The local school near Ferndean was alive with black, orange and lime green. Crude but carefully cut out shapes of cackling bats, pumpkins and witches hats splashed across the dusty windows and grimy walls. The beaming faces of the children gleamed up at Jane as she delicately wrapped her hand around theirs and guided the pencil to make a happily grouchy angular eye or smile on a cheerful Hallowe'en shape.
Their eyes smouldered with blind suspense as she read from a book of ghost stories, a tattered conical hat cocked on her head, revelling in their squawking glee as she impersonated a wizened old sorcerer or whooping ghost.
She left with a sincere, warm smile at what had occurred, and at the warm and beloved home that awaited here.
Jane sprang past the threshold of Ferndean. Edward adored this holiday, and she knew he must have had something planned.
This was why she was eerily surprised when she found the house pitch black.
No candle was lit in the corridor. Each door was ajar, leaving spears of doomed, dense blackness pillaring the hallway that Jane now stood in. She desired to roll her eyes carefully over the scene that enveloped her, but couldn't. She dared not observe further. Instead she garnered every particle of courage within herself to breathlessly call out
"Mrs Fairfax…?"
No reply.
"John… Lea..?" her voice faltered to a whisper
"Edward…?"
Blackness stared back at her, but no reply echoed through the hall, or from the doors which were coming to resemble dead, half open eyes.
Worry emersed fear. Where was the maternal old housemaid? Where were the loyal and good natured servants? Where was her husband, who usually commanded the house to come alive at this night.
Her skin crawled as she burst into a walk to the drawing room. Her tense fingers pushed, feather light against the door and it creaked open. Her eyes shot to the dim, half melted candle dying in the corner of the room. After scanning the room and finding it stern but still, she crept to it, picking up the light by its stained brass holder. A triangle of torn paper was set on it, flittering jerkily to the table. The candle light jittered over a jagged scrawl
"The Bedroom" it read.
Every sense crawled and shifted nervously as she creaked up the stairs and toward the flickering light from the end of the corridor. Their bed chamber.
This time she grasped the door handle and forced herself to stomp into the room determinedly. A quiet, animalistic, excited and… familiar growling came from the corner behind her.
She whirled round and was instantly gathered to a warm, chuckling chest
"Edward!" she smiled, relieved and laughing, her heart battering her sternum.
"My darling, did I scare you?" he smirked, quirking an eyebrow saucily.
She resigned her head to his chest, laughing warmly with him as he gently turned her round and leaned her against him, securely sliding his arms around her as she saw the table that was laid out for them.
The ripe burgundy of the crystal vile of wine glimmered from the light of the carved jack-o-lantern and the two thick, orange candles that surrounded a plump, perfectly browned pumpkin pie, all against a crimson tablecloth.
"Do you like it?" he whispered in her ear with a boyish anticipation.
She swept nearer the table with him in hand "I love it" she sighed.
The taste of Pumpkin lasted long into their warm, happy conversations and into the scariest night of the year.