A/N- New chapter... Yay. This is probably the bit you've all been waiting for, as this really brings the story together. This may or may not be the last chapter in the story, depending on what I feel like and how long this becomes; I mean I love to bring out long chapters, but not ridiculously long ^_^. Special thanks to these people, who have reviewed my story thus far; IwillmarryJustinTimberlake, LoKi-Shiver, Nightmare1, Sanely Challenged, Leona-da-Quirm, ASGT, Hannah Clark, Cryptic Ragdoll, LadySherlock93, Gloria Patri, Locked and last but definitely not least, Ninkira. Thanks guys, and everyone else please take the time to both check out these fantastic peoples' fics and review on this one, it takes about 30 seconds and it makes me a very very happy person. Now, on with da fun.
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Sally had never wanted to be the very epicenter of all attention to any one person, let alone the entire population of Halloween Town all at once. She had always been very content to live in the background, to be a mere stitch in the fabric of afterlife and nothing more, to allow others go about their lives while she, unseen, scurried about her own. It seemed almost too painful for her to bare when anyone even slightly noted her presence on the street as she quietly passed; so to have every eye avidly turned in her direction, to be at the very center, the very core of the sole thing anyone seemed to be thinking at that moment (except perhaps Barrel, who was carelessly dreaming of what he was going to do with his third of the candy when the trio returned home) seemed to be from what her most terrible of nightmares were composed of.
She knew very well that she could not stop the terrible little trio telling the last leg of the story that proceeded;it was too far gone for that. The wound had already been inflicted... the preceeds of the story were merely the knife jabbing a little deeper and twisting hard, as though to ensure the damage would take an age to heal. And she knew, with a sinking hopelessness in the pits of her artificial gut, that it would.
* * * * *
Sally's brow furrowed deeply in concentration. The little red demon boy had specifically requested her help to think of a place he and his friends could stay, and she intended to please him greatly. But she hadn't really seen all of Halloween Town yet, and nowhere immediately sprung to her simple mind. The Doctor had said she wasn't ready for the excitement of most of the other and seemingly infinate places of her town that she'd never laid eyes apon. From her bedroom window she could take in many of them in the cold, hazy distance, and she internally knew for a fact that when she was older she would visit all of them without pause.
"I know, I know! There's a house in the trees! A house in the trees just past the graveyard that I saw when I walked with Jack! Jack says no one lives there anymore, so you can stay, okay?" she cried very suddenly, even surprising herself as the words seemingly tumbled head over heels from her mouth. They cut sharply through the ruckus of the small brawl that had broken out behind her (Shock having become heavily insulted by Lock's previous comment in which he deemed her a "whiner"). The boy's tail slowly unravelled from it's constricting grip around the girls throat. She, in turn, reluctantly turned his leg loose from her painful death grip and slowly rose from being seated as heavily as she possibly could muster on his lower spine.
"A house in the trees, huh? A treehouse," Lock lamented in a voice that just barely succeeding a whisper as a fleeting and utterly sinister grin rounded across his face. "Sounds perfect."
"Oh no, I ain't sleeping in some rickety treehouse and.... and you can't make me!" Shock protested loudly, stomping her feet firmly into the ground and folding her hands stubbornly over her chest, unbelieving of what she had heard "I'd rather just stay here and waste away in my tomb, thankyou very much. End of Story!"
* *
In the time period that proceeded her harshly spoken protest, Shock found that she, to her utter disgust, would not recieve the last say in the matter as she had previously meditated. Barrel (whom of which had reluctantly been shaken awake, taken one look at the curious ragdoll peering into his face from a mere few inches away and fainted once more) had been awarded the gristly job of slinging the kicking, screaming and visibly heavier Shock over his heaving shoulders; much to his complete and utter disgust. In the meantime Lock, far in front of the struggling pair, calmly stepped in sync with the strange doll-woman, whom of which was travelling at the fastest pace her inexperienced and shaky legs would take her.
Behind his new ghoulish façade and behind his newfound sarcasm and leadership, Lock was internally debating the issue at hand. How in the world did they end up in this place? Even though it was as fascinating and breathtaking as his mind could possibly comprehend, he couln't begin to imagine how in the world they had come to be there. Was Shock, for once in her life, babbling and whining for something she was actually correct about? Were they....dead? Though he couldn't logically see how that could possibly be. His parents, from a very young age, had instilled in him the strong sense of belief in heaven. If he was dead, wouldn't he have gone to that big land in the clouds they always talked about at churches and funerals... the one that everyone seemed both horrified yet strangely enamoured with? He wasn't a bad person at heart, but had he been bad enough in the years of trickery to be denied access to the ultimate and eternal resting place? Was this a level of Hell he'd found himself stuck in, punishment for all the jokes and tricks they'd played on their parents, the neighbours and every classmate they'd had for a matter of years? Was that it? Had they really been that bad...?
"That's it! That's it!" Sally's extatic pitch cut through his heated thoughts with the velocity and strength of a sharp axe, immediately dispelling the thick fog of questions inside his mind that, to his terrible dismay, he could find not one answer for. He turned his face vaguelly in the direction of Sally's erratically waving arm. It was pointed (Slightly off-course he might add, yet he saw it's target nonetheless) toward a twisted and rather odd-looking tree, large and hollow with what little clumps of leaves that did remain stained a brilliant autumn orange. Though the tree itself bent and curved in odd yet elegant angles, covering much of it's foliage with blackened trunks, the Trio could just barely make out a small house teetering dangerously between them. It appeared oddly unproportioned, as if it were built by children supplied solely with planks of decaying wood, third-rate timber shop nails and a rusty, misused hammer. Shock, whom of which had been thrown to the ground in a rather undainty manner following the completion of the (to Barrel, at least) longest walk in the history of their lives, let out a small moan as she took in the site of the horribly disfigured yet cunningly built home.
"Nobody lives in that house anymore. Maybe you can," Sally lamented quietly, raising an inquisitive finger to her chin in fragmented thought. A little troubled, she knew that there was something else Jack had told her about the house that she'd forgotten; something the Doctor had told her too in another of his tedious history of Halloween Town lessons. Unable to remember as she racked her brain with all her might, she assured herself that it couldn't possibly have been anything of importance. What could possibly be bad about a house in the trees? With a moat and a bridge and everything? It seemed to remind her in some ways of the enchanted castles in the basic picture books the Doctor had given her; she was, after all, just beginning to read. No, it couldn't possibly be anything bad.
"A house? You couldn't even call that a house! If the big bad wolf was here right now, he wouldn't even have to start blowing to have that rickety thing fall down!" Shock cried, brushing furiously at her now dust-stained lilac clothing.
"Big... bad what?" Sally replied, her eyes wide with a muffled confusion. Shock merely ignored the woman at all costs and, opening her mouth, she began a tediously long, furiously spoken speech which seemed to solely incude the fact that not even a pack of rabid, rabies-infected wolves (In which Sally had curiously asked what this 'Rabies Wolf' creature was) would get her up into that treehouse. Lock, however, had long shut out Shock's high-pitched whining and had turned his attention avidly toward the house. He agreed slightly with Shock, the place did look as though it would fall with the slightest motion, but they really didn't have much choice in the matter. It was either the treehouse before them or their tombs back in the eerie graveyard. He decided, with a small nod, that he'd much rather risk falling into the oblivion of that seemingly neverending moat and breaking his neck than spending a single night in his death domain.
"This should do... at least until we get ourselves back together." Lock muttered between breaths to his male comrade, whom of which nodded slightly in return while rubbing his aching arms in a disgruntled manner. Sally's brow furrowed in confusion.
"Back together? Are you broken?" she gingerly prodded Lock's red-clad forearm, swaying slightly off balance in the process. "The doctor can put you back together! he's good at fixing things." The demon-boy's eyes rolled painfully in their sockets as he shooed her fast-approaching hand away with a small, sharp swat of his own.
"Forget it," he turned dissmissively from the ragdoll, who seemed too pre-occupied in attempting to find her centre of gravity again to notice the very obvious flashes of annoyance passing across the little boy's face like bolts of lightning. As the storm inside him cleared immensely, he found his mind beginning to formulate on it's own once more. It was all fine and dandy that they had located a place to stay, at least for the night; but what of the next morning? They knew nothing of this new and unfamiliar place, and it seemed the only grown up they had found didn't either. Did one need to eat when one was dead? If so, he wasn't sure how that was supposed to happen, or where they were supposed to locate anything mildly edible in a place that seemed to come straight from a horror movie set. Were all the adults in the place like her? His gaze shifted lightly to the ragdoll; her head cocked, mildly interested, as she avidly took in Shock very loudly 'expressing her personal opinion' (or as Lock and Barrel affectionately named it; 'Booting up Bossy-Mode'). He supposed she'd never seen anyone so loud and obnoxious; he knew he hadn't...
"Lock, how're we supposed to get up there?" Barrel's low and slightly tentative voice callously invaded his personal thoughts. "There's no ladder or nothing." The demon-boy, a look of mild bemusement from the pure irony of the situation present on his face, studied the monstrosity carefully. His friend was right, there was no ladder to allow them up. There were no dints or crevices in the tree's jagged lines for small feet to latch onto, and it certainly wasn't low enough for them to jump and hope to catch hold of the low-built platform above.
"Oh, that's just wonderful," Shock's sardonic voice pierced through his mental calculation like a hot poker. "Not only are we living in a house that looks like it'll fall just by looking at it but now, even if we were desperate enough to want to go up there, we're going to have to grow at least fifteen feet... or learn to fly."
"Oh will you cut the complaining for once!" Lock, having become tired of his female assailant's seemingly neverending string of complaints wailed, turning and administering a sharp and extremely generalised push to her shoulder.
Barrel, just tired of the girl in general (and recalling the fact every time he even slightly moved his aching limbs), replied with a "Yeah, shut up, witchy-girl!" and a swift shove in the opposite direction, much to her annoyance.
"At least I'm the only one being practical here!" Shock's bitter reply came fast and without pause, pushing each boy in their consecutive shoulders. "You're both a bunch of morons. Lucky I died too, otherwise you'd probably end up killing yourselves."
"I seen the vampires fly, it looks like fun!" Sally, eager for something to say between the snide remarks and violent shoving squealed, clearly overenthused. "Can I fly? I wanna fly!"
* * * * *
The crowd had been overcome with a tense silence. The faces had become ashen and surprised, lips pulled together into tight, grim lines and eyebrows raised high on their ghoulish brows. Nobody spoke; nobody dared to. They merely glared, pointed and vehemious, at the figure of whom they now envisioned as the very epicentre of their well-worn troubles with the terrible trio, the guilty culprit of all the problems they had ever experienced from them, and all of the tricks and surprises they were sure to experience in the near future. Sally, with the weight of a thousand outraged eyes heavy on her shoulders, tried with all of her strength to refrain the tears from springing to her own, yet found that the weight was seemingly too much to bare.
"What were you thinking?!" A deep, lone voice cut through the silence of the crowd like a knife. The heads of the town turned vaguelly to the co-ordinates of which the voice had projected, though they proved more interested in keeping their gaze on the ragdoll's reaction to the words rather than to know to whom the voice belonged. "What were you thinking, showing them the treehouse? We'd all told you a thousand times the fate of the people that had lived there before! We'd told you about the trouble they'd given us! and you showed it to them anyway!!" Sally could not be sure who the icy voice belonged to, yet it stung sharply nonetheless.
"I can't believe it," the flaky green witch with her high and chalky voice cried, clearly outraged as she stood on her seat in the middle rows. "I told you all she was trouble, didn't I?" Her spindly arms crossed over her chest knowingly, her mouth a thin, uniform line. "Jack, I told you she was trouble. I told you back on that Christmas-Halloween night that you were associating with.... with.." Her eyes met Jack's accusingly, as if he'd been a part of Sally's then-innocent plans. "With a girl from the scrap heap!" A seperate and very individual cry flew up from a hundred different mouths (including those of both Jack's and Sally's) in both agreement, protest and every view inbetween, causing a loud and unstoppable ruckus that, if there had been a singe soul in the town not attending the meeting, could have just as easily mistaken for a shattering earthquake.
Through this terrible and inane babbling, nobody seemed to notice a certain Terrible Trio apon the stage, giggling fitfully as they watched the angry and disgruntled from a safe distance. The Town seemed to have forgotten who was telling the story they were so naively believing; the Terrible Trio the entire meeting was supposedly based on, the Terrible Trio whose inconspicuous silence had caused them to slide from the accusations in the town's heads; The Trio who had, slyly and completely un-noticed by the public eye, once again slipped their duties like a loosened noose and roped in another sacrifice for their cause.
* * * * *
After a seemingly endless string of heated deliberation, quick and impatient exploration and what seemed at the time like a neverending gush of facetious abuse from a certain unwilling female in the group, Lock was the one that managed to locate their one and only ticket upward into the poorly crafted treehouse. A simple rope and pulley system attatched to a worn wrought iron birdcage-turned-elevator was what he had uncovered just left of the threadbare bridge. The bottom of the cage was thin and worn, scattered with rust spreading like a disease about all of the basic mechanical meeting points. The pulleys were rough and squeaking, catching the slightly decaying rope in large bundles every so often, as though the pulley above their heads no longer had the strength to haul the awfully heavy cage upward. Although the method of transport to the freshly-dead trio seemed terribly risque, it also seemed as though it was their sole choice in the matter.
Sally, who honestly believed she had never seen anything more wonderful her life, found herself instantly enamoured with the rope and steel contraption. After numerous and vastly failed attempts to pull the woman away from the elevator-machine to allow themselves pass through, the trio settled themselves impatiently at the far base of the bridge to await her child-like attention span wearing thin.
"She's crazy, you know," was Shock's snortine comment after watching the woman pull the contraption up and then back down again on it's ragged pulley system. "She's probably a psychopath.... gonna kill us as soon as soon as we get up there. Probably sucks out the brains of her victims, 'cos if there's one thing she needs more of, it's them." She reclined lazily and rather a little too nonchalantly for her previous sentence on the palms of her hands. Lock leaned foward, stretching long and hard and even managing to squeeze out a small yawn before finally turning lazily to his female assailant.
"Well, regardless of whether she's out to kill us and suck out our brains or not, without her we'd be sleeping in our crypts right now."
"Yeah well... I really don't care." The little witch repositioned herself uncomfortably; the ground beneath them was moist from a small rainshower that had ensued their small journey to the treehouse, yet it didn't seem to have softened the stone-hard soil in the slightest. "She hasta go. And I mean now."
"Can we ditch her now, Lock? Can we please?" Barrel's harsh whisper of agreement sounded coarsely in the demon-boy's left ear. "She's annoying.... and she kinda creeps me out." The pudgy skeleton flinched nervously. Between the stares of his friends, one displaying a look of pure venom and slight threatening and the other a downcast stare of nervousness, he knew immediately it was time for the lady to leave. To him, she had been a valuable portal of information but, like all of the portals he had seen in science fiction television shows, if they were'nt closed ahead of time, massive destruction ensued. With a large and very obvious roll of his eyes, as through not to let them think he agreed with them in the slightest, the pale little boy rose to his feet in a lazy stagger. He walked the short distance to where the ragdoll now resided. Her curiosity with the elevator having long worn thin, she had then positioned herself to the very centre of the rickety bridge, staring with her signature stare of innocence and blind awe into the endless drop to the bottom of the moat-like structure.
"Geez, it's a long way down, huh?" Sally commented lightly, talking in part to herself and in part to the visibly smaller boy, craning her neck to take in a full view of the moat's many and infinate depths. "I hope I don't fall in."
Lock took a step in which to stand parallel to the woman, mimicking her actions and staring intently down the barrel of the endless moat. He could take in uneven cracks and crevices that buried deep into crumbling walls of hard soil. The structure seemed denude of any care or conservation as the remains of it's mysteries were enveloped in a cloak of darkness. Lifting his eyes from the sight, they fixed once again on the awed woman that leaned heavily against the threadbare bridge.
"You should go now. The doctor-" he vaguelly recalled the woman having mentioned someone she affectionately named 'the doctor,' and used it to his benefit though he had no idea who the mysterious character was, "-will probably be worried sick about you." The woman laughed carelessly at his sentence, teetering dangerously close to the edge.
"Oh no, no! See, he taught me how to make dinner for him, and I made some soup tonight and I put everything in the cupboard into it, even the things he told me not to touch." She giggled innocently, conducting the painstakingly slow trek to the safe and steady land just beyond the bridge. "He's sleeping now, snoring away, so he won't even know I'm gone. " A questioning eyebrow on the young boy raised, yet he was immediaely sidetracked before he could think too harshly into the manner. Focusing beyond Sally's waistline, he could faintly make out Shock, one hand raised to her neck in a signature melodramatic throat-cutting notion, as she pointed to him with a murderous glint in her eye. His own rolled painfully; Shock was impatient as anything at the best of times, and it seemed that that particular trait of hers hadn't changed in the slightest after her death, much to his own dismay.
"Look lady, you'd really better beat it. We're tired and grumpy," he pulled a sour face to accentuate his notion. Sally turned incredulously to the remains of the trio behind her, whom of which blinked once in surprise and then promptly pulled their own uncouth faces. Her carefree smile relaxed into a troubled frown.
"Maybe I should go," she lamented. "The doctor is pretty bossy... and grumpy. Kinda like how you look, except worse," she referred to his sour face rather matter of factly, shrugging her shoulders in dismissal. Lock grinned, yet as he watched the woman she seemed to have quietened immensely, turned away from him and appeared as though she was pondering something beneath that thick skull of hers; at least to the extent her underdeveloped mind would allow her to. A hand rose to her cheek, touching it lightly in a troubled manner.
At last, after what seemed like a lifetime, she reached an arm down the jagged neckline of her roughly sewn dress (obviously something she had accomplished herself, judging by the poor stitching outrageous angles) and pulled from it a small, silver chain that had hung inconspicuously about her neck. Giving it a small, careless tug, the flimsy chain snapped and shrivelled, snake-like, into her stitch-lined fingers.
Outstretching her hand importantly, she unfurled her tightly interlocked fingers about the chain close to Lock's face. His eyes took in the sight of a tarnished silver charm apon the it, moulded expertly into the shape of an evil and quite gruesome-looking cat. Intricate details had been carved expertly into the silver, forming a small, agaped mouth full to the brim with glinting silver teeth and two tiny chunks of uncut emerald made up wide, surprised eyes. Every strand of fur had been carved expertly into it's own place apon the feline's back, and the whiskers, made of tiny, jagged silver rods, balanced uneven on the unproportioned face. Stroking it lovingly with her free hand, Sally pushed it further yet into the boy's face.
"My friend Jack gave this to me," she stated simply, running a finger along the impeccable lines of the charm. "He said I have been very good and I deserved it." Her hand retreated, clasping her clenched fist possessively to her chest . A coil of silver chain slipped through her fingers and brushed lightly against her wrist. She liked Jack; he'd been very polite to her from the first time they had met, and he'd never once told her off for her mistakes or interrogating questions, something she had come to greatly despise the Doctor for doing.
"He's my friend, and he said that this was his.... his Grastitute that he wanted to give to me."
"I think you mean gratitude," Lock corrected absently, his eyeline sliding to the ragdoll's clenched fists in a slight curiosity. The charm had appeared extremely vintage. If he could cash it in somewhere.....
She beamed a warm, infectious grin, cutting through the formulating plot in Lock's mind. "Yes! That's it... It's Jack's Gra-ti-tude." she sounded the word slowly in small chunks as that of a five year old in a vocabulary lesson, beaming as she pronounced it correctly. Her laced fingers slowly unravelling, she thrust the charm foward, a serene smile passing across her features.
"You're my friend, demon-boy. I like you, you were nice to me. But I don't have a Gratitude of my own to give you, I don't think I'm old enough yet or something. So I'll give you Jack's." A slight grin formulating in the corners of his translucent lips, mentally calculating how many bags of candy he'd be able to buy if he cashed the stupid-looking thing in, he outstretched his hand. Slowly and carefully, she took hold of one of his hands in her own, transacting the charm between them. He could vaguelly make out the sound of Shock conducting extremely melodramatic gagging noises behind Sally's back, and could inwardly imagine her overdramatized pantomime of the scene that went with it. 'We'll see who has the last laugh when I cash this thing in,' he noted inwardly, a small smile playing on his face. He eyed the charm greedily- he could have only guessed that the thing was solid silver, vintage and extremely valuable.
"Thankyou," he muttered unenthusiastically, thrusting the charm deep into the unknown and previously unused depths of his back pocket. Sally grinned; clearly accomplished with her actions as she clasped her hands tightly at her waist.
"Lock, we can't take it anymore, it's way too sickening," Barrel called, throwing a hand motion to accentuate his disgust into his words. Both the pudgy skeleton boy and the female in the group had long left the comfort (Or Discomfort, rather) of the stony ground before the bridge. They had both crossed and now resided impatiently at the other side before the daunting cage elevator, impatience glowing clearly on both faces.
Lock turned painfully to the ragdoll. "We're going now.... to check the place out and-" though he was immediately cut of by a rather distressed tone of voice from the woman.
"I can come visit you again?" she whispered hopefully, her balance slightly swaying on her inexperienced legs. He groaned inwardly, yet maintained his emotionless facade.
"Sure," he lied, immediately turning away from the lady and hastily running to rejoin his group, whom of which impatiently awaited his arrival. She waved vaguelly as the trio cautiously boarded the elevator. Unbeknownst to her, they were merely a few minutes away from being faced with the most absolute of evil in all of Halloween Town; an evil that resided silently beneath the uneven walls of the crude little house, an evil that she had led them blindly into the clutches of.
"Look after Jack's Gratitude!" Sally called importantly as she watched them make their tireless journey upward.
*
In only a mere minute or two, Shock lazily watched from between two bars of the metal elevator as the ragdoll wandered away on the path they had duly followed to the house, swaying nonchalantly as she strived with all her might to retain her balance and composture. Good riddance was the only sort of farewell she retained in her mind. Casting her intent gaze upward, she had to admit to herself that the view from the would-be birdhouse was breathtaking, and if she peered hard enough into the distance she could almost swear that she could make out an aura of light and the scraping of building tops- a city perhaps?
"Lock has a Girlfriend, Lock has a girlfriend," Barrel's inane taunting proved extremely distracting, and she turned to give a swift smack to his pudgy head, something of which Lock had already accomplished several times. Yet as she turned back to stare into the horizon once more, she could no longer find the distant lights and buildings; all that she could take in was as the ever lengthening drop to the ground.
"This things gonna snap in half soon and we're all going to plummet to our doom," she mentioned in a matter-of-fact manner, curling her fingers around two of the infinate bars. Lock snorted.
"Can you ever stop being so Neurotic?" He muttered, casting his gaze upward; there was not much more rope nor height to go before they popped through the top of the ramshackle home via a hole in the floor. She mimicked his snort and voice perfectly.
"Only when you stop being such a moron."
"I guess you'll be neurotic forever then," Barrel added. There was a second of silence before both he and his female cohort erupted into peals of immature giggles at the insanely lame joke told.
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A/N- I didn't like stopping here, but there was no other wya I could do it. New chapter should be up soon, I guess. 'Till then.... Keep those reviews rolling please!
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Sally had never wanted to be the very epicenter of all attention to any one person, let alone the entire population of Halloween Town all at once. She had always been very content to live in the background, to be a mere stitch in the fabric of afterlife and nothing more, to allow others go about their lives while she, unseen, scurried about her own. It seemed almost too painful for her to bare when anyone even slightly noted her presence on the street as she quietly passed; so to have every eye avidly turned in her direction, to be at the very center, the very core of the sole thing anyone seemed to be thinking at that moment (except perhaps Barrel, who was carelessly dreaming of what he was going to do with his third of the candy when the trio returned home) seemed to be from what her most terrible of nightmares were composed of.
She knew very well that she could not stop the terrible little trio telling the last leg of the story that proceeded;it was too far gone for that. The wound had already been inflicted... the preceeds of the story were merely the knife jabbing a little deeper and twisting hard, as though to ensure the damage would take an age to heal. And she knew, with a sinking hopelessness in the pits of her artificial gut, that it would.
* * * * *
Sally's brow furrowed deeply in concentration. The little red demon boy had specifically requested her help to think of a place he and his friends could stay, and she intended to please him greatly. But she hadn't really seen all of Halloween Town yet, and nowhere immediately sprung to her simple mind. The Doctor had said she wasn't ready for the excitement of most of the other and seemingly infinate places of her town that she'd never laid eyes apon. From her bedroom window she could take in many of them in the cold, hazy distance, and she internally knew for a fact that when she was older she would visit all of them without pause.
"I know, I know! There's a house in the trees! A house in the trees just past the graveyard that I saw when I walked with Jack! Jack says no one lives there anymore, so you can stay, okay?" she cried very suddenly, even surprising herself as the words seemingly tumbled head over heels from her mouth. They cut sharply through the ruckus of the small brawl that had broken out behind her (Shock having become heavily insulted by Lock's previous comment in which he deemed her a "whiner"). The boy's tail slowly unravelled from it's constricting grip around the girls throat. She, in turn, reluctantly turned his leg loose from her painful death grip and slowly rose from being seated as heavily as she possibly could muster on his lower spine.
"A house in the trees, huh? A treehouse," Lock lamented in a voice that just barely succeeding a whisper as a fleeting and utterly sinister grin rounded across his face. "Sounds perfect."
"Oh no, I ain't sleeping in some rickety treehouse and.... and you can't make me!" Shock protested loudly, stomping her feet firmly into the ground and folding her hands stubbornly over her chest, unbelieving of what she had heard "I'd rather just stay here and waste away in my tomb, thankyou very much. End of Story!"
* *
In the time period that proceeded her harshly spoken protest, Shock found that she, to her utter disgust, would not recieve the last say in the matter as she had previously meditated. Barrel (whom of which had reluctantly been shaken awake, taken one look at the curious ragdoll peering into his face from a mere few inches away and fainted once more) had been awarded the gristly job of slinging the kicking, screaming and visibly heavier Shock over his heaving shoulders; much to his complete and utter disgust. In the meantime Lock, far in front of the struggling pair, calmly stepped in sync with the strange doll-woman, whom of which was travelling at the fastest pace her inexperienced and shaky legs would take her.
Behind his new ghoulish façade and behind his newfound sarcasm and leadership, Lock was internally debating the issue at hand. How in the world did they end up in this place? Even though it was as fascinating and breathtaking as his mind could possibly comprehend, he couln't begin to imagine how in the world they had come to be there. Was Shock, for once in her life, babbling and whining for something she was actually correct about? Were they....dead? Though he couldn't logically see how that could possibly be. His parents, from a very young age, had instilled in him the strong sense of belief in heaven. If he was dead, wouldn't he have gone to that big land in the clouds they always talked about at churches and funerals... the one that everyone seemed both horrified yet strangely enamoured with? He wasn't a bad person at heart, but had he been bad enough in the years of trickery to be denied access to the ultimate and eternal resting place? Was this a level of Hell he'd found himself stuck in, punishment for all the jokes and tricks they'd played on their parents, the neighbours and every classmate they'd had for a matter of years? Was that it? Had they really been that bad...?
"That's it! That's it!" Sally's extatic pitch cut through his heated thoughts with the velocity and strength of a sharp axe, immediately dispelling the thick fog of questions inside his mind that, to his terrible dismay, he could find not one answer for. He turned his face vaguelly in the direction of Sally's erratically waving arm. It was pointed (Slightly off-course he might add, yet he saw it's target nonetheless) toward a twisted and rather odd-looking tree, large and hollow with what little clumps of leaves that did remain stained a brilliant autumn orange. Though the tree itself bent and curved in odd yet elegant angles, covering much of it's foliage with blackened trunks, the Trio could just barely make out a small house teetering dangerously between them. It appeared oddly unproportioned, as if it were built by children supplied solely with planks of decaying wood, third-rate timber shop nails and a rusty, misused hammer. Shock, whom of which had been thrown to the ground in a rather undainty manner following the completion of the (to Barrel, at least) longest walk in the history of their lives, let out a small moan as she took in the site of the horribly disfigured yet cunningly built home.
"Nobody lives in that house anymore. Maybe you can," Sally lamented quietly, raising an inquisitive finger to her chin in fragmented thought. A little troubled, she knew that there was something else Jack had told her about the house that she'd forgotten; something the Doctor had told her too in another of his tedious history of Halloween Town lessons. Unable to remember as she racked her brain with all her might, she assured herself that it couldn't possibly have been anything of importance. What could possibly be bad about a house in the trees? With a moat and a bridge and everything? It seemed to remind her in some ways of the enchanted castles in the basic picture books the Doctor had given her; she was, after all, just beginning to read. No, it couldn't possibly be anything bad.
"A house? You couldn't even call that a house! If the big bad wolf was here right now, he wouldn't even have to start blowing to have that rickety thing fall down!" Shock cried, brushing furiously at her now dust-stained lilac clothing.
"Big... bad what?" Sally replied, her eyes wide with a muffled confusion. Shock merely ignored the woman at all costs and, opening her mouth, she began a tediously long, furiously spoken speech which seemed to solely incude the fact that not even a pack of rabid, rabies-infected wolves (In which Sally had curiously asked what this 'Rabies Wolf' creature was) would get her up into that treehouse. Lock, however, had long shut out Shock's high-pitched whining and had turned his attention avidly toward the house. He agreed slightly with Shock, the place did look as though it would fall with the slightest motion, but they really didn't have much choice in the matter. It was either the treehouse before them or their tombs back in the eerie graveyard. He decided, with a small nod, that he'd much rather risk falling into the oblivion of that seemingly neverending moat and breaking his neck than spending a single night in his death domain.
"This should do... at least until we get ourselves back together." Lock muttered between breaths to his male comrade, whom of which nodded slightly in return while rubbing his aching arms in a disgruntled manner. Sally's brow furrowed in confusion.
"Back together? Are you broken?" she gingerly prodded Lock's red-clad forearm, swaying slightly off balance in the process. "The doctor can put you back together! he's good at fixing things." The demon-boy's eyes rolled painfully in their sockets as he shooed her fast-approaching hand away with a small, sharp swat of his own.
"Forget it," he turned dissmissively from the ragdoll, who seemed too pre-occupied in attempting to find her centre of gravity again to notice the very obvious flashes of annoyance passing across the little boy's face like bolts of lightning. As the storm inside him cleared immensely, he found his mind beginning to formulate on it's own once more. It was all fine and dandy that they had located a place to stay, at least for the night; but what of the next morning? They knew nothing of this new and unfamiliar place, and it seemed the only grown up they had found didn't either. Did one need to eat when one was dead? If so, he wasn't sure how that was supposed to happen, or where they were supposed to locate anything mildly edible in a place that seemed to come straight from a horror movie set. Were all the adults in the place like her? His gaze shifted lightly to the ragdoll; her head cocked, mildly interested, as she avidly took in Shock very loudly 'expressing her personal opinion' (or as Lock and Barrel affectionately named it; 'Booting up Bossy-Mode'). He supposed she'd never seen anyone so loud and obnoxious; he knew he hadn't...
"Lock, how're we supposed to get up there?" Barrel's low and slightly tentative voice callously invaded his personal thoughts. "There's no ladder or nothing." The demon-boy, a look of mild bemusement from the pure irony of the situation present on his face, studied the monstrosity carefully. His friend was right, there was no ladder to allow them up. There were no dints or crevices in the tree's jagged lines for small feet to latch onto, and it certainly wasn't low enough for them to jump and hope to catch hold of the low-built platform above.
"Oh, that's just wonderful," Shock's sardonic voice pierced through his mental calculation like a hot poker. "Not only are we living in a house that looks like it'll fall just by looking at it but now, even if we were desperate enough to want to go up there, we're going to have to grow at least fifteen feet... or learn to fly."
"Oh will you cut the complaining for once!" Lock, having become tired of his female assailant's seemingly neverending string of complaints wailed, turning and administering a sharp and extremely generalised push to her shoulder.
Barrel, just tired of the girl in general (and recalling the fact every time he even slightly moved his aching limbs), replied with a "Yeah, shut up, witchy-girl!" and a swift shove in the opposite direction, much to her annoyance.
"At least I'm the only one being practical here!" Shock's bitter reply came fast and without pause, pushing each boy in their consecutive shoulders. "You're both a bunch of morons. Lucky I died too, otherwise you'd probably end up killing yourselves."
"I seen the vampires fly, it looks like fun!" Sally, eager for something to say between the snide remarks and violent shoving squealed, clearly overenthused. "Can I fly? I wanna fly!"
* * * * *
The crowd had been overcome with a tense silence. The faces had become ashen and surprised, lips pulled together into tight, grim lines and eyebrows raised high on their ghoulish brows. Nobody spoke; nobody dared to. They merely glared, pointed and vehemious, at the figure of whom they now envisioned as the very epicentre of their well-worn troubles with the terrible trio, the guilty culprit of all the problems they had ever experienced from them, and all of the tricks and surprises they were sure to experience in the near future. Sally, with the weight of a thousand outraged eyes heavy on her shoulders, tried with all of her strength to refrain the tears from springing to her own, yet found that the weight was seemingly too much to bare.
"What were you thinking?!" A deep, lone voice cut through the silence of the crowd like a knife. The heads of the town turned vaguelly to the co-ordinates of which the voice had projected, though they proved more interested in keeping their gaze on the ragdoll's reaction to the words rather than to know to whom the voice belonged. "What were you thinking, showing them the treehouse? We'd all told you a thousand times the fate of the people that had lived there before! We'd told you about the trouble they'd given us! and you showed it to them anyway!!" Sally could not be sure who the icy voice belonged to, yet it stung sharply nonetheless.
"I can't believe it," the flaky green witch with her high and chalky voice cried, clearly outraged as she stood on her seat in the middle rows. "I told you all she was trouble, didn't I?" Her spindly arms crossed over her chest knowingly, her mouth a thin, uniform line. "Jack, I told you she was trouble. I told you back on that Christmas-Halloween night that you were associating with.... with.." Her eyes met Jack's accusingly, as if he'd been a part of Sally's then-innocent plans. "With a girl from the scrap heap!" A seperate and very individual cry flew up from a hundred different mouths (including those of both Jack's and Sally's) in both agreement, protest and every view inbetween, causing a loud and unstoppable ruckus that, if there had been a singe soul in the town not attending the meeting, could have just as easily mistaken for a shattering earthquake.
Through this terrible and inane babbling, nobody seemed to notice a certain Terrible Trio apon the stage, giggling fitfully as they watched the angry and disgruntled from a safe distance. The Town seemed to have forgotten who was telling the story they were so naively believing; the Terrible Trio the entire meeting was supposedly based on, the Terrible Trio whose inconspicuous silence had caused them to slide from the accusations in the town's heads; The Trio who had, slyly and completely un-noticed by the public eye, once again slipped their duties like a loosened noose and roped in another sacrifice for their cause.
* * * * *
After a seemingly endless string of heated deliberation, quick and impatient exploration and what seemed at the time like a neverending gush of facetious abuse from a certain unwilling female in the group, Lock was the one that managed to locate their one and only ticket upward into the poorly crafted treehouse. A simple rope and pulley system attatched to a worn wrought iron birdcage-turned-elevator was what he had uncovered just left of the threadbare bridge. The bottom of the cage was thin and worn, scattered with rust spreading like a disease about all of the basic mechanical meeting points. The pulleys were rough and squeaking, catching the slightly decaying rope in large bundles every so often, as though the pulley above their heads no longer had the strength to haul the awfully heavy cage upward. Although the method of transport to the freshly-dead trio seemed terribly risque, it also seemed as though it was their sole choice in the matter.
Sally, who honestly believed she had never seen anything more wonderful her life, found herself instantly enamoured with the rope and steel contraption. After numerous and vastly failed attempts to pull the woman away from the elevator-machine to allow themselves pass through, the trio settled themselves impatiently at the far base of the bridge to await her child-like attention span wearing thin.
"She's crazy, you know," was Shock's snortine comment after watching the woman pull the contraption up and then back down again on it's ragged pulley system. "She's probably a psychopath.... gonna kill us as soon as soon as we get up there. Probably sucks out the brains of her victims, 'cos if there's one thing she needs more of, it's them." She reclined lazily and rather a little too nonchalantly for her previous sentence on the palms of her hands. Lock leaned foward, stretching long and hard and even managing to squeeze out a small yawn before finally turning lazily to his female assailant.
"Well, regardless of whether she's out to kill us and suck out our brains or not, without her we'd be sleeping in our crypts right now."
"Yeah well... I really don't care." The little witch repositioned herself uncomfortably; the ground beneath them was moist from a small rainshower that had ensued their small journey to the treehouse, yet it didn't seem to have softened the stone-hard soil in the slightest. "She hasta go. And I mean now."
"Can we ditch her now, Lock? Can we please?" Barrel's harsh whisper of agreement sounded coarsely in the demon-boy's left ear. "She's annoying.... and she kinda creeps me out." The pudgy skeleton flinched nervously. Between the stares of his friends, one displaying a look of pure venom and slight threatening and the other a downcast stare of nervousness, he knew immediately it was time for the lady to leave. To him, she had been a valuable portal of information but, like all of the portals he had seen in science fiction television shows, if they were'nt closed ahead of time, massive destruction ensued. With a large and very obvious roll of his eyes, as through not to let them think he agreed with them in the slightest, the pale little boy rose to his feet in a lazy stagger. He walked the short distance to where the ragdoll now resided. Her curiosity with the elevator having long worn thin, she had then positioned herself to the very centre of the rickety bridge, staring with her signature stare of innocence and blind awe into the endless drop to the bottom of the moat-like structure.
"Geez, it's a long way down, huh?" Sally commented lightly, talking in part to herself and in part to the visibly smaller boy, craning her neck to take in a full view of the moat's many and infinate depths. "I hope I don't fall in."
Lock took a step in which to stand parallel to the woman, mimicking her actions and staring intently down the barrel of the endless moat. He could take in uneven cracks and crevices that buried deep into crumbling walls of hard soil. The structure seemed denude of any care or conservation as the remains of it's mysteries were enveloped in a cloak of darkness. Lifting his eyes from the sight, they fixed once again on the awed woman that leaned heavily against the threadbare bridge.
"You should go now. The doctor-" he vaguelly recalled the woman having mentioned someone she affectionately named 'the doctor,' and used it to his benefit though he had no idea who the mysterious character was, "-will probably be worried sick about you." The woman laughed carelessly at his sentence, teetering dangerously close to the edge.
"Oh no, no! See, he taught me how to make dinner for him, and I made some soup tonight and I put everything in the cupboard into it, even the things he told me not to touch." She giggled innocently, conducting the painstakingly slow trek to the safe and steady land just beyond the bridge. "He's sleeping now, snoring away, so he won't even know I'm gone. " A questioning eyebrow on the young boy raised, yet he was immediaely sidetracked before he could think too harshly into the manner. Focusing beyond Sally's waistline, he could faintly make out Shock, one hand raised to her neck in a signature melodramatic throat-cutting notion, as she pointed to him with a murderous glint in her eye. His own rolled painfully; Shock was impatient as anything at the best of times, and it seemed that that particular trait of hers hadn't changed in the slightest after her death, much to his own dismay.
"Look lady, you'd really better beat it. We're tired and grumpy," he pulled a sour face to accentuate his notion. Sally turned incredulously to the remains of the trio behind her, whom of which blinked once in surprise and then promptly pulled their own uncouth faces. Her carefree smile relaxed into a troubled frown.
"Maybe I should go," she lamented. "The doctor is pretty bossy... and grumpy. Kinda like how you look, except worse," she referred to his sour face rather matter of factly, shrugging her shoulders in dismissal. Lock grinned, yet as he watched the woman she seemed to have quietened immensely, turned away from him and appeared as though she was pondering something beneath that thick skull of hers; at least to the extent her underdeveloped mind would allow her to. A hand rose to her cheek, touching it lightly in a troubled manner.
At last, after what seemed like a lifetime, she reached an arm down the jagged neckline of her roughly sewn dress (obviously something she had accomplished herself, judging by the poor stitching outrageous angles) and pulled from it a small, silver chain that had hung inconspicuously about her neck. Giving it a small, careless tug, the flimsy chain snapped and shrivelled, snake-like, into her stitch-lined fingers.
Outstretching her hand importantly, she unfurled her tightly interlocked fingers about the chain close to Lock's face. His eyes took in the sight of a tarnished silver charm apon the it, moulded expertly into the shape of an evil and quite gruesome-looking cat. Intricate details had been carved expertly into the silver, forming a small, agaped mouth full to the brim with glinting silver teeth and two tiny chunks of uncut emerald made up wide, surprised eyes. Every strand of fur had been carved expertly into it's own place apon the feline's back, and the whiskers, made of tiny, jagged silver rods, balanced uneven on the unproportioned face. Stroking it lovingly with her free hand, Sally pushed it further yet into the boy's face.
"My friend Jack gave this to me," she stated simply, running a finger along the impeccable lines of the charm. "He said I have been very good and I deserved it." Her hand retreated, clasping her clenched fist possessively to her chest . A coil of silver chain slipped through her fingers and brushed lightly against her wrist. She liked Jack; he'd been very polite to her from the first time they had met, and he'd never once told her off for her mistakes or interrogating questions, something she had come to greatly despise the Doctor for doing.
"He's my friend, and he said that this was his.... his Grastitute that he wanted to give to me."
"I think you mean gratitude," Lock corrected absently, his eyeline sliding to the ragdoll's clenched fists in a slight curiosity. The charm had appeared extremely vintage. If he could cash it in somewhere.....
She beamed a warm, infectious grin, cutting through the formulating plot in Lock's mind. "Yes! That's it... It's Jack's Gra-ti-tude." she sounded the word slowly in small chunks as that of a five year old in a vocabulary lesson, beaming as she pronounced it correctly. Her laced fingers slowly unravelling, she thrust the charm foward, a serene smile passing across her features.
"You're my friend, demon-boy. I like you, you were nice to me. But I don't have a Gratitude of my own to give you, I don't think I'm old enough yet or something. So I'll give you Jack's." A slight grin formulating in the corners of his translucent lips, mentally calculating how many bags of candy he'd be able to buy if he cashed the stupid-looking thing in, he outstretched his hand. Slowly and carefully, she took hold of one of his hands in her own, transacting the charm between them. He could vaguelly make out the sound of Shock conducting extremely melodramatic gagging noises behind Sally's back, and could inwardly imagine her overdramatized pantomime of the scene that went with it. 'We'll see who has the last laugh when I cash this thing in,' he noted inwardly, a small smile playing on his face. He eyed the charm greedily- he could have only guessed that the thing was solid silver, vintage and extremely valuable.
"Thankyou," he muttered unenthusiastically, thrusting the charm deep into the unknown and previously unused depths of his back pocket. Sally grinned; clearly accomplished with her actions as she clasped her hands tightly at her waist.
"Lock, we can't take it anymore, it's way too sickening," Barrel called, throwing a hand motion to accentuate his disgust into his words. Both the pudgy skeleton boy and the female in the group had long left the comfort (Or Discomfort, rather) of the stony ground before the bridge. They had both crossed and now resided impatiently at the other side before the daunting cage elevator, impatience glowing clearly on both faces.
Lock turned painfully to the ragdoll. "We're going now.... to check the place out and-" though he was immediately cut of by a rather distressed tone of voice from the woman.
"I can come visit you again?" she whispered hopefully, her balance slightly swaying on her inexperienced legs. He groaned inwardly, yet maintained his emotionless facade.
"Sure," he lied, immediately turning away from the lady and hastily running to rejoin his group, whom of which impatiently awaited his arrival. She waved vaguelly as the trio cautiously boarded the elevator. Unbeknownst to her, they were merely a few minutes away from being faced with the most absolute of evil in all of Halloween Town; an evil that resided silently beneath the uneven walls of the crude little house, an evil that she had led them blindly into the clutches of.
"Look after Jack's Gratitude!" Sally called importantly as she watched them make their tireless journey upward.
*
In only a mere minute or two, Shock lazily watched from between two bars of the metal elevator as the ragdoll wandered away on the path they had duly followed to the house, swaying nonchalantly as she strived with all her might to retain her balance and composture. Good riddance was the only sort of farewell she retained in her mind. Casting her intent gaze upward, she had to admit to herself that the view from the would-be birdhouse was breathtaking, and if she peered hard enough into the distance she could almost swear that she could make out an aura of light and the scraping of building tops- a city perhaps?
"Lock has a Girlfriend, Lock has a girlfriend," Barrel's inane taunting proved extremely distracting, and she turned to give a swift smack to his pudgy head, something of which Lock had already accomplished several times. Yet as she turned back to stare into the horizon once more, she could no longer find the distant lights and buildings; all that she could take in was as the ever lengthening drop to the ground.
"This things gonna snap in half soon and we're all going to plummet to our doom," she mentioned in a matter-of-fact manner, curling her fingers around two of the infinate bars. Lock snorted.
"Can you ever stop being so Neurotic?" He muttered, casting his gaze upward; there was not much more rope nor height to go before they popped through the top of the ramshackle home via a hole in the floor. She mimicked his snort and voice perfectly.
"Only when you stop being such a moron."
"I guess you'll be neurotic forever then," Barrel added. There was a second of silence before both he and his female cohort erupted into peals of immature giggles at the insanely lame joke told.
* * * * *
A/N- I didn't like stopping here, but there was no other wya I could do it. New chapter should be up soon, I guess. 'Till then.... Keep those reviews rolling please!