The Mystery of Halloween

In the suite that the twenty girls were sharing, Alexander looked back and forth as the girls unpacked their luggage. To say that Alexander was confused, would be stating the obvious, for he was just as confused as when the children had been packing back to Quebec Castle. The boys, the girls, both were packing clothes that completely confounded the Northern caracal.

Anne Davis had brought a garment reminiscent of the kimono that Gemma wore, but as different as he and Roxana were from Miltiades. Agatha King was had brought a garment that was a complete mystery to Alexander for the ballet was something he knew absolutely nothing about. Nicole Ball had brought something most horrendous in appearance for the attire was Alexander's first introduction to clowns, something he would be become more familiar with.

All these strange attires, what was Alexander to make of them? All of the students, all of them ten years old, seemed to have gone mad! What was the meaning of these strange garments? Was there something he knew nothing about? Was there one of these masquerades he had heard spoken of? Was there going to be someone costumed as the Red Death like that Phantom of the Opera fellow that Alexander had heard Alan read of? He knew not. All the mystery, all the enigmas, was this somehow connected to Halloween?

As Alexander investigated a black dress and a pointy hat of the same colour, he quickly found Gemma standing over him. The sixteen-year-old daughter of Mr. Robert Cook, Quebec Castle's gardener, looked down at him with her large, reddish-brown eyes. Alexander looked back up at her, giving a meow as a greeting to which, she responded by giving him a pat on the head. She was a slender damsel of fight feet and six inches with light skin and red hair that was long and straight. She was wearing her blue kimono and shoes and her pink turban, the attire that Alexander most associated her with. She was fairly attractive for a human, with an honest face and a mouth that might have been called cute by a human.

"Are you making sure the costumes are alright, Alexander?" Gemma asked.

Costumes? There must have been a masquerade! Would someone he knew be costumed as the Red Death? Would it be someone he didn't know? Alexander was very curious.

"Is he in there, Gemma?"

"He is here, Ms. Lombard!"

As Ms. Lombard entered the room, Alexander's ears pricked up, but that was more because Roxana was following their master's fiancé. Jumping down from the bed, Alexander approached his mate and the two started sniffing each other's faces.

Roxana was a year old, just as Alexander was. As a female, she was smaller, being sixteen inches at the shoulder, her head-and-body length forty inches and her tail twelve inches. She was uniformly sandy in colour opposed to Alexander's reddish-tan, overall making her distinct from her mate.

After sniffing one another, Roxana sat down and proceeded to groom herself. Beginning by licking her right paw, she proceeded to rub her wet paw against her head and then repeat that. Alexander then proceeded to aid in the grooming, licking Roxana's right shoulder. For Alexander and Roxana, grooming had become a sort of bonding experience.

Soon, the students began to speak about going out onto the streets with the apparitions, the brownies, the pythonesses, the bats and the ghouls. Upon hearing this, Alexander looked to them in confusion. Apparitions he knew, he knew an apparition, for although he had succumbed to his wounds inflicted by Miltiades, Alexander's predecessor Darius still lived at Quebec Castle. Bats he knew as well, for he had seen them flying some nights through the sky, but what were these other things? What were brownies, pythonesses and ghouls?

"My Aunt Tulip used to say…" began Niall Hirst, one of the youngest of the twenty boys, as he entered the girls' quarters. "That on Halloween the Devil play the bagpipes while riding on his goat!"

What? Alexander looked at the boy, wondering what talk this was. It was said Herr von Fell was a devil, if not the Devil. Did this mean that Herr von Fell would this very day be playing the bagpipes and riding a goat?

Niall was awfully small for ten-years-old and even then, he barely looked his age, but from what Alexander had heard of Verna Gillespie, soon to be "Verna Petit" once she had married her fiancé Herman Petit alongside Captain Smith and Ms. Lombard and Mr. Cook and Ms. Eleanor Armstrong in a triple wedding, she herself had been not too different from Niall at that age. Coming from Ireland, Niall was apparently surrounded by a colourful group of people at home and he always said something to say about his late Aunt Tulip, either something about her life, something she would say or just something she believed in. Taking Niall's own beliefs into account, which included a belief in the undead, vampires existing everywhere but North America, werewolves and more, it was logical to believe that he and his late Aunt Tulip had been two proverbial peas in a pod.

Looking to Roxana, Alexander noticed her ears moving back and forth, as if listening for the sound of bagpipes. Having previously belonged to the cruel Herr von Fell, Roxana had known the Veteran of the Franco-German well, even if she had only been owned by him briefly, and knew that the Exiled Herr did indeed play the bagpipes, specifically the Schaferpfeife, a type of bagpipe native to Germany. As far as Roxana was concerned, her former master was indeed the Devil, though while she had both heard and seen him play the bagpipes, she had no memory of him riding a goat, though given how horses would either try to kick him or grow nervous in his presence, he clearly could not ride a horse, therefore a different mount would be required for him.

The next thing Alexander knew, a white sheet had fallen upon him. He merely stood there, moving his head back and forth as he heard Ms. Lombard say: "Now, Hippolyta, what did you do that for?"

"Alexander has a costume now!" Hippolyta exclaimed. "Doesn't he make a spooky apparition?"

An apparition? Was there something Alexander was missing? Since when did apparitions wear white sheets over their bodies?

When Gemma lifted the sheet off of him, the Northern caracal stared up at the gardener's daughter and proceeded to rub against her legs. He was an affectionate feline and he loved those that he viewed as his family. True, Gemma was unrelated to the Smith family, but Alexander viewed Gemma and her father as family just as much. He viewed the students, teachers and other staff as family as well, never even conceiving that there would be days that they would not be at Quebec Castle.

People not being at Quebec Castle? Alexander could conceive visitors, Ms. Lombard and Ms. Armstrong were such people, as were Herman and Verna and the recently married Timothy and Collette Covington, former students of Captain Smith just as Verna and Herman were. He understood that visitors were not there to stay forever, but when Ms. Lombard married Captain Smith and Ms. Armstrong married Mr. Cook, they would become residents of Quebec Castle.

Alas, Alexander could conceive death as well. With the recent passing of Captain Smith's mother, Alexander knew that though someone might live at Quebec Castle, there would eventually come a day where they would live no more.

Something that Alexander could not conceive however, were things such as Christmas holidays, summer holidays, graduation and retirement. He could not conceive them, because he quite simply never heard of them.

Taking a moment to scratch an itch, Alexander watched as Gemma proceeded to exit the girls' quarters. Following after her, he playfully batted at her feet, something that caused the sixteen-year-old-girl to giggle. Compared to his mate Roxana and their predecessor Darius, Alexander was by far the most playful of the three. Roxana did indeed have a playful side to her, but due to Herr von Fell's treatment of her, her playful side was something she seldom showed, while Darius on the other hand, had been a most serious beast, though he had his playful moments.

In the living room of the suite, Captain Smith was standing before the teachers Ms. Severine Burnett, Mr. Adrian Walters, Mrs. Marilyn Ayres, Mr. Freddy Asquith and Ms. Dido Watson, rehearsing a speech he had prepared. Alan was standing by, listening intently.

When Captain Smith said "My father used to", Alan finished the sentence with "'Sing 'Three bags full and a rooster on a hill' to the tune of 'Deadman's Chest.'" There was a smile on Alan's front as he said that with a fair off look in his eye as he thought about his late maternal grandfather. The teachers all smiled as well, missing Grandpa Smith as much as Alan did. Captain Smith on the other hand gave a small sigh, before smiling himself and nodding. His father had been a colourful character with eccentricities of his own, but affected as well, having been a pacifist that had been pressganged to fight the Fenian raids, all knew that until the day he died, he had not been the man he had always been. Captain Smith was of the opinion that his paterfamilias' eccentricities had been an attempt to hide how affected he had been, but there had been times when he made no effort to hide how affected he was, growing quiet and proceeding to stare into space, or even going onto long walks around the Quebec Castle's estate.

Grandpa Smith had been a man Alexander had never known. He was a year-old-caracal who had only come to live at Quebec Castle the month prior while Grandpa Smith had expired some years prior. He was spoken of on occasion and Alexander had seen some of his work, such as his attempt to paint a famous battle on the ceiling of each room in Quebec Castle. As grand a goal that might have been, Grandpa Smith only managed to get five ceilings painted, one of which was the ballroom with its depiction of the Battle of Clontarf upon its ceiling, though according to those who had known him, Grandpa Smith had not put Brian Boru as the leader of the Irish forces, but rather Carthach mac Saorbhreathach, whom Grandpa Smith had called "a real Irishman", quoting his wife, who was half-Cayuga and half-Irish while he himself was half-Algonquin and half-German. According to Captain Smith, the ball room ceiling of Quebec Castle was for his father what the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was for Michelangelo, but taking twice as long, having begun in the second year of the Second Boer War and only finished it seven years after the war had concluded.

Returning to rehearsing his speech, Captain looked to Alexander for a moment and said: "Alexander, come here." Obediently, Alexander approached, taking his place at his master's side. Sitting down, he looked at the teacher's sitting before them. Clearing his throat, Captain Smith uttered: "This year, I went to Egypt to bring home this four-footed companion. He came from near Memphis where Merneptah, that scion of Ramesses the Great, held court. His ancestors have seen wonders that we ourselves never could have dreamed possible before we started searching for the wonders that the desert sands jealously guard. I know not when I will next be in Egypt, war is everywhere it seems save for here in Canada, but I know that when the war is over, whenever it is, then once more shall we unveil the great mysteries of past civilizations, bringing to light… Bringing to light… Damn! I was doing quite well until then! What did I even say? Did anyone write that down? That was good!" Looking down to Alexander, Captain Smith asked: "Do you know what I said?" Alexander meowed a response, to which Captain Smith replied: "Thank you, that is very helpful."

Alan wrinkled his brow. He could not tell if his maternal uncle was being serious or sarcastic.

Walking towards Alan, Alexander stretched up onto his hind legs and pawed at the boy, meowing at him. Smiling, his master's nephew petted him upon the cranium. When that was over, Alexander then rubbed against Alan's legs while Captain Smith and the teachers tried to piece together what Captain Smith had said, with Mr. Walters, the fastest writer amongst them, writing it all down.

"Hey, Uncle Kull!" uttered Alan, getting his uncle's attention.

"Yes, Alan?" inquired Captain Smith.

"Would it be alright if I took Alexander here for a walk?"

"He, Roxana, Cnut and Emma will be taken for a walk when we all take the students ad Hippolyta guising, Alan." Answered Captain Smith.

Guising? Alexander looked to his master his ears perked up. What was guising? Was this something related to Halloween? The more that was brought up, the more the Northern caracal wondered. What was this Halloween thing? All he had learned so far was that it was a time of year when certain stories are at the most powerful in their abilities to take them to the places they tell of and that it was the time of year when the Devil went riding upon a goat while playing the bagpipes. What was this? What was even going on? This whole Halloween thing was such a mystery!

Noticing Alexander with his ears perked up, Ms. Burnett asked: "Do you hear something, Alexander?"

Looking to the caracal, Captain Smith commented: "He probably hears Cnut or Emma coming. There! You see! Here comes Emma!"

The rough collie entered the living room of the suite after coming from the boys' room. She approached her master and then lay before his feet with little care about this Halloween thing.