Chapter 5:
Acacia landed beside Raz after jumping down from the gate. Now standing in the old cemetery, they both felt less keen to get to the Hinterlands. The missing pumpkins made her shiver but the biggest shock was Spiral Hill.
It was strange seeing it gone after all that time.
"Creepy," whispered Raz, open-mouthed."
"Yeah." She replied, and shivered just a little bit.
Both of them walked slowly to the spot where it had been. Acacia just staring, but Raz was trying to work out how they could get up there without the hill.
"Got any ideas?" he said "If not, I'm gonna turn back. This is too weird."
She thought for a moment, then said with a sigh
"We can't turn back. And I do have an idea."
"What?"
The girl smiled.
"Well, I am a shape shifter, skellington boy."
It seemed Raz wasn't as heavy as he looked, well, he was a skellington after all.
She changed back from a bat to her human(ish) shape, and found herself face to face with the Hinterland gate. Now, the pumpkins had been creepy, but that was just plain scary. Even for a Halloween Towner. Even for a Skellington. Trees don't grow like that, in that shape and the trees don't grow so close together in the new graveyard forest.
But they couldn't go back now.
After struggling through the forest for two hours, both of the companions had to stop.
"This is getting us nowhere!" Raz shouted, kicking the base of one of the trees. His voice echoed round the forest, scaring off a crow somewhere.
"And kicking trees doesn't either," replied Acacia moodily "But we need to-"
"I know, I know. But we're lost in here anyway. No-one will find us."
They both sat down on the floor, brooding silently. But after three minutes, Acacia heard a faint bark some way off.
"Hey. Psst, Raz!"
"What?" he answered annoyed.
"Did you hear that? It sounds like…"
Another bark, this one was closer.
Both of them jumped to their feet, watching the reddish light that was weaving its way between trees, avoiding a rock here and there.
"Zero!" he cried, smiling. "Come on Zero, come on boy!"
But there was another voice, following the dead dog.
"Hey! Hey come back here you stupid dog!"
After that, there was a loud thud and a groan. Obviously the voice's owner had just run into a tree.
Acacia giggled, realising that the voice was human. A living human. She whispered to Raz, he nodded and they both hid behind one of the thicker tree trunks.
After a while, it came to the small clearing where they hid. It was a boy, at least 12 years old, who was chasing Zero round the clearing, with the dog barking for Raz. The skellington boy was trying to shush him, but with his glowing nose, Zero found Raz easily. Time for a scare.
Acacia jumped from the hiding place, taking the shape of a bat again. She flew at the boy, who threw up his hands in defence. Shrieking she flew off, watching and waiting for Raz.
He didn't disappoint her. Using his famed Skellington-Scaring-Skills (or as the Towners called them the S.S.S's) the boy ended up screaming.
Both of them loved scaring people. It was their favourite pastime. But it struck Acacia that the boy wasn't screaming at all.
He was laughing!