What language was this, he wondered, and what secrets did it hold?
“Speak to me, great blinking being,” he called. “Tell me your truths!”
He pushed a button on one of the poles and watched as the pattern repeated, green, yellow, red again and again, each of the one hundred times he pushed it. He walked down the street and pushed the button there as well. But the lights only flashed green, yellow, red.
“Foul, toad-spotted dewberry! Dost thou mock me?” he hissed, when it was clear the great beings above his head would not converse with him. As he turned away, continuing his path along the odd silver snakelike path, the black boxlike face of the creature shifted back to red. Just to be sure they knew his fury, he punched each button along the way.
Red was a good noble color, he decided, running the boy’s hand along a low white fence. The pain that pricked the battered skin only fed him that much more. Red was life. It was the drip of blood from his enemy’s fatal wounds. It was the color of anger, the most powerful of all energies.
But orange was the most cherished color Downstairs. It was the color of royalty, of superiority, of nourishment.
And there was much orange to be had in the Salem of this time. Parchment streamers wrapped around poles and dangled from trees like swaying spider legs. Flags with pumpkins fluttered, twitching and bobbing. One such flag stuck out from a pole, just low enough for the boy’s arm to reach up and rip it away. He used the strings to affix it around his neck, already feeling more regal. He relished the bite of the howling wind.
Alastor stood with his face to it, letting it bring a bouquet of beautiful scents: waste, left too long in the sun, rotting vegetation from the dying leaves, and a perfectly putrid fishy odor wafting up from the nearby harbor. Orange streamed down from the lanterns that lined the streets, high above him.
As he explored, he grew hungry. The face of the wooden house behind him, painted a hideous shade of pure white, was darkened. But there were two small rows of candle-like lights along the path that led up to the door. Even with the boy’s weak eyes, he saw the spiderwebs draped from one of its front pillars to the other, and the small black creatures that looked to be crawling over it. He leaped over the low fence and allowed the boy’s body to dance up to them, cooing with glee.
He ran the boy’s fingers through the silky—yet not sticky?—web until he found what he was looking for: a pristine black spider, which he promptly popped into the boy’s mouth.
“Ack! Ugh!” He flicked it out of the boy’s mouth with his disturbingly pink human tongue. It was hard through and through—no crunchy shell with gooey innards. It didn’t move or twitch when he bit down.
Alastor tried the next one, then the next, until they were all crammed into the boy’s mouth. He spat them back out into the yard with one furious breath, and spun away, stalking down the path past the human bones half buried in the ground. But his journey had not been entirely in vain: for, just beside the blue door of the house, there lay another small button. And, unable to help himself, he jabbed a finger into its little glowing center.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
“Noooooo.” He covered the boy’s ears and fled from the horrendous sound of bells. The lights in the nearby windows flared. Alastor stumbled down the path, tripping over an old tree’s protruding root before reaching another fence. He tumbled over it, just as the door to the house opened, and an old crone stuck her face out.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
So. These bells summoned humans. He would make certain to avoid them.
Alastor glanced around him, wondering why the boy’s body seemed to be slightly sinking. The black dirt here was nearly turned, soft to the touch. Accounting for, he realized, the graves proudly displayed in front of this particular house. Clever humans, keeping their dead nearby. It would make for fertile breeding grounds for blood vipers, which would in turn hunt for changeling eggs and fairies.
He examined the gravestones smugly. Humans lived for such a short time, blissfully unaware of the other realms.
Poor Little Susie, one stone read, her death was a doozy. Another read, I was Ted. Now I’m dead, and the one beside it, Mummy B. Ware. The stones were small, and when he knocked on one, hollow—not stones at all! Alastor kicked over the scythe leaning against the nearby tree as he moved toward the low brick wall that separated the other side of that house from the road.
Then he saw him.
The fiend was no bigger than a human infant and strongly resembled one. But instead of the rosy blush of new human skin, the vampyre’s flesh looked to have been cast out of white marble. Two long fangs hung still below unblinking black eyes. Alastor rushed up to it, seizing its dangling legs before he could stop himself.
The vampyre came crashing down against him, its hollow head knocking against the boy’s. Its body was light, almost as if it was filled with air, but…squishy somehow.
“Zounds!” he said, gasping. “Longsharp! Longsharp, what hast become of thee, friend?” He had known this vampyre—or one that had looked nearly identical—Downstairs. They had played Pickle the Faerie together many times, and had even traded tips on the best way to get a lucky cat’s tail without being mauled by the uncooperative feline’s claws.
And now, Longsharp was…dead? Un-undead? Alastor shook the little body, trying to spark a reaction. When that didn’t work, he set it down on the ground, but the vampyre’s legs collapsed beneath him.
Perhaps vampyres in this world slept during the night, rather than the day? No, that wasn’t right. Downstairs it was always night, and they could come and go as they pleased. But that had never been the case in the human world. The sun scorched them to dust (which in turn could be made into a fine cake batter, but that was beside the point). How foolish this vampyre had been to leave himself out in the open, unprotected.
Without another thought on the matter, Alastor picked up the body and tucked it under the boy’s arm. He started through the fence, only to stop. A pumpkin, carved with a face like a troll, sat just beside where Longsharp had been.
Sniff. Sniff.
Of course. Orange—the color of sustenance. Of food. He snatched the pumpkin under his other arm and skipped off down the street with his bounty. It was hollowed out, but already tender as it began to rot. Perfection.