Halloween Game the Eleventh

  On October 31, 1765, Lord Kaskin led his cult into what he hoped would be an eternal sleep.  John, the third Lord Kaskin, age 48 at the time of going into the machine, had a long history of suspicious and barbaric activity.  He had gone to the American colonies in his youth to escape notice after paying off witnesses to what many called a “ritual murder.”  In America, he founded a new estate deep in the woods and continued his occult practices.  Building a fine collection from various sources, he came upon a story from the Native Americans about the practice of eating hearts of warriors defeated in combat to gain their power.  Through his research as well as that of his Oriental manservant/wizard Li Chi and mad doctor Thomas Gatsby, Kaskin devised a machine that, if warriors’ hearts were taken still alive, it would allow them to feast continually on the fighting warriors’ spirit, living eternally, albeit in a sleep-state.  Leaving his estate to his lawyer for safekeeping, Kaskin joined his followers in the deepest dungeon of his mansion on beds around a machine powered by some fifty hearts of captured and murdered Indian warriors.

With Kaskin, sharing his dreams as they lived in dreams on stolen life, were his followers:

Matrice – 24 – Kaskin’s maid, cook, and lover
Li Chi – age unknown – alchemist, wizard, and butler
O’Banion (first name unknown) – 32 – Kaskin’s gun-happy bodyguard, a fiery Irishman (played by Joe)
Elroy Kensington III – 56 – a wealthy businessman, loyal to Kaskin’s cultist ways (played by Preston)
Magnus Silvermane – 60 – wily old groundskeeper (played by Paul)
Thomas Gatsby – 28 – crazed physician experimenting with brain transplanting and poison (played by Josh)

  On October 31, 2010, after some 245 years living in a paradise within their own heads, the machine halts, and the cult awakens with their last vision being that of a withered old man, wrinkled like a mummy and cradling a lazy eye in his right socket.  Stone had fallen from the ceiling onto the machine, destroying the central jar and finally freeing the captured heroic hearts inside.  They struggle to breathe, but their lungs are nothing more than sand.  Their bodies, long atrophied to mere husks, were unlivable, though their souls were free.  Kaskin leads the spirits into the nearest host: the waterworks employee who had mistakenly broken through the ceiling of the dungeon.  They stormed into his body, taking control of his mind and leaving his consciousness, Roger Karlsen, as a weeping half-being in the back.  The cult will be allowed to live for a time in Roger’s body, but playing such a host quickly burns through the life, and they need to go forward to find more bodies.

First, they took account of what they have:  The man wears long pants made of India rubber over his cloth garments, a badge with an incredibly detailed image of his face painted, and a helmet made of some hard, yet smooth and almost malleable substance none of them can recognize.  Even more strangely, a light that produced no heat shown from on top of it.  They are in a tunnel beneath the surface, a plain sewer with numerous metal pipes.  Down the tunnel, they see a ladder leading up, and, for the first time in two and a half centuries, they feel the night air.

The ladder leads to a circular hole in the middle of a street made of pure cement.  Beside it, giving great flashes of light, stands a metal carriage.  Other carriages stand in the street, but no horses are to be found.  Large houses with immaculate gardens stand in rows along the street.  Kaskin’s estate seems to have been broken up among the wealthy with their own small mansions built up.  The cultists push Karlsen’s body to the nearest door and knock.

A black man bearing a bowl with candies wrapped in what seems to be shining wax paper answers.  He looks confused and asks, “May I help you?”

Kaskin speaks, “Good morrow.  We would like to speak to your master.”

The man suddenly seems insulted.  Perhaps he was a freedman?  A very wealthy freedman?  Whatever the case, the spirits jammed into a single body have no time to discern exactly what had become of society in the future.  They knock him down, and O’Banion’s spirit dominates the body.

From further into the house, a female voice calls, “Charles?  Is everything okay?”

Kaskin and the others move in Roger’s body into the house.  A black woman stands in the doorway to an attached kitchen where two black children sit carving a pumpkin.  Dr. Gatsby leaps to possess her (Elroy Kensington refusing to become one with a person of a lesser race).  In her mind, he asks her questions, probing for what year it is and knowledge of this new world.  She struggles, answering questions and asking questions in return, though peacefully enough until Gatsby mentions his syphilis, at which she forces his spirit out of her body.  Free now, she moves toward what looks like an ivory horn sitting on a desk.  She picks it up and presses several numbered buttons upon it.  While she is distracted, Gatsby attempts to possess her again.  The struggle is vicious against the strong-willed woman, but eventually Gatsby manages to gain control.  When he does, he heard a voice inside the horn saying, “Nine one one emergency.  How may I help you?”  Shocked, Gatsby drops the phone and steps away.

From inside the kitchen, a girl calls, “Mom?” Matrice storms the body of the girl, Carla, while Silvermane captures the body of her mentally challenged brother, Bobby.  Carla cries, Charles is unconscious within his body, and the wife struggles against control, but Bobby is very willing to give up control and information, albeit in cryptic wording.  Needing two more bodies, the party goes to the home next door, where they find an elderly couple.  Harold Haskens becomes the unwilling host of Kensington, and Maude is controlled puppet-like by Li Chi.

The cult, now in their temporary bodies burning through the energy of life, have a little time to plot.   Li Chi says that the machine can be easily repaired, provided they could find the new materials of heroic hearts.  They decide that the Chinaman would begin his work while Kaskin and Matrice carried out darker deeds as well as attempting to contact the descendant of Kaskin’s lawyer.  The rest of the cult would go out to explore the New World in hope of finding heroes.  Bobby’s spirit offers up that the greatest heroes of all could be found at a place called “Mixed Comics.”  They ask how to get there, and Bobby replies simply, “Momma drives me!”

In need of directions, O’Banion manages to persuade Charles to give them information found on his “cell phonic” using a spell called “ghoul-gall.”  The magic seemed evil enough, so they allow him to return to the house to retrieve the device.  After a few moments, Charles’ body returns, punching itself in the face and shouting, “Do that again, and I’ll run ya through!”  Charles had attempted to call for help, but O’Banion’s viciousness kept the African man’s spirit all but broken.  Armed with a map that drew itself upon a glass tablet held in the hand, they climb into the Haskens’ horseless carriage.  Gatsby would drive, using knowledge stolen through mental torture from the black man’s wife.

He starts the car, twists knobs attempting to find a button to raise the metal gate that stood behind them, and began a demon’s scream from what the woman would later dub, “the radio.”  Silencing the radio with a kick, Gatsby gives up the search, and goes to wrench the gate open with super-human strength managed by expending lifeforce from the stolen body.  When he returns to the car, he twists a lever into “reverse”, and presses the proper pedal, smashing out the metal gate.  They back into the street, and Gatsby puts the gear into “drive.”  Pressing onto the accelerator, the car leaps forward, jumping over a curve and swinging through the gardens.  Fearful cries rang from the cultists inside.  Finally, Gatsby regains control, and he drives it carefully, never going above the “15” mark on the dials in front of him.

Regaining their senses, the cultists decide they must obtain weapons to subdue the heroes at “Mixed Comics.”  They “ghoul-gall” a search for weapons and conjure directions for a place known as “Al’s Guns.”  Changing paths, they drive to Al’s, which is in a series of shops surrounded by a huge, cemented plot Bobby explains as a car parking area.  They come to Al’s just as a burly, bellied man with a close-cropped beard is at the glass door, switching off a lighted sign reading “Open.”  Going inside, the proprietor, Al, says that they caught him just in time.

They choose weapons, asking Al many questions.  He begins to grow suspicious about them (a black couple, their Down’s Syndrome boy, and an old white man shopping for guns after dark on Halloween?) and finally asks their story.  After some shared glances, the cult decides to explain themselves.  Al stares at them a long while and finally falls to his knees, begging to join their quest for eternal life.  Finding a kindred evil spirit, Silvermane leaves the boy Bobby’s body and takes marginal control of Al.  Meanwhile, Kensington tests shotguns by disintegrating mannequins, prompting Bobby to scream and cry, which causes Charles’ wife to begin to rebel against Gatsby.  Just as he regains control, a man in a torn white shirt and loosened tie, dripping with blood from his crown, bursts inside, out of breath.

“Demons!” he screams.  “You gotta save me from the demons!”

The cultists question him, but all he can say is, “They came out of the sky!”

Deciding to return to their carriage quickly, they pick up Bobby and their weapons and hurry into the parking lot.  The man screams not to be left alone and follows.  Once into the open, the scattered clouds around the full moon part, and horrid creatures on bats’ wings from their shoulders descend with harpy screams.  They catch at the humans, grabbing them with talon-claws and attempting to drag them up into the sky.  Bobby is grabbed, which causes his mother to rebel fully against Gatsby and gain control.  Gatsby flees the body and searches another out before he is stripped away from the physical plane.  He attempts to leap into a demon, where he is met with a horrid mind’s eye of fire and the unquenchable stink of sulfur.  A voice of pure, seductive evil asks, “Why are you in my servant’s body?”

Gatsby attempts to speak with the Devil, but he is driven away by horrifying laughter.  He hurries toward the man in the tie, who is carried off, forcing Gatsby to share the body of Al.  The mother, meanwhile, shoots into the sky, driving several away.  The cultists fight their own demons, with Charles nearly being dragged away (with O’Banion inside), but he finally manages to free himself, though landing awkwardly.  The mother, having lost her child, blames the cultists and shoots at Harold’s body, crippling it.  O’Banion forces Charles to shoot his own wife, cleaving her in two with an illegal AK-47 provided by Al.  Charles goes mad inside the mind.

A feeling of nearby heroes comes over the cult, and they see a van painted blue and green drive hurriedly down the street.  The demons turn and begin to pursue it instead, leaving the battered cult sans Bobby and the man in the tie.  Kensington decides to leave Harold, sharing a body as they search the stores, all filled with clothing, for more hosts.  In the first store, they find a mother and child, who asks what’s going on.  They leave her, deciding they have had enough of babysitting.  In the next store, they find a tattooed young woman smoking burning hemp hiding behind the desk.  Her dazed mind is easily overtaken by Gatsby.  In the final store, they find a young Latin man with a badge reading, “Juan.”  He seems to recognize the tattooed girl and asks, “What’s the party, Sabrina?”

Kensington surges into his body, and Juan feels the overwhelming presence in his mind.  He begs to know what is going on.  Kensington, seeing the crucifix around the man’s neck and wanting to secure his domination, says in as terrifying of a voice as he can muster, “The devil knows your name and finds your soul amusing!”  A warm, wet sensation settles in Juan’s pantaloons, and the man is too terrified to challenge Kensington’s authority.

With fresh bodies, they pile into Al’s Jeep (Al happily driving) and go toward Bobby’s place of heroes.  Along the way, they drive past a multi-headed serpent slithering along the pavement and marvel at what a strange world this has become.

The cultists arrive at Mixed Comics finding its windows blacked out and covered with hastily nailed planks.  A young man on the roof calls down to them, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“We’re searching for heroes,” they explain.

The young man seems impressed.  “Come around back!  There’s a metal door; I’ll let you in!”

They creep through the alley to the back of the hurried stronghold and wait only a moment before a solid metal door opens.  The cult come into a storeroom piled with boxes, led by another young man wielding a round shield painted in stripes of red, white, and blue.  Coming into the front of the building, the man from the roof meets them climbing down a ladder and introduces them to the “comic shop.”  Rather than being a tavern or club of heroes, the place is a library with flimsy, whimsically painted books.  The “heroes” are nothing more than boys, each a man-child with a large brain addled by too many tales and a body half-ignored.  They carry swords, but none of them looks ever used.  A word on one of the boys’ shirts seems to phonetically describe them well:  “nerd.”

“Who are these guys?” one of the nerds demands.

The nerd from the roof, Tom, explains, “They said they’re looking for heroes.  And they’ve got, like, a million guns!”

“Maybe they can come with us!” Dick suggests.

“Survival in numbers,” Harry, something of a chubbert, adds.

The first refuses.  “We only have so many cans of food!  You guys know the zombie invasion plan; we’ve had it since the tenth grade, and we have to follow it.  Once Han gets here with his van, we’re going up to Tom’s dad’s cabin in the woods and hunker down until it’s time to rebuild society.”

It becomes obvious that, in their state, the nerds will be useless for the machine.  Still, there is a possibility that they may become useful.  Clearly, they have plans and are capable of greatness.  The cult, led by O’Banion’s call for bloodlust, spin the boys a tale of not fleeing from the horrors of the night, but conquering them.  When they seem too pure for conquest, the cultists lead them into a plan for destroying all the evil, purifying the town, and becoming great heroes.  The girl Sabrina’s body doesn’t seem to hurt their persuasion.  When asked how they know all these things, the cult tells the nerds that they are time-travelers, and they need their help to fix their machine (not totally untrue).

As they finish, a loud engine roars from outside, and the final nerd “Han”, dressed in a black vest and white tunic, appears.  He hears their tale, dismisses the objections, and decides to “rock.”  The naysayer nerd refuses to budge and prepares to hunker in the store alone with their canned food.  They leave him, marching out the back door and splitting between the van and Jeep, with the nerds bickering who gets to ride with Sabrina.  (Though they do not know it, the nerds made the right choice to leave.  The store was infested with a Spore monster that swiftly began to eat all of the paper, surrounding and consuming the final nerd.)

It should also be noted that Han’s van is painted on one side with planetary views, alien beasts, and spaceships and on the other with fantastic forests, dragons dueling knights, and a wizard. “Sci-fi on the left, fantasy on the right.” “What’s in the middle?” “Pure Han.”

They drive back to Al’s store to arm the nerds.  There, they find flashing blue and red lights with a car marked “Police” standing beside a large wagon labeled “Ambulance.”  Harold’s broken body is being carried away on a wheeled stretcher while the woman they left with her child in a stroller speaks with a blue-uniformed city guard.  Going back to the store now seems impossible as Harold or the woman may recognize them.  Fortunately for the cult, the police car suddenly comes to life and drives away of its own volition, prompting the police to chase after it.  In the chaos, they leave Al’s Jeep and hurry into the store.  Now armed, the nerds seem all the more heroic.

They attempt to go out the back where Al’s Jeep stands.  As they approach it, lizard-like laughter erupts, and Gremlins overcome the vehicle.  Horrified, the cult abandons it and piles into Han’s van to drive in search of adventure.  With enough merit, the nerds will become perfect stock for the machine.  They drive through the town for some time before coming to a “whole” foods market (as if there were half foods in this age?) where screams come from the rooftop.  Investigating, they find silver-robed cultists chanting around a man wearing a green apron on a stake above a wispy, silver fire as if made of moonbeams.  The female cult leader calls upon the Moon goddess to accept the sacrifice and begin the destruction of the evils of technology.

Seeing this as a suitably heroic event, the moon cultists lead the nerds into an attack.  First throwing a layer of grenades, the moon cultists are struck.  Several attempt to flee to a VW Bug, but the nerds cut them off, capturing one.  While the clerk is rescued by a heroic tackle from Han, the cult leader finishes the sacrifice by her own body, conjuring a great silver weasel’s head from the fire.  It snatches and grabs, seriously injuring Han.  Finding that the weasel is powered by the light of the moon, they douse the moon-fueled fire with the Luddite cultists’ robes and bodies, finally blocking out the last of it with the shadows of the VW.

With Han, the greatest hero, in mortal danger, they decide to take him quickly back to the machine to harvest his heart, assuring the nerds it is their doctoring from the time machine.  Silvermane leaves Al’s body, taking over the body of the rescued grocery store clerk, while O’Banion captures the cultist known as Vern the Fern.  Al and O’Banion take Han in the VW back to the subdivision where Kaskin and the others were left.  Meanwhile, the rest go in search of more heroes.  The idea of doctors as great heroes gives them the idea of heading to Halloweentowne General Hospital.

The group heading back to the dungeon run across an emaciated hobo (actually the personification of the monster Greed) asking for money at a stop sign.  They hit him with a flare and drive hurriedly into the night.  When they come to the street, they find additional cars parked around the Haskens’ house, including a police car.  As they go inside, they find a policeman.  He reveals himself as Kaskin, and the cult is much relieved.  A woman dressed in short leather garments with a face painted like a lady of the night sits in front of a mirrored box in the Haskens’ living room, watching and listening to moving figures (which, seen before, Silvermane had suspected of witchcraft… she is, in fact, Matrice’s new body watching television).  Kaskin has them take Han’s barely living body down through the sewers to Li Chi, now in a body of a Chinese food delivery boy, inside the dungeon where he has repaired the machine.  After carrying him down the chain ladder, the cultists cut up Han while alive, capturing his still-beating heart and putting it into a huge new jar labeled “Pickles.”

The others, meanwhile, come to the hospital, finding it very busy (but not overrun by zombies… this time).  Walls of cars surround the entrances where people crashed into one another in desperation to get to the emergency room.  The cultists and their nerdy compatriots move through the cars and into the hospital, finding the entrance guarded by haggard hospital security.  Inside, the room is filled with injured being hastily treated.  Looking for potential heroes, they come across an unshaven doctor (who takes his work too seriously to go with them), a 14-year-old with a butcher knife duct-taped to a hockey stick in a makeshift scythe (he asks Silvermane about his apron, then accepts the explanation of “a long story), and a marine with a bandage (who has attempted to get back in touch with his squad, but decides to go out with the cultists in the off chance of meeting up with his fellow soldiers, who had been fighting a massive atomic robot).  With new allies/prey, the cultists go back into the parking lot, where a Great Bear moves among the cars.  Moving carefully around it, they prepare to attack.  Finally, Tom shoots, hitting the enormous bear in the hindquarters.  It looks back at him and says nonchalantly, “Don’t do things you may regret.”  The bear walks on, and the cultists leave it alone.

Back in Han’s van, they drive on until they come across a man in a ragged suit covered in black feathers.  Several crows sit on his shoulders and one atop his ragged, wide-brimmed hat.  They honk their horn at him and speed up, expecting him to get out of the way.  Instead, he looks up at them with black crow’s eyes and calls, “Feed, my friends!  Feed!”

A cloud of feathers and beaks descend on the van with crows coming from every direction.  They block out the windshield, but it is obvious they strike the man from the loud bump.  He sticks under the van, calling down more curses and encouragement for the crows, who begin beating their way through the windows.  Running the windshield wipers enough to see, Tom drives the van to a gas station, pulling alongside the pumps.  Dick jumps out and starts up the flow of gas into a flame-thrower.  The crows attack him, injuring him despite the beating they take from the fire.  As all seems lost, a feeling of heroism comes over the cult members, and they see the blue and green van that had driven by them before reappear squealing down the road.  The crows relinquish, picking up the Crowmaster by his arms and carrying him in pursuit of the van.  They chase it some time before a huge burst of flame kicks from a back window, scattering the flock.

The cultists can feel the great heroism of a thousand solved mysteries, rescued victims, and avenged memories from the people in the van.  It is going in the direction of Kaskin’s estate, so they take up pursuit, though unfamiliarity with the roads causes them to lag behind.

Meanwhile, the other cultists have been at work.  While Matrice, Kaskin, and Li Chi work in the dungeon, O’Banion works to convert Al fully.  They are interrupted as they feel the van filled with heroes arrive.  Peering through the windows, they watch two dogs and four humans descend into the sewers by the manhole beside the vacant waterworks truck.  When the last disappears, they rush out and charge toward the hole.  At the top is a lanky young man in a green shirt, who looks up at them and shouts, “Zoinks!”  They open fire upon him, and he falls into the darkness below.  They hear the cries of the heroes in the sewer, firing behind them as they run.

Above ground, the others arrive, and the cultists regroup.  Sealing the manhole covers down the street, they move in from two directions.  Al is caught in a firefight, bleeding severely from the gut, and O’Banion meets him.  Al calls upon O’Banion to help him live forever, but O’Banion leaves the greedy would-be evil-doer to die, his poorly spent life quenched.  O’Banion goes to the hole leading into the dungeon, firing his gun at the heroes.  The heroes have jammed themselves into a corner, and a standoff begins where neither can move forward.  Kaskin calls out to the heroes to surrender, but they refuse.  Even though they are surrounded, they have Kaskin at his machine, and, without fresh bodies to steal or hearts to start the machine, all they have to do is wait for the cultists to burn through their life points.  They seem to have researched Kaskin’s project well and determined their body-stealing ways.

The heroes begin to convince the policeman to reject Kaskin’s possession, and finally he does, kicking Kaskin up into a shared body with O’Banion.  The cop stands horribly confused over the dead body of Matrice.  When Li Chi tries to make a run for the chain ladder, a firefight begins, killing Li Chi.  The standoff returns, but they cannot wait as their life energy goes quickly, so O’Banion destroys the ladder, pinning the heroes with the machine, and returns to the surface, where they would meet the rest of the cultists.

Upon arriving back at the subdivision, the cultists had been busy.  They subdued the soldier and the kid, tasering them both and tying them up as spare hosts.  With Dick severely injured, they took him into the Haskens’ house, where Gatsby used Sabrina to seduce Tom into another room.  There, as they kissed awkwardly, he switched bodies, since Tom was most distracted.  Gatsby shot Sabrina, whose life was nearly used up and now stood in a horrified scream at kissing some nerd.  Harry fled into the night, throwing his portly body over the rear fence and disappearing amid Kensington’s volley of shots.  When O’Banion arrived, Kaskin took the body of the kid, and they mounted a second attack.

Going down into the sewer, they look into the hole, where the heroes had escaped by breaking open the entrance tunnel sealed some 245 years before.  All that was left in the room was a black duffel bag sitting beside the machine.  Silvermane suspects trouble, jumping into the room and grabbing the bag to get it away from the machine.  The bag is filled with explosives set upon a motion trigger, and the resulting explosion consumes Silvermane and utterly destroys the machine.  The dungeon is filled with rubble, unusable.

The cultists retreat out of the sewer and work to determine where the ancient corridor leading from the dungeon would be today.  They loot the blue and green van of valuable weapons, and then blow it up.  Gatsby climbs atop a house’s roof with a sniper rifle, looking for potential escapes from the heroes.  Without the machine, their hearts are unusable, and so now is the time to merely kill the heroes in vengeance.  He finally sees shadows moving along the curtains in a nearby house (where they had climbed up through the wine cellar… leaving behind the green-shirted one, who had bled to death) and shoots.  A shadow spasms and falls, and a cry of “Daph!  Nooo!” rings out. 

Shots fire back, and a standstill begins again as a cold fog rolls among them.  Kensington takes one of the discarded carriages from in front of the Haskens’ house, loads it with rags and flammable liquids, and drives it into the front window on fire, leaping into the body of the soldier at the last moment and allowing Juan to explode.  With the house on fire, the heroes are forced to move, finally escaping out a side window.  Gatsby fires at them, and they return shots.  The younger dog shouts, “Puppy Power!” and tears through the yard, swinging on a rope up onto the roof, where he tackles Gatsby and begins to maul him.  Gatsby fights back, eventually catching the dog by the throat and squeezing with inhuman strength (converting the energy of his spirit) until its head pops off.

The older dog, a Great Dane, sees the slaying and gives a horrid howl.  Gatsby attempts to flee, and the dog chases after him over the rooftop.  He pins him in the next street, tearing his head off.  With the last of his life-force, Gatsby manages to jump to share the body of Kaskin.  O’Banion runs the dog over with a van and then returns to the fight on foot, followed by the beleaguered Kaskin.

The cultists pursue the fleeing heroes, with Kaskin shooting the policeman while Kensington drops a young woman in an orange sweater with a bullet to the shoulder.  O’Banion flips over the woman to check if she is fully dead.  Her glasses covered in blood, she holds up a fist with wires and says, “Jinkies.  Dead man switch.”  Releasing her thumb, she ignites explosives just as O’Banion jumps clear, using life force to propel his body, barely saving himself but at great cost.

By now the cold fog that has rolled in becomes a heavy, icy haze.  Kensington chases after the surviving member of the heroes, a blonde man, presumably the leader.  Firing into the air to cover himself, he attempts escape over a fence behind a backyard brick oven, but Kensington tackles him.  They grapple but prove evenly matched between the hero’s muscle and that of the soldier’s body Kensington has taken.  At last Kensington attempts to jump his spirit into the man’s body to overtake it, but he is met with a great white light.  The internal heroism of the man, this builder of traps, hatcher of plans, and leader of a gang that has solved thousand mysteries, is so great that his spirit is not only rejected but broken and dissolved.

The combat of spirits distracts the blonde man, however, and enables O’Banion to lob an armed grenade at him.  The man grabs it, readies to throw it back, but pauses as he looks at it and sighs.  Finally broken, he merely watches the grenade until it explodes, killing the last of the Heroes of 2010.

Kaskin and Gatsby in the kid’s body gather with O’Banion in Vern the Fern’s body as the icy haze turns to a dense ice storm.  As they begin to freeze, a shadow walks toward them as if in a vision.  It is the wrinkled old man they had seen awakening from their eternal slumber, his lazy eye rolling as he applauds them.

He says, “It has been some time since the Monsters have overcome the Heroes.  Your reward is to stay in Halloweentowne, finding new prey and next year continuing the game, this everlasting competition between Good and Evil.  But, for now, sleep.”

The man disappears amid the white, and the two bodies are frozen solid as the monstrous Ice Storm consumes them.  Inside, however, the spirits still bear the spells of Li Chi, living on in hibernation and feeding on the heroism within.  In the morning, Halloweentowne will be reborn as survivors pick up remaining pieces.  FEMA workers will find the bodies still frozen and turn them over to the city morgue, where they will be thawed and release the three spirits of the Body-Thief Cult to begin anew their quest for eternal life… by stealing it.

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