Through The Hollow

Chapter 4

Black.

He saw that before him.

All black.

Was that it?

Black?

Was he not dead?

Should he not feel good?

No. Instead he felt horrible. It was like he no longer was himself. He felt strange. Empty. He felt… lighter… like all the organs and flesh had been removed from him. He shook the feeling and looked around. He was in a closed space. There were walls all around him. He felt so secure yet also so uncomfortable. He couldn't help but wonder where he was or how he got there. The last thing that he remembered was being the swamp. He fell and the Elizabeth left. There was that voice and then… Nothing.

He heard voices above him. There was a stomping on the wood in above his face. He was lying down. The stomping proceeded, as did the voice. He heard some of what it was saying and he could smell smoke and blood.

"Rise! Rise to us spawn of the devil! Rise and be known!"

Witches!

"Rise and serve us!"

Oh no! I'm being reawaken for evil deeds! WaitThenwhyam I still in control? Why can I still do as I please? This makes no sense!

"Dude, this isn't working."

Dude?

"Ya, I suggest we try that 'sacrifice a virgin idea! Wahoo!"

They sure don't sound like witches…

"What do you say before we go we snag whatever this guy has? He's been dead for who knows how long so I think he'll be just bones by now. He may as well. Besides. Maybe he was a really rich guy and lots of money! Maybe it's like in Egypt where they burry the valuables with the body!"

"I guess it couldn't hurt…" There was a creaking sound above him. He stayed perfectly still. He did not move. The lid of the box he was trapped in opened and three people looked in. They didn't look like any normal person but they didn't look like witches either. What were they then? "Hey, this guy looks fake. The bones are so… clean. And white. And what about that ball head?"

Did he say bones?

"Oh, well. Let's see what we got here…" One in a bandana reached down and went for inside Jack's skirt.

Jack slapped him away and sat up. "What do you think you're doing?"

The boys backed away very carefully. They looked scared. He sighed. People really were scared at him. Jack got to his feet and looked out. He was in a hole! Buried! He had been in a coffin! He was six feet under! Jack climbed out of the hole and surveyed the area. It didn't look like anything that he could recognize. There were very tall buildings off in the distance. He stared at them. Was he in some sort of witch realm? Was that where he was meant to go? If so, he didn't want to anymore. He just wanted to die again but this time not wake up.

One boy neared closer. He took a position a few feet from Jack and tapped his shoulder. Jack turned around and looked the boys up and down. The boy started to talk but he was interrupted. "Are you witches?"

"What?"

"Witches. Are you witches?" They all shook their heads. Jack rubbed his head. "Well then what are you?"

"Teenagers?"

"Impossible. I'm a subsequent teen and I look nothing like you."

"Maybe that because you should be stiff."

"What?"

"Stiff."

"Why do you say that?"

One boy pulled out a mirror and showed it to Jack. Jack fell backwards in shock. He landed on his bum. He stared in disbelief at the reflection in the mirror. What he saw had not been him. It had been a skeleton. The bones shone bright and the sockets where once there had been eyes were hollow. Jack's eyes were as large as if he had seen something horrible and dies like that or remembered something as he passed on. His mouth was stitched and he was no longer in his usual white shirt with suspenders. He wore a pinstripe tuxedo with a white shirt underneath as well as bat bowtie around his neck that stretched out like the capes on vampires. He backed up and looked at his hands. They were skeletal. He was dead. He was a skeleton! Jack screamed. He leapt to his feet and hopped back into the coffin. The teenagers watched as he lay down and pulled the lid over himself. They all hopped down and landed on the lid of the wooden box. They leaned down and listened to him. "No… no… no… I'm not a skeleton… Thomas didn't stab me… its all a dream… a horrible, horrible dream… I'll wake up soon and be in my room… Auntie Marie will be there too… She has some grit ready for me and I won't eat it… She stands there… Zero will be a live and I'll be alive… Everything will be normal… I just have to wake up… I'll pinch myself… Damn! I have no skin to pinch! I' not dead! I'm not dead! I''M NOT DEAD!"

One of the teenagers spoke up. "Sorry, dude but you are dead…"

"No! I am not dead!"

"Yes, you are."

"NO!!!! I AM NOT DEAD! WHOA!"

Curious, the teens opened the lid. There was nothing inside.

---

Jack broke the surface of the liquid that he was in. He gulped for air but he received none. He had no lungs for which to take in the air. He clamped his hand onto the stone edge beside him and pulled his body out of the water. He noticed then that the water was green and swirled with a fountain with a winged creature statue aimlessly hanging over it from the side and gushing in more water.

He clambered out into the open. He seemed to be in a village of some sort. There were large buildings all around him. They differed from the ones in his town. The sky, when he looked up, was spotted with more stars than he had ever seen and was a deep black with hints of an eerie yellow. The cobblestones that he stood on her cracks and many were missing, showing the bare soil underneath.

As he looked around he found that the entire place was deserted. He could see no one and there was no one to be seen. Jack sighed. He finally ends up in a village that seems normal and there is no one there to speak with. Then again, if he were to attempt a conversation they would cry out with fear at him appearance.

Jack sighed and wandered down the cobblestone pathway. He crossed into an alleyway and noticed a pair of huge black gates up a path of stairs. He walked up and clambered up the stairs with no effort due to his long legs. As he approached the gates he heard a moan behind him. He turned on his axis and saw nothing. He merely looked into the alley for a moment before looking into the gates and seeing a graveyard. It was a fairly simple one except for the facts that many of the tombstones had been badly beaten and a few were completely destroyed. The gates opened by themselves and, as cautious and ready as he found it possible, climbed into the necropolis' area of occupation.

As he walked he found that the graves seemed to stretch on forever. A hill stood ahead of him and so he walked up it with little strain to himself. What he saw shocked his eye sockets. If he had had a heart it would have leapt out of his chest at the sight.

The landscape was littered with graves. Empty or not they were there. The stones stretched out at far as he could see. There was no end. They even went beyond the horizon. There was no end to how far the graves could stretch. The covered the land. That was simple enough to know. And Jack knew it. He tuned his head to the right and saw a smaller section. There were fewer graves in that area and a spiralling hill close to the centre. The graves there were decorated more so. Some had a pumpkin on top and some had angels watching over them. Jack climbed the fence and walked inside to see the tombs of these people. He red the first one: "Here lies Tom the Pumpkin King, 1065-1198. Rekilled while saving Town Hall."

He read the second: "Here lies Harold the Pumpkin King, 0154- 0970. Rekilled while performing "

He read the third: "Here lies Fredrick the Pumpkin King, 0862- 1002. Rekilled while surveying the spirit war."

He read a forth one: "Here lies Dimitri the Pumpkin King, 0957- 1142. Rekilled after one year of ruling due to a tendency to try and save his own skin while in tern running into even more danger."

He read one more: "Here lies Pierre the Pumpkin King, 1118- 1226. Rekilled in a battle between good and evil."

Jack skipped a few and read the last in a circle that rounded the hill. "Here lies Terrance the Pumpkin King, 1861- (there was nothing carved yet) Definitely going to die again at the rate he's going…" Jack raised a brow (or in this case one of his eye sockets narrowed and the other went further up). "There seems to be a pattern here… But why does this thing say the year 1861? It's only 1756… right?"

There was a chime of bells from behind him. Light emanated from within the village. Jack felt a smile broaden his black skeleton face and he found himself dashing out of the graveyard and back to the gates. He was running so fast that he had a hard time stopping and ended up running right into the black gateway. His head passed through the bars as his body hit one. Jack couldn't get his head back through. He sighed. A thought occurred within his skull. Jack angled his body so that it was parallel with the bars and slid through. He smiled as he appeared unharmed on the other side, back in the town, and walked to the edge of the alley where he peeped out into the village. What he saw made him gasp with surprise. (He tends to do that a lot, no?)

"You'll scream!"

"This is Halloween!"

"Red and black…"

"And slimy green."

"Aren't you scared?"

"Well that's just fine. Say it once. Say it twice. Take a chance and role the dice. Ride with the moon in the dead of night…"

"Everybody scream… everybody scream!"

"In our town of Halloween…"

Jack was struck with awe. Monsters and ghouls and devils galore danced in the square of the village. There were werewolves and witches. Ghosts and elementals. Skeletons and devils. Monsters that dripped slime and monsters that had one mouth in two parts. Monsters that had snakes for fingers and spiders in their hair and monsters that had razor sharp teeth and eyes glowing red. Jack smiled with delight. It was wonderful watching them dance. He did just that for quite some time. He even saw monster children join in the fun and bound around in a scary manner. Then a monster with an axe in his head rolled out with a large stuffed serpent and a scarecrow on it's back. The scarecrow jumped to life and surprised Jack. He cheered with enjoyment in the act. The scarecrow gripped a torch given to him by a witch and struck it to his chest. He danced on the serpent for a moment in amazing stunts until the fire engulfed his head. Then he climbed off and onto the serpent hovering over the fountain. He dove off that and did a cannonball into the water. A mummy, dripping wet but drying off fantastically quickly, emerged from the waves of the water and stood on the stone edge with his arms open wide as if to embrace the moon. Every monster there clapped and cheered called out his name, Leon.

Jack clapped too and in doing so failed to see the trashcan by his feet. He tripped over it and there was a loud clanging of metal hitting bone. Jack tumbled onto the cobblestones in front of a two faced, fat man with a hat like a witch on and a spider bowtie. There was a surprised gasp that escaped the voices of the monsters. They stared down at Jack with confusion in their eyes and faces. The man Jack fell in front of helped him to his feet and shook his hand. "Welcome! You must be new! It's been a long time since we had a new arrival! Don't you agree Leon?"

The mummy reluctantly nodded his head and dried off a bandage on his arm.

Jack spoke up. "Um, excuse me. Where am I?"

"Why, Halloween Town of course!"

"Halloween Town? Don't you mean the Town of Hallows Eve?"

The man raised a brow. "No. I mean Halloween Town. No one has called it the Town of Hallows Eve since the 1700s."

"But it is the 1700s. Right?"

"No m'boy. It's near the end of the 1900s."

Jack's eyes widened and he saw blackness in front of his eyes. He hadn't fainted. He had been struck. The last thing that he saw were the monsters and the one called Leon standing above him. Then all was gone.

---

Brooke: Hmm… I wonder who hit Jack. (snickers)

Impmon: You know! Tell me!

Zim: Tell!

Fiendmon: Tell us!

Brooke: Uhh… He knows! (points to Jack)

Jack: Uh… (runs)

Impmon: Get him!

Jack: You'll pay for this Brooke!

Brooke: (snickers and starts to type up next chapter)