Halloween 2020: Choose Your Spooky Outcome: Chapter 8
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“I… um…” What should you pick? Green might be handy for dodging, super-strength sounds cool, and there’s no telling what perks the other colors might hold. Yet for some reason, you find yourself drawn to the round orange candy. It touches off a slight familiarity, but as soon as you try to recall more, the sense vanishes. “I’ll take the orange.”
Ole Scotch offers up the box, and your hand quickly dips inside, not entirely trusting that the container won’t grow fangs and chomp down. No such attack comes, and you easily unwrap the cellophane to find an orange treat beneath. With a hope this doesn’t turn you into something edible so near Jim, you pop the candy in your mouth.
No sooner does it touch your saliva than the surface changes, turning cold and hard. More than that, texture is blooming where there was once only slick smoothness, and unless you’re wrong it feels like the candy is getting larger. Your mouth starts to become forced open, confirming your spacial assessment to be spot-on.
While it can still fit, you spit the object out of your mouth, candy no longer. It’s changed to a darker hue of orange atop a dense, heavy material. After rolling a few feet, the object soon halts it’s growth. Reaching down, you pick it up to find yourself holding a metal jack-o-lantern. There’s a slight protrusion on the back, like a dulled spike, but otherwise the item appears largely decorative.
“I’m just going to say what everyone is thinking: did the thing stop growing because it was done, or because it needs more spit?” Jim declares.
That might not have been what you were thinking before, but it kind of is now. You glance at Ole Scotch, getting only a shrug for an answer. Right, this is the same amount of mystery to both of you. Not wanting to risk a seemingly magical object being too small, you give the jack-o-lantern a test lick, seeing no results. Attempts at getting your mouth around as much as possible prove equally fruitless. “Seems like this is as big as it’s getting.”
“Damn. Was really hoping for a magical jack-o-carriage. My dogs are howling.” Jim leans against one of the nearby candy trees to rest his feet, causing several cracks along the trunk.
“As the magical lay-man, I’ll ask: what does this thing do?” Thad at least directs his question toward a target with potential answers, eyes on Victoria.
She walks to your side and examines the small figure, tapping it lightly, though not on the parts you aggressively licked. “To my senses, exactly as it appears. No trace of magic lingers about. But there are many powers here beyond my own, and it would be hubris to presume I could spot them all.”
“A strange gift, even by our standards,” Ole Scotch concurs. “What it means, and where it will lead, I know not. Only your steps will uncover such truths.” The old candy lifts a hand, hesitating slightly. “No favors are owed here, yet before I send you upon your way, I wonder if I might beg your help in a final task. Sweets like me have long fallen out of style, and eaters in this realm are rare. I have lived too many eves without my glorious destiny.”
A slew of ethical questions flood into your mind, but a hearty pat on the shoulder reassures you things are well in hand. You turn, expecting to see Thad offering such a confident gesture, only to find Jim emptying a baggie into his mouth. “Don’t worry everyone, I got this. The truth is, I’ve had the munchies since that spooky dance, and the snake was barely an appetizer.”
Moving fast, you turn toward Victoria and Thad, both of whom look equally unnerved. Ole Scotch, on the other hand, sounds like it’s crying from joy as Jim walks over. There’s a snap and a crunch at roughly the same time, then the landscape has changed.
Gone are the candy trees and bushes, no more sounds of laughter in the distance. Once more, you stand on an road, thick fog and dark shapes obscuring everything by the wayside. It’s still a creepy sight to behold, but honestly, can’t really hold a candle to the slurping noises coming from where Jim is standing. By the time you find the courage to look, he’s pulled a wet nap from a suit pocket and is cleaning off his Tiger-Dick facemask.
Of the entire exchange, what you find strangest is that Jim had the foresight to bring wet naps. Maybe that was his version of preparing to face The Between, and hey, it’s not like he didn’t end up needing them.
“Putting what just happened out of mind,” Thad says quickly, “looks like we’ve got to do more walking.”
“Let us hope it is not a great deal more.” Victoria sniffs the air, running her fingers through the edge of the fog with no fear of what might be lurking inside. “Time here is strange, yet it still moves. Our way to return closes with the night’s end.”
That puts some pep in your step, moving as fast as you dare with such poor lighting. Hurrying along the road, you soon spot a shape in the distance. A familiar one, at that. It’s the tree from the crossroads, except changed. Formerly upward branches now sag weakly, and on the ground you can see three broken piles of wood.
Drawing close, you realize the piles are branches that snapped off. Three of them, leaving wooden stubs behind. Only they aren’t merely stubs, or wood for that matter. Peering closer, you can make out the distinct form of something metallic poking out where the branch snapped. You’d say it was a key, if not for the end where the metal forms what looks like… a mask?
“Why would someone make a key with a mirror on it?” Thad’s voice snares your attention to another branch, one with a similar object jutting forth. Just like the one you saw, a key, except at the end it forms into a simple round mirror.
“We found one over here that looks like a back-scratcher,” Jim calls, his voice soon followed by Victoria’s.
“A claw, we found one shaped like a claw, not a back-scratcher.”
Taking a few steps back, you double check, making sure there’s no other keys poking out. There aren’t, just like there aren’t any more roads to follow. Looks like you’re going to have to pick a key. Experience has taught you that yanking on one of these will either cause the others to vanish, summon a threat to make you flee, or something along those lines. Best to be sure of the one you choose.
But also don’t take too long because you heard Victoria, the clock is ticking. What will it be?