Black and Blue

5 - Halloween

Morgan was right; I needed a break. More specifically, I needed to see our friends. There appeared a tiny, cramped bubble I closed myself off in every year come September. Right now, I was desperate to break out—and Halloween was only days away.

Classes picked up from there. I was actually sort of enjoying them, if you could imagine. It helped to remind myself what I was working for. Thankfully, neither the small, judgy group in my Nursing class nor that one guy who chased me outside the building bothered me for a while after the day Jack visited. The most I got was a condescending sneer from both of them.

Morgan informed me later, almost as if by strategy, of a small party being held at a guy named Sean's house on the 31st. Well, I say that like I didn't know him, which couldn't be further from the truth. He'd picked me up from a sad little curb on the outskirts of our high school's social hierarchy years ago, and hadn't stopped talking to me ever since. He also hadn't stopped talking ever since, period. Lovely person to be around, in the right doses.

The end of the month came sooner than expected. I'd gotten back home from a pretty lenient day of classes, my social battery just short of drained, my mood not so hasty to pick a side. The only thing on my mind was tonight's kickback. At least, it had been the only thing on my mind, until I entered the kitchen for a quick pick-me-up.

Muddy footprints trailed after one another, leading to the table in the center. I noticed my coffee pot had been emptied, and a series of light scratches lined up on the wall like tally marks. I scowled as my gaze fell upon the real kicker: a tiny piece of paper, folded up in the middle of the table with a scribbled letter J on it. I narrowed my eyes and picked it up to examine both sides. It was surprisingly clean, the most damage it seemed to have endured was the trouble of folding it up. If Jack's claw-like nails weren't retractable, I imagined it couldn't have been too easy—that is, if he was even the one who dropped this off. How many other people with J-names do I know?

Whatever. All the evidence pointed to him, anyways. I trudged upstairs and placed the note on my bedside desk to be dealt with later. Stupid guy can't even clean up after himself.

—

"Hey, you could make it!"

At 8:00, Morgan nearly crushed me in a hug as I doubtfully eyed the blank walls around Sean's doorway.

"Uh, yeah...I thought this was a Halloween party?"

"It is. Doesn't mean it has to look like one from outside." She released me and dragged me into the house by an arm. There wasn't much of interest inside, either—actually, it looked like he'd just finished taking all of his decorations down for the year. No light escaped the rooms on the side. Only the front hall was illuminated; everything else was practically a black hole. Morgan led me through one of these side rooms, past a small dining table, what looked to be a makeshift recording studio, and finally to a door of scratched, rotting wood that was locked when she tried opening it. She groaned and knocked abrasively.

"Sean! It's not funny, let us in!"

I heard his muffled voice from behind the door.

"No. Show her the other way."

Morgan groaned again, this time louder, and grabbed my hand to drag me along some more. We ended up outside again, facing an almost blank wood wall. Almost blank. There was one large square in the center that looked like it had been carved out and fitted back in; I noticed it was positioned above a tiny egress window, one that probably led to the basement. Morgan dug her fingers into one of the vertical cracks in the wood, wincing the tiniest bit, and pulled with all her might. The giant patch opened like a revolving door to reveal a rectangular hole in the dirt, reaching down god-knows-how-far. Against my better judgement, I peered over the edge with a hand on the wall to steady myself. There was a rope ladder stationed on our side of the hole, also seeming to go on forever, or at least until the darkness swallowed it up. I folded my arms and wished for illuminating daylight, or Sean's voice, some kind of reassurance that down there wasn't just...nothing. Morgan didn't seem as perturbed.