Rags To Witches
The half-caffs travelled on into a world of green hills, happily without a single flesh-eating tree in sight. They made good progress, seeing absolutely no other living thing except some birds for the entire day. At noon, they stopped for a coffee-break in the shadow of a tall plinth (a plinth is basically a henge without a lintel), and though they drank many cups of strong Shire coffee, they became drowsy in the heat and took a long nap.
When they awoke, surprised and dismayed about the sleep they had not meant to take, the sun was the colour of pale lemonade and gleaming through the mist just above the west wall of the hollow in which they lay. All around the green hills were blanketed with a thick, unnatural fog. As they watched, the thick white mist surged up their hill like foam on a latté, and leapt like a wall in front of them to close over their heads like a tidal wave of milk. They felt as if a trap had been closed on them.
Still, they did not lose hope. The half-caffs gathered their things and began to move, heading toward the remembered path and the exit they had seen earlier that day, which had looked as if it were not too far away, just a bit of a road through an old cemetery full of tombstones that had gleamed like white Chicklets in the afternoon sun.
Now all was grey and dark under the fog. NescaFrodo raised a hand to call a halt, which, of course, his companions did not see. They ran into NescaFrodo and tripped over each other.
"Get off!" NescaFrodo cried. "I can smell something... delicious! Up ahead! Follow me..."
Rags the Barrow-wight turned off the smoke-machine, taking a moment to savour the effect. It was certainly spooky, definitely worthy of gold he had spent on it. He moved about, dragging his trailing shrouds behind, fussily re-arranging the heap of skulls and detritus that was stacked to effect outside of his own tomb. He cast a jealous eye toward his neighbour's tomb; Bones Jones's crypt was magnificently arrayed in cobwebs, swaying moodily in a breeze that seemed to exhale the chill of the grave. "Now, that is ambiance," thought Rags, gnawed with envy, "how dose he do it?"
Rags drifted inside his own humble tomb and began to prepare for his expected company. The message from his Witchkingliness had been fairly vague, but firm. "Kill the half-caffs," it had said, but Rags had been without living company for what seemed like centuries. Surely, since Rags was going to follow his orders, would it kill him to be a little hospitable first? After all, he was already dead!
Chuckling at his own grisly joke, Rags began to mix the ingredient for chocolate chip cookies. "I do hope I have enough placemats for everyone," he muttered worriedly.
The half-caffs soon were completely and utterly lost, and of course, completely and utterly unaware of it. They came trooping steadily up to the entrance of Rag's barrow, following the scent of baking cookies as if it were the song of a siren, calling to them. As they drew near, they began to hear a low voice, singing a dirge-like tune:
Cold be cup and saucer and spoon
And cold be coffee served at noon
Since morning it has sat and brewed
And someone, in an ornery mood,
Has turned off, it no longer perks
Like muddy water in my cup it lurks
And one sip make me grimace and howl
A java-monster, bitter and foul
Cold as death and thick as sin,
And makes me mean like Gunga-din.
Frightened, but still entranced by the smell of food, the half-caffs approached the source of the singing and the smell, and found a dark opening in the side of one tall hill, ringed about with the debris of death. They stopped, unwilling to enter such a horrible place. They were about to turn and run, but they hesitated when they heard the clear sound of a percolating coffeepot.
"Here!" Rags leapt suddenly out of the pile of bones, causing the half-caffs to scatter in terror. "I have been waiting for you!" he called after them, brandishing a plate of fingerfood. "Horror'durves, anyone?"