"I don't know that there are real ghosts and goblins, but there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids."
-Robert Brault
***
Somewhere in one of the darker corners of the world, a witch and a ghoul stood at the entrance of a cemetery at midnight, and both of them were afraid. But they weren't afraid of what was inside: Rather, it was everything outside that scared them.
"Mark my words," said Stokes, shuffling his old undertaker's boots in the dirt, "tomorrow will be the last Halloween for most of us." A night breeze stirred the tree branches and the old cemetery gate creaked, as if in agreement.
Anne knew he was right. There was something in the air that year—some quality of the night or the moonlight or just the entire world—that suggested terrible finality. It was a miracle any of them had made it to this Halloween; expecting another would be hoping for too much. She chewed her nails; they were looking ragged these days, tending toward the bloody side.
"Are we the only ones?" she said. "Where's the countess?"
"Dead," said a voice from the shadows, and there, stepping out from the hollow of a tree, was Jezibaba, an ancient hag with a hump that could capsize a ship. How long she'd been there was anyone's guess. Anne had sent for her, but she was still surprised to see that the other witch had come.
"Dead and gone," she said again, "and the word has only just come. I was the first to know, and now I've told you, so together we make three who know: Dear Liz has gone the way of dust and darkness, and there will be no more midnight sabbats or crimson baths for her wherever she is now. It would bring a tear to my eye, if witches could cry."
Anne gasped. Stokes took off his hat (a battered stovepipe affair that he'd stolen from a particularly famous grave) and lowered his head.
"How?" said Anne.
"The rumors disagree," said Jezibaba, stopping to light a pipe, the orange flames reflecting on her iron teeth. "Some say a mortal believer found her coffin and opened it, exposing her to the daylight. But others say..."
She didn't have to finish. Anne knew: Elizabeth had left her own coffin open, because she'd given up hope. She wouldn't have been the first. Anne dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, though she did it out of habit rather than necessity, for of course she couldn't cry either. She'd known Elizabeth for nearly 400 years, and just like that she was gone. Was life so short?
"'Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep,'"
said Stokes. "We'll never see her like again."
"Was she the last one?" Anne said.
"There are a few old bloodsuckers still knocking around in Romania, and at least one that I know in this country," said Stokes. "But there can't be many. My kind runs into them less and less as we till the midnight soil. Of course, there are few enough of us left either."
"Few enough of any of us," said Jezibaba. "Few vampires, few witches, few ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties to go bump in the night. And soon there'll be none. It's only going to be the three of us here tonight, so let's not keep burning moonlight. We've a job to do, don't we?"
Anne stood up straighter. Jezibaba's presence restored some sense of spirit. The First Witch was rarely seen outside the old country anymore. She had traveled a long way through what must have been great trouble, but the stubborn squint of her eye was not diminished. She'll be the last of us, Anne thought. When we've all have gone to dust like the countess, Baba will still be here for a hundred more years.
Anne opened the cemetery gate (wincing at the touch of iron) and the three of them went in. Three old monsters, alone and afraid in the dark. Anne led the way, with lantern raised. Jezibaba walked at the back, looking over her shoulder, for she could see in the dark better than in the light. Stokes took up the middle, which was awkward since he'd grown enormously rotund in recent years (he had few brothers and sisters to compete with for meals anymore), and the bones in the pockets of his coat and trousers rattled with each step. It wasn't a particularly big graveyard or a particularly old one, but it was still a sacred place, and good enough for their purposes tonight.
Along the way they exchanged gossip: The final Massachusetts coven had parted, their circle forever broken. Now there were only three covens in the entire world stocked with genuine witches rather than just humans playing at being "pagans." Stokes reported that Germany's last werewolf was living incognito in a pen in the Berlin zoo, and that several prominent haunted houses, including the abandoned sanitarium in Waverly Hills and the Himuro Mansion in Tokyo, had somehow lost their ghosts and become spontaneously unhaunted overnight. And it had been six years, Anne told them, since the Sleepy Hollow horseman had appeared for a midnight ride.
"Where do you suppose ghosts go when they no longer haunt us?" said Stokes.
"If we knew where they'd gone, they wouldn't be gone," Jezibaba said.
Anne set the lantern down on a grave and turned it down as low as it would go. They had come to the exact center of the graveyard. It was a good place: tall trees, long shadows, and a hint of fog. Jezibaba brought out the offering: the fleece of a black ram. They spread it on the ground. It was up to Anne to say the words, since this was all her idea. She had never done it before, and she was afraid, but there was no turning back now. The three of them linked hands: Jezibaba's was an old, dried claw, like the talon of a vulture, while Stokes' was plump and soft, but cold. Taking a deep breath Anne said, as loud as she dared:
"Mother, we're here for you. Will you come?"
No more elaborate spell or ritual was needed. All they had to do was ask the question and see if it was answered. Often it was not, and for a moment Anne worried that this would be one of those times. But then they heard the trees stir and (muffled beneath the great tons of earth covering them) the voices of dead men call out. The dirt over the graves seemed to tremble and Anne felt her knees go weak, and then the fog parted and, faster than the shake of a bat's wing, a great black chariot appeared. Nothing pulled it, but its huge wheels still rolled and came to a stop precisely where they were meant to.
The charioteer was a tall, handsome, and pale woman. She wore nothing except a black cloak, longer and finer than anything in the world, and something about the whole of her looked misty around the edges, as if she were not really there at all. This was Mother Night.
She came to Jezibaba, kissed her on the cheek, and called her daughter. She kissed Stokes too (he doffed his hat with so much gusto that he almost shook the old thing to pieces), but when she came to Anne she paused. Anne flinched under the scrutiny. "I don't know you," said Mother Night.
Anne's cheeks burned. "Anne de Chantraine, Mother," she said.
"Oh yes. My suffering one."
She kissed Anne, and Anne felt lighter. It was true, they had never met, but this was still her mother. She was a Child of the Night as much as any of them. Mother found the tallest and grandest mausoleum to sit down on. She looked powerful and stern, but also loving.
"You've called me and I've come," Mother said. "Tell me why?"
Anne realized everyone was waiting for her to answer. This had been her idea, after all. She cleared her throat.
"Mother, thank you for--" No, Mother didn't care about ceremony. Instead Anne launched right into the meat of their plea: "Terrible things are happening," she said. "The Children of the Day rule the world unchallenged now. We, your children, are fewer every year. Once we rode through the night on broomsticks, slept the daylights hours in coffins, dug up the sacred ground to feed on the dead, and took on the bodies of wolves or other beasts to ran howling under your moon.
"But soon there won't be any of us left. The world isn't safe for us anymore. Tomorrow is Halloween, and we fear it will be the last for most of us."
"I know all this already," said Mother. "Why call me?"
"We want you to save us," said Anne. "You can't just let us die."
"It's not for you to tell me what I can't do."
"But you're our mother." Anne's eyes burned, tearless, again. "Don't you care?"
