#spookshow open

Spencer may have gain the reputation for being quite the clumsy werewolf since coming here, but today he was almost sure that people could forget about that for a second. Everyone was to chip and either do one of two things, fill up sand bags or haul them out. It went without saying which team he put himself on. With his strength hauling out sandbags was easy as cake. Even as Spencer piled sandbag after sandbag onto his shoulders or hefted them onto his arms, he managed to surprise himself with how much he could handle. 

As she got out of her car, she saw a few people heading towards the community center and unable to suppress her curiosity, Isabella left her suitcase in the car and followed them through rain. She stopped just in the door and watched in relatively stunned silence as everyone seemed to run around, filling sand bags or hauling them out. 

“Um, Looks like I’ve been missing quite a lot...” 

But she had to remind herself screaming at random hours do not good neighbors make. Which left her in the bundle of blankets on the game room staring at the TV screen, stale popcorn left sitting in a bowl by her side. In little ways her nights were still the same as they were when she was living. Holed up by herself all night having a one-sided argument with a screen. 

“Ugh why do movies always make kissing scenes weird.” She criticized with a well aimed kernel at the couple doing said kissing. “No one wants to see this.” 

So engrossed she hadn’t even noticed someone else up and about. She leaned out of her cover to properly look at the other. “Can’t sleep either?”

Graham’s frown deepened the more he looked out the window. “Do we have magical plumbing?” he asked, trying to catch the attention of the person seated closest to him. The glass felt cool against his knuckles when he knocked them softly against the window to punctuate his point, drawing his companion’s attention to the downpour. “I don’t think regular plumbing’s going to cut it if the rain keeps up much longer. Not that the merpeople would mind. I’m sure they’re having an absolute blast with this. Must feel just like home except with less seaweed.”

He turned his head to look away from the window and to the person he’d been speaking to. “What do you want to bet a witch had something to do with this? Some kind of rain dance gone wrong. Twenty dollars says that’s what it is.”

She didn’t need to make the trip, but in heart she knew that she had to go. Maybe it was a way she could ask the graves of her husband and baby for forgiveness and just be close to them again or maybe it was a way of just punishing herself. She deserved it after all. She may not have been the one to end their lives with her own two hands, but it sure as hell felt like it. 

No matter the the reason, the trip would hurt all the same. In fact, her heart felt heavier and heavier as the day of her departure grew near. 

In the end, Isabella was kind of a mess. Even now, she was bouncing back and forth between trying to pack her things last minute and trying to finish a the back log of orders on magically enchanted jewelry that had slipped her mind in the coming weeks. There was an open suitcase with clothing haphazardly thrown into it sitting on the coffee table in front of the TV and a pile of jewelry scattered across the table in the corner of the living room that she designated her workspace, but for the time being they remained untouched. In fact, her apartment was eerily still as Isabella sat at her dining room table, head buried in her hands as tears slipped from her eyes and onto the table beneath her. That is until a sudden knock at the door had her lifting her head and wiping her eyes quickly to get rid of any signs that she had been crying at all. 

“Uh! Just a moment! I’ll be right there!” she called out, her voice trembling as she spoke and scrambled to stand. 

“Watch your step as you exit the boats … And have a wonderful evening.” Perhaps it was a bit odd for Natalie to find scaring the guests so amusing, considering the way she died. But it wasn’t as though it could hurt any of them– her case had been a special one – and besides, there was something about the looks on their faces when she suddenly vanished from sight at the end of the tour that got her every time. Most of them, by that point, had already shrugged off her sudden appearance at the beginning as a fluke, or maybe their eyes playing tricks on them. Her final disappearance acted as a final scare, like the twist at the end of a movie that everyone walked out of the theatre talking about.

She watched as the guests filed out, clutching at each other and laughing nervously. Yes, being frightened didn’t hurt any of them. Not that she was complaining, not really. How could she be jealous when she was the one who got to do the scaring? She was a part of the fun now, if not quite in the way she had imagined when she was alive. And she was having fun – but sometimes some of the twenty-somethings on the tour looked a little too familiar, reminded her too much of a friend from before, and it made her lonely.

But there were always people to talk to at the Spookshow, especially once the guests were gone. And so, promptly at 12:30, Natalie left her post at the boat tours and started towards the back of the park, towards the employee housing where everyone stayed when they weren’t working. She quickly fell in step beside another employee. “Heading home, huh?” She liked to think that everyone thought of the housing as home – that, by sharing it, it made them all sort of like family. “Did you have a good day? It was busy, wasn’t it?”

“And now,” boomed the man’s voice, a sarcastic lilt to it that didn’t quite match his smiling expression, “I’m going to make myself disappear.” A flash of smoke, a blinding gleam of light -- and the boy was alone. In the dark.

No one clapped; the theatre was closed. The show had no audience, save for one employee seated in the very back row of seats. And the show had not really happened, for it had all been nothing more than an illusion. One that he finally let disappear completely, the boy vanishing into thin air without a trace left behind. Just like he had in real life. Only Johnny was still here, and it was time to leave before anyone caught him and got any ideas. Except maybe he was too late for that, for no sooner did he rise to his feet than did he hear a noise by the theatre’s entrance. Instantly he whipped around, panic gripping him as he squinted into the darkness. No one was supposed to see any of that.

“Hello?”