Chapter 149
The Haunted Lane

"You know, if this keeps up, there will be a ghost in this house, and it will be me, because I will have gotten spooked to death by a couple of toddlers," Maya breathed in that very jolted/exasperated tone she had developed since the beginning of October.

That was when the… campaign of horrors had been launched by their sons. It seemed that both Elliott and Noah had been clued in on the fact that the upcoming day of Halloween was all about hiding and jumping out with a loud shout, the better to startle some unsuspecting person… usually their parents, or great grandparents, or – inadvertently – their baby brother. They'd lost count now of how many times they'd done it, and how many times poor Jamie had been sent wailing his one-month-old head off. Between that and the fact that they were still on Tadpole Night standard time when it came to sleep, Lucas could just see his wife (and his grandparents) being just as glad as he would be when October would be behind them. They would stop once November started… right?

"We should talk to them, I guess…" Lucas told her, even as he kept his attention on Jamie as he was finishing up with his bath. Of their three boys, he was definitely the one who enjoyed the process the most, which had been amusing to his whole family. They never tossed the tadpole nickname around so much as when it came to bath time for the youngest Friar boy.

"You don't want to do it any more than I do, huh?" Maya guessed, coming nearer as though magnetically drawn to that little peaceful face in his bath seat.

"I really don't," Lucas admitted. It wasn't as though they hadn't needed to roll out any kind of discipline since they'd become parents, but this one seemed stuck in some kind of limbo. They were so little, and they were having fun, and other than startling people were they really doing anything that was so wrong? Lucas and Maya were hardly in a position to talk against a bit of Halloween fun.

"We could retaliate," Maya suggested, her smirk showing that she was joking… mostly. "We know how to scare them even more. All we need is a giant mascot costume… and a whisk…" she leaned closer and whispered near his ear.

"Tempting," Lucas agreed as he lifted Jamie from the water and brought him to the towel already waiting for him. As expected, the baby showed his displeasure over being removed from the water, though he did come around once he was wrapped up in his towel. "There, all better, huh, tadpole?" Lucas smiled.

"Fine, we'll try and explain it to them another way. It's really our own fault for letting it go on this long. Or, ooh… We should put a bell on them, then we'll hear them coming. I can do fake scared really well, check it out…" She demonstrated, which had him laugh for a moment, but not so much Jamie. The baby saw his mother's spooked face and started to cry in earnest. "Oh, hey, no, no, it's alright, that was just jokes, I…" She groaned, leaning her head against Lucas' arm while he went about calming their son again. "Talk, we're going to talk, yep, that's the plan…" she briefly cradled the back of the baby's head and kissed his forehead before going in search of his big brothers.

The solution presented itself a lot easier than they might have expected. October and the spooking of the Friar house was soon under the dominion of Monster Hour. Once a day, Elliott and Noah would get to suddenly declare that it was time for them to go around and do their thing, so long as they understood that it could only happen between breakfast and dinner time, no earlier and no later. This way, while they saw it as their carrying on their shenanigans, their parents and great grandparents were forewarned and able to go about their business without too much concern for their heartbeats. Did they have the occasional slip-up? Yes, of course, because they were two and three years old. On the whole however, the brothers made the most of their Monster Hours, and that was all their parents could hope for.

With that, their advance toward The Big Spook Day was a lot smoother going. They would be going trick-or-treating with the little Hunters, which would require costumes. They were just at the point now where Elliott remembered something of the previous year when they'd had Halloween, so he was excited, especially because he would also get to have fun activities and wear his costume out at preschool. And even though Noah didn't have any specific memories of his previous Halloween, he could take in enough of his surroundings, and take his cue from his big brother and his aunts and uncles and everyone else around him, that he was very excited, too. So, what were they all going to go as?

There was definitely a bit of debate in the beginning, as the boys were encouraged to choose what they wanted to be. Would they go as the same thing, in their own ways, or maybe as related characters from one universe, or would they be completely different things? There were so many options! And they had to think about Jamie, too. They couldn't leave their baby brother out, even though he was still so little. The tactic therefore became that they would divide and conquer. Lucas would casually ask Elliott what he most wanted to be one morning on their way to preschool, while Maya would do the same with Noah while they were at home.

Elliott wanted to be 'a real cowboy,' which they supposed really made sense, with how he'd been spending more and more time with his father up at Sullivan Stables. Upon further inquiries, the definition of what a real cowboy was, according to the three-year-old, looked a whole lot like Dr. Alvarez, like Juliet, like Lucas… basically any one of those particular pillars of his experience at the ranch. That felt like something they could very easily accomplish.

Meanwhile, with the question in his head, Noah had spent a morning being a lot quieter than his mother was used to seeing, but in a much more comical way than a disconcerting one. He was presented with a question that felt so big to him all at once, and he was going to find the answer. It reminded Maya so much of when Elliott had tried to do the same. In his case, it had come down to an octopus, while for Noah… In what felt like an unintentional breach of the Monster Hour rules, he startled his mother with a cry of 'Bee!' That was what he wanted. He wanted to be a bee.

"Oh, well, we can work with that," Maya breathed.

"Jamie the tadpole," Noah went on, approaching his brother in his seat.

"Or just a frog," Maya casually offered, and Noah took it in stride. "Unless we wait a couple years before doing that one, to wait until he's older?" Now Noah wasn't sure anymore. "We can see what Elliott and Daddy think, yeah?"

There'd been some concern that their trick would backfire, that maybe the boys, as satisfied with their respective visions for their costumes, would hesitate and want to go back somewhere closer to the other's choice. But it all worked out in the end. Elliott would be a cowboy, Noah would be a bee, and Jamie… The others could also see the benefit of waiting before going down the frog route, so they went back to the well. What would they make him into? As small as he was, they couldn't go and be too extravagant, or he would get overwhelmed very fast. Ideas were tossed around, some sillier than others. Here they had a chance to really make them all something of their own, and wasn't individuality part of their goals these days? In the end, they found their answer in the evening, at bedtime. It was on to a new book to read, and this one had a jolly little green dragon on the cover. The boys both pointed at it at once, like the idea would have needed a photo finish to be assigned to either one of them more than the other. Jamie's costume was decided.

"That just leaves us, huh?" Maya told Lucas, later on, as they got ready for bed.

"Yeah… Are we going individual, too, or…" Lucas wondered. Maya made a show of thinking this over, which only really made him smile.

"I'd say we already learned that lesson, so there's nothing stopping us from doing a couple costume, although… It could be fun to just… surprise each other on Halloween," she slowly suggested, sidling up to him with a look that seemed to lift his arms and close them around her of their own volition.

"We do like surprises…" he nodded.

"Oh, we really love those," she grinned, only to yelp and laugh when he brought them to roll on to the mattress together.

The last stretch leading up to Halloween turned into a lot of costume work, and not all of it out in the open. As far as the kids' costumes were concerned, at least, Maya had it in the bag. She could get it all taken care of while she was home with Noah and Jamie. Cowboy, check. Bee, check. Dragon, check. Each one that was completed was soon modeled by its recipient, much to their delight. Alright, maybe Jamie wasn't particularly delighted, but he looked comfortable with the outfit once it was on him, so they took that as his seal of approval. They didn't leave it on him too long, for fear that he'd leave a different kind of mark on it before the thirty-first of October.

After those had been handled – as they were the most important ones to her – Maya had her own costume to work on. In the interest of not letting any sort of clue reach Lucas, she would only work on it while Noah napped, so he had no way of accidentally telling his father or brother anything. Meanwhile, Lucas would split his time preparing his costume whenever he had the chance, on breaks at the office with his father, or over at the ranch, where he got a great deal of help from Donna Devereaux. Sure, he could have gone and bought a ready-made costume and been done with it, but he knew that Maya was doing more than that, with a mix of finding the right pieces and fabricating those that she needed, and he wanted to do the same.

He might not have been as skilled as she was in that department, but he could do research, and he could take directions, and so he did. Thomas Friar was sworn to secrecy, just as the dance teacher/event coordinator would be, though once Halloween would be behind them, they would eagerly share their stories of watching Lucas as he worked, with so much concentration and occasional finger prick as he handled a needle. It might not all have been as clean as it might have been if handled by someone more experienced, but they would see that he was proud of his work in the end, and nothing would matter more than that.

Halloween would be a two-day event for the Friars this year, seeing as the actual day would be on Saturday. The preschool would have its own activities on Friday, which meant that Elliott was expected to leave home in cowboy mode. And if he got to wear his costume, then of course Noah would want to wear his and the same for Jamie. Maya reasonably navigated for her baby boy's dragon to be kept for the next day, but Noah the Bee was cleared for take-off, the better to buzz, buzz, buzz around the house all of Friday. By virtue of his nickname, he had been fascinated with bees for as long as he'd been able to associate the name with the little thing it came from. He was not scared of them in the slightest when he saw them in real life, which could sometimes be concerning to the adults around him, but maybe his attitude toward them worked. He never looked in trouble.

Since Elliott had started preschool and they'd been home together, Maya had found one thing to entertain her middle son, and it was to feed into his curiosity for bees. She found videos for him to watch, anything that could be fun and educational for him. He would just eat it up, sitting there quietly and attentively… He ate it all up, culminating in that Friday, where he spent the day emulating a little bee. Maya acquired more than the usual load of photos and videos to share across family and friends that day.

Lucas would smile whenever his phone would alert him to something new from his wife, knowing what it would be. He'd show it to his father, who'd just laugh and grin at the sight of his buzzing grandson. After living with Noah's tale all day long, Lucas was very eager to see how his eldest son's day had been. What had Cowboy Elliott been up to over at preschool?

By the sound of it, Cowboy Elliott had been forging bonds… forging them in mischief.

For a little while already, both Lucas and Maya had been hearing the name Max get thrown around in Elliott's stories of preschool. They had never actually met the kid in question and, frankly, they hadn't really tried… because they hadn't been sure he or she existed. They had gotten it into their heads that this was an imaginary friend. It sounded silly now, when they actually thought back on the whole situation, but then in their defense, the way Elliott talked about this other toddler, it didn't all seem possible for 'Max' to be one person. Why they'd made the leap to 'he's making this up,' they didn't know. Maybe they were just really exhausted from Jamie nights.

And then that Friday, when Lucas went to pick up his son, he was informed of a slight incident which had occurred after lunch. Nothing was broken, no one was hurt, and they weren't exactly in trouble, but the kids had gotten hold of the small stash of candy their teacher had brought along… and they had hidden it around the classroom. It had turned into a whole sort of Easter egg type of hunt, which the kids had really enjoyed, and that was maybe the only reason why 'Max, Elliott and Max' hadn't been punished, but she still wanted to tell the parents about it, so they could talk it over with them.

At hearing the magic name, Lucas had been immediately curious, though again he'd misunderstood, thinking that the teacher had simply repeated herself… until she pointed them out. Now, the whole thing came into focus. 'Max' had not sounded like one person… because there were two of them, a boy and a girl. If they were to ask their parents, officially, they were Maximillian and Maxine, but both preferred to be called Max, and neither one of them would accept to be called anything else because of the other, no way. That now explained why they'd gotten it confused, with Elliott always going Max this and Max that, never differentiating between the two. He just knew what they wanted, and he did it.

Lucas got to meet Max and Max' mothers and briefly talk to them both about what had happened with the candy. As he'd later tell Maya, there had been a part of him that became momentarily concerned, like he'd meet the same dismissive attitude as he'd gotten from some of the other parents, but that had not been the case at all. No, Mrs. Farrell and Mrs. McAllister – boy Max and girl Max's mothers respectively – had been very amused upon hearing the story from Miss Alma. They had not yet met these little friends of their son and daughter yet either, and they were happy to have remedied it. For that, when Lucas and Elliott left, there was a picture on Lucas' phone of the trio of three-year-olds huddled together. Cowboy Elliott stood sandwiched between Tiger Max and Witch Max, all of them with big, happy smiles.

"I… You know what, we should have picked up on this…" Maya blinked, gobsmacked, when she was presented with the phone and the picture and the explanation. She smiled, absorbed by the image of their little sprout with his friends, before looking back up to her husband. "Are they going trick-or-treating, you think?"

It took a bit of calling around, but they were finally able to get in touch with the kids' parents. As it turned out, they'd all had a similar reaction and had been on a similar journey before Lucas had reached the finish line ahead of them. It was soon settled that they would all meet near the Hunter-Hart house. As it turned out, the McAllisters didn't live too far away, so they would be able to walk. The Farrells were about a ten-minute ride away from the area, so they would meet them there.

Elliott was very excited to know that his friends would be there. He'd have them, and his brothers, and his aunts and uncles… Maya and Lucas kept looking at Noah like they were worried that he'd feel in any way replaced or left out by this scenario, but so far he seemed alright, so they just hoped that this would go on the next day, too.

Finally, Halloween came, and they spent the morning with a bit of Monster Mega-Hour, which was really a combination of their normal game with a 'tag, you're it' component tossed in. Finally, it was time for everyone to get their costumes on, because they would be heading out to the grandparents' ahead of their meeting with the families. The cowboy and the bee suited up again, while the little green dragon was allowed to make his first 'flight.' He was asleep when they changed him – which felt like the easiest way to go – and he stayed that way until they left and through the ride, so that boded well for the rest of his first bit of trick-or-treating… they hoped.

While Pappy Joe and Patty kept an eye on the boys, Maya and Lucas went and got ready, putting on their 'secret' costumes so they could show them to one another. As they would soon learn, she had made herself into some kind of sea fairy, while he had turned himself into what could only be described as a worn out but overall friendly-looking ghost. He didn't want to scare any of the boys, but this felt like a good midway point. As far as Maya was concerned, she was very proud of what he'd done, while Lucas couldn't help but look at her with those great, loving eyes. October had seen its ups and downs, but now they were here, and they could remember that Halloween had and would always be special to them. Nine years ago, as of the following morning, they had become boyfriend and girlfriend after all, and then four years ago… Four years ago, tonight, they'd found out they were expecting Elliott.

The Friars soon took off, in all their costumed glory, on their way to find the Hunters. They loved their house, loved their neighbors and the whole area where they lived, but there weren't exactly that many houses for them to go to in search of candy, so stepping out on to Maya's parents' street, her old street, it felt like stepping into a whole different world… especially on Halloween. It was still early, as was to be expected when the majority of your group counted children aged two or three. The eldest were Nellie and Gracie at seven, and they really didn't mind going with their littlest brother and their nephews. As their father had pointed out, the earlier they went, the more likely they'd be to get the best candy while it was still there.

"Oh, here comes your witchy friend," Lucas turned to Elliott as he spotted the quartet coming along.

Both Elliott and Noah looked over to see the girl, looking just as she'd done in the previous day's photo, her long brown hair tied in two neat braids that dangled and swung along as she walked with what could only be called a giddy stride. She came hand in hand with the mother Lucas had met at preschool, and she had definitely seen them, too. She was eager to reach them. Along with the two of them was another woman, pushing a stroller that held another girl, no more than a year old. To look at them all, it was not hard to guess, right at first glance, that mother number two had been responsible for bringing Max along, while mother number one held the honors for the little sister.

Introductions had barely been made between the Friars, the Hunters, and Ingrid and Natalie McAllister and their daughters, Max and Rosie, when the Farrells arrived. Out came Tiger Max and his mother, Haruna. The boy had seen his friends, too, and he was as eager as they were, but he also stood by his mother's side like he was used to doing so. They both looked like they were waiting for something, and the group looking on from a short distance away was curious as to what they were doing. A tall man climbed out of the driver's seat and moved to open a side door.

Brian Farrell, as they'd later be introduced, first extracted a strange contraption that looked something like a large bird's nest, made of 'branches,' split into two pieces as though to fit over something. He handed these to his wife before going about pulling out a wheelchair, preparing it to receive its passenger before taking her from her seat in the car and depositing her on to the chair. She couldn't have been more than eight or nine, and they'd soon confirm that she had very recently turned nine, in late September. She was dressed as a bird, with great feathery wings about her arms, and when the nest was connected about her chair, it finally made sense. Max fell right in step with his big sister, following along as she was driven along by their father and looking like he clearly thought the world of her. When they'd all come to meet up with the Friars, Hunters, and McAllisters, the first words out of his mouth would be to say that this was his big sister, Kelsey.

"Alright, everyone ready to go?" Lucas asked the group, once all other introductions had been made. The kids cheered and hopped around. They were definitely ready, and the neighborhood had better have some treats if they didn't want to be tricked…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners