April 25th 2020

Chapter 116
Their Transformation Into Tricks and Treats

If there was ever any doubt among them as to whether this year's festivities would be a comparative success to the previous year's, it was soon removed, as they went and followed the sounds of eager voices waiting. There was really only so much they could do to keep their outdoor installations clear until they went and had their real start, except to count on parents to keep back. They had a 'gate,' to give the impression of an entrance, and this gate indicated in some fashion that they were not yet ready to receive. Coming from the house now, Pappy Lucas and Alice in Austinland soon unblocked the gate welcomed their guests. They were for the most part families from the area, and after living here for over a year now, they were really getting to be familiar with one another. They couldn't even begin to express how much this meant to them, except to carry on this tradition, year to year.

"Okay, so hear me out. Next year? We build a maze," Maya declared, sweeping her hands to indicate the space around their house.

"A maze," Lucas repeated, as they watched the rest of their 'attendants' and volunteer creatures – like the zombie ballerina – spread out and interact with the arriving trick or treaters.

"Yeah, you know, big walls, do I go left, do I go right, oh no, I'm lost… Maze…"

"I get the concept, I'm just not sure where you'd want to put it," Lucas pointed out.

"In the back," Maya shrugged, like it was the most obvious thing. "Get a tunnel going toward the back of the house, and then it begins!"

"We can… explore the idea, I guess. We have a year," he smiled. It was hard to tell her no, wasn't it?

"At which time…" Maya trailed on, pointing to her ring finger.

"I was just thinking that," he nodded.

"Our last unmarried Halloween," she intoned.

"This is going to be like senior year all over again, isn't it?" he chuckled as she grinned.

"Building up anticipation, you know?"

"I can tell you one thing, with absolute certainty: my anticipation is through the roof as it is."

"So mushy…" she 'scolded,' all the while leaning in to kiss him. "Okay," she breathed, once she'd pulled back. "We need to… you know," she gestured loosely around them.

"We do," he agreed, and so off they went.

Lucas couldn't help but feel particularly amused by this whole set up. Here he was, at his house, which had once been his grandfather's house, dressed as his grandfather. He wasn't sure exactly what message this was passing on, but he chose to believe it was his way of maintaining the legacy of his family, and keeping a long broken promise, and just… getting in touch with what was at his heart.

"Oh my…" He turned at the sound of a familiar voice, discovering a laughing Asher approaching, along with the rest of their Houston quartet. They all looked ready to bust out laughing, but Asher especially, as he undoubtedly had flashbacks to when the two of them had been kids, coming to visit Joseph Friar out in this house. "There are… so many words… so many… and I can't say any of them."

"Why do I have a feeling you and Maya are on the same page right now?" Lucas teased.

"I'll have to see what she said, but I do think we are," Asher teased right back.

"What costume is this about?" Lucas asked, indicating the suit he wore. Asher presented his photo for evidence.

"Double-o seven, right here," he gave his best steely expression. "Minus, you know, all those odd named women," he followed, back as himself, as he turned a smirk to his boyfriend. Ray nodded approvingly.

"Anne Shirley?" Lucas pointed to Sophie, who proudly extended her own photo.

"I was really getting in touch with my fellow gingers back then. No bad wigs for me, just the genuine article." Lucas loved to imagine a tiny Sophie schooling the masses on why redheads were great. Chiara was all smiles, too, looking to her wife. She'd needed a bit more of a process to even come up with a costume for today, seeing as she'd never done it as a kid and thus never had something to reproduce and update here.

Eventually, Sophie had helped her find a compromise, in the form of Hermione Granger, Chiara's self-proclaimed first crush, and first and forever favorite witch. Lucas recalled her telling them she had spent one particular summer in full Hermione mode, with robes and a wand and her own – at the time – frizzy hair. If that didn't qualify, then what did?

"I still can't believe you pulled this off," Ray declared, holding up his own picture, showing him at age ten, dressed as he was now as a vampire. He didn't look like a bloodsucking fiend right now, more like a very thankful friend.

"I had help," Lucas smiled.

They had all hated the notion that Ray's memories of his childhood, most of them anyway, had been left behind when his parents had kicked him out. It was the kind of thing you didn't realize could feel so bad until you actually stopped and thought about it, thought about what it would be like to lose all that when they still had it themselves. For a while, they had wondered what had happened to all that had been left behind after he'd gone, if Mr. and Mrs. Choi had kept any of it or just thrown it all away.

Lucas had soon come up with a plan, as the instigator of this year's Halloween. It involved a bit of spying of his own, thanks to Ray's cousin Min, who had been reached through Mr. Matthews, who taught her back at their old high school. She had always loved her cousin very much and had been caught in the middle of this rift instigated by her aunt and uncle, and then her own parents enforcing the same decision. So, she was ready to help if she could. There was no telling if it would all pan out, and then one afternoon she'd come to him at the bookstore, with two duffle bags.

"It was everything I could find," she'd told Lucas, which was what he'd passed on to Ray, a few days ago when he'd gone back up to Houston. Two bags to contain all that remained, but to Ray it had been nothing short of a treasure, and it had brought him to tears.

As the quartet moved along to say hello to the others, they briefly got a chance to say hello to Maya, who was trying and failing just a bit in her efforts to pretend as though she wasn't seeing the encounter between a knight and a fairy.

She'd spotted Cecilia as soon as she'd arrived, brandishing what was recognizable as her crutch, disguised by Sam's hand as it had been in the past. Today it looks like a great branch to go with her costume. Maya had been told how she had loved fairies for as long as she could remember, and her mother had made her a beautiful fairy costume for Halloween one year. She'd loved it so much that she would wear it whenever circumstance permitted it. She had made this one herself, as an update to her mother's long since outgrown creation, and the result was magnificent, especially paired to her red-dyed hair.

Maya had followed her progress, from where her father had dropped her off just outside the gate, until she'd spotted Sam and started toward him. Her little brother was on candy duty, passing the treats into the kids' bags and buckets. Then he'd done a proper double take, noticing his girlfriend coming toward him. Rather than abandon his post, he'd let her come all the way to where he stood, while she had taken up the charge to help with the candy, which she had been meant to do. There was an awkwardness to start with, and if someone didn't start talking soon, there was no telling…

"He's here!" a voice whisper screeched behind her, and Maya nearly started the bow right off her head. She turned and, jolted as she was, did another small jump when she spotted Zombie Missy.

"Wh-what?" she asked, fixing her bow.

"Kai!" Missy whispered, attempting to point him out as discreetly as possible. "Careful!" she begged, when Maya started to turn.

"I'm not new at this, give me some credit," Maya told her before doing a seamless sweep of their surroundings. She spotted the boy at once. He was the spitting image of his older brother, or what he would have looked like a couple years before she'd first met him. "What do you know, a zombie…" she turned back to Missy with a smirk. "Now, if only he could find himself a zombie girl to spend the rest of his unlife with," she sighed dramatically.

"I-I don't know," Missy looked much less like a dead girl and more like really alive girl, young and sort of terrified. "I've never… talked to a boy… not like that. What if he laughs at me?"

"Would he though?" Maya pointed out, and her little zombie friend seemed to get some vigor back in her cheeks.

"No, I guess not…"

"Alright then, you stagger yourself over there and say 'grr' or whatever sound that means 'hello' in zombie talk," Maya gave her best impression of her old basketball coach. It seemed to work, and soon the ballerina was making her disjointed way across the yard.

With the sun setting over them, she went for something of an approach as though she'd just been going along, in search of brains, as one would… when suddenly she noticed her fellow zombie and gave a head tilt. Hello? And then, giving hardly a fraction of a second for either Missy or Maya to wonder if this would crash and burn, the zombie boy fell into the scenario, making a curious advance of his own. His costume and his makeup were really good, too, and Maya wondered if he'd done it all himself.

To Missy's credit, she didn't crack once, as they somehow communicated their way toward one of the games without breaking character, even though she knew her young neighbor's mind must have been a cacophony of nerves and reactions. As the outdoor portion of the night progressed, Maya never once saw them apart. Sooner or later they would have to be themselves again, and she hoped this led to a good conversation. This all didn't necessarily mean that Kai felt for Missy the way she did for him, he could simply have been thinking 'cool, someone else who's into zombies the way I am' and ended up seeing her as no more than a friend, in which case Missy might be in for a bit of a bittersweet conflict, but that wasn't going to be happening just now… she hoped.

As time advanced, and some of the families went on their way back home, more of the guests for the party started to arrive, take a turn around the games, and then head into the house. Lucas would point out the photo wall they had installed, ready to receive the various guests' offerings, along with those already posted. The more it grew, the more it felt like his idea really panned out. They were all excited to see the others' images, to laugh and reminisce…

"I think we're ready to close out the games," Maya reported, a few minutes later, walking along with a handful of gummy worms. Lucas pulled one from the bunch when it was offered to him. "Gotta say, I know I'm usually the artistic one here, but this is definitely something…" Maya nodded to the wall with a smile.

"At the risk of being told I'm being mushy again, I did learn from the best."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners