Hello, ghouls and Anne-girls!

Here is another in my interminable attempts to rewrite 'Anne of the Island' and especially the circumstances around Gilbert's first proposal, this time to fulfill OriginalMcFishie's Halloween challenge. There are ten references here that were outlined in her own spooky story, and we all had to attempt to stay within 1874 words… in honour of Lucy Maud's birth.

We hope you enjoy all our little drabbles, and if you would like more offerings in this vein, our Halloween stories from our 2018 challenge can currently be found on page 9 and the top of page 10.

Thanks for reading and Happy Halloween!

MrsVonTrapp x


Turned Back Upon the Past:

A Kingsport Halloween


The orchard was little comfort to her, these days. Anne hadn't set foot in it since the spring, not since… a declaration, a question, a refusal, and the subsequent devastation… Gilbert's face, white to the lips, had been as shocking as any Halloween jack-o-lantern leering maniacally, haunting her these six months as any ghostly All Hallows' apparition.

Anne herself seemed almost spectral this Halloween evening – a shadow of her former self, as Phil mused reprovingly, worrying that indeed, despite the encouraging advent of Roy, her fortune telling had come to pass and Anne had not coped well with a world without any Gilbert in it. *

"Won't you come to the Autumn Harvest Ball with us?" Phil urged now. "It's plain wrong that Mrs Gardner forbid Roy going because she thinks tonight is some sort of sacrilegious pagan festival!"

"It's no matter," Anne sighed, thinking of the relief, if nothing else, in forgoing an awkward encounter with Gilbert and Christine.

"Shouldn't he at least be here with you?"

"It's Thursday," Anne explained patiently. "Roy's at his Club. Some MP speaking on politics tonight."

Miss Gordon gave unimpressed eyeroll.

"It's fine, darlingest. I have Rusty and my poetry."

Phil looked dubious regarding the comforts of either, craning to glimpse the cover Anne cradled in her lap alongside the cat.

"If you get sick of your Poe, Anne, remember I have that book of ghost stories upstairs that scared me witless last April!"

Anne blew a kiss as Phil departed, turning back to her reading with a dejected air.

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed—

But a waking dream of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast

On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past? **

Anne, stung with sudden tears, threw the tome aside in disgust and upended her favourite feline into the bargain, who might as well be raven black for all the luck he had brought. Her life had turned tragical indeed if even Poe was laughing at her. How was she to have known that almost the very minute she had rejected Gilbert she began to see, too late, what he actually meant to her?

That Gilbert himself would have appreciated the irony of that was lemon juice to her still-tender wound.

A walk. A walk would clear her head. It had always done so before. Hadn't she met Roy, after all, on her walk in the park, unable to face the entire college cheering on the dashing football captain?

Anne headed to the park as twilight descended, drifting towards her old abode at 38 St John's, missing the happy times there and the view from her window of her beloved graveyard. A wander there had always fired her imagination and restored her equilibrium, and the current absence of both spoke as powerfully as the uncertain wisdom of venturing there on All Hallows Eve.

She greeted the tombstones as old friends; the haphazard, outlandish architecture looking positively gothic in the gathering gloom. She greeted the lion atop the stone arch; the faded blue dog guarding an overturned slab; all the while the wind whistling through the willows, bending their boughs to whisper secrets to her as she passed.

Minding the uneven ground she almost stepped upon a fallen offering; a delicate white lace hankerchief, exquisitely edged in mourning black. Anne looked about, puzzled. Shaking off her pinprick of unease she discerned a dark figure in the distance, stepping towards her purposefully, in black lace from ankle to chin.

"Miss!" Anne was astonished anyone would be mourning, here, now. No one had been buried at St John's for decades.

"Hello…" the young woman, barely older than herself, greeted tearfully. "I see that you've found it. Thank you so much."

"Oh, yes of course!" Anne relinquished the hankerchief, and the woman immediately dabbed large blue eyes.

"I'm amazed to find anyone here, at this hour, especially on this night…" Anne offered a sheepish smile.

"It's the only time I can come…" the woman answered, with an edge of bitterness.

"I'm… I'm very sorry for your loss…"

The woman contemplated her with a defeated expression.

"Thank you. You are most kind. Please excuse me."

She turned on her heel, walking from whence she'd come, peering at each headstone to the faded, sometimes indistinct, inscriptions, sighing loudly each time and continuing on. Anne watched with both fear and fascination.

"May I help you at all?" she called into the fast-fading light.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I used to board here, in the house behind us, and would come to the cemetery virtually every day. If… you are looking for a particular tombstone I might even know it…" she approached tentatively, and now gave fulsome smile. "I'm Anne."

"I'm… Harriet," the woman answered reluctantly. "And I am looking for someone. I'm looking for my Henry. I haven't much time, so could we…?" she indicated impatiently.

"Yes, of course!" Anne jumped to attention. "There are several Henrys here with lovely dedications. I'm sure we'll find yours. How long ago did he die?"

"Fifty-two years ago."

Anne, examining headstones in the next row, took a halting breath.

"Was he… a relative?"

"He was my love. And I lost him! Which is why I need to find him again. And I don't have time for these questions!"

Anne was worried as to the hysteria in Harriet's voice, but more to the point, her timeframe made no sense. This woman was virtually her age and couldn't possibly have had a paramour still living half a century ago.

"I don't mean to pry, but how could you have known Henry… before you yourself were even born?"

Harriet approached her, clambering across several gravestones, as if they were mere stepping stones on a pathway.

"Well, now, aren't you the clever one?"

Harriet lifted her face to Anne's, and what she saw made her yelp in horror. The pretty young thing with the big blue eyes was already now middle-aged, skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones, hair streaked with grey and eyes shadowed and lined.

"Now do you understand we don't have much time?" Harriet hissed.

Stupefied, Anne could only stare. "What is happening to you?"

"Life is happening to me," she replied, misery sounding in every syllable. "And rather quickly."

Anne nodded, amazed and aghast, propelled to find this missing Henry, darting between the old markers even as she cast furtive glances over to the woman hobbling in increasingly desperate circles. The blanket of night had fully descended now, with only a full moon for company, and with it a growing dread, as the wind picked up to howl in her ears, an eerie accompaniment to Harriet's increasingly anguished sobs.

"Here!" Anne suddenly shouted, gesturing madly. "Henry Taylor! Beloved husband of…" she stopped up short, uncomprehending.

"… Amelia," Harriet croaked in her ear.

"But… I don't understand…"

"He was mine, but I never said I was his…" Harriet, old woman now, offered haltingly, bending to caress his tombstone lovingly. "I had my chance, once, and I let it slip through my fingers. I never got another one. So now there is only one night a year for me with him, on All Hallows Eve. Only this and nothing more…" ***

Harriet turned faded blue eyes to hers, faced etched with unbearable sadness and regret. "Surely you know of what I speak, girl called Anne? Didn't you retrieve my hankerchief, after all?"

The pained gasp in reply was all answer required, and Anne did not stay to confirm or deny. As the fading image of Harriet was already disintegrating into dust, blanketing Henry Taylor's tomb, she was running for her life – and her life's happiness – out the cemetery gates and towards the college.


Gilbert knew he would face Christine's ire for weeks for refusing to accompany her to the Autumn Harvest Ball, but could not stomach the dread prospect of encountering Anne and Roy at every turn… a Halloween nightmare indeed. Instead, he had punished himself with coursework and examining the exhaustive particulars of the Cooper Prize application. In his reconstructed world without Anne, he could only rely on himself and his tenuous grasp of a career.

He almost jumped at the hastily shoved note under his door, moving quickly to fetch it, the curious contents taking a moment to formulate themselves into sense.

Gilbert –

I'm so sorry. I was so wrong. I gave an answer to you, long ago, before I knew myself…

before I knew the true pain of a world without you in it.

I know I shall not ever hear your question again, but please believe me when I say

I HAVE and DO care for you, in THAT way, in every way.

I just wanted to say it, once, so my regret would not follow me to the grave… and beyond it.

Love, Anne

The night clerk had played messenger, begged by that redhead as mad as her hair, and Gilbert sprinted into the night, the wind whipping his curls and shrieking at him in affront.

He pushed on… through the college… across to the quieter streets… along John Street, once a well-worn path, and behind it to the cemetery, the fear nearly bursting his lungs.

So my regret would not follow me to the grave.

God Almighty. Anne hadn't been herself for months, but she wouldn't do anything foolhardy, would she? He had stayed clear, after a time, too wrapped up in his own pain to have even contemplated hers.

It was black as pitch here, now, the moon obscured by clouds, the trees tossed in the oncoming gale. He searched vainly at the entrance and was almost blinded by swirling dust on the wind, calling out her name for it to be carried away on the air.

"Gilbert?"

He turned, he saw her, he nearly collapsed in relief.

"Anne!"

"You didn't go to the Harvest Ball?"

"You didn't either!" he gasped.

"Why?"

"I didn't want.. to risk seeing you. With Roy."

She gave a choked laugh.

"I don't think I will be seeing him, after tonight, so you'll be safe now!"

He stared, not daring to believe.

"Well, that is an interesting development…" he approached her slowly, "as was this."

He unfurled her note, holding it like a promise between them, until the wind snatched it for its own, transporting it high above their heads and back towards Old St John's.

With a protesting shout Gilbert leapt to reclaim it, until Anne laid a hand on his arm.

"Don't worry, Gil…" she urged, and the breeze, unfathomably, seemed to gentle with her words, "I think it's found it's proper home, strangely enough."

He paused, hazel eyes hopeful. "And have you… found yours?"

She reached for his hand, holding it tightly in the sort of grasp she had once decried. His lips bent to brush her palm before migrating to her mouth, claiming it, at long last, for his own.

"Maybe… in time… you could ask me that again…?" Anne breathed unsteadily.

His answering smile was a beam of light that lit their path back to Patty's Place.


Chapter Notes

*from Anne of the Island, of course, Chapter 20 'Gilbert Speaks'

**The story title and poem are from A Dream by the fantabulous Edgar Allen Poe

***Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven