The night had fallen over the town like a curtain, transforming the streets into a stage of lights.
The pumpkins with their smiles and internal candles, mounted guard at every house, projecting lights over the sidewalks covered with dry leaves.
The "trick or treat" parade was at its peak. Hordes of children ran from door to door, screaming and laughing, while the parents watched them.
In the middle of that, three small figures walked with a different rhythm than the rest.
"How boring...," murmured Emma impatiently, looking with disdain at a group of costumed children running past.
They had already walked three complete blocks. At every door, the adults, delighted with their costumes, let out exaggerated exclamations of cuteness and deposited handfuls of chocolate bars in Lillith's and Esther's buckets.
The pockets of her suit, however, remained empty.
She did not have any interest in cheap glucose.
What she wanted was a "game" with real consequences.
"Patience..." said Lillith without looking back, adjusting the red hood over her hair. "Dessert is always served at the end of dinner."
She was not there for the sweets either. What she longed for was a purer emotion... the taste of fear.
"..."
In silence, Esther walked one step behind.
She could feel it, these two.. were not like the other children in the neighborhood. They were not even like her. She was an adult pretending to be a child. They... they were genuine monsters.
In Lillith there was a dark presence that instinctively made her hairs stand on end. And Emma... Emma was like a razor forgotten in a playground: small, brilliant, and capable of cutting deep before you realized it.
Being with them was walking on a tightrope, but Esther had to admit that it provoked a morbid excitement in her.
They passed in front of a magnificently decorated house.
Lillith's basket and Esther's bag already weighed considerably.
Suddenly, Lillith stopped next to a street trash container.
"Enough," she stated.
With a movement, she tilted her basket over the trash and the sound of hundreds of candies and chocolates hitting the bottom of the metallic container resonated like a hailstorm.
"The taste of these things is insulting. Pure processed garbage to numb..." she said, shaking her hands.
And immediately she raised her head slowly toward the night wind and her nose contracted slightly, sniffing the air.
"There," she whispered, and a smile was drawn on her lips.
She extended a finger, pointing toward a turnoff.
It was a narrow and poorly paved road that led away from the main residential area.
There were no streetlights there, the safety of the suburbs died at the entrance, whose end faded into absolute darkness.
"There is a very interesting smell there."
The corner of Emma's lips curved, and her eyes shone. This was what she had been waiting for!
Esther took a quick look toward the safety of the illuminated street, where the families laughed and ate sweets, and then looked toward the dark abyss that Lillith was pointing at.
"..."
She did not raise any objection.
She simply adjusted her scarecrow head.
...
The three of them went into the dark path, and immediately the voices of the festive neighborhood dissolved completely, as if the path had absorbed all the noise.
The outside world became silent, leaving only the amplified crunch of their own footsteps on the dry leaves.
The path ended abruptly at a vacant lot.
In which, in the center of that abandoned space, stood a gloomy two-story house.
The black house stood solitary, a monument to decay.
Large sections of the wood siding had come off, revealing the rotten and grayish wood of the beams underneath. The windows were covered with nailed wooden slats, one of which had broken and fallen, leaving a black and empty hole, similar to the single eye of a being that was spying.
The weeds in the yard grew out of control, surpassing the height of a person, and the wooden porch was broken.
The whole house emanated a palpable aura of bad omen, a stench of mold, of abandonment and of something much more sinister.
It was number 29 Neibolt Street.
The forbidden ground that no child in town dared to approach.
"Great!" exclaimed Lillith with genuine amazement.
Her eyes shone at the prospect. She could feel a dense layer of suffocating fear enveloping the house, an aura that made her salivate.
"It seems someone lives here..." She licked her lips with anticipation.
Emma slid a hand out of her pocket and in her palm a small paring knife had appeared that she had secretly sharpened until leaving it as sharp as a scalpel.
Her face remained impassive, but the glint in her eyes said: "I am ready to start working."
Esther took a half step back, examining the house.
The adult part of her mind screamed danger, pointing out that this place was a trap from which they should flee. But, at the same time, ambition and the desire for conquest, boiled inside her.
To earn her place with Lillith and Emma, she had to prove her own worth by challenging the strong.
"Are you sure you want to enter that dump?" she asked in a low voice, it was more a test than a real objection.
"Of course," responded Lillith without even turning around, her impatience evident. "Safety is for the weak."
She took the lead, stepping onto the porch with the creaking of the wood under her weight, and headed to the grained wooden door.
Emma followed her immediately.
Esther hesitated for a brief second, her gaze encompassing the darkness and the rot, then she also approached, positioning herself on the other side of Lillith.
The small hand that Lillith extended, without the slightest tremor, knocked on the door.
"Dong!... Dong!... Dong!"
The heavy sound of the knocks resonated in the silent night, amplified by the void, striking directly at the heart of the expectant silence.
There was no answer after a while.
Lillith tilted her head and her smile became sweeter.
"If there is no treat..." she said with a melodious voice, "I will play tricks!"
She had barely finished speaking, the answer arrived.
"Creak—"
That wooden door opened slowly by itself, yielding a crack.
A gust of abnormally cold wind came out of the opening, dragging with it a nauseating stench: a distinctive mixture of stagnant water, open sewers and the unmistakable and sweet smell of decomposing bodies.
Nothing could be distinguished in the inky darkness that extended beyond the threshold.
But suddenly, a splash of color manifested.
A bright red balloon, tied to an invisible string, came floating slowly out of the darkness of the entrance, remaining suspended motionless in front of the three.
Immediately after, following the trail of the balloon, a figure emerged slowly from the darkness of the entrance.
It was a clown... but not just any clown.
He wore an antique suit, with huge ruffs around the neck and wrists, all dirty, worn out and with an air of abandonment. His face was covered by thick and cracked white makeup, and stripes of bright red carmine extended from an exaggerated smile drawn over his mouth, to the sockets of his eyes.
The hair, of a burnt reddish orange tone, bristled over an abnormally high and bulbous forehead that looked cerulean under the dim light of the filtered moon.
It was Pennywise.
His eyes, the color of molten gold and with an infinite greed, swept over the three girls with a predatory slowness.
He liked children... but what really gave him life and energy was the Fear!... The Fear that emanated from them.
"Hello, little ones."
"Do you also want a balloon? We all have balloons down here, of all colors... and if you want them, you will float... You will all float..."
He leaned forward, trying to capture on the faces of these little ones the expression that was the most wonderful and familiar to him: the total surrender to fear.
But he felt deeply disappointed.
The girl dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, the one in the center, not only did not feel fear, but looked at him with a condescending curiosity. By her side, the zombie girl analyzed him with a gaze devoid of emotion, moving slowly over his clothing. And the other one, dressed as a scarecrow, although her body was trembling, that was not a tremor of panic, but rather a kind of... uncontainable excitement.
The red smile on Pennywise's face froze for an instant.
"Your smell..." said Lillith, breaking the stalemate and making the ancient being feel a pang of confusion. "Smells very, very old, but... it is terribly insipid."
"Besides..." Esther took the floor, taking a step to the front, and on that face appeared for the first time the cold and scrutinizing expression of Leena Klammer, with a nuance of disapproval. "Your costume is very vintage, sir. Horror clowns nowadays look more professional than that suit."
"?"
Pennywise remained completely astonished.
He had existed for eons, devouring fear, adapting only as necessary to primal fears, and had never encountered a situation like this: not only did they not fear him, but they were criticizing him and found him boring!
His jaw began to relax, his drawn smile giving way to reveal the true mouth.
It was in that moment of existential confusion when Emma, who had been silent, slid forward.
Pennywise, finally reacting, opened his mouth beyond human limits, revealing rows of teeth sharp as needles.
But it was too late.
Emma took out the knife and without a shred of fear, stabbed him directly in one of those bright yellow eyes!
________
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