Halloween. The day monsters like me are free to walk among the humans -- like you. The one day of the year a vampire is free to walk up to a human’s door and knock, and be assured an invitation in to party. Until forensic science got popular, vampires welcomed this day for its freely given access to willing victims – all the surviving friends could really say was that “Sue left with a guy in a vampire outfit.” But a few years in to my unlife the council decree came out that while we could go party with humans, we couldn’t kill any human take-out we picked up at one. Above all, vampires must remain legend – which in this highly ID’ed society, wasn’t a cake-walk.

I had been traveling that year, looking over gardens, seeing where the pumpkin patches were. My mates thought I was crazy wasting my time in gardens instead of bars. But years ago, long before I died, I’d been told a story about The Great Pumpkin. I believed that the Great Pumpkin God would arrive at the most “sincere pumpkin patch” and give any child waiting for him there wonderful treasures: his or hers’ heart’s desire. All the candy and presents they could ever want.

My friends and aquaintances knew about my fixation, so every time I spent time in a garden instead of in a bar getting a pint take-out, I was razzed. So not fair. As I asked my friend Harry, “if monsters like us were real, why couldn’t The Great Pumpkin be real too?”

“Hey Linus, are you done doing the audience narrator back-story thing yet?” Harry asked; his voice just a tad impatient. He’s my friend, has been since my turn, but he’s just doesn’t get my obsession. “Not true, I understand obsession; I watch Monk every week on cable,” Harry exclaimed before his own bit of narrating, “Linus is fixated on this story about some fracken Great Pumpkin which he was told about as a human kid. Every year at this time he goes bonkers and feels impelled to sit out the best night of the year – the open closet night – in some “sincere” Pumpkin Patch. I mean, sincere; how the hell can a pumpkin patch be sincere?”

“Hey now, don’t be putting your bad aura around! I think this is finally the one. Finally the place I will meet the Great Pumpkin. Its pumpkins took first at the State Fair; they were, ‘large, firm, and well shaped,” to quote the internet review.”

“Oh, I got it,” he laughed, and I knew I’d be pissed at whatever followed. “How very Freudian; pumpkins as metaphor for breasts?”

“Hey, look where you’re goin’,” a small voice shouted from down around my groin area. I realized I’d nearly walked over a mini-vampire. The fake fangs white under the moonlight and streetlight, and her cape was such a vampire cliché. The fake blood painting a path down her chin was a bit much, as were the long talon-like nails. I mean, don’t the humans think vampires would have discovered manicurists?

Harry’s laugh echoed in my head, and I wished I were better at keeping my thoughts to myself. I could catch his echo of my words riding behind his laughter, “manicurists?”

“Come on Priscilla,” said the gypsy attached to the child’s hand. “We still have five houses on this street to hit, and from what Kasie told me, they’re giving out full size bars, not minis.

“I wouldn’t mind a bite of that mom,” Harry muttered aloud. “She is definitely full-sized, if ya know what I mean? I bet she’d be a screamer.”

“Get your head out of the gutter. The night’s a wastin’,” I told him. “Anyway, she’s type A. You know you hate type A.”

We continued walking together down the sidewalk. It really was a perfect Halloween night, and we are something of connoisseurs of nights. The air was crisp, but not too cold. The moon was full and quite orange. The houses around us had all gone all out for Halloween; lots of hay bales, orange pumpkin leaf-bags, cobwebby trees, and bats hanging from porch roofs or in lit windows. Fun.

Oddly enough, we were the most normal appearing people on the sidewalk. Well, perhaps my favorite disco era shirt was a bit costumy, but it had been a bit loud when it was new, anyway. Now Harry, he was dressed like a pimp. No one would guess we were really vampires.

“We could have gone with the vampire costumes,” he whined in my head, “they are so old-school campy.”

“We wore those costumes last year. Remember last year?”

“How was I to know that that town didn’t celebrate Halloween? And that a human doesn’t dress as an ‘unholy monster’ for a Harvest Celebration?”

I shuddered. I would probably always shudder at that particular set of memories. We’d been lucky to escape un-dead.

We arrived at the last house of the dead-end street. According to my research the garden was around back, and Google Earth told me that the pumpkin patch was at the rear of the garden.

“Are you sure you won’t come wait with me?” I asked, a bit plaintively I’m sure.

“Nope, your obsession is all your own. Are you sure you won’t come to the local and find a pint or two?”

“No, I have to do this. This is the one pre-death habit I can keep. I know you don’t understand, Harry, and I would welcome your company. But I’ve been sitting in Pumpkin Patches on Halloween nights for most of my life. Oh, sure I lost faith for a few of my teenage years – what do teenagers believe in, after all – but for the last twenty-years, since my death, I’ve been searching for the ‘sincere’ pumpkin patch so I can meet the Great Pumpkin at last.”

With a shake of his head and a dismissive gesture, Harry turned away. “See you at the house later then Dude. Good luck with the Great Pumpkin!”

Alone again on Halloween I made my way around the darkened house. The porch light was off, meaning no trick-or-treaters should ring the bell, and I could hear the lonely snuffling of a dog inside. I wasn’t near enough to the house for the dog to get my scent or to sense my presence, so it wouldn’t howl its primal warning to sleeping owners.

As I padded silently around the house and through the garden I noted the Pumpkin Patch was lit. There were candles inside paper bags and small votives hanging from nearby trees. Odd, I thought. Then as the breeze shifted and I was suddenly downwind of the Patch, I could smell the sweet welcoming scent of warm blood on the air: ‘A’ positive; my favorite type. There was a woman sitting on a garden stool with a bottle leaning against the pumpkin closest to her. I could smell the liquor in the air. Her blood would taste of its residue. Yum. I could get full and get drunk at the same time. Don’t you love it when multi-tasking works out?

“Linus?” It was almost a whisper of the breeze it was so soft.

What?

“Linus?” the whisper came again. Then she stopped and lifted her glass to look at it accusingly. “Gotta be the liquor,” she muttered. “My sweet Baboo died twenty years ago…” she reminded herself softly.

After searching the surrounding darkness for slayer-types in waiting, I moved toward her cautiously. This had all the marks of a classic setup. Female victim alone in a dark place surrounded by an empty lot filled with trees and shrubs. Check. Victim sort of drunk – or not quite sane – check. Victim sporting the vampire’s favorite blood-type. Again check. But I didn’t spot even the smallest movement in the surrounding area, and I was down-wind of the lot; there was no blood-smell.

I stopped all movement when she muttered “my sweet Baboo.” Even my blood felt frozen in place. There was only one girl who had ever called me that. Sally Brown. She of the sweet disposition and the wavy blond hair. The most persistent girl I’d ever met; one who just wouldn’t take no – for no. My childhood best friend’s sister.

For the space of one of those odd stop-time moments they show on television I flashed back to the last time I’d been in a pumpkin patch with Sally. The rest of our friends had gone trick-or-treating and then on to a party. I’d talked Sally into sitting in the pumpkin patch with me instead of going with them. We’d spent most of the night just chatting and waiting for the arrival of The Great Pumpkin. He’d never come; I’d thought. It was only years later that I figured out that he really had; he’d given me the only thing I really wanted or needed: a girl who loved me.

But we’d been young, and I’d still thought candy and presents more important than faithfulness and love. Sally had too. When the night segued into false dawn she’d stalked off in disappointment. Our relationship really changed after that. After that night I’d felt she’d called me her “sweet Baboo” only out of habit.

The last time I’d seen her was twenty-years ago when I’d stopped by to see Charlie before shipping out, dying, and becoming undead.

She’d changed. She’d aged, but she’d aged well. But then, maybe I was seeing her through the eyes of remembered affection.

Approaching closer to her, I could see tears ruining her makeup, mascara and eye-liner running small paths down and across her cheeks – where she’d apparently tried to dry them with a tissue. Her lip-stick was still in place – a small miracle of modern technology. She looked lovely.

“Linus?” she quavered; then asked herself, “am I finally insane? Am I seeing things?”

Finally I got up the courage to speak to her. “Sally?” was all I could manage to get out. Yes, I knew I was breaking all the rules, and that by doing so I’d have to make her one of us, or kill her. Vampires must remain a myth, remember?

I reached out and touched her wet cheek. Instead of recoiling, she seemed to welcome the touch. She took my hand between her own shaking hands and held it palm upwards in the wavering candlelight. “You can’t be real. But you feel real…” and her words wandered off unended.

Impulsively I turned my hand over and used our linked hands to lift her into a hug. I was closer than the ‘triangle friend-hug,’ but not as close as the ‘let’s get dirty right here right now’ hug. She was warm in my arms. Amazingly she didn’t pull away. Instead she sighed into it.

The moment was truly timeless. It felt, to me, like eternal must feel to vampires who had un-lived for centuries. But with one of us mortal, the moment had to end. She pulled away first, and lifted her face to mine. She examined my face closely, as if comparing it with one in her memory – she found it unchanged, and it should have changed.

“Who… what are you?” she asked tonelessly, as though uncertain if fear or wonder was the correct response to my face.

“What are you doing here?” I changed the subject.

She allowed the change. “Every Halloween since you died,” and she paused briefly, “I’ve found a pumpkin patch to hold my own memorial for you in. You were always so certain that the Great Pumpkin would come… it must be nice to be so sure of anything…. But it cost me my marriage. My husband just couldn’t handle my yearly obsession with my past. He took my little girl – he’s a lawyer, I didn’t have a chance – and moved away. I’ve made a life for myself, but every year I still keep memorial for you. Someone should remember you….” And again she wandered off, still toneless. She added, “You… you are Linus, aren’t you?”

Unable to stand her tone I pulled her once more to me, and pressed her face into my chest. “Yes Sally,” I told her, “I am Linus. But I also am vampire. I was turned in Vietnam, and we, us vampires, need to remain myth, so I could never contact any of the friends from my past.

“Craig was right,” she muttered against my chest, “I am insane. I am holding so strongly to my own desire that I am living my fantasy. Oh well, might as go all the way if I’m insane,” and she turned her face up to mine and pulled mine down to hers. Our lips collided in a clumsy kiss. I could smell the bourbon on her breath and taste it on her lips.

After an eternity I pulled away from her lips and began kissing other body-parts, with particular emphasis on her delectable neck. She looked pole-axed, but soft when I glanced up from nipping her neck.

“Do you want this?” I asked her. I didn’t elucidate what “this” was, figuring she’d think it was sexual when what I meant was vampirism. I would need her permission to change her, and I wasn’t above tricking her into giving her permission. She’d mourned me all these years; she deserved better than death. “Do you want your ‘sweet Baboo?’” I asked, kissing her most thoroughly.

“Oh, yes…” she moaned into my mouth.

Taking that for permission I pulled her down with me – so she wouldn’t hurt herself falling when I changed her. I again kissed my way down her cheek, past her ear to the spot on her neck that I’d marked before. Swiftly I bit her; she began moaning as the pheromones in my scent and my saliva overpowered her pain sensors. She was moving against me as I drew her blood into myself, and kept pulling until she was almost spent. At that moment I moved to that my throat was against her mouth and swiftly tore my own neck for her to drink from. It hurt like hell. She had no pheromones or saliva to make her sucking pleasurable. But I’d let her go once, decades ago. I could take a bit of pain for her.

I pulled away from her as the pain of the change began in her. It is the natural order that a person must walk through one door in order to get to another. She had to die in order to un-die. But it was a quick process, lasting both an eternity and moments. When it was over, she looked at me …she was now stone cold sober and undead… then pulled me down on her. As Harry would say, she had nice firm large pumpkins. We enjoyed that pumpkin patch until it was far too late, but I’d learned something over the eternity since she’d last stalked alone, disappointed, out of the pumpkin patch. I didn’t let her leave alone. I’d finally gotten what the Great Pumpkin had offered me all those years ago, and so had Sally: companionship, shared beliefs, and love.