Deep in the Naughtwood trees, at the end of the lane, Agatha Mope got ready to hide. That afternoon the bare branches began to rattle like bones. Leaves skittered up her walkway like hunting spiders. Agatha felt the low sun cooling against the crisp air. It fell, a dying white orb, between the hook tree and the hollow oak opposite the road. It fell squarely between the haggard old trees, as it did every year when the night began to overtake the days. Agatha saw the shadows along the road grow long and she knew they’d be coming.

“Goblins, abhorrent little goblins,” Papa used to say. Rest in peace. “Oughtn get a moment on this earth, horrible beasts. Ought to be left to Hell, where they belong.”

He didn’t look her way when he was afraid. He didn’t look her way much. He had a habit of sweating through his shirts. Ammonia, Lemon, and five minutes in the sink. Agatha couldn’t forget that.

He pulled the curtains before the dark came. He turned off every light and they hid upstairs, hunched over his bible with a candle, his holy sword against the wall, its flames quiet in its belly. They whispered verse when the hordes swarmed.
 
In those years when the fiends found their home, wandering down the dirt road and past the post where their mailbox once stood, Papa covered her ears. She could hear the shrieks and bedlam through his hands, but no sound matched the strength of her Papa’s verse: and I saw the wild beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the one seated on the horse and against his army.

God would protect them. He would anoint them with power, if it came to that– came to being a wolf instead of a sheep.

Demonic shapes searched the woods for beating hearts these nights, searching for pure and God-fearing meat. The Mopes did not waver. They kept their heads down, as always, letting God be their pilot. Life is a staircase and one could easily fall on their way up. Keep your eye on the next stair Agatha.
On those nights, Papa read her verse by the votif and they survived to see the sun anew in the morning, not a wink of sleep between them.

Now he was in the ground where it was always dark. Now he was in heaven. 
She’d spent the day with her chest in a knot, her thoughts never far from her Papa’s bible. She didn’t need to see the sun fall to know what day it was. She knew the moment she woke. No matter how long she looked at her porridge, she could say grace until it cooled, time would take her in one direction. Night would come.

She looked at the simple ground, His humble earth, and wondered how the same soft soil that embraced the seeds could give way to the steaming pits of hell, it’s furrows drawn by gnarled talons and cloven hooks, still hot from their release.

These things walk this earth for one night, she’d known it her whole life, but she’d never had to survive that night without her Papa. They come tonight, on the Devil’s Harvest. She prayed they wouldn’t find her house.
Howls rose through the thicket and the groaning of tree trunks rose to a furor. They swayed over a purpling sky. Hellfire singed its edge.

She dropped the latch before the shadows ate her house up. She drew the chains across their bolts and she pulled the layers of curtains. Inside, she dimmed every lamp and pulled the string, extinguishing the bulb hanging in the kitchen.

“Piggly Wiggly Agatha Mope, I’ll blow your house down,” the boy’s voice lingered. Maybe it was the wind, but she could hear it. “Blow your house down.”
“You’re not there,” said Agatha.
He wore a fat grin across his freckled face, looking like he knew something she didn’t. Sins, she thought, he knew sins… but the expression said he knew something about her, something she couldn’t fathom.

She’d begged Papa to come on that errand. She hadn’t been in his truck for ages. How silly that seemed now. She didn’t need to go to town anymore.
“Blow it right to the ground you smelly pig. Don’t you know you smell like shit?”

Wind spiraled down the chimney, it’s pagan spirit testing the damper. He was the pig, with his stump nose and fat cheeks. “Piggly Wiggly,” he said, his finger cocked and aimed between her eyes.

Her father did nothing. He grabbed her arm and drug her, baffled and nearly crying, from the Naughtwood grocer.  “That’s why you stay in the truck,” he said. “Knew this was a mistake. You stay home next time.” 
She’d said nothing. Children weren’t for conversation.

He’d leave her in the truck sometimes, in the days before. They still looked though. They looked at both of them, slowing their gate to stare a little too long. She’d sit on the bench seat with the window rolled up and they’d all look, not just the children, but the grown ups too. They pointed and said things she couldn’t hear. Maybe they said Piggly Wiggly. Maybe they said worse.

“They’ll get theirs on the Demon’s Harvest,” her father assured. “Or in hell after. Drive through this town after the Harvest, you’ll see. Half these folks’ll be gone.”
 
She hoped they’d get the pig-boy tonight, if they hadn’t already. Tear him down to strips of bacon and drag him back into the sulfurous casm. She wished her Daddy would do more– would do anything. He never said a thing. “They aren’t worth it,” he’d say after, “not in God’s eyes.”

The piggly boy wanted to blow her house down, but he wasn’t no wolf. She’d seen it in her Pappa, the rising growl and the curling lips. The trembling began somewhere deep, freezing him in place. The vein on his forehead swelled and his eyes bulged. He’d try and clench em shut, but he could hardly fight the beast within– not when something woke it.

Why didn’t the wolf ever come when she wanted? Why didn’t the wolf come for the pig-boy and his devil sneer? Papa’d gone wolf over lesser indecencies– frankly, she couldn’t figure why the wolf woke when it did.

“Righteousness,” Papa’d said, “was knowing when to be a sheep, and when to be a wolf. We are his flock, you be certain, but he will come calling. When the time is right, God Almighty needs a wolf– but that don’t mean making a scene in no grocer’s.”

She wasn’t so sure God was calling when Papa shed his wool.

Night came calling though, sure as shoeshine. It came and it ate the colors, dousing them in devil’s black. It hid the bark on the trees and sent the birds into hiding. Only the creatures with glowing eyes came out now. The angry wind worked on the glass in the windows and shook the last leaves from the twisted branches.

She’d been waiting. She hadn’t realized it, but she’d been hovering by the banister, waiting for the wincing squeak from that first stair. Her ears hung on the wailing wind and clashing branches. Her house fought bravely against the foul weather these nights. Every beam groaned.

She’d put hours in each month to keep it up. It took two-inch galvanized nails to keep the timbers down in rough weather– nail em at least a half-inch from the edge of the plank or the boards’d split like a banana on vanilla ice cream. She knew the house wasn’t the same though. She couldn’t do it all alone.

Too late now, she thought. She didn’t eat supper. She’d been listening to the noises outside. She couldn’t do one thing: pick up a spoon, light the stove, take a step, without stopping to consider a sound or a change in the light.
 
Go upstairs Agatha. Just go there now. It’s safer… but she stood at the bottom of the stairs looking at the door, sure she’d hear that squeak if she so much as stood straight. She listened hard, feeling like her ear was leaving her body and drifting closer to that fated step. Demon Harvest, she thought, so close. She didn’t even know what she would do when– the rusty nail on the first step bent against the splintered wood, sending her clambering backwards. Her elbows fell to the stair behind her.

They were here: the Devil’s spawn, spewn from hell’s horrid lips. They were spilt upon the earth and they’d found her bastion– they could sense its purity and they were here.

She gathered her breath and began to rise. She could hear Papa’s voice, “hide girl, hide. Get where you’re going.” He wasn’t here to drag her away though, even as the winds grew stronger. No Papa. No wolf.

She rose slowly, her hand finding the uneven wall panels and a picture frame where Christ held a pillowy lamb. She clenched her teeth, a prayer locked on her tongue. She dared not speak a vowel.

She could smell the sulfur. Cloven feet searched the stairs outside, clacking up the planks in nonsensical formations. She felt the weight on the house. More hooves and other sounds, unnatural sounds, echoed on the aged timber. All manner of unholy extremity groped at her entry.

Papa’d never let her be so close. He’d of had her upstairs by now. Whatever they did to the house, he kept her from the violence. He’d never let them in.
“Get where you’re going!” Papa’s measured tone ascended with immediacy, but keeping its control. In another life he’d of been a preacher with his own flock.

Agatha didn’t budge. She thought about it. She wanted to, but she found herself alone, one door and four stairs from the ravenous horde. It was a moment from scripture– as lived by Noah, or Joshua. She tingled just a tiny bit. That little pig boy was out there with no faith to protect him. Where did the blasphemers and Pharisees hide?

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Each stroke fell like lightning. Crafted one-hundred years ago and strong as petrified oak, the door still protestested. The prayer on her tongue leapt down her throat and she scrambled backwards.

BANG! BANG!

There was movement, a garbeling. A shadow teased the moonlit curtains, evil peaking in. Agatha swore, in the instant before she gasped and scrambled up the stairs, that she saw the shape of a horn curling from a ghoulish head. 
With a single breath she found herself in her Papa’s study, nearly slamming the door. Then she remembered that they didn’t know she was here. She knew God hid the scent of the pure blooded, but even Daniel showed caution amongst the lions. She had to be quiet. She let the door close, letting only the slightest of its own weight pull it shut. Then she slid the deadbolt and pulled the lock with tempered breathing.

Something caught her eye. A slender shadow leaned against the yellow wallpaper in the space left vacant by the shut door. Her father’s weapon lay quiet there, it’s belly taught with holy thunder.

Bang! Bang!

The strikes on the door were muffled by the insulating newspaper and heavy carpentry. The little study held the light of the moon in every corner. The angry disc charted the space with furious luminescence, defiling the acute angles, the crucifix on the wall, her father’s writing desk, and the holy books stacked upon it.

She’d forgotten the upstairs curtains. Now, the laughing loon hung low, halfway to the earth. It wasn’t itself. The red milk of hell flooded its jagged mountains and stained its mocking teeth. Tonight, the alien sphere hosted a corruption. It’s evil light framed the world in a ruddy mist, maligned with abstraction and untruth.

Agatha couldn’t bring herself to stand in its light, or even be near the window. She sat huddled between the desk and her father’s antique chair, only finding the courage to reach up and search the desk’s alter-like surface with a blind hand. She pulled it down, their family book, THE bible– the TRUE word: King James. She clenched it’s warm cover in both hands as if it’s touch might muzzle the evil orb.

She realized the stillness of the room then, the stillness of her entire house. In her distracted moment, calm had descended over the once frenzied front door. She could place the door in her mind, feeling it’s absolute quiet. She pictured it, the wood splintered and gouged by fingers like curved swords.

How long had it been? Were they still there?
… noooo… scuttling limbs bolted from the front porch. Gravel crunched and twigs snapped under hoof and slithering belly. Below the study window, clear as the cock’s crow, but sick with bile, she heard laughter. A single breath of malicious laughter, pitched to slice ear drums and hollow as hell’s gaping maw, escaped the maelstrom outside.

Agatha hugged the book to her breast. “Give me strength, Father in Heaven.”
Could this wretched creature climb? Would it bury it’s claws in the siding and find her window? It could shatter the single-paned glass with a touch.
Perhaps the moon, mutated to Satan’s all-seeing eye, had already betrayed her. Maybe it had announced her place of hiding and the laughter was simply the recognition of her whereabouts. She’d been discovered and sentenced to die by Hell’s cosmic network.

She felt the weapon near her side. Papa’s weapon. Never touch, not ever. Weapons are for wolves.

Shingles spun on their moorings above her, flapping while the wind worked to wrench them loose. She listened for more laughing, for more signs of hellspawn, but could hardly tell her own whinnying air pipe from the coursing winds. Pumping blood drummed in her ears. Fear clouded her faith, but she would be tenacious. Fear was not sinful– no. She was God fearing, wasn’t she?
She’d be resolute. She rummaged for words and loosened the prayer from her tongue: “God in heaven, give me strength,” she said. “Strength.” Not a Piggly Wiggly. “Make me strong in the face of your… enemies.”

She buried her whispers deep within, making her voice so quiet that only God could hear. “Give me strength. Show me a sign. Help me please. Give me…”
THUD! The eastern wall shook.

She saw the curtains shake and the window frame shiver over the shape of the moon. THUD!

Cackles followed the second impact. They mocked her– of course they did, the wretched Fallen revelled in their hunt. They’d cornered one of His chosen children. The Demon Harvest had just begun, and they didn’t just sow, oh no, they celebrated.

They hurled basalt and hellfire mined from Hell’s black stomach. THUD!
Another wet heft collided with the wall.

THUD! THUD!
SPLASH!

Plasm shot across the window. Green venom stretched from the explosion, now oozing down glass. She’d seen the odious ooze before, but never so fresh. She’d scrubbed it from her house before, spending hours trying to get the stink out after the toxins had been neutralized by the morning sun.

She couldn’t imagine such a morning now, not by herself. Agatha covered her ears with both palms, keeping the barrage out and keeping her prayers locked in her head. The house endured the blows, each hit echoing in the old siding. 
More wet splashes collapsed against the wall. She could feel the impacts of the heavier blows, the wood around her spasming with each collision. The roof groaned above.

SPLASH! SPLASH! THUD!

Agatha stammered for new words, struggling to find her prayer. “Strength. Please.”

KABOOM!!!

Everything flashed at the strike. For a moment Agatha thought they’d erased everything she knew. With one wicked bolt, it appeared to be gone– but her vision came back and she saw yellow smoke drift across the vicious moon. The world shivered. It’s another breach she realized. A new gate to hell, THE Hell, had opened. This was a bad night. So much darkness, pure evil, so close… and no Papa, no wolf.

After the explosion the thuds seemed weak, pathetic even.

She whimpered. A Pig. A Piggly Wiggly, smelly and weak.

A tingling in her fingers drew her to the words she couldn’t find for herself. Agatha found the book open on her lap and searched the letters lit in the rancid light. The moon’s toxic luminescence didn’t change them. The words were strong, THE word was strong, bound in mighty ink by His chosen messengers. “This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand,” she read.

 “… and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.”

My home. My Israel.

CRASH!!! Shards of glass exploded from the wall. The cacophony of falling shards gave way to the violent wind. Agatha screamed.

A choir of howling abominations answered, some with the tongues of snakes and others belching their joy from the toothy jaws of flesh-eating fiends. Sodden hoofs pranced across her yard with merciless glee. OWWWWWWOIOOWWWW!

The howls sent Agatha scampering back to the wall. The bible slid from her lap.

“I’ll blow your house down!” echoed in the raging night.
My God! Please.
In the square above her, she saw jagged glass framing the moon. Slick streams of biolous contagion dripped from it. She could feel the substance change the air. The dripping projectile reeked of corruption. Agatha covered her mouth. The shards of thin class clacked with the wind. Gusts blew gobs of the stuff from its perch and into the putrefying room.

She coughed through her arm, the noxious air growing stronger. She was reaching for the latch above her before she knew it. Rank tendrils searched the glass breach and consumed the purity of her home. She could feel the growing sickness. Soiled air drank the pure air and pulsed closer, and closer.

She pushed upward and rolled toward the door, but found herself facing the varnished stock of the mighty sword.

No Piggly Wiggly.
 
“LORD deliver thee into my hand,” rang through her head, deafening the wind and the siege at her back. Into MY hand…

Something fell to the carpet behind her with a dull splash and the air thickened with such sickness that she could no longer breath. She turned back to the door, feeling it behind her, crawling up her legs and skirt, and along her naked legs. Venomous green smoke poured in all directions.
“No,” she whispered.

It took both hands to lift the long weapon, but she pulled it from the wall and spun from the room without a thought. She slammed the door to the study, unconcerned with the noise. They knew she was here. They were hungry for their Piggly Wiggly. She was ready too.

Into my hand. The weapon stirred.

Agatha sat in the dark hallway, watching toxic curls eclipse the putrid light beneath the door. The tendrils found the crack and with each spiraling stretch, found themselves closer to Agatha.

She knelt above the stairwell and put her weapon before her, reminded of Joan of Arc. The window at the end of the hall revealed a tree wreathed in phantasmic festoons, it’s ghastly coils blustered with the shaking branches . The world was theirs tonight, even the trees… but not her home. There is a God in Israel.

“Lord God… Please God, give me strength. Help me escape this wool,” she prayed. Green murk clouded the light beneath the study door. “Help me survive tonight, I’ll praise your glory forever and ever. Please God, don’t let me get eaten… or worse… please.”

The boards in the hall acknowledged her weight. The battering wind felt a world away. She lived in a cocoon of slow motion violence. Tongues of green evil searched the floor by her knees and she felt the maple handle slide in her sweaty palm as she lifted. Sure is heavy.

“Lord God,” she tried again, “Lord God… strength. Please.” Her father howled in her mind, his study besmirched. He raged an animal rage, his inner kiln alight. They’d taken his sanctuary, the temple to which she was admitted but once a year to escape the very same plague that had overwhelmed it.
The wolf consumed her father’s ghost. His violence trapped in the silence of her thoughts.
“Lord God. Lord God. Lord God… not a Piggly Wiggly.”

She inched backwards. A finger of miasma almost touched the floral pattern of her dress. Ninety-eight cents a yard at the discount fabric store in Kellerton Falls. Widen the cuffs and waste for a straighter fit and you saved on both fabric and thread.

Her feet hung from the top stair, but she kept backing up– inching on her knees. She’d lost the second floor, at least until tomorrow. She hoisted the weapon and she used the banister to lift herself. Not a Piggly Wiggly.

She backed down the stairs, unwilling to take her eyes from the intruding bane until she stood two stairs away.

“Give me strength. Make me strong,” she said. The roof rattled from corner to corner. “Strength,” she said. “Please.” The weapon felt lighter. Her soul told her that it was a part of her now, that it’s dimensions were her own. “Not a Piggly Wiggly.”

She turned towards the downstairs and a shadow whisked across the thinly light foyer. Something at the window. She fought the idea that something had gotten inside. She couldn’t allow that idea.
Impossible.

She firmed her grip on the weapon. “Not a Piggly Wiggly,” she said again. This wave, this Legion, they’d fear her flaming sword. They’d know her wolf.

“There is a God in Israel.” The words sounded right. They felt righteous in her mouth, a calling to protect holy ground. “Not a Piggly Wiggly,” she said louder. Another shadow glanced across the base of the stairs, but she took a step downwards anyway.

“Not a PIGGLY WIGGLY!” she yelled.

A wicked cackle responded, wet with mouthfuls of putrefaction. Other vermin joined.

KABOOM!

The whole downstairs lit like an exploding star. Shadows of demon bacchanal flashed across the room, twisted horns entwined with twisted tails and long fingers; all for half a second. Agatha glimpsed it before her breath gave out. She slipped, four stairs from the top. Her legs shot out in front of her. The heavy weapon flew up, but didn’t leave her stubborn hands, pulling her back down and slamming her against the stairs as she bounced down them.

Thnock! Thnock. She felt her head hit the first step, but the second seemed to be far behind her… so far behind her… under dark water. The curtains fluttered sleepily in the fading light. Her legs slid across the entry at the base of the stairs. Flat on her back, she saw the shadows play across the ceiling, they seemed to be acting out a story for her, making sense of things– but she couldn’t remember the names. The shapes started to blur. Everything followed.

She woke in the dark. The ceiling felt as vast and starless as the night sky. Afraid, she tested her fingers, not sure if they’d respond, or reveal supreme agony if they did. The movement felt distant, but not painful. Her toes moved too. They curled after half a prayer.

Reaching upward, she worried she’d find a sticky puddle on the floor around her. Her head throbbed, it’s inside pushing against the outside. In moving her arms, she realized that she still supported the enormous weapon. It weighed on her chest, inhibiting her breathing. Lifting it with her hands changed everything. She gulped the air.

She’d gotten to her elbows without realizing it. The room spun and she could feel the dense knot growing behind her ear. It seemed to swell in harmony with the spinning. The shapes didn’t hold their lines, but she sensed the calm. The storm seemed to have lost some of its bluster and the thin light in the room held the solemn blue hue of a normal evening.
The ringing in her ears hushed the more she moved her head, revealing the stark quiet of the hour. She could hear her hair on the floor when she turned, hear the curtains swaying and the wind rustling branches in the distance.

The heavy oak door stood over her, a sliver of cool evening glowing at its base. It stood tall as the Gates of Jerusalem, presiding over the goodly King David and the Ark of the Covenant. It looked mighty, filling her vision. Her breast swelled with pride. She’d done it. She’d survived the assault.

On this dreaded night, the Adversary, his dark wings spread and his scepter held high, had sent forth his army– and she’d outlasted them. Praise.

A groan broke the silence. Her heart leapt and she clinched the weapon. It came from outside. She knew the sound: the splintered wood rubbing on the nail. The next step creaked and the breadth of the light beneath the door flittered with movement.

Agatha Mope took one deep breath and put her weapon to the ground, using it to rise to her feet. She’d stood righteous before. She’d outlasted the Beast and his horde. “Come ruin or damnation,” she muttered. “I will not succumb.”
A barrage of limbs railed the step against the rusty nail, and caused all of the subsequent steps to complain in an overrun outburst. They drummed on the beaten wood in a skittering phalanx that halted at the barrier in formation, all manner of tail and claw dragging themselves to the ready. She could hear their eager breathing, the creaking of otherworldly armor and weaponry. She lifted her own weapon and cocked the hammer.

In a moment that could’ve stretched for eternity, she made herself patient. This could only be another of their tactics. They toyed with her. Only, it wasn’t she that broke rank. She gasped when she saw it, certain that the hairs on her head had turned white.

In that long expanse of time, when everything had held still, one unsightly creature stepped out of line. This child of Beelzebub let its curiosity lead it astray, as only a child of damnation could be let to wander. The horrid thing leaned away from its pack and its unnamable countenance drifted into the corner of the window beside the door. It’s enshadowed frame cast itself through the curtain, its hungry eyes a glittering red and its pallid face stripped of flesh, scarred to grinning fangs and tainted bone. The fiend stood, warped in its defiance of creation, bent to stand only at her shoulders, but with a scorched cowl and barbed helmet that stood taller. The rest of its shape could hardly be understood, but it’s breathing sounded labored, hampered by lungs not able to utilize the purity of earthly atmosphere.

The burning rubies fell on Agatha and a shrill stream of air escaped her nose, while her scream collapsed in her rigid lungs. It saw her.
It darted from sight before Agatha could respond. She stood frozen in place. I’ve seen the devil. I’ve seen him in the likeness of his children. I am confronted with evil– and it has seen me.
She raised her weapon, but her feet shuffled backward.
Not a Piggly Wiggly.

She tightened her grip and willed herself to lean forward– to be defiant.

BANG! BANG!

She nearly fell to the stair, but– NO! Not a Piggly Wiggly. Evil has seen me… but I’ve been called upon… I’ve been called upon. I’ve been called upon.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Agatha gulped down her next breath, sucking the sweat off her upper lip. “Called upon,” she whispered.

Something hot and fast burst from her heart, the strength of angels filled her soft arms and legs. Heavenly courage lit her corona. She stormed the entry and flung the latch from the door, pulling the chains loose in two swings.

She WOULD NOT be afraid! She WOULD show them the courage of the chosen. SHE was NOT a Piggly Wiggly.

She hefted her weapon and screamed with a backward heave. The door swung past and she lifted the mighty end of her sword– letting the light pour over her.
“There is a God in Isr–”
The blood froze in her veins, nearly paralyzing her. She couldn’t tell if the terror or the petrifying pain was more immense. They were horrible. The distorted art of Satan’s imagination nearly killed her where she stood. She faced a host of his most wretched soldiers, cut by his diabolical hand: blood-drenched, twisted, horned, and with angles and regalia nature could not have begun to consider.

They coiled to strike at once, her soul thinning as they drew breath. She had to move. They were feet from her. She gasped… her soul being consumed. Move Agatha! RAISE THY SWORD!

They lunged in unison, shrieking: “Trick or treat!!!”

Wielding holy fire, Agatha emptied the weapon