Chapter 55: Burning Moss

After freeing Hook, the group started to get into the idea of staging a mutiny against Hades. They learned that a book held the key to defeating him. They had found the book, which was the storybook, but the pages about Hades were missing.

Meanwhile, Shiara was still gone. She was in the graveyard staring at a large tombstone which only had two words on it, "PRINCE DAYSTAR." When the others joined her, she barely looked up. "So, now you've come to help out, now that you got your pirate?"

"We promised we would help you find him," Emma said. "We just had to get to Hook first; he was in more danger."

"How do you know that? We haven't even found Daystar yet."

"Well, at least he's still here," Snow said.

"I know that. Hades told me he's still in limbo."

"You talked to Hades?" Emma said.

"Why'd you think I ran off? I was looking for a clue. Turning up empty so far."

"Well, we're not gonna find one at his grave," Regina said. "All we know is he's here. Cruella explained it to us—upright stone means still in limbo, tipped over stone means moved to the better place, cracked stone means moved to the worse place."

"And what does that mean?" Shiara pointed to the right corner of the tombstone's base. Even against the reddish-haze of the Underworld, it looked like a shock of bright green, something starting to grow over the tombstone.

"I don't know. She didn't mention moss."

"I don't like it." Flames began to flicker between her twitching fingers in her hand, and she shot a small fireball at the moss. It turned brown and started to peel off.


"I got to find some way to get back to the other town. They're looking for me! My fiancée, Shiara, and my parents, King Mendanbar and Queen . . . Queen . . . come on, Mother, I know what your name is."

"I'm not entirely convinced that's a smart idea," Jack answered.

"Why not?" Daystar responded. "I'll just be going back to where I came from before I found Halloweentown."

"But it's not wise to leave the confines of the town once you move. I've learned that the hard way."

"I just don't see why—ow!" He suddenly turned away and put his hand over where his nose had been. After a few more cries of pain, he calmed down. "Sorry. This just fell off, and it started hurting. Man, it burns still."

"You skin does look tender there. Of course, you don't have to worry about that too long. It's all going to come off eventually. That just now happened?

"Yeah, during the haunting. I still have the nose." He pulled it out of his pocket.

"I can sew it back on, if you want me to," Sally offered.

"Will it hurt?"

"Shouldn't."

He shuddered. "I'll think about it. Cimorene! Her name is Cimorene, Queen Cimorene. Man, I don't get how I could forget something like that."

"See, you're memory's already starting to leave you," Jack said. "I think it's better for you to stay here. In that town, there's nothing but pain, and it will all come back to you. Here, it is a never-ending party, and you do not have to think about it ever again." Before Daystar could argue again, he moved on.

"Do you know what's going on with him?" he asked Sally. "Why doesn't he want to go back into the other town?"

She answered, "I'm afraid I haven't know him that long, but it probably goes back to when he died."


Two hundred years ago, somewhere in Italy

There was nothing he loved more than a party, and this was a party. He wore his best costume—a jester's outfit complete with a multi-colored cap with tiny bells, and a painted face. All night long, he was making himself merry, and that mostly involved drinking. Sometime in the midst of the party, he happened to find someone he did not expect to see coming straight for him—a man in a long coat with dark hair and a smile that did not quite fit his stern expression.

He greeted the newcomer. "My friend, it is good to see you here! I am glad to see you at such an occasion as this."

The newcomer nodded. "You are looking remarkably well this evening."

"I was quite worried you were cross with me these past few weeks. You must know I meant nothing by it. It was all in fun, merely a joke!"

The newcomer's smile became even bigger, and he actually laughed. "Yes, you have quite a unique sense of humor. I take pleasure that you found your jest amusing. You will probably die laughing one day."

The jester put his arm around the newcomer. "Come, my friend. Let us fill ourselves with the spirits. They are all around us tonight. You can probably guess, I've become well acquainted with them!" He laughed long and hard.

But the newcomer actually pulled away. "Yes, speaking of spirits, I crave your expertise. I discovered in my wine cellar a rare find. I am not sure it is what I suspect it is, and I ask you, since you are an expert of spirits, to satisfy my doubts."

"Why certainly, my friend. What do you believe it to be?"

The newcomer looked him straight in the eye. "Amontillado."


"Look here!" She called the others over, and they ran to her. There were several other tombstones covered with moss, vines, and kudzu. She could barely read the names on some of them. "This has got to mean something. Who are these people—Sally, Emily, Dr. F, Mayor something? And then this one." She came up to a crypt with a large tombstone that was completely obscured by moss and vines.

"This one's not even on the map," Snow answered. "There's just a big question mark."

"What all did Hades tell you?" Emma said.

"That Daystar was still in this realm, but he went to a place where people want to forget their unfinished business."

"Then maybe that's what the moss means—just how much they've forgotten."


The drunk jester was led by his friend outside of town to a stairway that went deep underground. "Amontillado! You truly believe it is Amontillado?"

"I have my doubts," the man answered as he lit a torch, "and I must satisfy them."

"If it truly is, it will bring you a fortune if you sell it! Of course, I want my cut, and I don't just mean of the profit. I would like a cup, at least. I have heard that it is sweeter than the nectar of gods." He suddenly got into a coughing fit.

"Why, my friend, that cough sounds horrid."

"It's nothing. Probably the dank in the air."

"Perhaps you should go back."

"No. I shall not die of a cough."

"Of course not. Well, if you are dead-set in seeing the Amontillado, let us proceed."

"You have a deep, strong wine cellar, my friend."

The man nodded. "It has been in the Montresor family for generations. We have hewed it out of stone itself and laid every brick."

"I did not realize you were a mason!"

"That is what Montresor literally means."

"Ah, I see. Such a name suits you well."

"As does yours, oh fortunate one."

The jester laughed. "Well, it shall be if you truly have the Amontillado."


Shiara stared for a long time at that mossy crypt, and the more she stared at it, the more she became angry. She put her hands on it, felt around for an engraving. She though she felt an F, or perhaps it was a T, but the overgrowth was too thick.

"What are you doing?" Emma asked.

"This one, whoever's grave this is, I keep thinking is the key to the whole thing. He has more moss and vines growing over it than any of the others. He has to be in the same place where Daystar is."

"What is it, you wanna talk to him? You want us to get more of that potion from Dunbroch? I don't know if Gold has any more or what it takes to make it."

"Well, it's not gonna do any good talking to him if we don't even know who he is. I want to know his name, and then I wanna find him, and I wanna talk to him. I want him to tell me what he did to my Daystar!" She angrily lunged forward at the tombstone and tried to tear the vines off, but every time she grabbed them, they snapped back into place.

"Here, love." Hook had suddenly joined them, and he came forward and sliced through the overgrowth, but they just repaired themselves and grew back together.

Shiara finally growled. "I HATE THESE STUPID VINES!" Her hair ignited, her hands blazed with fire, and she put them onto the tombstone. The vines immediately caught the flame, and before long the whole tomb was engulfed in flames.

Hook looked at Emma. "Hell hath no fury than a firewitch scorned."


Daystar was standing on the city limits of town. Sally joined him. "You still thinking about leaving?"

"I'll come right back. I'm gonna make sure you get married, but if they're out there looking for me, I gotta find it."

"I want to go with you."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I'm not technically dead; Dr. Finkelstein created me, so I haven't been up there."

"Well, I'll be happy to show you around, what I've see—."

Suddenly, a scream pierced the night, an almost unearthly primal wail. Sally turned around. "That's Jack!"

"You think he's just practicing something for next Halloween?"

"No, it sounds like he's in pain! Come on!"

They ran back to Jack's house and found him on the floor, both his boney hands holding his skull. Sally was right, he was in real excruciating pain. Not even he was sure it where it was coming from. She held his hand and asked him what was wrong, but he couldn't answer her because what was even worse than the pain was what he was seeing flash before his eyes.

He saw flashes of bright color, like lights in a party, then a man in a long coat holding a torch, guiding him down a long stone staircase. These strange sights filled him with an emotion he had not felt since he could not remember when—fear. And what he saw next filled him with dread.


"I found it down here," Montresor said as he and the jester came to the end of the stairway to an arched doorway. "Take a look for yourself and judge if it truly is Amontillado."

"Amontillado!" the jester echoed. He walked into the room in wonder. Yet he searched, and though he found many excellent vintage years, he did not see anything close to the rare wine. "I do not see anything special yet, Montresor."

"Keep looking," he called back. "It's in there."

So the jester looked more closely through the shelves and racks, but no luck. Then he noticed the light was getting dimmer and dimmer. "Montresor, you may need to relight your torch or move it closer. Oh, just give it to me." But as he turned, he saw it—his dear friend was laying bricks in the archway. "What are you doing?"

Montresor gave him one serious look. "Who's laughing now, Fortunato?"

The jester chuckled. "Yes, I see, an excellent joke! We will have a good laugh about this one day, over a bottle of wine."

"You mean the Amontillado?"

"Yes, the Amontillado. But it is getting quite late. We should go."

"Yes, we should go." But he did not stop laying bricks, and the terrible fact came clear to the poor jester—the man entirely intended to bury him alive. He made several other pleas and promises that went unheeded. Montresor did not even respond; he just kept laying bricks.

It was when the job was almost finished and the air was starting to get thin that the jester made one last passionate plea. He banged on the wall and shouted, "For the love of God, Montresor!"

And the cold, heartless reply came from the other side, "YES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!"

All that panicking must have taken the last of his air, because the jester then collapsed, and everything went black.


The flames did they job, and all of the overgrowth was destroyed. Shiara could clearly see the engraved name in the flames—FORTUNATO.


Jack suddenly got up. "I got to get out of here."

"Do you want me to come with you, dear?" Sally asked.

"No. Only one person can help me," he answered as he ran out of his house.

He ran out of the city limits of town, out the south side, not far from the place where he found the doors to the other holiday worlds. He wasn't looking for them this time.

But then, he just stopped running. He stood and stared at the empty, barren woods. "It's supposed to be here. Why isn't it here?"

"About that," a voice said behind him.

Jack turned around and sighed in relief. "There you are. Aren't you a sight for sore eye sockets?"

"You're looking remarkable well, too, Jack. Oh, and I heard your wedding to Sally is finally happening! Congrats. Of course I will make an effort to make an appearance."

"We would be very glad to have you, Hades, but to the matter at hand—where is it?"


He came to as he heard scratching on the other side of the brick wall, which soon became banging. He backed away as bricks started falling from the wall. "Montresor?"

After the hole in the wall became larger, a man poked his head in. "Not exactly," he answered, and his hair suddenly illuminated as a blue flame. Fortunato backed away in terror.


"Who is Fortunato?" Shiara asked. "He have something to do with Pinocchio or something?"

"His name sounds familiar," Emma thought aloud.

"I know Fortunato," Hook answered. Emma looked at him surprised.

"Tell me about him," Shiara demanded.

"I met him at a tavern in Italy. He's a wine appraiser, but he had many other talents. He told all sorts of jokes, and even when he was drunker than . . . well, a pirate, he could quote Shakespeare from memory. He grabbed this man who did not look like he wanted to participate and recited the 'Alas poor Yorick' speech from Hamlet, using the man's head as the skull. It was marvelous! But the next time I came to that tavern and asked for him, they told me he disappeared after a festival."

"Wait a minute!" Emma said. "I remember now. He was in 'The Cask of Amontillado,' a story by Edgar Allen Poe. I had to study it in high school."

"What happened?"

"Let's see, Fortunato was dressed in a jester's costume. He did something insulting to a guy named Montresor, it's not really clear what. But to get his revenge, Montresor told Fortunato that he had a rare wine called Amontillado and lured him into a wine cellar, and then he laid bricks in the doorway burying him alive."

"Guess that's how he got here, and he probably has unfinished business since he was murdered."

"Well, I think I know one thing that's on his list of unfinished business—apologizing to Montresor. Maybe if we help them move on, he'll help us find Daystar."

"So we gotta find Montresor now?"

"It probably won't be that hard. Mom has the map. Come on."


Fortunato was led out of the cellar by this strange new gentleman, and when they came to the surface, he saw a large tombstone with his own name. That was probably when it first hit him that he was dead, but Hades comforted him and coaxed him to tell the whole story. "What has happened to you is indeed terrible," Hades told him. "I rarely say this, but there's actually very little in here that is worse."

"I should've never done that. I didn't think he'd take it that personally!"

"Oh, let's not dwell on regrets that you can do nothing about."

"If I ever find him here, I shall apologize."

"I have a better idea. How would you like a drink?"

Fortunato actually smiled. "I'd never turn down a drink."

"Well, it's not exactly sweeter than the nectar of the gods, but I think you'll find it is sweeter than any wine you have ever tasted."

"It sounds wonderful."

"Indeed, it is. Even better than that, though, it will take away all the horrible moments from that night forever. It will be like it never happened—well, except you'll still be dead. How would you like that?"

"Please, good sir, give me this drink. These images still plague me. What used to delight my heart now fills it with fear. I will do anything."

"Since you bright it up, there is one condition, one thing I need for you to do."

"Of course, I shall do it faithfully."

"You see, Fortunato, I chose you, for in life you were mischievous, imaginative, resourceful, and I need all of those qualities. I know how much you love celebrations, and I need that. But this night, you got drunk, and quite frankly, you made a fool of yourself. So from here on, to the end of time, I want you to honor the holiday you disgraced. I want you to teach the living to fear the dead. Can you do that?"

"I believe I can."

"Excellent." So he took Fortunato to the bank of a river that was milky white. "Drink up."

"This is not wine!"

"Never said it was. This is the Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness."

"You tricked me!"

"Too bad, we had a deal. Drink!"

So, Fortunato cupped the water into his hands and sipped. It was indeed very sweet and even comforting, but then suddenly he cried out in pain, and he watched as his skin started melting off his hands. "What is happening?"

"You need to let go of everything from your life. Keep drinking!" But Fortunato was frightened now and would not drink anymore, so Hades forced his head into river and forced him to drink. He screamed in pain and curled into a fetal position as his jester costume and everything underneath dissolved. In less than five minutes, all that was left of him was a skeleton. "There, that wasn't so bad. And since you will be a jack of all trades, I will call you Jack. Jack Skellington." He held the man's skull up. "That's easier to spell than Fortunato, isn't it?"

"Who?" the skeleton asked.

"Exactly." The skeleton held his arms and shivered. "Feeling a bit exposed, Jack? I can take care of that." He waved his hand, and a black pinstripe suit suddenly covered the skeleton. He stood and actually admired his new threads. "Yes, that suits you better than that silly jester costume. And even though I'm calling you Jack, I'm going to make you a king. Now, let's work together to make this next Halloween truly terrifying."


"I remember everything! It just suddenly came back to me all at once. You told me I'd never have to worry about this memory ever again!" Jack said in desperate confusion.

"I'm very sorry about this, Jack," Hades told him. "This is magic I had not anticipated, and I will deal with it."

"But where is the Lethe? Only the Lethe can take this memory away. It's supposed to be here!"

"You know how rivers are? The tide keeps changing. Sometimes they flow in other places."

"Then take it to me, please! I'll do anything!"

"Well, there is one thing I need you to do. It's that new arrival you have, Daystar. Don't let him leave. If he ever even talks about him, give him some excuse to stay. Talk about wedding plans or Halloween plans, say you have to rehearse, anything to keep him from leaving."

"OK, I'll do what I can, but he's his own man. If he wants to leave, there's not much I can do to stop him."

"You're gonna have to be creative, Jack. That's what I love about you. I need you to do this for me. And at the rehearsal dinner, I have something special for the young man, but we'll discuss that later. Will you do this for me, Jack?"

Jack somberly nodded. "Yes."

Hades smiled. "I knew I could count on you. Now, come with me."


They found Montresor, and they immediately struck a reconciliation with Fortunato off his list of potentially unfinished business. His tombstone was split down the middle with a huge crack.

"So he's gone to the worse place," Snow said.

"Well, what do you expect? He was a murderer," Emma reminded.

"I guess this means Fortunato's business will never be finished," Shiara said. "He's gonna be here forever. So we gotta find him."

"We may not be able to," Hook said. "You haven't found him through this whole town either, and when I last saw Daystar, he was not in the town."

"Why didn't you tell me?!"

"Sorry, been concerned with other thoughts. I want to help you find him. He does not deserve this fate. I think the reason you have not been able to find him is because he cannot come to you. You must go to him."

"Alright, take me to him."

"Very well. Come with me. I will show you where I last saw him." So he led her away, and neither of them notice vines and moss crept up Fortunato's tombstone again.