Author's Note:

Well, for better or for worse, here is my contribution to Regina56's Halloween prompt, and is rightly dedicated to her.

I'm still not completely sure if it wants to be scare or spoof!

Please consider anything in italics, except when otherwise indicated or when clearly meant as emphasis, to be taken from Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', from which I quote liberally and lovingly.

With regards to timeline, I am setting this, as with other one-shots, during 'Anne of Avonlea', the October after Anne's and Gilbert's second year of teaching resumes.

Happy Halloween!

MrsVonTrapp x

Doth Walk in Fear and Dread:

An Avonlea Halloween

A tall, slim-hipped boy-man, not long having farewelled nineteen, with broad shoulders, roguish hazel eyes and a mop of brown hair all his friends acknowledged to be irreversibly curly, stared dejectedly at the Barry's bonfire, his thoughts appropriately dark and despondent on yet another All Hallows' Eve.

The curl of smoke escaping the flames rose up as a white tendril; a ghostly ladder to the netherworld of blackness above, the waning full moon as much of a pale apparition as the figure seated just beyond him. The fire created shadows that merrily waltzed across her expressive face, rising and falling, as her melodious voice, part siren and part storyteller, danced around her dramatically pathetic recount of a lovelorn creature, doomed to roam the earth as solitary spectre, shunned by all and forever searching for love and companionship. It was a retelling of Frankenstein by way of Poe, and yet still wholly Anne.

"I'm sure I could just read the book myself if I wanted to," Josie could always be counted on to burst any bubble, and a particular pointed chin came up in ready defiance, those depthless grey eyes greening with the challenge.

"And I'm sure you could come up with a story of your own, Josie!" Diana replied in staunch defence, flashing Anne a look of solidarity.

"I'm sure I've got better things to do than waste my time with fairy tales," Josie remarked, in her characteristic, insidiously perfect blend of feigned boredom and pointed rebuke.

"Mary Shelley was hardly writing a fairy tale, Josie!" Anne leapt to her own and the author's defence gamely. "She wrote one of the great gothic horror stories; a meditation on the nature of life and love and what it means to be human, and she was barely older than we are now!"

"We're not in class, Anne. You don't have to climb up on your high horse here." Josie's expressive eye roll gained a smirk from her sister Gertie.

"Actually, when Mary Shelley was writing, she was definitely informed by reports of the many body snatchers, often paid by medical institutions to recover fresh corpses, to use in scientific research," Gilbert added morosely, and perhaps unhelpfully, frowning into the flames. "Anatomy students then dismembered the bodies to further their training. The only really fantastical element of her story is the idea of reanimation."

"Gilbert! There are ladies present!" Charlie grumbled, on the ready lookout for affront, perhaps conveniently forgetting that one of the fairer sex had written such a tale in the first place.

"How did we go from ghost stories to dismembered bodies?" Jane asked dryly.

"Must we really have any ghost stories at all?" Ruby whimpered next to him, adding a sorrowful shudder to her plea.

"No ghost stories on Halloween? Alright then," Josie snickered. "What else do you suggest?"

"We've got plenty of apples," Fred reminded with a wry smile to no one in particular, and Gilbert tugged uncomfortably at his still-damp collar, having near-drowned himself in the earlier apple bobbing contest in yet another futile attempt to gain Anne's attention, if not her favour. But he had made the dread mistake of being overly sentimental on their walk to Orchard Slope this evening, conjecturing with desperation on the warm intimacy of an open fire on a chilly evening, and Anne had indicated her displeasure at this veiled overture by seating herself on the log next to Charlie once the boys had ensured the bonfire was appropriately stocked.

"Well… Halloween doesn't have to be all about ghosts and ghouls, you know," Ruby recovered, perking at the thought. "It can be about romance, too."

"How so?" Tillie Boulter was as confused, and perhaps as bemused, as the rest of them.

"Well," Ruby gave her own reanimated smile, "the legends tell that All Hallows' Eve is the perfect time to find out the person you're going to marry." *

There was a general groaning at this to befit any Creature composed of dismembered parts coming to mourn its very existence. However, unlike previous years, Gilbert noted the protestations did not last quite as long as they had once done, both in strength and duration. Soon enough, the expectant gazes of all assembled fell back on the fair Miss Gillis, who gave a self-satisfied look, not for the first time finding much benefit in the manifold confessions of older sisters.

"Go on, Ruby," Diana encouraged gently, and then blushed becomingly lest anyone should think her entreaty too enthusiastic.

"Well, at midnight we must all go into the vegetable garden, blindfolded, and each of us pull up a cabbage. The form of the cabbage – what the head and the stalk look like – will reflect the physical characteristics of one's future husband or wife. And if the roots taste sweet or sour, that is a reflection of their temperament."

"I'm not eating the root of a dirty old cabbage for anyone," Gertie announced vehemently.

"I really don't think any of us would escape Father's shotgun if we were to raid the vegetable patch," Diana admitted, a mite regretfully.

"Oh, there's plenty more ideas to try," Ruby allowed almost cheerfully, hardly much dissuaded. "My grandmother said that when she was a girl, their Irish maid would tell them stories of how young women would stare into a looking-glass on Halloween, eating an apple and combing their hair, and the face of their future husband was meant to appear in the glass, peeking over their shoulder."

"That would scare the living daylights out of me," grimaced Jane.

"And me," Carrie Sloane assented. "I'd not get a wink of sleep after that."

Gilbert stole a surreptitious glance at Anne, finding her mesmerised, mercilessly to his mind, by the thought of discovering some perfect stranger's face in her bedroom glass, and scowled ever darkly at the romantic sensibilities he so loved in her always turned against him. Would those enchanting grey orbs ever look into his with anything other than friendship? Must he languish in this purgatory of subjugated desires and buried hopes forever?

Gilbert sighed, with as much melancholy as even Anne herself would wish, lost in his own morose musings, not paying appropriate attention to the shift in conversation, until Ruby and others were off their perches and shuffling around positions, Fred and others helping to shift over the grate by the bonfire to a more central position.

"What's going on?" Gilbert whispered to Fred.

"The cracking of the nuts," his friend intoned.

"What?"

"Gil, weren't you listening? Ruby was just telling us all about it. There's a thing called Nutcrack Night on Halloween, another legend from her grannie, and everyone places a nut in the fire and watches how it burns. You've got to name your nut after your sweetheart, and if it burns well it means their love is true or something."

"I don't have a sweetheart," Gilbert muttered, refusing to look at Anne.

"For goodness' sake you don't need to say their name aloud," Fred replied in a low tone, watching as Diana reached into the bowl being passed around, and noting carefully where she placed her nut on the grate. Gilbert noted Fred's surprisingly smooth action in placing his next to hers, and then both he and Diana made a great show of acting as if they had no knowledge of the existence of any nuts on the fire, let alone the placement of such.

"If a nut jumps or cracks the lover is proven false," Fred continued.

"You're all cracked as far as I can see."

"What's gotten into you tonight?"

"Nothing," Gilbert huffed, watching now as Anne took a nut and placed it on the grate with an expectant emerald gleam.

Fred scooped a large hand into the bowl and handed him a nut. "Place yours on the other side of Anne's," he encouraged.

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

As Gilbert obeyed mulishly, Charlie swooped in with his own nut and placed it between his and Anne's with a relieved expression, and then proceeded to make much fuss over the angle of the grate in relation to how evenly all the nuts might burn. Gilbert straightened and crossed his arms, looking at how Ruby placed her nut the other side of his own with an encouraging glance back to him.

"Well, that's unfortunate," Fred smothered a grin.

"What is? You mean Ruby?" Gilbert answered carefully.

"No, I mean that your nut is also next to Charlie's, so if yours both burn together you'll be married, apparently."

Gilbert rolled his eyes, ready to give up not only on senseless superstitions but the entire evening, and sat back on his log with heavy resignation. There were not as many takers with the nuts as he may have imagined, though the Pye girls no doubt forfeited their prospects for wedlock out of principle, and Jane out of sense, and others might have been too shy. Gilbert hunched over, eyes trained not so much on the nuts as on the fiery embers, hoping he might hypnotise himself into unconsciousness.

He might have been more careful what he wished for. There was a surprise shower of sparks and a loud pop, and a nut launched itself with fury into the air and whizzed straight as a burning arrow for his temple. Gilbert dived impressively to avoid its malicious fiery passage, but slipped backwards off the log, and hit himself in the head on a most unfortunately placed additional tree branch, waiting there if the bonfire needed extra kindling.

The last thing he saw was the blackness above, before it reached down and around, swallowing him whole.

"Victor? Victor!" came the voice of an angel to me, and I felt myself stumble towards it, and then a slim little hand grasp my own, encouraging me ever forward, into the light. As I blinked slowly and stared up I beheld her beautiful face, haloed by flames… she who seemed to shed radiance from her looks… ** and eyes searching mine with unbridled love and concern.

Love?

"My love! May you speak to me, your Cousin? Will you know me for your own?"

I started and may have gasped my astonishment. All around me crowded curious faces; I could but focus on hers. I would know her anywhere, and she I, but I was not known as her love. I swallowed the bitter gall of regret in needing to disabuse her of her notion. She had obviously mistaken me, and though it would cost me all I would not be false with her.

"Victor?" that bell voice wavered, eyes filling with tears.

"Victor?" croaked I. "Why do you call me thus?"

"Are you not Victor, and I Elizabeth?"

"Elizabeth?" I was ever more surprised. "But you are Anne."

"I will be Anne, if I must," she gave a little laugh of relief, as if prepared to wish me anything at this juncture, "but I prefer Elizabeth."

"Then why am I Victor?"

"It is only the name I gave you," came a male voice to my left, and then strong arms assisted me in righting myself, from whence I had obviously fallen, for reasons undetermined, on the cold ground. "My beloved son and heir, Victor Frankenstein."

Frankenstein? I felt my eyes grow round.

The ruddy-faced man was eerily familiar and yet I could not place him; a raven-haired woman drew herself immediately to stand beside him, looking on with kind dark eyes.

"Won't you come and rest awhile, Victor?" she implored. "You took a terrible blow to your head."

I immediately felt for and found a sizeable bump, the effect of which may have accounted for my lost consciousness, but not, admittedly, the strange happenings thereafter.

"Or I could take you home, my darling?" came that musical voice, and that soft, white hand reclaimed mine. "It is in my vested interest to have you back safely, for you have oft warned of dangers about, and we are to be married on the morrow."

"Married?"

I stared in shocked disbelief, my features as immobile as my tongue; that the one whom I had loved from afar and for so long was now claiming to be my betrothed, and in doing so giving such easy voice to my deepest wishes and desires… it was all quite beyond my understanding.

She turned her face to mine, her eyes warm at the prospect, her tone at once both maidenly innocence and wifely promise.

"Have you forgotten me then, Victor, and our vows to come?"

I looked down at the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and pleasures… of whom, since childhood, I had harboured the most passionate and almost reverential attachment.

"No, indeed…" I swallowed carefully, and then added, wondrously, "it is my greatest wish to be joined in marriage with you, my dearest… Elizabeth. My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union."

Her answering smile was of such sheer beauty it stole the breath from my body.

"I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage with our dear Elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort and the stay of my declining years…" the one who professed to be my father clapped me on the back encouragingly. "You were attached to each other from your earliest infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes, entirely suited to one another."

It was a pretty speech, if not the entire truth of the matter, for my beloved had viewed me, in our earliest years together, with a marked and unreasonable disapproval that had been a torment. And yet, here she was, her hand in mine, and I could not dispute her tender affections towards me now, and they stirred my heart with a new hope beyond all reckoning.

"Well, then, let us away," I grinned down to her.

"Are you not promised to me, Anne?" came a dread voice from behind, and I turned to scowl at it, darkly.

"She is not Anne, she is Elizabeth!" I dismissed, preparing to depart.

Our passage was stayed by a low hiss of displeasure, and out of the shadows emerged such a Creature as had turned my dreams to nightmares this past year… at every juncture, at every turn, he was there… moaning, complaining, interfering. All my hopes regarding the lovely companion at my side were subject to his constant obstruction, for he wanted her for himself, and would undermine my gentle, genuine desires with his clumsy, blundering overtures. How can I describe my emotions at seeing him? Oh the wretch! His limbs were in proportion, but his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriences only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery, googly eyes, which protruded fearsomely and seemed in danger of dropping from his skull at any moment.

"I am not promised to anyone but my Victor!" a silver voice protested, even as I attempted to find my own, and was accompanied by an impressive, haughty toss of titian tresses.

"Why must you scorn and laugh at me?" the Creature moaned, as it was often wont to do. "I only search for a companion and a love to call my own…"

I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal combat, if necessary. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.

"Devil," I exclaimed, "do you dare approach me? And do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust!"

"I expected this reception," said the dæmon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!"

"Perhaps you will be consoled with some tea?" the dark haired, dark eyed woman placated, attempting to draw the Creature away.

It gave a frightening bellyache at that, and I took my opportunity, grasping my Elizabeth and fleeing into the darkness.

XXXXX

We ran and would run until we were safe; traversing countryside made gruesome and freakish by our fear; past a pond made grim and grey by the moonlight; past a graveyard dug up with scattered bodies; doubling back past a wood my beloved dared not enter for what ghosts she may find there; and finally up a lane and to a handsome, gabled house. Again the stirrings of familiarity struck me; here we would find shelter and safeguard, I was sure, but for how long?

Like one who, on a lonely road,

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And, having once turned round, walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread. ***

"Poetry, my beloved?" asked the angel at my side, pausing to rest herself on the step leading to a wide, generous verandah.

"Did I recite that aloud? I am sorry, my darling. I wasn't aware."

"All is well. It is something that we do, together," she gave pleased response, her lips upturning.

Emboldened, I drew her up and to me, my arms coming round her narrow waist, my heart pumping with the new audacity of my actions. "And what else might we do, together?" I murmured most lovingly.

She blushed endearingly, and I, breathless with anticipation, prepared to meet her shell-pink lips with mine, when came a furious knocking at the window, and a candle illuminated a stout woman, looking most affronted, and behind her a taller, angular woman, frowning.

I must have grimaced accordingly at this unfortunate interruption, for my fair Elizabeth laughed merrily and withdrew from my embrace, eyes shining with tease and temptation.

"It is no matter, my dear Cousin. Tomorrow I will be yours, always, and we may bar the doors and windows to all neighbours and family, both, and just hide away, we two, together."

"I have a feeling they will still find us, regardless," I scowled, with a petulance new to me.

"Oh, Dear Victor," she urged, hands finding mine, "banish these dark passions. Remember the friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power of rendering you happy? Ah! While we love, while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing—what can disturb our peace?"

I could hardly bring fault to such a loving speech with all the worries that continued to plague me. If it was not this Creature pursuing us, there would be others… there might be any number of obstacles to separate us. The long night till we were together the next morning stretched before me, seeming not a matter of hours but an eternity of years…

We sat late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor persuade ourselves to say the word "Farewell!"

My beloved Elizabeth nestled against me, and with the beautiful dreams of the bride, fell asleep with a sweet smile about her lips. I longed to feel them on mine, just once, and swallowed back the agony of temptation.

As the night deepened, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche, wrenching trees from their roots and causing a tempest of such horror and foreboding, it could only mean the reappearance of my trembling unspoken fear.

"My beloved! Elizabeth! You must awaken! You must away inside!

I shook her pale form but it refused to obey; she was limp and unresisting in my arms. Her luminescent complexion was already morphing to a waxy pale sheen; her lids fastened over her limpid grey eyes; her pink lips transitioning to deathly blue.

I began to sob over her; shuddering, shivering, spasming.

And that's when I felt it's evil presence; I need not look up and into those protruding eyes to know its sinister design.

"I have come for her. She is mine, now."

My shouts escaped as agonies that rent the air, and the very universe howled alongside me.

"Gilbert? Gilbert!" came the voice of an angel to him, and he blinked slowly, and then closed his eyes again against the dull painful throb of head and heart. When he chanced consciousness once more it was to focus on familiar grey eyes, with the light of reassuring life behind them, within a beautiful face grown ashen with worry and concern.

"Gil!" she breathed; his very name felt a surprise to him, but perhaps not so much as the slim little hand grasping his, which felt solid and reassuring and real in his own; a talisman against the fear and dread that still gripped him.

"Anne?" he really was unsure of even this, her name, let alone why he was lying on the ground near the bonfire, his head resting against the rough winter weave of someone's jacket.

"Hello there, Gilbert," came the reassuring, measured tones of an older gentleman, before the face of George Barry came into view. "Do you know where you are?"

"Orchard Slope?" he didn't quite know why he framed the obvious answer as question, but it seemed reassuring enough to Diana's father, who nodded encouragingly.

"You've had a bit of an accident, Gil. Hit the back of your head there, with a nasty bump now I'm sure. Think you can sit up?"

"Yes, Sir…" he nodded, forgetting his circumstances and wincing at a sharp cerebral stab, before raising himself carefully and then delicately prodding the back of his skull. Anne relinquished his hand almost regretfully, and someone else – perhaps Fred? – passed him a glass of water. Gilbert sipped and then a strong hand helped him up, and he smiled ruefully at his assembled friends – an anxious Diana comforting a tearful Ruby; Josie, Gertie and the other girls variously agog; Fred smiling through lowered brows; even Charlie looking on, slightly perturbed, though just the sight of him caused something in Gilbert's belly to coil uncomfortably, though he couldn't quite fathom why.

And Anne… Anne staring with troubled countenance, lips trembling…

"Best get you home, Gilbert," Mr Barry reasoned. "It's important to stay awake for the next couple of hours, just so your parents can keep an eye on you, and then if still concerned they can call upon Dr Spencer."

"Thank you, Mr Barry. Sorry for the drama, everyone," he flushed guiltily.

"We're just glad you're alright, Gil," Diana offered generously, and there were murmurings of assent, and a mournful lament from Ruby for suggesting such a perilous activity in the first place.

"I'll get the buggy for you, Gilbert."

"I can take him home, Mr Barry," Fred offered automatically.

"Thanks, Fred… " Gilbert rubbed the back of his neck, "but, ah, I came with Anne and I…"

"It will be my pleasure to walk you home, Anne," Charlie leapt to offer, and Gilbert felt a flash of anger and apprehension, remembering walking over with Anne earlier in the evening, but there had also been something about running, running through the darkness…

Anne looked slightly askance at the prospect of Charlie's attentions now, grey eyes almost charcoal and her face flushing with a look of unanticipated uncertainty.

"Thank you, Charlie…" she wavered, "but I began the evening with Gilbert and I – "

"Room for you too, Anne," Fred rescued, and was rewarded with her gentle smile, before her eyes searched for his own, and she gave a look that simultaneously stopped his breath and quickened his pulse, if such responses were biologically compatible.

Charlie may have given a little moan that brought Gilbert's head up quickly – another unfortunate movement – before the throng began to disperse, and Charlie found himself instead delegated to accompany the remaining young ladies, though it did not appear either side looked to unduly cherish the idea, though Gilbert felt his lips quirk regardless.

Whilst they waited for Anne to take her leave of Diana, Gilbert and Fred saw to the safe burning out of the bonfire, Gilbert pausing to consider the unfortunate nuts remaining on the grate.

"Looks like you and Diana are all set, then," Gilbert smirked, wincing again for his trouble, indicating a pair of nuts having burned merrily and with impressive synchronicity.

Fred looked a little sheepish.

"Actually, I unfortunately knocked Diana's and mine off the grate when some fool went and concussed himself," he explained. "And Charlie's was the one, typically, that burst and flew at you. Ruby's strangely just sat there and hardly burned at all. And so the two left, therefore, are yours and Anne's."

Gilbert reflected on this with an ironic smile, which was still firmly fixed in place as Anne rejoined them.

"Something amuses you after all the excitement of tonight, Mr Blythe?" Anne gave a teasing lilt to the question, her demeanour brightening the more he grinned.

"No, nothing at all… Anne."

"I'm glad we have not lost the power of rendering you happy," she smiled secretively.

"No, indeed. Good friends never do." He paused, considering. "Was that from… Frankenstein?"

Her smile widened, excessively pleased. "That's right."

"You two quoting stuff again?" Fred asked, chuckling.

"It's just something that we do, together," Gilbert affirmed, making sure to meet her eye.

Chapter Notes

*Throughout the nineteenth century there was a great interest in superstitions, the supernatural, and the occult. Halloween was one of the times ripe for romance, apparently, and Ruby's information is most certainly based on popular beliefs of the time, particularly from England and Ireland. Historian Geri Walton writes a great article on 'Halloween Superstitions of the Nineteenth Century' on her excellent website.

**In the middle section of this piece I quote from throughout Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818). Began when she was indeed only 18 and published when she was 20, it famously came out of a late-night ghost story session between she, her husband Percy Blythe Shelley and fellow Romantic poet Lord Byron. Their other companion, John Polidori, created the novel The Vampyre (1819), a forerunner of Dracula. They were all staying at Byron's Swiss villa at the time, and Victor Frankenstein is indeed a Swiss, growing up in the shadow of the alps. In the story he is raised alongside the family's adopted child, Elizabeth (they call one another 'Cousin' as a sign of their affection) and indeed Victor does marry Elizabeth although, unfortunately, it doesn't end… well.

***from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', itself quoted in Chapter 5 of Frankenstein.