On the hill above Nash-Lake stands a house no one visits. For thirty years, the people who climbed to its door on Halloween night never came back down. The town knew the couple inside only by their costumes: a tall orange rabbit in a grinning yellow mask, and a gentle old sheep in a witch's hat who always had candy ready.

They were polite. They were generous. They took a photograph of every guest, posed on the porch with a full candy bag, smiling. Then the guests went inside, and the photographs went into a leather album on the arm of an old armchair.

In 1979 a girl watched her sister walk through that door. She told everyone. Nash-Lake finally believed her. The town dragged Lorenzo and Rachel Waterman into the square and burned them while the whole street watched.

It did not keep them dead.

The house went quiet for three years. No one climbed the hill. The porch sagged, the siding warped, and the stench crept all the way down to the fence. But every Halloween the TV in the front room still turned itself on, and the pumpkins out back still came in ripe.

In the basement, grey mannequins wear the costumes of the missing. Upstairs, the photo album waits on the armchair, and every face inside it is still trying to get out. The only way to free them is to burn the book. The only people who know that are dead.

The Watermans have been hungry for a long time now. They are polite. They are patient. And they were very, very bad people.

Join the Empire