AN: I don't own The Nightmare Before Christmas or any of its characters, songs, etc.
"So, I was thinking about starting your lessons on Halloween today," Jace said as he sipped his coffee (where it even went, I didn't know; Skellington skeleton anatomy was a strange thing). Outside, the pumpkin sun struggled to pierce the thick layer of clouds that coated the sky. "Seeing as there's only a handful of buildings that still need to be rebuilt, I think they can spare me."
"Really?" I asked incredulously. "That fast?"
Upon arriving back at the witch's building, we found that the entire second floor had been restored. With Jace's assistance, the third floor and attic were reconstructed in two hours. From there, the Skellington skeletons moved on to Sally's shop, and then began a crazy fast (like, shouldn't-have-even-been-possible-because-physics kind of fast). Sally, seeing how unhappy I was to be unable to help, suggested that we hand out lunch and dinner to people who were building or weren't able to cook because, whoops, their kitchen was destroyed. The witches offered to help, and soon we had a makeshift soup kitchen in the witch's shop, with a line stretching out into the street. We didn't get back to the manor until late, and by then everyone was bone tired (haha, bone tired, like Jace and Jack—I'll stop).
I'd heard that the constructing moved super fast, and I'd seen some of it for myself, but to be done in two days… that seemed impossible.
"That fast," he said. "Also, once we're done, that means we can get your papers written up and whatnot."
"Really?" I repeated.
"No," Cynthia said. "Sorry, Jace, but you're going to be needed for construction. We should finish by today, but there's still a lot to be done."
"For fuck's sake, Cynthia…" Jace turned to his sister with a scowl. He hissed something that sounded like "Not helping," and Cynthia grinned before leaning to whisper something in his ear. The only words I caught were "desperate" and "playing Cupid."
Okay then.
Jace sighed and pushed her away, which didn't erase her broad grin. "Never mind," he said to me.
"…Okay," I said.
"Emily!" Jack popped out of nowhere, slapping his hands onto my shoulders and making me shriek. "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you there."
"Yeah, right," Cynthia snorted.
"Shoosh." The king waved a hand in her direction. "Emily, I woke up this morning to the feel of an unfamiliar fear aura!"
"Really?" I asked. "Is it someone new?"
"No, no, this would be yours!" Jack spun my chair around so I was facing him. His mouth was wide with excitement and his hands flew in the air. "I was wondering why your aura wasn't apparent when you first appeared in the town, but now I feel it! It's different from how it was when you were a human, which is why it's unfamiliar, but it's definitely yours!"
"How does it feel different?" I asked.
"Think of your aura like a room," he explained. "It's always appeared a certain way, with the furniture placed in specific spots and whatnot. Now, imagine that everything's been rearranged, and it looks and feels different. The room is unfamiliar, but it's still the same room. That's what your aura feels like now."
"So it's been rearranged?"
"More like strengthened," Jack said. "I don't want you getting too big of an ego, but your aura's pretty strong for someone who just joined the town. Most monsters need a couple of years to build up your strength."
"How do you build aura strength?"
"Scaring humans on Halloween, of course!"
"Dad," Jace interjected. "Don't go explaining everything to her. That's all my job."
"Right, right, sorry, my bad."
"Could I start her lessons today, maybe?"
"If there's time," Jack said doubtfully. "But there's a strong possibility you'll have to spend the rest of the day rebuilding."
Jace pouted. "Damn."
"It's fine, Jace," I said. "It can wait. There are more important things to do. Go rebuild the town, we'll talk tomorrow."
"Fine," he sighed.
Jack turned to me. "Emily, you should go with Sally whenever she makes her way downstairs. Me, Jace, and Cynthia will go rebuild."
"I got this shit," Cynthia said.
"Cynt—"
"Cynthia, language," she mocked. "Whatever. Let's go fix the town."
"We'll see you tonight, Emily," Jack said, heading towards the front door.
"Bye!" Cynthia bounded towards me and gave me an overenthusiastic hug before sashaying after her father.
"Later," Jace said, shoulders were hunched. He looked disappointed.
"Bye," I called after them."
The door shut with a bangthat echoed through the house, reverberating off the ceiling and around the stairwell. When the sound faded, my ears were left only with the sound of my breathing. After a moment of silence, I moved towards the small mess on the table, putting my cereal bowl and Jace's coffee mug into the sink and wiping crumbs into a trashcan. I heard a door open upstairs, and I followed the sound into the foyer.
"Sally?" I called up the stairs.
"Yes?" said ragdoll replied.
"Sorry, just checking if you were here," I said.
"I'll be down in a moment, just let me find something."
"Okay."
I wandered into the living room, which was cast in pale gold light from the sun that was finally beginning to peek through the clouds.
Gross, go away, sun.
Zero was asleep on a couch, his head tucked into his side and his ears floating lazily above his head. I sat down beside him and ran a hand over him, pretending I was petting him. From what I'd observed, only skeletons could touch him.
Speaking of which, only skeletons seemed to be able to talk to him, too. I wondered what it'd be like to talk to Zero. What would a dog have to say?
The ghost dog stirred, his eye blinking awake. He peered at me, his gaze almost questioning.
"Just wondering what it'd be like to understand you," I said to him, setting my hand down on the couch. "I've always wanted to be able to talk to animals."
Zero yawned. You don't really want that. Most animals aren't as entertaining as I am.
I jumped, eyes widening in shock. "What the hell?"
"Emily?" Sally said. She'd appeared in the entrance without me noticing. In her hands she held a small basket, like one you'd take on a picnic. "Are you okay?"
"Uh—" I glanced at the dog, who looked just as startled as I did. "Y—yeah, I'm fine."
Sally didn't look convinced, but she didn't press the matter. "Come on, we're going to go visit the doctor."
"The doctor?" I stood up and followed her out into the foyer. Zero hopped (floated?) off the couch and drifted alongside me, nearly passing through my feet. "Why are we visiting him?"
"He's in the jail," Sally explained. "And while I don't have the best relationship with him, he's still my creator and I feel obligated to make sure he's alright." She held up her basket. "This is full of things for him."
"Things like what?"
"Oh, you know." She opened the front door and stepped out, yawning as the sun lit her red hair. "A blanket, some food, a drink or two. Stuff to hold him over until we figure things out. Zero, stay here." She shooed the dog back inside and shut the door.
"Will he be let out of jail?" I followed her down the steps.
"It depends." She tossed a coin to the street band and nodded in response to the "thanks" she received. "If we can find a legitimate reason for his terrorizing the town and a way to solve that problem yes. If not, he'll probably be deemed and Unnecessary Creature."
"Unnecessary Creature?"
"You sure are full of a lot of questions, aren't you?" Sally smiled.
"Well, come on. I'm new here, I know virtually nothing about anything, and everyone keeps tossing around words and titles that have no meaning for me. Yeah, I'm going to be asking questions."
"Fair enough," Sally conceded. "Well, an Unnecessary Creature is a holiday creature that's being more of a hindrance than a help to its holiday. By being deemed Unnecessary, the creature loses its meaning for Second Life and experiences Final Death."
"I'm guessing Second Life is the life a creature lives in a holiday?"
"Correct."
"Can I make another guess?"
"Sure."
"Is Second Birth when a creature dies and joins a holiday?"
Sally laughed. "Well, we've never given it a name, but yes, I suppose we could call it that."
"So much learning," I chuckled. "I'm going to practically know everything by the time I start lessons with Jace."
"That's the plan, dear," Sally joked (I think). "The less time he spends 'teaching' you, the less time everyone has to worry about you and him getting up to trouble."
"We won't get into that much trouble," I protested. "We definitely won't need to dress me up as a zombie anymore."
She shook her head. "That's not what I mean, dear."
"Huh?"
"Nothing, nothing," she said. "Say, look, here we are."
The town, I was realizing quickly, was actually very small. A few minutes at a leisurely pace, and you could get almost anywhere. Only the Holiday tree circle thingy, the graveyard, and the Boogie Boy's tree house were a bit of a hike. Oh, and the lake, apparently, which I'd only heard about in passing. Apparently that was a journey.
The jailhouse was an extension on the back of the town hall, a low, flat, black building with tiny windows and one door. Said door opened silently, revealing a small lobby only occupied by a skinny fuzzy creature in a police uniform. Sally approached the monster, who didn't look up from her/his/its' paper until she was standing right in front of her/him/it.
"Ahem." Sally cleared her throat.
"May I help you?" The thing's voice was raspy and dry, but definitely female. She looked up at Sally without moving her head. "Oh, hello your Majesty."
Sally sighed. "Please, just Sally."
"All right, Sally. How can I help you?"
"I came to visit doctor Finkelstein."
"That scoundrel?" The monster spit into a can on the other side of the room. It landed perfectly inside. "They should just deem him Unnecessary and be done with it. It'd save me the trouble of having to sit in this dark building all day."
"I thought your species liked the dark."
"We do. Ten seconds in sunlight makes our skin burn. Doesn't mean I can't hate this building."
"Could you just tell me where his cell is?" Sally was becoming irritated.
"Last door on your left." She pointed down a hall, the only hall leading away from the lobby. "Don't stay too long. He tends to get angry with extended visiting times."
"Thank you," Sally said, nodding and gesturing for me to follow her.
The hallway was even darker than the lobby, lit only by the occasional lanterns. All the cells were empty, but some showed signs of having been occupied: tally marks on the wall, a stack of letters on the bed, a pile of bones in the corner. One cell had been covered completely with strange writing from a language I didn't recognize.
"Yikes," I muttered.
"Yeah," Sally agreed. "This place is barely used these days. Before Jack took over, there was a lot of crime and conflict."
"Who ruled before Jack?"
"Well, his father, technically, but he went missing when Jack was born and took Jack with him. We spent 100 years without a leader."
"What was that like?"
"Awful, or so I've heard. I wasn't created until almost 300 years of Jack's reign." She stopped. "This would be his cell."
The doctor's cell was smaller than the rest, but it was relatively clean looking. There was a chair in the corner and a rectangular slab of metal poking out from the wall that probably served as a bed. At the end of said bed was a bowl of some strange-looking gloop. The doctor himself was seated at the end of the cell, his head down and his chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
"Doctor," Sally said softly, tapping on the bars.
He stirred, mumbling something in an angry voice. His mouth gaped open and he yawned, stretching his arms as he did so. "Hello?" he said crankily.
"Doctor," Sally repeated. "Hello."
"What are you doing here?" His voice sounded accusatory.
"We came to visit," she replied. "We brought food and a blanket and… yeah."
Doctor Finkelstein stared, or glared, rather. He didn't say a word.
"I'll just slide it through the bars," Sally said. Poor ragdoll was floundering. "You can eat it later. Not the blanket, of course… Unless you want to, I guess. In which case, feel free—"
Out of nowhere came a loud roar, like hundreds of voices screaming together. I jumped, Sally screamed, but the doctor just sighed. The noise died down and Sally and I looked to each other in confusion.
"What—"
The roar came again, but this time I could make out a word. Fink.
The third time, I heard the word Kill.
Fink.
Kill.
Fink.
Kill Fink, I realized. Kill doctor Finkelstein.
The fuzzy warden lady came flying down the hallway. Literally, flying—the monster had wings on its' back that I hadn't noticed before. Her eyes were wide with panic, and the fur on the end of her tail (another thing I hadn't noticed) was completely fluffed out, like it'd been stuck in a socket.
The monster crashed into the wall behind us, shook herself off, then assumed the position of a kneeling nun at Sally's feet. "Miss, please, you gotta help me," she begged. "That crowd out there's looking mighty violent, and there's no way the door can hold them for much longer."
"What's going on?" I asked.
"They're trying to get to me, girl," Dr. Finkelstein croaked. "They want to get their revenge. This has been the third time today. It'll pass."
"You don't understand, monster," the warden spat at him. She said monster like it was an insult and not an accurate description of his race. "This is ten times the amount of people as last time. If they get to you, I could be deemed Unnecessary!" She blanched.
"Bah!" The doctor scowled.
"What do you want me to do?" Sally asked.
"Lead them away, calm them down—I don't know!" The warden wrung her hands. "Just make them leave! For good, preferably!"
Sally sighed and turned to me, holding the basket out for me to take. "Stay here," she instructed. "Wait for me to come back."
I nodded and took the basket.
"If I'm not back in two hours, head for the manor," she said, setting off towards the direction of the entrance. "Stay safe!"
The warden, who was shaking like a leaf, waited until she was out of sight before leaping onto the ceiling, tearing an air vent off, and scrambling into the pipe.
"Hey!" I called. "Where are you going?"
The only answer I got was the echoing sound of claws quickly scrabbling away.
The doctor snorted. "She abandoned us."
I sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down until I was seated on the ground. "Typical. Here," I shoved the basket under the bars. "Enjoy."
The doctor snorted again. "Like I'm going to have any of that. Did you know that Sally poisoned me hundreds of times back when she lived with me?"
"Yeah, yeah." I wasn't in the mood to hear the grouchy old man whine and complain.
"Have I gotten on your bad side now?" he questioned. I was about to answer with a sarcastic "Gee, you think?" but he sounded like he was really worried about that possibility.
"No," I answered. "At least, I'm withholding judgment at the moment. Until it's proven that you had no good reason for what you did, I don't hate you."
The doctor "hmm"d thoughtfully. "If only the rest of the town was like that."
"Why, doctor," I gave him my best shit-eating grin, "is that relief I hear in your voice?"
"Shut up!" he snapped.
I chuckled.
Several minutes passed in companionable silence. Outside, I didn't hear any more roars or cries of "Kill Fink!" Everything was still and calm. If it wasn't for the fact that my neck was starting to ache, I could've comfortable fallen asleep.
"Why did you do it?" I said some time later. The basket still lay, untouched, on the floor in the middle of the cell.
"What?" he practically yelled. The thing about the doctor: his voice was so fucking irritating.
"Why did you go all crazy on the town?"
He sighed. "I wasn't thinking right."
"That's not very specific."
"Are you really going to make me spin the whole thing out for you?" He glared at me.
I nodded.
"Fine," he snapped. "It started a few months ago. Well, actually, it started before then, years and years and years ago…"
"Are you going to tell the story or what?" I mused.
"Quiet," he snapped. "I'm only saying this once, so pay attention.
"When I built Jewel, I used half of my own brain to make her."
"Gross."
"Shut uuuuuuup!" he shouted. "Silence!"
"Sorry, sorry."
"I gave her the left half of my brain—"
My hand shot up.
"WHAT?" he screamed
"Okay, I'm sorry, I really am, I just wanted to say that the left half of the brain is the logical side and the right half of the brain is the creative side," I blurted out.
"Actually," he conceded. "It's a good thing you brought that up. See, my brain is the opposite. All holiday creatures' have backwards brains, actually; their left is creative, and their right is logical. Why that is, I don't know.
"Anyway, Jewel got the creative side and I got the logical side. This made it harder for me to come up with inventions, so me and Jewel became a two-person think tank, her coming up with ideas and me debating if they were remotely feasible. After that, I'd do the building, and if I ever came across a problem that needed an out-of-the-box solution, I'd call for her. It worked nicely.
"Of course, there were side affects to only having half a brain. Headaches, random blackouts—the point is, I made medication to get rid of the pain so I could focus on inventing and so Jewel didn't have to undergo such torture. Things worked well for many years.
"Now, I don't know if you know, but I'm pretty sure you don't know that after you left last year our royal family went through a strain I've never seen before."
"Strain?" I interrupted. "How?"
"And you were doing so well with keeping quiet," he said. "Pity.
"I don't know for sure what the strain was, but I'm pretty sure you were somewhat responsible for it. The fuss put the king and queen in a nasty place, and the two of them started suffering awful migraines. Now, obviously I'm not the town doctor, but the medication the Skellingtons were receiving wasn't strong enough to conquer the headaches. The doctors, who are the witches (those two play a lot of roles in this town), couldn't create stronger medicine with the power they had. See, the witches are limited to using spells and herbs for all their needs, which is great in most cases, but herbs can only go so far in creating strong, fast-acting, non-drowsy relief."
"Are you reciting a commercial to me?"
"What?"
"Never mind."
"Where was I?"
"Witch's medicine isn't good enough?"
"Oh, right." He cleared his throat. "So, knowing that they needed better medication, the king and queen came to me. I was happy to give them the medicine I'd created for myself and Jewel; that is, I was until I realized that I didn't have enough resources to continually make four batches of the stuff. I knew me and Jewel would suffer if we didn't get the medication, but my sworn duty is to the royal family, so I cut down on me and Jewel's pills and gave the medication to Jack and Sally.
"It didn't take long for Jewel and I to start feeling the effects of only having half a brain. Work became difficult, and it was harder to think than ever before. Jewel wanted to tell Jack and Sally about our problems, but I refused. I thought we could just hold out until the Skellingtons got over… whatever it was they were going through. But I was wrong.
"One morning, Jewel and I were suffering from headaches again when Jewel promptly collapsed. This wasn't unusual because, as I've said, blackouts were an unfortunate affect of split brain. But she wasn't breathing, which was obviously not a good sign. I tried to give her CPR, electroshock, everything I could, but she was still limp. So, with no other option left, I opened her head and took a look at her brain."
"Ewww."
"I made her, girl. With my own two hands. It's not like this wasn't something I'd done before."
"Ewwwww."
"Oh, shut up.
"Anyway, I opened up her head to see if I could find the issue, and right away I see that the wires that serve as a brain stem had been blown out. Nothing big, an easy fix. The thing is, the brain needed to be refrigerated or else it'd expire. So, in a fit of desperation, I plugged the brain back into myself.
"Immediately I could tell there was something wrong. I was hit with a flood of bad emotions, mostly anger and resentment, but fear and terror also. I tried to ignore it and continue with my work, and for a while, everything was fine. Just as I was about to remove the brain to put back into Jewel's head, I heard this voice, like a little whispering elf sitting on my shoulder, telling me it's not going to work. Again, I paid no attention to it, but when I plugged the brain back into Jewel she didn't turn back on. I spent several minutes trying to find the source of the problem, but there were a million things that could have gone wrong and not nearly enough time. With Jewel's body not working, the brain needed to be preserved, so I put it back in my head so I could take it to the freezer downstairs. Now, obviously at this time I was in a state of panic, so when I put the left half in my head, the half that was already full of bad emotions, I snapped. The voice was back, telling me that I wasn't going to be able to save her, that Jewel was dead and it was all the Skellington's fault. If they hadn't needed to take my medicine, Jewel wouldn't have short-circuited or whatever happened. It was all their fault, and they needed to pay."
"And then you used that machine you were working on last year," I said. "The two-way aura thing that Jack told you to stop building."
"Yes, yes." He waved his hand. "I should've listened to Jack, but I was so caught up in the buzz of inventing — I had almost perfected it! — that I went behind his back and worked on it anyway. I'd never meant for it to be used, but you can't just leave a highly dangerous weapon within reach of even one person and think that you're safe. Thankfully, the machine was crushed when my lab collapsed, so there's no danger there. But my brain—" Without a warning, he flipped the top of his head open. His brain possessed both halves, but the left half was black and lumpy—well, lumpier than the other half. It looked sick.
"I need to make a new half," he said, flipping his head shut. "And then I need to create another entire brain for Jewel. But I can't do that when I'm locked in here!" He sighed and slumped down in his chair. "I don't even know what they've done with Jewel."
"I'm sorry," I muttered.
"Bah." He spit at the wall. "I don't want your pity, girl. I just want to get out of here!"
"So, wait." I sat up a little straighter. "Are you saying that I indirectly caused the destruction of half the town?"
"Partly," the doctor said. "The prince and princess were acting fussy, and that was probably one cause of the headaches. But the thing is, their headaches were so strong, it seems impossible that they were caused by misbehaved children. If you want my opinion—and don't tell anybody I said this, but I think that the entire holiday's going through something at the moment, and it's putting Jack and Sally in a bad place because of their close connection to the Spirit."
"What?" I asked. "You mean that everyone in the town's been acting weird?"
"No, no. I meant that the holiday is going through something, not the holiday creatures. The holiday itself is undergoing some kind of conflict that we don't know about."
"That makes zero sense to me," I said.
"Yeah, yeah. You still need to learn about the schematics behind a holiday. There's a lot of complicated sorcery weaving this world together."
"What—"
Suddenly there came a loud bang from out of the open air duct where the warden had disappeared. I tensed, waiting, listening for more sounds.
I was rewarded with another bang and a sharp voice yelling, "Watch it, Barrel."
"It's not my fault your tail's in the way!" a second voice responded.
"Shut up, both of you!" a third, definitely female, definitely familiar voice said.
I smirked. "Hey, guys," I called, standing up so my face was closer to the air duct. "What do you think you're doing?"
I hear someone mutter "Oh, great," before Lock responded with a "Nothin'."
"They're here for me," doctor Fink hissed to me. "They want to get their revenge."
"Stop saying that, god."
"Stop saying what?" Barrel asked.
"Wasn't talking to you," I replied.
"Ooh, is there someone there?" This was Shock. "Is it the doctor? I bet it is!"
Before I could respond, there came a flurry of loud bangs that came closer and closer to the open vent. I scrambled away just before Shock, Lock, and Barrel came crashing to the floor. The three of them landed in a tangled pile and proceeded to yell at each other for several seconds. When the showed no signs of stopping I sighed.
"Hey, psychos!" I shouted.
The Boogie Boys grew still.
"Are you going to get up or are you going to sit there arguing for the rest of the day?"
"That's right!" Barrel said, leaping to his feet. "We've got a doctor to kill!"
"Told you," grumbled said doctor.
"Now, guys, I don't think killing him is the answer here."
"Really?" Lock said, standing up. "Because I do."
"Me too." Shock pulled herself to her feet.
"Me three!" Barrel exclaimed.
Lock and Shock rolled their eyes.
"Look," I said. "Killing is against the rules, right? If you kill him, you might get kicked out of the town or whatever happens if you do something bad. I really think you should just wait and see what Jack decides to do with him."
"Ugh." Lock huffed.
"But that's no fun." Barrel pouted.
"What would you expect from someone who so recently was a human," Shock said. "Just step aside, Emily. You don't have to protect him or anything."
Predictably, Shock's condescending tone made me bristle. "If Jack were here, would you be so confident and uppity?"
Shock rolled her eyes. "Obviously not. Jack's the pumpkin king. He'd have us skinned."
"And you think that because he's not here he won't find out who killed the doctor?" I asked.
Her eyes narrowed. "Are you saying you'll tell on us? What are you, three?"
"I will tell Jack if you kill him," I said. "Don't think for a second that I won't."
"Well," Shock drawled, a slow grin twisting her features, "if that's the case, I guess we just have to make sure you can't tell them."
"Shock," Barrel said sternly. "We're not going to kill her."
"No, no, I know that." She snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. No, I just think it'd be nice if she lost the ability to speak and write—"
"Shock." Lock looked her dead in the eyes. "Stop."
She scowled. "Nobody's any fun anymore."
"Um, guys?" Barrel said. "How are we going to get out of here?"
"Up the air vent, duh." Shock pointed above her.
"I don't know if you remember, but the way in involved a practically 90 degree fall that I don't think we'll be able to climb up."
"Shit," Shock hissed.
"Guess we're stuck, then," Lock said. "Is there anywhere to sit in here?"
"Back in the lobby there are a bunch of chairs," I said, pointing. "But I've just been using the floor."
Lock glanced at the floor, which, now that I thought about it, was pretty gross. "Nah."
"Let's go," Shock huffed, flipping her hair over her shoulder and sashaying down the hall.
Barrel sighed. "We should go after her, shouldn't we?"
"Yeah," Lock said. He turned to me. "Are you coming?"
The question caught me off guard. "Uh…"
"Go," the doctor spoke up. "I want to go back to sleep, anyway. All your chitchat has been driving me up a wall."
"It was nice talking to you, too," I muttered. "Yeah, I'm coming," I said to Barrel and Lock as I turned to follow them down the hall.