Melissa went to open the door with a smile, a big bowl of candy in one hand. She always loved Halloween. The Trick-or-Treaters were so cute, and she loved making children happy. She was wearing a witch costume, but she had made sure it wasn’t a scary one. No mask or strange makeup or long, sharp fingernails or anything. She wouldn’t want to scare the little kids, after all. When the door opened, she saw a small child of maybe six or seven years old wearing a very strange costume. It was one of those big bulky felt ones, like the more elaborate pumpkin costumes, but instead of a big orange pumpkin it was something beige and pointy and tapered. Like a fat beige carrot. The child also had a beige cap with big green leaves on it. Melissa assumed it was some sort of root vegetable, though she couldn’t tell what kind. More concerning was the fact that the child was all by themself. Melissa didn’t really approve of any children going around Trick-or-Treating unattended, and certainly not ones this young. Still, she couldn’t exactly control how other people raised their kids, and she wasn’t going to ruin this child’s Halloween by making a big fuss of it. “Trickle Treacle.” The child said in a sweet but somehow almost sticky-sounding voice. Melissa couldn’t help but wonder if they had a cold or something. “Hi honey! Are you out Trick-or-Treating all by yourself?” “Trickle Treacle.” The child replied, still sounding a bit sticky. “Right, right. Let’s see what we’ve got for a cutie like you. Do you like chocolate? I have lots of chocolate!” “Trickle Treacle.” The child said again. Melissa hesitated. The child’s voice had changed, just a little. It seemed… Thicker. She found herself looking into the child’s dark eyes, the amber colour of the irises so dark it was almost black. “Trickle Treacle.” The words were almost a burble at this point. “Are you all right? Is something wrong, honey?” “Trickle… Treacle…” Little dribbles of a thick, dark-brown liquid began to trickle from the corners of the child’s mouth. Without thinking, Melissa reached forward to wipe away the brown substance. The sticky liquid clung to her finger, slowly seeping down the length of it. But the droplet on her fingertip wasn’t getting any smaller. It was almost as though the strange liquid was growing across her skin rather than simply trickling down it. By now, the thick liquid was pouring from the child’s mouth, covering the front of their costume in a dark, sticky mess. Melissa let out a shocked whimper and frantically tried to wipe her finger clean against the wall. But no matter how much of the dark substance she smeared over the wall, her finger was still covered in the same amount of sticky mess. In fact, the smears on the wallpaper seemed to be expanding, turning into huge, dark, sticky blotches. In desperation, Melissa tried to wipe the substance away against the cloth of her costume, but no matter how much she rubbed and scraped, it just wouldn’t come off. And now it was spreading all over her clothes. The moment she stopped trying to wipe her finger, it started coating her whole hand, then her arm. The air filled with a cloying sweet smell as her whole body was gradually covered in the dark, sweet, sticky mess. Looking back at the child, Melissa realized that the dark liquid was pouring out of them, gushing from their mouth, their nose, even their eyes. The entire body of the child was absolutely covered in the dark, sweet substance. Looking up, the child burbled out two words between hacking up gobs of dark amber fluid. “Tri… ckle… Trea… cle…” Melissa screamed, but as she did so the fluid finally reached her mouth and began pouring down her throat. She hacked and coughed as the dark, overpowering sweetness suffused all her senses, filling her mouth and pouring from her nose as she retched up big gobs of dark, choking fluid. Before long, her consciousness faded and she collapsed to the floor with a dull, sticky thud. The child regarded Melissa with a faint smile before turning to leave. As they did so, all the treacle vanished from their form as if by magic, leaving their costume perfectly pristine. The mess in Melissa’s foyer stopped growing, and after a few more hacking coughs, Melissa’s breathing returned to normal, though she didn’t wake up. As the child rounded a corner and stepped into an alley, another creature appeared next to it. This creature was pitch-black, and its shape seemed no more substantial than smoke, shifting and changing with every step it took. Once they were some ways into the alley, the amorphous apparition spoke in a voice like rusty hinges and howling winds. “I have to admit, that was more effective than I had anticipated.” The child grinned, its smile extending to cover most of its face, revealing teeth that were far too many and far too large. “The old fears don’t work like they used to. These people are numb to them. They revel in them. To truly terrify, you need to make sure they don’t understand the rules.” The fear spirit nodded its dark, shapeless head thoughtfully. “There’s something to what you say. Beasts and monsters, murderers and plagues, even the living dead. It’s all old and predictable to the modern human. Perhaps this is better.” The chaos spirit chuckled. “She’s never going to stop being scared. Every year on Halloween, she’s going to lock her door and hide, just in case the treacle child comes back. And nobody will believe her. There’s plenty of people out there who would believe stories about ghosts or zombies or crazed murderers. But a child full of treacle? At best, anyone she tells will think it’s a hoax or an elaborate prank. At worst, they’ll think she went fully mad and covered her entryway in treacle during some kind of psychotic break.” The fear spirit huffed. “Fine. You win this round. But I’ll win next year.” “Sure you will, you old fossil. Sure you will.”