The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

an cloud of enormous bats, their black robes fluttering like wings as they
spiraled up, up, blotting out the moon.
Meanwhile the darkness whispered in her ear, and something with hard, warm
hands touched her and comforted her.
That night was Halloween, not that any trick-or-treaters ever came to
Caroline’s house, or anyone came at this hour, as it was well past midnight, but
she knew that on this night (and also in the spring, at the end of April) Mom and
Jack and the rest had their big “do’s” and this must have been one of them, for
which occasion they had murdered that girl, whoever she was.
The thing in the darkness took her by the hand, and helped her out of the
hammock, then led her into a dance as the bat-things scattered from the face of
the Moon. Pale light rippled over the back yard and she began to see what she
was dancing with, a male figure, naked, utterly black, like a computer graphic,
she thought, something that could morph into any shape; but now it was this
gleaming, handsome man, and she danced with him as if she were Ginjer Rogers
and he was Fred Astaire; and they whirled around and around with the music
turned off, listening to the darkness, which spoke to her from very far away and
told her that she was safe and everything would be fine and she could be
anything, anything at all that she wanted to be when she grew up.
“Yeah, I’m a witch all right, just like my mom,” she said aloud, as if
concluding that conversation with the goth-boy at school. “I’m pretty sure.”
But all that might have been a dream. She knew she would have to wait until
dawn, when Mom and Jack and the rest would return from their distant sabbat.
Then the friend she had called out of the darkness would confront them, and
command them, and begin to feed.
Then she would be sure.
She shouted. She didn’t care who heard.