CrazyA: Hello there! So happy to have readers! Yay! I was inspired by KP-chan on deviantART to write this fic coz of her awesome comics. Plus, Jack O'Lantern kicks ass.
Jack: I'm proud to be picked out by the lovely Jess as an obsession. It's actually kinda fun! Watch... Jess, can you get me a soda?
CrazyA: Whatever you say you extreme hotness... *runs to get soda*
The Joker: You don't get me sodas...
Jack: Guess she likes me better.... *two Jacks get into fight*
CrazyA: PLEASE READ AND REVIEW (NICELY)!!!
1. The Story of Jane
"C'mon, Grim!" Billy whined, pulling on the tails of Grim's flowing cape. "Just one story!" It was another night of work for Grim at the Old Folk's home. But he hadn't had a chance to go yet... Billy was holding on tightly to his cloak as Grim tried to drag his way to the front door. Two baby-sitters were meant to arrive, but they hadn't come yet. Mandy was getting prepared for them, sharpening her ninja-stars and trying to find a long piece of rope to tie them up with.
"Billy! Get off me cloak!" Grim yelled, shaking his leg in an attempt to remove the leech. "The old folk are expecting me!"
"Grim, surely one story can't hurt..." Mandy said, concentrating all attention on a chest of torture devices. "And something new this time... we're getting bored of all the other ones."
Grim paused in his floating-tracks, thinking about the right decision. He smiled as he thought up a nasty plan for them, heading off to his trunk with Billy still being dragged along the carpet.
"And not one of those fairy-tales again!" Mandy said, knowing what he was planning. Grim groaned and stopped at the basement stairs. Foiled again. Grim floated over to the couch and sat himself down, Billy still keeping a vice-like grip in his sticky hands. Mandy looked up at the clock: half-past eight. Still half an hour before the baby-sitters got here. Plenty of time for a story or two.
Grim snapped his bony fingers together, a story coming to mind. He turned to Billy, his eye sockets seeming to glow with the usual look of wisdom and magic that he got whenever he started a story. "You children know about Jack O'Lantern, right?"
"You mean the guy who used to pull like heaps of pranks on people in his village but then the villagers got sick of him and decided to play their own prank so they sent a prank from Jack to the queen and she got all mad and stuff and killed him so then you came to get his soul and he tricked you into giving him the scythe and wouldn't let go unless you made him imort-o-whatever?!" Billy said in one long breath of air. Silence echoed, and Grim was about to fill it when he started talking again. "But you were ticked off and decided to cut off his head to teach him a lesson so then he kept a massive grudge against you coz he had a pumpkin for a head and couldn't go outside and buy pudding?!"
Grim and Mandy stared at Billy, wondering if he would keep quiet for once... it seemed to be that way. "Yes, dat's de one..." Grim said, clearing his throat. "Well, a couple of months after Halloween when he came back... and went away again into a nightmarish realm... someone had moved into his house..."
"So?" Mandy asked, coming over at long last. "Lots of people in Endsville move into haunted houses."
"Yes...well this one is different," Grim retorted as Mandy sat on the floor beside Billy. "For Jack's house had no one in it, at least not at the time she moved in."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Billy said, interrupting the feel of the story. "If this is a love story, then I'm leaving."
"Fine, leave," Mandy said in her usual tone of utter boredom. But Billy stayed, for each one of Grim's stories was a classic hit. "Grim, just hurry it up and don't get too mushy on us."
"Hey! It ain't me fault if I like to read a romance novel once in a few hundred years!"
"Whatever, just tell the stupid story."
"Very well..." Grim's eye sockets went darker and the lights flickered mysteriously as the story began... "About a year ago, end of Novemberr, a small family of three were looking for a new house. The father had been fired from his job in New York, and they had decided to take up residence in little old Endsville..."
The bump of the car awoke her from her day-dream as it drove on. Her father was driving carefully, but you could tell from the pale colour of his knuckles that he was getting annoyed. And, of course, the blame rested on Jane.
It wasn't her fault that she was born with good (but picky) taste. In fact, she wasn't that picky at all. She just wanted a house that was simple, cosy, and different. Unlike all the other monsters that had come by that looked like something from a retro sci-fi movie. It was all too modern for her. And the cold temperature didn't help out at all. Whenever she stepped inside one of them, she felt so empty and blank. She wanted a house that was warm, like someone could actually live there.
"Well, there is this one house left on the list..." the realtor said, looking down at the file in her hand. "It's only recently been put on the market. Perfect for a small family."
"Why only recently?" Her mother, who was sitting in the backseat with her, suddenly asked.
"Well..." the realtor said, surprised by the voice as well. "The owner moved out a few months ago... it was sort of weird actually. Right on Halloween night, he mysteriously vanished..." She put on an immature 'ghost' voice, to frighten Jane as if she was a two-year-old. She merely rolled her eyes and leaned back in her seat, her iPod going up a little louder and looking outside to the white wondrous world.
It was hard to believe that two of the three other people in the car were Jane's only family. The lunatic behind the wheel, commonly known as Dad, was looking like he needed a shot of caffeine. He made all the conversations, rules and orders of the family. No one messed with Dad, especially after midnight when he came back from the pub.
The woman beside Jane in the white turtle-neck was meant to be referred to as Mom. But all Jane could see was a shivering coward who had practically no input on any decision made by Dad. Jane could see a bit of family resemblance: same dark eyes and ski-slope nose, but apart from that she felt like she had been adopted. Both Mom and Dad were blonde, but Jane had brown clumps of hair that she let grow wildly. A bird's nest compared to the highly-professional numbers that her parents possessed.
The realtor gave instructions to Dad, who nodded and followed carefully, paying close attention to the roads. Jane was the only person who noticed the incy, wincy tiny flaw with the house. Well, not really a flaw. Just something that not everyone could see even though it was pretty darn obvious.
"Who puts a house, in the middle of a busy city, on a giant hill?" she thought, not daring to point that out. She didn't really care much about it, for the rest of the house in her eyes was perfect.
Quiet, cosy-looking, completely perfect in every way.
They silently drove on, well except for the grumbling of Dad. But hell, he always did that. Jane paused her iPod, trying to take in as much of this as possible. It was beautiful in her eyes, better than any of the houses she'd ever seen before.
"The roof needs to be re-tiled," Dad grumbled, getting out of the car. "And the garden...just a load of weeds."
"But Jane likes to do a bit of gardening, don't you honey?" Mom said, looking over to Jane. No one was there. "Jane?!" She looked over to the front door and found Jane at last. Her daughter was trying to pull open the door, fiddling with the door-knob and banging on the wood.
"Um, Jane?" the realtor said, coming over beside her with a skeleton key. Jane moved aside slowly, blushing with embarrassment, but didn't say anything. The realtor unlocked the door and pushed it open, a cloud of dust immediately exploding in their faces.
The inside was completely bare, everything coated with at lest a centimetre of dust. Mom sneezed and wiped her nose on a tissue in her pocket, cursing her hay-fever. Dad was listening to the realtor, talking about how long the house had been standing, rats, cockroaches and other problems like that.
But Jane had headed straight for a set of winding stairs, quickly climbing them. She usually hated running, her limbs would jerk out awkwardly like a puppet with broken strings. But whenever there was a proper reason behind it, she was happy to run. She came to the top of the stairs and stared at the room. A giant window took up most of one wall, and she could see the whole town covered with the thin layer of white powder. It was sort of cool, actually. Like a gothic version of 'winter wonderland'.
And then she spotted it, all of the monsters that dotted the other side of the hill. The bright, round objects that hid underneath the layers of snow.
"Jane? How are things up there?" Mom asked, calling up the stairs. Her voice echoed against the walls, giving the already scary house an even scarier feel. Jane loved it. She wanted to spend the rest of her life in there (well, until she turned eighteen). She wanted to forever walk down the stairs, never to go outside again. She didn't give a damn about anything else, whether it be price or previous owner; she wanted the house so badly.
But she said nothing when she came back downstairs, merely shrugged with a ghost of a smile. That was actually a good sign: for the previous houses she had just wandered back into the car, listening to her iPod. The fact that she was standing inside the house for over ten minutes was enough her parents.
"Anything good up there?" Dad asked. Jane lied and shook her head; she wanted to keep her secret to herself. "Well, what's so good about this place then?" Jane just shrugged, she didn't know what to say. Dad wasn't worth talking to sometimes. She didn't care that his face went red and his knuckles went tighter and whiter. In fact, she sometimes loved it when that happened. Mom saw her husband's tensed-up expression and quickly defended her daughter.
"Maybe it's just too hard to describe for her..." she said, smiling in order to relax the four of them. "I think this house is a keeper, Steven..."
"And you haven't even seen the kitchen yet!" the realtor said, her white permanent smile growing bigger (if that was even physically possible.) Jane's parents followed her into a separate room, but Jane stayed behind. She waited until she was out of her parent's view before slowly and calmly walking back out of the house.
She made careful steps around the weeds, careful about where she went in case of hidden disasters such as rats and/or snakes. She didn't care about the new dirt on her black sneakers or any of the snowflakes that landed in her hair, she just wanted to see it to believe it. She looked down at the hill-side, her eyes glowing in amazement.
So she hadn't imagined it.
At least fifty-or-so pumpkins, round and ready to eat, with vines as thick as Jane's wrist. One was so huge that Jane could've used it as a coffee table. She smiled and tried picking up one of the smaller pumpkins, trying to see how heavy it was. Not that bad... a bit of a struggle, but she didn't have to go and fetch a wheelbarrow. Jane sat down on the closest one, brushing the snow off first, and looked out to the frozen horizon.
There was something about that day... about this house... she didn't know what it was... but Jane just knew... that something was going to happen.
