Halloween

Pat thought he was being smart. He thought he'd covered his bases. Tate, dressed as Quicksilver, had Violet with him. She'd even bothered to throw on a red overcoat so she could pass for Scarlet Witch to match, for those who cared. With her there, the guy reasoned, they could all have a good time. He'd skipped the superhero theme and went simple with the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride.

The car Patrick drove belonged to the previous owner of Murder House, taken by the ghosts of the house when they reci the house back from him. Pat enjoyed using the Rolls Royce but it, like everything in the house, was a hot commodity the others all wanted to use. It was especially in demand now that they could travel freely as far as the mist spread.

On Halloween, the car was particularly in demand, but Pat had skipped a turn with it the past several years in favor of doing the trick-or-treat routine. None of the three of them had used it on Halloween, in fact, which worked in their favor. Got them the car that year.

They drove through the smothering fog for over an hour before light could be seen. Then they drove another twenty minutes before finally pulling up at their destination. The outside of the building was lit up against the night, flashing with bright neon colors. The sign out front proclaimed it the Moonlight Rollerway.

"A roller rink?" Violet asked, at a loss.

Pat smiled and adjusted his black mask. "It's an all-ages Halloween party," he said. "I thought it might be better than a club."

He flashed her and Tate a smile then started toward the entrance. Violet looked at Tate, who looked amused by the flashing lights. She decided maybe the place wasn't a bad idea. She hooked her boyfriend's arm with her own and together they followed Pat to the entrance where he was already paying for their admission.

Tate tugged the door open and was immediately assaulted by thumping bass. He let the door shut again and looked over at Pat, who was stowing his wallet in his back pocket.

"It's loud," he reported.

"You'll get used to it," assured the Dread Pirate Pat and pulled the door open.

Bass whumped out. Violet steered Tate inside and Patrick followed them. There were lots of people inside, many of them on roller skates.

"I never learned how to skate," Violet admitted. She had to talk really loud to be heard over the music.

"Yeah?" Tate grinned and a cheek dimpled. "Me neither. My mother never let me have a skateboard either."

"I rollerbladed a little," added Violet. "But I was bad. After I broke my elbow twice, my dad said I probably shouldn't do it anymore. Some of the best advice he's given me."

Patrick led them over to the skate rental area but Tate looked dubious. He didn't want shared skates. He didn't really want to skate. Then he saw something behind the counter.

"Can we get those?" he asked Pat with a big grin, pointing to what he meant.

The big guy looked and snorted. "Oookay," he said. "Sure. But that's all you."

—

While Patrick rented a pair of skates, Tate and Violet got rideable scoot-abouts. They were technically made with kids in mind, but neither teen wanted to learn how to skate or spend the night falling down. The three-wheeled, low to the ground scoot-abouts were silly and slower than skating, but the couple had fun anyway. They chased each other and tried to scoot-dance to some of the more familiar songs. They even played a couple of rounds of "Limbo" when the facility ran the game.

The DJ did a couple of retro songs next, including a spin of YMCA that had most of the party skate-dancing, from octogenarian to toddler. Then a slow song came on and more than half of the rink cleared again, leaving a lot of couples, several clueless children, and a few lone skaters who weren't yielding the floor for anything.

It was easy for Tate to see Patrick out there then. He was skating with someone dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. The sight made Tate feel weird and think of Chad. Chad was at home, likely serving up a fresh bowl of something ghoulishly themed to a house full of ghosts by then. Blithely unaware of how Cap'n Jack Sparrow was flanking the Dread Pirate Patrick's starboard side so closely.

Distracted, Tate almost ran into a tween dressed as Spiderman, who was coming from the opposite direction. Tate corrected his steering then headed for the side of the rink. Violet assumed he just didn't want to ride to the slow song so she followed suit. Once they were off the rink she grinned at him.

"Want to go check out the arcade games?" she asked.

He picked up his scoot-about to hide his expression from her till he was sure he wasn't frowning. "Yeah. Sure." He started off toward the back, where the games were. It was a bit like fording upstream, there were so many costumed people moving around.

"Hey," she said, catching his elbow. "Are you okay?"

Tate made himself pretend. He didn't want to explain what he was thinking to her when he didn't even understand it. "Yeah. I just don't like this song. It's like... really? How's this even Halloween?"

She acknowledged the point with a sour look of her own. "I know. You get one day out of the year to play fun stuff and they pick this."

There was a group of kids in the game zone, which made Tate not want to go over there. There wasn't anything over there worth elbowing through a crowd or waiting in line for. He hesitated, then looked at Violet.

"Hey. You want to just get out of here?" he asked. "Go someplace, just you and me?"

"Suuure," she agreed, suspicion turning the word into a drawl. "I thought the whole point in going out, though, was to... you know. Get out. Among people."

"Not this many," Tate said. He headed toward the rental booth so they could return their scoot-abouts.

Violet put hers up on the counter once the guy had taken Tate's. "We should tell Pat we're leaving. Where is he?"

Tate didn't want to tell Pat anything. He wanted to leave. "I don't see him," he said without looking. He took her nearest hand. "He'll figure it out. Come on."

He tried to head toward the exit but Violet held her ground and steered him back toward her with his hand. "You want to ditch Patrick?" She smiled but she was eyeing him real close.

That's not how he wanted her to take it. The whole outing was beginning to frustrate him and remind him of why he never went out on Halloween before Michael. He looked out over the skaters and found Patrick. Captain Jack Sparrow was doing some fancy backward skating in front of him and they were both smiling a lot.

"There he is," said Tate. "Do you want to tell him?"

She looked in the direction he was and saw what he saw. Her brows jumped a little. "Oh."

"Chad's gonna be pissed," Tate fretted, since she understood. He hugged her arm. He felt better touching her.

"They're just skating," she offered, trying to help. She tried to reclaim her limb, thinking to put it around his waist, but he wouldn't let her. "Come on. Let's go see if we can flag him down."

Tate let go of her arm then but kept hold of her hand. She led the way through the throng of unsteady people coming and going off the rink. They passed at least seven princesses, an equal number of superheroes, and a surprising amount of retro costumes that tapped 1990s pop culture for inspiration. A call back to a safer, more prosperous time.

They took a position at one of the entry points and waited till he and his skating partner were coming around again. Violet assumed they would both be waving but when the Dread Pirate Pat skated past, only she did. He saw her though and lifted his chin to let her know. He was going too fast to stop, though; he would have to wait and come off the rink the next go-around.

"Where do you want to go?" Violet asked.

"I don't know. The beach?"

Tate hadn't really thought about it. He just didn't want to be at the roller rink anymore. Suddenly the beach felt wrong too. No place he could think of felt right except home. And that was stupid because it was Halloween. His thoughts went back to Michael and how it was all his fault Tate's Halloween was sucking so hard.

"We could go up to the Hollywood sign, for real," she suggested.

"Can we still get up there?" he asked curiously. "I heard that whole area's pretty much off-limits now since the rich people started that compound."

"Off limits to ghosts?" Violet smiled quirkily.

He smiled but that's when pirate duo skated up, so the smile disappeared quickly.

"Hey," Patrick said as he slowed to a stop and came off the rink. The other pirate followed him. "What's up?"

There was an awkward pause between them as Violet expected Tate to say something, and he hoped she would. They looked at each other. Violet raised her brows at him because she wasn't going to speak for him on this one.

"We were thinking about taking off," he said at last. He glanced Pat's way but then shifted his attention to the glittery mirror ball overhead.

"Taking off?" Patrick echoed, confused. "We just got here."

"There's too many people," Tate responded after another lag of hope and glance at Violet.

The bigger guy looked around, only just noticing the crowd. It didn't bother him but Tate was a hermit crab and the man knew it. But Pat wasn't ready to leave yet.

"Why don't you call a Lyft?" he told them. "This time of year, there's probably five outside waiting."

"What about the fare?" Tate asked because neither he nor Violet carried currency.

Pat waved the concern away and pulled out a smart phone. He handed it to Tate. "Use my account. It should be saved to the phone. And Tate? Stay out of trouble."

The teen took the phone and shoved it into his coat pocket. "The name is Quicksilver," he corrected. If Pat was going to treat him like a kid in front of the dumb pirate man, then he'd deliver.

—

The young couple didn't get a Lyft; Tate had a lot of pent-up aggressive energy so he wanted to move. Across the nearby interstate was a large golf course and the Los Angeles zoo. It took about fifteen minutes for them to walk there and they did it mostly in silence.

The parking lot of the zoo was huge and suspiciously empty when they arrived. Neither had been to a zoo in years but they both were aware of how popular the place should be on Halloween. The whole place was deserted. There were no festive decorations or lighting; just the regular flood lights that fired up automatically every evening.

"Looks like a ghost town," Violet commented. She rubbed her arms to fend off the inward chill she got. The place put her in mind of a bad dream she'd had a long time ago.

"Is it closed?" Tate wondered aloud as they headed toward the entrance.

Arriving at the locked gates, the answer was apparent. The place was completely shut down. They'd even removed the sign that showed the park hours. The ticket booths looked like they hadn't been opened in months.

"I guess they're out of business," said Violet. She looked around for some sort of notice of closure but there was nothing helpful posted anywhere.

"Well, that sucks," opined Tate. He gave the gate a rattle then a sly smile dimpled his cheeks. "Let's go in anyway."

Violet felt a smile tickle the corners of her mouth. "You want to sneak into the zoo?"

He shrugged and broke into a grin. "Why not? It's not like we can get arrested if anybody sees us. I want to see what it looks like. Maybe we can go raid the gift shop. Do you think they left any toys in there?"

He was already looking for a way to climb the fence. On Halloween, his form was more substantial than other times and it made it harder to pass through solid objects. He didn't like doing that anyway, under normal circumstances. It felt strange and always left a weird taste in his mouth. The gate itself was a weird toothy drum that would rotate when unlocked, to form a turnstile. Locked, he found it worked like a ladder. Soon he was up and over.

"Come on, Violet!" he called.

She was already coming, though, having followed him up the gate as soon as she saw what he was doing. She landed beside him and straightened with a smile. Together they looked around the entry area. The nearby plants were all overgrown and simultaneously wilted. The drip system had been shut off in the area and the flora had come to rely on California weather patterns over the past few months. They passed an area that looked like it should have a running waterfall but was all dried up too.

"Wow," Tate marveled. "They really let this place go."

Violet tugged the sleeve of his silver jacket and pointed. "Gift shop."

The dark building was in a row of other closed-up kiosks and retail establishments. The windows were all dark. They went over and tried the doors but they, like the front gates, were locked. Peeking in through the dusty glass, they could see the room had been stripped down to the shelves.

"They really did close it up," observed Violet. She rubbed dust from the tip of her nose with a finger. "I thought maybe they were renovating but it looks like they closed up for good. I wonder why?"

Moving away from the shop, they passed a closed-up concession stand and a booth advertising train rides. There was a scaled-down track there but no train in evidence. Then they both heard a very loud noise, somewhere ahead and off to the right. It was a siren of a sound that started out high then dropped to a strange whoomp-whoomping.

They looked at each other with wide eyes. Violet had never heard that sound before but Tate, who loved animal documentaries and had seen about a million of them, had. The sound was very distinct and went with only one creature.

"That's a siamang," he said.

More of the sounds started up as the first died. In the distance, a deeper barking howl started up. As the pair listened, they could hear more and more sounds of life in the zoo.

"Holy shit," Violet said as they moved deeper into the dark zoo. "I think the animals are all still here."

Tate wished he had a flashlight. Then he remembered the phone Patrick had given him. He pulled it out and fiddled with it a bit. He didn't like technology. It was always changing and never in ways that were intuitive. He managed to find the flashlight app without help though and he turned it on.

"Looks like Silent Hill," he remarked as they came out into the main portion of the zoo.

The entire left side of the expansive park was shrouded in the same fog that permanently blanketed their home. It thinned at the midway point; to the right everything was dark with the exception of the rare emergency path light. The vegetation was in the same condition as the front: Overgrown and in various states of dying at once.

"Guess that's why they closed it," said Violet, eyeing the curling mist.

From that side they could hear more sounds that might or might not be of natural origin. The sounds from the dark side of the zoo were just as strange to Violet's ears. They passed a dark carousel; the animals had freaky faces and strange colors. Some were mounted backward. She stared, again getting that creepy sensation that she'd dreamt this. She lit a cigarette to warm the darkness and calm her nerves.

"I can't believe they went off and left the animals," said Tate. The more he thought about it, the more appalling he found it. "If they were going to close it, why didn't they send the animals somewhere else?"

"Maybe there's nowhere to send them," she ventured. "I think the whole world's kind of going to shit."

They skirted the foggy area and headed deeper into the right side of the zoo. The monkey sounds were coming from that direction.

"If there's no zoos to take them," said Tate. "Then they should've just let them go."

"In the city?"

Tate shone the flashlight to the right and spied the aviary. He lit up and broke into a trot.

"Tate," Violet said, her sense of dread growing. "Maybe you shouldn't—"

It was too late. He'd already made it to the platform. The large mesh cage was dark. It seemed empty.

"Maybe they're sleeping," he said, not about to give up on seeing birds. He hadn't seen a real bird in years and years.

He hopped down off the platform, excitement growing as he darted down to the path that led right up to the giant bird house. He could hear Violet calling him but he knew she'd catch up. He hopped a low wooden rail but he still couldn't see any birds on the branches through the mesh. He spied a door on the side of the aviary and trotted over. It had a STAFF ONLY sign on it but it wasn't locked when he tried it.

Letting himself in, he passed through a small maintenance room filled with small cages and bird supplies, from food to medical equipment. Through another door was the aviary itself. He let himself out into the wide pair of connected hexagonal fly spaces and shone the flashlight around the ceiling. An artful collection of branches, nesting baskets, and foliage offered a nice place for birds but there weren't any up there.

Then he looked down.

All over the ground were hundreds of birds. The flashlight cast stark shadows behind each curled up body. They were all dead.

"Oh, man," Violet breathed from the doorway. She came up behind him and put an arm around his shoulders. "I'm sorry."

Tate continued to stare at all the lifeless piles of feathers and feet. Broken wings jutted at odd angles. He wrinkled his nose and fought back the angry tears that were burning his eyes. It didn't help. Tears slipped over his cheeks and hit the front of his shirt.

"Fuckers let 'em die," he sniffled and wiped the back of his hand under his chin because the tears that ran there were making him itch. Then he mopped his face with the hem of his shirt and sniffled some more.

Violet gave him a squeeze. "Come on," she said. She tugged him toward the door.

Once they were back out of the aviary, she led him deeper into the zoo. That confused him because he thought for sure she would want to go home.

"Where are we going?"

She smiled and took his hand. "We're going to let the rest go."

He tipped his head, then a smile slowly stole over his tear-puffy face.

—

It was hard work freeing the animals that were still alive. There weren't many keys to be found so the mission involved a lot of breaking things. Most of the animals didn't want to leave, either, spooked by the presence of the dead. Tate figured out how to use that natural aversion to their advantage: They went where ever they didn't want the animals to be. That worked especially well on the wildcats; not so well on the rhino. They discovered a rhinoceros, when frightened, had a tendency to run at what it was scared of, rather than away from it.

There wasn't anything to be done for the animals in the foggy side of the zoo. Tate and Violet didn't even go very far in after it became apparent that everything there was either dead or hideously mutated.

They used some bolt cutters they found in one of the maintenance sheds to cut the padlock off the loading gate. With some effort they pushed the wide bay door open. By then dawn was tinting the sky pink and they could feel the urge to return to Murder House growing. The newly freed animals would have to figure out for themselves where the exit was. Hopefully hunger would lead the way.

...

Author's Note:

In 2011, an Ohio man owned a lot of wild animals. When he had problems with his wife and city officials over the exotic "pets" he vindictively turned them loose and killed himself. 56 half-starved animals were set free without warning. 48 were shot and killed, including: 18 tigers, 17 lions, 3 mountain lions, 6 black bears, 2 grizzlies, a baboon, and a wolf.

That, to me, is a horror story.

If you want to get an idea of what the zoo would look like, check out Life After People episode 3. It has some great footage of what the San Diego zoo would look like over the years, if people disappeared.