***Hello, my lovely friends! We should just be movin' right along in this story to something good. So, the characters belong to Tim Burton, the story belongs to me, and let's get going!

Chapter Five: The Treehouse In The Graveyard

The days in Halloween Town were a vast improvement to the days in the last life. This was the unanimous conclusion if one were to ask Lock, Shock, and Barrel where they would rather have been.

They, being really the only kids in town, were given a single united title The trick-or-treaters. And the three children were perfectly fine with that title. They didn't have to go to school. They could pull their pranks day in and day out without getting in trouble as long as the pranks didn't physically harm anyone. No one hated them anymore. Yes, their new lives were good ones.

Well...except for one thing.

And that thing was Jack. His house was nice and he was a kind person, yes. The only thing that made him the bad aspect of living in Halloween Town was all of the rules that he kept.

Every day, Lock, Shock, and Barrel would each receive at least one lecture about some sort of broken rule. Jack insisted that it was for their own protection. The children insisted that it was to annoy the ever-loving crap out of them.

At last, they had to branch out. Jack had long since left for work for the day. So that left Lock, Shock, and Barrel alone for at least a few hours. That was the perfect time.

"Let's go, you idiots," Shock said to her only two friends "We're not the idiots here. But yeah, right behind you," Lock agreed. "Me too," Barrel chimed in.

And, out the doors of the Skellington Manor they went.

XxX

They had been roaming for a while all over the town. Eventually, they wandered on past the outskirts of town. That took them to a big-no, to a massive graveyard. There was one thing they noticed.

It was that every tombstone had the names (or rather, the full names in the previous lives) of every citizen of Halloween Town. Lock and Shock ran over to the biggest one to see if their created logic held true. Sure enough, there was the name:

Jack Sweeney

"Yeah, I'm glad he changed his last name," Shock remarked upon reading the tombstone. Lock looked at the date of birth of death. "Fake last name or not, if the year of death is when he first came here, then he has been here for a long time," he pointed out. Shock looked at it and nodded. "You're right, he is an old man. Granted, I always knew that he was, but this just further proves my point," she said.

"Hey, guys! Come look!" Barrel called out from a distance. Lock and Shock went over to him. He was looking at three plaques on the ground that were perfectly arranged in a line. "I found our names!" he said. As expected, each plaque had one of their names on it:

Lakin Sweet

Samantha Snyder

Brayden Walker

"They must get bigger over time or something," Shock said. "Check out what I also found!" Barrel added on. He went off further and to a structure rather than a tombstone this time.

It was a rickety old treehouse that had been found. There was a cage attached to a rope that lead up to said treehouse that must've been an elevator of sorts. "It's like my old treehouse! Well, without the elevator it does. Come on, you guys!" Barrel said. So, he ran towards the cage elevator and stepped inside. He held open the door.

Lock and Shock looked at each other for a moment. Then, they went to the elevator and got in.

XxX

The only things in the treehouse were a gaping hole in the wall with a tube wrapped around it to make it look like an entry of sorts. And there was a bathtub sitting in front of it. It stood up on the small legs that were on its four corners.

"I've seen a lot of weird things in this life and the last... but this one is certainly a first," Shock remarked. "You're telling me. But I think it's pretty cool," Lock semi-agreed. "I never said it wasn't cool, stupid," Shock said.

Barrel climbed into the bath tub, using it to lift himself to where he was eye-level to the hole in the wall. "What do you guys think is down there?" he asked. "Well, the last time we fell down a dark hole, things turned out pretty well. Let's keep the streak alive," Shock said. She shoved Barrel out of the way and got her retribution by throwing Lock down instead. There was a loud THUD! noise after a few seconds.

"Well, it's not as far down as the last one was," Shock stated. Before Barrel could respond, both children heard something from the destination the hole in the wall lead to. There was a sort of jazzy music playing faintly. A booming voice demanded, "And why are you in my lair, little man?" Lock's response was a simple yet very loud, "Uh, you guys?"

Shock and Barrel just looked at each other for a moment in shock at the change of events. Determined to keep their friend at least somewhat safe, Shock jumped down the tunnel with Barrel following closely behind.

***Let me explain the names. Lakin Sweet, Samantha Snyder, and Brayden Walker are actually people I know. As for Jack's last name? I was trying to think of something decent that started with an S. I considered my last name (Yeah, it starts with S) but I veered away from that. Then, Sweeney Todd popped into my head and I had to go with that. Anyways, be sure to leave a review on the way out and I'll see you all in the next one! Bye!