Challenge Topic and Number: #02, Three Little Words
Title: Trick or Treat
Word Count: 1,394
Warnings (if applicable): Mild horror.
Summary: The kids liked to joke that the fence that surrounded the abandoned house on the corner of Pine and Sixth was meant more to keep something in than to keep people out.
A/N: Originally written in tandem as my second entry to the LJ Idol writing competition and for a prompt on the sharp_teeth horror meme ("The cottage has been empty for years, hidden behind a locked gate - but people say that if you're there at the right time, you can see a face at the window") exactly one year ago today! ...Granted, the show had all of like 2 episodes at that point, so this story has virtually been proven AU in all ways, but it's a pre-canon AU that takes a few licenses with Nick's childhood and the nature of his Grimm abilities. I hope you enjoy, and Happy Halloween!
Trick or Treat
The kids liked to joke that the fence that surrounded the abandoned house on the corner of Pine and Sixth was meant more to keep something in than to keep people out. Ghosts and things, and not the kind with sheets over their heads begging for candy on the neighbor's doorsteps. Nick tested the edge with one black-gloved hand, and watched the paint chip off to reveal dark, near rotten wood underneath. Seemed like the fence was doing a pretty bad job at both, to him.
He looked up at the house; on this particular evening it always looked its worst, wreathed in orange from the setting sun, the clapboard siding sagging and weather-beaten from years of neglect. In the past they'd always walked past it every year to get from Nick's neighborhood to Sam's, and one of them would bet the other to hurl a miniature pumpkin over the fence to try and reach the half-dead oak by the porch, or take a step or two down the front walk if they were really feeling daring.
"I bet you can't even put a foot past the property line!" It was Sam who made the first dare, chewing on a Milky Way and reaching for a second in his pillowcase.
"I can, too!" Mark, dressed as a cowboy, unlatched the gate and swung it open, planting spurred boots firmly on the first slab of cracked cement. "Let's see you do better!"
Sam was big for his age, and brushed past the gate and then Mark, dropping an empty candy wrapper as he stood a few paces further. They were both still a long ways from the house itself, but could just about make out the iron numbers of the street address nailed above the door. If thirteen was a bad number like everyone said, then two thirteens must be doubly unlucky.
"Come on, Nick! Try and beat me, if you can." Sam shouted it, as though the gap from the front walk to the gate was some great distance.
Slowly, Nick pushed the rickety gate further, listening to the sound as it naturally fell back towards him. Creeeeak. Creeeak. Before he could completely lose his courage, he followed his friends, making sure to step only on the cement, and not on the actual ground—rumor said that the people who lived here back when his grandparents were no older than ten had buried their kin on the property instead of in the local cemetery, and he wasn't taking any chances—and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam.
Sam dug a hand into his pillowcase for another chocolate bar. "I bet none of the others have come out here, there's no smashed pumpkins. Look, we're the bravest of them all!"
Nick glanced up towards the house, frowning as he studied the bay window in the front. He could see where white curtains hung at the periphery, and the slightest edge seemed to move from some motion or nonexistent breeze.
"I heard Andy say that on Halloween, all the ghosts come out of the ground here, looking for a real flesh-and-blood person to drag underground with them."
"Andy's always making stuff up." Nick couldn't shake the image of the moving curtains, but found somehow that he was struck by curiosity just as much as awareness, and wanted to understand just why everyone seemed to fear this house so much.
"What do you think?" Mark asked.
"I don't believe in any of that stuff," he said. "None of it's real."
"Then you shouldn't have a problem ringing the doorbell." Sam waited, tossing another empty wrapper to the ground. "Go on, do it!"
Nick sighed and put one foot in front of the other, shuffling his way up the long, narrow walk to the porch steps. He placed his right foot first, hoping the steps wouldn't give way beneath his boots. Again the ancient wood creaked and bent, warped at the edges where nails had uprooted trying to hold them in place. There were four steps in total, and he took them one-at-a-time, taking a new breath in-between each one. He didn't have to look to know that Mark and Sam were doing the same.
"You can do it, buddy!" Sam didn't shout this time, and Nick could barely hear him as he raised a hand towards the doorbell, depressing it lightly with a finger. The bzzzz sound was deafening in his ears, and he thought he saw just the slightest bit of movement in the dust covering the tall window alongside the door. He leaned closer to get a better look.
He stumbled backward, eyes widening as he saw the figures clearly formed, the faces of the parents who'd died a year prior in a car crash, their skin mottled and burned to expose the bone underneath where hot metal and fire had touched their skin, hair lank and so much longer than he remembered, arms outstretched—
Nick turned and ran from the house, dropping his sack of candy on the doorstep. He made Sam split his share, and when asked about what had happened, what he'd seen, he told them he hadn't seen anything. He said there was nothing to see.
Present Day
Nick Burkhardt walked the streets carefully that day, although he'd made sure his flashlight had new batteries and his cell-phone was fully charged. Even his car had a full tank of gas. More crimes were committed on Halloween than any other night, and he wasn't taking any chances, especially with all of the strange things that had been happening lately. It made him feel better to know his streets were secure, and it was something he had no problem doing himself.
It was a bit too early for the teenagers to be out, but he could see parents and small children trick-or-treating at a few of the bungalows nearby. Lit pumpkins gleamed from steps and fake cobwebs hung from tree branches, and as Nick crossed Sixth he realized just what house awaited him a few blocks up.
The memory came rushing back like a hard punch to the stomach, but he carried on. He thought he'd forgotten all about it; the night, the old house, the spilled candy, the ghosts in the window. That year for Halloween he had dressed as a firefighter. Not too far off the mark.
The house seemed less foreboding with a wash of maturity and skepticism over his eyes, but he still hesitated before unlatching the gate. It had been well over a decade, and the house seemed to age without grace, but now thin tendrils of ivy had started to grow over the clapboards and curl around the windows. The green was bright against the washed-out brown; the deserted house was a good environment for them. They flourished here.
It was more than a little unsettling, but as he flicked open the gate—it creaked, but he ignored it—and walked inside, he spotted more than a few smashed pumpkins against the old oak by the corner of the porch.
He didn't know what he was expecting. Would he find eighteen-year-old Milky Way wrappers, ground underfoot into the dirt? Would he find a blue-striped pillowcase with rock-hard candy waiting for him?
The easy and simple answer was no. Of course not. Nick walked up the porch steps almost automatically, just to prove to himself that what he had seen all those years ago was a fluke of his memory and nothing more. Anything else would just be impossible.
He didn't ring the doorbell, just looked around the porch, feeling a satisfied smile creep up to his face. Just as he thought—there were no ghosts, there was nothing, just as he'd thought—
His glance back was unconscious, and it took him a moment to place the face that formed this time, smiling at him with a wide, empty mouth and eyes that seemed dead and cold.
It looked far too much like Juliette.