Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(76)

"Thanks, Violet." The jeans are snug against my skin, blue denim benediction welcoming me back into the world. "Happy Halloween."

The pumpkin patch yields up its harvest of the dead under the watchful eye of the rising sun. So many of them are new this year; so many of them don't understand, just yet, what's at stake. They'll learn. Because that, too, is a part of Halloween.

***

The Barrowmans are good people. I've been coming to their farm every Halloween for forty years, part of their annual harvest of the dead. They're old ambulomancer blood, older than the routewitches, even, and they regard our presence as a blessing on their farm. That's a good thing for us, because it encourages them to treat us well. The clothes are a requirement, as is the breakfast spread out on picnic tables erected in the old cattle barn, but there's nothing that says they have to dress us warmly or feed us well. The platters of pancakes, casserole dishes of scrambled eggs, and sizzling plates of bacon all serve to remind me how well they treat us...and how much is at stake. How much is always at stake, when the jack-o-lanterns burn away the dark, and the dead go walking with the living.

Violet takes a seat next to me on the bench, her youngest sticking close to her like a solid shadow. "How's the road been treating you?" she asks, and piles more bacon on my plate.

I don't object. This is the one day of the year when I can eat what I want, without worrying about ritual or rules. "I can't complain," I reply—the right answer, even if it's not entirely the truth. I could complain all day long, but there isn't time for that. Instead, I turn a smile on the little girl, waving a strip of bacon in what I hope is an amiable manner. "Hi, Holly. Aren't you getting big? How old are you now, four?"

The little girl holds up five fingers, expression solemn.

"Wow, five? Really?" I feign astonishment...but it isn't entirely a false. Five, already? How time does fly when you're dead and having fun.

"You going to fight this year, Rose?" asks Violet, as she tousles Holly's hair with one hand. "Looks like a good batch this time, but you could take half of them."

"No." My answer is simple, because that's all it's ever needed to be. Will I fight, here, on Halloween, when the dead wear flesh and the living seek to steal it? No. Not this year, not next year, not ever. "I'm running."

"You always run."

"That's true. I always get away."

"What happens when you don't?" Violet's tone is neither approving nor condemning; it's just curious, and that's the worst part of all. She grew up on this farm—I watched her grow up here, jumping forward year after year, like a strange sort of time-delay picture. Baby, little girl, teenager with a face like heartbreak waiting to happen, wife, mother. I remember the Halloween after she buried her own mother, the first—and only—time that Willow Barrowman woke with the dead out in the field. Her husband is a johnny-come-lately who took her name when he took her family's calling, but Violet's a Barrowman to the bone, and she knows what she's asking me.

"The year I don't get away is the year I die the death you don't come back from." I shrug, and pull a plate of pancakes closer to me. Around the barn, the chatter of the new dead is quieting, dying down to a murmur as the long dead tell them what's really going on. What price we have to pay for a day of wearing farm hand-me-downs and eating pancakes in a barn.

Trucks are driving up the gravel driveway, their tires grinding like the teeth of some unspeakable beast. Halloween is upon us. The treats have been delivered. Now comes the time for the biggest trick of them all.

***

My initial count was off by two, stragglers who took their time stumbling out of the hayrick. Seventeen living dead people stand in a ragged line behind the Barrowmans' barn. Of the six long dead, I'm the youngest; of the eleven new dead, one died only a week ago, a fresh-faced teenage football star who still doesn't understand that this is something more important than the games his funeral forced him to miss. Violet is around the front, wrangling the hunters, keeping them from crossing the line before the time is right. Matthew Barrowman is attending to us dead folk, his teenage sons behind him, like we're the ones they need protecting from.

Silly boys. We're not the ones with the guns.

"Some of you know how this goes, so I ask for your patience while I explain. Everyone has to have the same chances when the candle's lit." He casts an apologetic glance my way. Violet must have told him that I'm the only one of the long dead appearing here who's never chosen to stand and fight. "For the rest of you...this is Halloween. You've probably noticed that you're all breathing."