Halloween 2021: Choose Your Spooky Outcome: Chapter 9
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“Given how little we know about what’s going on, any strategy seems as good as another. Might as well go with the flashiest of our options, at least maybe we can lure the damn thing out. Big ass light it is.”
Jim lets out a joyful whoop, thrusting his fist into the air, while Pumpkin looks on skeptically. “What light did you even have in mind? It’s a little early for burning down the school.”
Finishing his celebration, Jim points directly to the large shape behind your high school, the very reason that the parking lot needed expanding. It isn’t the largest or most impressive of stadiums, even the name is pretty generous for the football field, bleachers, and snack stand. However, it does have huge, powerful lights designed to turn a dark night brighter than noon on a clear day.
Everyone but Thad is focused on the stadium, realizing the scope of Jim’s plan. Your brother is shooting a concerned look at Pumpkin. “Early implies there’s a point where you would be okay with burning down the school?”
Her response is a casual shrug. “Sometimes the thing you’re fighting won’t die until a burning school falls on it’s head. Not saying we’re there yet, but you know… hope for the best, brace for the worst.” Hardly the cheeriest of policies, although knowing even part of what Pumpkin has been through in her life, you can see where she’s coming from.
It’s at that moment Jim decides to go racing toward the stadium, or more likely, the unsuspecting snack stand that has no idea what is approaching. The rest of you hurry to keep up, or more accurately, you hurry to keep up and the others are nice enough not to entirely spring ahead.
Reaching the stadium, you expect to see Jim waiting by a gate until Victoria does her lock-opening trick again. Instead, he’s already dashing ahead, gate swinging wide open and no lock anywhere in sight. Jim never even slowed down, there wasn’t anything to remove, meaning the stadium was left accessible to anyone walking by.
“An odd lack of defenses,” Victoria notes. Her eyes trace up the nearest set of steps. There’s nothing nearly as fancy as VIP boxes, however the stands do hold one enclosed space. A modest area for the announcers and principals, one with locks to ensure no mischievous students made off with sound equipment.
A bang rings out, causing you to jump, but it turns out to be Jim opening the steel shutters of the snack stand before diving inside. Trusting that he’ll scour every inch of that place, you instead head up toward the announcer box. That’s where the lighting controls will be, along with the likeliest hiding place for whoever left the gate unlocked.
Approaching it cautiously, you peer up, expecting dark windows, only to find there are lights on. Thad gets there before anyone else, pulling the door open without resistance and stepping inside. By the time you arrive, he’s standing in front of the announcer table, looking over what appears to be a pile of junk.
Plastic cubes, bundles of flowers, a weathered photograph, all next to a metal box coated in dirt. Unlike Thad, Victoria does more than look, her hands snake out and snatch up the nearest object: the photograph. You recognize it as one of the old Polaroid-types, a strange relic from the past. Everything on the table is old, you realize, just before Victoria announces her discovery.
“Class of 1981.” She flips the photo around to show the writing on the back, a sea of faded faces not quite discernable on the front. “I think we’re looking at a time capsule.”
Like a shot, Pumpkin dives forward, grabbing you and Victoria by the arms and yanking hard. She pulls the pair of you against the far wall, putting herself between your bodies and the table of dated junk. After several seconds of nothing happening, Pumpkin’s speaks in a noticeably embarrassed tone. “Sorry, did you say time capsule, or rhyme capsule?”
“The first one,” Victoria clarifies.
“Ah, sorry about that. Old habits.” She releases both of you, stepping away.
As you rub your arm, curiosity overtakes your better sense. “What is a rhyme capsule anyway?”
“It would take a while to explain. But if we ever see one, don’t say anything besides ‘orange’.”
While Pumpkin was dragging you across the announcer box, Thad began to mess with the lighting system. After fiddling with a few dial, his hand stumbles across the correct switch, and suddenly the world explodes in light.
Thanks to the angle you were looking out at, you get an eyeful of brightness, taking almost a full minute to blink away. By the time, it clears, you notice room in the box has grown even harder to come by, as Jim is now crammed in as well, along with a trash bag full of what has to be old popcorn.
“What’d I miss?” Flecks of popcorn go flying as he speaks, prompting Thad to hop in with a quick reply before he opts to ask again.
“We found an old time capsule, guess somebody opened it earlier?”
With a snap of her fingers that sounds a touch too much like bones breaking, Victoria leaps back over to the junk. “After they dug it up, most likely unearthing the dead guardian’s spirit in the process.” Her hands run along the dirt, fresh dirt, of something newly unearthed.
“Also, there’s a bunch of people coming into the stadium,” Pumpkin adds. She’s staring down onto the field, where your classmates have indeed begun congregating. A football flies through the air, dug out of some poorly secured equipment shed, and soon bodies no longer fit for it are filling the field as though a decade of time hasn’t them down.
Others are cheering, some drinking and yelling in the stands. You wanted to go back to high school, looks like you’re getting the full experience.
“Anyone else worried they’re going to hurt themselves?” Thad asks.
“Not as much as I’m concerned about the mystical creature attacking,” Victoria counters. “It wasn’t the strategy I might have chosen, but you’ve lured the crowd to us. If the monster still wants to hunt, it will have to come here, assuming it isn’t sneaking around already. The question is, how will we confront it, considering we still have no idea of its form?”
From her pocket, Pumpkin produces an orange lighter with a jack-o-lantern face etched into the front. “Uncle Thad’s suggestion about burning down the school earlier got me thinking: fire does solve a lot of monster-based problems.”
“It was absolutely not my suggestion,” Thad protests. “Personally, I think we should try and organize everyone. They might be a little out-of-it, but nobody is totally gone yet. Many hands make for light work.”
“Hordes of humans can be an effective, if indelicate, resource. I might counsel an approach of lying in wait. Each of us is capable in our own… unique ways.” Victoria’s eyes dart to Jim, whose head is currently buried in the trash bag of popcorn to a worrying depth. “Thus far, the greatest challenge has been in catching the creature. Spreading a wider net offers us a more opportunities to succeed.”
Everyone has pitched their idea, save for Jim who doesn’t look like he plans to surface anytime soon, so best decide which one you’re going with.