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MD - Chapter 131: End of Halloween
🕑 Added 2025-06-01 17:33:29 +0000 UTCThe second group of victims, as Claire liked to call them, entered the house.
Three kids stepped through the entrance. The first, a boy around ten years old, tall for his age, with brown skin and a confident, slightly defiant expression.
Next to him was his six-year-old sister, also brown-skinned, with curls and a shy smile. Bringing up the rear was another boy, the same age as the first, freckled, shorter, and with a face that looked ready to mock everything.
Jay once again messed up the timing of the effects, grumbling as he did so, clearly ruining the immersion.
Claire brought a hand to her temple, but Phil, as always, tried to stay calm. He straightened up with a crooked smile and said in a deep voice, “Not everyone who comes in here leaves the same.”
The little sister’s eyes widened, clearly impressed by the living room’s decor and eerie atmosphere. “Is that true?” she whispered.
But her older brother scoffed and stepped forward without fear. “Pff, this is a joke. I thought it would be like the legends. This isn’t scary.”
“Yeah,” the freckled boy chimed in mockingly, “This is like a first-grade birthday party.”
From a dark corner, Gloria suddenly stepped out in her witch costume, speaking with an even more exaggerated accent than usual, “Careful what you wish for! Inside here, the walls can hear… and those who mock may end up with their tongues turned into snakes...”
The little girl jumped and clung to her brother, but he just rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah… sure. Just give us the candy and we’ll leave.”
Claire now pointed toward Haley, who this time lifted the lid slowly, adding more suspense. “Some lost their heads,” she said with dramatic flair.
Cam’s head appeared, but he didn’t scream or do anything scary.
“And they all shouted,” Cam began, with a raspy voice and a distant look in his eyes, “It’s him! Catch Quasimodo! Catch Quasimodo!!”
Claire closed her eyes, unable to believe Cam was still going on about his ridiculous trauma.
“And the villagers chased me. And then I peed my pants. I peed in my pants,” he repeated, each time lower, as if the memory were tearing him apart. His voice cracked. He was on the verge of tears.
Haley, still holding the lid, stared at him, completely lost, “What… the hell…?” she muttered, glancing at her mother, confused, her eyes clearly asking: What’s wrong with him?
Claire clenched her teeth.
The three kids stared in complete silence. Then the two boys burst out laughing.
“Pfff… this sucks. I thought it was gonna be actually scary,” the leader said with disdain.
His friend let out a quick laugh, like he’d been waiting for permission to mock everything.
The little sister giggled softly, not saying anything rude, but clearly enjoying the provocation.
Claire forced a smile, though a twitch was visible on her brow, “Well, well! Aren’t you brave. Why don’t you go into the second room? Maybe that’ll surprise you. If you make it through, you’ll get more candy,” she said with a kindness that bordered on sarcasm.
The boy raised an eyebrow, defiant. “Piece of cake. And free candy… Let’s go. I don’t have all night.”
Claire led them to the door to the second room, opened it, and let them in.
“Follow the lit path,” she said sweetly, and the moment they passed through, she shut the door.
As soon as the click of the lock was heard, she muttered under her breath, “Scare that little jerk.”
Phil, who had heard her, raised an eyebrow. “They’re kids, Claire.”
“Kids who mocked my production. Now they’ll get what they deserve,” said Claire, already hoping to hear their screams.
The three kids stepped into the second room.
The difference was immediate. The lighting turned dim, completely red. The air felt heavier. A faint background tune floated in the air, a slowed, warped music box melody.
There were no adults in sight behaving badly, no movement. Just the three of them and that oppressive atmosphere.
For the first time, the dark-skinned boy, the leader, lowered his chin slightly. The freckled boy also stopped cracking jokes. Only the little sister kept her eyes alert, as if sensing something was off.
They turned a corner and found Alex, who was still studying her notes using her phone's flashlight, since the dim red lighting was terrible for reading.
“Oh… I have to study...” she began, unenthusiastically, trying to continue her improvised line, but nothing came to mind, so she simply went back to her notes.
The three kids stared at her. “Seriously?” the leader muttered.
The freckled boy snorted, “This is a waste of time…”
Alex pursed her lips, slightly annoyed by these cocky kids, but said nothing else.
The three children kept walking. They rounded a bend in the path and there, another figure appeared: Willa.
Willa was crouched in a dark corner, her face hidden. A red balloon trembled softly in her hand, held mid-air, barely reflecting the red light.
She wasn’t moving, her back was to the children, and she was quietly sobbing.
The three kids stopped in their tracks.
The leader swallowed hard, clearly not expecting this. The crying sounded far too real.
The freckled boy grimaced, unsettled.
And the little sister, naturally empathetic, took a step forward. “Are you okay?” she asked gently.
The crying stopped, and Willa slowly turned her head. The children saw her painted face for the first time, and they went pale.
“I’m alone… no one wants to be my friend… they say mean things… they hate me…” Willa said. Her voice was shaky, almost innocent, but deeply disturbing.
The freckled boy stepped back, looking around nervously.
The leader tried to joke, but all that came out was a weak sound. “I-is this part of the show?” he asked, confused.
Willa stared at him. One of her eyes began to drift to the side, as if something inside her had come loose. Her mouth hung slightly open… and a strand of drool ran down her lower lip, glistening under the red light.
The children were frozen, staring at her.
The discomfort was palpable, as if something was truly wrong.
“Are you… going to make fun of me too?” Willa whispered, her voice both childlike and hollow.
“No. I won’t make fun of you,” the little girl replied sincerely, taking a small step forward.
Willa seemed to process those words.
For a few seconds, she stayed silent, staring at the girl, her eye still off-center, the drool still dangling.
Then her expression changed. A slow smile spread across her face, forced, and instead of bringing comfort, it made the children shudder.
“That’s great… do you want to be my friend?”
The girl didn’t answer. Part of her was terrified of Willa’s personality and her expressions, but another part felt pity.
Willa lifted the arm holding the balloon. “I can give you this red balloon…”
The girl hesitated, “Maybe…” she said uncertainly.
“We should keep going,” murmured the freckled boy, now visibly pale.
“Yeah… that’s enough,” the older brother added, clearly uncomfortable.
“Come on,” Willa insisted with a forced sweetness, her smile still unchanged. “Come closer… take it. It’s yours.”
The little girl swallowed.
Something inside her was screaming not to do it. But her childlike empathy was stronger than her self-preservation.
She took a step. Another. She approached cautiously, breathing heavily. When she was just inches away and reached out to take the balloon…
Willa changed. Her smile twisted into a deranged grimace.
“Then you’ll float with me!” she shouted suddenly, in a guttural, almost inhuman voice, grabbing the girl’s arm.
The girl screamed instantly, a sharp shriek that shattered the silence.
The other two kids also screamed, paralyzed for a moment by shock.
“Let her go!” the older brother yelled, summoning all his courage.
He ran at Willa and shoved her hard to make her release his sister. Willa let go, not because of the force, but because that was part of the act.
The three of them began to run, hearts pounding, footsteps heavy down the hallway.
“This isn’t over!” Willa shouted after them, her voice breaking with rage and pain. “You said you’d be my friend!”
And then she started laughing, watery and chilling, “I’m going to come to your house tonight…!” she added between giggles that sounded like they came from the bottom of a pit.
The little girl was crying.
The three of them were already running without looking back. All they wanted was to reach the exit.
They were running like hell itself was right behind them.
They didn’t stop.
They didn’t look back. They didn’t even register that the hallway had a final scare prepared.
Andrew, fully ready in costume, was just about to jump out from the side shadows, but the kids ran right past him, not even seeing him.
They slammed the door open and burst out onto the street, breathing hard. They could still hear the clown’s laughter, that eye, that smile… They were clearly going to have nightmares tonight.
The little girl was crying. The makeup on her face was now smeared with tears.
“I don’t want… I don’t want her to come tonight,” she sobbed, “She said she’s coming for me… the clown… I don’t want to… I don’t want to!”
Her brother hugged her tightly, trembling too, trying to appear braver than he really felt.
“No… nothing’s going to happen, okay?” he said with a trembling voice, not sounding very convincing. His eyes kept darting to the door, as if expecting the clown to come after them. It had all felt too real.
The freckled boy didn’t say a word. His face was completely pale. His mouth hung slightly open, like he still couldn’t process what he’d just seen.
Claire, watching from the living room window, frowned. “What the hell…?”
She saw them run without even glancing back.
And without touching a single one of the reward candies they’d prepared on the entry table. Just like the first group, but much worse.
Phil had just opened the door, looking alarmed. Claire was right behind him.
The three kids were on the sidewalk. The little one was still crying inconsolably.
“Hey, hey…” Phil said softly, approaching slowly, “It’s okay, you’re safe. It was just a performance, alright? Nothing here is real. No one’s coming after you, I promise.”
“Here, this is your reward candy for making it through the second room,” Claire added, handing the candy to the freckled boy since his hands were free.
The kids didn’t say a word. They took the candy, still shaking, and walked away without a backward glance.
Then Phil and Claire went back inside the house.
Halloween night continued.
Claire, who was on the verge of a hysterical breakdown, finally snapped, because of Gloria’s terrible fake accent, Cam’s Quasimodo trauma, and her dad’s badly timed scare cues.
Lack of commitment, chaos, and missteps had led her to finally explode during the third group of victims, who laughed at the first room, but came out terrified from the second.
And from that moment on… everything changed. The first room started to improve.
Jay triggered the effects on time: lightning, thunder, fog, all perfectly synced.
Gloria dropped the fake accent. Cam finally abandoned his Quasimodo story and just focused on giving solid jump scares when the silver lid was lifted. Haley improved her performance. Luke and Manny found their rhythm as the mad scientist and his monster.
The second room, on the other hand, had been solid from the start… maybe too solid at first.
Willa, after the first two groups, began calibrating her performance. She didn’t always scream or act too realistically like Pennywise. If she saw younger kids, she held back. If they were older and cocky, she pushed them to the edge. She adjusted the level of fear like a seasoned actress.
Andrew did the same. If he saw older kids in groups of more than two, he made them run like they were in a nightmare. But if it was younger kids alone or with just one friend, he knew when to stop. He’d put away the knife, take off the mask… and hand them the candy with a genuine smile.
Even Alex gave in to the experience. After all, scaring kids wasn’t just liberating… it was actually fun.
By the end of the night, the Dunphy House of Horror had become a neighborhood legend.
All the kids were talking about the red-balloon demon clown, Mitchell Myers chasing them like he was real, the thunder and screams, the asylum-like Dunphy décor…
The kids were already calling it “the scariest house in the neighborhood, and the best Dunphy haunted house ever.”
“It was worth it,” Claire said, satisfied and much calmer now that the chaos had passed.
Phil gave her a sideways look. “Even the trauma?”
“Especially the trauma.”
On the front porch, Andrew and Willa sat on the steps, surrounded by candy wrappers and stolen treat bags from the “reward” stockpile. Both looked a little tired, but satisfied with their work.
Willa was slowly chewing on a mini chocolate bar.
“So?” he asked, stretching out his legs with a lopsided smile, “How was your first real Halloween night?”
She shrugged at first, as if she were going to downplay it, but then reconsidered.
“It was… fun. Way more than I expected,” she replied, glancing at him with a faint smile on her lips. “I guess scaring kids with you and your family makes the experience way better.”
“That’s good. Plus, you were the star tonight. Nobody’s going to forget the female Pennywise, those kids are gonna have nightmares for months,” said Andrew with a smile.
“I hope not,” said Willa with a small guilty laugh. “I don’t know if that says good things about me or not…”
“I think it means you’re talented. And scary. And really good at lying so kids trust you and want to be your friend… right before you chase them like you’re going to eat them,” Andrew replied, amused.
Willa smiled wider and stayed quiet for a moment. Then she turned to him, slightly more serious. “By the way… what happened with your aunt’s prank?”
“Mm, I don’t know… She hasn’t tried anything weird yet,” Andrew said with a thoughtful look.
“You think she forgot?”
“Claire forgetting a Halloween prank?” Andrew looked at her like that was as unlikely as a blue eclipse. “No. She’s waiting for the perfect moment. I know it. The second I lower my guard… BAM!”
“So… are we still going with the plan?” Willa asked, lowering her voice a bit.
“I don’t know, it’s up to you. I’ve already kept you here over an hour. If you want to go home, that’s fine. No problem.”
Willa shook her head without hesitation. “I’m staying. I heard Haley telling your aunt she was going to invite people over tonight. Cara, Sophie, Kevin, Leonard, Zach… you know.”
“Oh, right. She’s grounded, but got that special permission. She can’t go out, but she can have guests. Classic Dunphy-style punishment,” said Andrew with a faint smile.
Haley had been grounded for almost a month because he ratted her out.
Just then, the door behind them opened, and Haley appeared in her Mother Teresa costume, coming down the steps with her usual graceful, but rushed, energy.
“Hey! The others are about to get here. We could watch horror movies or something. There’s ice cream in the freezer, candy all over the house, and I’m officially unsupervised because Mom locked herself in with a glass of wine and wants nothing more to do with Halloween,” Haley said with an enthusiastic smile.
Andrew and Willa both raised an eyebrow at that last part.
“Your mom locked herself in?” Andrew asked, and Haley nodded.
'That’s weird…' Andrew thought.
Did Claire really run out of time for her prank since she worked so hard on the haunted house this year? Or was this all a setup to make him think that, and let his guard down?
“Great,” Andrew said, standing up and stretching a bit. “I’ll call Pippa and ask if she’s coming.”
Willa glanced at him when he said the name, but kept her calm smile. Haley sat down next to her while Andrew stepped away to make the call.
He spent a few minutes speaking in a low voice.
When he came back, Haley asked straight away, “So? Is she coming?”
“Nope,” he said simply.
“Oh...” Haley murmured, not hiding the mix of surprise and… relief. Then she shrugged, trying to sound casual. “Well, more ice cream for us.”
Andrew didn’t say anything. Pippa and Haley had clashed the day secrets came out over Colombian food at Jay’s place. They managed to make peace, but it wasn’t exactly a deep friendship.
As for Haley, she forgave Andrew for ratting her out and everything he said to her surprisingly quickly, even he was shocked by how fast.
Just then, two figures stepped through the front gate.
Leonard and Howard, dressed as Marvel characters.
“Good evening, town of ignorance!” announced Howard, raising his arms. “You have been blessed with the presence of Doctor Doom and his loyal companion—”
“I am not your companion!” Leonard interrupted, clearly offended. “I’m the young Reed Richards, Earth-1610 version! We share no emotional or chronological bond whatsoever.”
“You don’t have emotional bonds with anyone,” Howard shot back without missing a beat.
Willa, still sitting on the porch, raised an eyebrow. “Okay, two things,” she said. “One: Doctor Doom is like six-foot-seven and built like a demigod… what exactly was your selection criteria, Howard?”
“The power of performance,” Howard answered with a bow, “and platform shoes.”
“And two: why are you dressed as Marvel characters on Halloween? You’re supposed to be scary!”
“Doom is a villain!” protested Howard, offended.
“And Reed Richards can be terrifying if you know his ethically questionable decisions in the Ultimate comics,” Leonard defended himself with conviction.
“They have a point,” said Andrew, nodding.
That’s when Leonard noticed Willa’s costume. “Wait… are you Pennywise?”
Willa leaned forward slightly, that perfectly calculated sinister half-smile on her lips. Her right eye drifted just a little. “Correct. Want to float with me?”
Leonard and Howard instinctively took a step back. They froze.
Leonard swallowed hard. He knew it was Willa, but her costume and acting were so good. He and Howard had seen the 1990 It series, and like many kids who watched it, Pennywise had left them with psychological scars.
“Well…” Leonard began, trying to maintain some dignity, but Howard interrupted him.
“Yes, I want to float!” Howard blurted out enthusiastically, eyes gleaming.
Clearly, the fear was there… but it couldn’t compete with his constant hormonal state.
Willa blinked once and looked at him like he was a strange insect.
“Weren’t you afraid of clowns?” asked Leonard, staring at his friend in confusion.
“Yeah, but they’re all ugly and guys…” Howard replied, shrugging.
Haley, sitting on the porch, raised an eyebrow, amused, but also genuinely disturbed. “So, you’re saying that even though you have a phobia of clowns… if they were women, you’d kiss them?” she asked, looking at him like he was a clinical case.
“You are such a total pervert,” she added, not giving him time to answer.
“Okay, wait... total pervert?” Howard said, raising his right hand. “Or lustful and lonely?” he added, raising his left.
He stared at both hands, as if weighing options on an invisible scale, and then chose by raising his left. “I’ve come to this.”
Leonard looked at him with a grimace. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Oh God… why did I have to hear it?” Willa groaned, putting a hand to her forehead. “I want to float right now.”
“There’s no unhearing something like that,” Haley murmured, rubbing her temples. “It sticks to your soul. Like trauma.”
Andrew let out a low chuckle, chewing on a candy corn. “Well, think of it as revenge for all the scared kids. This is our cosmic punishment.”
Haley nodded. “Yeah, makes sense. After all those kids left crying, someone had to make us pay.”
At that moment, footsteps echoed at the garden entrance. The others had arrived, and Halloween continued.
Though it wasn’t a long gathering, there was school the next day, Andrew stuck close to Willa the entire time. After all, if Claire played her prank, Willa had to be right there to fake the heart attack.
But nothing happened.
Claire didn’t pull any tricks.
And while part of Andrew felt disappointed, he’d really been looking forward to seeing Claire’s reaction if she thought her prank had caused someone to collapse, he also, secretly… felt relieved.
It had been a long, exhausting day. And the same was true for Claire, she had carried enough stress to not need a fake heart attack added on top.
And just like that… Halloween came to an end.
Comments
Amos
Can you make the heart attack prank like a special or in next year Halloween? Would love to see it
Matt Holmes
Thanks for the chapter
