Prologue
"Are you guys sure we should be here this late at night?" Kurt Hummel asked as he carefully folded his legs Indian style on the floor of the choir room of McKinley High, looking around at his fellow members of New Directions. Finn Hudson, Kurt's stepbrother cocked an eyebrow at him as he watched his girlfriend Rachel Berry light a candle in the middle of the circle. "I mean, the halls are dark and it's Halloween. This is really creeping me out guys." Finn shook his head.
"Relax Kurt. We'll be fine. I've never seen you so worked up before. You seemed all for it when we discussed doing this together after glee practice," Finn said, watching Rachel light yet another candle.
Noah "Puck" Puckerman looked up from where he was gently strumming a guitar, closing himself out to the others for a few moments. "Yeah Kurt," he said, jumping into the conversation. "What gives dude?" Kurt frowned disapprovingly.
"You know I hate it when you call me that," he said. Puck shrugged and returned to strumming his guitar. Kurt's eyes roamed around the rest of the group. To his left sat his boyfriend Blaine Anderson. Finn was on his right. Rachel sat on Finn's other side. Puck was next to her. Lauren Zizes was on his other side. Mike Chang sat next to Lauren, his girlfriend Tina Cohen-Chang next to him. Quinn Fabray sat next to her and Sam Evans was next to Quinn. Mercedes Jones, Kurt's other best friend besides Blaine, was on Sam's other side. Santana Lopez was next to her, her hand holding that of Brittany Pierce. Rounding them off with the wheels of his chair firmly planted between Blaine and Brittany was Artie Abrams.
There was something unsettling tonight about breaking into the school to tell ghost stories in their choir room. Though like Finn had mentioned, Kurt had been all for it originally. Now, the boy just had a really odd feeling, and it wasn't a good one. He swallowed and shook his head. Rachel had finished lighting candles and was smoothing her plaid skirt. The others were looking at Kurt curiously, waiting for him to say something. Should he tell them that he had a bad feeling about the night? He decided not to. No need to worry his friends with silly feelings. But he had a feeling, they weren't going to let up. The feelings, not his friends.
xxx
"Ouch! Damnit!" spat Darren Criss as he stumbled into something on the set in the dark. "Chris! Are you sure this is a good idea?" he shouted ahead to a man dressed in a geeky t-shirt and loose fitting jeans. The man, Chris Colfer, glanced over his shoulder, hair loosely hanging in his face. He gave Darren an odd look but didn't say anything. Darren was slightly puzzled. Chris was his friend, and his co-star but he would have suspected himself of coming up with this spastic idea before he ever would have thought Chris would. There was something strange burning in his friend's eyes.
Darren momentarily forgot to move as he watched Chris's backside in front of him until he felt two hands on his back. "Don't stand there like a statue man," a voice said from behind him. Darren looked over his shoulder at Mark Salling, the actor who played Puck on Glee. Behind him were the collective members of most of the rest of the cast, mainly the ones who played the members of the club.
"What is going through Chris's head?" asked Amber Riley, the actress who played Mercedes as she came up from behind Mark, cutting Darren off before he could apologize for stopping short. Darren looked at her and shrugged. He staggered over a cable, one he had just tripped over and banged into the wall, which was why he had declared ouch earlier. What the hell they were doing on the set he didn't know. Amber was watching ahead, to where Chris could only be seen rounding a corner, watching the youngest member of the cast, who played Kurt with a worried expression.
"Come on," Darren finally said. "I know he's heading for the choir room set but if we don't catch up, he's going to get impatient waiting for us." Mark and Amber exchanged glances but nodded all the same. Darren was careful in the dark as he stepped over more cables, walking through the set as quickly as he could to catch up to Chris, who he was quite sure was probably already in the choir room.
xxx
Kurt was suddenly overcome by a strange uncomfortable feeling that sent shivers crawling up his spine. The others failed to notice as Rachel was passing around a hat that had numbers written on paper. These numbers were meant to designate in which order they'd be telling stories. Kurt, personally, felt it was more fun just to wing it but that didn't matter much. There was one person who caught his shiver, Blaine. And that may have only been because his boyfriend was clutching Kurt's hand. The teenager looked at him with concern.
"Kurt love," Blaine whispered. Kurt looked over at him, his eyes twinkling with a strange mix of both love and fear. "Are you okay?" Kurt swallowed. Should he tell him? Should he tell Blaine that this weirdness was shrinking in around him? Even though Blaine was the love of his life, Kurt feared that he wouldn't believe him and so finally, he shrugged and nodded, trying to give off the indication that he was fine. Blaine didn't look convinced but Kurt was grateful that he didn't press for more information. Instead, Blaine used his free hand to smooth out some of the wrinkles in the jeans Kurt was wearing, an action that brought a brief smile to Kurt's face. Blaine smiled back at him. There was love there all right.
The pale boy tried to shrug off the odd feelings but they weren't going away and it only got worst when he could swear he was hearing voices. Kurt raised his eyes to the ceiling and only came back around when the hat with the numbers was sort of forced into his chest, briefly winding him. "Rachel be careful with that!" he spat, ignoring the voices for a moment. She frowned at him.
"Sorry Kurt but I had to get your attention. We can't waste time watching you daydream," she said. Kurt glared at her. He sat still for a moment before just standing up and walking over to one of the chairs in the room, sitting down upon it instead. "Kurt what are you doing?" Rachel asked in a bit of irritation. He folded his arms across his chest, turned his head away, and ignored her. Rachel rolled her eyes. "Well, if he doesn't want to join in that's his problem. Everyone have a number?"
xxx
When Darren and the others finally reached the choir room set, Chris stood in the middle of it, tapping his foot, arms folded across his chest. "Well, took you all long enough." Darren threw the others a worried glance. Why did Chris seem to be in such a bad mood for some reason? He was acting completely out of character for himself. Hell, he wasn't even acting in character for Kurt, which though he denied it, he sometimes had a tendency to do even off set. Darren was quite sure that sometimes, their characters personalities rubbed off on them and they had a tendency to naturally react the way their characters would. That was how they knew they were well acquainted with the characters they played on the show.
Darren was the first to reach him and he put his hands on Chris's shoulders in concern. "Chris, are you okay? You seem a bit…off tonight." Chris sighed and dropped his arms, eyes falling to the floor. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up a bit in a way that would have caused Kurt to probably emit a girlish scream of horror, prompting him to squeal about what Chris had done to their hair.
"I don't know Darren. I've just been kind of snippy and on edge all night. A part of me was even telling me to call it off. But I want to do this. It would be awesome." He shook his head and turned away from Darren. He walked over to one of the chairs and sat down in it.
That was when things got weird. Chris sat in that chair and almost immediately, his body sort of began to shudder. Darren ran to him, followed by Amber, Mark, and Ashley Fink, the actress who played Lauren. The rest of them stood in the room looking horror struck. Dianna Agron had wrapped her arms around Cory Monteith. Lea Michele was the closest to the foursome surrounding Chris and her mouth was hanging open. Harry Shum Jr. who played Mike was wide-eyed, as was Jenna Ushkowitz. Chord Overstreet stood behind them flanked by Naya Rivera and Heather Morris. Kevin McHale was shaking his head rather violently. None of them had any idea what was going on with Chris and fear rose as it seemed that Darren, Amber, Mark, and Ashley were not having any luck fixing it.
xxx
"Blaine…" Kurt whispered in a weak sounding voice. And rather than just Blaine looking over at him, the whole lot of them did. Kurt was looking down at himself. There was an odd white-blue light surrounding his thin frame in the chair. Blaine leapt up from the floor and rushed to his aide. But just as he reached out a hand to grab hold of his boyfriend's arm, intending to pull him out of the chair and into his arms, the light got brighter. It blinded him and he stumbled backward, tripping over his feet only to be caught by Puck who was staring at the light surrounding their friend.
"What the hell is happening to him?" Finn spat out, nerves ripping all over his body. Who could blame him? Kurt was his brother and he cared about him just like if he was his blood brother, which he wasn't because they were only brothers by marriage. Finn watched in terror. Blaine was put back on his feet by Puck and his screech of Kurt's name was so loud that people barely registered it. The light was growing brighter still. Finn was backing toward the door. He grabbed Rachel's arm on his way toward it.
Rachel blinked for the first time in several moments seeming to gather into what was really going on. "Finn!" she shouted, trying to tug her arm free. "Finn no! What are you doing? We can't just leave him!" Finn stared at her agape for a moment. Since when did Rachel honestly care what was happening to Kurt? He didn't want to leave his brother. He was his brother. He was family! Burt would kill him if something happened to Kurt on his watch but there was a gut wrenching feeling that he wasn't going to be able to stop this.
Screaming filled the room and no one knew whose it was because it seemed that they had all opened their mouths at once. The bright light had now grown so large they couldn't even see the chairs that were surrounding Kurt's. Kurt himself was completely void of view. Than, there was a rumbling noise, followed by a blast at which it seemed the blinding light exploded, filling the room. They all had a split second's view of it before everything went black.
xxx
Back in the reality, Darren, Amber, Mark, and Ashley were knocked heavily off their feet, sent flying through the air and smashed into a wall. An earthquake erupted right on the set and the rest of the actors were knocked to the floor. They all blacked out…