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MD - Chapter 130: Halloween IV
🕑 Added 2025-05-30 17:11:10 +0000 UTC“Let’s go,” said the girl confidently. “We can do this.”
The girl and the boy stepped into the second room with confidence. However, as the door shut behind them, their previous certainty began to waver.
The second room, once the Dunphys’ calm and cozy living room, was now unrecognizable. Red lighting, coming from small hidden lamps in strategic corners, bathed the walls in a hellish hue. Shadows stretched into grotesque, elongated shapes, as if the walls themselves were alive.
The floor was marked with fluorescent footprints showing the way forward.
Faint, eerie music began to play from some invisible source. An out-of-tune piano.
The room had been transformed into the hallway of a psychiatric hospital. It forced anyone entering to walk in a zigzag, never knowing what might be around the next bend.
“We have to follow the path,” the boy murmured, swallowing hard, his hands gripping his plastic pumpkin tightly.
“Yes… yes,” the girl said, more to herself than to him.
Then, raising her voice with a forced bravado, she added, “There’s nothing to be afraid of. If it’s like the first room… it’ll be a piece of cake.”
They took their first steps, following the footprints. The first thing they came across was a very realistic mannequin.
It wore hospital clothes: white shirt, gray pants, a name tag that read “T. Brant, Night Assistant.” Its head was tilted to the side, its face pale, eyes empty… and its chest stained with dried blood. A broken pen was embedded in its neck.
Both children stopped. The mannequin didn’t move. But its position, right in the middle of the hallway, forced them to walk around it.
“It’s fake… but it might move when we get close,” said the girl, swallowing hard.
“Yeah… no big deal,” said the boy, trying to sound indifferent.
They both remembered the words of the grumpy blonde woman: “Dangerous patients on the loose.”
They looked at the mannequin again. If this was a hospital employee, he had clearly been a victim of those patients. Although, of course, it was just a prop. Nothing real. Nothing to worry about.
They took a step. Then another.
And passed it. The mannequin didn’t move.
Both let out a quiet sigh of relief, doing their best to stay composed in front of the other. They continued down the curved hallway until they came across something unexpected.
In one corner of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was a teenage girl. She wasn’t wearing a costume. Just jeans, a gray t-shirt, and a hoodie tied around her waist. She had her phone flashlight on, pointing at some notes filled with tiny scribbles. She seemed completely detached from the atmosphere around her.
The girl looked up lazily when she noticed them.
“You shouldn’t interrupt students while they’re studying…” said Alex in a monotone voice. “I have a biology exam. Or maybe I did five years ago. Hard to tell from here.”
She stared at them for a few seconds. Then lowered her head again. Both kids stood there, perplexed. Then looked at each other. And smiled.
The girl shrugged, “I knew this was going to be a letdown.”
“Yeah, just like the first room. But with red lights.”
With scornful smiles, they walked past Alex without a trace of fear. They didn’t even pretend to be tense. The setting was good, sure. But the fear… was another failure. Now they knew. The Dunphy house was a fraud.
And they were ready to finish the walkthrough, step into the backyard, grab their candy, and tell their friends it was all a sham.
They walked forward with confident, almost bored steps. The hallway curved once more, but they weren’t scared anymore.
The girl turned to say something teasing to the boy. “I told you this was—”
But then, a soft voice was heard. Barely a whisper.
“Do you want a balloon…?”
Both stopped dead in their tracks.
The boy frowned and looked around. The red light still cast shadows on the walls, and the path ahead remained lit as if nothing had changed.
“Who…?” the boy began to ask.
And that’s when they saw her. From a dark wall that had seemed normal, from what had looked like mere shadow, she emerged.
At first, she was just a silhouette, as if crawling out of a crack in the wall. A pale, white figure, with eyes glowing faintly in the reddish gloom. A red balloon floated beside her.
It was Willa. Her head tilted slowly, at an unnatural angle, as she silently stared at the children. Her flawless Pennywise makeup, mouth painted up to the cheeks, forehead cracked with crimson lines, looked even more real and terrifying under the red light.
“Hello, children…” she said in a high-pitched, distorted voice, drawing out her words like a sickly lullaby.
“Going somewhere?” she asked, tilting her head again as the red balloon swayed gently in her hand. “Going to see the other patients… or are you lost? Need help? I can be your guide!”
Her tone shifted constantly, sometimes slow and eerie, then suddenly excited and fast.
The children didn’t respond.
“Mm, must be very confused… I got lost once,” Willa continued when they said nothing. “Many years ago. I was just out looking for candy. Just like you. But I found something better.”
She paused. “Do you want to know what it was?” she asked, taking a step forward.
The children stepped back. The girl grabbed her brother’s arm.
“W-what…?” the boy asked, forcing himself to sound brave.
“Friends.”
Willa smiled even wider, if that was even possible. Her tone was sweet. Far too sweet.
“I found little friends forever. We play floating, you know? It’s a fun game… although, sometimes, it hurts a little at first.”
She crouched down slowly, as if to whisper them a secret. “Do you want to float with me…?”
The balloon rose slightly, as if responding to her voice.
The red balloon floated up just a bit, swaying silently, like a heart suspended in the shadows.
The children didn’t answer. They were frozen in place, tense, goosebumps all over their skin, eyes wide with fear.
Willa blinked.
Once.
Twice.
The previously friendly smile, though clearly terrifying, vanished, and she looked at the children seriously.
“You don’t want to float…” Willa said. Her cheerful tone was gone. Now her voice was deeper. Annoyed. Almost hurt.
Her body tensed. Her head tilted with a barely audible crack.
And then, without warning, a sudden scream shattered the silence:
“YOU’RE GOING TO FLOAT ANYWAY!”
Willa screamed and squeezed the balloon with both hands, making it burst.
POP!
A loud, brutal bang that echoed through the room like thunder.
The children screamed, the sound bouncing off the walls like a wave of panic.
“YOU’LL FLLLOOOOAAAAT WITH MEEE!” Willa roared, stepping toward them.
The girl shrieked. The boy shoved her along the fluorescent path. They ran, gasping, stumbling, crying.
Willa watched them flee, her breathing still heavy. Slowly, her posture relaxed. Her face twisted into a smile… a genuine, satisfied one.
The children ran without looking back. The hallway felt endless. But finally, after turning one last corner, they stopped.
They were panting. Eyes full of tears.
The girl’s face was red. The boy clutched his chest, trying to calm down.
“I think… I think we lost her,” he said, between gasps.
“Yeah…” she replied, trembling as she wiped her nose with her sleeve.
Both turned around, just to make sure no one was following them.
And then they saw it.
A silent figure, standing still and imposing. They must’ve passed it while running… but they hadn’t noticed it until now.
The figure wore a blue jumpsuit, a white expressionless mask, and held a long, bloody knife in one hand.
It was Andrew. His posture was perfect, standing tall, relaxed… but every muscle ready to move.
He said nothing, just took one slow step forward.
The children froze in place.
Another step. The white mask stared at them without emotion. The knife tilted slightly with the movement.
The boy went pale, his lips trembled. “It’s… it’s Michael Myers!” he whispered, recognizing him from the movie he wasn’t supposed to watch but did anyway.
The girl’s eyes widened in terror all over again.
“Run!” she shouted, grabbing her brother’s hand, and they started running as fast as they could.
They heard footsteps behind them, but didn’t look back—they just ran harder.
Andrew didn’t catch them, though he easily could have. His straight-line sprinting speed was on par with, or even better than, a running back.
The children burst through the door. The light from the street looked like heaven itself, and they ran out as if their lives depended on it.
Not a single glance back. They didn’t grab the candy laid out on the tray by the exit. They didn’t even pause on the porch.
They simply dashed out of the Dunphy house, down the steps, and kept running down the street, screaming.
Andrew walked over to the door to close it, catching a glimpse of his family, who were watching him, part proud, part wondering if maybe this year they had gone too far.
Andrew said nothing. He just raised his head, still wearing the mask. And without breaking character, he lifted his free hand and closed the door.
In the second room, Alex approached Willa’s area and watched her. Andrew arrived seconds later.
“You’ll float with me… seriously?” asked Alex, raising an eyebrow and staring at Willa with disbelief.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Willa replied, delighted, striking a dramatic pose like an actress taking a bow. “They dropped like flies.”
Alex let out a dry laugh and crossed her arms. “Yeah, well… if you ever end up in jail one day, this moment will definitely be part of the evidence.”
“That was great,” Andrew chimed in at last, taking off the mask and running a hand through his hair, slightly damp from the heat of the costume. “I don’t remember getting a scare like that in past years.”
He paused for a moment, taking in the setting. The atmosphere was perfectly crafted: the red lighting, the angled path, the silence broken at just the right moments…
And his own Michael Myers costume, his height and movement style, helped complete the final effect. It was threatening without needing a single word.
But Willa…
“What you did was on another level,” Andrew said, looking at her more seriously.
He had heard Willa’s demonic scream, and then the children’s terrified shrieks.
She looked at him, curious, “Yes?”
Andrew nodded without hesitation. “Yeah, your acting is amazing.”
“Thanks, I’m really putting in the effort,” Willa said, clearly pleased by the compliment, especially since it came from Andrew.
“It shows,” Alex added. “If I were ten, I probably wouldn’t sleep for a week.”
“Is that a compliment?” Willa asked with a smile.
“It’s the closest you’ll get from me,” Alex replied, holding back a smile.
“I’ve got a few suggestions to improve your performance,” Andrew said.
“Oh, shoot,” Willa said, intrigued.
“When you look at the next kids, try shifting just one of your eyes, like something inside you is miswired. It’ll make them uncomfortable,” Andrew explained.
Willa tried it. Her right eye drifted slightly, not perfect, but enough to be unsettling.
“That’s perfect!” Andrew approved. “And then leave your mouth just slightly open. Don’t speak right away. Stay silent for a few seconds.”
“Hmm, that might work… and maybe let a little drool slip out,” Willa joked with a laugh.
Andrew nodded, amused.
"I'm glad to see you're enjoying childhood trauma like it’s a competitive sport," commented Alex sarcastically, raising an eyebrow as she looked at them both.
Before they could reply, a soft doorbell chime was heard.
Andrew lifted his head, “The next ones are coming,” he announced seriously.
Alex sighed. “Well then. Time to go scare more kids. Anything to make sure we don’t run out of candy.”
Willa adjusted the collar of her costume, grabbed a freshly inflated red balloon, and walked back to her spot in the shadows. Andrew moved to his corner.
Alex stayed for a second longer, watching them, then murmured to herself with a half-smile, “Maybe this is more fun than I thought.”
The room fell silent once again.
Comments
Matt Holmes
Thanks for the chapter
