Through The Hollow
Chapter 5
Jack rubbed his eye sockets. He felt inside and sighed. He had hoped that it was all a dream but when you reach into your own eyes and find that there's nothing there you can usually count that you are indeed dead and you're not dreaming. Jack had done just that.
He looked around. He was in a tall room; a tower perhaps? There were bare walls all over the place and he had slept in a bed that consisted of a thin mattress on the floor like the fashion done in Japan. He rose up and looked at his skeletal hand. He hadn't noticed before but he had lost a finger on each hand and now he only had four. It looked slightly animated as well. Jack put a finger to one of his teeth. They weren't dull but they weren't very sharp either. He found that his scull would move and shape itself depicting his emotion and he was glad for that because he did not wish to have a bland and expressionless face.
Three days.
That was how long he had been in Halloween Town. On the first day he had met the townsfolk and discovered that he was, in fact, dead. On the second day he had been given a house to live in. He would have to work to pay for it but they let him live in it even so seeing as he was a new comer and he had no money to give for the house. Now he had slowly come into the third day. The day was dreary like each other, the sky did not falter. Apparently Halloween Town rarely had much climate changes but when it did it was either fog or rain. Yet more bleak to add to the sorrow of the place. Jack sighed.
He climbed out of bed and pulled his tuxedo from off of a pole he had hung it on the night before. He slipped it on and walked down the stairs. Jack found a new thought appear in his head with each movement downwards. The first step came and met the underside of his foot. I can't believe I'm really dead… The second stair came. 200 years… The third. That's how long I was in that grave… The forth. I can't find aunt Marie though… The fifth. And what of Zero? Sixth. What happened to him? He set down on the seventh. He was going in a spiral. Then again… what happened to me? The eighth stair came. The last thing I remember was the shot of a gun… The ninth. Then I woke up in the cemetery… Tenth. That bullet could have killed me… Eleventh. But something doesn't feel right about that…
There was a screech!
If Jack had had skin he would have jumped out of it.
It was the doorbell.
"I really have to get that fixed…"
He hurried down the last few steps and walked to the door. There was another screech before he opened it up. There stood the mayor of Halloween Town; the fat man Jack had met on his first day. He smiled up at him with a beaming grin. It was either that face or the worried one that was, currently, the back of his head. He had no emotions otherwise. "Good morning Jack!"
"Good morning mister mayor."
"I trust your moving in well?"
"Well… that's not exactly the term that I would use…"
"Oh, pish posh. You're moving in much better and much quicker than I did when I first came. I must have stayed in that graveyard a few days before I realized that I wouldn't die of starvation…" Jack was stunned a moment and then quickly let it pass him by. "I just wanted to help you out a little. I have a guide here that can show you around the place. Took me a while to find her but I did. Oh, she's the best guide in town. A little different from what you know but… well… I supposed everything is different from what you know here. Isn't it Jack?"
"Yes. Mister Mayor."
"May I come in?"
"I don't know how…"
The mayor walked in the front door and into the house. Jack's eye sockets went wide. He looked at the mayor then at the door then back at the mayor. "I don't know how you did that…" He examined the doorframe as the fat man made himself comfortable on a sofa that Jack had in his living room.
"Nothing is what it seems in this town dear boy. Come sit. I want you to meet your guide."
Jack reluctantly moved away from the door and sat in a chair opposite the mayor. He placed his hands on his knees and leaned down so that he was eye-to-eye socket with the short, obese man. "Ok. When will I have the privilege of meeting her then?"
"Well, right now Jack. I said that I wanted you to get around the town as soon as possible. Didn't I?"
"No."
"Oh… Well I should have. Anyway. I have her right here with me…" The mayor reached into his coat and pulled out what looked to be a jar with a brown covering over top of it. He unwrapped the twine that held the brown fabric on and then pulled it off. Jack looked into the jar too see a tiny creature with long, spiked, black hair. The creature had two wings that looked to be torn and ruined from wind and it had a pale body covered by a black cloak that came to its stomach, a grey shirt and black pants. The mayor unscrewed the jar. Jack could see no holes for air and so he assumed the creature was dead. But then again, everything was dead in Halloween town. The creature's wings jutted out with surprising speed and the creature itself flew out, stretching its arms to the open space. Its body grew as it emerged but it was only as tall as a child when it came out completely. The mayor smiled and looked back to Jack. The creature followed his gaze. "This," he said, "is Yulee. She's…"
"A pixie?"
"No. Yulee is not a pixie. She's a dark guardian. What humans may refer to as brownies or sprites can turn evil or vile in some way in their life. Then, when they die, the creature reappears as a dark guardian if it did not fix the problem that it had in life. Most of the cases it never happens, that's why humans have never heard of dark guardians. There are so few and so hard to catch that it would be a miracle if a human even caught a glimpse of one. Yulee, come on down. This here is Jack. I want you to show him around the place for me. Will you?"
The dark guardian touched her small, bare feet to the ground. She leaned over and examined Jack up and down. Yulee stopped at his eye socket and looked through. She smiled. Her voice, when she spoke was so soft yet so hard and there was a hint of distaste and loath in her tone but it seemed so normal that Jack didn't take that the hatred was to him. "I can see a lot in you but you're lucky that I can't see into your soul." She lifted into the air again and then went to the door. Yulee opened it and then beckoned to Jack. "Will you be joining me any time soon?"
---
"A dark guardian?"
"Yes."
"I've never heard of one of those before."
"Like the mayor said, dark guardians are too tricky for humans and we come in too few amounts."
"Do you know how many there are?"
"No. Now, can we continue with the tour?"
"Of course. Sorry."
"It's no trouble at all. Ok. Here we have the Halloween town square as you can plainly see from the fact that we are in a ring of buildings. The fountain there," Yulee pointed to the winged serpent, "is our view into the real world. On Halloween it's how we check up on the mischief that our town citizens are causing. We can also use it to look into varying places outside Halloween town. Say the old mansion beyond the graveyard. We would be able to see that." Yulee led Jack over to the fountain and had him gaze into it. His eye sockets widened as the green fluid of the pool began to swirl into forms of colour and light, exposing a run down old house with shattered windows attached to a towering tree. Yulee smiled at him. "It had been abandoned for years up until Leon moved in. Now he lives there himself. He doesn't let anyone go onto his property and if they were to do so he would find them and drag them into his dungeon. We think he has a total of 17 Halloweenies in his house."
"Why does no one complain to him then? If he is the pumpkin king then surely he would do as his subjects wished."
"It doesn't work like that Jack. Leon's a fierce ruler. We're not really sure how he became the pumpkin king though. He appeared in town one day and seemed to be pretty ok with his surroundings. Leon claimed that he had been dead for quite some time and so he had taken the opportunity to wander around the grounds.
"He said that while wandering in the graveyard he spotted a disturbance. When he came he could see the people of the town being tormented by the one who wished to be the pumpkin king himself, Dark. An entity so grotesque that he hinds his own face behind a face to conceal himself.
"Dark had tormented the town for a while, demanding to become the pumpkin king. When he left for the day we all knew that he would be back in a week or so. But he never came. Leon appeared in town a few days after Dark was meant to come looking beaten, bruised and bloodied. He had been in a fight and he claimed to have slaughtered Dark.
Of course the town was overjoyed to hear of the wondrous news. They immediately appointed Leon as the king and he took his newfound power with great pride. He commanded us to do many things. Sick of his actions what dark guardians living in the town retreated to the forest to get away from him. Leon has no power there so we knew that we would be safe."
Jack leaned on the fountain and placed his elbows on the stones in from of him so that he could have his skull rest in his skeletal palms. "So, I take it that Leon is not a very good king, is he?" Yulee shook her head. "Why doesn't the town protest to him?"
"Considering that Leon killed Dark, the most powerful creature in Halloween town, they dare not oppose him. The town's people believe that he could kill them all quickly and so no one will confront him. He's far too scary."
"He doesn't look too scary to me…"
"Well he's… Eep!" A tuft of black smoke consumed Yulee's body. Then she disintegrated and Jack was left alone in the courtyard.
"Yulee? Yulee?"
"Yulee?" came a harsh voice. "That sounds like the name of a dark guardian I once met." Jack spun around to be confronted by the pumpkin king, Leon. The undead mummy stood tall and proud, around the same height as Jack if not taller. His bandages all for his left eye, which poked out and glared at Jack, covered his face. Leon's chest plate was coloured deep blue today and he wore it conceitedly with his grieves and ankle supports. That strange black eye glowered at Jack. "You wouldn't happen to be with a dark guardian would you?" Jack did not answer. "I dislike dark guardians being in my town. Do you have one with you?" Jack shook his head. Leon came close and examined him. He snarled and then slinked away and disappeared beyond the light of the pumpkin faced sun.
Jack breathed out.
The tuft of black smoke reappeared at his feet and Yulee leaned against his leg, exhausted. She breathed out and in heavily and then slumped to the ground. Jack followed suit and sat down at the edge of the fountain. He looked down at the tiny child. "Where in Halloween town did you go?"
"I didn't go anywhere. Dark guardians have the power to conceal ourselves if the nedd arises and the need arose."
"Why are you so out of breath then?"
"We can only do it if we hold our breaths and I'm not accustomed to doing it for so long as of yet."
"You should practise."
"I plan to. By the way… I thought you said that Leon had to be confronted. Your chance came and you did nothing?"
"I… uh…" Jack hung his head and placed his elbows on his knees so that his arms hung between his legs. "I couldn't. He was just so… so…"
"Scary?"
"Yes/ Usually I can scare anyone that I want to. All they would ever have to do was look into my eyes and they would run away."
"But you don't have eyes anymore."
"That's my problem…"
---
"Here we have the graveyard. The tombstone for each person on the planet stretches beyond the horizon right over there. For the people where no stone was placed a tree grew to commemorate them and if you chop off a branch then you can read the person's name from under the bark." Yulee pointed to the endless bone yard that Jack had seen when he first came to Halloween town. "That is why there are so many."
"That explains it. I thought that a war had happened."
"Well, wars did happen. Two of them. Humans called them World War 1 and World War 2. Many people died in those. From what I know it was over 40 million."
"That much?"
Yulee nodded. She walked over to a gateway and leapt over the brick wall that separated them from a differing graveyard. "This here, holds the graves of Halloween town's past kings."
"That much I gathered."
"We haven't had all too many kings seeing as they cannot die like normal humans and so go on living. The people of Halloween town are hoping that Leon will die again so that he will become and ghost and therefore will not be king any more."
"A ghost can't be king?"
"Of course not! Otherwise anybody could be a king. There'd be far too many to choose from if that scenario came up. Besides. We try to discover the ones that tend to stand out from the rest of the crowd. Leon killed Dark, that fact alone made him stand out greatly. That's the only reason he became king. If he had not killed Dark then he would just be another person in Halloween town living his life out normally. Well… If you can call Halloween town normal."
"I don't think that I've lived here that long to refer to it as that." Jack looked up. "What's that?"
Yulee followed his gaze. Her red eyes landed on the spiralled hill that swirled in on itself and stretched above the pumpkin patch just before the forest and just after the king graves. She turned back to Jack, lifted into the air and pulled him along with her. At that moment Jack thought that Yulee looked like a child pulling her friend into something that would be of great fun. She led him to the very peak of the hill and Jack suspected that he could fall off if he swerved too much. "This," she said stretching her arms out to exaggerate her point, "is called Spiral hill. Legend says that a very special person can walk up to the edge and step forward and then the hill will catch them before they fall to a hurtful grave. That person would be able to scare anybody if they ever wanted to. It's said that they would be able to scare the pumpkin king himself. But no one has been able to do it since Dark and Leon. Why don't you try?"
"No. I don't much feel like being a ghost. I'd rather be a skeleton any day seeing as I can no longer be a human. Why don't you give it a try?"
"I have…" Yulee alighted on the very edge of the hill and leaned over to see beyond the point. She extended a foot with her eyes closed and stepped down. Jack nearly fell off when she tumbled down. Then she flew back up and stood in front of him. "The hill will not except me. I am not frightening enough for it. I cannot scare the pumpkin king. I wouldn't even be able to do it if my wings depended on it. I'm just not scary enough. But you Jack. You have potential. I can see that just by looking at you. Won't you give it a try?"
"Can you catch me if I fall?"
Yulee thought for a moment. She took off and flew behind Jack. Yulee reached under his bony arms and lifted. Her wings flapped rapidly behind her as she beat and tried to get the air required to life back up. The effort was to no avail, as she could not lift Jack. Yulee touched back down in front of him and sighed. "No," she said hanging her head in shame, "I cannot."
Jack, seeing her distress, placed his hand on her shoulder. She looked to it and then up to his grinning skull. "I shall make a deal with you. If you try as best as you can and gain the energy that you need to lift me up then I shall take the Spiral Hill's test and step off the edge. Do you accept?" He held his other hand out to her pale face.
Yulee thought for a moment and then gripped it. She shook hard and smiled. "I accept."
