Nightmare House - A Halloween Story

I've been posting this short story on my blog. Now that it's finished, I've decided to share it on DA too. Enjoy.

Part One:

Halloween is my busiest time of the year. I work for a haunted house, so that’s to be expected. You’re probably thinking Halloween should be my only time of year for that kind of job, but no. Nightmare House runs all year round. Yes, business is kind of lean in the winter months, but we get a steady stream of customers again in the late spring and all through the summer. Of course, nothing beats the crowds I see in October.

Nightmare House isn’t actually a house. It’s a little plywood shack that travels from town to town. We set it up in parks or empty lots, wherever they’ll have us. I book our appearances, get all the permits, take out ads, hang decorations, print flyers, sell tickets, lead the tours…whatever my bosses can’t do themselves. Yes, that is too much work for one single employee, but I get it all done.

Each night, right after sundown, all the kids line up and I lead one group at a time into the house. I like to take groups of ten in the off-season, but in October, I usually need to take groups of twenty or thirty kids at once. I like to wear dark clothes, a costume cape, and maybe a little stage makeup, if I’m feeling it. I lead each group to the corridor and tell them that they are about to enter a space where their worst nightmares will come true to haunt them. I’m not a natural performer by any means, but I like doing the introduction. It’s the only part of my job that’s even a little fun.

Then the kids walk into the house and I close the door behind them. Right away, they’re disappointed that it’s just a big empty room. They always expect the winding halls and creepy exhibits like you see at normal haunted house. But when their eyes adjust to the dark they notice that we are not alone in here. My bosses are in the room with us.

That’s when the nightmares start to appear. It usually starts with something small, like snakes or spiders. In less then a minute, the room is full of nightmares. Mad dogs, lightning bolts, whatever scares those kids. But, no matter how crowded the room gets, the kids don’t even seem to notice anything except their own, personal nightmare. I stand in the back and watch the room fill up with these awful things. I’m not really sure how it works. Believe me, I try not to ask questions. The simplest explanation is that my bosses are, for lack of a better word, demons.

I’m not sure if my three bosses are literally demons, I just know that they’re not human. They do look sort of human, at least that’s the appearance they take whenever they meet with me. But they don’t look quite right. For one thing, their skin and eyes have these sort of purple undertones that look unnatural. They also have a low pitch to their voice. I’m not certain a human larynx can produce that exact pitch. Actually, these descriptions don’t quite do them justice. Whenever they’re around, I get this feeling of uneasiness, like an instinct that tells me something is wrong. No humans could possibly mistake these guys for members of their own species. That’s probably why they need a human employee. I can sell tickets and book locations for them. If any of our customers had to interact with these guys, no one would ever come near Nightmare House.

I know what you’ve been wondering. When the kids face their nightmares, do they get hurt? Of course not. I’m not exactly the kindest soul you’ll ever meet, but I’m not a monster. My bosses just terrify them for ten minutes or so, then the nightmares disappear, and everyone runs out the exit and into the back lot where their parents are waiting. The first few times I saw it, I expected the kids to tell their parents everything that had just happened. Then the parents would call the police or something and I’d spend the rest of my days in prison for child endangerment. But the kids just talked about fake bats on strings, wax figures, garbled sound recordings from 1973, and all the other regular haunted house crap.

I guess Nightmare House puts some kind of spell on the kids so they don’t remember what happened. I don’t think the magic is perfect, though. When it’s over, the kids always look a little more rattled than they should. And we never get return customers. If I’m in town for a week I don’t see the same kids on Tuesday that I saw on Monday. The spell must not work on adults either. I go into that house with the kids every night and I’ve never seen any of my nightmares. I guess that’s why we only take kids and no adults. That’s another strange thing about Nightmare House. With any normal haunted house, you can be sure that some kid won’t go without one or both parents tagging along or there will be at least a dozen parents who won’t let their kids go in without a chaperone. But when families show up at Nightmare House, the kids just line up at the door and the parents wait at the exit as if it that was the only possible arrangement. Come to think of it, we never see any childless adults, teens or college students either. Like I said, don’t question it.

I think I’ve heard of spells like this before, but only in fiction, of course. They’re called glamour spells. They make people see or think things that aren’t real. As I recall, for the spell to work, the victim needs to be open to the suggestion first. Glamour spells can’t make you believe anything unless part of you wants to believe it. I guess these kids really want to believe that nothing horrible really happened to them.

You’re probably wondering why actual demons would bother using their magic to run a traveling sideshow. Simply put, fear is like food to them. If they stop scaring people they starve to death. I suppose in the olden days, demons would run around terrorizing humans to sustain themselves, instead of finding willing volunteers. That actually makes this whole operation seem a little less nasty, if you ask me. I mean, what other creature can eat without killing anything? These guys just mess with their victims for a few minutes then send them back, physically unscathed and able to go on with their lives. Heck, their only victims are people who are asking to be scared. Sure, it’s lousy that they only prey on children with this arrangement. And it would be better if they didn’t have to scare them quite so much. And, yes, it’s a little unscrupulous that we charge admission for the whole thing, but I have to get paid somehow. I can’t eat fear.

I don’t remember how I started working here. I probably started the way anyone takes any bad job: I convinced myself that I really needed work and I would only do it this for a little while. But then the years piled on, I really can’t remember how many, and now I’m not sure I could quit. I mean, I don’t think my bosses are dangerous, but I’m not looking forward to their reactions if I ever bring them a letter of resignation. And I’m not sure how I would find another job after this. The longest running job credit on my resume would read, “Haunted House Worker.” Add that to the disadvantage of starting a new career at my age. Actually, I’m not sure how old I am. That’s the kind of thing most people remember, isn’t it?

_______________________

Part Two:

It was the Halloween night, and trick-or-treating had ended, easily our busiest time of the year. It’s tough to notice individual people in a big crowd, but somehow, this little boy caught my attention. He looked about eleven or twelve years old and his eyes were kind of bright and kind of hollow at the same time.

I figured that he was going to be one of those mean kids. I’m not proud of this, but I kind of enjoy watching the mean kids get scared. They’re the ones who try to show how fearless they are by making fun of demon house, which usually means mocking me and ruining my act. I’ve had kids throw trash at me more times than I’d like to admit. Sometimes they shout me down during my introduction, which, as I mentioned, is the only good part of my job. This is going to sound a little silly, knowing what's about to happen to them, but those kids hurt my feelings. They don’t know what I’m planning. As far as they know, I’m just some working stiff who they push around for selfish amusement.

So, back to this kid. I thought he was going to be a jerk, so when his group got to the front, I gave them the best, most mock-proof “Welcome to Nightmare House” spiel I could muster. But the kid was quiet and respectful the whole time. When I was done, a few of the youngest kids gave a tiny applause and he joined in. He seemed to be nothing but polite. I had no time to figure him out because they were all in the house in less than a minute. I shut the door and stood back as the nightmares began to come to life.

As usual, the room came to life with skeletons, zombies and clowns. There was a kid who seemed to be dreaming that he had poisoned himself (I hate watching the smart kids. They always come up with the worst psychological tortures to inflict on themselves.)

That’s when I noticed the worm. I had been working for Nightmare House for years, so I’d seen pretty much every imaginable fear in some form or another. But I had never seen anything quite like that worm before. It was the size of a small dog and growing fast. It had skin that looked like my demon bosses’ skin, except folded into worm segments. It was oozing a putrid purple vapor and it seemed to be growing tentacles that could be feelers or extra heads. It seemed to be chewing on the remains of something that was probably once human. Again, descriptions can’t do it justice. It just gave me a really awful feeling. And it was about to get worse when I noticed that no one seemed to be looking at the worm beast. What if it wasn’t a nightmare? What if this thing was actually in the room with us? By now, the worm had grown to the size of a small car and showed no signs of slowing. Watching other people’s nightmare come to life had always been more disturbing than scary to me, but this thing was flat out terrifying.

The creature started to advance on the boy with the strange eyes. It must be the boy’s nightmare after all, but that thought did little to comfort me. How did a kid even imaging a thing like that, even in a nightmare? Is he psychotic? Or…is this something he had seen before?

Somehow, over the usual sounds of screaming and panic, I became aware that the boy was talking softly. No, he was chanting, chanting in a language unlike anything I had ever heard before. And the more he chanted, the slower the nightmares seemed to move. Then, the nightmares started disappearing. Not all at once, as they usually do when a tour ends, but one at a time. And, for the first time, kids were coming out of their trances at different times, so the first to break the spell could clearly see they were standing in a room full of nightmare illusions and traumatized children. Then, just like that, all the remaining nightmares vanished, along with my demon bosses. The little boy yelled, “everyone get out of here!” and all the other children took off either out the exit or back through the front door, until there was no one left in the room except the boy and me.

He turned on me and asked, “Where did they go?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, trying to shake off my own fear as fast as possible, “there’s just this one room.” From inside, without the distraction of the illusions, Nightmare House was very clearly made of just four plywood walls.

“Think hard. Where else could they have gone?” He asked, sounding very serious. It seemed like such an absurd question. Where could they have gone? My demon employers had never told me about any escape plans. Thinking harder was not going to change that. Somehow, the urgency of the moment forced an idea to form. Nightmare House had a few cheesy decorations to help convince people that this was a normal haunted house. One of these decorations was a fake door, covered in fake chains to imply that there was some kind of fake monster behind in. Most of the decorations went on the outside of the house, but the door was the only one that fit on the inside.

“Over there.” I said, “Try the fake door.” The kid ran to the door and flung it open as if that were the most natural suggestion in the world. If it had been a fake door, the boy would have opened it to see a plywood wall. If it had been a regular door, it would have opened into the parking lot outside, where, no doubt, an angry mob of parents would be demanding to know just what was going on here. The door was neither of those things. Instead it opened to reveal a staircase, a staircase which led up to what looked like the inside of a steeple tower. From this angle, the tower looked disturbingly like the fake, four-foot plywood tower I fixed to the top of Nightmare House. That is, if that prop tower had been real. The boy started up the stairs. “Come on!” he called down to me.

Going up those stairs felt like a horrible plan. But then, so did staying behind, so I decide to follow and see how it all played out. After all, I knew these demons. Maybe I could still smooth this over and keep this kid out of trouble. “

They’re not as bad as they seem,” I said in my most parental voice as we climbed the staircase, “they just need fear for food. They do this to stay alive.”

“Is that what they told you?” The boy responded without looking back at me. “They don’t eat fear. They’re using it for something else.”

I had slowly been feeling more confident ever since the worm beast disappeared, but those feeling of confidence were slowly being consumed by fear again. This was a different kind of fear than what I had felt when the worm beast appeared. That fear was panic, pure and simple. This new fear was dread. Deep-rooted, psychological, all-consuming dread. Why had I never questioned the stories about eating fear? I’ve spend the last several(?) years of my life years of my life taking the word of demons, for pity’s sake! Why had I gone along with all of this so complacently? This boy’s comments were removing all my suggestibility. There was no glamour left. Only more dread.

“What do they use fear for?” I asked. Despite my years of demon experience, this kid somehow seemed to know much more than I did.

“I don’t know,” he said, still not looking back at me, “but it won’t be good.”

“What can we do?” It was laughable to think that I imagined myself the adult in all this less than a minute ago.

“I can finish my spell. I was powerful enough to chase them away. Maybe the whole spell can destroy them.”

We were nearing the top of the stairs. I tried to remind myself that this would be okay. These were the demons I’ve known for years, right? It was tempting to think that this was somehow all a misunderstanding, but if I held out any naive optimism, I might fall victim to the glamour again. I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of false hope. We were at the top of the steps.

___________________

Part Three:

We passed through a little door and entered a small, round room. It was almost a relief to see my three bosses, looking almost human, just as I remembered them. They were standing in a circle, locked in deep discussion, just as humans would. But when they looked up and saw the boy and me, their faces turned serious. The door closed behind us.

At once the boy fell into his chant. My bosses advanced on us with inhuman speed. They began to change as they moved. By the time they were near us, their appearances matched that the creepy feeling they always gave me. The feeling which, by the way, had multiplied ten fold. The demons looked like smoke and ashes and shadows that held an almost human shape. About where their stomachs should be, each demon had a transparent sack, which was almost full to the top with a thick purple liquid. Two of them advanced on the boy, hissing in a tone no living creature could make. The third started to approach me and I felt terror like I had never known was possible. And as he came near me, I saw his stomach sack grow fuller. That purple liquid must be the fear that they had been storing. Now that he couldn’t take any more fear from children, he was going to take it from me. And their stomach sacks were almost full. Whatever they were collecting fear for…they almost had enough.

The boy was scared too. His chanting was steady, but his voice was higher and shakier than before. The demons swarmed around him frantically, their stomach sacks filling slowly.

Suddenly, the stomach of the demon closest to me filled to the top. It dropped out of his body and burst on the ground like a water balloon. A glassy puddle splashed across the floor. But in this liquid pool, where a reflection should have been, I could see a chasm. And this chasm was filled with the monster worm beasts I had seen in the boy's nightmare. One of them, roughly the size of a Volkswagen bus, turned towards us and began to move upwards, as though he was down in a hole and the puddle was the hole's opening. Fortunately, the puddle was too small for these monsters to climb through, although the liquid was still spreading out.

SPLASH! I looked up and saw that a second demon had dropped its stomach sack and a new puddle was combining with the old one, making a much larger opening. The worms were very aware of this portal now and they were all scrambling to get closer. The largest worm had begun to extend its tentacles to the surface and, to my horror, the tentacles passed through the puddle as easily as passing through an open window. The worm could not squeeze it whole body through and he was blocking the way out for the smaller worms. But if that last fear sack were to fall, the puddle would be large enough for everything to pass through. There would be nothing stopping them.

All three demons were swarming around the boy, trying to stop his chants. They seemed unable to harm him directly, but this whole thing had to be throwing his concentration. I thought they had all forgotten about me, until a violent jerk pulled my whole body to the ground. But it wasn’t a demon. The largest worm had gotten ahold of my stupid costume cape. The creature didn’t even realize it had me. If it did, I’m sure it would have effortlessly dragged me to hell, or wherever it was trying to crawl out of. Instead, it was simply twitching it tentacles, like an insect’s feelers and my cape had happened to get tangled up in them. Inch by inch, the monster inadvertently pulled my to my doom while I frantically tugged at the catch of my cape. I was certain my life was going to end in the most horrific way imaginable, when everything in the room seemed to stop moving. The boy finished his spell.

It wasn’t a big, theatrical end, the kid’s voice didn’t change or anything. But it was like the last word itself had weight. And, the word itself seemed to catch fire. A white flame hung in the air in front of the boy’s face. Then the flame spread in all directions, filling the room. I was sure that the boy and I would be burned alive, along with everything else in the room. We would be martyred to spare the world from a demon invasion. Considering I was about to be pulled into a pit full of the worst nightmare creatures imaginable, getting burned to death would have been a welcome relief. But the fire passed right through the boy without harming him. It passed through me as well. But the demons were quickly consumed by it and it burned them into nothingness. Not even ashes were left behind. The fear pools burned up like puddles of gasoline, leaving the worm beasts trapped wherever they were. And suddenly the fire was gone, and there was nothing left but the two of us. The boy, shaking and barely standing upright, and me, lying on my back and wearing the tattered remnants of a Halloween costume cape, both of us on the top of a plywood shack, next to a fake four-foot plywood steeple.

The entire area was empty except for the two of us. The crowd seemed to have left. Perhaps some last little bit of the glamour led the people away so to protect the secret of Nightmare House, or some deep-rooted self-preservation instinct made everyone decide to leave the site of our near-Armageddon without understanding the reason for their departure. I had a faint realization that I should be grateful that they all left quietly instead of hanging around to press charges. I knew I would be able to process this gratitude more fully in the days ahead, once my mind stopped reeling from tonight’s disaster.

As I collected my bearings, I realized that the boy was staring at me. He was making no move to leave. I figured he either wanted to thank me for my help or punish me for the lousy part I had played in all this monster summoning. “What do you want?” I asked bluntly. I had no energy left for tact.

“You can see them?” the boy asked, incredulously.

“Of course I can see them.” I answered. Couldn’t everyone see the demons? I had always assumed the demons needed me to help them because no one else would cooperate with them. It had never occurred to me that they might be invisible or something.

“I’ve never met anyone else who could do that!” The boy exclaimed. “Well, except for my grandfather, he’s the one who taught me how to fight them.”

“But grandpa’s gone now,” he continued, “and I’ve had to fight them all by myself. But now you can help me. And you’re an adult, so you can drive us places and buy weapons and supplies. Maybe you could get a job at my school so you could help cover for me if I have to leave class and stuff.”

“Stop!” I interrupted. “I don’t know how to fight demons. I can’t do any of that stuff for you. And I certainly can’t get a job at your school. Schools aren’t the kind of places that hire people like me.”

The kid was undeterred. “They’ll give you a job if you use your glamour power on them.”

Just when I thought he understood all this supernatural stuff, he goes and makes a dumb assertion like that. “No, I’m not the one with the powers. The demons had all the magic.”

“But you were with them for more than a year. That means you’ve absorbed some of the glamour by now. The magic won’t convince the school to hire you as a teacher or principal, but you could be a janitor or something.”

This was too much. The kid was trying to convince me that, not only did I have a small amount of magic powers, but I should also use these powers to get a job as a school custodian. Incidentally, even without the demon fighting, working as a school custodian sounded horrible. Bratty kids making a mess on purpose because they think it’s funny that someone else has to clean up after them. And after tonight’s fiasco, I imagine more than a few of them would have it in for me.

“No.” I said. “I’m not doing any of that.”

“I can’t do this by myself and you’re the only other one who can do something.” He said. I knew he was going to argue my decision, but he couldn’t change my mind. The boy may be able to fight monsters, but when it came to other humans, he was as powerless as any other kid. Or so I thought.

“You have to do this.” He said. It sounded as much like a plea as it did an order. And I realized that all my complaints and excuses were simply my mind’s way coming to terms with a simple, concrete fact. Yes, of course I had to do this. 

This was it. I would atone for my crimes against humanity by risking my life fighting evil in place of this kid’s departed grandfather (by the way, I noticed how vague the kid was about why, exactly, grandfather was out of the picture.)

I put my head down and prepared to brace myself for this new chapter in my life.

The End

Author's Note

The idea for this story was simple. In fantasy tales, we often read about kids with fantastic powers who become heroes. They are often reluctantly dragged into their destined role by an adult mentor who helps them face the tasks ahead. (I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately, just to name one example.) I thought it would be fun to write a story that worked the other way around, where the hero kid has to convince the reluctant adult to take up a heavy role. Off the top of my head, the only other tale I can think of that scratches on that idea is the plot to The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (a beautiful game with a charming story).

I don't plan on writing anymore stories with these characters. Part of this story's appeal is that it looks like and origin story, but I never dreamed up a larger world for it to be an origin to. Besides, my ongoing comics are already overpopulated by roguish characters seeking redemption. If I were to expand on the narrator character's arc, I fear it wouldn't be long before I ended up repeating myself.

Amusingly, to keep the narrator from seeming too derivative of my other characters, I provided as few details as possible. You can't even tell if the character is male or female. I've tried reading the story back to myself imagining the character in either gender, and I think it holds up both ways.

However, this probably won't be the last short story I ever spin. Keep an eye on the blog. I may keep throwing the occasional piece of fiction in, along with all my rants.

Happy Halloween.

-Marj