**Author note** Warning, there is an incident of physical (not to mention psychological) child abuse in this chapter. :(
Lock was awoken out of a fantastic dream (where they blew up the Mayor's entire house instead of just his toilet) by someone roughly shaking his shoulder. "Wake up!" Shock hissed, and he opened his eyes to find her fully dressed and kneeling on the floor next to his mattress, her face uneasy. Judging by the light streaming through the broken window Lock would have guessed it was early afternoon.
"What time is it?" he said groggily, and Shock looked even more uneasy.
"It's super late, you've been sleeping forever and Oogie Boogie wants to see us."
He bolted upright at that, now instantly wide-awake. "When?!"
"Just now." she said, tossing his costume at him. "I took your clothes off the line."
"How did he sound?" Lock asked anxiously, yanking off his t-shirt and putting on his red long-sleeved one.
"He seemed to be in a good mood." she answered, and he relaxed a little. With Oogie Boogie, you never knew quite what to expect.
"Get out of here, I gotta put my pants on."
"Gladly, I definitely don't want to see that." she snorted, then stood up and left his room but not before Lock threw a wadded up sock at her back. When he got his pants and shoes on he found his cohorts both waiting by the cage elevator. He knew he didn't have any time to waste but he grabbed one of the smoked lizards out of the oven to eat as fast as he could on the way down into the pit and he just barely finished swallowing it as the cage came to a stop right in front of the entrance to the Boogie Man's lair. The three of them looked at one another for just a moment, then pushed through the saloon-style doors to see what their master wanted. They entered the large, dark, circular room with their heads bowed and when they got to the foot of the chair where Oogie was sitting they knelt on the ground and bowed even lower.
"Get on up here, kiddos." he said, and his voice was quite friendly so the children stood and smiled up at him, waiting to hear what their mission was and hoping it would be something fun. "Well, well, what happened to you, princess? And you?" he pointed to Shock and Lock's matching black eyes then looked at Barrel. "Beatin' up both your friends, huh? Pretty impressive, little man."
Barrel giggled. "No, Lock fell on the couch and then he punched Shock." Lock and Shock looked at one another and giggled, too. It did seem pretty funny in hindsight.
Oogie chuckled, but then his expression turned serious. "Now then, a little bat told me that you three went hunting and didn't even send anything down to ol' Oogie Boogie." He raised one brow disapprovingly and the children immediately sobered up - this was not a good turn in the conversation. They'd sent him down the bugs every day as usual but they'd kept the last few larger animals they had caught for themselves… and apparently he'd somehow found out about it and wasn't pleased.
Nobody said anything for an awkward moment until Lock finally spoke up: "Sorry, we were just hungry. We didn't have any food." He spoke quietly, unable to make eye-contact as Oogie Boogie leaned down right next to all three of their nervous little faces, huge and intimidating and more than a little angry.
"You think the Boogie Man doesn't need any food? You want ol' Oogie Boogie to go hungry, too?" he said in a deep, sinister voice and before the trick-or-treaters could deny this accusation he smacked Lock hard across the face, splitting his lip right open and knocking him off his feet backwards into the pedestal at the center of the roulette wheel, just barely missing the sharp spikes. Shock and Barrel flinched but didn't move - they had learned the hard way that if they went to one another's aid then they would get beat up next. "Well, do ya'!?" he boomed, now leaning even closer and they could smell his rancid breath seeping through the burlap. They both shook their heads furiously and Lock managed to shake his head along with them from the floor, holding one hand to his bleeding lip and the other against his back where he had hit the pedestal. Then Oogie brought one hand underneath Shock's chin, tilting her head up and forcing her to look at him and she could feel the bugs squirming around beneath the course fabric. "You tellin' me I don't take good care of you?" She wanted to shake her head no, but he was gripping her jaw too tightly. Then he looked right at Barrel. "Well, are ya'?"
"No." whispered Barrel, shaking his head even harder and forcing himself to glance up into the terrifying black shadows of the Boogie Man's eyes.
"You take good care of us." Shock managed to mumble.
He looked satisfied at that and let go of her face and leaned back into his chair again. "That's good, because I got somethin' for you." He looked over at Lock, who still hadn't moved from where he had landed. "Go on over and get it, since you're so good at gettin' food." and he pointed to a dark corner of the lair. Lock got slowly and unsteadily to his feet, then rushed as quickly as he could to where the Boogie Man was pointing and found a big cauldron of stew. It wasn't the extra-delicious, really special snake-and-spider stew, but it still looked and smelled good - pretty much everything Oogie Boogie cooked was good. He tried to drag it out of the corner but it was too heavy and Oogie laughed, "Go and give him a hand." Shock and Barrel immediately ran to help, trying not to look at the blood trickling from Lock's split lip down his chin. Blood was cool, but not when it was coming out of one of them because of being punished. Once they got the cauldron moved in front of Oogie's chair he produced three smaller buckets and handed them out to the children, which they knew was their invitation to start scooping up the stew and carrying it back up to their treehouse. It took them quite a few trips to empty the stew from Oogie's cauldron into one of their own upstairs, and once they were finished and had put their buckets back on the floor around his chair he brought out a pack of cards. "Let's have a game, hmm? The Boogie Man gets lonely down here without his little henchmen." he said in a jovial voice, and the ground seemed to quake a bit as he waddled heavily over to the card table to deal out a game of poker. The kids relaxed a bit - it seemed that punishment time was over and his mood had shifted. Oogie won the first game because they were still all too nervous to play well, but by the second round everything was going fine and they were having fun. Barrel won the game thanks in part to his excellent, grinning poker face and Oogie Boogie barked out a loud, booming laugh. "Nice one, little man! You got ol' Oogie good that time. Take a lesson from him, you two!" He dealt out a third game and Lock actually won, but mostly out of sheer luck. Oogie laughed again and Lock grinned as best he could with his sore lip. "Well, well… looks like you ain't as dumb as I thought, devil boy!" He chuckled and slapped him on the back and Lock winced in pain even though this time it was a friendly, not-too-hard smack. Oogie didn't seem to notice or care, and continued: "Let's see now… one game for me, one for Barrel and one for Lock. By my count I owe you three a little prize." He turned his gaze on Shock and said with a big smile, "Go and get it, princess!" Shock hopped off of her seat and hurried to the great big chest where Oogie usually kept any gifts for them and found it filled with candy.
"How much did we win?" she asked eagerly.
"Why the whole thing, of course! The Boogie Man ain't cheap with his little buddies and you won it fair and square!" Barrel leapt off his seat to go and see, and Lock followed him rather slowly and stiffly, then they all three grinned with excitement at the truly massive stash of all kinds of candy.
"Thank you, Mr. Oogie Boogie!" they said in unison. This much candy would last them well over a month no matter how much they ate every day. Oogie laughed and threw an enormous sack at them and they started loading it up with all of the candy. When it was full, Oogie gestured to the door and said:
"Just you remember: you send ol' Oogie Boogie what he's due and he'll take care of you. Don't you hold out on me again like that, understand?"
The three children nodded and bowed their heads again, backing out through the doors as quickly as they could while dragging the heavy sack, then went up the elevator as fast as it would go.
When they got back to the treehouse they drug the candy bag into the middle of the living room and Lock sat down gingerly on the ratty old sofa. He looked a complete mess with his black eye from hitting that same sofa and his busted lip from being hit by Oogie. "Lemmie see," said Shock quietly, and Lock let her carefully inspect his puffy face. They weren't this tender towards one another often, but all three of them knew that it could have been any one of them so they tried to take care of whoever took the fall whenever this sort of thing happened. His normally blue lips were turning purple around the nasty cut and the dark red dried blood stood out sharply against his white chin. "Go get a washrag and some ice." Shock said to Barrel over her shoulder, and he ran to do as she said. Lock winced as she slowly pulled his lips apart to check that he still had all of his teeth, and fortunately they were all accounted for. "At least he didn't knock your teeth out. Is the rest of you okay?"
"Yeah, I hit my back on the wheel, but it's not bad." he lied. Actually his back hurt quite a lot and unfortunately for him Shock had noticed the careful, stilted way he'd been moving and his near-constant grimacing since the incident and she could see right through his lie.
"Yeah right, you liar. Lemmie see that, too."
Lock rolled his eyes but let her lift up his shirt just enough that she could see the very large, ugly bruise that was blossoming over the left side of his back. Shock winced in sympathy at the horrible-looking injury and she didn't really know what she could do for it other than put some ice on it - she just hoped that he hadn't cracked any ribs. Barrel returned with a cold wet rag and a chunk of ice from the icebox and Lock hissed but didn't complain as Shock dabbed away the dried blood from his face before wrapping the chunk of ice in the rag and holding it to his lip. "Hold this here." she said.
"I know what to do." he snarled, but Shock didn't take it personally - she'd be cranky too if Oogie had knocked her around that hard.
"Go get some more ice and another rag. A dry one this time." she told Barrel, and he once again scurried to the kitchen as Lock slowly lowered himself onto his stomach on the couch, keeping the ice against his mouth. Barrel returned with the supplies and handed them to Shock, then watched sadly as she wrapped the ice in the rag and placed it gently on Lock's shirt over where the bruise was. He sucked in another harsh breath but then relaxed as the cold began to set in and he watched from the sofa as his cohorts drug the candy bag into the corner.
"You want some candy?" Barrel asked him, pulling out a lollipop for himself.
"No." Lock muffled through the ice.
"He can't feel his lips, he'll just drool anything you give him all over himself." Shock snickered, getting a chocolate bar for herself. Barrel giggled a little and Lock squinted menacingly at them, wishing he had something to throw besides his ice pack - but even if he did, it would have hurt too much to throw it anyway. He was glad he'd at least eaten that smoked lizard because even though he felt hungry he somehow didn't have much of an appetite at the moment. They switched on the T.V. and just sat in silence for awhile, Shock and Barrel sitting on the floor and finishing several pieces of candy each until Lock's ice had melted to the point where it was getting uncomfortably wet. He groaned as he rolled off the sofa while trying to move his back as little as possible and the other two watched him, making sure he was alright. Lock was too proud to let them fuss over him much, but they kept an eye on him all the same since one time Oogie had beaten him so badly that he actually passed out in the tub afterwards and they didn't realize it until Barrel had to go to the bathroom. "Go help him." Shock muttered, and Barrel put down his candy and hurried after Lock. They returned after some time with Lock now in his dry pajamas and holding a bowl of the piranha and pike chowder - he wasn't in the mood to eat the stew from Oogie Boogie no matter how good it smelled. He sat carefully back down on the couch and started eating as Barrel went back to the kitchen.
"You want some soup?" he hollered to Shock.
"Yeah." she hollered back, and Barrel stood on the footstool so he could reach the warm pot of chowder still on the stovetop and ladle the last of it into two more bowls before turning the stove off. They watched T.V. and ate in relative silence for a few hours before Shock said, "Well, so much for getting the Christmas books."
"You guys should go get them tomorrow. It's okay. Give me one of those nougat bars." said Lock, holding out one hand and Barrel and Shock looked at one another. They hated going to town with only two of them, they always worried that someone would ask where the third one of them was and nobody wanted to admit that they were at home, all beaten-up. But the books had been out there on the roof for several days and now that their mission had been indefinitely postponed thanks to Lock's injuries they felt like they had to at least do something to make progress on the task that Jack had assigned them. Barrel rummaged through the candy bag until he found a nougat bar and tossed it but his aim was terrible and it landed nowhere near Lock's outstretched hand.
"Nice throw, midget." Shock teased him, and she slid across the floor to grab it and hand it to Lock since he couldn't bend down to pick it up off the floor himself. Then she scooted over to where her creepy doll project had ended up when Barrel had chucked it across the room, wound the thread back onto the spool and started to work on it for awhile - and every time she pierced the needle through the fabric she imagined it was Oogie she was stabbing. Barrel got some crayons and paper and drew pictures of terrible things happening to Oogie Boogie - but he always burned those kinds of drawings almost immediately after making them because if Oogie ever found out about them Barrel would be dead meat. Lock didn't do anything but stare listlessly at the T.V. and slowly eat his nougat bar out of the corner of his mouth, trying to avoid the cut in the center of his lower lip. They passed the time this way until dinner, when without a word Shock got up and went to the kitchen to fix up some of the tubers with ragwort and a side of salted tarantula and moths. Barrel followed her and made some belladonna tea, being sure to make Lock's extra-strong so that hopefully he would sleep better. Then they went back to the living room to bring him his food and sit back down on the floor to eat their own. They all had a few more pieces of candy before Lock announced he was going to bed, and the other two watched as he hobbled slowly and stiffly to his room. After a few more minutes they got up to wash the dishes and Shock said: "We'll go to town tomorrow and get those books. And if anyone asks any questions we'll just punch them in the nose."
Barrel nodded as he wiped the last bowl dry and put it back in the cupboard, then he lit his drawings with a match and threw them in the oven to burn before going to bed. He tossed and turned restlessly in his wad of blankets and pillows, feeling guilty because deep down he was grateful that it was Lock and not him that Oogie had hit so hard today. Lock was really tough, but Barrel still didn't like feeling this way, like he was happy that Lock had gotten it instead of himself… what kind of friend and cohort was he? He would have thought he'd be used to it by now, but he couldn't stop replaying the image of Lock getting hit in the face and knocked off his feet and then slamming into that pedestal over and over in his mind. He sighed heavily and tried to fall asleep anyway, and eventually he managed it… but his dreams were fitful and frightening. He should have made his own tea extra-strong, too.