Phew! You guys thought you'd lost me huh? Nope, I'm still kicking! Anyway, HEre's another chapter for ya. Sorry this one is so depressing, but i tried to set up a lot of stuff to be resolved later on. Personally I like the writing I did in this one... Anywho, Enjoy!
It was Halloween again.
Elle had been waiting for it for months, ever since her damned sister had found her diary.
Cherry had meant well, to be sure, when she had run to Elle's mother and father with the open diary.
"She's crazy, Mommy! Elle's crazy!" Elle had written everything about Fink down in the little book her grandmother had given her. Ever since the first night they had met each other down in the cemetery, she had recounted everything he had said or done. She had even sketched his face onto one of the pages, and had written his name with red thread below it, sewing into the page. At first it was just fun to have a secret friend. Then she began to realize that it was not just friendship she wanted from Fink.
Any parent would tolerate an imaginary friend, even in a twelve year old. But would any parent tolerate an apparent obsession with a person who obviously could not exist? Or if this…Fink… did exist… And it was then that Elle began the treatments. They put her on medication; they sent her to the shrink, everything they could think of. But the medication could not erase the truth from Elle's mind and the shrink could not convince her that she was delusional.
It was only after Elle heard her parents discussing the possibility of sending her away (where she could only guess) did Elle start to agree with them. At least that's what she said.
She started telling the shrink he was right about her. She began to apologize to her parents for worrying them. While they watched her, she tore up her diary and threw it in their fireplace. She had to fight the tears as the sketch of Fink curled under the flames and disappeared. For two months now she had not taken her medication, it was hidden in a box between her mattresses. Everything was going fine in the Morgan house.
But not in Elle's mind.
And now it was Halloween.
And she was leaving this house. For good.
Elle shoved more of her clothes into her duffel bag. She had it all planned out.
There was a kid from school, Bobby Trielle, the same kid who had led her to Fink that night years ago, who had hit bottom a few years ago. He would do anything for drugs of any kind, and while Elle hated to feed his addiction, she needed his help like he needed the meds under her mattress.
Bobby would come to her window at 5:00 sharp; she would give him the duffel bag and a few other things and a quarter of the meds. He would take her bike and hide them in the cemetery. Then he'd take her bike to the corner of Grove St. and Heaven Wood Dr., where there were plenty of bushes, and hide it there. Tied to one of the interior branches would be a bag with another quarter of the meds. Elle had managed this picking Cherry up from school. He would then return to the cemetery and wait for Elle. Elle would take Cherry to her friend's Halloween party at 7:00. She would stay for a hour, and then give the adults the slip and escape. She'd grab her bike and haul to the cemetery. Bobby would get the rest of her meds when she got there and leave. Fink would come, she's go back with him, everything was perfect.
Elle smeared black eyeliner down across her cheek as she ran the plan over and over in her mind. She was always a jester, every year. Her red and blue satin costume hung in tatters in her closet. This year was an occasion, she was getting out. She had made a new costume. White, white satin with black diamonds over her chest and arms. The long sleeved tunic reached past her slim waist and divided into several short points around her lower stomach and rear end. A white collar covered her shoulders and extended into six corners with tiny bells on the end with dark midnight blue lining the edges of the collar. Black leggings hugged her hips down to her mid-calf, were the white satin laces of ballet dancing shoes met them and tied off into bows. Elle stood and looked at herself in the mirror.
Perfect. He'll love it.
On her vanity was her old patched blue and red satin jester's hat from years ago. She picked it up and set it firmly on her head. The colors had faded, and it was torn and patched and dirty and worn, but it was sewn up with red thread. It was the only thing that had kept her believing in Fink the past months. Every time she held it close and closed her eyes she saw him holding his bloodied hands out to her that first Halloween. The bloodstains on the hat were proof of his existence. She knew he was real. And now she'd be with him forever!
A knock on the window startled Elle out of her reverie. It was Bobby.
She opened the window and dropped the duffel bag into his waiting hands.
"Don't forget. I'll be at the cemetery around 9:30ish if you've put my bike in the right place. The stuff's there in the trees. Here's the first bit." She tossed him a small bag containing six pills. Bobby scrambled to pick it up and quickly downed on of the tiny blue pills. He nodded at her.
"Ok, I'll get your stuff there. You DO have the other half?" Elle reached into her costume and pulled out a bag with twelve blue pills and held it up for him to see. Then she replaced it and handed him another smaller bag.
"Get going Bobby. My bike's around the back of the garage. DO NOT let my parents see you. Go, quick. I'll see you at 9:30." She shut the window and watched as Bobby pocketed the bag of pills and lifted up Elle's bags. She watched him until he disappeared from sight around the corner of her house.
She sighed nervously and glance at the clock. 5:10pm. 9:30 was only four hours and twenty minutes off.
Give or take a year.
It was Halloween again, and Fink was eagerly awaiting sunset. Practically the whole town was bustling around his house, yelling, laughing, shouting instructions, trying on masks, costumes, flinging handfuls of candy. There was the same festival air that danced around the courtyard of the Skellington residence every Halloween since Fink had taken over the designing of Halloween festivities. Already he could hear the familiar chanting song being struck up by several of the younger, newer trick-or-treaters. But he motioned for them to be shushed. There would be time for that… but now…right now he wanted to revel in the glory of the Halloween he had created before it took to the streets and left him home alone for the seventeenth year running. He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes…
That was where Jack found him. Standing slightly removed from the chaos of the Halloweeners in the living room of the house, arms crossed over his chest, in his own little world. He looked so calm in the swirl of excitement that danced around him, not a tousled hair out of place. Jack smiled softly to himself as he gazed down at his son from his towering height. Fink was reminding him more and more of himself, many years ago when he had assumed his role as the Pumpkin King.
Every Halloween since the night Fink had mysteriously disappeared and reappeared had been nothing short of perfect. Fink's fresh ideas mixed with his father's ingenuity and expertise had created a string of the best Halloweens the town had seen since Jack's glory days a few years before the "incident." The years following Halloweentown's new start… After…
Jack shook his head clear before he ventured down a path in his past he had not visited in years. Back before he was Pumpkin King… Back when Halloweentown was a dark and evil place…
"Jack? Love, it's time." Sally placed cool hand on his arm, startling him out of his reverie. He looked down at her and smiled. She was his true love; she erased all the bad memories from his mind whenever he looked at her. She was his savior, even if she didn't know it. He took her hand and placed it in the crook of his right elbow and escorted her to where their son stood. With a pang of regret that he hastily swallowed and stuffed deep inside him, Jack shook Fink's shoulder gently.
"Son, we've got to get these guys moving out. They're liable to tear the house down if we keep them waiting ay longer!" A few spooks standing near them laughed. Jack smiled his wide charming grin and held up his free hand for silence. The noise in the room stilled and all of the excited Halloweeners turned expectant faces towards their King.
Jack looked over them all, his loyal subjects who had followed him through good and bad. This was the night they prepared for all year long, the night the children of Halloweentown looked forward to more then their own birthdays. The playful pageantry of Halloween that Jack and Fink had created was bubbling below the surface of the people of his town. It was their lifeblood, their reason to be. To go out in the world and do the thing they did best; to scare with joy and fun in mind. For this night they based their whole lives on, and now they waited on only the word of their King.
Jack's spine tingled with the rush of power he always felt just before the big show began. He lifted his shaky hand and picked up a lighted candle from a nearby table. The electricity in the room reached a peak. Fink felt the hair on his neck stand on end and something in his cuts went zap! Up and down his arms. Jack led Sally, with all the eyes of Halloweentown on the candle-flame, to a huge black Candle in the middle of the hall of their house. The creatures in the house rushed around them and filled the hall. Fink ambled slowly in after them, making his was to the stairs. He perched on the third stair up, surveying the scene below him with quiet pride. The Candle was his creation, his baby. He had worked on it all year, and it was no doubt, a Halloween masterpiece.
The Candle stood five feet high in the middle of the Skellington's hall. It was carved of jet-black wax and was more than a foot in diameter. Emerald green wax dragons of intricate detail surrounded the base for, their dull red eyes glazed and dead. Their bodies reached two feet out from the base of the candle, their tails, claws, and wings gleaming in the candlelight. Red and yellow and orange ribbons of the dragons' wax fire crawled up the sides of the black pillar. And at the very top, almost hidden in the wax, was a silver ribbon.
Jack walked to the candle, holding the lit taper aloft. Halloweentown became the calm before the storm as every person held his or her breath in anticipation. Jack looked around him one more time.
"Let Halloween…BEGIN!" He thrust the taper into the top of the candle. The creatures in the room gasped and leapt back as the Candle erupted in huge bursts of green and blue flames. The whole pillar of the Candle began to glow. The dragon's eyes flared a deep ruby red and in the flickering light of the flames they appeared to writhe and move around on the floor. The tongues of flame that appeared to leap from their mouths roared up the sides of the candle in a sudden rush that elicited not a few screams from the crowd. They the whole room began to cheer madly, wildly. As the dragon's flames had rushed up the candle, white, glowing images of every creature in Halloweentown appeared.
Jack felt a huge swelling of pride rise within him and threaten to burst through his chest. He turned to face his son, grinning like a maniac. Fink just waved at his father with a small smile of satisfaction. If Jack had possessed the ability to cry, he would have done so. Sally had a hand to her mouth staring at the Candle, looking dangerously close to either crying or bursting out laughing. The crowd around them, who had worked themselves into a veritable frenzy over the beginning of Halloween, driven by the adrenaline jolted into their systems by the Candle, had began to rush out the front door into the night. Their shrieks and squeals of joy and excitement began to fade away as the last of them trickled out the door.
Only Jack, Sally, and Fink were left in the house. The Candle's flames began to calm down after their initial burst. While they still retained their green-blue color, their flickering became less frantic and took on the personality of a quiet campfire. A kind of calm settled over the trio. Then Fink sighed and turned to walk up the stairs.
"You guys better get going, they won't wait for you." This was the part he hated most. He loved the chance to see Elle. But more than anything he wished just once that his father and mother would grab his hands and throw him head long into the streets of Halloweentown with Shock and all his other friends. But he knew each year his mother would kiss him on the cheek and hug him gingerly, his father would nod stone-faced at him, and they'd both walk out the door arm in arm. It was the same every year… At least he knew Elle was coming…
Jack bowed his head. The joy inside of him ebbed away slightly.
"Fink, this was magnificent, sweetheart it really was!" Sally bubbled. "You really made your father and me proud tonight. Didn't he Jack? Jack?" Jack's he slowly lifted towards his son.
"You really did Fink. It was fantastic" For a moment father and son's eyes met and both understood the feeling of the other. The son who wanted his father's approval and the father who did know how to show his son he had it. Utter quiet reigned in the house. Sally stood looking between the two, hardly daring to breathe and interrupt their moment. Then Fink shut his eyes.
"Have fun, Dad." He turned back and ran up the stairs. Jack heard everything he didn't say. Have fun…without him… Jack squeezed his own eyes tight almost in pain. It was his fault, if only he had been more careful with him…if only… if only…
Once again Sally saved him from himself. She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder and tugged him out of his misery.
"He's so wonderful isn't he Jack? Your son is the most wonderful thing that you ever made for this town. And the people know it." She smiled up at him. "He wants us to have fun. Let's do it for him. Besides, we have to keep those crazy people out there in line don't we?"
Jack finally met her smile with his. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. Taking her hand, he led her out the door. He laid his hand on the doorknob and looked back just in time to see Fink try to hide himself around the corner of the stair landing. Jack smiled to himself.
"Goodbye son," He called back to the "empty" room. Then, much, much quieter, "I love you…" and shut the door. The house, shut off now from the lights outside, became filled with the glorious light from the Candle. The shadows flitted across Fink's face as he slid down the wall into a sitting position. How long he stayed there he didn't know, but the Candle began to douse itself with its own wax when he finally shook himself and rose to go to his bedroom.
He reached down under his bed and pulled out a rope ladder.
"I can just walk out the door… they're not even here…" He thought to himself. But even the logic of his seventeen-year-old brain could not deny him the childlike sense of adventure that came along with escaping from him bedroom window by the ladder. He gathered a few items from around his room and stuffed them into a backpack before opening his window and throwing down the ladder. Out the window, down the ladder, across the grass in a crouched run, over the stone wall, and into the shadows. Fink stole quietly away from the Halloween festivities, unknowingly to a rendezvous with fate.
A pair of red eyes watched Jack and Sally leave the house. He saw the ladder tumble from Fink's bedroom window and Fink escaping into the night. He could not suppress the bolt of excitement that shivered down his back as he realized his goal was so very near; his victory was at hand….
Lock gripped the red devil's mask in his hand as he peered through the darkness. Towards the lighted streets of the town, at the blissfully ignorant people in those streets. He was almost done with his part of the deal… one more thing to do and then kick back and let Fink deliver Elle right to him. It was perfect…perfect…
Bum bum BUM! Hold onto your socks boys and girls! This is gonna be good!