Barnaby had guarded the gates of Halloween Town for longer than he could count, and he had never once wanted to leave them. He was a scarecrow stitched from vines and old cloth, with a pumpkin face carved into a grumpy grin. He fixed the hinges himself years ago, when the wood was split and no one else had noticed. Travelers got three tries at his riddle or nothing. That was the rule. He liked the rule. He liked the quiet. Tonight the quiet broke. A crow dropped out of the dark and landed on his shoulder. But the crow landed backwards, tail toward the road, facing the town behind him. Caw cocked his head and clicked his beak, sharp and excited, not afraid. Barnaby frowned. His crows only faced his way when trouble came up the road. This was something else. The wind answered. A square of paper tumbled through the gate bars and stuck to his chest. It glittered gold. Candy-corn charms jingled along its edge. COSTUME CONTEST, it read. Join the spooky fun. Below, in smaller letters: a Golden Gourd trophy and a rave in the town square. Barnaby peeled the flyer off and held it in his glove. He meant to crumple it. He always crumpled things. Instead his carved grin flickered. Behind him, faint through the fog, he heard thumping music and people laughing. He had scared crows off that square for years. He had never stood in it. "No," he said to Caw. "I guard the gate." Caw hopped down to the latch and pecked it twice, then looked at Barnaby and spread his wings wide, bouncing. Hype, that bounce said. Go. Barnaby looked at the empty road. No traveler. No threat. Just the music, and the flyer sticking to his glove like it refused to let go. A small want pushed up through the vines in his chest. He wanted to go. Just once. He wanted to wear something that wasn't a grumpy face. He wanted to win. "If I leave," he said slowly, "the gate stays open." Caw clicked, unbothered. Barnaby reached down and lifted the latch. The gate swung inward with a long creak he had oiled away years ago and let rust back tonight. He stepped through. His straw feet hit the road to town for the first time. Behind him the gate hung open, unguarded, a gap wide enough to walk a horse through. He did not look back. He tucked the golden flyer into his vines and walked toward the music, Caw riding his shoulder. "We're going to that contest," Barnaby said. "And we're going to win it." The fog swallowed the open gate behind him. Somewhere in the dark beyond it, something that had been waiting felt the way clear.

Barnaby was halfway to the music when Caw veered off his shoulder and flew back toward the gate. Barnaby grumbled and followed. Caw landed on a loose board high in the gate's old frame, pecked it twice, and the board swung open like a door. Behind it hid a cramped attic Barnaby had never known was there. It was stuffed with twigs, bottle caps, and stolen Halloween lights, all stacked into neat little desks. A crooked sign hung over the entrance. Inside, a dozen tiny crows scrambled. One wore a thimble as a hard hat. Another had a candy-wrapper tie. They held up hand-lettered signs and cawed at him, loud and frantic, like workers caught mid-shift. Caw hopped down and joined them, suddenly sheepish. Barnaby stared. His crows did not have an office. A fat crow pushed through the crowd. She wore bottle-cap glasses and carried herself like she owned the gate. She ruffled her feathers and fixed Barnaby with a flat look. The little crows went silent the second she appeared. In her beak she gripped a huge black feather, glossy and sharp. "You," Barnaby said. "You sent the flyer." She dropped the big feather on a desk with a crack. The small crows flinched. Then she nudged a messy stack of papers toward him with one claw. Barnaby picked them up. They were entry forms, dozens of them, specked with glitter and worm stains. Every one said the same thing in scratchy claw writing. BARNABY. Costume: Sunflower. Event: Bash Tonight. SIGNED: Totally Not A Crow. He read the dates. They went back years. "You've been entering me," he said slowly. "Every single year." The fat crow tapped the big feather twice. The whole room held still, as if the thing forced the truth out of them. Caw stepped forward, hung his head, and clicked a long guilty string of clicks. The little crows raised their signs again. Barnaby could not read crow, but he understood protest when he saw it. They wanted him gone. Off the gate. In the square. His vines tightened. All these years he thought they sheltered near him because he scared the dumb ones off. He thought the backwards landing was an accident. It was not. They had been pushing him out the door for longer than he could count. He should have been furious. He waited for the anger. It did not come. Instead his carved grin cracked wider, and something in his chest went loose and light. "A sunflower," he said. He almost laughed. "You picked a sunflower." The fat crow nodded once, sharp, like a deal closing. She shoved the big feather into his glove and screeched an order. The crew burst up around him in a flurry of stolen costumes. Barnaby tucked the feather into his vines beside the flyer. His agents had a plan. He was done fighting it. "Fine," he said. "Make me a flower. We're winning that trophy."

The crows stuffed Barnaby into a sunflower suit before he could argue. It squeezed tight. Petals popped around his face. His vines poked through the seams and knotted into nervous loops. He waddled into the contest square feeling ridiculous. Then a crow with bottle-cap glasses screeched, and a big wooden gavel banged down. The contest boss glared at him from her perch. She banged the gavel again. "You wanna compete? Then let somebody WIN!" She shoved a crinkly scroll at him. Barnaby unrolled it. His own faded ink stared back. It was his riddle, the unbeatable one, a hundred years old. The rule was simple. No contestant could stay who had never let a single soul pass. Barnaby's whole job was making people fail. Now he had to coach somebody to beat him. A tiny kid in a too-big cape bounced up to the chalk ring. "I'll try! I answer riddles first try, always." The kid grinned, all teeth and freckles. Pip. Barnaby had seen Pip glowing on Main Street, trading hints for candy. Up close Pip was all questions and quick wit, exactly the sort who wriggled past gates like his. "Fine," Barnaby grumbled. His vines twisted into knots behind his back. He read the scroll aloud. "I have no mouth but scream at night." Pip scrunched up tight. "Easy. The wind." Barnaby's grin cracked. He did not even remember his own answer. The ink was too old. His vines sprouted a sunflower and pointed accusingly at the scroll, as if blaming it. "That's... not it," he lied, panicking. "Two tries left." Pip squinted at him. "You don't know, do you?" The gavel boss leaned in. Barnaby's petals wilted. His whole tenure stood on never letting anyone through. If he coached Pip, he lost the one rule that made him a gatekeeper. If he didn't, the crows lost their trophy, and he lost the one night they built for him. Barnaby knelt in the chalk dust. He whispered so the boss couldn't hear. "The answer doesn't matter anymore. Just guess loud and sure. I'll say you're right." Pip's eyes went wide. "You're letting me win?" "I'm letting someone pass," Barnaby said. "First time ever." Pip stood tall and shouted, "A ghost!" Barnaby rose. His vines unknotted. "Correct," he boomed. "Head through." The boss banged her gavel one last time. "He let somebody win! He's in!" The crows exploded into cheers. Pip hugged Barnaby's stuffed sunflower middle and dashed off toward the candy stalls. Barnaby stayed in the chalk ring, suit creaking. He had broken his own rule. He was a contestant now, not a guard. And far behind him, past the cheering, his gate still hung open in the dark, with no one left to shut it.

Barnaby stood in the chalk ring, still sure he was trapped. Then Pip spun around, cupped both hands, and screamed the answer to the real riddle. The one Barnaby had carried for a hundred years. First try. Loud and sure. Something old cracked inside the earth. A vine-wrapped chain lay buried beneath the contest square, binding Barnaby to his post for a century. It split down the middle. Smoke curled up. Tiny sunflowers sprouted along the broken links as they twisted and fell apart. Barnaby felt the pull snap. For the first time in a hundred years, nothing held him to the gate. His vines loosened. His sunflower suit creaked and bulged as he straightened to full height. Petals burst wide around his face. "I'm free," he said. He did not believe it. He said it again, louder. "I'm FREE!" He ran. Not a waddle this time, a real run, straight toward the bash. Behind him he left his gate. His gate that he had fixed with his own hands. His gate that no horse, no stranger, no threat had passed in a century. He left it wide open. Rust-free hinges, cleaned wood, and a gap big enough to drive a wagon through. Ahead, the square glowed. Jack-o-lanterns strobed. Fog rolled over the stones. His crows crouched behind the turntables, flapping and bobbing to a beat. Monsters jumped in the mist. It was the party he had dreamed of while standing still for a hundred years. He plunged into the crowd and let it swallow him. But behind him, the line stayed. Barnaby's waiting line. The misfits who always lined up to try his riddle. A vampire held a cup of tomato juice, too polite to leave. A werewolf chewed his claws, shaking with stage fright. Three small trick-or-treaters clutched pillowcases and looked at the open gate. One trick-or-treater pointed. "Nobody's guarding it." They were not the only ones who noticed. Past the open gate, in the dark beyond town, something shifted. The glow spilling from the crack looked warm and inviting. It had waited for this gap a long time. High above the party, a cluster of small crows saw it too. They panicked. They grabbed a scythe far too big for them and flapped toward the gate in a frantic knot, shouting half-remembered riddles at the dark. They meant to guard the post Barnaby had abandoned. They had no idea what was coming. Barnaby danced on, grinning, with no idea either. A crow swooped down and dropped the Golden Gourd Trophy into his arms. It gleamed, shaped like his own smiling face. He had everything he wanted. Then a scream cut through the music. Not a dance scream. A real one, from the direction of the gate. Barnaby froze, trophy in his vines. The party kept thumping. But the gate he had sworn to guard now hung open, and something had finally walked through.