A Tale of Two Sisters: Part Four

   AS Finn held out the candy offering, the strange girl gestured for her to come closer. Not wanting to be rude, Finn walked slowly toward her. The girl reached out and accepted the candy with in inclination of her head.
   "I'll give you a treat. Choose any one of my perfumes." The girl gestured grandly to the shelves.
   Finn turned and warily surveyed the glimmering bottles in their individual cubbies. All of them seemed to glow like magic potions. The bottles themselves were lovely, spun glass formed into animals, flowers, people, objects, and mythical creatures. The girl continued speaking, her voice almost a lullaby. "There is the fragrance of a boy's first heartbreak. There is one of summer rain on skin. There is the scent of a taste of power. A perfume created from a first kiss. There is one made from a mermaid's tears and another from an animal's first taste of blood."
   Finn wondered if the weird girl was messing with her. "Is there one that smells like lilies?" She reached for a shimmering purple bottle with a label on it, its picture that of a lady holding flowers. She took it down and turned.
   "Hey!" She flung up an arm as the girl, who had risen, lifted an old-fashioned camera and clicked it. The flash blinded Finn.
   The bottle slipped from her fingers. She tried to catch it, but it hit the floor and shattered. Blinking furiously, she stared down in dismay at the broken glass, the torn label that now looked as if the lady with the flowers had a skull for a face. The liquid from the bottle wasn't purple . . . it was a bright scarlet. There was something small and white in it . . . Finn bent closer, squinting. It couldn't be a tooth . . .?
   She looked up and the parlor faded for an instant, into gloom and shrouded furniture and a floor littered with debris. Then the glamorous parlor returned with a queasy wavering.
   The camera flashed again. Finn recoiled. As the flash flared again and again, she turned her head away, backing toward the door. "Stop!"
   The girl lowered the camera. She was close now. Finn saw that her skin was as white as powder and she wasn't wearing make-up--she looked bloodless. Fear wormed its way back into Finn as the scent of flowers became overwhelming--and it drifted from the girl.
   "That was Mother's Last Embrace, that fragrance you just spilled." The girl tilted her owl-masked head and her sweet voice seemed poisonous now. "Did you lose your mommy?"
   The memory of the horror of her mom's car accident last year swept up into Finn's throat like vomit. She smelled winter and blood and gasoline. She swoooned. As her knees hit the floor, she felt glass cut into her skin, tasted tears in her mouth.
   "This was my trick." The girl in the owl mask crouched before Finn. She reached out with one livid hand, her sharp nails shining like metal. "Wasn't it splendid? I wonder what perfume your blood will make?"
   Finn's vision blurred as she remembered the scent of her mom's shampoo, the tang of fresh-cut daisies in the kitchen, the spicy perfume her mom wore whenever she and Da went out to dinner. Mom.
   Finn snapped from the enchantment. She lunged at the girl and tore the owl mask away.
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A Tale of Two Sisters: Part Three

   AFTER ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door and not getting any response, Lily began pacing frantically on the porch, trying to peer into the windows. She hadn't noticed the shutters on the windows before.
   She fumbled out her cell phone, to call her dad.
   The phone was dead even though she'd charged it an hour ago. She shook it as if that would help.
   She whirled and flung herself at the door and began pounding on it. "Give her back! Give her back!"
   "Little girl. What are you doing?"
   The voice, male and gently mocking, made her quickly wipe the tears from her face, and turn.
   The young man standing at the gate was lean in black, one hand, glinting with rings, settled on the rusting post. Sable hair shadowed his face. His eyes reflected the street lights like a cat's. His flashing smile immediately put Lily on the defensive. She said, "I'm not a little girl. I'm twelve."
   He began moving up the walk. "I do apologize, Snow White. I didn't recognize you."
   "Do you live here?" she demanded. "Your house took my sister."
   "I't s not my house." He halted at the bottom of the steps and surveyed the Queen Anne. "And it's not really a house."
   Lily no longer felt so beautiful and grown-up in her lipstick and mascara. She was scared. "What is it then?"
   He glanced at her and she told herself he was wearing contacts that made his eyes so silvery, like mirrors. He was gorgeous in the way predatory animals were. He gently told her, "It's a monster's den."
   Lily whirled and lunged at the door.
   The young man loped up the stairs. He caught her wrist, his fingers cold from all the old rings he wore. "I'll tell you how to save your sister, but you'll have to kill the monster."
   Lily stood very still because she couldn't believe this was happening . . . all because she'd taunted Finn. She whispered, "There aren't any such things as monsters."
   He didn't say anything He just looked at her. She hunched her shoulders. "Will you help me?"
   He crouched before her, gazing at her. His eyes were normal now, only one was blue and one was gray. He took something from his blackpea coat and her eyes widened as he held out a wooden knife in a wooden sheath, all beautifully carved with images of roses and thorns. "I can't. The monster won't let me in until she's finished with your sister. Take it.'
   "Are you crazy?" But Lily gripped the hilt of the wooden dagger.
   "Perhaps." Again, that flash of a smile. "But that doesn't mean I'm not teling you the truth. All you need to do is stab the monster in the heart. Is that bracelet silver?"
   Clutching the dagger against her, Lily glanced at her charm bracelet. "Yeah. How do I get in?"
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A Tale of Two Sisters: Part Two

  FINN didn't like it when Lily called her chicken. Or 'yella,' like the people in her mom's favorite black-and-white movies would say.
   Thinking about her mom while standing on the veranda of the spook house made something pinch inside of her, like a toothache in her chest. When the door to the house opened, she ventured one step forward, called out, "Hello?"
   Lily shouted her name. Finn scowled and defiantly set one foot into the house. The lamp in the hall was joined by a galaxy of others further in, revealing a parlor with a domed ceiling and wall-to-wall cubby shelves. Each cubby housed a small bottle, each a different color and shape. And each bottle glowed.
   Enchanted, Finn moved into the parlor. The stained-glass lamps resembled twisting flowers and columns of swirly-haired ladies rose toward the ceiling. On a little round table circled by old-fashioned chairs and a red velvet sofa was a tea set of pink porcelain. The colors in the parlor were disorienting--deep reds, pale yellows, and vein blues. Verdigris green crusted some of the metal frames of the pictures and mirrors on the walls. There was a rich scent in the air, like the dust inside of an old church.
   A rustling sound from the shadowy hallway on the other side of the parlor made her next breath a tiny hiccough of fear.
   Turning her head, she saw that the front door had closed without her having heard it do so.
   "Hello?" The new voice seemed to echo her earlier inquiry, to mock it.
   A girl emerged from the hallway. She wore a plastic owl mask and tattered pink finery that made Finn think of a ball gown a dead prom queen might wear. The wig of silver curls piled on her head was decorated with twigs and leaves and wilted flowers. The girl asked, "Are you here for one of my perfumes?"
   Even as Finn wondered why she didn't hear Lily knocking at the door or ringing the bell, she glanced at the decorative bottles in the cubbies. Each bottle looked as if it held a glimmering potion. Some had labels hanging from ribbons; others had the labels pasted on. Finn looked back at the girl. "I'm just here for trick-or-treat."
   "Trick?" The girl glided forward and tilted her masked head to one side. "Treat? Do I get a trick? or a treat?"
   This was getting weird. Finn began back toward the door. "I'm the one who gets the treat."
   "I think"--The strange girl moved to the middle of the parlor--"I would like to see a trick first."
   "You're wearing a costume. Don't you want a treat instead?" Finn delved a hand into her plastic pumpkin and drew out her most prized candy of the night.
   The girl sat on the red velvet sofa shaped like a heart, her pink ballgown netting over it like gossamer. She looked own at herself, then up at Finn. The eye holes in her owl mask were black. "Yes. I suppose we do wear costumes. And this night is for tricks."
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A Tale of Two Sisters by Katherine Harbour

   "It's a bad house, Lily."
   "It isn't. It just looks bad."
   The rambling Queen Anne, with its moss-green exterior and ivy-choked front yard, was a source of fascination and speculation for the neighborhood kids. It had been sitting, abandoned, in the wooded lot on the corner, forever. On Halloween day, the house seemed spookier than usual, looming, dark and gaunt against the sky streaked with neon orange and lavender. Their dad had allowed them from five to six to trick or treat, as long as they stayed on this block. So they'd done the rounds. Now their plastic pumpkins were filled with candy and they'd engaged with a few other trick-or-treaters who'd admired their homemade costumes. Finn was Little Red Riding Hood with a bloody plastic hatchet and a skull face, and Lily was a glamorous, dead Snow White with puncture marks on her neck.
   "There's a light on." Lily, who was always longing for something adventurous, pointed. She swished her cape. "So someone's there."
   "It's not light. It's just the sun reflecting off the glass."
   "Oh, come on, Finn. We haven't done one scary and fun thing tonight and Dad won't let us watch Halloween. You are such a chicken."
   "No I'm not. See you later, alligator." Finn stalked to the ivy-tangled gate and shoved it open. Her crimson velour cloak was vivid against the foliage as she marched up the path onto the veranda shrouded in creepers that reminded her of the shed skins of snakes.
   "Finn. Wait--" Lily pushed at the gate that had swung shut, frowned because it was stuck.
   As Finn ran up the steps, the sun slid behind the trees.
   And the house's door slowly opened. Lily saw a hallway dark but for that single lamp like a tiny, alien sun, and hissed. "Finn! Come back here."
   But Finn, on the veranda, was peering into the house.
   From within, Lily thought she heard a woman singing softly. She didn't know why that singing made her shove at the gate with frantic force.
   Then her little sister stepped into the house.
   "Finn!" Lily swore. She dropped her pumpkin and clambered over the gate.
   She fell. Her chin struck the cracked cement and her teeth sank into her lower lip. As she spit blood from her mouth, the door to the house slammed closed. And Lily fiercely felt the house had just become her enemy.
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