~*~It is now October 1st and I present you the first chapter of "Halloween Special: Trick or Great Misery"!~*~

Thanks to all who've reviewed thus far for the promo: NightxInxSterlingxArmor, Jonas x Knight, sonnycentral, MusicFreak-Sonny, Eilidh-xx, Dancing on Rainbows, monkey87, mindless scribbles, HorriblyAddicted, pinkconchshell, gAnGsTa GaBbY lOvEs JoKeR, Literari Lover, percabethforever369, ZoeZora, Harryfan94, silver~roses, xHeSaidSheSaidx, Kylie Robbins, Dancing-StarryEyedDemigod, Change4Good, JateLexzieLit, SterlingIsMyKnight, Spunkalovely, Bhavana331, TheEntertainer26, EllietheDisneyfreak, AnalystProductions, daseyrocks, Fluffness, KSpazzed, klcthenerd, Always Juliet, best with breadsticks, ConfusifyingCristy, xxHeadInTheStarsxx.
Subscribers/alert who didn't review: Chanii3220, channylover808, kataang0, x-Lozzeh-x, channy4eva, 24QueenMo (that's a REALLY good number so far!)

I've drawn some sketches that are related to this story, like Sonny's costume but I have to wait until the weekend to scan them in. You can find Chad's, Tawni's, Nico's, and Zora's costume on my profile—you guys will especially love Chad's costume!

A special shout out to Bhavana331 who's writing a fantastic SWAC Halloween story also! So be sure to read it!! And also to sonnycentral for helping me with Sonny's costume!

Disclaimer: I do not own SWAC, nor Frankenstein nor Edward Cullen or some of the Lemony Snicket styles I've used here...or pirates unfortunately. But I do own my plot.

Haunting hour was soon arriving. Hollywood, famous for its dazzling features, was now a ghost of the past, intricately transformed into "Horrorwood". The wind howled as it whistled wielding into the leafless trees, their bare branches like grappling hooks. Other trees so happened to set the colonial feel of raining greens, golden and orange crunchy leaves, all fallen to elaborate the ground.

The Condor Studio was equally majestic—on the inside. Studio 2 and 3, rival by ratings, was now at a union as the separating wall was taken down for the annual Condor Studios Halloween Party. Inside the shared building were the cast of the two shows, forced to work together as they scurried to outrank the other in terms of setting and decorating the best. Movement was so frantic you could barely catch which person in a Mackenzie Falls uniform delivered the food and what Random in a Halloween costume decorated the black-and-orange tables.

High up on a step-stool stood Sonny, cheery as ever, as she hung streamers of black, orange, and gold. She decided not to wear her Halloween costume just yet as it was a safety hazard being 8-feet high up, but her black tank and orange knee-length dress was just as festive. Inching forward to tape the glow-in-the-dark gold moon-and-star-print decoration on the black streamer, Sonny beamed as she tried taping it when her ladder violently jerked, her streamer now lightly falling to the ground. Who other than Chad Dylan Cooper, the notorious conceited jerk himself smirked at meeting Sonny's frown?

"Be careful where you walk into, Chad," she muttered, only to find Chad's smug grow in ego.

"Oh, don't worry," he smirked as Sonny aimlessly watched. "I was exceptionally careful knowing where to walk into."

Sonny huffed, whispering under her breath. "Jerk." She shook the rival emotions away, having promised herself earlier that no one and nothing could ruin tonight, even if Chad tried hassling her work.
"Hey Chad," she pointed over to the fallen stream. "Could you pick that up please?" Chad sarcastically analyzed her question.
"I could…but I won't," he plastered a smile as he rolled his head, which only brought Sonny's nerves to a temperature of 'boil'.

"'llow me, Sonny!" Nico, who so happened to pass by, dressed in a vampire costume, picked the streamer for her.
Chad blankly looked at the boy's costume. "Wow. And I thought you already killed your viewers by your show."
"Why thank you Nico," she sappily forced out a grin, hoping to make Chad notice. "Finally, a gentleman," she cooed, as she began climbing down the ladder.

"Well," Nico popped his collar with a swag, "You know how I do!" As Sonny chortled along with Nico, Chad's sneaky ocean eyes flashed over to find Grady spin dizzily across the floor, rolled up in streamers.
"Eat...brains!" the porky boy walked stiffly across like a zombie, catching everyone's attention. But then, Chad caught the big man himself walking over to them—Mr. Condor; a brilliant idea approached the "bad-boy."

"Hey," Sonny's head snapped forward to find Chad's apologetic looks as he laid a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder. "Sonny, let me take it from here," he softly said, feigning such interest that Sonny had no force to cling on to the streamer as he pulled it away from her.

"Wow, thanks Chad!" she awed, then eagerly clapped. "This is going to be the best Halloween party ever!"
Chad smirked as he mentally calculated how long he had before Mr. Condor approached them. "Really, Sonny? Really?"
But Sonny was all smiles. "Yes! It will! Really! I mean, even you're helping, Chad, and that's amazing!"

Chad coolly shrugged with a wink. "Well, I am all for the team."

As soon as Sonny's beam fell morphed into confusion at the spouting lie, Chad furiously began climbing to the top of the ladder, then waving over to Mr. Condor.
"Hey Mr. Condor! Like the work I did? All by myself?"

With a final conceited wink from Chad, Sonny gasped, fuming.

~*~

"Man, I cannot wait for this party. It gonna be so much fun!" Nico punched the air, waiting for Grady to finish putting on his costume as the two were in their dressing room.

"Yeah!" said Grady's muffled voice from behind the changing curtain. "We get to bob for apples and eat pumpkin pie. What could be better than that?"

Nico smirked. "I will tell you, m'friend. Not only do we get to do those, but we get scared girls to dance with!"

"Ooh," Grady's voice shuddered. "Those freaky decorative dolls scared the pants off me!" Just then, the changing curtain waved to the side, revealing Grady proudly standing tall wearing a Frankenstein mask but his hair was in crazy pigtails. Along with that, he wore a short plaid skirt that should never be seen on a male. "Who knows what'll creep 'em out…cool!" he giddily bounced.

Nico jaw-dropped in awe to his friend. "Man, who scared the pants off o'you?!"

"What? Oh this?" Grady daintily picked the skirt's edge by the hem and twirled side-to side on his feet. "I'm a Zora-stein. After much consideration, I've realized Zora's 'bout the scariest thing," Grady feebly chuckled.
"Uh-huh…" the leaner of the two muttered as he walked out of the door with his pal beside him. "Man, I do hope we get some more candy dis year," Nico suggested as Grady nodded along. "I mean," continued Nico, "the last two years have been alright, but it wasn't worth a thing!"

"I'm pretty sure it's because most of the people thought we're too old, like that one grandma who chased us," Grady reminisced.
"You mean handsome," smugged Nico. By now, the two had continued walking off towards the set when Grady's mind had a magnificent idea.
"Unless," he stopped Nico in his tracks. "We make a candy multiplier machine!" The black boy looked at his friend dumbfound.
"What, a candy multiplier machine?!" Grady felt as if he was going to be yelled at for his dimwitted idea when Nico grinned. "Awesome!"

~*~

The haunting hour had arrived as the cast and crew of the Condor shows piled through. Sonny, in her costume, marveled at the decorations that both the MackFallites and Randoms had done, like the streams symmetrically covering that ceiling, or the intricately carved pumpkins, the paper-mached balloons and mask, even Zora's work made her proud—the Little Random had a blast stretching out fake spider webs and putting glow-in-the-dark spiders in them, and constructing robotic mannequins.

"Wow!" she exclaimed, meeting up with her friends. "This party is fantastic! And look at all the people enjoying themselves," Sonny carried on. Of course, as she looked around, there were very few people who stood out to the sides, looking very shifty. It lightly occurred to Sonny that she did not know who they were, and usually everyone knew everyone here. But this was quickly forgotten.

"Yeah, I know!" Grady bounced, still in his Frankenstein mask and Zora skirt. "We've got apple-bobbing, a mummy race...a scarecrow destruction!"
"Yeah, and we even have more creative stations, like "Pin the stake on the vampire," Nico motioned over to where a blindfolded person was dizzily trying to put the stake on an Edward Cullen poster.
"And look it all those dishes: pumpkin fries, pumpkin Alfredo, pumpkin sherbet..." That's when the Random boys found their eyes upon the Meal-or-No-Meal girls dressed as big puffy pumpkins.
"And I'm about to go get me a slice of some sweet pumpkin pie!" Grady jumped.
"Hmm-mm!" Nico lead the way.
As Sonny beamed, watching the boys leave, Tawni approached her in a beautiful Tinkerbell costume, despite her golden hair adorned with a silver crown.
"Tawni, you look so beautiful!" Sonny cooed, attacking her almost-friend with a tight hug, causing the tween queen to fight herself out.
"My bubble, my bubble! What part of that do you not understand?!" Tawni glowered as Sonny cutely shrugged, waiting for Tawni to cool. "You look..." Tawni began to say when her eyes widened.
"What are you supposed to look like?"

With a slight twirl, Sonny looked down at her costume—it was a sunflower with a purple stalk. Starting out with her custom-made brown moccasins that stretched out to look like roots, she wore a purple cute long-sleeve shirt and a purple skirt with purple leggings. Her arms were succumbed in what appeared to be real green leaves, all paper-mached onto one another. And to top it off, a black beret rested on her head as she wore a sunflower-petaled headdress with petals one foot tall spiked around her whole head.
"Oh, this?" Sonny gushed. "I'm a sonny-flower, get it?" she snorted when a pirate in a puffy white pirate shirt and a black bandana on his sandy-golden hair had his back faced to the girls.
"Whoa," Sonny bit her lip smiling. "That is one hot pirate."
Sonny knew something was wrong when Tawni appeared bug-eyed and the pirate turned around, morphing into a cocky-smirking, jerk-throbbing Chad.
"You finally admit it," he smirked, having way too much fun with this.
Sonny scoffed, quickly frowning. "Y-your...shirt's hot, not you!" She stuttered, her head frantically bobbing up and down in defense when her nod slowly turned weak until she gave one last firm nod.
"Heh, what are you?" Chad looked Sonny up and down.
"A sonny-flower," she quickly beamed which was quickly wiped off after Chad's blatant comment of "Sunflowers aren't purple."
"Well," scoffed Sonny. "I'm creative, so ha!"
With a light smile, Chad couldn't help but chuckle. "Huh." He started to turn around when he turned on his foot, facing back to Sonny.
"Well, I was ...wondering if you'd like to—"
"Hey Sonny," Tawni briefly interrupted. "You'll go do the pumpkin toss so I can win the pumpkin cape! Let's go!" Tawni demanded, yanking on Sonny, both girls leaving Chad standing aghast.

Halfway into the dance, the crowd had fun like none other. Almost everyone was happily dancing to the current song of "The Monster Mash"...nearly everyone.
For some strange occurrence, Chad eagerly pestered Sonny, always starting off with the same way: "Would you like t—" but already accustomed to his ego, Sonny would always rush away to whether it be a dance with her friends, or to grab a bite to eat, with the same answer, "Not now, Chad."

It wasn't until the third time that Chad gave up, his head downcast, pacing around the concessions watching aside. But besides that, everyone was enjoying themselves.
Sonny didn't know why she ignored Chad, as she danced with the other Randoms, and yet always finding herself to always be glancing up at Chad every other moment. She just really didn't want her sunniness to be brought down and –let's face it—Chad Dylan Cooper usually did bring the mood down and stormy 85% of the time. And the only times he was nice and caring was when they were nearly always alone together—something that just couldn't and wouldn't happen at a Halloween party.

She continued dancing in a happy manner next to Zora, who was dressed as a hunted bear, with an arrow through the bear costume's head with splattered fake blood. The bear costume was used many a times, the latest being when Zora wore it during the "Gary and Larry" sketch.

"I need to find my access card. Take my drink." Sonny's soft brown eyes flashed as she indirectly watched Portlyn in a sleek small black dress shove her drink into a grumbling Chad's hands.
"You're welcome!" Chad sarcastically praised over the drama queen's distancing figure.
"Huh," Sonny muttered, dancing near the girls. "Chad must be in a really bad mood."
Tawni paid no attention. "Why do you care what mood he's in?"
"Oh, I don't," Sonny rushed her words a bit too fast.
"Hmm-mm," the blond pursed her lips.
A few moments passed and the atmosphere was a disturbingly cheery as ever when Portlyn, her look of pure dread on her wan face, ran shrieking into the combined studio arena.

"GHOST!! GHOST IN THE DRESSING ROOM!"

Now would be a wonderful time to end this chapter, but the truth is, the reader would be in more suspense than the actual party-goers, who, truth be told, weren't as eager to listen in on what the snooty star was screaming about. All except for the ghost part.

"The screaming for next week's shooting, not now," Chad called out callously.
"Chad," she stumbled, racing over t him for support as she shook in fear. "In my dressing room, there was a ghost. And some weird message...and blood." the girl cried, pulling on Chad's puffy pirate shirt.

By now, attention was all focused at her when...

"Spiders!" someone shrieked from the other side of the dance floor. As the Randoms and stars of MacKenzie Falls looked out to the side, each twitched or gasped or ran the heck out of the room when they viewed countless of bugs and spiders on the fake spiderwebs which surrounded the crowd like a veil. There were beetles on the cupcakes and cookies that, at the beginning of the dance, had been beetle rings or plastic beetles. Where fake gummy worms once floated in the punchbowl, hundreds of living slimy earthworms now tried climbing out of the bowl. Someone screamed to look up. Near the ceiling lights, ten or more so large dolls rose up, each somehow causing the recording tape on them to go off, playing evil laughter.
Unable to believe it, Sonny quickly looked at Zora, not wanting to say it but she had to. "Zora, you didn't—!!"
"Course not!" the girl cried, showing her rare display of fear.
Pandemonium struck when the lights began flickering on, off, and on again, causing everyone stampeding over to the exit signs. For the Randoms and the Fall-doms, both dashed to witness this message and the so-called ghost.
As each one raced behind the other in their costume, they past the studio directors including Marshall and Mr. Condor, all screaming for everyone to try to calm down.
"This way," Portlyn whimpered, opening up her dressing room for both cast, not in the least bit angered that she was allowing access for the rival show.
"Wha, I don't see any—" Nico began to argue when Portlyn pointed forward.
"Over there," Portlyn's voice trembled. It was as if everyone had stopped breathing, fore what they saw could not be possible. On the mirror in a thick blood-like substance was writing:

I HAVE RETURNED TO CLAIM WHAT'S MINE.

STAY IF YOU WISH TO BE HARMED

--JAMES ESSER

Not a single creak, tap nor breath was heard as the young adults glanced at one another uneasily, intoxicated by fear.
The big cuddly bear with the arrow through her head then realized something. "Hold up," Zora's voice piped from within the bear costume, losing all quirk. "I have my camera with me." The stars watched as the bear's head popped off, revealing Zora's head as she pulled on a huge black mass inch-by-inch—a professional one foot-long camera.
"Now's not the time for taking pictures," said a soft voice within the group, stirring them all to jump. Looking around for the speaker, Sonny could had sworn it was the MacKenzie Fall's silent Asian girl.
"Wow! You can talk!?" Sonny exclaimed, earning many huffs of laughter on her side and a glare or two from the other...or five.
"Please," Chad introduced his "Mr. Business Finer" to the Randoms, "would you not insult us at a time of crisis here?"
He then turned to the Asian girl. "You can talk?"

As the Asian girl eagerly bobbed her head, Zora began taking pictures of the message from different angles.
"I'm documenting visual evidence of the premises for future reference of this investigation." Blank looks awaited her after that loquacious statement.
She sighed. "Pretty. Picture. Help. Find. Meanie. Butt!"
"Oh!" everyone nodded smiling when Sonny felt her inner analytical detective side taking over as she walked towards the "message".
"Huh," she muttered as she looked closer when Tawni cried from behind.
"Ooh, look! A pretty flower!" Tawni gasped, quickly falling to the flower to pick it up. It was certainly a purple flower like none other. (A/N: To see the flower, check my profile)
"Was that always there?" Sonny asked Portlyn, who was nearly back to her old dramatic self.
"Eww, I wouldn't be caught dead near that color!" She then looked at Sonny's unique purple flower costume. "But apparently you would," she smirked.
"Oh, and look it here," Nico muttered, ignoring Portlyn's comment as he bent forward towards the lower right-hand side of the mirror. "There's some symbol near this guy's name."

"I found them!" the kids jumped at the sudden loudness of the statement as Marshall ran in with all the other producers along with Condor.
"Hey, you kiddos. It's n-not safe here," Marshall's voice quivered as he looked around for any signs of trouble.
Condor on the other hand wanted to get to the bottom of why there was trouble in his studio. "You said something about a ghost?"
Portlyn meekly nodded. "Yeah, I came to look for my access card and some girl found it for me. Then I came in to my room and found...a ghost. And that message," she pointed towards the mirror, letting all the producers go to investigate.

Condor frowned. "A real ghost?"
But Sonny interfered. "Sir, I don't think so for some reason. It could be someone playing a prank on us, by pretending to be a ghost."
Chad's eyebrows creased. "But everyone was at the party." Sonny could only answer with a shrug.
All eyes turned wide as Nico began to stutter. "O-oh, good. So...if it looks like a ghost, it's not."
Sonny nodded with a smile. "Yep!"
"And just to be sure, if it looks real evil, it's fake."
"Oh yes."
"And if it's right behind us, we have nothing to worry about?" Nico squeaked as he cowered behind the other stars.

Sonny's eyes grew huge as she slowly turned around to face a ghoulish transparent body of a male with black pools of ice for eyes. The atmosphere suddenly turned freezing, as if you were paralyzed, screaming on the inside.
"I will warn you one last time," the ghost appeared to whisper before its hoarse voice roared.

"LEAVE THE STUDIO AND LET MY LOST LOVE COME BACK TO ME! IF YOU DO NOT, YOU WILL PERISH LIKE I DID IN STUDIO 13!"

All power in the studio momentarily turned off, leaving a screaming panic in the midst of the pitch dark as a ghastly malicious cackle was heard throughout all fourteen studios.

~*~*~And now you may fear~*~*~

~*~Let thy suspense begin~*~