Victoria - The Taker

Tonight the harvest moon hangs red, and all know well to lock their doors.

All down the lane you can hear the sounds of people drawing deeper into houses, taking steps and whispers with them. It is like a body in the cold, drawing heat into its center. Lose the limbs and save the heart, or some such.

I hear my mother pacing the kitchen, the steady shuffle of her tread. I hear the front bolt slide. I hear the back door lock. I hear the shutters snap and the windows lower and they are all warnings that it is time.

This is the night when shadows come, down through the chimney, up through the floors.

The harvest moon means one thing and one alone. Out in the dark and through the fields, the Harvesters are coming. The Sower, the Reaper, and the Taker. Three cloaks and three masks the same rust red of the too-low moon, and three hands gripping three tools. The shovel, the scythe, and the basket.

My mother comes to kiss me goodnight. My father looks to the window, and seeing it shut, gives a nod and slips away.

This is the night when the world gives back. The payment for abundance.

Now the lane is hushed. Now the night is still and cold. I sit on the bed and wait and watch and listen, and soon I hear it, the faintest turning of a latch. The shutters on my bedroom window tremor, and unfold. From the dark I hear a tap, tap, tap as of a scythe against a pane of glass.

I swallow, and stand, and cross the room. Eyes tucked behind the rust-red masks gaze at me and I gaze back, before my fingers drift to the window lock. I slide up the glass, and lift my basket from the sill.

Victoria Schwab - Witches

The wolf stood on the road that ran through the woods, and watched the slice of red between the trees.

The red thing was small and pretty as a flower before it’s plucked, petals all tucked close.

The wolf watched and wondered if he should eat it. A sound like a falling stone fell some ways behind him, and the wolf glanced back with yellow eyes narrowed, and teeth bared. But the path was empty. He turned back toward his dinner, and jumped. Eyes the color of dusk hovered inches from his snout, just above a very wide smile, and just below a very red hood.

“Hello,” she said. “Do you want to play a game?”

The wolf wrinkled his nose and his whiskered tickled her cheek. She laughed, and the sound was like sunshine and rain and something sweet. The sweetness made him dizzy. And before he could open his mouth to speak or to eat her, the red thing, which appeared to be a little girl, kissed the wolf on the muzzle.

“Run,” she whispered, and before the word was out, the wind lifted, rustling the canopies and making the forest light dance, and the girl was gone.

All that was left on the path was a small red flower. The wolf lifted it—the petals had the same sweet smell—and he smiled with a mouth full of very sharp teeth.

Silly girl, thought the wolf. He would run, of course, but not away. The wolf cast away the blossom and off he went, following the far-off laugh and the scent of sugar and rain and light.

The path ended at a house. Smoked drifted up from the chimney, and though the door was closed, the windows were all thrown open. The wolf climbed through, and knew that this house belonged to the little red thing. A small pot simmered on the stove, a basket sat on the table beside an ax. There in the corner was a small bed, and in the bed was a body, its back turned to the room. The blankets seemed to rise and fall with quiet breathing, the shape no bigger than a child. The wolf’s smile spread.

Silly, silly girl, he growled to himself even as he flexed, and lunged. The moment he hit the bed, the body sprang up, but he pinned it down and flashed his teeth into a wide smile. The smile twisted in confusion, and then panic. The body had no face. It was less a body than a tangle of sheets, and those sheets now snaked around the wolf. In the yard the wolf heard humming. By the time the little red thing came in, the sheets had pinned the wolf to the bed, good and tight. He muttered curses at the girl through a muzzle of linen and wool.

“Silly wolf,” she giggled. “I told you to run.” Then the girl slid back the hood, and the wolf’s eyes widened as he saw the crown of shadow that marked her for what she was.

“A witch,” he growled, writhing on the bed. The sheets only tightened, enchanted.

“All the better…” she said to herself. Her arm drifted up and the whole house seemed to heave the ax from the table into her hand.

“Let’s play again.”

Her dark eyes glistened and she flashed a smile, one that seemed to eat up her entire face.

And then she brought the axe down on the bed.

* * *

Did you know...

-That some of the original versions of the story now known as Little Red Riding Hood involved witchcraft? Specifically the grandmother as a witch. So in case you're thinking, "Gawwwd, Victoria, why would you twist this fairy tale to Witches week? How lazy are you?" I just want to say that it DOES have ties to witchcraft.
-That yes, I write books about witches, or A book about witches, and those witches are not at all like this witch, though both kinds of witches have fairy-tale-esque origins.
-That I LOVE fairy tales, and simply couldn't get through this series without playing with ONE.
-That I wrote this story between 12:13am and 12:41am. Just saying. Be gentle.

Victoria Schwab - Ghosts

1:14

Emma dug her nails into her arm, the pain enough to bring her back to the room and the whirling fan and the low music seeping from the clock radio. But moments later her head bobbed again. She gripped hard enough to carve red crescents in her skin.

“Stay awake,” she whispered, turning the music up. But soon enough she started to slip, slowly, slowly, into the solid dark of sleep.

It started again.

“He’s on the steps,” said a small boy, blond hair curling into his eyes. In the distance, a door opened and closed.

“Stop,” said Emma, still sitting on the bed. But it wasn’t her bed now. The yellow pattern of the Batman comforter spread out beneath her legs.

The boy stood in the doorway. He looked back over his shoulder into the hall.

“He’s in the house.”

“Not again,” Emma whispered. She pressed her hands against her ears, waiting to wake up. But it didn’t matter. She heard the boy close the bedroom door just the same. It didn’t lock. It had been her biggest complaint about the house.

She looked up and found him standing on his toes, ear pressed to the door.

“He’s on the stairs,” the boy whispered. Emma thought she could hear footsteps, but it could have been the Batman clock on the side table, tapping, tapping.

“He won’t hurt you,” she said. Her voice was shaking. The little boy turned to look at her.

“He already has.”

The color began to bleed out of him. His eyes were sliding from blue to gray, his skin sallowed, began to hang heavily on his bones.

“He’s in the hall,” the boy whispered, stepping away from the door until he reached the bed. He climbed onto it beside Emma and sat, hugging his knees. His lips grayed. The skin around his neck began to bruise.

The doorknob turned.

Emma sat up, heart thudding in her chest.

The fan whirled and the radio played while the clock blinked: 1:20. She took a deep breath. Her bed was her bed, the blue striped comforter. Her clock was her clock, digital so it didn’t tick or tock or tap.

Emma frowned. Why then, did she hear the soft, insistent sound of tapping? A stair creaked. She reached for the volume on the radio, just as the doorknob turned.

Victoria Schwab - Vampires

"Home"

When you die, the life you lost becomes a drug. You think if you can only have a taste – a brief glance – you’ll be satisfied, you’ll stop craving it. Maybe you’ll even be able to let them go. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie.

Dying was nothing. Losing them was everything.

I’d been keeping tabs. Asher warned me four, maybe five times, to step away, to leave it alone. But I was a Watcher. I’d given up my life to protect the town of Arden. Surely this was part of my duty, to watch over my family. That’s what I told my self that night, when the city man followed my sister into the dark.

I sat on a rooftop, invisible against the moonless sky. A small shadow against a much larger one. Church bells started ringing, and the wind caught them up in this way that made me feel like I was still alive, still there inside the small stone building, kneeling between my little sister and my father. The doors groaned open and the townsmen poured out, and I strained forward on my ledge.

I’d been good.

I hadn’t gone home – couldn’t have handled going home, so I stole my glances on church nights, when my family bled in with the masses. That’s how I justified it. I wasn’t just watching my father, or Emma. I was watching all of Arden. I was doing my job.

What’s funny now, in a sick way, is that I’d seen the city man before mass. I’d smelled him, all strong liquor and smoke.

And I’d resisted.

Now the crowds petered out, and my father broke away for a moment to speak to a friend, leaving Emma to go ahead home.

I wouldn’t have followed her, but I saw the city man and I swear that even from the roof I could smell the bad on him now, and took the same path as Emma even though that road led out of town and toward our home. I slipped across the rooftops, watching as he made two long steps to each of her one. Silly Emma always staring at stars instead of watching the ground, instead of listening for the sounds of extra feet. I pulled my hood down lower and sped up.

Never let the living see the lost.

A rule drilled in again and again by the Watchers but when the city man reached her, when he found the clasp of my sister’s dress, I forgot. I forgot everything. I dropped from the roof to the alley, ripping the city man away from Emma like a rag doll from a child.

The wind was up and swallowing the sounds. The sound of her surprise, the sound of his stumbling backward, of his cursing, of my teeth sinking into his throat. The only sound I heard was the pulse. Not mine, but his. Slowing. Slowing. And I pretended, for just a moment, that it was my heartbeat. Calming, falling, stopping. The city man fell to path but I didn’t hear the sound of that either.

Until I heard my name. “Connor?”

I turned, and found her eyes -- so blue I used to tease her that it came from always looking up -- and for one moment, I was home.

And then I smiled, and Emma screamed.