Shreya, Aahana and the Night of Halloween

Shreya zipped up her black cat costume and checked her whiskers in the mirror for the third time. Downstairs, Aahana was already bouncing by the door in her dinosaur onesie, pumpkin bucket swinging from one claw-gloved hand. "Ready?" Aahana asked, though she was really asking herself. Shreya grinned and grabbed her own bucket. Outside, the sky had gone a deep, bruised purple, and jack-o-lanterns flickered awake on every porch like the whole street was blinking its eyes open just for them.

Page 1

The first house belonged to old Mr. Díaz, who had strung fake cobwebs so thick across his porch that the girls could barely see the door. A motion-sensor skeleton rattled upright the second they stepped close, arms creaking wide. Aahana froze mid-step. "It's just plastic bones and a speaker," Shreya said quietly, more to herself than her sister. Saying it out loud helped. They walked up together, rang the bell, and Mr. Díaz dropped chocolate into their buckets with a wink.

Page 2

Two houses down, green fog rolled across someone's lawn like a ghost had spilled. Aahana grabbed Shreya's sleeve. "What if something's hiding in there?" she whispered. "Then we'll see its feet before we see anything else," Shreya said, pointing at the shoes sticking out from the mist. Sure enough, it was just a dry ice machine hidden in a bucket. They laughed about it the whole way down the driveway, buckets a little heavier than before.

Page 3

At the yellow house on the corner, giant spiders dangled from the gutters, swaying whenever the wind pushed past. Aahana hung back on the sidewalk. "I don't love spiders," she admitted. "Me neither," Shreya said, surprising her. "But these ones don't have legs that move." They counted the spiders together — seven, all fake, all still — before marching up for candy. Naming the scary thing, Shreya was starting to notice, made it take up less room in her chest.

Page 4

The graveyard display outside the Thompsons' house had crooked tombstones with funny names painted on them, like Here Lies Ima Goner. Aahana read them out loud in her most dramatic voice until she was giggling instead of gasping. Shreya noticed how laughing worked almost as well as naming things — both made the scary feel smaller, like letting air out of a balloon slowly instead of popping it. Their buckets clinked with another handful of wrapped candy.

Page 5

Next came the house with the cauldron — a bubbling, glowing pot of green liquid on the porch steps, and beside it, a witch in a tall black hat, cackling at every trick-or-treater. Aahana stopped dead at the end of the walkway. "That laugh is really creepy," she whispered. Shreya squeezed her hand. "Let's find out who's under the hat," she said, and pulled her sister forward, one careful step at a time.

Page 6

Up close, the witch's cackle stopped mid-laugh. "Oh, I hope I didn't scare you too much, girls," she said, lifting the hat just enough to show a kind, wrinkled face. It was Mrs. Patterson from two streets over, who Shreya recognized from the library. "I get nervous nobody will like my setup," Mrs. Patterson admitted, fussing with her cauldron. Aahana told her the fog was the best on the whole street, and Mrs. Patterson's whole face lit up brighter than her glowing pot.

Page 7

Shreya realized something funny as they walked away: the witch had been scared too, just scared of something different. Everybody on the street, it seemed, was carrying around some small nervous feeling, dressed up as something else. She told Aahana this, and Aahana thought about it for a whole block before saying, "Maybe that's why we're supposed to say it out loud. So nobody has to carry it by themselves."

Page 8

The Nguyens' house had turned their garage into a haunted tunnel, black plastic sheeting draped over everything so you had to feel your way through in the dark. Aahana's voice wobbled. "I really don't like tight dark spaces." "Then hold onto my cape," Shreya said, "and count our steps instead." They counted together — eleven steps in, eleven steps out — until daylight, or porch light anyway, found them again on the other side.

Page 9

A group of older kids in zombie makeup jumped out from behind a hedge near the park, groaning and dragging their feet. Aahana yelped and nearly dropped her bucket. Shreya's heart thumped too, but she made herself laugh instead of run. "Nice makeup," she called out, and the zombies broke character immediately, grinning and comparing fake wounds. Being brave, Shreya thought, didn't mean not being scared. It just meant deciding what to do next anyway.

Page 10

By the time they reached the house with the animatronic bat swooping on a wire above the doorway, Aahana barely flinched. "It's on a track," she said confidently, pointing at the thin cord strung between two trees. Shreya smiled, proud in a quiet way that didn't need saying out loud. Her little sister was borrowing the trick now, turning scary things into puzzles instead of monsters, one porch at a time.

Page 11

The last big house on the street had turned its whole front yard into a pretend swamp, complete with a fake alligator peeking from a kiddie pool and swamp-gas fog curling around plastic reeds. A hidden speaker groaned low, like something enormous breathing. Aahana grabbed Shreya's hand without needing to say anything this time. Shreya squeezed back, and together they stepped into the fog, buckets held high like shields.

Page 12

Halfway through the swamp display, the alligator's jaw suddenly snapped shut with a loud clack, triggered by a hidden sensor. Both girls screamed — then burst out laughing at exactly the same moment, the kind of laugh that only happens after your heart has been startled and realizes everything is fine. The homeowner, chuckling from his lawn chair, told them that was the gator's fourth victim of the night and they'd screamed the best so far.

Page 13

On the walk home, their buckets were heavy and their feet were tired in the good way that meant a full night. Aahana counted her candy by flashlight, sorting chocolate from chewy into two careful piles. "That was the best Halloween," she said. Shreya agreed, though what she liked best wasn't the candy at all — it was realizing that every scary thing on the street had turned out to be something ordinary wearing a costume of its own.

Page 14

Back on their own porch, their mom had left the lights on and a bowl of extra candy by the door for stragglers. Shreya looked back down the street at all the glowing pumpkins, the fog machines finally running out of fog, the tired zombies heading home too. She thought about Mrs. Patterson under the witch hat, and the alligator that wasn't really hungry, and how saying "I'm scared" out loud had made room for "let's go anyway."

Page 15

Inside, Aahana traded two lollipops for one of Shreya's chocolate bars, and they sat on the kitchen floor sorting their loot into equal piles, costumes still on, cat ears and dinosaur tail both a little crooked now. "Same time next year?" Aahana asked. "Every house," Shreya said. "Even the scary ones. Especially the scary ones." Outside, the last jack-o-lanterns flickered low, keeping watch over a street finally going quiet.

Page 16