the edges and wove the top crust together with quick, practiced fingers, pressing the wormy creatures back into the sugary goo before they could wriggle their way out.
Winifred clutched Dani’s small body tighter. “My mother could not live forever,” she whispered into the girl’s ear. “But I’ll make sure her rightful daughters do.”
Dani squirmed and whined like a maggot herself, but Winifred’s heart was full and warm and her teeth were ready for the crunch of crystallized sugar on a buttery crust, or for the roasted knucklebones of a towheaded girl—whichever Mary wanted to prepare first.
Max and Allison picked their way into the loft and looked out over Salem’s dark streets. It was nearly six in the morning, but kids were out in hordes, some of them holding candles and others carrying flashlights and some empty-handed. A few of them were still in costumes, though the majority wore pajamas and nightgowns. All of them walked as if transfixed. They headed south in a silent, shuffling crowd.
“They’re going to the Sanderson house,” Allison said, watching the scattered throng snake up the road and out of sight.
“Hey!” Max shouted down to the sleepwalking children.
Allison grabbed his arm. “It won’t work,” she said.
“Hey!” he yelled again, ignoring her. “Don’t listen to them!” But just as with the adults at the Pumpkin Ball, nothing seemed to get their attention.
Allison shook him. “Max,” she said. “Max, I figured it out. Winifred said ‘The candle’s magic will soon be spent, and dawn approaches.’ The Black Flame Candle only brought them back for this one Halloween night—and unless they can steal the lives of children, when the sun comes up, they’re dust.”
“Yeah,” Max said, turning to her, “but how can we make the sun come up? And they’ve got Dani. We need a miracle.”
Allison gave him a helpless look. She looked back at the road and the flickering warmth of candles and flashlights dotting the eerie scene.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Can you drive?”
The candles in the Sanderson house flickered low, and their yellowed wax softened and dripped down iron holders and wooden furniture in slow, slick rivulets.
“Can you pick the lock?” Jay asked Ernie.
“My kit’s at home, man,” said Ernie. He looked across the room at his friend. “Jay,” he said, “I’m scared.”
Jay was scared, too, but he knew he couldn’t admit it. He was two months older than Ernie, and he was supposed to look out for him. So he said, “I won’t let those hags eat you, Ern.” They might eat me, though, he thought. But if they didn’t, he’d be a better person. No more creeping on girls, no more breaking things that didn’t belong to him, and no more stealing chips from the gas station. That last bit had always made him feel bad, anyway. His parents ran a small business, too—the groundskeeping service for the historical lighthouse on Winter Island—and he knew how tough it could be to get by.
The boys groaned in unison when Winifred and Mary Sanderson returned, this time with Max Dennison’s mouthy little sister in tow.
Mary spent several minutes tying Dani to a chair before turning to the caged boys with a conniving grin. Winifred, meanwhile, opened her massive spell book and got to work. With a spark from her fingers, the fire beneath the cauldron leaped back to life.
Jay and Ernie protested as Mary pressed chocolate bars and gummy worms between the bars of their cages.
“No more candy,” said Jay weakly.
“But we’ve got to fatten you up,” said Mary.
“We should first eat the girl,” said Winifred, almost absently, as she leaned closer to the simmering potion she’d been preparing for half an hour. “Otherwise, she’ll start to spoil.”
She and Mary and Dani looked up when the weathered front door creaked open. Jay and Ernie looked, too, though both boys moved sluggishly, as if they’d long before given up hope of getting free.
Sarah entered, her purple cloak billowing dramatically around her narrow body. “The children,” she said, beaming, “are coming.”
Winifred clapped. “Well done, Sister Sarah!”
Dani tugged harder on her rope bindings, but it only seemed to tighten them.
Behind her, she heard Binx wriggling in the woolen sack that Mary had strung from the mantle. He yowled, and his claws scratched at the thick fabric. “Let me out of here,” he demanded.
“If I did, thou wouldst drop into the fire,” chided Mary.
“She’s doing you a favor,” Sarah agreed, pausing near the sack to give it a light pat where she thought Binx’s head might be. He struck out at her hand, but it only prompted a giggle from her currant-colored lips. The burlap caught Binx’s claws and trapped them. As he struggled to rescue his paw, Sarah leaned in closer. “Sweet kitty,” she cooed. Her nose nearly touched the burlap. “You’ll make a good roast.” She giggled again and turned away.
Winifred finished tending the bubbling cauldron and moved instead to her book, which she’d returned to its ornate wooden stand.
“Soon the lives of all thy little friends will be mine,” she told Dani, “and I shall be young and beautiful again forever.”
“It doesn’t matter how young or old you are!” Dani spat back. “You sold your soul. You’re the ugliest thing that’s ever lived, and you know it.”
Winifred gave her a long, cold look. “You’ll die first,” she said crisply. She stalked back to the cauldron and bit off a chunk of her own tongue, spitting it into the potion while eyeing Dani. The liquid’s surface erupted with huge, hungry bubbles. Behind her, Ernie and Jay groaned.
Dani’s ears pricked at the crunch of tires on gravel. It was their parents’ big car: she recognized the deep purr of the motor from many weekends spent lying awake waiting for her parents to come back from friends’ dinner parties. The thought made her remember those Saturday evenings with Max, when he’d order a pizza and help her with homework before starting his own. Sometimes he’d even give in when she begged him to watch Rescue Rangers or DuckTales with her instead of practicing his drums.
Dani glanced at the Sanderson witches, but none of them seemed to hear the sound. Max was there to save her, she knew, and after he did, she’d never make him watch cartoons with her again unless she thought he secretly wanted to.
Winifred gave a delighted yelp, snapping Dani’s attention back to the horrors at hand. “ ’Tis ready,” the eldest witch said, giving the potion a final stir. “Pry open her mouth.”
“Dani, don’t drink it!” Binx called from his cloth prison.
“Shut up, you,” said Winifred. She scooped up some of the bubbling liquid in her huge spoon.
Sarah hurried over to Dani and pinched her jaw. Her fingers were surprisingly strong,
but Dani kept her teeth tightly clenched.
“Dani!” Binx shouted, unable to see what was happening. “Don’t drink it, Dani!”
Mary went over to help her sisters. She forced a thumb between Dani’s lips, then sprang back. “Ow!” she shouted. “She bit me!”
Dani brought her foot down hard on Sarah’s toes.
Though both of her sisters were incapacitated, Winifred still advanced with her spoon.
The door flew open, crashing into the wall. “Prepare to die!” shouted Max. “Again.”
“Hollywood,” Jay said, jutting his chin at his cage’s padlock.
Winifred turned to Max. “You,” she said, splashing some of her potion in the process. It sizzled against the floorboards. “You have no powers here, you fool.” She refocused her attention on Dani.
Meanwhile, Sarah had regained her footing and tried once more to force open Dani’s mouth. Dani shook her head hard and squirmed, trying to protect her face from the witch’s sharp nails. Winifred pressed the spoon against her mouth, putting it as close to the girl’s nose as she could in the hopes that the putrid smell would force her to gasp or breathe through her mouth, swallowing the potent liquid in the process.
“Maybe not,” Max said to Winifred. “But there’s a power greater than your magic, and that’s knowledge. And there’s one thing I know that you don’t.”
Winifred, frustrated, pulled the spoon away from Dani and whirled on Max. “And what is that, dude?”
Her sisters chortled like ravens.
“Daylight savings time,” he said.
Mary parroted the strange phrase, mocking his accent. Sarah snorted.
The orange light of sunrise pierced the eastern windows of the house, shining warm and rosy and sure through the glass.
The witches shrank back.
“Max, get me out of here,” Dani said desperately.
At once, the Sanderson sisters collapsed onto the floor, writhing in pain.
“It hurts!” Sarah shrieked.
Max ran over and cut Dani’s ties with his dad’s pocketknife. Once freed, Dani jumped up and ran to the fireplace to save Binx.
“Hey!” cried Jay. “Let me out of here! Help!”
Max unhooked the bag containing Binx and handed it to Dani. “Get outside,” he said with a push to her shoulder.
The witches continued to whimper underfoot. Winifred pulled her cloak over her face and hands to protect her skin.
“Hey, Hollywood!” said Ernie.
Max strode over and examined the bully, whose legs were dangling out of the cage.
“Help us out here?” Ernie asked.
Max pulled his stolen shoes from Ernie’s feet. “Tubular,” he said, holding the Nikes up in salute. On his way to the door, he pushed over the cauldron, spilling the soul-sucking potion over the floor. It bubbled and smoked and spilled through the spaces between the floorboards as Winifred wailed.
“Let me outta here, man,” Jay pleaded.
“Come on, Dani,” Max said, taking Binx from her since she was struggling with the sack. “Let’s go.”
As they stepped out of the house, Dani stopped. “Max, I want to see her turn to dust,” she said.
Just then, she spotted her mom’s gray SUV. Allison was standing next to it, gesturing desperately at the headlights, which were covered in a colored film that turned their light orange.
“Pump it!” Dani yelled, running for the car.
Max followed her, ripping the cellophane from the headlights as he passed them.
He jumped into the driver’s seat, pushed Binx into Allison’s arms, and revved the engine.
The dawn thinned and vanished with a roar and a rumble.
Sarah rolled onto her back and stared at the high ceiling of the house she’d been born in. Firelight flickered over the sturdy roof beams, highlighting swathes of cobwebs and colonies of spiders. She went through a mental checklist from the roots of her hair to the nails of her toes. Her hip hurt a little, but then again she had fallen on it in her hurry to avoid the burning glint of sunrise. Everything else felt fine.
“I’m alive,” she said, smiling.
“Damn that boy!” said Winifred, who’d collapsed first and now lay beneath both Sarah and Mary. “He’s tricked us again.” She got clumsily to her feet. Her face was as red as her hair.
“Oh, you’re right,” said Mary, shifting uncomfortably beneath Sarah’s weight. “You’re always right. I don’t know how you do that.”
“It’s my curse,” said Winifred to Mary. “That, and you two. Get off me, you thundering oafs!”
Sarah sprang up, dusted off her skirts, and pulled her lucky rat tail from her sleeve. Chewing it always made her feel better, especially when Winifred was out of sorts.
Mary and Winifred scrambled up after her.
“Look,” said Winifred. She crossed to the kitchen, where the Black Flame Candle waited on a cluttered counter, its mysterious flame diminished to a weak flicker. The scene on the outside of the candle had all but melted away, and the taper was reduced to a runny stub. “The candle is almost out,” she said, then gained the courage to turn and examine the fallen cauldron and the puddled floorboards. “And my potion. My beautiful potion.” She knelt by the cauldron, not caring that the cooling liquid soaked her clothes. “Look,” she said. She knelt down even lower and peered into the depths of the pot. “There’s just enough left for one child.”
The room seemed to grow very quiet, and the silence made Jay and Ernie even more conspicuous. They were biting their lips and staring at each other, each wordlessly threatening mortal harm if the other made a sound.
Winifred turned to Mary. “Get the vial,” she said.
Sarah took her a glass bottle whose base was wide and round and whose neck was long and thin. Carefully, Winifred ladled the last of the potion into the bottle. She pressed the cork back into its mouth and clutched the treasure to her chest.
“What luck,” she said, smiling. She turned to the door through which Max and Dani had escaped only minutes before, and her voice grew sharp: “This is perfect for that little towheaded brat.”
“We have a child,” said Sarah, gesturing at the two hanging cages.
Jay and Ernie each pointed at the other, shouting “Him!”
Mary, for her part, leaned against the front window and watched the yard with dreamy interest. “And look, Winnie: more children are arriving.” She beckoned to the sleepwalkers. “Come on in,” she cooed.
“Winnie,” Sarah said, touching her sister’s forearm, “we’ll make more potion because we have the book.” She pointed to the spell book, which still lay open on the pedestal.
“We haven’t the time,” said Winifred. “Besides, I want to get that little rat-faced kid that called me—”
“Oh,” Mary said, rushing over, “don’t say it.”
“Ugly?” asked Sarah.
Winifred and Mary both cringed.
“She really hurt my feelings,” whimpered Winifred. “She doesn’t even know me.” She took Sarah’s outstretched hand and dried her eyes on it. “You know,” she said, composing herself, “I always wanted a child, and now I think I’ll have one. On toast!”
Dani sat in the back of her parents’ car, clutching Binx in her lap. Max was driving, which made her even more scared because his last practice session had ended in a long argument with their dad about what constituted a rolling stop.
“There are too many kids,” Max said, careening around another group of transfixed children. He recognized a few of them from Dani’s class and felt a pang of worry. He leaned out his window. “Go home!” he shouted, but of course they didn’t listen to him. They didn’t even seem to hear him. Max groaned and pounded the steering wheel. “We need to wait in the cemetery until sunrise,” he said. “But these zombie kids are going to trap us on the road.”
“Try that side road.” Allison pointed off to the left, back into the woods. “It’ll reconnect to the main road in town, and you can circle around to
the front of the cemetery.”
Max nodded. He knew it was a risk since it would take longer, but he also knew that it would put them closer to the clearing Binx had shown them before. From there, it would be easier to see the witches coming—and to go back into the sewers if needed.
Before any other kids blocked their way, Max veered to the left as Allison suggested and headed deeper into the trees. He clenched his sweaty fists tighter around the steering wheel as visions of careening off the road swam through his head. The engine growled as he goaded the accelerator.
The sprinklers, the kiln, the fake sunrise—how many times could they trick the witches before their tricks didn’t work any longer? Max realized their time was running out—but so was the Sanderson sisters’. If Allison was right, they just had to keep them at bay until sunrise.
If Allison was right.
Max glanced at her. “Are they following us?” he asked.
Allison turned around in her seat. “No,” she said.
Max smiled. “Good.”
Just then, Winifred Sanderson appeared at the driver’s side window, her body angled forward against the handle of her broom.
Max swerved away but kept going; Allison reached over to steady the steering wheel and help ease them back toward the middle of the road before they skidded off of it.
“Pull over,” Winifred demanded. “Let me see your driver’s license.”
Max considered sticking his arm out the window to push her away, but that seemed like a terrible idea on several fronts. Instead, he gripped the wheel even tighter and banked the car to the left, knocking her and her broom out of the way. He grinned again, but this time he wiped his palms—one and then the other—on his jeans.
“We’re gonna be okay,” Allison told him. He nodded tightly and pressed on, taking a sharp turn onto the street that held the graveyard entrance facing downtown Salem.
