Foxfire: Veil of the Nine Phantoms

13: Demon IV - Halloween Night

October 31 - Melanie

The fallen autumn leaves crunched beneath my feet as I took a stroll around the quiet residential streets of the Pocket. The sun was just about to set, and because it was Halloween there were kids and parents moving from house to house. My own home was decorated with various spiders, and my parents were loudly playing spooky ghost sounds to add to the atmosphere of the night.

I heard a little pitter patter of feet approaching me, and I turned to see a little girl looking at me. She was Hoshiko, dressed in a bat-themed costume and disguised as a small child for the purpose of duping unsuspecting homeowners into giving away their candy.

She handed a full bag of candies to me.

"What am I? Your servant? Carry this yourself!" I whispered while I pretended to be angry. She giggled, and excitedly ran away with another empty bag to fill with treats.

I envied her. I remembered my own sweet memories of trick or treating, which were cut short because I had an early growth spurt. Aren't you a little too old for this? No, I wasn't too old at that time; I was just tall for my age. I was usually very proud of my stature, but that was one of the few times when I felt fate had cheated me. Fortunately my short best friend, Eva, shared some of her candy with me.

For the festivity I also brought my own witch-themed costume, complete with a big black pointy hat, and a black cape over a black dress. I wasn't wearing a Halloween costume just because I wanted to dress up. Grandma had suggested that I should get clothes to blend in with the locals whenever we visited the retroscape, so the witch outfit had the very practical purpose of allowing me to not immediately stand out in conspicuously modern clothes.

When Hoshiko felt like she had exhausted the chocolates of every single house in the Pocket, we ventured out to one of the bigger neighbourhoods in the East End, where she looked forward to getting even more treats. We moved south to Leslieville where we came across an adorably monstrous house on 1 Badgerow Avenue decorated to appear like the porch was a giant mouth just waiting to eat the next little kid who ran up for trick or treating. The house had a long red tongue made of fabric, and skeletons were scattered about, victims of the monster house's appetite. A young boy, who looked like a kindergartener, stared at the monster house with apprehension. Noticing his fear, Hoshiko cast an illusion on the house, making it come alive. The house mercilessly chomped on screaming skeletons begging for escape. Big hungry eyes stared at the kindergartener, and the house's tongue lashed like a whip. The little boy screamed in horror and ran to hug his mother.

Grandma is out here traumatizing little kids. Damn, she's irredeemable.

The two of us travelled to every house with a jack-o'-lantern, until all the bags I brought were full with our ill-gotten sweets. By the time we were done it had gotten dark. We walked through rows of quaint duplexes until we reached the parking lot of Gerrard Square, a shopping mall I had visited all the time after school, then we took a shortcut through a narrow lane behind the mall, where a rusty chain link fence separated us from the railroad. This passage between the mall and the train tracks was used as the mall's truck loading dock. I looked around and noticed we were alone, so I thought it was a good time to start a conversation.

"Why'd you retire? You said you were some sort of executioner before, hunting down dangerous yokai. Kitsune grow stronger over time, right? So that means right now you're stronger than you've ever been. Why would you retire if that was true? Humans get old, so we have to retire eventually. But not you. Why?"

"Because I'm afraid of losing," Hoshiko said.

"That's it?" I said. It seemed like an oddly simple answer.