Chp 45 Hallowe'en Special
Something old…something new…
By
Lilachigh

A story for Hallowe’en, written for Gillo, to thank her for all her help.


Agnes Pringle was making gingerbread men. She knew they would sell well because – she sniffed - it was nearly October 31st, a date that always upset her, no matter how hard she tried to be sensible.

Agnes had never really come to terms with the American version of Hallowe’en. It confused her – the Trick or Treating, the colourful costumes, children roaming through the streets, doing dangerous things such as knocking on the doors of complete strangers to ask for sweets.

She had to admit she liked the fact that for one night you could move around Sunnydale and no one bothered you if, by mistake, you vamped into game face. People tended to stop and congratulate you on a great costume and ask where you bought it. You just had to remember to keep from slipping back into human face before they moved on.

Yes, she liked to see people enjoying themselves and she believed that even back in England some of these jolly ideas were now taken very seriously – but… she was still confused.

Granny Pringle – her father’s mother, not to be confused with Nana Cuthbert, that doyenne of good manners and strict behaviour – had been Agnes’s favourite relative when she was a child. Dear Granny Pringle – living in her tiny cottage just outside Winchester – unconcerned that she had the reputation of being a witch. The local children threw stones at her windows and would have done worse except an odd, timely plague of boils had struck down several of the more lively boys. There were even rumours that they hadn’t just appeared on their faces!

No, Agnes was sure Granny Pringle had never been a witch, but she did make good love potions and a sort of elderberry and mushroom soup that gave you very strange dreams.

And it was from that thin, dark-eyed old lady that Agnes had learnt about the night before All Hallows’ Day, the night the ancient people of Britain had called Samhain when the borders between this world and others grew thin and spirits and demons, both good and bad, could pass through. You wore a costume and mask to hide yourself from their view. You carved a turnip into a horrid face and placed a candle inside it to ward off evil. It wasn’t a happy night. You were never sure if you would live through it to the morning.

Agnes sighed and absentmindedly popped a handful of currants into her mouth before she remembered she didn’t eat them any more. Some of the gingerbread men would have to be blind this year, she thought, then happily remembered she had a box of glace cherries which made them look far more like gingerbread demons and likely to sell far faster.

“Are some of those for me?”

Agnes looked up and smiled as Spike pushed open the door from the tunnels and walked into the kitchen. “I wasn’t sure if you would be around tonight. I don’t usually see you on Hallowe’en.”

Spike shrugged. “Night off, Aggie. Let all the silly wankers run round with their lanterns and little baskets making idiots of themselves. Nice crate of beer and a few of those little men will do me fine.”

He flung himself into a chair and tilted it back at a dangerous angle. His gaze at Agnes’ face suddenly became sharper, more concerned. “You don’t look that special. What’s up? Rats got in the flour again? Thought the cat would deal with those.”

“Oh, I’m just being silly.” Touched by the concern in his face, Agnes turned away. Really, she must not cry just because today was today.

Spike’s chair banged down on the stone floor. “Right – you – sit! I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and you can tell me what the bloody hell’s upsetting you. I’ve got nothing else to do. Someone you want killing, I’m your man.”

Protesting, Agnes allowed herself to be placed in the comfiest chair and watched as Spike deftly produced a cup of nice, hot, sweet tea. He was the only person she knew who would have thought of warming the pot first which made such a difference to the brew.

“Well?” he asked at last, raiding one of her storage tins and finding his favourite cheese and paprika straws.

Agnes didn’t even wince as she watched some of her hard-earned profits vanish. “It’s – well – I always get a little upset on the 31st – not that I’ve any right to because it was my decision and one I’ve never regretted, not for a second – but – ”

“Aggie! You’re rambling. Slow down, just tell me what’s got your knickers in such a twist.”

The owner of the Olde Willow Tree Tea Shoppe didn’t even blink at the rather coarse remark. She was too used to Spike now. Words and expressions he used sailed straight over her head.

“I - I was going to be married on 31st October!”

Spike almost choked on a cheese straw. If he’d needed air to breathe, he would have done. “What? Married? When? Who? How?”

“Really, Spike, there’s no need to sound quite so surprised,” Agnes found herself saying, rather tartly. “I know it must seem unlikely to you, but once I was – well, I was asked to be someone’s wife.”

There was a silence. For once Spike was speechless. Did the poor old duck mean before she was turned? Yes, she must have done. That was it! She was suffering from unrequited love. Perhaps some bastard had jilted her at the altar. Even now it wasn’t too late for Spike to seek him out and kill him. It was never too late for a vampire.

Agnes was sitting, sipping her tea, wondering if the use of the word “someone” had been quite accurate. Dear Richard, when he proposed to her all those years ago in Los Angeles, had been in human form, but obviously he hadn’t actually been, well, a human. She remembered their last meeting, his proposal, the dreadful demon ring, carved as a rose out of a vast ruby, reeking of death and destruction.

And the joy in his face when he’d suggested they joined their lives together on Hallowe’en!

Agnes had fled Los Angeles that night, knowing that as much as he cared for Richard, she did not love him. He was definitely not, as she had now learnt to say, The One. No, she was still waiting for her knight in shining armour to ride up on his white horse and although sometimes in the dead of day she wondered if she was foolish to think he was still on his way, she remembered that “Good things happen to good people,” as her mother had always told her. Although Agnes was no longer a person, what had happened in Hollywood Had Not Been Her Fault, so she hoped she still counted on the good side.

“What happened?”

Agnes came back to earth with a bump. She’d forgotten that Spike was still sitting in her kitchen and there was a distinct smell of burning biscuit from the oven.

With a squeak, she leapt to the gingerbread mens’ rescue. “See, that’s what day-dreaming does for you,” she admonished Spike. “You should remember that when you’re mooning around after that Slayer girl.”

Spike bit his lip, wondering when the verb “mooning” had changed its meaning and whether Agnes knew.

“Anyway, nothing happened. I received a proposal, the 31st of October was mentioned and it would have been my wedding day.”

“Who broke it off?” Spike was still determined to discover if his friend’s heart had been broken and who had done it to her.

Agnes shook her head impatiently and began to mix a bowl of frosting as she’d learnt to call icing. “There was no actual engagement. I never accepted.”

She didn’t think it was necessary to tell Spike of how she’d fled with just a suitcase, how she’d caught a Greyhound bus heading for Sunnydale because it was such a pretty name. And certainly no reason to tell him that a few years had passed before she actually reached the town because she’d had the sense to realise that with all his connections, Richard would have had no difficulty in tracing her movements and would have headed straight for Sunnydale.

So on that 31st October, all those years ago, Agnes Pringle had got off another bus and, penniless and starving, walked into some small town late in the evening. There she’d been confronted with gangs of witches, demons and ghosts, all running and shouting and laughing. She’d stood there, bewildered, then been carried along by a large group of teenagers, eventually finding herself catapulted through the door into a school where some sort of party was being held.

Trying desperately to escape, she’d opened a door and hurried through it, only to find herself in a kitchen where two harassed women were arguing over trying to cope with preparing food for over a hundred guests. Before she knew it, she was grilling burgers and sausages, pouring brightly coloured drinks and automatically taking over and organising the chaos the women had made.

Two raw burgers and with the hint of how she might make a living later, she’d felt far more like her old self and had hardly had the time to think of what she might have been doing on this, her wedding night.

But every Hallowe’en since, she’d remembered.

Spike was getting restless. “So, no one to kill, Aggie? I haven’t got to swan off to L.A. and drain some poor bloke. What was he called, by the way?”

Agnes ignored the question. Sometimes Spike was not very bright, but on other occasions he could make vast leaps of logic and arrive at the conclusion to a problem immediately. Not that knowing about Dear Richard would help him, although vampires could live a very long time and she wasn’t quite sure when Richard’s next transformation was set to take place. The last thing she wanted was for him to arrive back on this plane of existence and find a revengeful Spike waiting for him!

“No, there is certainly no need for you to avenge me in any way, Spike. But thank you so much for offering. Now, let me wrap up the remainder of these gingerbread men for you and enjoy the rest of your evening. I must get on. I’ve so much to do before I open the tea-rooms this evening.”

When he’d left, munching his way through a brown paper bag of gingerbread so that Agnes despaired of him having anything left by the time he got back to his crypt, she took a deep breath to settle her nerves.

She hadn’t wanted him, friend though he was, to see what she was about to do.

From the depths of a cabinet, she pulled out a large round cake that smelt of brandy and fruit with just a tinge of the very best human blood she’d bought at great cost in Willie’s Bar.

Picking up her spatula, she began to cover the cake with frosting, smoothing the white folds down with loving attention.

Hallowe’en night would be here soon and she would be upstairs, firstly serving the humans who celebrated with their gingerbread, toffee apples, Parkin and nut brittle. Then, when they had finally left, those vamps and demons who had no homes or who were too restless to stay in them, would arrive for her baked specialities. (They particularly liked the puff pastry turnovers that wriggled inside).

And then even they would lurch out into the night, and as dawn broke over Sunnydale she would go downstairs, cut herself a large slice of wedding cake and wonder what would have happened if…….

The end
Happy Hallowe’en!