Chapter 27: Death and All Its Friends

It had been over 20 years since Charlotte Charles went trick or treating ("des bonbons ou un sort") with her father, and she was hell-bent on making up for lost time. This would be the best Hallows Eve they ever had. They would wear elaborate costumes and stuff their faces with candy and explore the city, hidden in plain sight. If only she could convince Charles Charles to get into the spirit of things...

"Dad, don't you get it? This is the one night we can go anywhere we want; be anything we want."

"So you get to be Audrey Hepburn and I get to be what? A mummy?"

Chuck threw her arms in the air and flopped back in her chair. She had spent the morning cleaning his room (with supplies she bought herself); stocked the place with books and snacks - yet here he was staring out the window, sulking.

"So you don't want to go."

"I want to be with my whole family. You think I came all this way to be entombed in the Catacomb Inn?"

"Stop calling it that," Chuck huffed, pushing herself up onto her feet. "You're not trapped here. I'm inviting you out."

"Inviting me," he scoffed and turned to glare at her. "Kid, did it ever occur to you that I was getting by just fine before you even knew I was here?"

Chuck could not help but feel stung. She was only trying to protect him. To protect all of them. And it was proving to be strenuous, thankless work. With a wounded sniff, she whipped off her headscarf and shook it out, then went to put on her coat.

"Well where're you going now?"

To the job I actually get paid for, she thought, but did not say…

Later, in an only moderately busy Tome Voyage, Chuck leaned against the counter with her chin in her hand.

"What do you do for fun on Halloween?"

Halima handed a customer their change before responding.

"Certainly not trick or treating. That is more of an American tradition I think."

"Your kids have never been?" Chuck asked. As Halima hesitated to answer, she began to wonder why she had simply assumed the woman was a mother.

"No, because I don't have any," she said. Chuck worried she had been careless in her curiosity, but then Halima turned to her with a smirk. "On purpose of course. Wanted to be sure I would never have to go trick or treating."

Chuck released a laugh that was more than a little relieved.

"I do have a nephew," she continued. "But considering he's in university I doubt he wants to be out with me. So I will be at the Père-Lachaise. My friends are having a bit of a picnic and a piss-up there, if you want to join."

"A party in a cemetery…" Perhaps it came down to her own dalliance with death, but she did not find the idea at all morbid. It sounded fun actually…

"Not just any cemetery! But home to some of the most lauded artistes in history."

Like Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, Mana Solo, Sarah Bernhardt…Chuck had read all about them; lost herself in the archives of their work. In the little world her father built…

At that moment, the Alive Again Adventurer felt the warm glow of an idea lighting up her mind. He may be upset with her for withholding Lily and Vivian, but she could at least let him interact with new people for a night, outside the confines of the hotel.

"You know," Halima mused, "my mother believed that every Halloween, the veil between the living and the dead is lifted. So we can see them, hear them, maybe even talk to them."

She shook her head, apparently amused by the superstition. Chuck had heard stranger things…

XXX

For young Olive Snook, Halloween treats included fresh fruit popsicles, saffron-dusted pumpkin seeds, or - when she had been particularly good – 'Spiders' on a Log, with chocolate chips instead of raisins. Olive was an aspiring athlete after all, which meant her parents would never let her come within sniffing distance of gummy worms and toffee apples and candy bars…

Of course, she was not entirely deprived in her childhood. There had been the Snooks' cook, who would smuggle contraband in on Halloween, Christmas, Easter, Diwali, Ramadan, Hanuhkah…any special occasion warranted some sort of sugar-coated celebration. Cookie (as Olive called her, never thinking to ask her real name) sat with her at the kitchen table, offering words of comfort along with the assortment of sweets.

Olive had looked to her birthday with great expectation, knowing something special awaited. That was until the nanny found a pile of sweet wrappers in her room and promptly tattled. Without a second thought the Snooks let Cookie go, leaving Olive with a stomach full of regret…

Some 20 years later, Olive sat stress-eating her way through a salted caramel pie, while Ned gutted yet another pumpkin.

"Don't get up to help or anything."

Olive took a slow, deliberate bite, her glower never wavering from his. "I told you not to throw out the alive again pumpkins."

Ned flung goop off his fingers with more force than necessary. "And I told you we don't use dead things anymore."

Olive was about to retort, to remind him that he was fine with dead things before the Poppy Temple People, to insist that there were healthier ways to deal with his fear – but Emerson cut in before she could.

"Would you two shut up? We all know you're not really stressin' about the pumpkins."

There was a tense pause, before Olive swallowed her pie (and pride). He was right. Now was not to time to dredge up whatever lurked in the shallow end of their psyches.

"Fine," she grumbled, sliding off the stool and striding round to Ned's side of the counter. They worked in silence, separating the dessert pumpkins from the decorative ones. After a while they fell into something of a flow state, enjoying the feel of a physical task that required minimal thought. When they were done with the pumpkin guts they rinsed off their hands and moved on to carving out jack-o'-lanterns.

Olive glanced at the Pie Maker – so focused one might think he was sculpting the Statue of David – and felt a rush of remorse. She began to whittle a Jill-o'-lantern, with lashes along its heart eyes.

"Hey," she said, holding it up to her face so that it looked like her own head. "How do I look?"

She peeked out to from behind it to see Ned biting back a smile. "Smashing. You know, because Smashing Pumpki-"

"I got it, thank you," she snickered, holding it out to 'kiss' his cheek.

"Ugh," Emerson uttered. "Now you're gettin' along a little too well."

Olive laughed, but it faded away as the Pie Hole doors swung open and Eddie strode through. The mood in the room immediately shifted and he did not fail to notice.

"…who died?"

XXX

We'll find out soon enough, Emerson thought, but did not say. As Eddie sat down across from him, it took more effort than usual to maintain his façade of indifference. Papa Pie Maker seemed like a man who could detect deceit the way cadaver dogs sniffed out bodies. And right now they were trying to maintain multiple layers of lies.

The facts were these: Eddie was in the process of luring Dwight back, monitoring his progress as if he were nothing but a rare migrating bird. What he did not know was that Ned, Olive and Emerson were about to make an elaborate escape. They had no intention of being the bait in this game of catch and release. Which meant Eddie would be on his own. Abandoned, in a sense, with no goodbyes, and no explanations. Something he himself had done many times before...

"You look a little anxious, kid."

Eddie was, of course, talking to Ned, who had a face like a wet weekend.

"I just uh…I'm…" He glanced at Emerson, and whatever he saw there caused him to compose himself. "Just kind of overwhelmed. This is our busiest season. I didn't realize how much harder it would be without using my..."

Eddie scoffed at the frivolity of such a worry and fixed Emerson with an expression that read something like: told you he can't handle the truth.

"You'll be fine, Betty Crocker."

Emerson felt a spark of aggravation, but extinguished it with a deep gulp of coffee. Eddie seemed awfully confident for a man whose confidential informant had recently turned up dead.

One could only hope that same confidence meant he would be able to handle his old friend, all by himself. Because Team PI Hole had no intention of getting caught in the crossfire…

A/N: Once upon a time I dreamed that I would get this out in October of 2021…and life was like 'lol, NOPE!' But hey, fiction is a mode of transportation to another time and place :p

Next chapter, it ain't New Year's Eve but there will certainly be fireworks. Thanks for reading x