Joe and Audrey reached 57 Oracle Road. A skeletal fist punched through the center of the teardrop-shaped gate, its index finger curling upwards. A jack-o’-lantern filled with orange and black sweets hung from the finger. Above it, a cardboard sign read: Help Yourself.

“Let’s help ourselves,” Audrey said.

Joe nodded.

He chose a black sweet and dropped it in his pillowcase. Eleven-year-old Audrey had to stand on her toes to reach the lantern. Joe didn’t help her because the sign said to help yourself.

Clutching an orange sweet, Audrey hesitated. “The lantern should be empty by now.”

“What do you mean?”

“If everyone took as many sweets as they wanted, the lantern would run out of sweets immediately. But it’s seven twenty, and the lantern is still full.”

“Maybe we’re the first visitors,” Joe said. “Maybe he just refilled it.”

“He?”

“The owner of the house.”

“She could be a woman.”

“Or a skeleton,” Joe eyed the hand on the gate.

“Where would a skeleton get sweets?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it went trick-or-treating like us. No one would know the difference.”

A row of potted orchids covered the balcony’s moss-patched parapet. Wind chimes in the shape of angelfish weaved through the flowers.

Audrey held a peppermint against the blood moon. “Maybe the reason the lantern is full,” Audrey said, “is that everyone helped themselves.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Sweets are bad for you,” Audrey said. “By avoiding them, you’re helping yourself. Which is what the sign tells you to do.”

Joe said nothing. A bespectacled girl carrying a silver cauldron knocked on the door of the neighbouring house. A black cat sat on her shoulder, wearing a small pointy hat.

“Not everyone obeys a cardboard sign,” Joe said. “Not when they don’t know anything about the person writing it.”

“Maybe they rang the doorbell and talked to the writer.”

“Should we do that?”

Audrey nodded.

Joe knocked on the gate and the left half swung inward.

The owner of the house wore a green sequined costume. Glass bells dangled from the tips of their claws. A bucket-sized snout carried reptilian eyes.

“Did you write this sign?” Audrey asked.

“Yes,” the dragon said.

“Can it be trusted?”

“I have no idea. I wrote it, so I wouldn’t trust it.”

“Why not?”

The dragon shrugged. “If I believed everything I wrote, I’d tell myself lies.”

“What kind of lies?” Joe asked.

“Every day is Halloween,” the dragon said. “My children are still alive.”

A breeze ruffled the scales on the dragon’s body. It gazed into the distance.

“We’ll visit you,” Audrey blurted out, turning to her brother. “Won’t we, Joe?”

He nodded. “We will. And to do that, we have to stay alive.”

“Stay alive?” The dragon cocked its head.

“We’re not sure what to do about the sign,” Joe said. “If we obey it, something bad might happen to us. If we defy it, something worse might happen. So I’ll obey the sign and Audrey will defy it. That way, if one of us gets cursed, the other one can still visit you.”

The dragon brought its paws together. “How could anything go wrong?”

Joe grabbed four fistfuls of sweets and dropped them in his pillowcase. “I’ve helped myself. Your turn, Audrey.”

Audrey unhooked the lantern and filled her pillowcase with the remaining candy. “Not helping myself,” she stated. “I’m not helping myself.”

The dragon laughed. “Let me know how they taste.”

“As soon as possible,” Audrey promised. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“You’re going to finish the sweets by tomorrow?”

“Sure, as long as they’re not licorice.”

“After you eat five sweets, the others transform into liquorice,” the dragon said. “You have to wait twenty-four hours for them to turn back into toffees.”

“Oh.”

Joe coughed. “We should be going. Mom told us to be back by eight.”

“Of course,” the dragon said. “Happy Halloween.”

“You too,” Joe said. “And thank you.”

“Thank you,” Audrey echoed. 

Toting their pillowcases, the children went home.

Ryan Tan studies English Literature at the National University of Singapore. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Straylight, Grimdark, Versification, Altered Reality, and The 13 Days of Christmas.