/-/

Over the river and through the woods

To grandmother's house we go.

The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

In the white and drifting snow.

Over the river and through the woods

To grandmother's house we go.

It stings the nose and bites the toes

As over the river we go.

The manor was as big as it was dark. The candles hung on the walls flickered as they burned, causing the shadows cast on the dark wooden floorboards to dance. A long red carpet lay at the center of the hallways that seemed to stretch on forever, a winding crimson path at the feet of the ornate statues standing guard to the side. Thick curtains draped limply from the ceiling, barely moving in the stifling air of the manor as they tickled the ground, almost as if they were moments away from collapsing into a lifeless heap of satin over the rich wood. Outside the giant glass windows carved out of the walls, thunder boomed, and lightning flashed, every so often leaving darker shadows that ran deeper into the manor, and the paintings beside them watched below with cold, unfeeling eyes as Hat Kid scurried through the halls, oblivious to it all.

Stupid Snatcher, she thought with a scowl, boots flying over the lush carpet. Even with the red pathway spilled over the ground, her footfalls still gave off a dull thudding sound as she moved forward. Stupid Snatcher and his dumb contracts.

Hat Kid didn't like being demoted from "fashionable and hatted explorer of planets" to "errand girl". Not one bit. But the Snatcher had promised her the timepieces, so she sucked it up and took it in stride.

Now, Hat Kid liked to think of herself as a very nice person. More friends meant more smiles for everyone, so she tried to make as many of them as she could. Even then, she had taken out his trash ("hot garbage", he called the Fire Spirits), unclogged his well (have fun trying to explore the forest when your clothes were sopping wet), and cleared out his toilet (which turned out to be a very smelly and very angry ghost), so she felt like she could be forgiven if she kinda absolutely hated him just a tiny bit. Seriously, was his hobby to make her life smelly and miserable?

Yes. It absolutely was.

I mean, he's such a big fat JERK. So it was probably true.

Annoying purple gummy worm being annoying aside, "snooping around some lady's attic" sounded a lot different from the missions he normally gave to her. Mostly because it didn't involve saving that ghost village from trouble, but at least it didn't involve plumbing, so she wasn't complaining. The last thing she wanted was for people to start calling her "toilet girl", thank you very much.

He'd told her it would be easy, and she believed him. Just like she did those three times before. Running around some giant house sounded it. She should have known he would find a way to make her miserable, and sure enough, not five seconds after she entered the manor, one of his little minions told her that she wasn't allowed to use her hats.

No one had told her about that! The contract hadn't even said that! Of course, when she told that to the minion, he replied that it said that in the "fine" print, and when she did look closer at her contract, she noticed the "You can't use hats on this mission" written by a tiny pen just above her signature. The minion had told her it was something called a "claws", whatever that was.

Stupid Snatcher and his dumb contracts and his dumb claws.

It was this that had her so mad right now. What if she found a really heavy button she needed to push with her ice hat? Or what if she needed to get away from some big scary monster on her scooter? Or what if someone saw her with only a mess of chocolaty-brown hair over her head? The things that could go wrong were endless! He could throw her down a well, but take away her hats and there would be heck to pay!

In the middle of her internal ranting, Hat Kid noticed one of the candles go out from the corner of her eye, and she stopped. Suddenly the hallway felt a lot colder, like that one candle had been keeping the whole room comfortably warm. A chill ran down Hat Kid.

Naturally, she went over to see what was wrong. There didn't seem to be anything weird about it, so maybe a breeze had passed over it and blown it out.

Above the candle, a small trail of smoke writhed its way toward the ceiling, like a hand clawing its way to freedom. It faded before it could get a foot away from the charred string protruding from the wax.

Hat Kid stared at it for a long time, wondering what to do. She spun around to look for anything that could help her, letting her blue eyes drift over the carpet sprawled over the floor, the candles still burning brightly against the frigid night sky, bleak and colorless. When her eyes landed on the statue, they lit up.

In one of the statue's hands was a long stick that looked like the things lamplighters used to light up lamps a long time ago. If it worked for them, maybe she could use it to light up the candle.

Slowly, Hat Kid approached the statue. The statue stared back at her with the empty eye-holes in its helmet. Taking a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, Hat Kid wrapped her small hands around the long wooden stick and tugged.

She didn't expect the whole thing to come crashing down.

Hat Kid yelped as she jumped out of the way. The empty suit of armor crumpled into a pile of metal in front of her with a loud clang that echoed through the halls, and Hat Kid briefly thought about escaping before the servants came running to see what the noise was. She really hoped no one saw that, otherwise people might start calling her "that hatless girl who knocked down a statue".

Although, now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen anyone in the manor at all. For how big the place was, she thought there would be a hundred servants scrambling around to do servant things, but so far, she hadn't seen a single soul. It was almost like the place was abandoned.

Nah, that couldn't be it. The Snatcher had said a lady was living here, and she had to have a million servants that Hat Kid hadn't seen yet. Maybe they were all on lunch break.

Speaking of lunch...

A familiar tang caught her attention, and as she stuck her nose into the air, a sweet scent drifted past her nose. Coming from a door further down the hall, she could smell freshly baked cookies.

If the servants were all on lunch break, then no one would mind if she stole one or two, right?

A smile spread over her face, and she took a step down the hall.

Something crunched under her foot. She looked down. Shards of ice lay shattered beneath her boot.

It was probably something that had gotten inside through the windows. There was a lot of ice outside, after all.

She pushed it to the back of her mind as she crossed the hall. A locked door passed to her right, and Hat Kid made a mental note to investigate it later. She reached the door where the sugary smell was coming from in seconds, and with one last look over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, she slipped inside.

As she shut the door behind her, she took a moment to take in her surroundings. It seemed she had found the manor's kitchen. The floorboards beneath her feet were the same dark wood from the hallway, the cabinets over her head painted in a shade of light green, and as she scanned the room, she found what she was looking for, a tray of cookies sitting on the countertop, on the other side of the room.

Hat Kid was on it in an instant. The countertop was too high for her to reach, but when she stood on her tippy-toes, she could just barely snake an arm over the edge, hooking her fingers around a baked treat. As she pulled the cookie back toward her, she could feel her grin stretch even wider in the anticipation of sinking her teeth into it, of tasting the sugary goodness fill her mouth, when she heard a low creak come from behind her, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the door begin to open.

Someone was here.

Well, here we are again.

I didn't think I'd be back so soon, but then I remembered that Halloween was a thing, so to get into the mood of the holiday, I thought: what better way than to start a scary story?

Anyway, now that I'm here, I plan on seeing this through. Updates will happen every Thursday, so you can look forward to that.

I hope.