Devil's Night: The Hunt for Laughing Jack

I: JACK-O-LANTERN

I: JACK-O-LANTERN

There wasn't much to say about the day before Halloween. It was damp, it was grey, it was quiet. No one got much done, yet everyone seemed to be busy. And as withered stacks of raked leaves grew taller, the ominous fog around the mansion's moss-covered walls thickened to the likes of churned butter, and BEN Drowned got booted through a window for eating all the candy, something sinister stirred between the innocent autumn breezes.

Come nightfall; the skies burnt black.

Autumn's chuckle vanished, and a hag's shrewd cackle took its place, putting the bare branches under a spell to force them to dance, creak and groan, opening the stage for those vile, wicked childhood fears to roam freely.

Just the wind rustling a branch, or a claw tapping on the window? (Not knowing which to believe, you hide under the blanket, praying your shivery little form will go unnoticed as menacing shadows ghost on the wall).

For the creepypastas, the noises weren't unsettling. They were the monsters lurking in the dark; the figure fogging the rain-splattered glass with its raspy breath.

What did unsettle them was the moon.

A sickle in the sky, yellow like a mouth full of rotting teeth – so unnaturally close and so uncharacteristically large it was... unnerving to look at. Although no one mentioned it or brought it up during conversation, they all knew something was amiss.

But, no matter who they were - a demonic clown tucking himself into bed, or a villainous illusionist flipping through a book of bedtime stories, they did the same thing:

They ignored it; pretended it wasn't there. This uneasy atmosphere is all in your head. The colour of the moon doesn't mean a thing. Don't be spooked by Devil's Night.

Nothing is different.

Nothing bad is going to happen.

It's just the wind.

Something wicked this way comes? No. Something wicked had already come, and it was knocking on Laughing Jack's window.

_______

The monochrome clown was dreaming a simply wondrous dream. Eyeless Jack had died, the moon was made out of cheese, and someone discovered a way to make it rain candy.

He was rather disappointed to awaken prematurely.

It took a tick or two for Laughing Jack to accept he was back in the miserable world, where he wasn't the sole 'Jack' of the house, the moon consisted of inedible rock, and the only kind of Candy Rain was a 90's hip hop song.

Stupid wind, stupid tree branch... Smiley wouldn't wake up because of that, so why should I?

(On the contrary, Smiley would've woken up to such a sound, and gone to investigate it too.)

Pouting, he lay his head back on the pillow and turned over, closing his eyes, willing his begrudging spirit back to its delicate sugar-spun dreams. He melted into the softness with a sigh, cosy as a purring cat. The strangeness didn't matter so much anymore; there was just warmth, night-quiet, and sleep.

Then, a little child sang.

"All around the cobbler's grave, the beetle chased the weasel," Her horrifying pitch was like torn fingernails assaulting a chalkboard. "The beetle thought t'was all in fun..."

Hearing his signature song altered - no - butchered, and then played back to him made Laughing Jack's shoulders sink with a cringe. He sucked in a breath, and held it.