Night of the Living Veg

​

Filthy Henry always loved when Halloween approached. For him it felt like Celtic Christmas. There was a noticeable change in the air as the last vestiges of Summer, which sometimes survived into September, finally gave up and allowed the darker, colder, nights to return to the land. You could smell the season change, along with magic, on the air.

 

A smell of magic so powerful that even mortals would comment on how magical everything seemed. Generally, these statements were made closer to Christmas time, when the imaginations of children made adults believe again in the magical side of the world.

 

Even if that belief only lasted a few days of the year.

 

For the fairy detective, however, being attuned to the magical side of the world meant he sensed the change as soon as October rolled around on the calendar. That was when all the old Celtic traditions and rituals had taken place. If Christmas was the finish line, Halloween was the starter pistol being fired to tell the world that the next three months were full of mystical marvels.

 

All you had to do was look.

 

The downside was that all that extra magic floating around meant Filthy Henry saw an increase in his caseloads during the Winter months. Good for his bank balance, sure, but his blood pressure, not so much.

 

So, when Shelly had taken the call and then dutifully bundled the fairy detective into a taxi, he knew that things were about to get busy.

 

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

 

“We?” Shelly replied. “We aren’t going anywhere. You are going to Hain’s Pumpkin Patch just outside Wilkinstown.”

 

“Meath? I’m going to Meath. Why am I going to Meath solo?”

 

Shelly smiled at him, then closed the door.

 

“You’re going solo because I’m already working two cases involving ghosts and a nursing home.”

 

“Why can’t I take that, and you do this one? Spoiler alert, it’s probably just the residents of the nursing home walking around with a sheet over their head because they think it is how they will look when they die.”

 

“Goodbye, Filthy,” Shelly said, turning and walking down the street without looking back.

 

Resulting in the fairy detective taking a nap, only to be rudely awakened about an hour later by a taxi driver demanding payment.

 

Filthy Henry reached into his pocket, conjured some Euro notes that would disappear within thirty minutes, then paid the driver. He opened the door, stepped out of the car, and slammed it shut behind him.

 

The taxi pulled off, spraying some dirt and pebbles into the air as it left Filthy Henry standing on the side of the road.

 

“I should have made Shelly take this one,” he said to the surrounding nature.

 

None of the flora or fauna responded.

 

Filthy Henry realised just then that Shelly had not actually told him what the case was. Nor had she given him enough time to put his mobile into his trench coat pocket. Given the distance he was from the office, teleporting the phone would have been a large expenditure of magical energy. Plus, there was no guarantee it would arrive in working order. Being a half-breed, the fairy detective could do pretty much what most other fairy folk could do when it came to magic. The only drawback was his internal magical reserves were a lot lower than that of a full-blood fairy. Bringing the phone to him now would have been useful, but it could just as easily result in no magic for the odd fireball required to save his life later.

 

He decided against bringing the device to him and turned around to get his bearings.

 

The taxi had left Filthy Henry at the entrance to a pumpkin farm, a very impressive hand painted sign read out the name Sam Hain’s Pumpkin Patch. There was a long, winding, country path on the other side of a small wooden gate that lead, presumably, to the pumpkin patch. A field had been converted into a seasonally friendly carpark, roughly twenty-five percent of it occupied with family cars of various shapes and sizes.

 

Filthy Henry pushed open the gate, the spring hinge groaning for a drop of oil as it moved. He started down the path towards the pumpkin patch.

 

Pumpkin picking had become very popular in the last few years, even when you ignored how close it was to being an annoying tongue twister. Like a ghoulish version of Santa’s Grotto, Pumpkin Patches came in all shapes and sizes from the bloody brilliant to the totally terrible. Some farmers saw the event as just a way to get civilians in to pick pumpkins, thinking it was a great day out for the entire family, while charging them for the pleasure of picking their own pumpkins. Other farms went all out with carving stations, decorations and even prizes.

 

Sam Hain’s Pumpkin Patch seemed to be on the higher end of the scale in terms of quality. Farmer Sam had gone all out with his decorating. There were plastic skulls with glowing red eyes on top of each of the fence posts along the trail. Filthy Henry thought they would look excellent at night, based on how they seemed now during dusk.

 

Some running footsteps up ahead caught his attention. He saw a person running towards him. The fact that they lacked greatly in the weapons department meant Filthy Henry refrained from conjuring any defence fireballs.

 

“Filthy Henry?” the person shouted down.

 

“Unless there is another ruggedly handsome fairy detective working the rounds with my name,” he replied.

 

“Right, yeah. She mentioned you were a wise ass,” the person said, coming to a stop a few feet from him. “I’m Samantha Hain, this is my farm.”

 

The fairy detective looked at Sam and realised that he had fallen victim to the societal problem of gender biases. Based on the name over the entrance, Filthy Henry had expected to be greeted by a burly farmer-type. All beard and muscles with pronouns of the male persuasion. Instead, he was greeted with the sight of a rather fetching woman with skin slightly browned from years of working outdoors.

 

The farmer offered Filthy Henry her hand.

 

“Shelly said you were on the way. I’m glad you finally made it. You can call me ‘Sam’.”

 

The fairy detective shook her hand.

 

“You’re kidding, right?”

 

Sam frowned, letting go of his hand.

 

“No,” she said. “My dad was ‘Sam’, as was my grandfather. When Da’s first born son turned out to be a girl he figured why let a little thing like gender get in the way of tradition.”

 

Filthy Henry waved his hands in the air and shook his head from side to side.

 

“No, not that bit,” he said. “I mean your name, your father’s name…your family name. Sam Hain. Samhain. Tell me your family do it on purpose.”

 

“Huh,” Sam said, tapping thoughtfully on her chin. “Samhain, Halloween in Irish. You know, literally nobody has ever pointed that out before.”

 

The fairy detective found the coincidence to be highly amusing.

 

“Well, there you go,” he said. “Now, Shelly said you had an interesting case.”

 

Sam let go of his hand, after giving it a friendly squeeze, then looked back along the trail.

 

“She didn’t tell you what was going on?” the farmer asked.

 

“I like to come to cases somewhat blind,” the fairy detective lied with ease. “Means I get the data straight from the source.”

 

“I see,” Sam said. “Well in that case I’m sure you’ll like the data here. How do you feel about zombie turnips?”

 

#

 

Filthy Henry listened with rapt attention for twenty minutes as Sam Hain explained what had been going on in the farm. At first it sounded like the plot to some shoddily written short story, but as the farmer had gone on it became more and more unbelievable. Which, in the fairy detective’s experience, meant everything he had heard was no doubt real.

 

“So let me get this straight,” Filthy Henry said after Sam finished speaking. “Right now, there are zombie turnips bouncing around up ahead and they just appeared this morning?”

 

She nodded her head.

 

“And what, pray tell, makes them zombies exactly?”

 

“They are moving about with their scary faces and chasing after people,” Sam said, clearly surprised she had to explain herself. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

 

Filthy Henry made placating motions with his hands.

 

“Oh, I believe you, don’t worry about that. You’d be surprised by half the nonsense I see before lunch. But, well, it’s just zombie turnips don’t really make sense.”

 

“Which part are you having trouble with, exactly?”

 

“Well…the zombie bit. You see I can buy that you’ve a bunch of animated root vegetables moving around causing no end of hassle. In fact, I’d genuinely be surprised if you didn’t, given some of the tricks that fairy folk pull around this time of year. But they wouldn’t be zombies.”

 

“Why not?” Sam asked, crossing her arms with an expression on her face that suggested she was getting impatient.

 

“Are they eating people?”

 

“They are chasing people.”

 

“That isn’t the same thing.”

 

“I have half a dozen families hiding in my carving station while turnips with faces smash into the door like deformed lemmings trying to get in. What more do you want? Why don’t I show you.”

 

Filthy Henry was fond of explaining things to people. Mortals that wound up getting involved in the magical world needed so much schooling on how things worked. Zombies were one of those things that cinema had taken, perverted, and then mis-informed the masses as to the rules around how they worked.

 

Zombies, the human variety, did go after other humans because it was how they procreated. Well procreated would be the wrong word, but the terminology was still somewhat applicable. They tried to eat humans because each person bitten turned into another zombie. Turnips that were zombies would not go after humans.

 

They would go after other turnips.

 

But sometimes people needed to be educated by being shown instead of talked to. So, the fairy detective figured it would be best if Sam brought him to the attack site.

 

“Please,” he said, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm along the path. “Lead on.”

 

Sam turned and started walking back down the path, Filthy Henry fell into step behind her. The fairy detective looked around as they walked. Beyond the plastic skulls on the fence post Sam had seriously gone all out with decorating the place. Up ahead he could see fake cobwebs spread out on fences and door frames. Several kites in the shape of witches flew on the wind above the farm. There was even the sound of screams and chilling, ghoulish, laughter coming from hidden speakers along the path.

 

All in, Filthy Henry was impressed. Hain’s farm clearly wanted to be seen as a top-tier pumpkin picking patch.

 

“Okay,” Sam said, reaching back and putting her hand on his chest. “We need to keep quiet from here on out. We don’t want them to hear us.”

 

“The turnips have ears?”

 

The look Sam shot him was enough to tell Filthy Henry that sarcasm at this juncture was no longer a requirement for the case. He took the cue and ducked down low like Sam. They crept along the fence, using the hedge on the far side to keep hidden from sight. As they moved with all the stealth of a mouse on Christmas Eve, making very little sound at all, Filthy Henry began to hear noises the closer they got to the farm proper. A repeated, low, thumping of something on a metal surface followed by some muffled, fearful, cries.

 

“That what I’m here to deal with?” Filthy Henry asked in a whisper.

 

Sam looked back at him and nodded once, then made a gesture with her hand for him to stop talking and follow her.

 

They came up to a large wooden gate, several small skeletons hanging off it. The gate itself was the entrance to a wider yard in which two large outdoor tents had been erected on either side of a metal barn. One tent bore the sign ‘Coffee shop’ while the other had the look of a haunted house to it. A rather disturbing scarecrow was sitting in a rocking chair, all gangly limbed and cloth sack head. But what really caught the fairy detective’s attention was the metal barn and the two dozen animated turnips battering the doors.

 

He had been in the game of fairy detective work for about seventy years and in all that time he had never seen animated root vegetables trying to get into a barn.

 

If anything, you would assume they would be running away from the barn.

 

Filthy Henry watched with a sort of morbid curiosity as three or four turnips would pound against the door, causing the occupants inside to let out a cry. He thought back to the impromptu carpark back at the roadside entrance. Twenty five percent full, several the cars being what one would consider a ‘family car’. Meaning there could be at least thirty people inside that barn hiding from the mindless hordes of the living vegetable.

 

“How many people inside?” he whispered to Sam.

 

“We had only just opened, so not too bad. Between staff helping run the event, the actor we hired in to play the living scarecrow and visitors I’d say we’re at about thirty.”

 

Filthy Henry was impressed he was so close to the actual answer.

 

“Is there another way into that building?”

 

Sam nodded and gestured for him to follow.

 

#

 

They made their way along the hedges that surrounded the event area and came up to the back of the barn. It was devoid of any animated assaulting vegetables. A window set in the centre was open, on the latch. Sam pointed at it, then broke into a run from her hedge hiding spot. She grabbed a nearby pallet, placed it against the barn, and climbed up to the window. Pulling it open a little wider, Sam shuffled in through the window and out of sight.

 

Filthy Henry looked around, checking that no zombie turnips were coming his way, then followed Sam’s lead. What she had made seem easy was, in fact, heartbreakingly hard. Not for the first time in his career, the fairy detective thought about how doing more physical training instead of relying just on his magic would be a smart move. With a grunt and a groan, he hauled his backside through the window and landed unceremoniously with a painful thud on the ground.

 

“Nobody tells Shelly about this,” Filthy Henry said, standing up and dusting down his clothes.

 

He looked around the inside of the barn. It had been set up with several rows of folding tables, each table home to two pumpkin carving stations. There were all the usual tools you would expect to see. Little knives, poking sticks and big spoons. Complete, as well, with pumpkin innards strewn about both table and floor. Up at the double doors into the barn were two men and three women, using a table as a barrier and holding it in place. It did not look like they were under any really stress, which made sense given the size of the turnips outside were not exactly large. Around the barn little circles of kids and parents had formed, telling stories to keep themselves entertained.

 

A pimply faced youth, wearing a t-shirt that bore the farm’s logo, came running up to Filthy Henry and Sam.

 

“Oh, thank God,” he said. “When we didn’t see you in here, I thought one of them had gotten you.”

 

“No, it nipped at my heel but didn’t get through the rubber of my wellies,” Sam said.

 

Filthy Henry glanced down at her feet and saw the orange splatter of pumpkin guts on her boot.

 

“What’s been going on in here?” he asked the youth.

 

“Oh, we’ve just been keeping everyone calm. The kids finished all their pumpkins and now we are telling ghost stories. We take it in turns to hold the table up at the door. Did you see John when you were outside?”

 

“John?” Sam asked, looking around the barn a bit panicked.

 

“Who is John?” Filthy Henry said.

 

“The actor who came in to play our scarecrow. You know, dressed up and walking around for photos. The regular guy cancelled at the last minute but thankfully John showed up, costume and all at the ready.”

 

One hard and fast rule about the magical world was this: there was no such thing as a coincidence. For mortals, sure, things could happen that were seemingly connected but, they were just random moments that took place together. But Filthy Henry had learned a long time ago that if something on a magical case seemed to be coincidental the reality was it was not.

 

A regular actor not showing up and an unheard-of understudy appearing in costume screamed coincidence.

 

“And John isn’t here now?” Filthy Henry asked.

 

The youth shook his head in the negative.

 

“No,” he said. “John was here for a bit, then he muttered something about ‘things taking too long’ and climbed out the window saying he was ‘going to help’.”

 

“’Going to help’ or ‘Going to get help’?” Sam asked.

 

“Well, it was hard to hear him properly as he climbed out the window, but I’m sure it was ‘get help’. Nobody followed him because we’ve all seen enough zombie movies to know that the person who goes on a solo run usually ends up getting eaten.”

 

“Unless John was made of pumpkin, I think he’d be okay,” Filthy Henry said, strolling away from them and into the centre of the barn. “Besides, if somebody had gone with him then he wouldn’t have been going on a solo run. Right? So, your logic is a tad flawed there.”

 

The simple act of him walking into full view of everyone in the barn immediately caught all their attention. Each group shifted around on the floor to look at him while the parents at the door pressed their backs against the table to get a better view of the fairy detective.

 

“Who are you?” a voice in the crowd asked.

 

“I’m Filthy Henry, the fairy detective,” he said, pausing for an applause.

 

Nobody clapped. Even the crickets failed to chirp in the silence.

 

“Well, maybe someday,” Filthy Henry said to himself. “Right, everyone. I’m here to get you out of this crazy situation. I’ve worked cases like this before, so if you have any questions please hesitate to ask.”

 

“Hesitate?” Sam asked, coming to stand beside him. “You’re really bad at these pep talks.”

 

“It’s been pointed out before,” he replied. “Now, first order of business. Does anybody happen to have one of these zombie turnips.”

 

“Hey, man! We don’t appreciate the air quotes.”

 

Filthy Henry looked at his hands, still raised in the air, and frowned.

 

“Ha,” he said, lowering his hands. “Must be a reflex at this stage.”

 

“Nobody has a turnip,” a woman in the largest parent circle. “Zombie or otherwise. Why?”

 

“Helps me figure things out. Right. Grumpy and Frumpy at the top there, I need you two to help me capture one of these turnips. Pimply faced youth, bring me a bucket or burlap sack or whatever you have to store turnips.”

 

Filthy Henry marched down to the double doors, ignoring the glares of annoyance from Grumpy and Frumpy. The fairy detective had always found it easier to get help from people who wanted to no longer deal with him than if he spent time forming relationships. Learning the real names of secondary characters in his adventures just made them too real and if they got hurt, well, he would never be able to live with it.

 

“Here you go, sir,” the pimply faced youth said, giving Filthy Henry a small potato sack as he walked down to the door.

 

“Thanks,” the fairy detective replied, taking the sack off the youth. “Right, on three open the door and as soon as I have caught one slam it shut again.”

 

“As in we go on ‘three’ or ‘one, two...’?” Grumpy asked.

 

Filthy Henry held up his hand to signal for silence.

 

“We’re not doing that bit,” the fairy detective said. “It’s been done so many times now that people don’t even chuckle from a nostalgic point anymore. On three, Grumpy opens the door and when I grab the turnip you slam the door shut before anymore get in.”

 

Grumpy and Frumpy, clearly annoyed the question had been taken as a joke, nodded in agreement. Filthy Henry raised his hand, three fingers in the air, then slowly brought each one down. As the last was lowered, Grumpy pulled open the door a crack. Immediately one of the zombie turnips burst through the gap without any prompting. Filthy Henry threw the burlap sack over it, securing it in cloth material and closing the top tightly in his hand. Grumpy and Frumpy pushed the table back in place and closed the door once more.

 

Holding the sack up, Filthy Henry watched as the turnip continued to bounce around inside. A small tear began to form as the turnip tried to chew through the sack.

 

Filthy Henry raised the sack up in his left hand, then pointed at it with his right index finger and drew upon his magic.

 

“Peil shoiléir,” the fairy detective said, casting his spell into the sack.

 

Like a balloon being inflated, the sack took on a spherical shape and stopped bouncing around. It grew to the size of a football in a matter of seconds, then stopped.

 

“Did he just say ‘clear ball’ in Irish?” Grumpy asked behind Filthy Henry’s back.

 

One of the hilarious things non-magical beings did not understand about spell casting was the language. After reading numerous fantasy books, everyone always assumed that the words spoken during a spell had to sound like some sort of pidgin Latin. The truth was you could use any language you were comfortable speaking in as long as it followed two simple rules. Rule one: you did not use English. Rule two: the grammatical rules of the language you chose were entirely ignored. But explaining that to a bunch of mortals was not going to enrich his day at all, so Filthy Henry decided not to bother.

 

Instead, he reached out and lifted the sack up into the air with a flourish that would have made a Vegas stage magician jealous. The fairy detective grabbed the glass ball as it fell out of the sack and held it up in the air for all to see.

 

“Behold,” Filthy Henry said, puffing his chest out with pride. “I have captured the demon.”

 

“So, we can go now?” Grumpy asked.

 

“No,” the fairy detective replied. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

 

He marched over to an empty pumpkin carving station, pulled out a chair, dropped down into it and placed the glass football onto the table. Inside there was a large turnip bouncing around and banging against the glass to get out. Filthy Henry rotated the sphere around peered inside.

 

Initially it was hard to see anything strange about the turnip, beyond the fact it was moving of course. Then it changed position and revealed the most horrific face Filthy Henry had ever seen, on a vegetable or otherwise. Two eyes had been seemingly gouged out with a spoon, sitting above a terrifying smile showing several triangle shaped teeth. From within the turnip there was a bright, red, glow. Looking into the mouth, Filthy Henry could just about make out a small lump of burning coal. No smoke or heat seemed to come off the glowing ember, but the light flickered with every movement the vegetable made.

 

Without warning, the turnip rushed towards Filthy Henry. Its mouth gnashing furiously. The fairy detective sat back in his chair and watched the sphere fall off the table and roll along the floor. Through several bumps, the turnip guided its sphere-shaped prison towards some pumpkin pulp. It proceeded to roll around the orange pieces, flattening them into the ground, while biting at the glass.

 

“Hey, Sam,” Filthy Henry shouted. “I was right. Looks like the turnips aren’t after human flesh, but gourd flesh.”

 

The farmer came over and watched the glass sphere moving around.

 

“Huh,” she said. “Well, that’s, slightly less scary. I mean, they just look like animated decorations gone crazy now.”

 

Filthy Henry shifted around in his chair to look up at her.

 

“So, now the thing to do is figure out what is actually going on. At least we know everyone is safe. Except for their pumpkins. These guys are not going to stop until they’ve eaten every pumpkin in here.”

 

The repeated bangs against the barn door ceased. Everyone looked at the barricade, equally confused.

 

“We’re in trouble now,” the pimply faced youth said. “When the banging stops, the screaming starts.”

 

Filthy Henry stood up and started walking down towards the window in the back wall.

 

“You need to get out and socialise a bit more,” he said to the youth in passing.

 

#

 

With a little help from his associates, Filthy Henry went back through the window and dropped down at the rear of the barn. He checked around for any turnips bouncing, before turning to offer Sam some help down.

 

She grinned and lowered herself from the window with the grace of a ballet dancer.

 

“I’ve been sneaking in and out of that place since I was a kid,” Sam said to the fairy detective.

 

Filthy Henry began to walk along the barn wall with purpose to his steps. Whatever had created the zombie turnips, a name he was still not overly enamoured with, had also called them off. Which meant, in the fairy detective’s experience, that things were about to escalate in strange and unusual ways. That was how these cases always worked. Just when you thought a reprieve had arrived the Big Bad showed you they had other ideas.

 

But what these evil idiots never factored into their plans was Filthy Henry getting involved.

 

John, the scarecrow actor, that was who was behind all this. The fairy detective knew it, deep down in his gut. One thing that Filthy Henry always trusted was his gut. The only problem was he had no idea who John really was. Figuring out that bit was going to be key to returning the turnips to the earth from whence they came.

 

Sam tapped him on the shoulder right as they reached the corner of the barn.

 

“What’s the plan, exactly?”

 

He could not resist a shoulder shrug. Usually, Shelly would be around to ask him that question and his shrug would annoy her no end. With Sam it had no effect whatsoever.

 

“We go around front of the building, see where the turnips have all bounced off to. Then we find that scarecrow of yours and see what they have to say for themselves.”

 

“You think he is in on it?”

 

“He is it!” Filthy Henry said. “There is no such thing as a coincidence in my line of work. I’m telling you; John is the problem. I just haven’t figured out what problem.”

 

Sam nodded her head in agreement.

 

“Fair enough,” she said. “We find John and ask him some questions. Do we need to get weapons? My tool shed is behind the haunted house amusement.”

 

Filthy Henry held out his hand and conjured a small fireball in it.

 

“I’m good for weapons,” he said, closing his fingers and extinguishing the fireball.

 

The farmer stared in amazement at his closed fist.

 

“I thought the glass ball thing was just some sleight of hand, like the rabbit in a hat. But you actually do have magic.”

 

“You have a horde of zombie turnips bouncing at your door. You hired me to solve the problem. Yet you thought magic wasn’t real?”

 

“Well,” was all Sam could say in response.

 

Filthy Henry laughed, then turned the corner of the barn and walked along the edge of the building. Up ahead he could see the farmyard was empty, devoid of any animated root vegetables. Never one to rush into supposed calm, the fairy detective slowly stepped out and looked around for any sign of movement. Over by the haunted house the rocking chair now sat empty, moving back and forth ominously in the wind.

 

“Well bugger me,” he said. “John watched us arriving earlier.”

 

“Damn, I didn’t spot that. The scarecrow we had in the chair was dressed differently”

 

“He is some actor. I really thought it was a scarecrow,” Filthy Henry said. “But that just turns my theory into proof. He’s behind all this. Of course, now we get to go through the cliché.”

 

“The cliché?” Sam asked.

 

The fairy detective nodded and pointed at the haunted house.

 

“Yeah. Haunted house, around Halloween. When strange things are afoot. Total cliché. What’s in there,” he asked her.

 

Sam shrugged her shoulders, the expression on her face revealing nothing.

 

“It is just some standard haunted house stuff,” she said. “Candles and cobwebs. Some little puppets and skeletons set up to look creepy. There are a few motion-triggered things that laugh and cackle as you go past. Spooky music playing in a loop over speakers with just the right amount of volume. Then you get to the other end and have to run past the monster to get your treat. I mean you’ve got to have a haunted house at Halloween. It’s like a tradition or something. Same as mistletoe at Christmas.”

 

Filthy Henry turned and stared at the entrance to the haunted house.

 

“Pumpkins are traditional Halloween...” Filthy Henry said, before trailing off as some information made its way to the forefront of his thoughts. “I know who’s bloody behind this.”

 

“Care to share that nugget with me?” Sam asked

 

He ignored her and started walking towards the haunted house. For a homemade deal it looked pretty good. There was black cloth dangling down the front, fluttering in the wind and giving a glimpse of what lay beyond. Eerie music played from hidden speakers, giving a very spooky sensation to the whole sense of hearing. There were even two cages hanging over the entrance, little model crows in them with what looked like plastics hands in their beaks.

 

Filthy Henry felt a shiver running down his spine. He had worked all sorts of scary cases over the decades, even dealing with ghosts and banshees on more than one occasion. But there was something truly terrifying about a haunted house created by a mortal mind. Humans, for some strange reason, sought to make things much more macabre than they had to be. Back when he was a younger half-breed, Filthy Henry had gotten so scared in a haunted house that he had nearly burnt the place down with a panicked spell casting.

 

All because a rubber chicken had dropped down on him from out of nowhere.

 

It had left a lasting impression on the fairy detective that no amount of magical abilities had been able to fix. He was, for all intents and purposes, a scaredy cat when it came to haunted houses.

 

As the fairy detective approached the entrance he reached out, pulling back some of the black cloth to get a look at what lay beyond. Like your typical haunted house, the lighting inside was done on a budget. There seemed to be an abundance of red lights casting scary shapes around the place, with several flashing strobe lights strategically position and set slightly out of sync with each other. Each pulse of light caused strange shapes to appear on the opposite wall.

 

“Can’t we just go around?” Filthy Henry asked Sam.

 

“No,” she said. “I sort of thought kids would try and sneak to the end to get their treat. So, you must go through the haunted house. I had the gang build it so that there is no way around unless you want to go walking for an hour through some fields?”

 

The fairy detective looked back at the doors of the barn and thought about the people hiding inside. While it was true, he knew they were not in any real danger, they did not know that. All they knew was that turnips had risen from the ground and began a tiny rampage.

 

“No,” Filthy Henry said. “We’ll go through the stupid haunted house and see what’s on the other side.”

 

He pulled the black cloth back more and stepped inside.

 

A smoke machine, presumably triggered by his entrance, began puffing out a foul-smelling mist. More hidden speakers kicked into life, playing the sound of clinking chains and ghostly moans.

 

“If it’s all the same to you,” Sam said, taking the cloth material from his grasp. “I might stay back here. Just in case anything comes out.”

 

Filthy Henry groaned.

 

“Sure,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Leave me to walk through the haunted house all alone and you stay safe and sound. At least try and get everyone to safety if you can.”

 

“Of course,” Sam said. “While you keep the zombie turnips distracted in here.”

 

Before he could respond with a clever quip, she let the cloth fall back in place.

 

Filthy Henry turned to face the scary setting, gulped for comedic effect, then started strolling through the haunted house slowly, taking care to check nothing dangerous was hiding in the shadows as he walked. The last thing the fairy detective wanted to happen was for his untimely death to be caused by turnips. The only time somebody should be killed by a turnip in his view was at Christmas, when said vegetable was thrown across the kitchen because nobody wanted to eat it.

 

Something crunched under his left foot, shattering with ease. He knelt and brought his shoe up slightly to reveal destroyed plastic skull. As the nearest strobe flashed it made the macabre scene seem a little bit more horrifying. From the corner of his eye something moved in the darkness, but another strobe flash made it impossible to say for sure what it was.

 

Filthy Henry stood up, looked around and considered just summoning enough fireballs to burn the place to the ground. There was a titter of laughter coming from somewhere, but he could not figure out if it was something in the haunted house with him or just playing over the speakers.

 

The fairy detective cautiously continued walking.

 

Several more objects shattered under his feet. A quick check revealed that they were more plastic skulls and even a few plastic zombie heads. Small, like they all belong to a puppet or doll. Again, he caught movement, just on the corner of his vision, but there did not seem to be anything there.

 

He straightened up and stared down the remaining part of the haunted house. It seemed to have grown in length.

 

“It’s all in your head,” Filthy Henry said to himself. “There is nothing to be afraid of. There are such things as ghosts, but you are the thing that ghosts are afraid of.”

 

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, half-breed,” a rasping voice said from everywhere at once.

 

Filthy Henry stiffened, a chill running down his spine. Every one of his muscles seemed to tense.

 

“John,” the fairy detective said, turning on the spot slowly and crushing more plastic heads in the process. “Or should I say, ‘Jack’?”

 

“Well now,” the voice hissed. “Aren’t we a clever one. I’d always been led to believe you were a bit dim. But look at you, putting two and two together.”

 

“I know. Didn’t even need to take my shoes off and use my toes for counting or anything,” Filthy Henry said, facing the entrance to the haunted house now.

 

From the corner of his eye, the fairy detective thought he saw something move on one of the tent’s support beams. He slowly turned his head and saw a small skeleton statue resting beside the red bulb bearing lamp.

 

“It’s all in your head,” he said, smiling. “Except for that voice, that’s outside your head.”

 

The little skeleton sat up and stared at Filthy Henry with a terrifying turnip head on its plastic neck. Then it brought up both hands to reveal pumpkin carving knives in each tiny fist.

 

“Dagda damn it!” Filthy Henry swore, running with everything he had back to the entrance of the haunted house.

 

He burst out into the farmyard, conjuring a fireball in each hand, and spun around on the spot to face the entrance.

 

Sam ran over to him from the barn side of the yard. Filthy Henry glanced over and saw both doors wide open.

 

“Everyone out?” he asked, turning his attention back to the haunted house.

 

There was a low rumbling noise coming from within, accompanied by a creaking sound he could not quite place.

 

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I got everyone out and they’re headed back to their cars now.”

 

The rumbling grew louder.

 

“What is that?” she asked.

 

“I’m hoping it’s not a load of your decorations now bearing turnip heads coming to kill us with tiny knives,” Filthy Henry said.

 

“What?”

 

“The turnips…now have bodies. Tiny little bodies. Looks like they took apart the decorations in there and something about being a magical animated inanimate object has allowed them to animate other inanimate objects. I suppose we’re lucky they only tried it on toys. Could you imagine if they’d figured it out while being on top of a car? We’d have ghost cars racing all over the place.”

 

All at once the black cloth flaps burst forth from the haunted house entrance as hundreds of animated turnips came bouncing out into the yard. Mixed in with the flood of villainous vegetables were dozens of turnips attached to scary puppet bodies. They moved with the grace of the decomposed beloved by Hollywood horror movies for decades. All stutters, judders, and the occasional fall. Each of these possessed puppets brandished carving knifes in their tiny hands, their turnip faces filled with murderous intent.

 

“What in God’s name are those,” Sam asked, pointing at the approaching horde.

 

“Yeah, so it turns out that our problem got a little worse.”

 

Filthy Henry spotted a large shadow bringing up the rear of the turnip troops, moving with slow and dreadful purpose. One of the strobe lights flashed, catching off the metallic surface of a farming scythe.

 

“That’s him,” the fairy detective said. “Sam, I’m going to run interference, but I don’t think I will be able to do it for too long given the number of turnips. Not to mention the ones with…oh crap!”

 

He ducked, right as one of the skeleton-turnips jumped from the middle of the horde and brought up its tiny knife. It made no sound, but the mouth of the turnip was bent into what looked like a very distinct scream. Filthy Henry, acting on instinct, threw one of his fireballs spell directly at the little killing creature. The flaming sphere smashed into the plastic body, shattering it into a dozen fiery pieces, while char-grilling the turnip head into something Santa would feel happy dropping into the sock of a misbehaving child.

 

The turnip horde had taken the impromptu attack on Filthy Henry to advance faster. Several of them began to thump into his shins and knees with such force that he fell back to the ground. A mild sense of panic began to build up in the fairy detective’s gut as the turnips circled around him. Two zombie-turnips shuffled around, smiling at Filthy Henry while they pointed their knives at him.

 

“Sam!” he shouted, batting away at the turnips while trying to think of what spell would get him out of harm’s way.

 

Out of sight, Filthy Henry heard what sounded like an engine starting. It groaned into life and the fairy detective knew for the first time what true betrayal felt like. Sam had clearly run to the nearest car while he was being devoured by angry root vegetables, so she could escape safely.

 

Sudden, tiny, stabbing pains ran along his left leg. Filthy Henry managed to push some of the zombie turnips out of the way to get a look at three of the puppet turnips poking him with their tiny carving knives. The fairy detective lashed out with his leg, kicking them off. He sent three demon vegetables back into the other turnips. Rolling onto his side, Filthy Henry tried to get back to his feet.

 

There was the unmistakable roar of an old engine and the ground started to rumble. Filthy Henry saw Sam sitting in the cabin of an ancient John Dere tractor, mowing blades attached to the front of the green chassis and spinning quickly. Sam grinned down at the fairy detective, then drove the tractor right towards the fairy detective. The approach of the vehicle drew the attention of all Filthy Henry’s attackers. Hundreds of fearful faced vegetables turned, just in time to see most of them sliced and diced into pieces that splattered across the yard with carefree abandon.

 

The only turnips that managed to survive the slaughter were those possessing bodies. These jumped onto the side of the tractor as it drove past Filthy Henry. He watched as they began to attack the door of the cabin with the least effective attacks anyone had ever performed. Before the fairy detective could even react with a magical assist, Sam kicked the door open and flung all the murderous mites into the air.

 

Filthy Henry tracked their trajectory, then launched tiny fireballs at each of them. A Halloween version of clay pigeon shooting. Each fireball found its mark.

 

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” he said, getting up to his feet and dusting down his clothes from turnip bits. “Nice driving.”

 

Sam parked the tractor, climbed out of the cabin and walked over to him.

 

“Thanks,” she said. “I think I did okay.”

 

“Oh, you did,” the creepy voice said from inside the haunted house. “But fear not, I shall fix that for you.”

 

The tip of a scythe peeked out from behind the haunted house curtains like a menacing nose of a Punch puppet. Slowly, the cloth was pulled back and a scarecrow stepped out. The same scarecrow that had been in the rocking chair when Filthy Henry had arrived earlier. With jittering moves, just like the tiny turnip terrors, it stepped out into the yard and stood up to its full height. At a guess, Filthy Henry would have said the scarecrow was nearly seven feet tall.

 

Which was easy to do, when you had small stilts. It was the shoes that gave it away, the wind blew the raggedy, torn, trouser hems around something much thinner than a human ankle.

 

“Scary John?” Sam asked, staring at the figure.

 

“Of course, Sam,” they said, their voice echoing. “I had to teach you all the true meaning of Halloween.”

 

Filthy Henry snorted.

 

“Alright, we can drop the act, Jack. Or should that be ‘Stingy Jack’?”

 

The cloth face moved swiftly, two eyes focussing on the fairy detective.

 

“You know?”

 

“I know many things,” Filthy Henry said. “You’d be surprised what I don’t know actually.”

 

The scarecrow reached up, grabbed a hold of the cloth mask, then pulled it off and dropped it to the ground. Beneath was a very mortal face with two eyes the colour of coal. He looked at Sam, then Filthy Henry, and grinned.

 

“How do you want to do this?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve broken no laws.”

 

“No, you haven’t,” Filthy Henry agreed. “But you have broken The Rules. Exposing the fairy world to mortals with malicious intent. Making me your worst nightmare.”

 

Stingy Jack dramatically chortled with such mockery it impressed the fairy detective.

 

“Oh, The Rules,” he said. “Aren’t they just how things are governed between fairies and mortals. I’m no fairy.”

 

“Em, I’m confused,” Sam said. “Who is this?”

 

“See!” Stingy Jack spat out, pointing the scythe in Sam’s direction. “See how people have forgotten the old ways. The traditions. Not of fairy, but mortal!”

 

“Oh, that clears up exactly nothing,” Sam said. “Seriously, who is Stingy Jack?”

 

“There are a few versions of the story that go around, most of them having been adopted by the Christian faith as it tried to remove any sort of pagan worship from Ireland. But the nugget of telling is the same. There once was this man named Jack who tried his best to never pay for anything. One night he was out having a drinking when The Devil…”

 

“The Devil?” Sam asked.

 

“Yeah. The Devil, or a devil. Demon. Disgruntled fairy. Take your pick. Basically, an entity of dark magic, so we’ll go with demon as that fits into all versions of the story. This demon comes up and starts drinking with old Jack. But he shows off his magical powers, and Jack gets envious. Why can’t he have magic, he wonders. So, Jack comes up with this strange prank. If the demon turned itself into a coin, he would buy the next round.”

 

“It wasn’t a strange prank,” Stingy Jack said, stamping the bottom of the scythe pole on the ground. “It was genius.”

 

Filthy Henry rolled his eyes.

 

“Whatever,” he said. “Anyway, the demon did so, but Jack pocketed the demon beside an object of good magic. Like a cross or a blessed stone. The result was the demon couldn’t change back, but while in his pocket Jack never aged.”

 

“See, genius,” Stingy Jack said.

 

“Eventually the demon starts to mess with Jack’s head and cause him to nearly go insane from bad dreams. So, Jack takes the coin out of his pocket after having it for fifty years and the demon transforms back.”

 

Sam frowned, looking from Stingy Jack to Filthy Henry and back again. After a few seconds of contemplative silence, she shrugged her shoulders once.

 

“I’m not getting what that has to do with turnips and people ignoring tradition.”

 

“See!” Stingy Jack screeched. “All I have suffered and to be forgotten because of a failed colony with a different sort of vegetable.”

 

“One that is infinitely easier to carve than a poxy turnip,” the fairy detective said.

 

“How dare you!” Stingy Jack snarled.

 

“When the demon turned back, he cursed Jack to forever walk the lands of Ireland. Never dying nor finding a place in Heaven or Hell. Back in those days both sides of the Afterlife basically were in a perpetual cold war, so they did favours from time to time. To help him never stop walking, the demon picked up the nearest vegetable to hand and smashed its fist into it. The impact caused the turnip to have a hideous face, like it was carved from somebody who had never seen a face before. Then the demon ripped out Jack’s soul, crushed it into a lump of burning coal, and stuck that into the turnip lantern. Becoming the first ever Jack O’Lantern.”

 

The fairy detective waited for the inevitable from Sam. Statements of disbelief. Accusations that she had just been fed a lie so terrible it would not have fooled a new-born. Comments about how her first birthday was not, in fact, yesterday.

 

Instead, the farmer slowly nodded, stared down at the ground, arched an eyebrow and eventually shrugged her shoulders again.

 

“Fair enough,” Sam said.

 

“That’s it?” Filthy Henry asked, surprised by her lack of reaction.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean I’ve spent most of the day watching bouncing turnips try to eat my customers. What’s one more insane story on top of that.”

 

“They weren’t trying to eat your customers,” Stingy Jack said, his tone like one used by a teenager who is tired of explaining to their parents what The Internet is. “They were trying to eat all the pumpkins so that you’d be force to use turnips.”

 

“See! I told you they were after the pumpkins. Zombie turnips, as if that’s a thing.”

 

“Yes, well, I’m delighted that you all had a good time. I’m going to have to kill you now,” Stingy Jack said, taking the scythe firmly in both hands and bringing it up to his left so that it was ready to reap.

 

“Just one second there, bargain basement Reaper Man,” Filthy Henry said, raising his left hand up and pointing it towards the pumpkin carving barn. “Liathróid teacht.”

 

From inside the barn there came the sound of several tables being pushed, nudge and eventually knocked out of the way. A bucket went flying, sailing past the open doors and off into the depths of the building. Finally, the turnip which Filthy Henry had encased in a spherical spell came racing through the air and into his hand.

 

He held it up for all to see. Inside, the animated turnip started gnashing wildly at the sphere.

 

“Wha, what’s that about then?” Stingy Jack asked.

 

“I’ve often wondered if the stories that were co-opted into another belief system influenced the people in the story. There aren’t a lot of examples of it happening, you see. But Stingy Jack was one of those few that moved from being a fairy folktale to being a Christian one. Which, in theory, would mean that you could be affected by their magic just as easily as you could the fairy magic.”

 

The cold light of terrified realisation dawned on Stingy Jack’s face. He had made the logical leap much faster than Filthy Henry had assumed he would, which was impressive.

 

“No, I don’t think,” the scarecrow began, before lowering his scythe ever so slightly. “I don’t think that’s true.”

 

The fairy detective reached into his pocket and pulled out a small vial of water. Making sure to hold it in his right hand so that Stingy Jack had a good view of the bottle, he popped the lid off with a flick of his thumb.

 

“I dunno,” Filthy Henry said. “Looks like this scarecrow didn’t get their brains from the wizard after all.”

 

“Is that…Holy Water?” Sam and Stingy Jack asked both at the same time.

 

The fairy detective nodded, bringing the bottle over so that it was above he sphere. Inside the turnip failed to notice anything strange going on.

 

“Indeed, it is,” Filthy Henry said. “What better way to put out a lump of coal containing a man’s soul, infused with fires of a demon from Hell, than by using some good old Holy Water from Lourdes itself.”

 

“Lourdes! You just happen to carry around with you a bottle of Holy Water from Lourdes? I don’t believe you, it’s a trick. You’re known for this sort of thing,” Stingy Jack said, the conviction in his voice wavering more and more with every word.

 

“But there were little bits of coal in all the turnips,” Sam said, pointing at the killing zone that was her farm yard. “Would you need to gather them all up?”

 

“Exactly,” Stingy Jack said, dropping the scythe and holding his hand out in front of him. “You can’t do anything if I get my lantern back.”

 

Along the ground a wind began to blow, a very localised meteorological marvel. Large pieces of turnip, parts mostly intact, began to bounce along on the mystical breeze. Mingled in with the lumps of vegetable were little black clumps. As the clumps gathered, they began to glow red, like burning coal. Stingy Jack gestured with his right hand from the ground to his outstretched left hand. A large, brown, turnip formed with a horrible face carved into it. The bits of coal, now reformed into a single lump, passed into the turnip from the mouth and lit up the inside.

 

Like a very disgusting lantern.

 

“See,” Stingy Jack said, brandishing the newly formed lantern before him.

 

“I do,” Filthy Henry said, gesturing towards the sphere in his hand with a nod of his head.

 

Inside the tiny, animated, turnip was still gnashing.

 

“Oh crud,” Stingy Jack said.

 

The fairy detective tilted the vial of water ever so slightly, causing a single drop to fall and pass into the sphere. It dropped through the spell, narrowly missing the turnip, before falling to the ground.

 

“Okay, okay, OKAY!” Stingy Jack shouted, clutching his lantern like a baby. “I’ll go. That’s what you want right? Me to leave this farm alone.”

 

“Go and never return, I believe is the line in the stories,” Sam said, crossing her arms and giving him a hard stare. “And by never return I mean you don’t get to comeback and annoy anyone again.”

 

“We have a deal?” Filthy Henry asked, wiggle the vial of water back and forth.

 

“Deal, just give me that turnip.”

 

“Nope,” the fairy detective said. “I’m going to hold onto this and make sure you honour the deal. You turn up again and I go splashy-splashy with the Holy Water.”

 

Stingy Jack said nothing. He stared at them both, then held out his lantern and thrust it in their direction.

 

“Mark my words, half-breed,” he said. “I will get that piece of my soul back. And when I do, I’ll make you and your little friend here rue the day you messed with Stingy Jack.”

 

He brought his right hand up in front of the lantern, blocking the light by covering it. It seemed as if all the light in that part of the yard was sucked into the shadows, the whole area in front of the haunted house becoming as dark as night. In a way that the fairy detective was unable to perceive, the scarecrow vanished from sight. The light returned, revealing a distinct lack of Stingy Jack in the area.

 

“Oh he’s going to be a recurring character, mark my words,” the fairy detective said.

 

“Huh,” Sam said, clearly impressed. “Lucky that you happened to have some Holy Water in your pocket.”

 

“Oh this?” Filthy Henry said, holding it up. “This is just tap water in a bottle with a little cross on it. Great thing about belief is there is no way to test for it. But you can really sell it to people, because they’ve no way to disprove you otherwise.”

 

“You mean you bluffed him?”

 

“It’s how I solve most of my cases,” the fairy detective said. He handed her the sphere encased turnip. “Here you go.”

 

Taking the animated vegetable from him, Sam Hain looked at Filthy Henry with utter confusion on her face.

 

“What do you expect me to do with this, exactly?”

 

He pointed over at the haunted house.

 

“Stick it in there and tell people it is your star attraction?”

 

Filthy Henry stuck his hands into his pockets and looked about the yard. His gaze landed on the coffee shop tent.

 

“You don’t happen to do those pumpkin spiced lattes do you?” he asked Sam. “It is coming up on Halloween after all.