Snakes and Ladders Read online

  Snakes and Ladders

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  Buckley Township, Michigan

  1944

  “Mama, Mama!” Alice raced down the stairs at the sort of heedlessly suicidal speed native only to small children and creatures in immediate danger of being eaten. Frances Healy—who had long since learned that no amount of shouting would slow her daughter down—did her best to conceal her wince. One good tumble and their trick-or-treating would be over before it had the chance to get properly started. “Mama, look! I’m a cowgirl, Mama, look!”

  “Yes, you’re definitely a cowgirl,” said Fran diplomatically. Enid had done a remarkable job of cutting one of Fran’s old circus vests down to fit Alice. She’d even used the leftover sequins and fringe to bring a denim skirt made from a pair of Alexander’s old jeans up to proper levels of Wild West acceptability. Combined with a straw hat, some tin guns from the five and dime, a “lasso” made of coiled clothesline, and pigtail braids, Alice was the living embodiment of what people who had never seen the Mississippi thought of all the people living west of it. The galoshes were a little out of character, but it had been raining on and off for weeks. One night of faux-authenticity wasn’t worth the trouble of dealing with a sick six-year-old.

  “You’re a cowgirl, too!” Alice crowed as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Fran grinned, bending to sweep Alice into a spinning hug. “That’s right, puss!” she said gleefully. “I am!” She was wearing jeans rather than a skirt, and in her case, the vest hadn’t required any alteration: she was still essentially the same size she’d been when she followed Jonathan Healy home from Arizona, some sixteen years before. Her boots, gun belt, and pistols were all real. Both of them were “being cowgirls”—something Alice had been begging for since the start of the month—but only Alice was wearing a costume.

  Anyone who saw them together would have been unable to miss the fact that they were mother and daughter. They had the same flax-gold hair, and the same stubborn cant to their chins, like they might decide at any moment to challenge the universe to prove its worth…and like they might win when they did.

  This was the first year that Alice really understood the idea behind Halloween. They’d gone trick-or-treating the year before, but she’d mostly clung to Fran’s leg and stared at the other children in their monster costumes, occasionally entreating her mother to shoot them fast, before they got hungry and attacked. After she had asked loudly why they weren’t carrying any throwing knives in the trick-or-treat bag, Fran had decided that maybe Alice was still a little bit too young, and called it a night.

  Kindergarten had changed everything. Suddenly surrounded by a peer group that was enthusiastic about things like costumes and candy, Alice had embraced the idea of the holiday, especially after Mikey Caldwell said he was going to be a mobster, and she realized that the right costume would mean getting to carry guns, just like her mommy and daddy. The fact that her guns were tin and only fired harmless pop-caps really didn’t matter; they were hers, and being allowed to wear them openly made Halloween the best holiday in the history of absolutely ever.

  “Alice!” called Enid, from the kitchen. “Come and get your treat bag!”

  “Coming, Grandma!” Alice shouted, and squirmed, laughing, until Fran freed her to go racing off down the hall, galoshes thumping on the hardwood floor. Fran watched her run with a smile on her face. A night when she could take her daughter out and not worry about what might be watching from the woods? Halloween was pretty much all right by her, too.

  The front door opened, and Jonathan stepped inside, stomping the mud off his boots and onto the wicker mat placed just inside the threshold. He laughed when he saw her, asking, “All right, have we fallen backward through time, and you’ve only just arrived here from the rodeo? Because I don’t exactly relish the idea of introducing you to my parents again.”

  “Now, Johnny, I was perfectly well-behaved,” said Fran, taking off her hat and fanning herself with it. “Not my fault they got testy.”

  “You accused them of thinking that you weren’t good enough for me, and threatened to hop onto the first train back to Arizona.” Jonathan stepped over and slid his arms around her waist. “I believe there were some threats of violence.”

  Fran smiled guilelessly. “Just making sure they didn’t get the wrong idea ’bout me.”

  “No, dear, they knew right off the bat that you were violent, dangerous, and quite possibly entirely insane.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” she said, putting her hat on his head.

  Fran and Jonathan were still standing in the foyer five minutes later, when Alice emerged from the kitchen with a fabric sack clutched triumphantly in one hand. They had their arms wrapped around each other, and were kissing with enthusiasm. Alice wrinkled her nose, turning to shout toward the kitchen, “Grandma! They’re doing it again!”

  Laughing guiltily, Fran and Jonathan let go of one another, stepping just far enough apart that Alice couldn’t accuse them of “doing” anything. After a pause, Fran reached over and retrieved her hat from Jonathan’s head. “What’ve you got there, puss?” she asked.

  Alice solemnly held up her sack. “S’for tricks and treats.”

  “It certainly is,” Jonathan said. Enid had taken an old pillowcase from the rag bag, patched the holes, and covered the stains with orange and green felt pumpkins and black felt bats. It would have been an elegant piece of work even without the protective white-on-white runes he could barely make out stitched around the top. “I’m sure you’ll be able to collect a great deal of candy in there.”

  Alice beamed.

  “Guess we’re ready to go, then,” Fran said, jamming her hat back down on her own head. “Come on, Ally, let’s make tracks.”

  “Are you quite sure you don’t want me to accompany you?” Jonathan asked. He sounded almost plaintive, and for a moment, Fran wavered. They rarely got to do much together as a family outside the house; what with his job at the library, Alice’s school, and the local cryptid population, there just wasn’t time. And yet…

  As long as it had been since the three of them had done anything together, it had been even longer since she’d been able to spend a night with her daughter. Alice was getting older every day, and Fran was starting to fear that one day she’d blink and her little girl would be getting married and moving off to start her own life, leaving Fran wondering where her baby’s childhood went.

  “Sorry, darlin’, but this is mother and daughter time,” Fran said firmly, and took Alice’s hand. Alice beamed, the pillowcase dangling by her side as she leaned against her mother’s leg. “We’ll be back after supper. Alice, tell your daddy good-bye.”

  “Bye, Daddy,” Alice dutifully repeated.

  “Have fun, Alice,” Jonathan said. He bent to kiss her forehead before straightening, looking from his wife to his daughter, and saying, “The two of you be careful out there.”

  Alice wasn’t sure why her mother laughed so loud when he said that, but she giggled along, just because, as Fran led her through the front door, out into the crisp autumn night. Jack-o-lanterns decorated the porch and walkway, and garlands of wheat, aconite, and late-blooming hemlock hung over every window. The air smelled like apple cider and distant bonfires.

  “Ready for Halloween, puss?” Fran asked, and Alice, still giggling, hauled her down the steps, racing toward the night.

  *

  Fran brought their impromptu parade to a brief halt at the end of the driveway, letting go of Alice’s hand in order to rummage under the tarp in the back of Alexander’s truck. Alice took a step backward but made no effort to continue without her; seven years of living at the edge of the woods without getting eaten by any o
f the many things that thought little girls tasted good had taught her that obeying parental authority was usually a smart idea, while wandering away into the dark was a good way to get your picture in the newspaper.

  “Just a second,” Fran said, and rolled the tarp back further, pulling a large canvas duffle bag out of the back of the truck. Slinging it over her shoulder, she turned to offer her hand to Alice. “All right, Ally. We’re ready to go.”

  “What’s in the bag, Mama?” Alice asked, taking her hand.

  Fran hesitated. “Well, sweetheart, you know how you want to fill your bag with treats?” Alice nodded gravely. Fran smiled. “My bag is full of tricks.”

  “We balance!” said Alice, sounding delighted.

  “That’s right,” Fran said. “We do. Come on; the night is short, and there’s a lot of candy to be hunted down.” They started down the driveway, Alice happily babbling every step of the way about all the candy she was going to collect, all the costumes they were going to see, and how her costume was definitely the best, because her costume came with guns, which meant she could beat all the monster costumes, if she had to.

  Fran chuckled under her breath as she listened to Alice chatter. Jonathan might make noises about raising her to be a proper young lady, one who’d be more interested in marriage and keeping house than taxidermy and the proper methods of killing a werewolf, but you only needed to listen to her for a minute to know that it was already a lost cause. Maybe he’d been hoping for a lady; what they got was a Healy, and Fran, frankly, wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  The Healy house was reasonably isolated—by design, according to Enid; they’d purposefully purchased the most out-of-the-way farmhouse they could find that was still inside the town limits, to minimize the risk from nosy neighbors—and they had to trudge most of the way down the road before they started seeing houses with their lights on, porches marked by the traditional Halloween jack-o-lanterns.

  Alice hung back as they reached the first house, suddenly shy. “Go on, goose,” said Fran, planting a hand between her daughter’s shoulders and shoving lightly. “You don’t take risks, you don’t get treats. I’ll wait right here until you get back.”

  Alice gave her a wary look. “You promise?”

  “I double-promise. Now go on, scoot.”

  Still looking somewhat dubious, Alice nodded and went trotting down the gravel driveway to the front door, where two ghosts, a stripy cat, and a football player were already gathered, waiting for their rewards.

  Fran crossed her arms, and smiled, watching Alice’s braids bobbing up and down as she bounced in place, pillowcase held out at arm’s length. They grew up so fast. It really did seem like only a few weeks ago that she was risking Jonathan’s wrath by carting a teething infant with her to see the lake monsters, and now…

  They just grew up so damn fast.

  A needle of regret lanced through her heart. Daniel would never grow up, would always be three years old and lost. Alice was her second chance. She’d be damned before she’d waste a moment of it.

  “Mama! I got a popcorn ball! Mama, Missus Walters gave me a popcorn ball!” Alice practically flew back down the driveway, feet sending up small sprays of gravel. “A real popcorn ball!” From the amazed delight in her eyes, it would seem that a “real popcorn ball” was somewhere between the Holy Grail and the Arc of the Covenant in the holy reliquary of little girls.

  “Well, congratulations,” said Fran, shaking off her brief melancholy before reclaiming Alice’s hand and starting to walk toward the next house along the way. “Will you be keeping it for yourself, or sharing it with the mice?”

  Alice’s eyes went wide. Not quite quickly enough to hide the guilty expression that flashed across her face. “Mice, Mama?”

  “Mice. The ones you’ve got hiding at the bottom of your pillowcase.” Fran leaned forward, calling into Alice’s sack, “Y’all all right down there?”

  “Hail Priestess!” shouted a small, squeaky chorus of voices from the bottom of the bag.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Fran said, straightening.

  Alice was staring at her like she’d just performed a miracle even more astonishing than the popcorn ball. “How did you know?” she asked, sounding awed.

  “You didn’t have any candy in your bag before, but you were obviously carrying something,” replied Fran. “Out of all the things you’d smuggle out of the house, about the only thing you wouldn’t have shown me already s’the mice.”

  “Hail the wisdom of the Violent Priestess!” exalted the mice. Alice giggled.

  The Aeslin mice were just another part of life with the Healys, one Fran had found surprisingly easy to get used to, once she got past the idea of talking cryptid mice who worshipped them all as somehow connected to the divine. They were actually cute, in their tiny, constantly worshipful way. The trouble was that they were also damned annoying.

  Frances bent again to open Alice’s trick-or-treat bag, looking down at the small cluster of mice gathered at the bottom. “Now, I’m not going to insist that we turn around and take y’all straight home,” she said, “but I’ve got a few simple rules I need you to obey. There will be no hailing, no hymns, no shouting in exultation, and absolutely no leaving the bag under any circumstances. Do you understand me? I don’t mind you coming along for the ride, but I will happily feed you to the biggest, meanest cat I can find if you don’t behave yourselves.”

  “Yes, Priestess,” said the mice, meekly.

  “Just so we understand each other,” said Fran, letting go of the bag. “Damn mice.”

  Wide-eyed and shocked, Alice scolded, “No swearing!”

  “Sweetheart, when you’re grown up and have to deal with stowaway mice, you have my permission to swear at them just like I do.” Fran jammed her hat back onto her head. “Come on, now. We’re almost to Main, and we want to get to the big houses before all the good candy’s gone.”

  Fran had possessed a slight ulterior motive in taking Alice toward Main, rather than up to Elm. Both streets connected to Central, which cut through the center of town and would, most importantly, take them past the elementary school, where there would be flocks of small children and the area would be as absolutely safe as anyplace in Buckley could possibly be after the sun went down. Heading for Main, however, also meant passing the intersection with Old Logger’s Road, and while Fran would never have taken Alice there to trick-or-treat, well…

  She had reason to believe they might wind up meeting someone down there, what with it being Halloween and all.

  The sky stayed mercifully clear as they walked, with Alice racing from house to house, and back to Fran’s side for the spaces in between, her pillowcase slowly growing in mass as she filled it with candy. Her energy, in the way of very small children faced with the opportunity to stay out late and acquire potentially limitless amounts of sugar, seemed to be unending. Fran followed at a more sedate pace, content as long as she could keep the pale flash of Alice’s braids in sight, and for her part, Alice seemed to understand that getting more than a house or two ahead of her mother was a bad idea.

  Fran was standing by the fence at the Winslow place, watching Alice jockey for position in a swarm of bedsheet ghosts and wedding-dress princesses, when she started to feel like something was watching her. She turned to scan the sidewalk. The street was far from empty; not only were there scattered parents waiting for their own small monsters to return with their spoils, there were also roving bands of older trick-or-treaters, children between eight and thirteen, walking down the road in either direction. None of them seemed to be paying her any particular degree of attention. She was just another Halloween escort, as common as mud on a night like this.

  But they were near the intersection with Old Logger’s Road. Looking steadfastly back toward the house, where Alice was now at the front of the throng, Frances said, “You can come out now, Mary.”

  There was a long pause. Then, behind her, a voice said, “How’d you know I was there
?”

  “You were watching me, but I couldn’t hear anybody moving in the direction the watching was coming from,” said Fran, beginning to rummage through her bag. “That meant it was either something dead or something dangerous. I figured it was worth the wager.”

  “Oh,” said Mary, sounding mystified.

  “All the books said the ghosts would be out and about on Halloween, which makes a measure of sense, this being the night when the walls between the worlds get even thinner than they usually are around here. So I thought we might run into you.” Fran continued to rummage. “We’ve missed you. There’s always a place for you with us.”

  “I know,” said Mary. “I just…I needed to learn some more about what I am now. You know how it is.”

  “I don’t really, but I reckon I will one day.” Fran stopped rummaging, pulling out a red velvet cape with a hood lined in brown rabbit fur. She turned to hold it out to Mary—Christ, Mary Dunlavy, who still looked exactly like she had the first time she came to sit for Alice, sweet sixteen, with her long white hair and those mooncalf eyes that seemed too big for her face, and she’d been so young, so young when she crashed and burned and everything changed forever—as she asked, “Would you like a costume?”

  Mary grinned, her expression of delight mixed with relief as she reached out to take the cape from Fran. Her clothing warped as she slung the red velvet around her shoulders, her blue capris and white blouse becoming a red dress that fell past her knees. Fran raised her eyebrows.

  “That’s a new trick for you,” she said.

  “I’ve been learning about all the things being dead lets me do,” said Mary. “My clothes just look like I want them to.”

  “It’s a nice trick,” said Fran. “I talked to Alexander, an’ he said that since you’re a road ghost, even if you’re not a hitchhiker, you can probably get some extra substance out of a borrowed coat. Sympathetic magic, an’ all that. I don’t really understand it, but I guess I don’t need to.” She paused before adding, in an unconsciously mothering tone, “You looked cold.”