by Nancy Holder
She reached out her hand for her Slayer’s bag, which Xander was carrying. He had her box of matches in his hand, and she knew he was dying to ask her what she used them for. If she told him they were for just in case, like to light a candle, she knew he would be disappointed.
At that moment, thunder shook the Bronze. The lights flicked off and the band wound down like a tired battery-operated toy. The only light in the place was from the candles in the grinning pumpkins on the tables. The faces above them—both human and vampire—looked eerie and skeletal.
“Wow, cool,” Xander said. He cleared his throat. “I mean, oh, what a drag.”
The lights flicked back on. Everybody cheered.
Buffy looked down at her elbow and said, “Anybody want a nonfat decaf latte?”
“This time we’re going with you,” Willow insisted.
Xander nodded. “We don’t want you to get your brains eaten by zombies.”
Willow added, “You might be outnumbered. I mean, really outnumbered, if there are, like, a kabillion of them and only one of you.”
“I’m the Slayer, guys.”
“These are zombies, not horrible demons or ultrastrong vampires,” Willow said reasonably. “I think civilians are allowed to kill them, like a citizen’s arrest, y’know.” She looked a little nervous. “I mean, don’t they just stumble around real slow?”
“Stumbling’s what I’ve heard,” Xander agreed. “They do that sort of mummy-stumble thing.” He puffed out his chest. “Most definitely can I run faster than a speeding zombie. Hey, I won third place in the fifty-yard dash at camp the summer before sixth grade.”
Willow smiled patiently at him, then turned to Buffy. “There, you see? Proof positive of our suitability for the mission.”
Buffy wasn’t convinced. She said, “If Giles says it’s okay, you can come.” Figuring that he’d most likely say no, especially once she told him the bit about the dark lord. “I need to call him anyway and see if he has any fun facts and helpful tips on how to deal with zombies that I didn’t get from watching Dawn of the Dead.”
Xander shuddered. “I loved that movie the first time I saw it. I never dreamed I’d be in one of the sequels.”
Buffy smiled ironically. “Stick with me, baby. I’ll make you a star.” She pointed to the door that led to the alley where there was better cell reception. Although all of Sunnydale was spotty when it came to technology.
Special Agents Harris and Rosenberg flanked Buffy as they worked their way through the Bronze. Then Buffy pushed open the door just as a zombie stumbled in.
She drew back her arm and was about to smash its face in when it said, “If you’re going to use the phone, there’s, like, no signal.”
“What?” Buffy said. She tried her phone as Xander and Willow looked on.
“It doesn’t work.”
“I’ll ask to use the Bronze’s private line,” Xander suggested and dashed off, leaving Willow and Buffy alone.
“Poor Mr. O’Leary,” Willow said. “Nobody believes him.”
“Clone that thought,” Buffy said, thinking of the tears in Mr. O’Leary’s eyes. She felt as if she had betrayed him. But what else could she have done? “I wonder if I’ll end up like that, Willow. You know, Giles refuses to tell me the average Slayer life span. You notice how it’s always one girl in every generation? Not one middle-aged matron in every generation? One bridge-playing—”
“—Harley-riding,” Willow threw in.
Buffy blinked. “I don’t own a Harley.”
“You don’t play bridge, either.”
Xander poked his head in. “Their phone’s out too. Word on the street is that all the lines and cell towers went down in the storm.”
“Oh, well,” Willow said unhappily.
“Oh, well, nothing,” Buffy shot back. “I want you two to go to Giles and see if he can dig anything up about zombies.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh yeah, and about the pumpkin king.”
“Tim Burton flick. Nightmare Before Christmas,” Xander supplied helpfully. “He wants to be Santa Claus.”
Buffy looked at Willow. Willow said, “I’ll ask him about the pumpkin king.”
“And the dark lord, too,” Buffy said, wrinkling her nose. There were too many big-shot bad guys interrupting her good times.
“I’m not certain I’m liking this split-up maneuver,” Xander said. “In the movies, the kids split up and then the dude with the chain saw shows up.”
Buffy said, “Hmm.” What she was thinking was, maybe the term “dude” wasn’t so over after all. When she realized Xander thought she was reconsidering her insistence that he and Willow go to Giles, she shook her head. “Xander, I need his input.”
“Let’s all three go, then,” Xander said.
“I need to go now. Who knows what’s going on over there? Besides, I’m worried about Mr. O’Leary. He might try to save the world all by himself.”
“Saving the world all by oneself. Sound like anyone we know, Agent Rosenberg?” Xander said in his best David Duchovny voice.
“Indeed, Agent Harris,” Willow replied. “But as much as I hate to admit it, Buffy has a point. I’m thinking we should be obedient little Slayerettes.”
Xander scrunched up his face. “That’s your thought?”
“Yes. The thought that I have,” Willow said.
“Okay.” Buffy clapped her hands. “Synchronize your watches. Let’s hit the streets.”
“Jolly Roger, Captain.” Xander saluted. Then he got serious and said, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Buffy grinned. “Can’t think of anything offhand, Xander, but okay.”
The three of them hurried out of the Bronze and out into the Halloween night together. Buffy hoped they were more Three Musketeers than Three Stooges. If they were the Stooges, she didn’t think Larry and Curly were going to survive the night.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the silence of the library, Giles sat and pored through the many volumes of Watchers’ journals. The exploits of the Slayers of the past made for some horrifying and exciting reading, but he had no time to be fascinated by any of it. As the night wore on, he found that instead of being relieved that he hadn’t heard from Buffy, he became more and more concerned. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to happen, or was happening even now.
It had to do with Halloween, with Samhuinn, the season of the dead. And with that local legend about scarecrows and Halloween rain. Of that he was certain. But though he had been equally certain that he’d once read references to Samhain, the demonic spirit of Halloween, in connection with scarecrows, he hadn’t yet come across any mention of either thing.
Disgusted and in a hurry, Giles had resorted to something he despised: skimming. Now his eyes whipped across journal pages and he looked for any references to the Druids, the Celts, scarecrows, Samhuinn, or Samhain.
Nothing. Or, as he’d heard Buffy say many times, “no joy.”
Giles pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was tired, but he hadn’t begun to drift off yet. That was something, at least. He had to stay awake. Buffy’s life might depend upon it.
On the other hand, and this was a thought he’d kept avoiding because his instincts screamed otherwise, it was possible that he was wrong. It was possible that any connection between local legends and ancient Halloween demons was just in his head, and Buffy wasn’t in any real danger. That Sunnydale was not going to be overrun by the minions of the Halloween king.
Slowly, Giles became aware of a certain anxiety, a feeling of dread that had snuck up on him. He tried to pinpoint the source of this feeling, to identify it. Then he did. There was a warmth on his back, that feeling he’d always gotten when someone was staring at him. Watching him. Sizing him up, maybe for a next meal.
He turned, narrowing his eyes and peering at the doorway and the darkened hall beyond. Giles blinked twice, trying to focus, but there was nothing there to focus on. Nobody watching him. Watching the Watcher. A shive
r ran through him, just a little excess energy he’d stored while concentrating so hard on his research. At least, that’s what he was going to tell himself.
Rupert Giles was not a nervous person by nature, not anxiety prone or jumpy at all, in fact. He’d prided himself on that. It had served him well as a Watcher, and in all the years of study he’d had to prepare for that role. He was simply not easily spooked.
Somewhere in the school, down the hall a way, a door closed. Just short of a slam, it was, but loud enough for Giles to hear it. Giles glanced around at the door again.
Curiosity got the better of him and he rose from his chair and strode across the gloomy library to the door. He poked his head out into the hallway and looked in both directions. The hall was empty. If he’d been asked, he would have thought the school was empty. Now, however, it seemed as though he was not alone.
“Just the custodian,” he assured himself as he returned to his chair and began skimming journals again.
A sudden thought gave him pause. He’d been sure the custodian had already left for the evening.
Giles brushed the thought aside. He’d spent many a late night in the library without incident. In truth, while most people were deeply disturbed by being alone in a place that was usually populated—a school, or office, for example—Giles preferred it.
Easier to concentrate, he’d always felt. No jumping at shadows for him.
Suddenly, his eyes fell upon the word Samhain in the journal he’d been reading. He scanned back to the beginning of that entry and began to read.
“Mr. Giles?”
“Aaah!” Giles cried out, and leaped to his feet, knocking the chair onto the floor with a clack as he spun to see who had spoken to him.
Wayne Jones, the white-haired custodian, stood in the doorway to the library with a broom in his hand, frowning at Giles’s reaction.
“Ah, Mr. Jones,” Giles said, trying to calm his pounding heart and cover his embarrassment. “You startled me.”
“Sorry about that, Mr. Giles,” the older man said in his gravelly voice. “I see you’re burning the midnight oil as usual. I just wanted to tell you I was locking up, make sure you had your keys and see if there was anything you needed me to do in here before I go.”
“Hmm? Oh, no, thank you,” Giles said. “Have a good evening, Mr. Jones.”
“You, too, Mr. Giles,” Jones said. “Sorry again about frightening you.”
“Frightening . . .” Giles said absently, rubbing the back of his neck, as he often did when he found a subject of conversation uncomfortable. “Not at all. I’m just a bit on edge, actually. You go on, I’ll be all right.”
“See you tomorrow,” the custodian said as he started off down the hall again.
“Yes, yes,” Giles said, turning back to the journal once more.
He’d found a reference to Samhain in the Watcher’s journal referring to the exploits of a Slayer named Erin Randall, an Irish girl who’d lived in the seventeenth century. The Watcher, Timothy Cassidy, had been very fond of the girl, and if Giles’s memory served, Erin had been the Slayer for only a short time before her death. She’d died violently, as most Slayers did in the end. But in her short term as the Chosen One, she had faced a horde of demons, monsters, and vampires. Even the Tatzelwurm, which she had destroyed.
“I ought to have known it would be you,” Giles whispered to himself. “Who else could have faced Samhain and lived?”
Giles paused then, upset by the question. Could Buffy battle Samhain and survive? It wasn’t even certain that Samhain was here, in Sunnydale, but Giles suspected that if the spirit of Halloween, the demon king of ancient Druidic rituals, was going to settle anywhere, it would be the Hellmouth.
He pushed his concern away. Buffy had become quite accomplished as the Slayer in a very short time. What she lacked in her studies, she more than made up for through determination, physical skill, and sheer courage. If Buffy couldn’t stop Samhain, Giles suspected the Halloween king couldn’t be stopped. Somehow, the thought did little to comfort him.
“Ah, here we are,” he muttered as he found the journal entry and began to read.
The Randall lass is but a wee slip of a girl [the Watcher Cassidy had written], yet now she must face one of the most powerful demons born of the time before man. The Vikings and the French paid their respects to this demonic spirit, the lord of the night, whom the dead and the creatures of darkness all obey.
Let me amend my words to this: that they did obey him in the days of old. Through the lifting of the veils of superstition and ignorance, the dark lord, Samhain, has lost much of his power. ’Tis a good thing, for otherwise my young lady would not dare hope to defeat him.
Aye, once ’pon a time, the Celts, the ancient people of my own land, green Ireland, did hide away from Samhain and his followers for all the long winter months. That was the dead time, called Samhuinn, called thus after the old demon himself. Feasts there were, for the dead. Candles burned all of a night to keep the dead away, and offerings bought lives for another day. The folk carved pumpkins to represent the dread lord of the winter, and Samhain rejoiced. He reigned supreme as the pumpkin king, the spirit of the dead time.
The dark lord, some called him.
But power cannot stay forever, and the time of the Druid priests came to an end. Through the grace of God, the heathen Celts became Christian Irish, and the season of the dead began to wither like unto a tree denied lifesaving water. Soon, Samhuinn was a three-day festival, a holiday, and the old faith was gone. Hallowe’en had taken its place.
The pumpkin king was enraged, but could do nothing. He would survive, of course. He had been there before the Celts, before humanity, and he would remain. But he was weakened. Samhain could enter the world only through a vessel built in his image. There must be a little faith, at the least, for him to return.
Jack-o’-lanterns, carved pumpkins, would serve him as hosts, even if their makers did not know they were following the ancient rituals. Jack-o’-lanterns are the eyes of Samhain, the eyes of the king of Hallowe’en. He can see everything that they see, but he cannot act, for he himself has no form.
There is only one form the old demon may use to walk the earth now. Many farmers, too foolish to realize what they have done, have provided Samhain with host bodies by making scarecrows for their fields and using carved pumpkins for the scarecrows’ heads.
Last night, All Hallow’s Eve, the dead walked the countryside, the werewolves and ghouls, ghosts and goblins along with them. And they had their king to lead them. My lady the Slayer, Erin Randall, was kept busy through the night by various creatures of darkness, and she was forewarned by them that the pumpkin king had set his sights on her, that tonight he planned to take her life.
I have provided Erin with garlic and angelica for her protection, with signs and sigils which she may draw in the ground to trap the demon—a feat which may also be accomplished with a ring of fire—and I have given her a weapon of my own making which may, I pray, destroy the host vessel. Mayhap this will return Samhain to the netherworld, where he resides the rest of the year. Or perhaps it will destroy the pumpkin king forever.
Giles studied the markings on the page, the symbols and designs which, when drawn in a circle in the dirt, would apparently trap Samhain, as in a sacred circle. He memorized the parts used to make the ancient Slayer’s weapon. Then he moved on, to read about Erin Randall’s battle with Samhain. According to Cassidy’s journal, Samhain had managed to disarm the girl, so the weapon was never used. She had, instead, found a way to destroy the scarecrow host body, thus banishing Samhain for another year. This part was a bit vague: Cassidy had been interrupted while writing and hadn’t filled in all the blanks.
The pumpkin king must have been furious, Giles thought, and he wondered what had happened the next year. He flipped pages until he came to the following Halloween’s entry. The last entry, as it turned out. For the following year, Samhain killed Erin Randall.
Giles closed the book,
turned, and stared at the moonlight shining through the library window.
“Buffy,” he whispered to himself.
He stood quickly, picked up a canvas bag, and began to gather items he knew he would need. Then he hurried out of the library.
Xander and Willow were tired. They’d made good time, and the high school was definitely within walking distance, but it wasn’t a short walk. All the while, they’d been glancing over their shoulders, expecting trouble to come leaping out at them at any moment. Despite what Buffy had hoped, Halloween night was turning out to be pretty horrible. Xander himself had hoped for some quality time with Buffy—and Willow, too, of course. No such luck. At this point, he figured he’d have to be dead to spend any real time with the Slayin’ babe of his dreams.
And as romantic as he’d always considered himself, that was really not an option.
He and Willow stepped onto the campus lawn and started across toward the front of the school. As they passed by the bench where they met every morning, there was a sudden snapping sound behind them, and they both turned and stared up into a nearby tree.
“Not good,” Xander said.
“We’re just jumpy, is all,” Willow said, offering some of her famous rationalization. One of the reasons she had been Xander’s best friend since kindergarten. “What with the night we’re having, we’d have to be extreme morons not to be a little nervous.”
“Right,” Xander agreed. “A little nervous.”
Somewhere off in the dark, they could hear a high, childlike laugh.
“Ignore it, Xander,” Willow said. “Let’s move.”
They picked up their pace, heading for the front steps of the school.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Willow insisted. “Right? I mean, what do we have to fear?”
Xander glared at her out of the corner of his eye, even as he walked faster.