Devil's Night: The Hunt for Laughing Jack

I: JACK-O-LANTERN (Pt. 3)

JACK-O-LANTERN (Pt. 3)

When something light touched his face, he'd simply lain a hand over his forehead. A heartbeat later, the touch had dropped to the crook of his neck.

Smirky shifted his shoulder and turned to his side, loosening the embrace of his grey blanket. It was natural fleece, or something – cozy as a spot by a lit fireplace on Christmas Eve.

Something tickled his tummy, and not those pesky metaphoric butterflies.

The illusionist kicked the blanket's wraps into a ball and curled up around it, hugging the folds tight against his chest, guarding his middle fiercely.

"Ngh... go away..."

A lock of black hair fell across his grimacing face. Someone other than himself brushed it back and tucked it behind his ear.

"I said, go away! I'll deal with you in the morning!"

He reluctantly rolled again, this time on his stomach, clamping his indented pillow over his head. To hell with what it was! He just wanted to sleep.

Nothing else happened for a while.

So Smirky wrote it off as a small victory over Devil's Night and started to fall adrift, eyes drooping shut, breathing slow and steady. Being a demon's servant had advantages: you really weren't bothered by the creepy and occult.

However, nothing in the dog-eared '101 Tips For Paranormal Inactivity' handbook that his master had fished out of the bin and begrudgingly handed to him as a Christmas gift, could've prepared him for when a ghostly hand stroked his thigh. Affectionately.

"I knocked and knocked on that door earlier, but it wasn't you who answered..." a female voice murmured, sadly, her tone dipped in unmistakeable sugar-coated insanity.

The illusionist yelped and scrambled to sit like a dazed dachshund, crossing his legs as an afterthought, goosebumps erupting over his flesh.

The fleece blanket flew over half his head. He gingerly lifted it up.

It can't be...!

A blast from the past greeted his eyes.

He didn't see her on the edge of the bed; he saw her in the mirror. She had a hole where her heart should've been; you could see right through her chest cavity.

He never forgot the smell of her floral perfume.

She emitted a wondrous illusion of life, looking exactly as she had been before her untimely death. Behind him, she draped her slender arms over his shoulders.

Velvet voice, chiming bells. "I was vewwy disappointed. Don't you remember me, my darling?'

"Yandree..."

She smiled. Yandree slipped from sight like sand in an hourglass. Smirky changed the angle of his view, and saw her near the doorway, beckoning him to follow her out.

He glanced over his shoulder; the place she stood was empty. But, looking back to the mirror, she was right there. And then she ran.

Without hesitation, the illusionist jumped out of bed and chased her. Common sense said it was impossible for her, the real her, to be there, but he wasn't so sure. Her body was decomposing six feet underground in an unmarked grave, deemed unfit for proper burial.

(no flowers for you)

But, if he didn't find out for sure – the curiosity would chew him up and spit him out for dinner. So he dashed, darting through the surgery's ajar door, relying on passing glimpses of reflection to hunt her down.