As I explained in my last post, "Happy Halloween! 2" is longer than I had anticipated. In fact, it is such a lengthy piece that two more posts (including this one) will be necessary to conclude it. The last part of chapter two, in addition to the story's epilogue, will be ready either tomorrow or Sunday. In this section, the fight with Professor Apo begins. Will Jonathan, Awana, and the Halloween friends be victorious?
It was almost impossible to see in the blackness of the
tunnel, but Jonathan’s eyes adjusted somewhat quickly—and Ms. Unicorn
apparently carried an innate luminosity, serving as a small beacon of light to
her owner and Awana. They heard the
scuffing of Witch’s feet and the flapping of Bat’s wings as they hurried after
Pumpkin. The floor was harder than any
substance they had felt before, and Jonathan caught a glimpse every now and
then of the diamond path beneath him.
Whether or not it was actual diamond he did not know; but even if it was
fake, the cost of laying down this many yards of flooring was substantial. Although it was dark and full of twists and
turns, the tunnel did not have other roads branching off from it; however,
because of its constant change of direction, it had a maze-like quality. Jonathan’s speed as he hastened down some of its
long stretches and tight corners astounded Awana, and she had to cling to his
shirt both to keep up and to remind him that she was still there. Finally they caught up to the Halloween
friends, who were already closing in on Pumpkin. He was nowhere in sight, but the pat-pat of his stem-like legs against
the floor was audible. The tunnel
stopped twisting and turning. One
unhindered path rolled out into the shadows before them. They noticed that Pumpkin’s footsteps had
ended, and then there was a loud “Whoa!” and the sound of something—or
someone—collapsing in a heap. Jonathan
raised Ms. Unicorn into the air. Light
fell upon the floor of the tunnel, and everyone saw Pumpkin and Witch lying
flat on their faces.
“Watch where you’re going, Witch!” Pumpkin muttered as he
rose to his feet.
“Eh, ‘tis easier said than done,” Witch replied, holding
her hip and standing. “The darkness is
heavy here.”
“Well, things get a lot brighter up ahead,” Pumpkin told
the group. “Look!”
They stared forward and noticed that, ten yards away, the
tunnel ended and opened up into an expansive room. Pumpkin led them to its broadening point at a slow
and stealthy pace, and the room became clearer.
Its size was about forty by forty feet (with a high, arching ceiling cut from the mountains' natural stone), and it was cluttered with glass
tables, cabinets, and display cases; everything sat upon the diamond
floor. The tables were laden with test
tubes, pipettes, beakers, clear bins, jars of various compounds, Bunsen
burners, hot plates, and many other items whose names the companions could not
guess. Dispersed across the ceiling in
symmetrical design were glass chandeliers, blazing with the light of the fake
candles they held. In some areas of the
floor, there were broken or abandoned projects: steel golems with missing
heads, hybrid weapons, gelatinous substances and, most frightening of all,
scarred cadavers. In the center of the
room sat a massive cauldron that bubbled, orange and black tendrils of steam rising from it with a
low hiss. An old, nearly bald man
wearing a white lab coat and goggles stood behind it with his back turned to
the group, carefully adding drops from a pipette to a solution in a test
tube. To the friends’ surprise, he was
singing:
Three
potions done, three more to come.
The end
is now in sight.
Halloween
gone, resurrection,
And
goodness turned to blight.
The
holidays shall fade away;
I’ll
burn them to their core.
In ash
they’ll lay, that none may say,
“Happy
‘this’” anymore.
A touch
of this, a dash of that.
My
potion’s almost done.
The day
of thanks will not be had;
I’ll
strip them of their fun.
And if they
seek and try to take
The
potions I’ve conceived,
They’ll
curse their fate, for two are safe
In the
hands of M.D.
Ghost looked at Pumpkin. “He sang, ‘If they seek and try to
take.’ Do you think he suspects us?”
“I don’t know,” said Pumpkin. “It might be.”
“Even if he does,” Jonathan joined in, “it doesn’t
matter. He’s working on a new potion,
and he’s almost done. And it sounds like
it’s going to steal the spirit of Thanksgiving.
We need to stop him, and we need to do it now.”
“What an excellent idea, little child!” the old man
exclaimed. He reached under a table in
front of him, and there was a whooshing sound behind the group. A yard behind them, a door clanged to the
ground. “But if it’s to be a true fight,
we can’t have anyone escaping, can we?”
“Old men and their antics!” yelled Ghost.
“What an overconfident lunatic!” Bat shrieked.
“Pumpkin,” Jonathan murmured, “you were right. It is
a massacre in here. Just look at all
those bodies.”
Pumpkin paused.
“Um…oh, yeah. I wasn’t really
talking about them. Just look at that
long table over there! Seriously! I can’t bear to look.”
Jonathan gazed to his left and saw a dining table bearing
at least a dozen pumpkin pies. “What?
They’re just pumpkin—Oh, yeah. I’m
sorry, Pumpkin.”
The squash shuddered.
“I am Professor Aponowatsomidichloron,” the old man
announced, turning around to face them.
He had set down the test tube in a test tube rack. “I believe that you refer to me as ‘Professor
Apo.’ Why don’t you come in? Unless you
have ranged weapons, I believe that two parties engaged in a battle should be
close to each other, don’t you?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Jonathan answered coolly. He stepped away from his companions and
headed toward the professor with a determined stride. He gripped Ms. Unicorn tighter than usual,
though he was sorry to do so. He thought
he heard her suffocating in his grasp.
“Johnny boy!” Awana cried, clearly terrified for him but
too afraid to step forward.
“I got this, cupcake,” he said to her.
She looked at Witch, almost swooning. “He called me ‘cupcake!’”
Witch shook her head.
“Professor,” Jonathan growled, “you have stolen the
spirit of Halloween. You’re trying to
steal the spirit of Thanksgiving, and who knows what else. But I’ve come to stop you.”
“Fine,” the professor said with a laugh. Then his face became grave. “Just try it.”
Jonathan let out a battle cry and burst forth toward his
enemy. He leapt over two tables and
lifted Ms. Unicorn toward the ceiling.
Professor Apo stood his ground.
He clasped his hands behind his back and grinned. Jonathan increased his speed and lifted Ms.
Unicorn even higher. The professor
leaned against the table behind him. As
Jonathan prepared to jump over the cauldron smoldering in front of the old man
and throw his weapon with all his might, the professor hit something beneath
the table. There was a tremendous sound
of rock against rock all around the room.
And then, to Jonathan’s horror, resurrected cadavers—zombies, as people
tend to call them—poured like ants from newly revealed holes in the stone
walls. He stopped running a few feet
before the cauldron. Then, with a loud
squeal of which he was quite ashamed, he dropped Ms. Unicorn and retreated to a
corner nearest his allies. There he
huddled, burying his face in his hands.
The Halloween friends, however, noted with some confusion that he was
very specific as to the location in which he dropped the toy.
A hundred or more zombies entered the room, approaching
the companions slowly. Professor Apo
remained where he had been. His evil
laugh could be heard even among the groans of the living cadavers. Pumpkin brandished his sword and turned to
his friends.
“Jonathan is the kind of leader I thought he was,” he
said. “In a time when true leadership is
required, he has fled. But that is fine,
because victory is not beyond our grasp.
We can win this battle. We have
faced adventures before, and once we finish this, we will face many more. It will be but one more tale to tack on to
our list of extraordinary exploits. Go
forth, Halloween friends. Show them the
true meaning of comradeship…and of pain!”
Then they charged forward, roaring (and screeching and
meowing), undaunted by the seemingly innumerable force before them. Before they could meet their foes, Ghost
literally disappeared for a short while, but they did not know why until
later. Awana ran at Pumpkin’s side, and
behind them, Witch, Bat, and Cat (abreast) followed. Jonathan was shivering and crying in the
corner, too scared to take another look at the undead making their way across
the room. Professor Apo continued to
laugh. He now looked toward the ceiling with arms raised and chest
heaving. The zombies marched forward,
intent on ridding the room of every living thing but their master. Pumpkin’s sword led the companions forth,
forth into the fray.
Pumpkin met with the enemies first. His sword hewed the head from one zombie and
the legs from another. He then began to
jump from table to table, now somersaulting, now spinning while swinging his
sword with professional strokes at his enemies.
There were moments when he would vanish from his allies’ sight, and they
would panic; but then, seconds later, he would explode upward from beneath a
table and down a small group of zombies with an airborne spin attack. The thrill of battle was upon him, and rather
than fear (which would be understandable), only excitement touched him. It was not long before his sword, after years
of unuse, was smeared with blood.
Awana astonished everyone, especially Jonathan, who
finally found the courage to look up from time to time. Long had she hidden her passion for Jiu-Jitsu, but now she put it on
display for all of the room to see. To
her disappointment, the zombies did not seem particularly interested in engaging
her in the sort of match for which the sport called. This attitude resulted in their demise. Before they could eat her flesh, she would
wrap them up in her legs like undead pretzels and render them immobile. She would then destroy them with the nearest
object at hand. She favored the Bunsen
burner (as this item made interesting effects on their faces when turned to
high heat), but she also settled for broken beakers and the occasional stray
metal scrap.
Witch soared high above the
crowd on her broom, cackling wildly. At
times, she would chant dark words and release violent sprays of magic toward
the oncoming creatures. At other times,
she would reach into her pockets and drop potions upon the undead like
grenades. When she ran out of potions,
and when she was not chanting, she would sweep down and ram her broom into the
opponents at full speed. There were even
rare moments when she would extend both arms upward and, after yelling
something about liver of rabbit and antlers of hart, she would shoot through
the room in a dark whirlwind that picked up zombies and tossed them against the
walls.
Ghost, it turned out, had
visited the spirit realm and now returned with some heavy artillery. Withdrawing to the backroom, he spent a few
minutes building something. The
companions, fighting for their lives, thought that he was being a coward and
had found something less threatening to occupy his time. Soon, however, they were grateful to
him. He constructed a ghostly catapult
that lobbed spectral spheres of energy upon the horde of zombies. Though he was not in danger at any time, he
was very much part of the battle; his constant loading and slinging of the
catapult resulted in five to ten enemy deaths at a time.
Bat was a sight to see. His movements as he cut through the air and
sent his sharp wings through flesh and bone were graceful and flawless. As was inevitable, a zombie would intermittently
attempt to swat him or seize and eat him.
That zombie would have no luck, for Bat would dart away from his grasp
at the last second, propel himself toward the ceiling, and then shower upon his
enemy with his fangs exposed. His teeth
bit deeply into flesh, and he knew where to bite. Even if he did not always kill his prey, he
would maim each opponent in such a way that effective fighting was no longer
possible.
Cat, though the smallest of the
group, was not by any means the weakest.
The instant she entered battled, she released a hiss that was so
piercing, half the front line retreated.
Even the professor felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Cat then managed to cover every square foot
of the room in little time, hopping from table to table with admirable
agility. In her flight, she would land
on the chest of some foe and puncture it with her claws. Then she would launch her teeth into his neck
and leap onto the next table. There was
one moment when she saw Witch flying down toward her, so she jumped from a
table and landed in the cackling lady’s arms.
Witch then spun across the room in her whirlwind while Cat hissed,
causing zombies to flee in every direction.
They would not get far, for Pumpkin’s sword or Ghost’s aim would end
their flight prematurely.
Yet fight as they might, the
sheer number of the zombies was too much for the group. They began to grow weary, and they huddled
close together to assure that no one would be the target of some surprise
attack. Even in their weakness, they
managed to slay many of their enemies; but they noticed that it would take much
longer to kill one zombie, and that they would feel even weaker after each
kill. Ghost could no longer utilize his
catapult effectively, for the zombies were now too close to his companions;
they would be caught up in friendly fire.
Jonathan did not budge from his position, and because he was concealed
behind some tables and lab paraphernalia, the zombies did not see him. Professor Apo grew frustrated with the
allies’ persistence, so he hit another button underneath his table. Slots opened in the ceiling. Massive steel claws dropped down and sought
out each member of the party. Ghost
could do nothing but stare in awe and horror.
The claws held the five companions a couple feet above the hungry crowd,
like the hand of a child dangling food over his dog’s head.
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