Widdershins

The children stood in the graveyard. Music drifted faintly on the chill breeze. Tommy guessed it was coming from the "light party" being held in the school hall. The headmaster (and village priest) had insisted he'd hold it to "stem the unashamed adoption of pagan tradition" that was Halloween.

  Judging by the pointy-hatted silhouettes scurrying about the village it hadn't been as successful as he'd have liked.

Tommy was twelve and had left the school that July. His sister still went there. She was glumly kicking at the stone chippings that marked the path between headstones. The little witch was dressed in an identical outfit to her friend's.

"Tommy I'm cold," she whined, "and so is Bella."

  "Can we go back to your house now Donna?" Bella beseeched, ignoring Tommy as she had done all night.

In their hands the girls clutched small, plastic cauldrons brimming with the night's treats.
To Tommy the pair looked like the twins he'd seen the other night in that film - 'The Shining.'
His obsession with horror was almost a year old and showed no signs of abating. Their mother would have gone crazy had she'd known he'd watched it.

"Don't know where the fascination comes from," she'd tell people.

The irony was that the headmaster himself had stoked his interests by belittling the superstitions native to their Yorkshire home. There'd been no 'light party' last year but the man's tirade against "the heathen beliefs" had lit up young Tommy's imagination.
The headmaster further compounded the boy's fascination by punishing him for daring to ask how believing a man could walk on water and rise from the grave were any different?

"You've dragged me halfway round the village so now you'll do this one thing for me!" Tommy warned.

"We're tired!" the girls wailed in unison, more like twins than ever.

  Tommy shot Donna a withering glance. She crumpled.

  "Okay," she said, stretching out the vowels, "but does it have to be nine times?"

"Nine times widdershins," replied Tommy gleefully. He loved how the word formed in his mouth.

"And then we'll see some fairies?" she asked hopefully.

"If you do it right."

Donna grabbed hold of Bella's free hand. Slowly, they started a half-hearted skip down the path.

"No!" shouted Tommy, "the other way. Widdershins means anti-clockwise! "

The girls turned on their heels and skipped off in the other direction, a bright moon guiding the way.

He leant back on a frosted gravestone as the girls made their first circuit. The music sounded closer now, something with strings. The girls must have heard it too as their skip became a dance. They kept time to the music.

As it picked up speed, so too did they.
They'd completed six laps in no time.

Tommy began to feel light headed. The strange music filling his thoughts. He tried to focus on the girls but they were a blur of motion. He could just make out their laughter above the notes that were building to a crescendo...

When he came round Tommy could just see the girls heading towards the cemetery gates.
  "Donna, I'm scared," he heard Bella say.
  "It's just a trick," Donna replied, but sounded unconvinced. "Tommy is a meany."

The moon was still bright in the cloudless sky. How could they have missed him?
  He was lying in the damp grass next to the gravestone.

He sensed movement behind it.

Briefly, he wondered if the girls had doubled back, the joke being on him instead?

No.

The small creatures that poured from behind the stone and lunged for him were no small girls. Nor were they the fairies those girls may have imagined.
These fairies had teeth.
They'd played their trick and now he was the treat.
The music started up again.

Tommy screamed.