Chapter 1

Samhain is an ancient traditional ceremony, believed to be a night where spirits came back to visit their living relatives. People left soul cakes out for their ancestors and the children used to sing songs door to door for the dead, in return for their own little cakes. This tradition has changed over time and has turned into Halloween. Now, it's just for children to dress up in spooky costumes, play jokes and get free candy from their neighbours.

However, some spirits did not get the memo that they weren't supposed to show up any more.

....

Liam lived alone. He worked hard and brought himself a house in his mid twenties, before inflation set in and now a decade later was close to paying off his mortgage.

He worked in IT for a large American company, which paid decent money and felt like a job for life. He was sensible. He wore a shirt and tie every day to work, drove an electric car and kept his hair and beard neatly trimmed. He felt like he had everything he could work for, but now, at the top of his career felt lonely. He struggled to find dates and when he did, didn't really know how to talk about anything besides computers. He never thought of himself as a bad catch. He was thin, slightly athletic from a five day a week swimming habit and had a good education, a master's degree in technology from University College Cork.

Today was Halloween. He had returned from the office, with a quick stop to pick up a few spooky decorations for the front door. A pumpkin shaped glass jar, filled with individually wrapped sweets, a tacky cobweb and a doormat saying "We welcome good spirits" surrounded by cartoon ghosts. It was the bare minimum participation for the night and hoped it enough to stop children actually knocking on the door and talking to him.

He turned on the porch light and turned off all lights at the front of the house. This should be enough to trick people into thinking he was probably not home. He settled in upstairs, sat at his computer, opened software for making computer games to fulfill his recent hobby of programming an AI capable of being a challenging shogi opponent, under the belief that western chess was not imaginative enough.

"Alexa, play Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens." It was his favourite light musical suite for concentration and helped him block out any distractions from neighbours or the road outside the house.

He opened up his long, serpentine list of code and started editing various loops of code. Maybe once he was happy with how the AI matched his moves, whilst reducing his code to the minimum size he could edit it down to, then he could hire a graphic designer to make an acceptably polished product and publish it on the android store. He considered this to be a productive use of his time.

He sighed and put on his headphones. He had his doorbell camera open on desktop, He could see if anyone came to the door and if need be, politely direct them to the sweets and imply that he was not home. He did not like to outright lie.

'Bing bong bing bong' came a chime interrupting his music. He switched his screen to show the doorbell footage. Some children dressed up as classic movie monsters, with a bored looking older teenage relative had pressed the bell.

Unmuting the microphone he said. "Sorry, I can't come to the door. Please help yourself from the bowl."

The children made noises, disappointed that they couldn't threaten him with trick or treat picked up some haribo bags and were ushered away.

'Easy enough' he thought to himself before typing away at his hobby.

Over the evening, only a few families bothered him, or at least pressed the doorbell to ask for him, which was fine. Maybe most of them saw the lights off and just left him alone. A successful, quiet night.

He sipped on some strong black coffee as the evening darkened to night. He planned on being awake until after midnight, meticulously checking the AI response to his own moves.

As time went on, the frequency between the rings grew greater and eventually they stopped. He had been working away for four hours without a break, too lost in his own world to even make himself dinner, but at least he reasoned that the children had been sent home to bed.

He took off his headphones, the music had long stopped and he had not even noticed. He sipped coffee, his eyes getting a little tired from staring at the screen all day and now all night. He needed to remind himself to get some blue filter glasses to stop the eye strain, but always forgot by the morning. He sighed and looked away for a moment. Maybe it was time to call it a night and heat up some tomato soup.

He slipped into his dressing gown to keep off the chill and went downstairs to the fridge. He opened it up, it was very clean, but almost bare. All he kept was tubs of ready made soup, a loaf of bread and an assorted selection of fruits.

He heated up a plastic tub of soup and stared into the microwave, watching it rotate and slowly bubble under the dim orange light.

'bing bong bing bong' came a chime within the house.

Liam looked around, startled. He thought he had escaped the visitors tonight. They must see the light on and he dreaded having to make social contact.

'bing bong bing bong'.

He stopped watching the food and switched to the doorbell camera on his phone and looked outside. Nobody was there, just the black and white night vision camera showing his empty porch.

He sighed. Just the neighborhood children playing a prank. He remembered a similar game when he was a child. Other children in his neighbourhood would knock on the door and run away. Very irritating.

He put the phone down on the counter and ignored it, going back to stare at his soup.

'bing bong bing bong.'

He gritted his teeth and marched towards the front door. He didn't know what he was going to say, but he knew he was going to have strong words with the pranksters and hopefully their parents if they were there too.

He glided to the door and threw it open, with an annoyed glint in his eyes.

"Who's there?" he growled into the empty darkness.

"Boo!" came a woman's voice behind him.

...