Fink and Elle spent a wonderful Halloween evening together, staying up way past both of their bedtimes. At about 3:00 am Fink tumbled back into the grave with the stone angel and turned to wave goodbye to his newfound friend.

"I hop you're mom and dad won't get as ad at you as my parents are going to get at me." He said with a sheepish grin. Elle shrugged.

"If they do, our groundings will be long over by the time Halloween rolls around again. Though I hope you'll find a way to get back here before then." Both of them had reluctantly admitted that the only time Fink would be able to visit again would be next Halloween. Fink knew that his parents never left him alone for any long enough time to escape and see Elle except on Halloween, and even then he couldn't stay for that long.

"Maybe I'll find a way…" Fink said hopefully. Elle nodded.

"It'll be worth the wait." She said cheerily. She began to heave one of the grave's stone doors shut. Fink lifted up him arms to help her ease the weight into place. Elle placed her hands on the other door and stopped, not wanting to say goodbye. Fink stood looking up at her from the grave, smiling comfortingly.

"Maybe this year will go by fast huh?" Elle smiled back at him, lifting the door.

"Yeah…maybe it will." She paused halfway to shutting the door. "You won't forget me will you? I mean…you will come back, right?" Fink pushed the door back fully open and jumped out of the grave, startling Elle. He held her perfect little hand in his stitched one, the new bright red thread she had used to sew him up shining between them.

"I could not forget you, Elle. I'm coming back." Elle stood still for a minute, then let go of his hand and began to undo the long silver ribbon she was using as a belt. She pulled it from around her waist and held up his hand.

"Just to make sure you won't forget," She began looping the ribbon about his hand and wrist, almost so it looked like a bandage on his cut skin. She tied it off and looked at him satisfied. "This'll remind you." Fink chuckled at her and nodded.

"Of course." He said and stepped back into the grave. Elle pulled the door over the hole, watching the Fink's face disappearing into shadow.

"Bye…" She said softly. Fink waved to her with his silver-bandaged hand.

"Bye…" The door thudded closed and both stood staring through the stone at each other. Then the spell was broken and they both turned back to walk home. Elle picked up her discarded bike from where it lay on the earthy floor of the graveyard. She pedaled out of the gate and paused in the lamplight just as the first snowflakes were beginning to fall on her upturned face…

Fink walked down the tunnel to the cave opening in the other graveyard at the end. Halloweentown was still glowing from the Halloween fires and the torches that lined the parade route. He could still here a few residents who had imbibed too much Halloween wine singing the famous Pumpkin Song drunkenly in the streets. He looked up at the familiar stars above his head. He was home.

Like his mother had done years before him (thought he did not know it) he picked a flower and climbed the curled hill, sitting on its crest. He twirled the flower around between two fingers, staring past it to the lights of Halloweentown.

So he was home, but he was still on the outside, the same as when he had entered the human world. And he had come back…Why had he done that? He had wanted to stay with Elle, and Elle had wanted him to stay. Then why?

Fink thought hard. What had made him come back? What was here for him?

'Your parents.' He thought. His parents…they kept him practically locked up like a prisoner. Then why? His parents…his mother and his….father…

Of course…He was his father's son; Halloween was in his blood, his bone, even in his tattered flesh. Why couldn't he take part in Halloween? His…condition… Yes but it takes a whole year to plan the parties, parades, tricks, treats, scares….Ah yes…he now understood his father's love for scaring, Bobby's gang had helped him see that. Why couldn't he still be the Pumpkin Prince?

"That's right, I AM the Pumpkin Prince!" He shouted to himself in his growing frenzy of excitement. Then he let out a cackle, the cackle his father was famous for.

In his bed in Halloweentown where his wife had sent him while they waited for Fink to reappear, Jack awoke with a start. He could have sworn he heard… Jack threw back the covers and rushed downstairs.

Fink stood atop the curled hill, triumphant. Yes Halloween was in his blood, and this would be the last he took no part in it. He wouldn't be just watching the festivities anymore; in fact he wouldn't even be in Halloweentown for the festivities.

But he would make the festivities.

Fink dropped the flower and began walking back to his house through the graveyard.

'I'm finally going to make my parents proud. My father proud.' He thought as he walked up the street to his house. 'Finally.'

Jack walked out on the landing to greet his son, but Fink spoke before his father did.

"Dad, I've got some great ideas for next Halloween." Sally joined Jack at the door.

"What?" She said, "Fink, where have you been? We've been so worried-"

"I was just out thinking." He turned to Jack. "Dad, I want to help you make Halloween next year." He pulled his father in the door. "I wanted to show you my ideas. Come on!" Jack looked back at Sally in confusion as he was pulled into the dinning room. Sally, equally confused, shrugged and shut the door.

Fink sat his father down and found some paper and pencils, sketching his ideas.

"Now I was thinking that-" Jack sat in amazement as his son drew him a perfectly terrifying Halloween. He began to smile his wide skeleton grin again. Deep within his boney heart, pride in his son began to grow.

Sally stood in the dinning room doorway, not hearing a thing Fink was saying. She was staring at his hands as they flew over the paper. She knew that her neither Dr. Finklestine nor herself had had to stitch Fink up in over three months…and that neither of them had used anything but black thread… but somehow the cuts across Fink's knuckles were sewn with small, delicate stitches of candy-red thread…

Lock had walked calmly back down the tunnel into the Halloweentown graveyard. He walked calmly, but his whole inside was churning with fury. Shock and Barrel followed him at a distance, both silently wondering what was wrong with him. Lock walked straight toward the tree house where they still lived, reaching it before the others did. As soon as he was out of their sight in the darkened house, he rushed to the slide he had invented to travel down to the dark lair of the late Oogie Boogie and slid down into the oppressive darkness.

Lock had taken the whole basement portion of the tree house as his own after Oogie's defeat by the Pumpkin King. The tricks that the monster had hidden in the walls and floor and the torture devices sat rusted and broken around the room. The only thing that stood in the room was the platform that Oogie had planned to tip Santa and Sally into the molten pot with. Lock had covered it with an old sheet and several tattered pillows, using it as a bed. It was here that he flopped down and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

Only from that vantage point could anyone see what Lock had been doing with himself for the past several years since Oogie's death and maybe before that, but no one would know that until too late.

Lock reached under a pillow and fished out an old CD player, a prize he had won from a successful scare in the human world. He put on the headphone and blasted some from of hard rock, trying not to think about the feelings surging in him.

'They were right…they were right damn it…He did find the human world, he found that girl…geez that girl… How did they know? How?' His thoughts were scattered and they made him feeling like his flesh were burning.

'That girl…what did that guy call her? Elle? My God…and Fink…'Lock's thoughts turned dark.

'Fink always gets everything doesn't he? Little Pumpkin Prince, huh? Little Pumpkin Prick always gets everything he wants. He's just like us, just like me and Shock and Barrel, but everybody wants him….nobody wants us…nobody wants me…' He shoved his face into the pillow to stop the tears that were threatening to fall. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped and turned over fast.

It was Shock. Lock sighed and ripped off his headphones.

"What do you want?" He asked roughly, ashamed that she had caught him when he was about to cry. Shock looked at him.

"I…I was just coming to check on you…you ran in here pretty fast, I thought something might be wrong." Lock bit his tongue.

"Of course not. I just was tired. Now go away." He picked up his headphones again. Shock didn't leave.

"Well, if you want to talk-"

"I don't! Now go away!" Lock kicked a lever near his bed. A pendulum blade swung out of the ceiling in a shower of dust and swung towards Shock. She jumped out of the way as it nearly missed her and ran towards the ladder that led out of the basement, climbing it in record time.

Lock watched her go, and then looked at the pendulum blade as it started swinging slowly to a stop.

'Hmm…Got to remember that one works,' Lock thought to himself. He put his headphones back on and lay down again, his thoughts turning to Elle.

'I wonder what she was wearing under that costume…'

Shock walked back into the room that she and Barrel shared. Barrel was on his stomach on his twin bed eating candy from his bag and reading a comic book he had no doubt stolen from one of his scare victims. His eye was still swollen shut and he had stuffed tissue paper up his bleeding nose. His shirt was spotted with blood.

"B, give me your shirt and I'll wash it." Barrel looked up at her and then sat up and handed her his shirt. Shock smiled at him as he went back to stuffing his face and reading. She tossed his shirt into the old tub and began filling it with water.

As the tub filled, Shock took of her witch's hat and hung it on her own bed across the room from Barrel's. She grabbed a stretchy hair tie and pulled her wiry black hair into a shaggy ponytail. She unlaced her black knee-high boots and placed them beside her bed.

She turned off the tub water and grabbed a chunk of soap resting on the bottom of the tub and began washing Barrel's shirt.

She thought about Lock's behavior. He was getting more and more like this. Shock remembered when he had been sort of the undisputed leader of their little trio, back before they knew you could grow out of trick-or-treating. Everything had been great.

Shock had never really wanted to be a real witch. She joined the coven in Halloweentown just long enough to learn a few spells and then she had stopped going to meetings. She had grown up a very pretty girl, but the whole coven couldn't stand her. She rarely went into town at all unless it was to see Fink or to buy medicine for Lock and Barrel.

She glanced up from her washing at Barrel. She had become mommy to them both, Lock and him. Barrel had always been in awe of Jack Skellington, hence his usual costume choice. He had been asked by Jack to become his apprentice, to learn the trade of the scare and perhaps one day, to take over as Pumpkin King. That was before Fink was born. Barrel had not complained about his fate, but took it quietly. No one ever knew that he had been so upset about it, not until shock heard him crying one night. The two had become very close after that. Lock had nowhere else to go when he started to grow up, so he settled for staying with Shock and Barrel. The three of them had long ago given up the title of Halloween's Best Trick-or-Treaters. They really had nothing to do, nowhere to go.

And then Jack had come and recruited them for the Halloween parades. It was a chance to go back and live in the spirit of Halloween again, to pretend that they could be somewhere and matter to somebody.

But Shock was content taking care of 'her boys', as she thought of them. She began to worry about silly things like bloody shirts and scraped knees and good food. And now she was worried about Lock. Something was up. But she could do nothing. In his eyes, She and Barrel had each other and he had no one.

No one wanted a little devil-boy.

No one except Lock's new friends.

No one except the shadow's master.

But no one, not even Lock, would find out why until it was too late.

Why does Lock have a CD player? cuz I said so! Anywho, thanx to my reviewers, you guys are great! The next chapter should jump ahead if not just a few years, the whole five to the real action! What is Lock up to? And what's going to happen to our friends! Heehee, you'll just have to wait.