Celestial Halloween Pranks
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
Summary: This will be a collection of connected one-shots about the mortal-celestial families and foremost their children, bridging the gap between Rory's birth and the final scene. This is the Earth counterpart to my other one-shot-collection 'Daddy Night in Hell' revolving mainly about Lucifer and Dan in the other realms. Prequel/Sequel to my story 'Audience with the Devil'.
CHAPTER 1: Teenage Rory and Charlie try to lift the moods at a boring Halloween Party with the help of their dear Aunt Rae-Rae and a séance.
A/N: I'm not really satisfied with this piece, but I hope you like it.
X – X – X – X – X
"We could go to the neighbors again till Mommy and Daddy come." The little brunette girl in a lavender fairy costume whined and unloaded her already to the brim full plastic pumpkin bag to the half full yellow pillow case she tightly clutched in her other hand.
"Yesssss, more candy, please!" Her black haired brother, a pirate with eye patch, begged his two older cousins, who were trick or treating with them like every year as all four plopped down on the lawn next to their porch.
Rory rolled her eyes exasperatedly, wearing a very realistic demon visage on her left face. Had she been this bad when she was that age? Most likely worse when she and Charlie had made a deal with Trixie to go through the neighborhood trice with a costume change every round. The drawback was at dividing their loot and figuring out that all the promised chocolate related goods made up to more than half of the sweets. Luckily her sister had a kind heart and had split her deal's payment with the two half-angels. "Nope, Danny. Your parents will be here any moment and then maybe they'll take you another round."
Chewing on a caramel candy with his fake pointy vampire teeth Charlie saw the pout on the little fairy. "We already have each several pounds and we allowed you to throw eggs at that house with the aggressive dog." All four knew that mentioning this in front of their parents would be the end of their Halloween afternoon forays together.
This made little Rose giggle evilly. "But I'll get all yellow gummy bears!"
It was a fortunate circumstance that all four children had different favorite flavors. "Yes, you'll get all the yellow ones, your brother the green ones, Rory the red ones and I the white ones." This repeat of their deal made the seven year old beam. Hopefully Maze and Eve's child would like the orange ones once it was born and old enough. "But tomorrow we'll do the exchange. Not today." Charlie watched the twins' dark eyes narrow in annoyance about the delay. "Rory and I will meet with a few friends now. You know that."
"I wanna come, too!"
"We have been through this, Danny!" The twelve year old Rory sighed a little bugged and ruffled the boy's equally black hair. The two were exhausted and yet very much awake due to the sugar rushing through their veins. "We'll most likely watch the scary movies with the clown." The Devil's daughter so hoped that this wasn't the case. For one she didn't like 'It', not that it was too scary for her. And clowns in general were creepy in her opinion. And she knew the twins also shared this assessment.
Before the younger ones could grouch anew a car pulled up to the house on which lawn the four were sitting in a small circle. Immediately the little ones were on their feet and running squealing towards their parents. Ella embraced her two sunshines, careful to not smear their make-ups. After the two half-angels hugged their aunt and uncle hallo and their cousins good-bye and entrusted each of their pillow cases with their loots into Ella's capable hands, Carol ushered the two into the car.
"Thanks for dropping us off at our friends', Uncle Carol." Charlie said with a smile as he slid into the back seat next to his cousin.
"A small price to make sure to go upwards later." The cop joked grinning.
The girl rolled her eyes chuckling. "You know that this isn't how afterlife works." A few years ago, Carol had finally seen proof, accidentally, as Ella had been unsure how she should breach this celestial topic to her husband, who was mostly an atheist.
X – X – X – X – X
With being only two years apart and growing up like siblings - it was rare when the two wouldn't see each other daily - Rory had grown up into her cousin's circle of friends. With her fearless nature the little girl had made her place in the group of the now fourteen year olds.
Yet sometimes Noah and Theo were trying to scare the two girls in their group. And Halloween was the perfect opportunity for this. Instead of watching a horror movie Lydia observed with mixed feelings how Noah placed a real Quija board onto the decorated Halloween table. They had met once again at Theo's. The boy's parents were a bit boring and naïve. After providing the children with all kind of monster shaped brownies, chips and sweets, the two adults had retired to their bedroom to watch TV or in Theo's mother's case read a book. At seven o'clock in the evening. At least Theo had no curfew.
"A Quija board?" Lydia's troubled gaze swapped from Noah over Theo and Charlie to Rory, who like always looked rather eager than scared.
"Scared, Lyd?" Noah teased and Theo crossed his arms coolly. "I don't believe in ghosts. And I wanna see your hands. I bet you have some magnet to move the planchette." The sandy haired boy had fetched the piece of paper next to the wooden board and eyed the short handwritten description skeptically.
"You really don't believe in anything supernatural, Theo?" Charlie asked with a smile. If his smug friend only knew that God's son and the Devil's daughter were his friends. He had wanted to tell his friends so often, especially the very fact-driven Theodore, but Aunt Chloe had showed him and Rory some old surveillance videos with the people ending up screaming in a straightjacket after his vanished Uncle Lu had showed only his crimson eyes to them. He didn't want to break his friends and after Carol had reacted with a small nervous breakdown after witnessing how glowing white wings sprouted from Rory's back when she was caught in a coughing fit, Charlie kept his mouth shut about anything celestial. As did Rory ever since.
But well, today was Halloween. The night the dead and monsters walk Earth. "Okay, how does this work?" God's son shared an amused smirk with his cousin. Both knew that ghosts exists, but were an extreme rare occurrence with their aunt collecting the souls usually immediately after their deaths sending them their way up or downwards.
"Who do we wanna summon?" Rory asked with an eager expression. Wasn't this supposed to speak with dead relatives? All her and Charlie's family were still alive. Well, except for her grandpa and her sister's father, who both died before her birth. Both mean did exist on her family tree, but nothing more. Her Mom did not often speak about her Dad and Trixie did neither about hers. She knew T. sometimes spoke with Aunt Maze or Uncle A. about her father, but hardly ever with her and the young angel was grateful about this circumstance. It hurt too much to know that her father had discarded her and her Mom, she didn't need a reminder on the things her sister had experienced with her Dad, which she never would with hers.
The elder teens looked puzzled at each other. This was a valid question for their endeavor. "Lyd's cat died a few months ago." Noah suggested with a shrug.
"A cat?!" Charlie repeated disbelieving.
Lydia was aghast about the mere thought. It had been hard enough to lose her beloved pet. "No, you won't use Tammy for this hocus pocus!"
"There are words, letters and numbers on the board. If the cat didn't have an IQ of over 100 I doubt we would get an answer." Theodore pointed out and sat down between Charlie and Lydia while Rory took the chair next to Noah opposite them.
"Anyone volunteering some dead relative? Everyone in my family is much alive." Charlie said expectantly. Although the majority of his aunts and uncles were indeed in Heaven.
"Yeah." Rory nodded and dug into the sweets looking like eyeballs. "Noah, it's your idea."
The curly haired boy looked quite caught, but amended with a sigh. "My great-aunt Trudy died last year. She was a bit weird, but always generous with Christmas gifts."
After they had finally started and all placed their fingertips onto the planchette, it was rather quickly apparent that Noah and Charlie were trying to navigate the piece of wood over the letters, only they had different destinations in mind. "Would you stop pulling the thing, Charlie?!" Theo eventually huffed and let go of the indicator annoyed.
"That's not me but ghost Trudy." The young angel lied and Rory knocked grinning with her knee against the underside of the table making the board and Lydia jump.
"You really are stupid!" The older girl shouted into the group and leaned back in her chair upset about the game.
"Okay, lets' try it again and now no one moves the wood." Noah's green eyes dug into the dark skinned boy opposite him.
With a roll of his eyes Charlie nodded. Seemed like Noah wanted to be the one to spell the word.
The next half an hour they spent with a few ridicules 'yes' and 'no' questions and the spelling of an obvious misspelled 'thnak you'. Theo let eventually go again of the wood and grasped his glass of coke.
"Hey, you can't let go!" Noah exclaimed and shot his friend an angry glare.
"I'm thirsty. I think your aunt Trudy will excuse this."
Rory also snatched her glass and a few gummy spiders, before leaning back and pressing her palms together. Her eyes closed the girl chewed the sweets.
"You're praying?" Noah starred at the younger girl aghast. "I know you're believing in God and all that but you really think that he will come and protect you from ghosts?"
Rory laughed delighted about her friend's belief that she would be scared of ghosts. "Your Quija board is boring. I was praying to Azrael, the Angel of Death." Now Noah looked a bit funny. "Maybe she can help make this a bit more thrilling."
"The Angel of Death?" Theo repeated nodding, a disbelieving smile on his face. The one is trying to call ghosts and the other the Grim Reaper. His friends are nuts. And even more nuts if they thought he would fall for this humbug.
Lydia on the other hand felt more and more unwell. "How about we watch the new remake of Nightmare on Elmstreet?"
Charlie smirked. "It's Halloween, the night of the damned. But since our Aunt Maze in the only demon currently roaming Earth, we really could hit on Archangel Azrael to provide us with some ghost, she didn't drop off to the hereafter." The half-angel knew that his friends had 'respect' for his bounty hunter aunt and didn't think her label as demon so farfetched. Yet, he doubt that his blood related feathered aunt would indeed drop by with a human soul in tow. But she was invisible to humans thus she will do. The teenager also folded his hands in prayer.
"Hey Aunt Azrael, Rae-Rae, Rory has already asked and I know Halloween with the many alcohol deaths is really busy for you, but it would be so cool of you to drop by and play a ghost. Only for a few minutes. Scaring our friends a bit. You can come tomorrow to Aunt Ella's house when we divide the sweets and get a share."
"But not again only orange gummy bears." Was the reply of the full-fledged angel a moment later. "Give me 20 minutes. I need to clean up the bus crash in Indonesia first and then the mass dying in Chile. I just hope it isn't some landslide again." She told both children separately.
Opening his eyes, Charlie smiled wicked at his cousin, whose evil smirk widened. The younger Nephilim fetched her smartphone and googled for necromancy. If they did this, she wanted to do it as authentic as humans thought this would be. The right atmosphere was always a high plus in a good torture. "We need five candles and if you don't want me to draw onto your parents' living room parquet floor, then I would need a few leaves from your drawing block and tape."
Gaping Theo stared at the twelve year old. Was she serious? Unfortunately he knew her long enough to know that she was when it came to something like this. Other times she was just talking trash to fool people, but so convincing that he even sometimes fell for it. "You're nuts to believe this will work. Or that I believe that the Angel of Death will bring a ghost to us." Sighing and still grumbling the boy stood up and looked for the candles in the side board. Tea lights would have to do.
Fifteen minutes later, the five children sat each in front of a candle at one of the points of the pentagram inside two circles with different symbols, Rory had recreated from her google findings. She had mixed several different symbols she thought cool. Not that any of this would indeed work to summon a soul from one of the other realms. They would need a freshly empty vessel, but corpses were rather hard to come by and no guarantee that in that moment a doomed soul managed to make its way from Hell. And what soul other than their Aunt Eve would want to leave Silver City voluntarily?
Rory read some Latin text, she didn't understand, in which her father's name was mentioned at least twice so far. If instead of her Aunt her long lost father would drop by… she didn't want to go down that road of thought, although the irony of it had some merit.
"Are we summoning Satan?" Theo wondered out loud when anew the Devil's name was spoken. Not that he believed in the Lord of Hell. But didn't they agree on the ghost of great-aunt Trudy?
"Don't worry, he never reacted onto my prayers before." The dark haired angel said and continued the foreign text. "And now hush."
Theo only stared at her dumbfounded.
Suddenly a gush of wind made the candles flicker briefly and the half-angels saw from the corner of their eyes their aunt tug her dark wings behind herself. Perfect timing.
Azrael eyed the startled looking human children warily. She intended to scare them till one might wet themselves and taking in the expression of the girl, this wouldn't take long. "Does anyone of them has a heart decease? I'm not keen to make myself even more work…"
Charlie frowned up at his Aunt, invisible to his friends, before his gaze travelled over to his classmates. "Anyone of you with a weak heart or something?"
"Yeah, we don't wanna turn one of you into a ghost." Rory said cheekily.
All three shook their heads, Lydia's eyes still on the candles that had flickered from the gush of wind. Where had that come from? All windows were closed and the air conditioning was turned off. For the right flair Rory resumed her recite of the Latin text. She wondered if she was praying to her father by accident.
The Angel of Death looked around the room and bend down between Noah and Theo and blew Noah's candle out. Earning her a yelp from the boy and the human girl, while her nephew bit his lip to not laugh.
"Look the candle!" Noah elbowed the other boy.
Theo was skeptical as always. "Yes, great, you think I wouldn't know you blew it out yourself somehow?"
"It wasn't me!" Noah was crept out. "I swear!"
"It was the supernatural identity." Charlie held a big grin as he watched his aunt approach the dining table and the countless snacks there.
"The eyeballs look really ugly. How can you fledglings eat those voluntarily?" Rae-Rae shook her head grossed and grasped a ghost shaped brownie. Unfortunately the humans' attention was centered towards the pentagram's middle and not their surroundings.
Noah was now really scared, his eyes still glued to his unlit candle, a small line of smoke rising. "Aunt Trudy?"
Rolling her eyes the Angel of Death stuck her hand not holding the cake into the bowl of chips, rummaging and cracking the salty snacks.
Rory suspended her Latin Devil summoning and looked grinning towards the table. As did everyone else.
Lydia's breathing was fast and shallow as she watched the chips move without any human doing in the glass bowl. Noah didn't dare to move or breathe, his eyes glued to the snacks.
Theo was the first one to spot the levitating brownie. "The brownie!" In complete disbelief the boy pointed onto the in the air hanging and now slowly flying upwards cake. Were there strings attached? But this was his home. His parents surely wouldn't help his friends with fooling them. They would rather kill him if they knew they did a séance in their house.
Azrael lifted the snack up to her lips and took a large bite, causing a squeak from the girl and one of the boys, her family members on the other hand biting their lips not to laugh. "Hmmm this brownie is really good. I'll take another one." With another bite, she fetched a second from the plate and then neared the on the floor sitting children with a large grin.
Charlie watched his three friends' eyes follow the flying cake while another bite vanished and crumbles gushed to the floor. Lydia looked like she was gonna cry any moment, the two boys like they would take off. None was able to articulate their fear or what they witnessed. Oh this was wonderful! Aunt Maze would be so proud!
Stepping inside the circle Azrael finished the cake and spread her wings in the very same moment. With a flap she extinguished the four remaining candles, the children's hairs tousled in the wind and three high pitched screams erupted from the humans. Within one heart beat the three were on their feet and out the room.
All angels finally laughed loudly, little Rory had herself fall to the floor, and stared after the mortals, wondering if they had fled the house or crawled under Theo's parents' blanket.
"I think the party is over now." Azrael snatched two more brownies from the plate. "Smell you tomorrow at Ells' house, squits!"
"Thanks, Aunt Rae-Rae!" "You're the best, Aunt Rae-Rae!"
X – X – X – X – X
Turned out that Theo's parents weren't as easy going when it came to black magic and occultism. The party was indeed over and if her son wouldn't be too terrified to let go of her hand, Theo's mother would have immediately a serious word with the other parents, especially Charlie's and Rory's. But maybe it was a good thing to sleep a night over it.
Chloe had been as surprised as Linda when they got identical whatsapps from their younger children, telling them that they could come and pick them up. At 20:30h. On Halloween. So much about a calm evening among the two friends and a bottle of wine.
The Lt. of LAPD's homicide department and The Almighty left the car and were surprised when their children stood already waiting at the porch of their friend's house. They seemed to be the last ones to arrive. Amenadiel watched the pale human children and the shaken and slightly enraged mother of Theodore. While his son and niece look more than delighted. With a slight frown God asked the teens. "Did you have fun?"
His son beamed up at him. "Oh yes, Dad. Noah had an Ouija board."
They ignored the surprised "What?" from Noah's father, who walked past them with his son, grasping him now tightly by the upper arm. "That was boring." Rory added. "Then we prayed to the Angel of Death and fetched some candles and held a séance."
"So you had a lot of fun." Chloe smiled as she unlooked her car, not in the slightest concerned that the children had tried to contact the dead. Differently than the other parents present as they heard this. Lydia's father was already in a tirade about goths and Satanists and drugs. Seemed like a few of their friends might get grounded.
"I think Rory either prayed to Uncle Lu or she tried to summon him." Charlie chuckled as he climbed into the backseat.
His cousin elbowed him, glad her mother only rolled her eyes and didn't seem sad at the mention of Lucifer. "The text was in Latin. No idea what it was about. But it did mention him a few times."
"So Azrael dropped by?" God asked with a smile. He was glad that some of his siblings and foremost the Angel of Death were trying to connect with their newest additions to their celestial family.
"She'll be tomorrow at Aunt Ella's when we exchange candy."
"How nice. Ella will be happy." Chloe pulled out into the street, not wondering in the slightest what a visit of the Angel of Death usually meant. But most people weren't related to the Grim Reaper.
