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mouth.  Reddish, bedraggled hair fell from the top of its head and trailed down its back like a horse’s mane.  Another one pushed the first creature out of the way, this one a little more gray than green, its hair paler.  If I were to name them, I’d say they were gnomes.  But they couldn’t be, because gnomes didn’t exist and I wasn’t living in some fairy tale.  The past seventeen years of my life were proof to that.
    I took a deep breath and started moving once more.  It was really happening again.  The voices, and now I was seeing things.  I guess I hadn’t kept my fingers crossed long enough.  I wondered if I should tell my parents this time.  But that meant more visits to the psychiatrist and more medication.  I wasn’t even sure if Dr. Morgan still had her practice.
    A sudden squeal behind me made me jump.  I shot a glance over my shoulder.  From the thrashing of the reeds and splashing of water, I could tell some of the things had gotten into a fight.  Then a few of them tumbled out onto the trail.  Several more joined them a few moments later.  They were all hideous, gray and green and brown with warts and those strange manes running down their backs.  They were only a foot or so tall, but they had vicious looking claws at the ends of their fingers and toes, and they seemed to be strong for their size.
    I guess I stood still for too long, because one turned and spotted me.  It let out one of those shrill, fingernails-scraping-a-chalkboard cries and threw itself down the trail towards me.  My heart leapt into my throat, but I turned and took off, running up the sandy trail that would take me home.  I might have been tall and gangly, but thank goodness I was fast.  I put some distance between us, my backpack thumping painfully against my spine, my delicate butterfly wings snagging against stray branches.  I never looked back, just pushed harder despite the deep sand.  And I had been worried about mosquitoes.
    After a few minutes I finally made it to my house.  I jumped off the trail and cut up the slope, pumping my legs hard to reach my backyard.  I dug my hand into my backpack and fished out my house key.  It seemed to take forever, but once I found it I jammed it into the keyhole of my sliding glass door and pulled the door open.  As soon as I was in, I slammed it shut and locked it, leaning on my knees as I caught my breath.  Eventually, I worked up the nerve to look out into our backyard, secretly wishing it didn’t open out onto the woods surrounding the swamp.
    There wasn’t a single creature in sight.  I was confused, for I had heard them right behind me, even to the point of stepping onto the flat expanse of my yard.  A flood of relief washed over me then.  As real as it all had seemed, I had been imagining them.  Thank goodness.
    Standing up straight, I took my hair down and walked into my bathroom.  I looked like a mess.  My face was all sweaty and dirty from the extra effort of running the last five minutes home, and I felt grungy.  I decided on an early shower, hoping that the hot water would not only wash the dirt and sweat away, but would also cleanse away the images of those strange creatures from my mind as well.
    The dance wasn’t until eight, so as soon as I was clean, I was going to take a nice long nap and try to resettle my mind.  I just hoped that my dreams wouldn’t reflect what I had just been through.
     
    -Five-
    Samhain
     
    I didn’t dream during my nap, something I was very grateful for.  If I had dreamed, I’m sure it would have been full of toady little creatures with sharp claws and black eyes.
    I woke up to some Halloween-themed song playing on my radio alarm.  Appropriate , I thought.  I threw the covers back and dragged myself to my bathroom, casting a quick glance at my sliding glass door as I went.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  No little monsters staring at me from beyond the glass; no scratch marks running up and down the