Sooo... I did drop the ball on this last year. Time, circumstance and I just haven't been the best of friends, but I'm working on it. For those of you who have been following the story since I first posted it, the story is complete and I'm getting it up as fast as I can. Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy the way things pan out.

Chapter 7: Trick Or Threat?

A little boy dressed as a purple dinosaur gasped when he saw his reflection, the dinosaur hood he wore pressed wide with its toothy grin protruding, almost as if it were reaching out of the mirror. He darted behind his mother's legs and peered back at the mirror around them, only to see his head being pulled toward the ceiling. The woman in a white dress with frayed edges and hair pulled up in a high bun chuckled as she hoisted him onto her hip, before gently pulling back the hood of the costume.

"See that my little Dino, it's just you. It's a special mirror that makes your face look like that." The boy blinked and reached out to touch his stretched face in the mirror. Two more reflections joined them as a man wearing a long, loose-fitting orange dress-like outfit with black spots accompanied by a ragged, blue tie, and a 10-year-old girl wearing a better-fitting green dress with similar spots over black leggings while her hair was tied up with a bone running through it, joined them.

The family laughed as they made funny faces at each other in the mirror. The little boy squealed and clapped his hands. Once more reaching out to tap his own wobbly face. The lights flickered and he pulled back and turned into his mother, one of his hands clutching the ring of white stones she wore around her neck. The man slid an arm around the little girl's shoulder and tucked her closer to him as he looked around.

"It's okay kids, it's probably just part of the show," their mother soothed as her husband nodded. The lights flickered once again before turning off entirely, leaving the room in darkness. They stopped moving and huddled together. A soft giggle echoed through the space before the lights flicked back on. The parents shared a look as the little girl wandered back to a mirror. She stared at her reflection, this time seeing just herself, like she would at a mirror at home, until her face grew paler and more gaunt, the eyes hollowing out as the skin started to pull away, leaving behind a skeletal form.

"Ahhhh!"

Wes followed Reece who was speedwalking toward the Hall of Mirrors talking rapidly about all the things that were going wrong.

"Reece, slow down, I can barely keep up with what you're saying," Wes called only to have the manager turn on him with eyes wide and mouth set in a stern expression. "Welcome to my world. I'm going crazy trying to keep up with this madness. Are you sure you didn't set this thing up on a burial ground or something? Because other than being haunted I have no explanations for what's going on."

"Calm down. We will figure this out. I promise you this isn't a burial ground and no spirits have been angered, at least I don't think they have."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"That's…"

The sound of hurried footsteps caught their attention as a family of four raced out of the Hall of Mirrors. Their eyes were wide and faces pale. They rushed past them, barely paying any attention. "Don't go in there!" the man called out as he pulled the rest of his family along.

"Still think it isn't haunted?"

Wes narrowed his eyes at him and stalked up the path and into the Hall of Mirrors. The lights were bright and bounced off the mirrors that morphed his reflection into increasingly hilarious avatars. He walked down a row of mirrors but nothing seemed to be out of place. At the turning he whirled around to face Reece, who was now standing by the door, holding his arms out.

"There's nothing wrong."

"Tell that to the people that just ran for their lives."

"Maybe they got spooked by their own reflections."

Reece raised an eyebrow but Wes just shrugged. "It's Halloween Reece, people get weird."

The sharp creak and ominous crinkle of glass fracturing reverberated through the narrow space, the sound slicing through the stillness. Wes froze, his body tensing as he caught sight of Reece, who stood rigid, his gaze locked on something just behind Wes. The colour drained from Reece's face, his skin going pale as a sheet, and Wes felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. Slowly, almost unwillingly, he turned. His eyes widened as they fell on the mirror in front of him, now webbed with jagged cracks, as if someone had swung a hammer straight into the glass. The fractures spiraled outward like a spider's web, glinting ominously in the dim light. Wes took a slow step backward, his breath shallow, his gaze never leaving the mirror. His heart pounded in his chest.

He retreated further, but in an instant, all the mirrors lining the narrow corridor shattered in unison. The violent chorus of breaking glass echoed around them as sharp shards rained down, tinkling like broken wind chimes against the floor. Wes froze, eyes wide with terror, the glimmer of countless fractured reflections surrounding him, distorting the world in a thousand shattered pieces.

"Mr. Collins? Maybe you should get out of there?"

Wes gulped and slowly backed up towards the door. He just barely heard a giggle as the shards around him began vibrating. Like the ocean pulling away from the shore, the shards gravitated towards the end of the path, rising into the air and arching over like a wave, pointed edges facing him before it pushed forward. Wes turned and ran. He shoved Reece out of the way and slammed the door before he lost his footing and stumbled to the ground as he heard the distinct thud of the shards hitting the door.

Breathing heavily he turned to Reece. "So? Shut it down? Hall of Mirrors is a little cringe anyways, right?"

"Sure but…"

"Grrrowrrrrr"

"What was that?"

They turned to find a tiger circling the path ahead, pawing at the ground as a boy in full white body paint watched in horror before his body contorted and his scream turned into a loud bray as he turned into a zebra. The zebra shook its head as it stumbled around, almost drunkenly. When it seemingly found its bearings it noticed the tiger and took off. The tiger, seemingly slower on the uptake sniffed the air and turned in the same direction, stalking forward.

"Yo… yo… you saw that right? That guy just turned into a zebra. And I'm pretty sure we didn't have any tigers on site before."

Wes stared after the animals as he pushed himself off his feet. "Looks like the other shoe dropped," he mumbled to himself before turning to Reece. "Okay. That's it. We're shutting down. Get as many people as you can and evacuate everyone. I'm calling reinforcements."

He fished out his phone and barely registered the missed call from Eric when a cloud of bats swooped past them and another volunteer, hands over his head, ran up to them revealing that there was a man coughing up blood by the candy corn stand.

Wes turned to Reece. "Get everyone out now. Whoever we can't help stays until I can figure this out, but everyone else needs to be evacuated. Go!"

He took off running in the direction the volunteer came from, his fingers sweeping over his phone as he dialled Eric.

"Come on Wes, pick up," Eric mumbled into his phone, as Taylor, Alyssa, Cole and he followed the bats, watching more of them fly off the twine that held their once paper selves up and join the growing cloud in the sky. Their attention was immediately drawn to a large crowd converging around something or someone. Eric looked over at Taylor who nodded and led the other toward it. They pushed through with Eric holding up his ID to convince people to move and found Jen and the others, standing by as the medics strapped a groaning man to a stretcher.

"Jen!" Eric called out. "What's going on?"

She nodded at the medics who told her they would meet the ambulance at the entrance and wheeled the stretcher away, before turning back to her friends.

"Is that guy going to be okay?" asked Cole

"I don't know," she said, rubbing the back of her neck. "As for what happened, one minute he was fine enjoying his candy corn the next he was on the ground coughing up blood and a razor blade."

"A razor blade?"

Jen looked over by the stand where Andros was talking to the man behind it, his complexion pale and eyes focused on where the victim was previously lying on the ground. Eric nodded and gently pressed her shoulder as he joined Andros.

"Are you okay?" Taylor asked Jen, as Ashely joined them as well. There were faint lines visible on the brunette's brow and her eyes seemed unfocused.

"I'm fine. We were just waiting for Andros when it happened."

Ashley gasped and her eye widened for a moment, "That could have happened to Andros," she whispered. Alyssa stepped forward and took her hand, giving it a small squeeze as she reminded her that he was fine.

Jen pulled out a wad of tissue from the pocket of her overcoat and showed Taylor a double-edged razor blade splattered with blood. "This was what he coughed out. I told the 911 dispatcher I would hand it off to the Guardians and that they would look into it. I didn't want the police getting involved."

"A razor blade." Taylor repeated as Jen tucked it away. "That's not something that falls into a bag of candy by accident." She walked over to the fallen bag and picked it up, ignoring the pieces of candy corn scattered on the ground. Clutching the neck of the clear bag she tapped it against the palm of her free hand and watched as the remaining candy jostled around. "It should also have been pretty easy to notice in the bag. Unless he was really distracted and shoving handfuls in his mouth."

"He wasn't," Andros offered as he joined them while Eric walked over to disperse the crowd. "I was right next to him, he just tossed a couple into this mouth. There's no way he ate it by accident. And I don't think that guy is involved either," he said, pointing to the vendor who was now sitting on a stool as a volunteer spoke to him. "He's more shaken up than anyone else."

"So you're saying he didn't intentionally or accidentally put the blade in his mouth?" Ashley asked as she tugged on the oversized tan jacket she wore over her pale yellow dress.

"That doesn't make sense," Cole piped up.

"About as much sense as paper bats coming to life," Eric grunted as he walked up to them, phone in hand. "Wes is coming to us, we're apparently on evacuation duty."

"Evac…"

Eric quirked his eyebrows as he watched the rest of his friends quickly turning their heads around, all of them scanning the area around them.

"Did you guys hear that?" asked Taylor

"Hear wha…"

Flames shot out of the many Jack-O'-Lanterns scattered around, flaring out into the sky and alighting the air around them with sparks. Screams and yelps mixed in with the roar of the flames as patrons moved away from them. The seven of them backed up against each other, instinctually sliding into a stance. Around them, plastic skeletons that were once artfully arranged in different poses righted their skulls and pulled themselves to their feet, one creaky bone at a time, and lumbered forward.

"Uh… this is all part of the show right?" Cole whispered.

"I don't think so bud."

Around them, the screams got louder and people rushed past them, heading toward the gates. Vendors abandoned their stalls and posts and joined the crowd as volunteers tried to calm them down. The volunteer who was sitting with the candy corn vendor ran up to Jen, holding out his radio. "We're evacuating the carnival, Mr. Collins' orders."

"At least they've got the right idea," said Ashely.

"Guys over here!"

They turned around to see Wes lift a little girl who tripped and hand her to her dad before directing them to the exit. The rest of them weaved through the crowd rushing past them, struggling not to get pulled along.

"What is going on?" Eric asked as he made it through.

"The plan was to have everyone evacuate in an orderly manner, but then that happened." He gestured to the fire-spitting lanterns and skeletons.

"Not what I meant."

The others scrambled though, looking a little disheveled as they tugged on jackets and brushed down pants. Cole had lost his lion ears.

"Hey guys, nice of you to join the party."

"What's going on? Are we being attacked?"

"Don't look at me, the best explanation I've got is that this place is haunted."

"Or someone's idea of a joke," Jen inferred, narrowing her eyes at him.

"If this is a prank, then it's a pretty elaborate one and I'm impressed. Those skeletons are freakin' cool."

"Wes, can you be serious for once," Jen snapped.

He stiffened and pressed his lips together before turning to Eric. "I've got Reece, running evac, but it got out of control. We do need to go check if anyone's stuck somewhere. And I've got a couple of people who turned into animals that I don't know what to do about."

His tone was steady but Eric was well versed in reading Wes and the blue eyes that were normally alight with energy looked weary and dull.

"Someone or something's got to be behind this," said Ashley.

"We find who or what and maybe we can turn things back to normal," said Taylor, throwing a worried glance at Jen.

Near the gates, volunteers lined the entryways and directed people outside, trying to keep them from trampling each other. But as the first wave of people crossed the threshold the gates slammed shut locking into place. The skeletons that were until then ambling about aimlessly now marched with precision, easily skirting around the crowd that flinched and edged away from them. They blocked the gates and circled around the walkway, trapping people within its confines.

"This is ridiculous," a man shouted and stomped up to a skeleton and punched it. The bones fell apart at his touch, crumpling into a heap on the ground. With a smirk, he turned back to the crowd. "They're weak as hell, they can't hurt us. Let's get 'em and then get out of this weirdass place."

The crowd watched with wide eyes and still breaths as two skeletons crept up behind him and slid their bony arms under his shoulders before pulling him away.

"What?... Get off me you bags of bones."

He flailed around and knocked one down, but another took its place, bony fingers piercing into his flesh as they pulled him back further. He kept fighting, thrashing around, but every time he knocked one down, another took its place. In the meantime, the bones of the skeletons that fell shifted, joining together and rising up to form larger skeletal creatures.

A hushed silence fell over the crowd as they collectively took a step back and away, clutching onto each other. The roaring and spitting of flames drew their eyes skyward as the fire shooting into the sky danced and curled into loops and arches as it wrote out,

"Ah ah ah. The night has just begun."

Thanks for reading.

Till next time...