By the first week of October, everyone in Bellweather had put something on their porch.
Pumpkins mostly.
Cornstalks tied to columns. Pots of rust-colored mums. Wreaths made from dried wheat and little orange berries that scattered across the sidewalk whenever the wind picked up.
Everyone except the house on Briar Road.
It didn't need decorating.
October seemed to live there already.
The house sat beyond the last streetlight in town, where the sidewalks disappeared and the road narrowed between fields. It was an old white farmhouse, though most of the paint had surrendered years ago. Ivy climbed the chimney. An apple tree leaned crookedly over the fence.
And every October, exactly seven pumpkins appeared on the porch.
Nobody ever saw anyone put them there.
They simply arrived.
October first.
Seven pumpkins.
Seven chairs.
Seven windows glowing after dark.
The rest of the year, the house looked abandoned.
Naturally, we were obsessed with it.
The first time we went there, we were seventeen.
There were four of us then, packed into Maggie's mother's station wagon with a paper bag full of cider donuts between us and absolutely no intention of doing anything stupid.
At least that's what we'd said when we left.
By nine o'clock, we'd parked beside the cornfield on Briar Road.
"Absolutely not," Maggie said.
"You drove."
"Driving here and going inside are two very different things."
We stared through the windshield.
Seven pumpkins glowed on the porch.
Behind them sat seven empty chairs.
"I thought nobody lived here," I said.
"Nobody does."
"Then who lit the pumpkins?"
Nobody answered.
Which, naturally, meant we had to investigate.
There is a particular kind of stupidity reserved for seventeen-year-old girls in October.
We climbed the fence.
The yard smelled like wet leaves and apples.
Somewhere beyond the house, wind moved through the cornfield in long waves.
The porch steps groaned beneath our feet.
One.
Two.
Three.
Seven pumpkins watched us approach.
"This is how every horror movie starts," Maggie whispered.
"No," I told her. "Horror movies start when somebody says something like that."
She hit my arm.
There was a basket beside the front door.
Inside were apples.
A little handwritten sign rested against them.
TAKE ONE.
Maggie immediately stepped backward.
"Oh, come on."
"Absolutely not."
"It's an apple."
"It's an apple sitting outside an abandoned house telling me to eat it."
"Fair."
I took one anyway.
It was small and deep red, almost black beneath the porch light.
The moment I lifted it from the basket, something moved inside the house.
We froze.
A shadow crossed the hallway.
Maggie grabbed my sleeve.
"We're leaving."
Then the front door opened.
The woman standing there couldn't have been much older than my mother.
That surprised me.
I'd expected an old woman.
Every story we'd ever heard about Briar Road involved an old woman.
Instead, she had long dark hair streaked with silver and wore an oversized green sweater with the sleeves pushed to her elbows.
She looked at the four of us.
Then at the apple in my hand.
"You going to eat that?"
I considered putting it back.
She laughed.
"Come inside. Cider's getting cold."
This should have been the moment we ran.
Instead, five minutes later we were sitting in her kitchen.
Because apparently that's another way horror movies start.
But there was nothing frightening about the kitchen.
That's what I remember most.
It was warm.
Bundles of herbs hung from wooden beams. Copper pots crowded the walls. A black kettle simmered on an old stove, filling the room with cinnamon and cloves.
There were candles everywhere.
And on the table.
Seven mugs.
I counted twice.
"You were expecting people?" I asked.
The woman looked at the mugs.
"Always."
She poured cider into four of them.
"Who are the others for?"
She smiled.
"Whoever comes."
Maggie kicked me beneath the table.
Stop asking questions.
So naturally, I asked another.
"Do you live here?"
"Sometimes."
"What does that mean?"
"It means sometimes I live here."
That was the first moment I noticed something strange about her.
Not frightening.
Familiar.
I had seen her before.
I just couldn't remember where.
We stayed nearly an hour.
She told us nothing about herself, despite our increasingly unsubtle attempts to find out.
Instead, she asked about us.
Where we'd go after graduation.
Who we wanted to become.
What we were afraid of.
Seventeen-year-olds rarely get asked questions like that by adults who actually want the answers.
So we gave them to her.
Maggie wanted to leave Bellweather.
Claire wanted to fall in love.
Jess wanted to become a photographer.
And I,
I didn't know.
The woman studied me over the rim of her mug.
"That's all right."
"It doesn't feel all right."
"Most things haven't happened yet."
Outside, something struck the window.
We jumped.
The woman didn't.
A crow sat on the sill.
She tapped the glass once.
It flew away.
Then the clock in the hallway chimed ten.
The woman's expression changed.
"You should go."
Nobody argued.
At the door, she stopped me.
I'd forgotten the apple on the kitchen table.
She placed it in my hand.
"Keep this."
"For what?"
"You'll know."
Then she looked past me toward my friends.
There was sadness in her face.
"Come back next October."
We didn't.
Life happened.
Graduation happened.
Maggie left Bellweather just like she said she would.
Claire fell in love three separate times before finding the right one.
Jess became a photographer.
And I spent years figuring out who I wanted to become.
The station wagon disappeared.
Then the old school.
Then the diner where we'd spent Friday nights.
Eventually, even Bellweather began changing.
But every October when I drove past Briar Road,
seven pumpkins glowed on the porch.
I never stopped.
I don't know why.
Maybe some places belong more safely to memory.
Twenty-three years passed before I climbed that fence again.
By then, there was gray in my hair too.
The apple tree still leaned over the fence.
The porch still had seven chairs.
And seven pumpkins glowed beside the steps.
There was a basket beside the door.
TAKE ONE.
I laughed when I saw it.
Then I knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
The door drifted open.
"Hello?"
The house was silent.
I stepped inside.
The hallway looked exactly as I remembered.
So did the kitchen.
Copper pots.
Herbs hanging from the beams.
Black kettle on the stove.
Seven mugs waiting on the table.
But everything was covered in dust.
Everything except one chair.
On the table before it sat an envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Not my married name.
My seventeen-year-old name.
My hands began shaking before I opened it.
Inside was a single piece of paper.
Most things haven't happened yet.
Underneath she'd written:
But look how many did.
I sat there for a very long time.
Then the clock in the hallway chimed.
Ten.
Something struck the window.
I turned.
A crow sat on the sill.
And somewhere upstairs—
a floorboard creaked.
I should have been afraid.
Instead, I smiled.
"Okay," I whispered.
"I remember."
The kettle began to whistle.
Behind me sat seven empty mugs.
Outside, tires crunched slowly along Briar Road.
Voices floated across the yard.
Young voices.
Laughing.
Someone climbed the fence.
I looked at the seven mugs.
Then at the kettle.
And suddenly,
I understood.
I pushed my sleeves to my elbows.
Opened the front door.
Four teenage girls stood beneath the porch light.
Terrified.
Trying desperately not to show it.
One of them was holding an apple.
I smiled.
"You going to eat that?"
They stared at me.
I stepped aside.
"Come inside."
Behind me, the candles flickered to life.
"Cider's getting cold."
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