Halloween sleeve design with pumpkins and ghosts

Seven lanterns she set along the garden wall, every one cut with a crooked grin, and candy canes pushed through their stalks like little walking sticks. The moon came up over the chimney stacks yellow as a yolk, and the wind combed the old spiral tree until it sang. Down in the lane the ghosts came in off the water, three of them, trailing fog like wet washing, and they knocked at each door as politely as the milkman, which was the worst of it.

Mr Gorse, who had the back room and a sack for a belly, stepped out in his green cloak to meet them. He had counted buttons all his life and he wanted the count right. 'Seven lanterns,' he said, 'and I see eight.' Mrs Thorne looked, and there was one more, grinning up at the moon from the bottom step, its candy cane still warm to the touch.

Nobody ate the sweets that night. Mrs Thorne sank the eighth lantern in the sea at first light, Mr Gorse paid his rent on the nail, and the ghosts never knocked again. Yet every October since, her back gate is found unbolted, and somewhere up the lane a small skeleton leaves a lantern burning on a wall for whoever is still counting.