“Can I use your costume?”
“Promise me that you’ll hold onto Halloween. Promise me.”
“...okay.”
- Moose and Pepper Ann, Pepper Ann
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Season 1, Interautumnal Interlude I - "Halloween Happenings 1"
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“Say the line!” Audrey chanted, sitting on a stool at her apartment. “Say the line!”
Isaac nodded. He tugged a little at the collars of his blue suit and popped a candy cigarette in his mouth.
“Oh well,” he said with the coolest smile and voice he could muster. “Whatever happens, happens.”
Audrey clapped in delight, then pointed a finger gun at him. “Bang!”
Isaac laughed. “I was made for this role. I even sound like him.”
Audrey cocked her head. "...eh."
Isaac shrugged, then made some kung fu moves with his hands. “I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive.”
The look on Audrey's face didn’t change. “...yeah, maybe you oughta quit while you’re ahead.”
Isaac rolled his eyes while Audrey playfully stuck her tongue out at him. He grabbed a handful of candy out of a bowl on Audrey’s coffee table and smiled as he looked around the room.
“You did a great job decorating,” Isaac complimented. And indeed, Audrey’s apartment had that Halloween feeling; she taped all sorts of paper jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, zombies, and witches to her walls, and she had an actual jack-o-lantern on her counter, it’s face looking rather goofy, but it was nice all the same.
“Thanks!” Audrey exclaimed, holding up her fingers to reveal bandages on several of them. “You figure paper cuts would heal faster, but here we are!”
“What a brave man, going down in the line of duty like that.” Isaac looked at the clock on Audrey’s wall. “Where’s Reed? You figure she’d be here by now.”
“She’s probably being up to no good,” Audrey supposed with a giggle. “Halloween is a prime time for nefarious acts of skullduggery and the like! And unless she has a knockout costume, I think we all know who the winner is here!”
Isaac examined Audrey’s costume. “It’s alright.”
“Alright? Just alright?” Audrey rolled her eyes and threw the end of her scarf over her shoulder. “Amelia Earhart is more than just alright!”
“You? I don’t know about that. But I’m sure the real Amelia Earhart was alright,” Isaac told her. He glanced off to the side. “Though, she couldn’t even make it around the whole world...”
“Isaac!” Audrey exclaimed. “I oughta wash your mouth out with soap, saying something like that.”
“Alright, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make fun of someone dying like that.”
“No! You said you weren’t sure if I’m alright!” Audrey put her hands on her hips. “I’m more than alright, I’m Audrey! Audrey as Amelia Earhart! Look at this!” She pointed at her head. “I had Esther get me a real life aviator’s cap thingy from the school. Check it! It even has goggles!”
Audrey giggled to herself as she grabbed the goggles and wrapped them around her eyes. She then puffed the collars of her brown bomber jacket.
Isaac laughed too. “You bought most of the candy here, so I guess can’t go around biting the hand that feeds me.”
Audrey puffed out her chest and nodded proudly.
The doorbell rang, taking them out of their thoughts.
“I’ll get it!” Audrey exclaimed.
“No,” a low voice outside answered. “Isaac has to answer.”
“Why me?” Isaac asked her dryly.
“’Cuz Audrey won’t get it.”
Isaac looked at Audrey and shrugged, then opened the door.
A massive lightshow on the walkway greeted him. A number of greens and blues and reds pulsated in front of him, their colors so bright Isaac almost had to shield his eyes. In the center of them, Isaac raised an eyebrow as he saw Reed twirl around, spinning what looked like a modified Domino Sword in her hands.
As the colors continued, and the spinning sword let out some inspirational music, Reed closed her eyes and spun, stretching her body as if she was being clothed by an external force. Just as the colors and sounds reached a climatic crescendo, Reed struck a pose, extending the Domino Sword towards Isaac.
“...wow,” Isaac simply said.
Her transformation sequence completed, Reed sighed in relief. “I practiced that for two weeks,” she explained. “Making the costume was even more tiring.” She swung the sword, kicking up a sound wave that made her black cloak billow dramatically behind her. “Well, the cape was easy, and I guess the white skirt and belts were easy too...I still got my tights on though, I’m not brave enough for the bare thighs, and I’m basically freezing my balls off out here as it is. But bam, check this out.”
She twirled the Domino Sword around. Isaac looked closely at it and saw there was a bunch of black cardboard taped to it so it looked like a staff. Reed smiled at her own ingenuity. “My very own Bardiche.”
Audrey peered over Isaac’s shoulder. “Oh wow! Who are you supposed to be?”
Reed changed her posture and vocal tone so she looked and sounded much more formal. “Destiny D’Urberville, best friendo of Melody Nonoka, des. Yorosh-ku-shi-gai-shi-mas.” Reed elbowed Isaac gently - as gently as a Reed elbow can be - dropping the act. “See? Look at all the goddamn effort I’ve put into getting into character. I clearly won the contest.”
Isaac leaned suavely against the door frame. “I’m just watching a bad dream I never wake up from.”
Reed and Audrey glanced at each with other cringe-filled looks.
Isaac sighed. “...aw, man.”
Isaac stepped back inside; Reed followed suit and shut the door behind her. Reed took a long look at Audrey’s aviator costume. “Meh.”
Audrey threw her scarf over her shoulder in smug defiance.
“Alright, now that the guest of honor is here,” Reed said, “It's movie time. And trust me, I brought a good one.”
“Anything would be good compared to last year’s,” Audrey supposed cheekily.
Reed eyed her. “What? You thought A Haunting in East Eden wasn’t good?”
Isaac shrugged. “It was alright. When it comes to my favorite slasher films, I’d give it like a...six? Six point two?”
Reed crossed her arms and shook her head arrogantly. “Isaac, Isaac, Isaac...Isaac. Once again, your own actions have demonstrated the superiority of my film tastes. This year was Hibiscus Reed’s turn to choose, and choose she did. Check it out.”
Reed reached into her cloak and pulled out an old looking VHS tape. “Dave said this was the scariest thing he had,” Reed explained. “So scary they banned it in Austria. The Austrian people are notorious for their ability to remain unphased while watching horror films, and yet they banned it all the same.”
Isaac exhaled. “...that can’t be true.”
Isaac and Audrey peered at the VHS set. The cover depicted a sad-looking French woman with an equally sad-looking Frenchman standing on a balcony, with both the Eiffel Tower and a huge crowd of protesters in the background. “Lettres d'amour de Mai 68,” Isaac read aloud.
Reed quickly placed the tape back in her coat. “That’s, a, uh, French romance film I was gonna watch later. Very tragic.” Shen then pulled out another tape.
This new one featured a menacing-looking handyman chasing a number of scared looking teens. “He measures twice, and cuts once,” Isaac read. “Beware the handyman...and don’t look in...The Tool Shed.”
“Dun dun dun,” Audrey added after, laughing.
Isaac looked at Reed dryly. “And you call my taste bad.”
“Because it is,” Reed reminded him. “The Tool Shed has everything. Grainy, gritty cinematography. A slasher villain motivated by a complex relationship with his mother. Gore and screams. And best of all...teen angst!”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Reed slid the actual tape out of the box. “But that’s not even the scariest part. The scariest part – well, outside of its horrific box office numbers – is that this actual VHS tape is haunted.”
“Haunted,” Isaac repeated, his voice full of disbelief.
“It’s been cursed,” Reed said ominously. “Everyone who watches this particular tape dies.”
“What?” Isaac asked.
“They die,” Reed simply repeated. “What’s so hard to understand?”
Isaac pointed to Audrey, who was sniffling intensely and rubbing her eyes.
“Aw, c’mon Audrey,” Reed told her. “Quit acting like a coward.”
Isaac nudged Reed. “Okay, okay,” Reed said. “Look, it’s just a funny thing Dave said to scare me. If it’s actually a killer tape, why would he rent it to me?”
Audrey took a few deep breaths. “Really?”
“Yep,” Reed said. She then rubbed her chin in thought. “Well, he actually refused to rent it to me because it killed whoever watched it, so I had to steal it. Life's funny like that, right?”
Audrey started crying.
Twenty big candy bars later, Audrey settled down. “Alright, I’ve come to realize that because our minds like to wander and think things out, we feel as though we really could die from urban legends, even though rationally, it makes no sense.” She stood proudly. “I’ve overcome my fears!”
Reed pointed at a door. “Nice. Now you can come say Bloody Mary with me in the bathroom.”
“No.”
“...fine.” Reed held out the tape. “Movie time?”
“Movie time!” Isaac and Audrey cheered.
Audrey lit a candle (autumn scented, she might add) and turned the lights off in the room. Isaac inserted the tape Reed gave him and quickly joined the other two on the couch. Everyone snacked on candy as grainy film started playing.
Isaac raised an eyebrow as funky music from the 1970s started playing. On the screen, a handyman and a rather voluptuous blonde woman talked to one another in a kitchen.
“Oh, I bet you’ll do a great job cleaning my pipes,” the woman said. “Only thing is, I don’t have any way to pay, and I can’t ask my husband for money since he’s not home. He won’t be home for a while...”
The handyman looked at her coyly. “Money’s not the only sort of payment I accept-”
Reed slammed her fist on the VHS player’s ejection button. Isaac and Audrey hadn’t even noticed her get up. Reed looked back at them, panting and sweating heavily.
“I must’ve...I must’ve mixed up my handyman tapes,” she said, her face red.
“I liked it!” Audrey exclaimed. “It seemed like there was going to be a really nice romance. I bet the woman was gonna make him lunch.”
Isaac and Reed looked at each other; Reed looked away. “Oh boy...” she mumbled to herself. This time, she inserted the correct tape and took her seat back on the couch, downing candy bars to forget her sorrows.
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“Thank God it’s over,” Sabrina said, sighing in relief.
Clad in his letterman jacket, Brad put his arm around her. “There’s a reason I didn’t want to go to vocational school. Too many tools.”
The two laughed and walked away from the Amityville Lumber Yard.
They heard the sound of a power saw in the distance.
THE END
?
The sudden, ominous music of the end credits woke Reed back up. “Wuh, huh...oh, it’s over. Well, I sure picked out a knockout hit this year, right?”
"You could say that," Isaac answered with a yawn.
Reed shrugged. “Everybody’s a critic. What did you think, Audrey?”
Audrey hugged a pillow close to her chest, shivering intensely.
Reed raised an eyebrow. “Audrey? You alright? The movie wasn’t actually that scary.”
Audrey nodded intensely. “I actually liked the movie. But...we’re gonna die now! Gonna die, gonna die, gonna die!”
Reed rolled her eyes. “Quit your bitching, it was just a dumb story I said to spook you. Here, fine. I’ll turn the lights back on.”
Reed strolled over to the wall and flicked the switch; nothing happened. She narrowed her eyes and flicked it a few more times, yet the room remained under the cover of darkness.
“Huh, that’s odd.”
The three of them felt some sort of weird demonic chanting entering their souls. Reed coughed and hit her chest a few times, then looked around.
“Huh, that’s odd.”
Audrey recoiled in fear when the VHS suddenly shined a ghostly red light on her. Reed looked at it in confusion.
“Huh, that’s odd.”
The VHS player started making all sorts of weird noises, grindy and elongated and filled with a sense of dread. The tape popped out on its own, and then the magnetic tape inside of it exploded outwards, coiling itself into a mesmerizing spiral.
“Oh, goddamnit,” Reed muttered. “Dave charges extra when you return the tape all fucked up.”
The spiral of tape rose in the air, pulsating red light as it spun. It began to assume some sort of humanoid shape.
“Demon! Demon! Krampus!” Audrey cried out. She made the sign of the cross and threw a glass of water at it, but nothing interest happened.
Isaac kicked over the coffee table to give them cover. Since it was a coffee table, it only covered them up to their knees. Audrey looked at Isaac indignantly, who simply shrugged.
A red wave of light washed over the room, forcing the three to cover their eyes. When they could see again, the magnetic shape formed the shape of something almost human, but not quite, bright red lights shining below the spirals of magnetic tape that seemed to pull the three towards it.
“So,” the VHS demon greeted. Its voice was deep, but sounded neutral. “What did you think of my movie?”
Reed raised a finger, ready for a long diatribe, beginning with her disappointment in the cinematography and improper use of lighting. Isaac quickly covered her mouth. “Give us a moment to discuss it,” he said, putting another hand over her mouth when Reed got uppity.
“Take your time,” the VHS demon said, its voice flat and monotone.
The terrible trio scooched away into a corner and put their heads together.
“You know, I’ve never met a demon before, but it seems pretty nice, all things considered,” Audrey told them with a smile.
“It only seems nice,” Isaac corrected her. “Have you guys heard the legend of the Kuchisake-onna?”
“Is this another Japanese thing?” Audrey asked, disappointment rising in her voice. “How come you guys are all about Japanese things so much? Why can’t we have a nice American demon for once? Or a New England one? Salem Slot has a haunted tunnel, and what about the Narragansett organ harvester?”
“Well, VHS tapes originally came from Japan, so it makes sense,” Isaac explained. “You see, the Kuchisake-onna is a Japanese urban legend. She’s a beautiful woman – or so you think – who approaches people in the middle of the night.”
“I think I’ve heard of that,” Reed realized. “She asks you if you think she’s pretty, right?”
Isaac nodded. “If you say no, she kills you. If you say yes, she reveals she’s disfigured and asks again. If you still say yes, she messes you up real bad. If you say no, she kills you.”
Reed didn’t like the sound of that. “How do you stop it?”
“You basically gotta say she looks mediocre or give her money or something,” Isaac remembered. “Really makes you think about it from a cultural standpoint, you know? In the former United States, our answer for urban legend attacks is usually just shooting them, but over there, you gotta – hey, Audrey, wait!”
Audrey approached the VHS demon. “It’ll be alright, Isaac,” Audrey said cheerfully. “I like to assume the best in people. Demon or human, if you show kindness, you’ll get kindness in return!”
Audrey took the VHS demon’s hand-tape-thing. “I thought your movie, in all honesty, was good! I got scared sometimes, I laughed sometimes. I really liked it.”
“Oh, is that so?” The magnetic tape that swirled in the center of its body, where its torso would be, suddenly spun faster and faster, until an opening appeared. Within the opening was something labelled as the movie’s income statement, revealing a budget of ten million and a profit of...
“...yikes,” Audrey said apprehensively.
“Still like my movie?” the VHS demon asked again, its voice sounding distant and shaky.
“...yes!” Audrey confirmed. “People put their heart and soul into it, and that’s worth something, no matter what box office numbers have to say!”
The tape spun faster and faster, spirals appearing all over the demons body, humming, pulsating.
“Audrey, you said yes twice!” Isaac exclaimed. “You’re gonna get messed up real bad!”
Audrey smiled. “I think me and the big guy over here are becoming fast friends-”
The demon reached out its hand and engulfed Audrey’s head within its grasp. Isaac and Reed gasped out of shock as the demon threw Audrey headfirst into a wall. Audrey slid to the ground, leaving a huge crack from the impact.
As she rubbed her head, the demon sprinted unnaturally fast over towards her. She was suddenly in its grasp again; its spirals wound up, and it punted her through her window into the night sky.
“...Jesus,” Reed said, swallowing. She grabbed Bardiche and pointed it at the demon.
“Wait, Reed, don’t attack!” Isaac exclaimed. “It can only go away if we act neutral towards it!”
Reed looked back at him, her eyes ablaze. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Isaac! It’s not because Audrey got smacked like that. It’s because she got smacked like that while still owing me money for the costume competition!”
Reed stepped up to the demon.
“Alright, demon, you asked for it.” Reed raised the Domino Sword. “Bardiche, Cartridge Load! Haken Form!”
From the tip of the Domino Sword, sound waves pulsed out in either direction, forming a horizontal arc of red currents in the shape of a scythe. She pointed it at the demon.
“Plasma Lancer!”
Reed fired off a beam of pure sound from the tip of the Domino Sword. The energy staggered Isaac, forcing him to bring his arms up to shield him from the blast.
The demon was at point-blank range, Isaac told himself as he struggled to see through the light of the blast. That should do him in-
When the light cleared, Isaac saw the demon’s fist had punched through Reed’s stomach, his arm coming clean out through the other end. Reed coughed up blood and dropped Bardiche to the ground.
The demon pushed her forehead backwards and slid its arm out of her; Reed fell and landed on her back. Her eyes looked glazed over and she smiled weakly.
“Reed!” Isaac called out. He knelt next to her.
Reed managed to raise her right hand. She raised a hand towards the ceiling, towards the sky.
"This is how you do the goddamn voice, Isaac."
She made a finger gun.
“Bang.”
Her hand collapsed to the ground.
The camera panned upwards from her, leaving her fate ambiguous.
Isaac gritted his teeth and stood up confidently. Golden energy flared all around him.
For Audrey. For Reed. For the twenty dollars of the costume contest.
He settled himself down, knowing what needed to be done to get his friends back.
“So?” the VHS demon began once again, the spirals where its mouth be forming a mocking smile, or maybe Isaac just imagined it. “What did you think of my movie?”
Isaac resisted a raging flare of energy from within him and breathed deeply.
He looked at the demon square in the eyes, or at least where its eyes would be.
“It was...okay.”
The demon nodded. “Just okay?”
“Just okay.”
The demon shambled around. “The acting?”
“Just okay.”
“The characterization?”
“Just okay.”
Unstable red energy pulsed within the demon. “The props?”
“Just okay.”
“The cinematography?”
“Just okay.”
The demon coughed hoarsely. Its magnetic tape spirals slowly unraveled.
“The dialogue?”
“Just okay?”
“The pacing?”
“...well, I thought it was a little slow in the first half – wait, shit...”
The demon roared and laughed. It grew in size, spiraling magnetic tapes spreading themselves along the walls of the apartments.
“Still like the pacing?” the demon asked quite demonically, knowing victory was in its grasp.
Bribe it, Isaac, bribe it!
Isaac felt around his pockets, then realized a horrifying truth: he had no money on him since Spike himself had no money on him. Spike didn’t look like he had money, after all.
Faced with no other choice, Isaac charged up energy in his right fist-
Magnetic tape was on him before he even knew it. They curled around his arms and legs, covering him, spiraling around him until only his face remained uncovered. He stumbled around then fell to the ground.
I can’t move!
His last sight was of the VHS demon standing over him.
“I’ll show you some slow pacing,” the demon taunted.
Then the magnetic tape covered Isaac’s eyes.