The Mansfield house had been abandoned for so long that the ivy had almost swallowed its walls whole. Rotten shutters barely clung to rusted hinges; the roof sagged beneath decades of storms. The legend began at the harvest of 1894. Mrs Mansfield was up late into the night baking bread for the farm workers working through the night; the house should have been silent, yet laughter suddenly echoed through every room, a soft, playful sound like a child playing. Every candle in the house suddenly lit itself. Their trembling flames created crooked shadows that danced across the walls, leading Mrs Mansfield into the dining room. In the middle of the polished timber floor sat her daughter, Holly, slowly disappearing into a vast pool of fresh blood, the thick metallic scent enough to choke the last bit of air from your lungs. Holly ran her pale fingers through the blood with childish delight, splashing it into the air. Crimson droplets rained over her face as she laughed, spinning her hands through the blood like a warm summer rain. Her white dress remained immaculate; not a single drop marked the fabric. Slowly, Holly lifted her head, smiling. "Good morning, mother." With a scream, Mrs Whitmore fled barefoot deep into the night. When the farm hands searched the house at sunrise, the dining room was immaculate. The polished floor gleamed; not a single mark was found. Most dismissed her story. Women tend to fret at night after all. The parish priest did not. For three nights he searched every inch of the property, recited hundreds of desperate prayers. The blessings lasted through the night; neighbours heard prayers rising above violent banging from beneath the house. Between each prayer came delighted laughter, then pleading, then scratching so frantic it sounded as though someone was trying to claw through solid rock. With the first beam of sunlight, silence finally fell; the exhausted priest emerged white as ash. "I have banished her from this land," he whispered. "She will never cross its boundary while even one soul of Mansfield blood still walks this earth. But when the last heartbeat of your family falls silent... nothing will hold her back." Over time, the Mansfield line slowly dwindled; with every funeral, a little of the laughter returned until the last of the Mansfield bloodline finally died in their sleep at ninety-eight. The solicitor arrived the following morning to catalogue the estate. Inside the dining room, he found a woman twirling through the bottomless crimson pool, humming softly to herself, her bare feet creating lazy waves through the liquid. She stopped when she noticed him. Her smile widened. "Welcome, it's been so long," she whispered, "I've had no one to play with."

“Got it!” Carrie said, lowering her phone. “That’ll look good on my blog. Thanks, you guys. Hope you have a great Halloween tonight. Lots of goodies and all that.” The children didn’t move, their blank eyes continued to stare. “Go on, then,” she said, waving. “You don’t want to miss out on all the treats, do you? Go scare the crap out of your neighbors, like you’re doing to me.” Still nothing. Carrie looked around, trying to avoid their gaze. “Are you out here alone? Don’t you have an adult with you?” From the corner of her left eye, she saw movement from the tallest one. She turned back. He, she, it was one step closer to her. “Hah! Red light!” she shouted, throwing up her right hand, palm out. She saw the third one’s head cock slightly. “Have you never played that game?” Carrie asked. “I say ‘green light’ and you move toward me until I say ‘red light’ and then you freeze where you are. The last one I see move is out.” She began stepping backward as she explained. Her skin was growing clammy and her heart and breath were quickening. The children seemed to be listening intently. All their heads were now cocked sideways like puppies trying to find a recognizable word in their master’s voice. “I’ll just move away across the field and we’ll play.” Carrie turned and started running, glancing back over her shoulder now and then to make sure the children were not following. They weren’t. She continued at a run when she came to the road bordering the field and headed for her car parked fifty feet away. She clicked her fob and unlocked the driver’s door. Glancing once more, she saw the four children still standing where she left them. She dropped into the seat and double-clicked the fob, making sure all doors were locked. As she turned the car around, her headlights picked out the four figures in the field, heads still cocked in an inquisitive attitude. “Damn little bastards,” she said, shaking her fist in the rearview mirror. “Go tell your mother she wants you!” As she turned her eyes back on the road, the children were spread across it, their hands stretched forward, palms up. “Red light!” they screamed, their voices filling Carrie’s car as if they were in the back seat. When Carrie awoke in her overturned car, she felt as if every muscle in her body hurt. It took her a moment to remember what had happened. She searched for her seat belt. “We win,” a child’s voice said. “You moved after we said, ‘red light.’ We’ll take our treats now.” “What?” she asked. Then she screamed as the children began tearing her apart, dropping body parts into their bags, and arguing who had the best ones.

The gloom of the midnight moon watched over the sleepy town of Dust Haven, and the first fog of The Long Darkness had flowed from the isolated church to the silent streets below. The town’s lifelong inhabitants hid behind locked doors, voicelessly mouthing their prayers for the night to come, wishing in the darkness of their homes that their offering be sufficient to keep at bay that which threatened their crops and livestock for the many seasons to come. Before yesterday’s arrival in Dust Haven, the Harburys had spent years sleeping in hostels, often in the car, occasionally in a tent. Night after night, town by town, paycheck to aching paycheck. Dale did all he could to provide for little Annabel. Working any earner he could find that would provide a roof over her head, a scrap of food for her to eat, and a pillow for her to sleep on. I will keep Annabel safe, he’d promised in prayers to the ghost of her mother. Twenty years, the church tower held silence in its hibernation, but on this night, it would chime again. Echoes of rich timbres bounced through the floorboards and doorways, the emptied stores and lifeless barns. Each house sat in darkness, curtains and shutters closed, no lamps nor candles lit, no hint of life to be found at all. Apart from the newest arrivals to Dust Haven, and the four Faceless girls who sought them. They skipped hand-in-hand down the town’s cobbled roads, leading the fog of The Long Darkness behind them. Their pale, white, frowning masks glowed in the streetlamps. Late nights, Dale would come home, often sacrificing his own nourishment for hers. Tucking her in with torn quilts and singing lullabies on broken-spring mattresses, hoping for her to have a glimmer of restful sleep in the stained, damp hostel rooms — toxic mould inhaled into her dreams. Laughing and singing sweet rhymes from their last days at nursery, the girls looked through the windows. Searching. Seeking. Each shared a single knock on the doors they approached. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Dale and Annabel, with full bellies, sipped tea, cheered and wept around their lantern-lit dinner table, a dream they thought never to come true. Gorging themselves on the courtesy welcome treats for the isolated hilltop church’s new lifetime contracted maintenance man. A home of their own and free supplies of local produce for the family - a true end to their hardships. “All will be well from now on, dearest Annabel,” he’d said as the bell chimed once more. Their mutual laughter and cheer distilled into quiet contentedness, both of them looked with wonder and awe at their cosy dining room, warm from the burning embers of the log-lit fireplace, “It’s perfect, Dada, perfect perfect perfffeect!” Between the softening resonance of the last bell chime and the crackling of wood, there developed sounds of school girls singing nursery rhymes, with intervals of stopping, then laughter, then more singing. Mounting in volume, louder, and louder, and louder. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.