Halloween Game the Sixth
On October 31, 2005, a group of kids (none more than
15 years old) met at Archie Hoosendouffer’s house to play video
games. Archie was your stereotypical snobby, rich kid (‘cause his
dad, whom he hadn’t seen since August, owned a dealership), and the
ragtag group of friends he had collected were:
Steven Anderson, 15, a nerdy
science student with a love for video games (played by John)
Al, 15, a kid from the streets
with a heart of gold and sticky fingers (Will)
Tommy Hogie, 12, a reincarnation
of Dennis the Menace, complete with dog whistle (Paul)
And a creepy kid with a lighter
(played by Scott)
Everything was going well until Archie whipped out
an old black NES cassette with no label, saying, “This creepy old guy
at the rental store said this one was the ultimate thriller
game.” As soon as he popped it in, the room went dark, and the
next thing the kids knew, they were in the middle of a deserted
two-lane highway nearby a tall green highway sign, featuring several
holes from a shotgun, that read, “Welcome to Halloweentowne.”
Reactions were mixed. Some wanted to walk
toward the distant lights of town, others to stay put, and at least two
to beat up Archie for getting them into this mess. Archie swears,
‘cause he thinks it makes him look cool, and eventually they decide to
head toward the lights.
After a few minutes of walking, headlights appeared
coming out of town. It came closer, and then flashed lights on
the roof, revealing it to be an out of date police car. Al ran
into the woods away from the police (as one learns in the streets,
apparently), Scott hid in the ditch, while the rest stayed on the
road. The car stopped, and a past-middle-aged policeman stuck his
head out the window. “What’re you boys doing out here in the
middle of the night?”
Steven explained that they just suddenly appeared,
the cop mumbled something and offered a ride back to town. Tommy,
Steven, and Archie decide to take it. Archie demands the front
seat, leaving Steven and Tommy in the back with the icky
plastic-covered seats.
“We’ll head back in a bit,” the cop told them,
“first I got to look into something. Old man Johnson called in
about weird noises coming from Old Mill Road. You boys can stay
in the car.”
“You should take us back now,” Archie replied,
“because my dad owns a dealership.”
The cop ignored him and turned up the radio, which
was playing country music.
“This song sucks,” Archie said.
The cop replied, “Yeah, well, so do you.”
(Thus winning a coolness point with Paul.)
As the car drove down the road past a clearing with
a bonfire and blaring gothy music (“Bunch of no-good teens,” as the
policeman says), Al came upon his own discovery in the woods. He
is attacked by a were-puma, which nearly bites his head off at the
temple. Fortunately, Scott heard his shouts, attacked from behind
with his pocket knife, and the two are able to fight it off, sending it
scampering back into the woods with a wounded flank, back leg, and
eye. Al, meanwhile, bandaged up his head as best he could with
his bandana and other scraps.
Things in the cop car went better for a while, till
something hit the windshield, leaving a big green smear. After
using the wipers, the cop turned off the highway onto a dirty road with
a creaking wooden bridge and an old, half-rotten windmill with broken
sails that seemed to move only when one was not looking.
“Wait here,” the cop said, stopping the car in front
of the windmill. The three boys complied, as the cop stepped out,
grabbed his big flashlight, and approached the dusty mill.
Shoving the door aside with a grinding “shwff”, he stepped
inside. Things were quiet for a moment, and then came a terrible,
guttural groan. The cop’s scream followed, along with
gunshots. After the boys exchanged worried glances, they turned
back to see the cop staggering out of the mill, missing one of his arms.
A monstrous scarecrow followed, appearing from the
shadows into the beams from the car’s headlights. He stood seven
feet tall, with huge, wicker arms and oversized hands made of foul
twigs. Dirty hay popped through the broken seams in his rags and
moldy leather. His painted face seemed smeared on the sackcloth,
forming an evil sneer. The scarecrow caught the cop in a massive
hand and then descended onto him, tearing out the man’s flesh as if it
were hay.
(It was here that Paul failed his “don’t wet pants”
roll.)
“Get us out of here!” Tommy screamed at Archie, who
was frozen. Steven tried the doors, but, as with most police
cars, there is no exit from inside the back seat. After some more
screams, Archie dove into the driver’s seat and slammed the car into
gear.
And promptly crashed directly into the scarecrow
with a loud thump following by the whirring of tires that were now
lifted into the air. Fortunately, the crash popped one of the
doors open in the back, and Steven and Tommy fled the car.
Running as quickly as their adolescent legs could carry them, they
headed across the bridge and back to the main road, peeking back only
to see Archie screaming and the scarecrow tearing the hood off the
front of the car from underneath.
Finally, the scarecrow shifted enough so the tires
met the ground, and the car was freed. Archie drove away in a
panic, fleeing down the road, and leaving Tommy and Steven
behind. With nothing else to do, the two jog down the road after
him.
Al and Scott, meanwhile, spend their time setting
fire to the forest. After a good fire builds, they head back to
the road see a beaten up cop car go screaming toward town. Not
long afterward, they meet Tommy and Steven, and the four head toward
the lights of Halloweentowne.
After a mile or so of walking, headlights appear
coming from town. The boys try to hide, but the driver seemed to
spot Tommy. The car (which seems to be a modified armored bank
truck) slowed down, stopped, and then reversed so the driver is
parallel with Tommy. A man with scraggly hair and a grizzled
beard and wearing an overshirt and an old band t-shirt, asked, “Hey,
did you just appear here?”
Tommy said he did, and the man shouted, “Then get in
the truck, quick!”
As if he had never seen an afterschool special,
Tommy hurriedly jumped into the truck with the mysterious
stranger. At least he made no mention of his three friends still
hiding in the ditch. The man sped away toward town, while the
three waited till he was gone to walk again.
It was not long after the disappearance of Tommy
that a third set of headlights appeared, this one coming from outside
of town. They belonged to a large, shiny new Ford with huge
floodlights on top of the cab. The truck whizzed past them, its
brakes squealed, and it spun around to a stop.
Then, with Al’s keen street-ears, he heard the
“thwip” of a silenced gun and the crack of a bullet against wood in the
trees just beyond them. The three screeched and scattered, hiding
among the trees.
“Hey, lemme go after ‘em!” a hickish voice called
from the truck.
“Nah, it’ll take too long,” another voice
replied. “Come on, let’s head into town. There’s plenty of
people to catch up to our daddies’ record.”
With that, the truck sped away, and the three crept
out of the woods, shaken, but not stirred.
Tommy, meanwhile, was having a better time. As
Greg Weiss drove to his house, he explained the rules and monsters of
Halloweentowne, and why the boy was suddenly trapped in this crazy,
evil world. They got back to Greg’s house/compound and found a
gremlin pop up from under the hood. Greg shot at it, pinning it
under the car, and Tommy succeeded in beating it with a fire
extinguisher.
“Nice job,” Greg told Tommy. “We’ll get you a
change of clothes and suited up, then I’ll drive you through town to
find your monster.” He sighed and added, “But we’ll need to make
a stop at the bank.”
While Tommy was getting a nine-millimeter for the
first time, the other three at last came into Raven Oaks, the first
housing addition on the outskirts of Halloweentowne. Kids were
out with their parents, merrily going trick-or-treating. The
kids, meanwhile, were looking for something to steal. (Al’s heart
of gold had become a heart of stone from the incident with the
were-puma.)
Just as they came upon a man and his Lexis SUV that
had let his fairy princess daughter out to get some candy, a strange
buzzing began at the end of the street. The buzzes gave way to
screams as people tried to flee the Swarm of flesh-eating flies.
Al jumped into action, throwing the door to the car open and demanding
to the driver with his knife, “Your car or your life!”
The man fled his car, and the three piled in,
driving away and leaving the poor trick-or-treaters behind to their
flesh-eating doom. (It wasn’t very nice.) But, anyway, they
drove around aimlessly for a while, seeing strange glints flying in the
patchy clouds or in the light of the full moon, till they came to the
Halloweentowne Mall, where there was a small carnival going on in the
parking lot. Seeing the sign for Bob’s Outdoor Supplies, the
three decided to go get themselves some bigger weaponry.
Al, taking a note from the Blues Brothers, drove
directly into the mall, whipping around sunglasses stands and tossing
people out of their way till they came to a halt in front of
Bob’s. Al and Scott left the car, and Steven stayed inside to
sleep (which, after seeing a man ripped to shreds by a living
scarecrow, being shot at, and participating in grand theft auto, is
exactly what I would do… ?!?!). They barely made it inside the
store before mall security and Bob (dressed in a hunter’s uniform)
descended upon them and arrested them. Steven went more
peaceably, asking a Pakistani officer if he could call his parents to
get a ride home.
Al and Scott were frisked of their lighters and
knives and thrown into the detention cell. The rest of the
security team was called off for some kind of disturbance in the food
court, leaving the Pakistani guard and Steven trying to get an outside
line, though the phones seemed broken.
With the guard’s back to the detention room, Al and
Scott suddenly found black ooze dripping out of the air ducts. It
sizzled against anything organic, almost as if it were digesting it on
the spot. Al and Scott started banging against the sound-proof
glass till Steven finally alerted the guard.
“Oh my goodness!” the guard shouted. He rushed
with the keys, let the others out, and then suddenly found himself
locked inside thanks to Al’s quick shove. Screams followed as the
guard (only trying to do his job and help some ruffians) was eaten.
The three broke the lock on the locker holding the
guns to find themselves some weapons. As they worked, the ooze
then began to squeeze its way through the tiny holes in the door, and
the three hurried out into the hallway leading to the rest of the mall.
After a few steps, they found themselves in the food
court, where bodies lay scattered and tables overturned. Two
figures dressed in the best in civilian body armor, hunter’s flannel,
boots, upturned infrared goggles, and cowboy hats and wielding massive
rifles with silencers stand on top of a decorative fountain, shooting
bullets everywhere. Their gaze immediately locked on the three
boys.
Though they tried to fight back, the boys are
outgunned, and Al and Steven were shot down (with Al “bravely” using
Steven as a body shield). Scott ran away, and the two took up
pursuit.
“Get ‘im!” the taller one called.
Scott rushed toward the stolen SUV till he
remembered Al had the keys. Instead, he ran past a confused Bob
(who had only moments till he himself met the serial killer hicks) and
out into the deserted carnival parking lot. After hurrying past a
few rides looking for a place to hide, he dashed into an old haunted
house ride called “Tunnel of Terror.”
Scott rushed past a few terribly artificial cobwebs
and listened to a replay track of howls till he came to the first
life-sized diorama. It was of an old haunted house with a creepy
hag mannequin and fluttering paper bats blown by ill-hidden fans.
Raising his gun and walking quietly, Scott crept toward the mannequin
to ensure it was not moving. As he came close, however, it leaped
to life as a monstrous old woman who charged him with . And then,
it all went black for Scott.
All this time, Greg and Tommy had gotten their gear
together and headed out in Greg’s truck to do an errand (well, rob a
bank to supply Greg with enough money to buy black market weapons to
fight monsters next year). Greg drove expertly, dodging
werewolves and mummies till he came to Halloweentowne First National
Bank, which, of course, was next door to the Halloweentowne Blood Bank
Depository.
“It’s all right,” Greg mumbled to Tommy. “It’s
all federally insured, and the money would have been used to pay
national guard to fight monsters anyway. I’m just cutting out the
middle man.”
Tommy agreed, and the two stepped out of the
car. Just after Greg smashed the door open, a ‘40s Lincoln with
suicide doors squealed to a stop outside the blood bank.
Gangsters in fedoras and long coats stomped out and charged into the
depository. One paused long enough to say, “Yous didn’t see
nothin’.”
As they disappeared into the building, Greg and
Tommy entered the shadowy bank. The alarm had gone off, but Greg
assured Tommy that no cops would come this late in the evening.
As Tommy stood guard, Greg hurried into the broken vault, emptying the
money bin but not touching the personal strong boxes.
In the shadows several pairs of bright yellow Cats’
Eyes began staring at Tommy and purring. Ethereal voices called
to him, telling him to step into the darkness. After a moment of
temptation, Tommy fired into the shadow, and the eyes disappeared.
“What was that?” Greg asked. Tommy explained,
and the elder robber said, “Ah, good call.”
They rushed out to the street again, only to find
the four gangsters standing in a row with their hands in their coat
pockets. One stepped forward and said, “In exchange for our
silence, we think we should be privileged to a certain percentage of
your haul.”
Greg and Tommy froze.
“Something like, ninety percent?”
“Look, I really don’t want to start any trouble,”
Greg said. He motioned for Tommy to move to the other side of the
truck. “I got a kid here and—”
The first vampire leaped toward him, hissing a
vampiric battle cry. Reacting with well honed reflexes, Greg
splashes him with a water balloon. Holy water balloon, that is,
which left the vampire a screaming puddle.
Tommy let a shot go, nicking one of the
vampires. Greg splashed another with a water balloon, and then
staked a third as Tommy keeps them pinned with bullets. The last
one, heavily wounded with holy water, limped back to the car and
fled. Greg and Tommy exchanged nods, and they hurried back to
Greg’s house.
It was about this time that Scott awoke, finding
himself strapped to a table next to a corpse. After gasping, he
turned to see the old crone and a limping mad scientist standing next
to some cheesy-looking Jacob’s ladders and plasma balls. Scott
broke the half-rotten leather straps easily enough, and he ducked out
of the diorama as quickly as he could. The two chased after him.
“No!” the scientist bellowed. “We have to
complete the life-transfer .”
During a Scooby-Doo-esque montage of running through
a cheesy vampire’s castle with a spring jumping out of a broken casket,
Scott found himself in the last , where a mummy covered by dusty wraps
was straining against a chain around its neck.
It moaned as it saw Scott, pulled, and the rusty chain broke
free. Now he ran out of the ride, into the dark parking lot,
pursued by three grizzled carnival monsters.
It was then that he met a tall, sallow man with
scraggly black hair, wearing a black trench coat and a black hat, with
his face turned toward the ground. He looked up at Scott, showing
that his sockets were covered with skin as if no eye had ever been
there. Scott reacted instantly, running away till he came upon a
familiar-looking truck.
The truck belonged to the hicks who were still
shooting up the mall, and Scott decided for some revenge or
something. He shot open the gas tank and lit the fuel, blowing up
the truck. With a triumphant nod at the blaze, he hurried toward
the street.
It was not long before a terribly beaten up police car driven by a
frightened-looking young man appeared. Scott flagged Archie down
and clambered into the car.
“I’ve figured out what to do,” Archie told him as
they sped toward the outskirts. “I’m just going to drive out of
here. We’ll find my dad, who owns a dealership, and we’ll sue
this whole place!”
Archie ignored him, and they drove out of the west
side of town, into a wide open plain. Everything was going well
till the ghostly horde of Civil War soldiers opened fire on them.
Scott was hit in the shoulder by an invisible musket ball, making his
arm go numb.
“Maybe we should turn around,” Scott suggested.
“No!” Archie screamed. “I’m never going to
stop till we find my dad and his dealer—” It was then that an
unseen giant hand grabbed Archie and dragged him away into the darkness.
Scott leaped over into the now-empty driver’s seat
and turned the car around under a hail of ghostly gunfire. The
tires were all quickly punctured, which caused Scott to announce,
“Well, I can drive on rims!”
And drive he did, just as Greg was driving till he
and Tommy returned safely back to his house. The safety did not
last long, however, as a flying, ethereal galleon appeared in the sky
and ghost pirates attacked. The two fled, driving away as the
galleon caught up after them with glowing, tattered sails and skeletons
with peg legs and cutlasses leaped onto the top of the truck. At
last Greg drove through the fence surrounding the Halloweentowne
Buddhist Temple, and the pirates were driven away by the sounds of
monkish chanting.
About this time, a beat up police car appeared and
crashed similarly. Scott burst forth triumphant, glad to be
reunited with Tommy. Greg is shocked to find out that there were
others Tommy did not mention, but he lets it slide. Unfortunately
for the others, however, who did not survive even though Greg could
have looked for them.
As Scott told them of his adventures, Greg stopped
him at the hicks in the mall. Using his awesome Halloween powers,
Greg puts two and two together. “There were two hicks long ago
who did the same thing. If I didn’t know any better, and I don’t,
.”
“So, we need to go kill them,” Tommy said firmly.
“Well, the truck’s banged up, probably broke an
axel,” Greg said. “And we can’t take your car. Maybe the
monks will lend us something.”
After a few minutes, the three burst forth armed
with leftovers from the truck (grenades and Scott gets a rifle and
such) driving in the monks’ VW bus (nicknamed the Monk Mobile, the
Meditation Machine, or the Buddha Bus, whichever you like). Greg
drove them through town, and they arrived back at the wreckage of the
mall. After a brief scan, they drove through the hole left by Al
and into the mall itself.
It is not long before they find Frankie and Jed,
Jr., walking amidst their trophies outside a big clothing store.
A firefight ensued, with Scott nailing Jed, Jr., just before Frankie
hit him in the other shoulder. Scott finally passed out from
blood loss and exhaustion, leaving young Tommy to finish the job.
Grenades are thrown as Greg drives in awkward circles, till at last a
lucky shot blows Frankie from behind a check-out stand.
Greg stopped the bus, and Tommy rushed toward the
wounded, murderous hick. Frankie’s hat was blown off, revealing
her to be Francine, not Francis. Apparently it is not only males
who become killers fascinated with racking up a new record. She
strained for her gun while most of her limbs were broken and
bleeding. Finally Tommy stood over her and the two stared at one
another.
“I’m not wrong, ya know,” Frankie told the
boy. “People need killin’. It’s like thinnin’ the
herds. The survivors are the strongest ones…” and so forth and so
on.
Tommy, however, smashed her face in with the butt of
his rifle. He just kept pounding and pounding till at last he
found himself back in the real world, standing next to a bleeding,
comatose Scott.
The two were never quite the same again.
Tommy, with his newfound bloodlust, joined the Marines and served
valiantly till he was forced to retire. Scott, meanwhile, became
a horror screenwriter (“where ever does he get his ideas?” they ask),
but never fully regained the use of his arm wounded by a ghostly musket
ball. And neither of them ever knew what became of the mysterious
man called Greg still left behind in Halloweentowne.