I do not own the Nightmare Before Christmas, however, Anna Grisholme is my own character.
Chapter 2
Fearless...
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
It was a nightmare. She knew that much.
She also knew that something rather cliché would probably happen. Some guy in a hockey mask. Maybe. Or maybe she'd place a confident foot forward only to find inky nothingness suddenly not supporting her weight. Then she might fall. Or shoot upward as if caught in a rollercoaster of uncontrolled wind, flying around like a wet autumn leaf.
It was hard to tell what could happen next in a nightmare but Anna wasn't one to be scared of them. Logically she knew they weren't real. She knew that nothing in her fairly damaged mind could really hurt her. It was actually a bit of a break from the exhaustion of real life even if her dreams were sometimes annoying and rarely as interesting as she wished they were. But to a different person they honestly would be terrifying. At the front of her mind Anna knew that, even if she couldn't quite understand it.
Someone slithered out of the corner of her eye, long and serpentine… Anna took a step toward it, her heart not even speeding up the tempo.
Ba-Thump…Ba-Thump…Ba-Thump…
Her heartbeat was slow. Steady. It matched the echoes of the liquid that splashed onto the dull gray floor until she couldn't differentiate between the two.
Drip.
Drip.
It wasn't water. Some splashed on her hand when she reach out toward the shadow that the slithery thing had disappear into and the liquid slid down her wrist, warm and sticky.
She could feel it oozing into the faint creases of her skin and turning crusty as it stuck there. She could feel the excess slip off and fall the rest of the way to land on her foot.
Somehow the liquid chilled during it short fall and it hit her naked foot freezing cold like salted ice water and sent a shiver up her spine. Somehow, there was more of it than she felt leaving her hand. There was now a puddle rapidly growing around her feet.
With a grimace, Anna stepped out of the puddle, shook her foot, took off the towel on her head that she had fallen asleep wearing, and wiped her hand off. Not because it scared her. It was really just gross and physically uncomfortable. Would anyone stand barefoot in a puddle of ice cold liquid, sticky or not?
She looked up at the ceiling where the drips were coming from.
She smiled. The corners of her mouth curled upward slightly but no teeth showed. Her eyes shone with a spark of interest that never seemed to leave even when life seemed most uneventful. Friends often told her one of the reasons she was fun to be around was because everything seemed to interest her. She was continuously looking for something novel and interesting in the most boring of subjects. She would listen to a friend drone on for hours just to hear the three seconds of a punchline they could deliver.
"You should really get that looked at," she quipped in amusement at the sad creature that hung from the top of the wall like a macabre version of one of those decorative plates her `mother liked so much.
The creature looked vaguely like a human sized very used voodoo doll that was pinned to a wall out of boredom by the very needles that allowed it to do its gruesome job.
"Do you need help? Do you want down?" Anna asked, genuinely compassionate. There was no terror or caution in her voice, nor in her eyes. She reached toward a half-inch wide rod that was one of the "needles" and carefully placed a hand on its perfectly unmarred, unrusted, unsmudged surface.
Immediately the creature groaned in pained and snarled at her. It hissed like a cockroach and half-heartedly lunged at her. That is, if it had a heart. Given the sizable bloody hole in its shirt, it likely didn't.
Anna didn't flinch although somewhere in the deepest, possibly darkest, parts of her mind she realized that it would probably be safer to step back, just a little. Just out of reach on the off chance it should free its arms and hands. Why must basic survival decisions be so hard for her? She knew why but didn't let that thought form into coherent words within her head.
"Sir, if you're going to attack me, I won't help," Anna said, "Do you want down or not?"
The fleshy doll stopped growling and glared at Anna distrustfully with one good eye, though that one was barely staying in place as it was. Slowly it curled its upper lip and shook its head carefully, as if too much movement would jostle its head just enough to send it toppling of its neck and crashing into the hard floor…
"Ok," with that Anna turned heel and started walking toward where she saw the slithery thing disappear.
"Waaaaait."
Anna paused, surprised to hear the creature speak.
"Yes?" she turned back around and looked toward the doll creature.
"Do you…not…fear….me…" the mess of a creature rasped softly.
Anna blink slowly and thought about her answer. She quickly sucked a breath of stale yet not foul air (the creature didn't exactly smell the best) and stepped up to it. She looked it straight in the eye. She tried to be afraid, she really did. But she could only see its pain underneath the gore and rot. It was awful and disgusting but she could see past it all.
"No I don't suppose I do. I know I probably should but…" she looked away for a second,
"I can't feel fear. I just can't. Besides…" She stepped back again and studied the creature. "You looked tortured and hurting, not scary. Are you sure I can't help?"
"No. Mind the fire." With that they disappeared. No smoke. No flash of light.
She looked around in surprise. They were gone? Just gone. Not a trace was left on the wall, not even the holes left by the giant needles. It was spotless.
"Interesting…" Anna muttered, and turned away with one last glance at the metal wall.
Mind the fire. It had said.
As Anna walked in search of the slithery thing she dubbed the dream snake, the hallway started to twist around her. One minute she was walking on the floor, the next she was on the ceiling.
"Is this supposed to be scary? It's annoying," she said with slight contempt. Then she scoffed at annoyance at herself for being contempt. It was in her own head after all and it was rather backward to hold contempt for something her own sub-conscious created. There was flaw in her logic but she choose to ignore it for the moment.
HSSSSSSSSS.
There.
Anna chased the tail end of the snake into a doorway but when she entered the room in was completely empty. Just an empty slate grey room with four plain walls, a floor, and a ceiling.
"I'm in a room. It's pretty boring looking. Just a room with grey paint," Anna said, "Hold on. There's something else. I didn't see it when I first came in."
What is it?
"A mirror," Anna frowned in confusion. She looked behind her. "It's weird looking. It's goes from the ceiling to the floor but it's crooked. Like a lopsided funhouse mirror. And I can see the door I just walked through."
What do you think is the significance of the mirror?
Anna almost rolled her eyes in annoyance. "You don't get it. I can see the door I just came through but I can't see myself in it. I'm standing right between them but there's nothing of me. It's like I'm invisible."
Are you scared of being invisible?
"No," Anna said. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. That voice just wouldn't shut up sometimes.
Suddenly, Anna noticed something. It was like an outline of a heatwave in the mirror.
Anna waved her arm and a vague shape like a piece of clear ice in a glass of water moved with her in the mirror.
She walked toward the mirror in curiosity and stood right in front of it. The distorted shape moved with her.
Anna squinted and carefully reached a hand to the glass.
She suddenly yelped and yanked her hand away. The tips of her fingers were an angry burnt red and already several white hot blisters were forming at the ends. The feeling of assaulted nerves shot its way down her arm and tingled her spine.
She stuck her throbbing burnt fingers in her mouth. She almost gagged on the disgustingly gooey feeling of blisters on her tongue. Her saliva really didn't help much but sucking slightly relieved the pain.
She turned to glare at the mirror but her face suddenly shifted to one of shock. She removed her fingers, carefully wiping them off on the corner of her now bloody towel that she somehow still had with her.
She dropped the towel with a grimace.
There was something else in the mirror. Or rather, someone. They stared at her with a curious expression but their appearance was simply so incredibly bizarre.
It looked practically unreal. It was dressed for a party. A strange party where guest chatted atop tombstones and party crashers clawed their way up through the dead grass. The clothes were in weren't moth eaten rags or stained in mud and other various substances. They were well kept and elegant. A silky clean dress adorned the figure. The dress was inky black with white spider web shaped lace crisscrossed all over it.
The coat was the real kicker though. It was long, reaching just past the wearer's knees, but on Anna it would have drowned her in fabric and trailed behind her like a badly designed macabre wedding train. Both the inside and out was black and covered in thin vertical white pinstripes that elongated the figures already stick thin and tall frame. Little orange pumpkins were embroidered along the hem and a large wiry spider web collar framed the pencil thin neck of the creature. It was a pretty ridiculous looking outfit. Something fit only for a Halloween costume. Yet the way the creature wore it…they stood as if it was something they wore every day.
But even the childish looking pumpkins as the only color only added to the off-putting nature of the being. They were too tall and disproportionately thin. The pinstripes were crooked and could make eyes swim. The hands were huge yet somehow elegant. The creature reminded Anna of a starving hyena with that lopsided grin and toothpick body and pseudo-controlled insanity just below the surface.
Anna felt a sensation she hadn't had in over a decade. Dread. The creature had its eye sockets locked with Anna's own. It stared at her in the same curiosity Anna had.
With one major difference. A wide happy, mischievous, grin that stretched across its entire face adorned it, like it knew something she didn't.
Anna felt an ache in her throat. She wanted to run. She actually wanted to run. She couldn't explain it but terror fell off this stick thin creature like waves. It was so tall. The longer she stared, the taller it seemed to grow right before her eyes. Soon it towered over Anna at nearly seven feet though she suspected… no… hoped, that it was just an illusion.
It laughed. A horrible pitchy cackle that made Anna's hair stand on end, further cementing the hyena picture.
In an instant, the terrible part of her imagination gave her an awful image of that creature lunging at her with outstretched claws and a hinged maw before sinking its crooked broken teeth into her neck. Blood staining its too perfectly clean coat.
It didn't though.
Almost as if it could hear her thoughts, the monster tilted its head and smiled wider than what Anna thought was possible, giving her an excellent view of every tooth.
Anna scrambled backward as the creature lifted one long bony finger and tapped the glass like a kid at the zoo tapping on the glass of a venomous snake's case without care of getting bitten.
It tapped again but this time the glass cracked where the skeleton hit it, for it was a skeleton, if a poorly proportioned one. The glass cracked in the pattern of a spider web and covered the entire mirror, or was it a window now?
The glass broke, showering Anna in shards and she instinctively lifted her arm to shield her face.
When she deemed it safe to open her eyes, the skeleton was towering over her with its smile never leaving. The empty sockets were squinted slightly and light somehow reflected off the white bone from a source the teenage girl couldn't pinpoint. It was disturbing how the skull could move as easily as skin yet it still looked like hard bone.
Anna gasped and tried to step away backward but slipped and fell on her back into a pile of tiny slivers of glass. She could feel shards digging into her hands and shoulders but didn't care.
"Who are you?" she asked in fear, the most she had ever felt since she was five. Why did she have to say that? It felt cliché to ask such a question.
"Why Anna," the skeleton laughed with a familiar voice and put a thoughtful finger to its dry lips. It crouched down till it looked Anna in the eye and whispered while holding up a large shard of mirror glass to Anna's face. Anna tried to lean away but there's only so far she could lean back.
"Don't you recognize yourself?"
Anna looked half dreading, half expecting to see something other than herself.
And she screamed.
She shouted as her eyes shot open and she bolted upright. Anna quickly looked at her hand, immediately relieved to see the tan skin she inherited from her mother and the mandatory two hours a day in the sun both parents required of their three children.
"Anna? Are you okay? What happened?"
The fifteen year old felt an unnerving amount of satisfaction upon seeing her therapist's alarmed expression.
Doctor Phineas Fog Ramsey was the son of a retired Librarian and Vietnam War hero. His father had died ages ago in the war when his mom was pregnant and Mrs. Ramsey, the librarian, had never fancied remarrying. Anna personally thought the good doctor had turned out well enough, if inherently and annoying nosy from growing up with gossipy women all his life. Not to say he didn't have any male role models. Apparently, his father's two brothers and multiply army buddies were all too willing to fill in for Col. Ramsey. Mrs. Mary Ramsey was pretty attractive in the sixties, if the picture of her and the colonel on the doctor's desk was anything to go by. Regardless, that motherly-prying-into-other-people's-business-like-a-can-of-paint-attitude wasn't very well balanced out and left Doc with a too well-honed skill that he never hesitated to use with bat crazy patients.
Like Anna.
Actually, Anna knew an awful lots of personal stuff about the quack. He had been her doctor for eight years and honestly she thought he was pretty stupid. True, he had a PHD and that had to count for something but sometimes he said things that made Anna think he had the IQ of a squirrel. Which really wasn't all that bad. Squirrels were pretty smart. They were annoying and Anna shot them in her backyard with her pellet gun but they were relatively smart.
But when it came to psychoanalyzing teenagers with damaged amygdalae who couldn't physically feel the flight or fight response, Anna would prefer her shrink at least have the intelligence of an otter. Otters were smarter than squirrels; they used tools.
` The only reason why she had managed to hang on for this long was because she had turned it into a game. How many personal facts can they learn about each other without being told on purpose? Right now Anna's winning. Last month she learned that Doc has a third nipple on the knuckle of his big toe, information courteous of his mother when Anna visited the nursing home. Anna felt awful for all those other people that had the same affliction but couldn't help but laugh every time she thought about it. It probably wasn't true. Mrs. Ramsey was a joker…
Her eyes drifted toward Dr. Ramsey's shoes and she suddenly snorted in amusement.
"Annalise, stay focused."
Poor man didn't know she knew.
"Now I want you to focus. I know it's hard but it's important you try to remember every detail of these dreams as soon as possible before they fade. It may take some time but I told you it would take a couple tries for this hypnotism to work," satisfied that he knew why Anna was being so hesitant, he nodded decisively. His eyes darted to a bowl of walnuts that Anna had brought to taunt him silently. She wanted to bring acorns but she decided that was too overt.
Anna resisted the urge to roll her eyes again. She remembered each of the three dreams she had so far perfectly and in detail. She just didn't want to tell anyone about them, especially her shrink. It really wasn't the doctor's fault he sounded so clueless to Anna but she figured it was better to keep her "visions" to herself rather than risk her already stressed parents sending her to that hospital that Doc Ramsey had the gall to suggest sending her after the snake incident.
She stuck her hand in a snake's cage when the zoo had done some educational show-and-tell at the high school. That little incident was probably the most excitement most of the students present had in a week. One of the girls had dared Anna to pick up the rattlesnake without getting bit.
It was a mean taut really. It went something along the lines off, "You're such a freak. You might as well go let that snake bite you. You wouldn't survive the trip to the hospital. No one would miss you and your boyfriend probably just hangs around in pity." Anna immediately added that girl to her list of "People Who Really Could Be Smarter" and her "Pumpkin List."
Anna had weighed her options and decided it was safe enough. She already had done it a few times at the farmhouse her grandparents owned (not that her grandparents knew). She could pick up a venomous snake easily. She waited until the two adults on the auditorium stage, the zoo person and the principal, weren't looking and crept on stage without anyone knowing. It was really very strange. They should have been able to see her but she managed to get right behind them without a single creak of the floor boards or a glance in her direction. Even weirder, lots of people in the audience should have been able to see her the entire time but her friends said it was like she just appeared there when she cleared her throat. Looking back, it was like they knew she was there and could see her but couldn't notice her until she wanted them to.
Oh the looks on everyone's faces were hilarious!
The principal fainted and the audience gasped and screamed, though a few jeered and laughed thinking it was a hoax with a plastic snake. All the while, Anna laughed at the shocked zoo keeper's face as she calmly held the rattlesnake by the back of the head. It didn't even let it's fangs out or try to bite her. It just hung there from her hand without a care in the world.
Of course, a half hour later she was surrounded by paramedics, her parents, the zoo keeper's boss, a reporter from the school news (who reads that?), and a police officer. The officer really didn't do anything. The zoo keeper hadn't done anything wrong.
The story pretty much ended with an emergency session with the Doc, a week long suspension, a fervent letter to the zoo director begging him not to fire the poor employee, and a slew of nicknames of various severities and meanings from a thousand high school students, most of which still have underdeveloped brains. The students, not the nicknames.
"Psycho Freak" was a favorite among those people who pretend to be mean but really were insecure and jealous of Anna's attention.
"Medusa" was much better. Surprisingly, that one seemed to stick the best.
Anna's personal favorite was "Charmer," mostly because it was the nickname Mark gave her meaning "Snake Charmer" and because she charmed him. She pretended not to like it. It was a bit too mushy and silly, and Anna wasn't one to be silly. Strange yes. Obsessively interested in everything and anything? Yes. But not silly or corny.
Back in the present, over the next half hour, Annalise Grisholme successfully frustrated Dr. Ramsey to the point that he let her out five minutes early, which was a big deal since the doctor is usually very particular about when he ends or begins his sessions. Her last glimpse of him as the heavy soundproof door closed was of him grudgingly digging through his "Post-Bat Crazy" drawer. That's what Anna called it at least. It was really just the bottom drawer of his huge mahogany desk where he kept his migraine medicine, stress balls, and dart board. And a bottle of Scotch.
Anna's face didn't change when she passed the receptionist but as she reached the door and turned to wave goodbye, she smiled brightly and casually dropped…one…two…three…four of his darts into the dirt of a small potted tree next to the door.
She darted (pun intended) out the door and waited until she heard the doctor's office door slam. The sounds were muffled but she could pick up the receptionist's deadpanned voice saying "Plant" and the footsteps as the shrink walked to the little tree. There was a few rustling noises as the doctor searched for his precious darts.
Three
Two
One
Suddenly, two ear splitting shrieks vibrated down the hallway of the office building, making several people poke their head out in search of the cause of the commotion.
But Anna was long gone.
Rattlesnakes may be deadly, but little garter snakes were harmless.
Mark Deaton wasn't sure what to think when his girlfriend stumbled out the front doors of her shrink's office building laughing so hard she was having trouble breathing. Immediately, he got out of the driver's side and went around his car to open the passenger side for Anna.
"Pumpkin List?"
"Hehe. Pumpkin List," Anna laughed in her seat as Mark leaned over the car door. "Now hurry up and get in before he catches up!"
"Aye aye Fearless," Mark snapped to attention and gave Anna a mock salute as she closed the door. He slid over the hood of his car, mostly to impress, and drove down the street as fast as he legally could.
Anna liked her Pumpkin List ever since she made it when she was five. It was a list of people she had lined up for a prank. She and it were almost legendary in a town small enough to only have three schools: the elementary school, the high school, and the community college.
Essentially the rule of the town was: don't make Annalise Grisholme mad or you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a nasty prank when Halloween rolls around. No one is safe, young or old, and she didn't differentiate between friend and foe, except that the "friend" pranks were often better fodder for a good laugh later. She also had a very good memory. Some people purposely "employed" her for pranks, either on themselves or someone else. The best part was that she didn't wait for Halloween night. She knew more people had their guard up during Halloween. She acted on the List as early as October 1st or as late as the day after Halloween. She didn't do the whole list alone either; often hiring other clever individuals to do certain portions of the List. She didn't pull her elaborate plans the night of Halloween though, that was reserved for the Souling Race.
The Souling Race was an opportunity for the kids of the town to run amok and play jump scares on each other. There was a wooded park between the high school and the college that was about a square mile wide. Halloween night it was entirely cordoned off by police and the fire department while volunteers walked around carrying first aid kits just in case. Kids of all ages ran in and basically played the greatest giant game of hide-n-seek there ever was. All the players had to scare each other enough elicit a scream and if they were successful, the victim had to stamp a card the scarer had with them. Everyone had their own personal stamp or hole-punch that was unique to them. The winner was determined by points that players gained five each by having someone else's mark on their card. Unfortunately, for every person that had their mark, they were subtracted ten points.
There was a big bucket of little rubber stamps that anyone could use near the entrances. Every year, the high school craft club would make more as a service project. However, lots of the older kids had their own custom ones.
Anna and Mark both still had theirs they helped make in second grade. Their parents helped so they looked pretty good, but the kids designed them one their own.
Mark's was a little silly but he loved it. It was a lightning bolt with his initials M. A. D (Mark August Deaton) above the word SCIENTIST. Both word were scratched in backwards with a sharp knife.
Anna's was a skeleton cat walking on top of a smiling Jack O'Lantern with the word "Fearless" underneath in cursive. She added the "Fearless" last year. Of course, just like Mark, she carved it in backwards so it would look the right way stamped onto something and the awkwardness of carving into the rubber in front of a mirror made it look very jagged, but still really cool.
Anna Grisholme was the current leading champion. She had never stamped another person's card.
There was even talk of a team up this year with the sole purpose of getting a scream out of Anna.
Suckers.
Mark kept his attention to the road but watched as Anna took out a small black canvas covered notebook with a picture of a scarecrow with a pumpkin head hand-painted on the cover. After fishing for a pencil in her purse, she turned to a page titled "Pumpkin List 1995" across the top. With a satisfying swipe of her hand "Shrink Ramsey" was scratched off the list. Two days until Halloween...
"Who's next?" Mark asked casually.
"Oh no. You know the rules," Anna snapped the little book closed with one hand and pointed the pencil at her boyfriend with a glare. She had a sparkle in her eye as she pushed a strand of black hair out of her face.
"Come on just a peek," Mark teased.
"Eyes front soldier," Anna pointed at the road.
"I didn't mean that way," Mark snapped, "My eyes are always front."
"They better be or it won't be just my dad who will kill you."
"Yeah I know," Mark said. Wasn't it the guys who were supposed to make the girls blush?
Anna sighed and leaned her head on the door window. She felt the buzzing of the road beneath the tires rattle her skull. Usually this was the reason why she hid a tiny pillow in a little box beneath the seat of the family car. But this wasn't the family car, this was Mark's new car and he seemed to be always coming up with excuses to drive it as much as possible. Recently he had taken up to driving Anna to school and doctor appointments, much to Anna's mom's chagrin.
Her dad, ironically, thought Mark was awesome and trusted the Christian boy with his daughter. Perhaps it was because Anna's dad was Mark's scoutmaster in his Boy Scout Troop and their families all went to the same church.
"Something up Charmer?"
"Don't call me that," Anna snapped.
Mark didn't respond and they sat in silence for a minute.
Anna listened to the white noise of the outside traffic until she thought the buzzing of the road hurt her head enough.
"It's the dreams," she finally admitted, though she didn't look at Mark.
Mark hummed and signaled while briefly checking over his shoulder before moving into another lane.
"They won't stop. I thought Dr. Ramsey was crazy when he suggested hypnotism. But these dreams, they're so real Roman," she said, using the nickname she gave him in history class when they were in sixth grade. "They scare me."
"I still don't quite understand why you won't tell the Ram."
"You don't get it. They make. Me. Scared. Mark," Anna suddenly turned and glared at Mark with such ferocity that he briefly swerved in surprise. "I can't feel fear. I shouldn't be able to. The amygdala of my brain is dead yet I can feel fear inside a dream. It doesn't work like that." Anna sighed again and said sadly, "…It shouldn't at least. If I tell him, he'll put me on medication again. I don't want to forget what fear feels like."
Mark scoffed, "Why not? You're lucky Charmer."
He really should have stopped then but he didn't see the look Anna gave him out of the corner of her squinted eye.
"You never have to worry about freezing up during a game when a giant linebacker's charging you. Remember when I did that? You don't worry over tests or pop quizzes. You just study hard and breeze through them no problem. You're not afraid to walk up to the principal and tell him Chelsea put those pictures of Kelly on the web even though she threatened you. You picked up a snake that could have killed you if you hesitated like a normal person would. Last year you ran into the middle of the road to grab that little kid during the parade. You saved his life!"
"Now you're over exaggerating," Anna whispered bitterly.
"No I'm not. Not being able to fear is a gift, I think. It's like your own super power," Mark grinned at Anna but his face fell when she didn't smile.
Anna didn't bother to argue with him. She had already told him her side of this argument multiple times. It was his fault for not listening. It didn't help that she wasn't sure how to explain it to him better. The words existed but they were just out of her grasp. She didn't understand fear enough to describe this need to feel it.
They fell into an awkward silence.
"Sorry," Mark said, "I just…"
"I know."
Mark swallowed at her cold tone, "Remind me. What were the dreams about?"
Anna closed her eyes and pictured each dream in her head. She tried her best to recall every detail she could. When she was satisfied she remember what she needed, she began.
"The first one was about a man in a quince tree…"