The Thief of Always. Clive Barker

only right. This was Hallowe’en, after all, and what was Hallowe’en without a few chills?

      After a few minutes of searching he found a long black coat with a collar he could turn up, which Wendell pronounced very vampiric. Well-satisfied with his choice, he went back to the wall of faces, and his eyes almost immediately alighted upon a mask he hadn’t previously seen, with the pallor and deep sockets of a soul just risen from the tomb. He took it down and put it on. It fitted perfectly.

      ‘What do I look like?’ Harvey asked, turning to face Wendell, who had found an executioner’s mask which fitted him just as well.

      ‘Ugly as sin.’

      ‘Good.’

      THERE WAS A flickering family of pumpkin-heads lined up on the porch when they stepped outside, and the misty air smelt of wood-smoke.

      ‘Where do we go trick-or-treating?’ Harvey wanted to know. ‘Out in the street?’

      ‘No,’ said Wendell, ‘it’s not Hallowe’en out in the real world, remember? We’re going to go round the back of the House.’