literature

Gauntlet of Maltese - Halloween (Part 1 of 3)

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We’ve always given kookie made-up names to all of the different holidays. Independence Day is our In-Da-Pants Day. Christmas is our Mrs. Chris, and Thanksgiving is our Please-Taking, but Halloween has always been Halloween, the day when any lost child with a costume could get all the free candy they wanted, so long as they were willing to do the leg work.

Lost children, like Mark, Nat, and I, wander the streets of Zero City as explorers, fighters, and survivors. We run at night, and during the day we sleep at home in our old red caboose, the Red Lady, atop of a junk pile at the city’s junkyard.

The glorious night has finally, hungrily come, and we’ve been up all day working on our different costumes.

Just after sundown, Mark appears from behind a shower curtain hung through the caboose, wearing an opened black trash bag around his neck like a cape, the darkest set of matching black clothes we could “find,” a new set of rubber vampire teeth, and axle grease run through his blond hair to slick it back.

“Vwat do you think, Edvin?” he asks, standing straight, and pulling the cape halfway up his face and narrowing his eyes. Glass bulbs, with lit candles inside them, rest on the floor and cast his shadow tall and menacingly.

“Hey, nice work!” I say, closing an old suitcase and standing up. “The adults will practically throw candy at you.”

“Mua-ha! That is the plan,” he replies. “After tonight, I’ll have so much candy that I could hardly, count it all. Mua-ha, mua-ha.”

Mark’s pun is lost on me, and I stare at him blankly.

“Oh, never mind,” he says miserably. “What’s your costume?”

I thought I had made it clear. I’m wearing white jogging pants, a white shirt, and a pair of tennis that I’d dipped in white paint. I found a belt, and pinned the lid of a tin can to it and wrapped it around my head. Then on my shirt, I found red paint and painted a bold cross on the chest.

“Come on, you know what this is,” I say.

Mark tilts his head and touches his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t … get it Edvin. What are you?”

“Come on, I’m a doctor!” I shout.

“Edvin, do you even know what doctors look like? You look like an ambulance.”

“Well, that can’t be too far off, right?” Just as I ask, we suddenly hear a loud crash outside of the caboose.

My heart jumps, and we both look toward the doorway and become silent. It sounded like something had hit the hill of junk were on and tumbled down. There’s a light rustling of metal in the junkyard, and I immediately think of the junkmen that patrol the yard about once a month, but usually during the day. Did somebody notice the lights coming from the caboose?

My breath holds in my chest, and suddenly there’s a glint of metal as a huge object throws itself through the doorway. Mark and I duck, and the object crashes into a wall of the caboose, nearly hitting the candles. It then rolls across the floor, and Mark and I see that it’s a metal trashcan. Then a second can comes through the doorway, but this time Mark stands his ground, holds his arms out, and catches it like a charging bull.

He sets the trashcan down carefully, and from the doorway approaches the clanking, shifting of metal, as if something is climbing up the hill.

Mark takes a step back, and I move closer toward him. A chill whistling of wind comes through the doorway, causing the candles to flicker and make every shadow jitter frantically. A shiver slithers down the back of my neck. The whistling and clanking of metal grows louder, and Mark and I find ourselves near the back of the caboose by the curtain. He gulps the spit in his throat and reaches for the curtain. Is he going to throw it at whatever’s coming for us?

Then suddenly one of the candles blows out, and we hear a rasping noise like talons scratching on wood, and soon thin black nails touch the inside of the doorframe, and a shimmer of inky feathers catches the convulsing light. Another candle goes out, and the rapidly chilling air bites into my skin. Goosebumps ripple down my arms and legs. I can’t see the thing’s shape or its size, but the nails on the doorframe slowly pull the being through, revealing wings draped in raged feathers, blacker than any crow’s.

My breath becomes thin and quick, and suddenly two white eyes pop out of the darkness, then a sharp beak, full wings of night, and thin, needle-like claws. Mark and I frightfully grasp the back of each other’s clothes, and the creature leaps at us, brandishing talons and feathers, and screeching death.

“AHH!” Mark and I both yell, crouching and desperate to protect our faces. He tugs hard on the curtain, yanking down the pole it was attached to, and drops it onto our heads with two loud bonks!

“Ha-ha-ha!” a pleased voice laughs.

Mark and I throw the curtain off and stare at the creature, it’s Nat.

She’s four and a half feet tall, ten years old, and covered from shoulder to waist in heavy, black ruffled feathers. Her short black hair is teased insanely upwards and filled with more feathers, and her face and hands are painted with black charcoal that glitters, making her morning-gray eyes pop. To finish her raven-like appearance, on her nose she’s attached a small beak, painted it black, and dabbed a bit of silver on the tip.

“NAT!” Mark and I shout.

“Ugh, my pacemaker,” he jokes.

“That’s too scary,” I say, flooding with relief, because, for one, we weren’t shredded to death, and two, because it hadn’t been a junkman.

“Well I’m supposed to be scary,” Nat replies. “This isn’t Eats-Her Day.”

“No kidding,” I say. “What are the trashcans for?”

“I got them!” she exclaims. “They’re for our candy. Are you guys ready to go yet?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I reply.

“Nat,” Mark says seriously, “we can’t take these as candy bags.”

“Why not?” Nat replies.

“If we were to fill these cans up to the top with candy they’d be too heavy to drag back to the junkyard.”

“I think Mark’s right,” I agree.

Nat looks back toward the junkyard and says, “Okay … but I want to bring in a lot of candy this year.”

“Well how about we take one trashcan, hide it around where we’ll be trick-or-treating, and each of us will have smaller bags,” I say. “Then when our bags get full, we’ll add our candy to the big can and keep going back and forth. Then at the end of the night we’ll carry one big can back here.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Mark says. Nat agrees, and she rolls two of the cans out of the caboose, while I blow out the candles and grab a bunch of plastic bags. Then Mark takes one can, and we all climb down the mountain of scrap that the Red Lady teeters dangerously on, and head for the hole in the outer wall that leads to the street.

“Edvin, what’s your costume supposed to be?” Nat asks.

“Not you too,” I say. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Mark chuckles, rolls his eyes, and lights a crooked cigarette from a circular tin with one hand.

“You’re a … Crusader?” she answers unsurely.

“A what?” I ask.

“Oh … they’re like these medieval jerks from ages ago.”

Even Mark seems confused as to what a “Templar” is, he is the oldest at fourteen and Nat is the youngest at ten, but she somehow has a way of knowing things that we don’t, and so we leave it at that.

We take turns going through the hole in the wall, with Mark coming out last with the trashcan. “So, who’s got the card?” he asks, blowing out smoke. “Where are we meeting the Black Wolf this year?”

“Oh, I’ve got it,” Nat says, and she ruffles the feathers near her hip and pulls out a small black card, with a surprisingly minimal amount of dog-earedness to it. She turns it over, and scribbled on the card in white is a tiny wolf with an address by it. “3247 Pale Rd,” Nat reads out loud.

“That’s in the three-thousand block,” I say. “So … that’s between the Spanish district and the Central district.”

“Good, then it won’t be that far of a walk,” Mark adds, puffing out smoke. To meet with the Black Wolf we’ll be walking diagonally, toward the east.

The Kumani district, where the junkyard is, is made up of short buildings, usually three to five stories high, with apartments on top of little restaurants or shops, and bright, flashing signs with unknown letters. Being relatively peaceful, the Kumani district already has its first trick-or-treaters hitting the streets. On every road we find a group of five or six kids, near our ages, moving together and wearing store-bought costumes.

We stop at a few apartments on ground level to pick up some starter candy, but meeting with the Black Wolf before he runs out of maps is more important.

Everyone knows it isn’t safe to walk the streets at night in Zero City, so sometimes trick-or-treating can be really difficult. Many buildings would rather lock up for safety. You might find entire neighborhoods with no candy, but sometimes you’ll find a lucky street with a buffet of sweets. Other streets will have cheap candy, and other places might have the really good stuff: Pixie sticks, peanut butter cups, gummy worms, Sweet Tarts—the works. And we’ve got to collect all the candy we can in one night, but to help avoid wasting your time on the bad neighborhoods, about six years ago, the Black Wolf started a small racket by watching where the candy was, and so every year, for a percentage of candy, the Black Wolf gives out maps of the city, outlying in detail which buildings over the course of six years had statistically given out what kind of yields of candy, and with this map, a lost child could boost their Halloween performance by an advertised one-hundred percent!

After nearly half an hour of walking, and precious trick-or-treating time gone, we were beginning to worry. Those were priceless minutes on this one special night.
“Don’t worry,” Nat says. “The Wolf’s never let us down before.”

We find Pale Rd. and look around to find the street number on the card. It’s half block west, and after a short walk we come upon an average looking apartment building.

“Do we go inside?” Mark asks.

“The card doesn’t say that,” Nat says, turning it over and over. I go up the stoop and approach the door, but then something in the mail slot catches my eye, an origami wolf, folded from black paper.

“Look! It’s a wolf,” I say excitedly.

I unfold it, and drawn on the paper is a cross with the letter “W” at the end of one of its lines, the number three, and the words, “Fold me back and leave me where you found me, or else.”

“What does this mean?” I ask. I rejoin Mark and Nat, and we look at the paper together.

“Well that looks like the compass on a map,” Mark says quickly. “Except people usually put an ‘N’ for North on them, not a ‘W.’”

“Maybe we have to go to Compass Rose Square?” I ask.

“I hope not!” Mark says shocked. “Do you know how long that would take? We’d be wasting valuable time.”

“Maybe the ‘W’ is for West? Like, we have to go west,” Nat adds. We all look around and note that Pale Rd, is an east/west street.

“And the number three?” Mark asks.

“Three blocks west, three buildings west, three steps west? Maybe?” I say.

“Alright, let’s start from there then,” Mark finishes.

Nat carefully folds the origami wolf back together, and I place it back where it came from.

“What if it’s three miles!?” I say, terrified.

“Then I guess we’re not using the Wolf this time,” Mark says.

We start walking, and after three buildings we find a darkened alley. Nat and I step in. “We’re here to see the Black Wolf!” I call out.

From behind a dumpster, a pale hand pops out of the shadow and beckons us in deeper. The hand disappears, and we follow the sound of footsteps as they fade into the darkness. Then an orange light opens up on one the side of the alley, and the figure we were following steps into it. As we approach, on a steel door is a rough painting of a black wolf glistening in the light.

Quickly we step through the doorway, and enter a large storage space with candles alight on tables and shelves. Maps of the city are pinned to the walls, and moving around are about thirteen other lost children, dressed in torn coats, hats, and scarves, each of them with white armbands made from rags with black wolves on them. They mostly seem about my age, but suddenly we feel a bit ridiculous about stepping inside with our costumes on.

“Did you leave behind the wolf?” asks a small boy on our right with large eyes and pale, freckled skin.

“Yeah, we did,” I say.

“Good. Then come on.”

We follow the boy with large eyes deeper into the room, which looks like a temporary hideout, and any sort of boxes or supplies that were in here have been pushed against the walls. The boy brings us to a long table in the center of the room, with a stack of maps on one end, and another kid seated, copying down numbers onto maps by candlelight.

“Wolf, three more are here,” the boy says.

A tall figure standing behind the table turns around and greets us with a stark calculating face. He’s a tall lost child, a few years older than Mark, with broad shoulders, short curly black hair, and brown skin. His eyes are coal black, and there’s just the hint of facial hair growing around his jaw. Quickly though, his serious face becomes a bright smile, and he says, “Mark, Edvin, Nat, good to see you again!”

“Hey Rashad!” Mark exclaims, extending his hand, and the two boys shake. “Looks like it’s been a good year,” he says.

“Ah, we get bigger and bigger every year. We’ve already given out thirty maps,” Rashad happily replies. “Nat, lovely lady, nice costume.”

“Thank you!” she says cheerfully.

“And Edvin, you…”

I put my arms out as if to say, “Come on, this is easy!”

Rashad touches his temple and says, “You, look like a pregnancy test.”

Mark and Rashad burst out laughing, and I fume. “Come on, man! I’m a doctor!”

“Oh that’s what you are?” Nat says, surprised.

“Yeah, like, you know, this cross is medical, and then this tin on my head,” I say urgently.

“Oh, well, it’s very nice. I guess,” Nat says.

Mark continues laughing, but then Rashad quickly gets back to business. “So, you’re here for a map?” he asks.

“Yup,” Mark replies.

“Alright, good. I won’t need collateral from you three this year, you guys are some of my oldest customers, just fifteen percent of your loot when you’re done.”

“Alright,” Mark settles.

Rashad hands Nat a map, and she opens it up. “Here let me point out some of the finer spots this year,” he says, and he comes around the table, and holds the map toward the candles and begins outlining neighborhoods which have had high yields and low yields, specific buildings, and the trends for the past few years. As he shows us which neighborhoods to go to and which ones to avoid, I notice that the entire Hell district is crossed out, and over it in red he’s written, “Here be Demons.

“Now, I recommend a route that goes this way, so you can hit these neighborhoods without having to backtrack through any of these other ones,” he says. “And if you’re thinking about it, you might want to go just a touch into Uptown. Kids there mostly have their parents buy them candy and don’t really trick-or-treat, but around here you can get some good stuff. And there are a few buildings in the Jewish quarter that give out baked goods in case you’ve been needing any bread.”

Rashad was one of those rare lost children that made you think: maybe learning a bit of school stuff and some numbers was a way to get ahead in this city. “Sounds good,” I say.

“Thanks Rashad,” Nat adds.

“It’s my pleasure ma’am,” he says, smiling.

Three slow knocks come from the metal door behind us, and Mark, Nat, and I wheel around. It opens, and in steps four figures, one of them being the large-eyed boy who led us through the door, and the other three are wearing black hoods with white masks over their faces: a hockey mask, a surgeon’s mask, and a Ghostface mask.

“See Edvin, that’s what you needed, that surgeon’s mask,” Nat says.

Mark and Rashad chuckle, and Mark picks up the trashcan and asks, “Hey, do you mind if we leave this out by your alley and have that kid with the big eyes watch it for us?”

“Why, what’s in it?” Rashad asks.

Mark quickly explains our plan to fill up the can with candy and finishes by saying, “and that way by the end of the night, when we’re done trick-or-treating, there’ll be an even bigger cut for you.”

Rashad grins, agrees and says, “You know, that’s not a bad idea at all. I think I’ll start spreading the word about it to my customers. Okay, looks like I got three more. Check out through that side door, and have a safe night. We’ll be open till five.”

We thank Rashad, take our map, and Mark shakes his hand again. Then one of the wolf boys guides us through a side door, up a dim stairway, and into the small lobby of an apartment building. We exit through the front door and return to the streets, with the rest of our night open to trick-or-treating.

“Ha-ha! We got it! We got it! We got our map,” Mark says.

“So where to first?” Nat asks him eagerly.

“Well,” he says, “a lot of the best neighborhoods on the map go off toward Uptown, but then we can loop back toward the Kumani district. Then there’s some stops nearby here….”

We hide our trashcan by the stoop, among this building’s trashcans, and keep planning, but as we do, the three hooded kids who had come in to see Rashad exit the building and step down. We stay quiet, and watch as they solemnly walk southward toward the Kumani district.

“Well that seemed quick of them,” I say, once they’re gone.

“Yeah,” Mark says slowly. “Anyway, let’s rock and roll!”
You are reading Part 1 of 3 of a short story.
Halloween is also a prequel to its mother book [link] which continues the story, but this short stands on its own, and you don't need any prior knowledge of the Gauntlet universe.

Part 2: [link]
Part 3: [link]

[reporting typos is greatly appreciated!]
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