“You’re like, super pretty,” a guy in an ill-fitting suit slurred, throwing an arm around Bonnie as he knocked back a Jell-O shot.
“Thanks,” Bonnie said listlessly.
“What are you supposed to be?”
She glanced down at her costume, a gauzy white dress that was entirely inappropriate for a Halloween night so cold and rainy. A crown of roses, its fabric petals dusty and frayed, held a delicate veil that flowed over her bare shoulders. Her skin was charmed blue, except for the parts where it was completely translucent, revealing bones that gleamed like moonlight.
“I’m the Corpse Bride,” she said, tracing the rim of her solo cup.
The guy looked at her blankly.
“You know, like the movie,” she clarified.
“Oh. Cool,” he said, uninterested in the way only drunk frat boys could be. “Can you guess what I am?”
She glanced at him, and shrugged. “A CEO?”
“I’m Patrick Bateman,” he said, offended. “From American Psycho. Are you saying you’ve never seen—?”
“I gotta go,” Bonnie said, launching herself from the couch. She ignored his protests as she pushed back into the crowd, grimacing at the stench of jungle juice, sweat, and unfinished basement miasma.
Bonnie was over college parties. They’d stopped being fun after Sheriff Forbes died, and Caroline used them as excuses to get completely shitfaced. Elena wasn’t any help—she’d shake her head over Caroline’s drunken antics and then run off to be with whichever Salvatore brother she favored that week.
“You know, some friendships aren’t meant to last forever,” Grams had said, lips twisted in disapproval.
But ours was supposed to, Bonnie thought as she strode onto the porch, breathing in the dark, damp air. The door slammed shut behind her, cutting off the sound of laughter and music.
She lingered on the porch, observing the dull streetlamps and the drizzly mist that clung to the earth like a shroud. The shadows shifted, and a trio stumbled onto the street, giggling as their black and white dresses fluttered in the air.
Just like magpies, Bonnie thought, and then noticed their pale, old-fashioned caps. Not magpies, then—Puritans.
“Hi!” One of them trilled, walking towards Bonnie with surer steps than she had appeared with. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” Bonnie replied.
The Puritan woman stared into her eyes, and her face split into a wide, wide grin. “No, I do know you! Or know of you, anyway. You’re Sheila’s granddaughter!”
“Who doesn’t know Sheila Bennett?” One of the others said. “She’s only the greatest witch on the Eastern seaboard.”
“The greatest,” the last one echoed.
“We all take her course on occultism,” the leader said, flashing teeth that were perfectly white. “I’m hoping she’ll have an apprenticeship open when I graduate, but we’ll see. Now, what’re you doing all on your lonesome?”
“Oh, you know,” Bonnie said, waving towards the door. “Taking a break from the party. It’s pretty stuffy in there.”
“I bet,” the leader said sympathetically. She reached into a pocket of her perfectly starched apron and pulled out a silver flask. “You want a drink?”
“Nah, I think I’m good,” Bonnie laughed.
“Oh come on,” the leader cajoled. “I made this special for All Hallows’ Eve! It’s a genuine witch’s brew, not the spiked crap you’ve been drinking all night.”
The other Puritans nodded behind her, smiling beatifically.
Bonnie hesitated. She knew better than to accept drinks from strangers, but that was a rule for guys, wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure if it applied to girls, but even if it did, they were some of Grams’s students, and fellow witches too…
“All right,” she said, taking the flask.
It was only one sip, barely a mouthful, but the bittersweet liquid coated her tongue and stuck in her throat like sap. In Bonnie’s eyes, the world was no longer misty, but made of mist, thrumming with cold and darkness.
“What’s going on?” She asked, her voice far away.
“Don’t worry about it,” the leader said, grabbing Bonnie by the wrist and guiding her off the porch. They hurried through the streets, feet echoing off moon-slicked asphalt until the road ended, and a forest rose before them. Bonnie’s high heels sank into the wet earth until they slipped off her feet, and she was standing barefoot within a circle of witches.
“What’s happening?” Bonnie asked.
The leader unsheathed a knife, curved like a sickle, or perhaps a crescent moon.
“Your granny doesn’t share everything she knows,” she said, grasping Bonnie’s hand and giving her palm a shallow cut. Blood welled from the wound and dripped to the hungry earth below. “I’m ready to learn, but she isn’t willing to teach, so I’m taking the knowledge for myself. No hard feelings, okay?”
The trio began chanting, familiar Latin at first, but as they continued, they slipped into a language strange and unfamiliar. It was harsh. Musical. Ancient.
Something tore, and Bonnie was falling through the air, hair slipping from its pins and wind screaming in her ears until she hit the ground with a teeth-rattling thud.
When she opened her eyes, she was alone. The oaks and maples that bracketed Whitmore College were gone. Instead, there were pines. Massive, massive pines and firs that blocked out the night sky, so tall that Bonnie would believe you if you said they were sequoias. The wind rustled through their branches, bringing with it the scent of woodsmoke and a chill that cut through her flimsy costume.
Bonnie shivered, scrambling to her feet. Her mouth still tasted of the undoubtedly drugged concoction she’d had earlier, but her mind was clearing.
Get help, she thought, following the scent of smoke. Smoke meant fires, and fires meant people. People could help.
She could see a chimney peeking behind the tree branches, and then a ramshackle roof, and the light of a lantern, and—
A fence, made of human bones and crowned with human skulls.
She knew at once she wasn’t looking at Halloween decorations. She could almost taste the screams that emanated from those desecrated bones, but she had no time to linger in her horror—a true scream echoed from the forest, shrill, full of pain and terror, and Bonnie was running through the gate of death and slamming the door behind her.
Inside was worse. It was so much worse.
Oh, at first glance it looked like any rustic cabin—everything was hewn from rough wood, and an enormous wolf pelt was strung in front of the fireplace like a bearskin rug, but the end of the house…
Bonnie had to clasp a hand over her mouth to stifle the shriek.
It was a slaughterhouse. A dismembered corpse hung from hooks on the ceiling, except for the parts that were nailed to the wall. Blood dripped from pulsing organs and limbs, pooling on the floor and filling the air with an iron tang that made Bonnie want to gag.
The head was the worst. It was hung from a hook by its knotted hair, and perhaps it could have been considered handsome once, but its skin had been ravaged, furrows left by claws and chunks taken out by the sharpest of teeth. Its blue-green eyes were not unseeing—in fact, it seemed to focus on Bonnie, its gaze sharpening in a way that had the young witch skittering against the wall.
The hands nailed to the wall twitched.
“How the fuck are you still alive?” Bonnie whispered, warily creeping forward. The head released a broken sigh, and Bonnie unhooked it from the ceiling, carefully setting it on the floor. She began fetching the rest of the mutilated body—torso, hands, thighs, calves, feet, ears, liver, heart, fucking intestines of all things—and placing them in an approximate shape of what a body should look like.
Her dress, her hair, the soles of her feet—everything was soaked in blood. She could feel it, sticky and cool, caking under her nails.
The head’s eyes flicked towards the door, which swung open with a painful creak. Bonnie snatched the head back up like the world’s most macabre teddy bear as an old woman hobbled in, heedless of the young witch cowering in the darkest corner of the hut. She was the most frightening creature Bonnie had ever seen, but it wasn’t because of her leathered skin or iron teeth or the gnarled hands that dragged the corpse of the witch who’d dragged Bonnie into this mess to begin with behind her. It was her eyes. Black as pitch, with no whites or pupils to speak of, radiating a malice so potent and old that Bonnie could feel her magic shriveling in terror.
The old woman hauled the witch’s body to a table, taking a rusty cleaver and swinging it through the air until it hit the dead woman’s neck with a wet thud.
Nausea roiled in Bonnie’s stomach, and the old woman paused her butchery.
“Who’s that?” She croaked, the blood-stained blade glinting in the firelight. She took a deep breath, sniffing the air like a dog.
“Bennett,” she muttered. “Bennett blood. AMELIA!” She howled, waving the cleaver. “Come to trick old Baba Yaga again?”
“Tell her your name,” the head breathed, rustling Bonnie’s veil. “Distract her.”
“I’m not—” Bonnie started weakly, and coughed. She tried again, stronger. “I’m not Amelia!”
Baba Yaga skittered towards Bonnie, raising a taloned finger to examine her face.
“No,” she grumbled. “Not Amelia. Too young, too green. Who are you?”
“Bonnie,” the young witch said, heart pounding fiercely in her chest.
The crone glanced at the head in her arms and cackled, the hideous sound echoing up into the rafters. “Come for a husband, have you?” She made a hacking noise, spitting on the floor. “Well, I’ve no use for a husband or a wolf, especially one as troublesome as Nikolai Mikhailovitch. Take him, if you’d like.”
“But first,” Baba Yaga said, eyes gleaming like chips of obsidian. “You must do something for me.”
“I’m old,” Baba Yaga sighed, as if she hadn’t hauled a corpse through the woods. “My hands ache, and I can no longer do my chores the way I used to. Help me, girl, and I let you leave with your man. Fail—” She ran a talon over the edge of her cleaver. “And you’ll join him on the wall.”
Bonnie swallowed, and nodded.
“Good,” the old witch crooned. “I must fetch the rest of my dinner. You shall start on the weaving, and if I find myself displeased with your work when I return, I shall rip your eyes out.”
“Yes,” Bonnie whispered, and Baba Yaga swept out of the hut.
Bonnie sank to her knees. “I don’t know how to weave,” she whispered, hugging the head to her chest.
“Flick your blood on the loom,” the head murmured. “Take my pelt and run.”
What good will that do? Bonnie wondered, but obeyed the head. It’s not like she had any other options.
“Leave my body behind,” he whispered as Bonnie wrapped the heavy pelt around her shoulders. “I will follow you.”
Bonnie scrambled out of the hut, following the path she’d left behind back into the forest.
“How goes the weaving?” She heard Baba Yaga call.
“The weaving goes well!” She heard herself reply.
She ran into the clearing she’d arrived in. The two other witches who used her blood hung from the trees, their entrails spilling from their slit bellies like ribbons. The tear between worlds rippled in the air, and a shriek cut through the forest.
Baba Yaga had discovered her deception.
Bonnie slipped through the tear, the witch’s howls pounding in her skull until they were suddenly cut off, and she slammed against damp earth.
If it had been any other night, perhaps people would have been more concerned at a barefoot, bloodstained girl dazedly stumbling home, but it was Halloween. She'd even gotten a few earnest compliments on her 'costume' that made her want to weep, but she held it together until she made it back to her dorm.
Caroline and Elena weren't back yet, and so Bonnie felt no shame as she collapsed on her bed, sobbing into her pillow as she burrowed under the heavy wolf-pelt. It was warm, so warm after the cold night she'd lived through, and she felt herself drift into an exhausted slumber.
Sharp, incessant knocking yanked Bonnie from her nightmares.
She glanced at the clock—4:59, she noticed incredulously—and walked to the door with unsteady feet. Her head was pounding.
She wrenched the door open. "Somebody better be dying—" she started, but the words froze in her throat.
Standing before her was the head. Well, he wasn't just a head anymore—thick, ropy scars connected it to his body, the same scars that connected hands to wrists, and, Bonnie imagined, any other appendage that had been sawn off. He looked human enough, and without the viscera dripping from his stumps, he could even be considered handsome.
"Good morning," he said, his voice deeper and richer now that he'd regained most of his vocal chords. "May I come in?"
"You were a marvelous distraction, love," he said, leaning against the doorframe. He's tall, Bonnie noted absently. "I never could have reassembled myself without you leading the crone away," he continued.
"You're welcome, I guess," Bonnie said, smoothing a hand over her rusted white dress, a bloody caricature of a wedding gown. "Thanks for your help, too."
"After what you've done for me, you never need to thank me for anything again," the man said, wrapping a lock of her hair around a scarred finger.
Bonnie slapped his hand away. "What—" she stammered. "What are you doing? Why are you even here?"
The man pouted. "You have my pelt," he said, mischief dancing in his eyes. "I'm your husband. Where else would I be?"
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