A/N: Happy All Hallows Eve.

Winnie was getting cross.

Mary knew she wasn't the brightest of candles, which was why she left the decision making to her elder sister. But she was intelligent enough to notice when the red head was about to fly into a rage. So when she saw the all too familiar twitch appear above Winnie's left eye as the fake Master's wife yelled at them, she quietly grabbed Sarah's arm and pulled her back into the tiny entrance hall. Her timing could not have been better, as Winnie started hurling hexes at the unsuspecting couple the moment the pair of them had left the room. Sarah was cowering slightly behind Mary, as their elder sister continued her rampage and the screams of the couple echoed around the house.

After a good ten minutes, the sounds from the other room fell silent.

The younger Sandersons watched warily as the elder came into the hall, a wild look still lingering in her eyes, but thankfully she didn't unleash her infamous temper on them this time as she grabbed her cloak of the hook near the door.

"Come, sisters. We have wasted enough time here already."

Both of them quickly obeyed, and the three left the house with a swirl of their cloaks. Mary chanced a quickly look back into the other room just before they left, and the sight of the two bloody corpses slumped against the far wall only made her hasten after her older sister even faster.

The discovery of the theft of their brooms from the fence outside made Winnie lose her temper again, and the house itself bore the brunt of her rage as she quickly set it on fire. The people around them quickly began to panic, and the three quickly slipped away unnoticed through the quickly growing crowd of onlookers. Winnie was marching forward with purpose, with the pair of them trailing behind her in absolute silence so as not to set her off again.

Suddenly the red head stopped dead in her tacks, which caused the pair of them to crash into her back as expected, the pair of them got a slap around the head before Mary was thrust to the front of their small group.

"Mary, thou must take the lead!"

"Where are we going, Winnie?"

"To find those dammed children! Now, use thy nose and find them! Quickly!"

It took some time to find their trail. The smell of the children was masked by the horrible smells in the air left by the strange horseless carriages, which made her cough and splutter while her poor nose burned painfully. Winnie was walking right behind her, crossly urging her on while she dragged Sarah along with them. They gained quite a few stares during their walk, but this was nothing new as they were constantly stared at and whispered about in the old days as well.

Eventually, she picked up two familiar scents on the wind near where the old town meeting hall was. There was a long line of people trying to get inside, dressed in strange revealing clothes that showed too much flesh for Mary's linking. If their mother, rest her soul, had seen any of her girls walking around in such revealing garments…people would had to have dug up their bodies to find out what she had done to them. The only reason Sarah got away with what she wore before they died, was because Winnie didn't care as much as their mother did about what they wore. In fact, she was the one who insisted they buy coloured cloth to make their dresses instead of the black cloth the townspeople wore.

It was funny to watch their faces twist into strange expressions when they walked into the township, especially when the men caught sight of the split in Sarah's skirts that showed her legs. Their eyes would linger on her sister, while their wives drag them away and send dark glares towards them as they did so. But now it seemed that such standards were long gone, as both men and woman showed as much flesh as they liked to each other.

The scents of Binx and Taylor went as far as the door, but her nose could not make out if they had gone inside or not. The smells of sweat and alcohol coming off the people around her were not helping matters either, but Winnie was getting impatient and her temper was beginning to rise again. It was now up to Mary to make a decision, and there was nothing she hated more than being put on the spot and made to make a choice. She was getting flustered, and her mind was going around in circles as she struggled to decide what they had to do.

"Mary? Why have ye stopped?"

The sound of Winnie's voice made her panic, and she made a split second decision. She quickly pointed at the hall.

"Winnie, I think they went in there…"

Winnie's eyes lit up and she quickly dragged them towards the door, which was being guarded by a large bald man in black clothing. Mary frantically prayed to the Master that the children were inside the hall, or Winnie would have her guts for garters…

When Alison had volunteered to take Max and Danni to the Sanderson House, she didn't imagine that a few hours later she would be trudging through freezing cold sewer water with a talking cat and his owl companion. The water came up to both her and Max's thighs, which resulted in Alison giving Danni a piggyback while Elizabeth kept her perch on the girl's shoulder. Thankfully, Danni wasn't that heavy and she kept as still as possible so Alison did not lose her grip.

It was the water that was causing them the problems.

She and Max had stumbled more than once in the icy water, and her legs were beginning to go numb. She'd lost all sensation in her feet some time ago, an she was not looking forward into finding out what she may have stepped in during their travels in this sewer. But that was nothing compared to the fact she was running for her life from three crazy witches and a zombie, who were supposed to have been dead for over three hundred years.

But here they were, chasing them half way across the town on magical brooms or through the sewers like Billy, trying to get a hold of Danni to restart their child murdering ways.

Thackery was the one guiding them through the sewer towards this tunnel they hoped would get them inside the hall, but Alison had a horrible feeling in her stomach that something would go wrong. Max was leading the way with his lighter, with the enchanted Thackery around his neck like a furry scarf to keep him out of the frigid waters below.

"H-Hey, how much further, Binx? We're getting frostbite here!"

"Not much further. I f memory serves, the tunnel we seek is around the next bend."

The next bend lead them to a dead end, but the lighter showed several old rotten planks nailed to the wall on the right. Thankfully there was some light coming down from a storm drain hole above their heads, so when Max had to put the lighter away to pull at the boards they weren't plunged into complete darkness.

"Hey, Alison?"

"Yes, Danni?"

"Do you think the grown-ups are going to believe us?"

It was a very good question. If Alison had not seen Winifred and her sisters come back to life with her own eyes, she would have assumed it was a Halloween pranks or a story Max was telling to try and get her attention. Not that he really needed a story to do that, since he was the new boy at school and his clumsy attempts to talk to her were just too cute to ignore…not that she would ever admit that, especially to his face. Telling their parents and the other townspeople that the Sandersons had returned from the grave to kill their children was not going to go down well, especially if the adults had been drinking for most of the night which was highly likely.

But they had to get them to believe, because failure was not an option.

"I don't know, but we've got to try."

"Aye, that we must."

It was the first time Elizabeth had spoke up in quite a while, and the sound of her voice almost made Alison jump. The girl-turned-owl was watching Max struggle to pull one of the planks off the wall, which was slowly but surely giving way under his tugging.

"Elizabeth, do you think the tunnel will be flooded as well?"

"Aye, it will be for the first few meters. But it goes uphill after that if memory serves, and we'll end up in the Native cave system. The Elders used them to store grain once the township was founded."

"Native caves? No one ever mentioned Salem being built on a Native site…"

Elizabeth snoted.

"Nay, they would not. Never forget, most of the land we first colonised was taken from the local tribes either by force or by deception. We were always at war with them, killing their men or enslaving their women and children. And they did the same to us, burning the townships down and stealing cattle and crops from us so we would starve when winter came. We saw them as heathens for burning own our churches, but they thought the same about us when we defiled their holy grounds in turn."

"So these caves…they were holy grounds to the local tribe?"

"Thou are correct. Natives rarely came to Salem Village to trade, but the few of them that did could speak English. One of them used to talk to my Uncle's slave Tituba, and he told her all about how the caves were once the place where the tribe's shamans communicated with the spirits for guidance. When the founders first tried to settle on the land here, the Natives pushed them back to Salem Town and warned them not to return. But the Founders did not take kindly to their warning, and an expedition went out to find the local tribe's village to 'teach the heathens about Christian manners' armed with muskets and swords."

It was times like this that almost made Alison ashamed about what her forefathers had done to settle New England. If they had tried to use such tactics in this day and age, they would have been branded as terrorists and murderers. Plus it was hard not to laugh at their hypocrisy, since they had left England to escape religious persecution and yet here they were doing the same thing to the Natives. But as Alison was often reminded by her Mom, she was looking back with both the benefit of hindsight and with twentieth century views of how society should behave. The Founding fathers were basing their actions on what was believed at the time, and they truly believed the Natives were the spawns of Satan and had to be wiped out so their perfect puritan society could thrive.

These views were then taken up by the American government, who continued the campaign to rob the natives of their land and kill them in their thousands over the next two hundred years.

"Is it really a good idea to go into those caves? I mean, after what I've seen tonight I don't want to go in them if it's going to upset anything that's lurking inside…"

"I agree, but we have no other choice. Thou could not get by that man at the door, and I do not wish to see Max be struck again trying to get inside. We must go through the caves."

"And if we disturb something? What then?"

"Then we must appease it somehow. Now ready thyself, Max has created an opening…"

Sure enough, the boards had been pulled away to reveal a hole just large enough for them to squeeze through. Max slipped through first and relit his lighter, giving Alison just enough light to manoeuvre through the hole without dropping Danni or Elizabeth in the process. Max gently grabbed her arm before she could go any further, and motioned towards Danni.

"Hey, you wanna swap? I know she gets heavy after a while…"

"Yeah…that'd be great."

After some manoeuvring and grumbling from the siblings, Danni was soon perched on her brother's back and Alison now led the way with the lighter with Thackery and Elizabeth on her shoulders.

"Christ, you're getting heavy Danni. What's Mom been feeding you lately?"

"The same stuff she gives you Max. If I'm heavy, you must weigh like an elephant!"

"Whatever midget, but seriously lay off the candy. You get any heavier; you'll go through your bedroom floor…"

"Hey!"

The pair continued to quietly bicker as they made their way up the sloping tunnel, which was thankfully lined with stone and tall enough for them to stand up in. Alison tried not to smile as the pair carried on behind her as if oblivious to their less than friendly surroundings.

"He's doing that on purpose, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is trying to distract her. I used to do the same with Emily during a thunderstorm…she used to be scared by the thunder. She thought God was angry with her, and the thunder was him shouting at her in anger."

Thackery trailed off into silence after that, and Alison just kept on walking rather than ask any questions. After a few more minutes, they finally left the cold water behind them. She tried not to wince at the sloshing noises that came from her shoes as she kept on walking, absently noticing that Max had put Danni down on the ground so she could walk with them. After a few more meters, the stone floor gave way to a compacted dirt floor and she felt Elizabeth stir slightly on her perch on her left shoulder.

"Be careful, the caves are just ahead."

Alison felt Danni slip her hand into her left one, and the older girl gave it a reassuring squeeze as a cold breeze came down the tunnel towards them. All the hairs on her body stood on end, as long forgotten instincts screamed at her not to go any further. But as Elizabeth had said, they had no other choice but to go inside and risk ticking off whatever was inside. As one the group crossed the threshold and entered the caves, leaving the relative safety of the sewers behind them.

Here we go…