When you're young, people always expect you to know things. And if you don't, they insist on telling you, whether you want to be told or not. Resisting that compulsion isn't easy, either for the teller or the told, though the told can always shut their ears or switch off their memory. But sometimes, when they do that, they miss something that they didn't think was important for them, but is just about to become so. So maybe it's a good thing that you can't really switch off your underlying memory ' it's just that most people never bother to find out how to access it, because it's not something you can do deliberately. It's like seeing something out of the corner of your eye. If you try, you can't. But if you look straight ahead with enough concentration, then you can.

Ella was always being told things that she didn't think she needed to know ' or not at that particular moment, anyway. One was how to tell the time. Big hands, little hands ' who cared? When it was time to do something, a big person would say. And even if you knew it was time and could prove it, they still said, 'Not yet, dear'� or 'In a little while'� or, if they were very old, 'Presently'�, which meant 'not for ages and ages and ages."

Her granddad kept on saying that. He used it to stop her going out to play when he wanted to tell her all about his mother and father, and wanted to show her pictures of the way the village used to be in the old, old, old days. Well, Ella didn't want to look at those pictures. She didn't want to see the cottage her granddad been born in, with the front door that had a big ring in the middle of it as a knocker, and the two willow trees at the gate ' partly because it had been torn down and new houses built on the land that had belonged to it, and that was a bit sad, even if the house her grandparents lived in now was one of those houses, and a lot drier and warmer than the old one. She didn't want to see her great-grandfather in his stripy waistcoat with his silver watch chain and his big fat pocket-watch like an onion ' of course, she remembered about these things even if she didn't want to, and she'd seen the pocket-watch, because it was her grand-dad's now, and he was always pulling it out to see the time, or to trick her into telling the time, but she wasn't fooled, and what she wanted to do was go round the back of the house to the garages, and play with the other children, especially the ones with big shiny bikes that were slightly too large for her.

The children were one of the good things about staying in the village. There were'� ooh, more than a handful of them, more than two handfuls of them, more than ten, that is, and their parents would definitely have said they were a handful, but Ella wouldn't have known what that meant, because her parents and her grandparents didn't use that phrase (not in her hearing, anyway), and she didn't really see why people needed to count beyond ten when they only had ten fingers to count with'�

The bad thing about being in the village was missing her parents, though she knew it wouldn't be for ever, but it was a pity that it was Hallowe'en, because her mum always carved wonderful pumpkin heads, and her dad always told wonderful stories, even if her mum said they were too scary. They sat around the table with only candles to light the room, and shone torches up under their faces and tried to think of ways to frighten each other, and it was all great fun, because it wasn't really scary.

She couldn't see her granddad or her grandma dressing up in a sheet and going woo-woo! Come to think of it, they were scary enough in real life anyway, with all their rules about eating and talking and watching television, and they didn't even have a computer! And the television was so tiny!

So, she thought it was a very good thing when Angela, who was eight, asked her whether she was going to come trick-or-treating, because she'd heard about that, but never done it. Firstly, because they lived in the big city, and it wasn't safe to go out at night on your own without a big person, and secondly because it was more fun to stay at home with mum and dad than go out in the cold and dark. But staying at home with granddad and grandma was a different matter entirely.

'Don't worry,'� said Angela, 'all the kids do it round here, there's a big mob of us, thirteen or fourteen in all, and a couple of our mums tag along to make sure we're all right and carry the big boxes of sweets we get given. I'll get my mum to ask your grandma, and it'll be fine.'�

And she did. And it was. Oh, there was a bit of a 'discussion'� about it ' grandparents always like 'discussions'� ' but Ella reassured them that she 'always did that kind of thing at home'�, and her grandma told her granddad that her daughter (by which she meant Ella's mum) could really do without being pestered about that kind of thing just at present, and Angela's mum seemed such an eager and businesslike kind of person that they agreed. Two other mums were going along, and after the kids had done the rounds of the little estate they'd split up into smaller groups and go back for apple-bobbing and sparklers and party games, and then be dropped back home in due time.

Ella's grandparents were really quite relieved to be freed of responsibility for her, especially as Angela's mum explained that although it was called 'Trick or treat'� it was actually all treat and no trick ' they knew who they were calling on, and the people all had sweets ready to hand out, and if they'd forgotten, or weren't at home, the worst that happened was that the kids sang a song about people who didn't give sweets not being sweet, and that was that.

'It seems the village may have changed for the better,'� said Ella's grandma. 'It was a lot rougher when I was a girl here.'�

'Nonsense,'� said Ella's granddad.

'You were a boy,'� said Ella's grandma. 'I wasn't altogether happy when you said you wanted to retire here'�'�

'It's where our roots are,'� said Ella's granddad, and there might have been another 'discussion'�, but just at that moment the doorbell rang, and it was Angela, in a big white sheet, and several other children, also in sheets, except for a little lad with thick glasses in a luminous skeleton body-stocking, who couldn't wear a sheet because it would have made his spectacles mist up inside.

'Mind the road!'� said grandma. 'Don't forget poor little Jemma!'� Well, that was a waste of time, because poor little Jemma had been knocked down seven years ago, and Ella couldn't have known her, and granddad realised that, so he said, 'Remember poor Patch!'� and that was better, because Ella had played with Patch, a little Jack Russell who was always digging his way out of his garden, and had been very upset to hear about what the big grain lorry had done to him last autumn.

So, off they all went, giggling in a gaggle, up the first garden-path, knock-knock, laughter, sweets thrown out in handfuls, door closed, mums with torches helping the kids closest to pick the foil-wrapped glinting goodies out of the flower-beds and off the muddy lawn. Then away again, down the road, and through the cut between the houses that must once have been an old footpath through the fields.

Ella trod on her sheet, and tripped and stumbled and nearly fell over, and by the time she had recovered herself, in the pitch darkness of the cut, the others were out of sight (no street lamps, remember! That was the nice thing about the country ' none of those awful yellow lights that made everybody look as though they were walking corpses! And you could see the stars properly, too!).

She looked across the expanse of The Green, which seemed so much bigger in the dark than it did in daylight, and thought she could see a white shape and ran towards it ' there were others, further away, she couldn't tell how many, but this one was near, so she called out, 'Wait for me!'� and it turned its blank white sheet of a face with two hollow eye-holes towards her and stood still with its hand out, and she caught up and took it.

The hand was ever so cold. That was surprising, because the autumn had been remarkably mild that year, no frosts yet, and Ella had been sweating a little under her sheet, and regretting that grandma had made her put on her sleeveless woolly, but when she touched the hand she didn't regret it at all.

'Come this way!'� said the person in the sheet, and gripped her hand hard, which made her feel even colder, and pulled her a bit roughly, so that her feet had trouble catching up, back the way she had come.

'We've been there!'� she said, trying to pull her hand away, but without any effect, except for a chill creeping up her arm.

'No, you haven't,'� said the person under the sheet, and they seemed to take a firmer grip still, which moved Ella along despite her resistance.

All at once, they were in front of an old wooden garden-gate which creaked open as the person in the sheet touched it, and they went in between two tall trees, though it was too dark for Ella to see what kind of trees they were.

Ella was expecting to hear the challenge of 'Trick or Treat?'�, but the front door opened with a long, low creak before they reached it, and there was no need for the person in the sheet to knock on it with the big round ring in the middle. She found herself in a low, cramped room, with smoky beams, that seemed filled with people in white sheets. They had all been moving and talking, but as the door opened noise and movement stopped completely and every one of them turned to look at the new arrival. The door closed behind her with a very final kind of sound, and the person in the sheet beside her said, 'I've found a thirteenth.'�

'Good,'� said a gruff man's voice. 'It's been a while since we did.'�

'It was me,'� said a little girl's voice that came from one of the sheets by the fireplace. As she spoke, Ella thought she could hear a shrill little bark, and fancied she could see the shadow of a tiny dog against the girl's white sheet.

'So it was,'� said the man, 'so it was. And your coming let old Jonas move on.'�

'Move on to where?'� said the little girl, her sheet flapping anxiously.

'Never you mind,'� said the man, 'it'll be a while before you get the chance.'�

'I know,'� said the girl, 'but it's your turn next, isn't it?'�

'It might be,'� said the man, 'it might be ' we shall have to wait and see.'�

'At midnight,'� said the person in the sheet beside Ella.

'Yes,'� said the man, 'at midnight, not before, with all of us together ' ALL of us.'�

And he looked straight at Ella. Actually, Ella felt he was looking right through her, or maybe at something inside her that she knew he couldn't possibly see.

'Put her in the back room till we're ready,'� said the man, and the person in the sheet took her hand in his icy grip and made her walk with him through a narrow passageway into the back room, where he left her with the words, 'Stay here.'�

Perhaps the people in the main room, all ' eleven of them, or was it twelve? ' had been 'out of the world'� too long to remember the way little girls really behaved ' in any case, staying there was the last thing Ella intended to do. To begin with, she had seen something of great interest in the narrow passageway. Actually, she had heard it first: the tick of a clock. She sneaked back to look at it in the light that spilled from the dim candles and dying fire in the main room. It looked awfully familiar ' but whether it was the same one or not, it had given her an idea.

As quietly as she could, she opened the front of it, a big circle of glass held in a tarnished brass frame, so that she could put her little hand directly on its big one, and then she began pushing it gently round from right to left, till it had made a whole circle. As in the rest of life, where the big moved, the small had to follow.

Only just in time! she thought, for now the clock said that it was a quarter to eleven, and whatever she pretended to other people, she knew that much, though she could not imagine where all the extra hours had gone since she had stepped out of her grandparents' front door much, much earlier that evening.

And her grandparents, at that very moment, were wondering what had happened to her, and beginning to become very concerned. At first, they had rung Angela's mum, but she had said she was sure Ella must have gone home with Tracey's mum, and Tracey's mum was on the phone, or maybe her sister, Beth was on the computer, in some chat-room with a boy, and for some reason neither grandparent had wanted to venture out into the dark, so they had to wait till the phone-line was free again, and then Tracey's mum was sure that Ella had gone home with Kevin's mum, and they weren't answering, because they'd all gone round to the Watsons, and it took a lot more phone calls to establish that fact, but only one to discover that Ella wasn't there either, then several more phone-calls, and the interrogation of several sleepy kids to establish that the last time anyone had seen Ella was within a few yards of her own front door at the beginning of the evening, when she'd gone off with some kid in a white sheet that no one had ever seen before'�

Given the circumstances, the grandparents wanted to have a word with Ella's parents before they phoned the police, just in case she'd done this kind of thing before, or there was some simple explanation, but they had a very good reason for not wanting to worry them at this precise moment, so they just waited and hoped and hoped and waited'�

And that was exactly what Ella was doing, as she listened to the conversation in the main room.

'What's the time?'� asked the man with the gruff voice.

'Haven't you got a watch?'� queried the person in the sheet who'd led her to the house.

'Of course ' it's in my waistcoat pocket, but I can't get at it for this ludicrous sheet ' puzzles me why we have to wear them at all ' '�

'It's so nobody knows what we really are,'� said the little girl by the fireplace.

'It isn't the way we did it in the old days, let me tell you!'� said the man. And just then Ella was aware of the flapping of a sheet. The person who had brought her to the house was coming to look at the clock. And it had stopped ticking! She must have knocked it when she changed the time! That would give everything away, ruin her trick! Her trick! That wasn't the kind of trick she had expected to have to play tonight, for sure! Swiftly, she opened the little glass door at the bottom and gave the motionless pendulum a gentle push, to start it into life. And it swung, and kept swinging. She breathed again, and darted away into the far corner of the back room, just as the voice said, 'Five to eleven!'�

'It can't be!'� said the voice of the gruff man. And it wasn't, because just at that moment there came an enormous clap of thunder and the roaring of an almighty wind, and the people in the room were whisked about and spun around by it as if they were withered brown leaves in an autumn gale, and the smoky beams vanished, and the starry sky was visible where the roof should have been, and the sheets they had been wearing fluttered down to become dustsheets on the furniture, and then the furniture vanished and the walls of the room faded, and the front door wasn't there any more, and the two dark trees became no more than shadows, and everything was completely silent, except for the shrill barking of a little dog, somewhere high in the air, and then that, too, was no more, and Ella found herself standing in the middle of the road, opposite her grandparents' front door, and she ran up their garden path and knocked frantically, and her grandma opened the door one-handed, because she was on the telephone, and the joy on her grandma's face (which Ella, to tell the truth, had never seen there before) became twice as great, and she hugged Ella and screamed at her not 'Where on earth have you been?'� which was what Ella expected, but 'You've got a little sister, you've got a little sister!'� and she thrust the receiver into Ella's hand and dragged her protesting husband away into the kitchen, so that Ella could be alone to talk to her Dad.

And all through that conversation (and through the explanations afterwards, which had to follow, but which we don't need to worry about) Ella's one thought was: I had a trick AND a treat! I had a trick AND a treat!

30.x.2005, 11.50-13.30, 14.50-15.40

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...