A little chapter update. Life has been crazy busy lately, but here you go. Also, my spacing got messed up when I uploaded the last chapter. I'll get in there and fix that.
"We'll talk to Dad after the holiday, okay Guy?
The Beldam remembered those words, spoken by one of the older Skellington boys, the night Guy found the doll. That imprisoned doll presently useless, The Beldam widened her view as one would twist a telescope. Halloween was a mere three days away, as noted on a countdown clock which rose above the town square. That the children's father was absorbed these final few days was an understatement. His upcoming Halloween Night performance was all consuming. Such parental distraction worked in The Beldam's favor, but was seldom combined with such a looming expiration date. His holiday work behind him, The Pumpkin King would have nothing but time to seek out and expel a home invader.
Jack Skellington was by all appearances a genial and gregarious showman, but The Beldam guessed he wasn't one to be trifled with. Minimal research on the family Skellington yielded ripples of an incident years before. Apparently some enormous thug of a creature had been handily bested by The Pumpkin King. She again scanned the open spaces and public areas of the town. The children's mother was difficult to pin down. In no way was she the equivalent physical threat posed by her husband, but the queen seemed to have an innate ability to linger quietly along the edges of what could be seen. It was as if she could not be focused upon, and hard to tell if that was a purposeful evasive mechanism, or an unintentional result of her natural air. Purposeful or not - it was annoying. What's more, when visible, she gave the nagging impression that she knew something was amiss. She clearly hadn't put it all together as of yet, but the mere fact suspicions were raised was cause for concern.
Curses, thought The Beldam. Curses on this rotten town. When did I get so stupid and slow? It was all those little humans, she told herself. Soft little humans. True, a human child had ultimately delivered her comeuppance, but as a breed they'd proven far less challenging than their shadowy counterparts. There was benefit to be had in simply moving on, she thought. Perhaps she could find somewhere less confounding, somewhere where monsters and ghouls were not so cautious with their young. Defeated by a human girl, and now at an utter loss with the child of holiday royalty, The Beldam clicked her tongue in disgust. She began to dismantle the web-like scaffold on which she'd planned to hang little Guy's dream world. Quivering ribbons meant to support her illusion popped apart like crepe streamers. She spat at the effort, pulling hard against a particularly stubborn remainder. Her peevish force, and the subsequent release of the web, bounced her backwards. Scrambling to right herself, The Beldam instead fell hard against the wrong side of the door in Guy's hearth. Rarely one to be surprised, let alone alarmed, she gasped in a rush of undiluted panic. The door had popped open easily, dropping her into the child's bedroom.
Initially frantic, she calmed upon the realization that no one had seen her. She held her breath for a moment, wondering if anyone had heard the clatter and would be coming to investigate. Silent as the proverbial tomb, the house was empty. The Skellingtons were more than likely all outside, as was often the case in early afternoon. Relieved, albeit a trifle dazed, The Beldam took a brief accounting of the room before her: Ashen gray floorboards in varied widths spanned from right to left underfoot. A moss green rug stretched from before the hearth to the foot of the bed, where sat a wooden toy crate with rope handles. The crate was more than half empty. The boy's playthings were mostly scattered on the floor. From the brief glimpse she'd gotten before Guy blinded her doll, The Beldam recognized a cluttered spot under the window where the boy often sat to play. There was a wardrobe closet against one wall. A school desk stood near the corner.
The room felt oddly comfortable to The Beldam, unlike the series of perfectly symmetrical little shoe boxes occupied by her human pursuits. With their bright walls and straight lines, those rooms always struck her as foreign and antiseptic. Building their copies was much like arranging a terrarium for a small pet. In contrast, Guy's room was almost disconcertingly familar to her senses. After stealing the quickest of looks at ink strewn papers on the small desktop, The Beldam reversed back through the hearth. She closed her door gently behind her. It was only then that the realization hit, striking as bright and quick as summer lightning: Not only had the room felt inviting, it had been so. She had been able to leave her secret place, able to come right into the child's home even though he'd done nothing to allow her across. For what felt like the hundredth time, she was quickly reminded that this was not a human place. The children of monsters were at least her same order, if not her species. True, this made them more difficult in most respects, but The Beldam now recognized a freedom of pursuit which more than leveled the table. She was closer to home than she'd been in centuries.