A full moon hung low in the sky, silver and lustrous, illuminating the corners where the streetlamps didn’t quite reach. Angela kept her eyes trained on her shoes as she marched down the hall. Earlier tonight, she and Dustin had walked to the diner together, their shadows growing closer and closer until finally his shoulder bumped against hers. With a thrill, Angela had taken the opportunity to snuggle closer to Dustin, tucking her bare arm under his jacket and snaking it around his waist for warmth. He had draped his lanky arm over her shoulders. She had blushed.
It had been a perfect night and now here she was, stalking her sister to the bathrooms.
"What do you think you're doing?" Angela demanded. "Why do you always have to ruin my plans?"
Lilith’s face lit up with surprise, but it quickly settled into a mischievous smile.
“Angela!” she said, spinning around to face her twin. “What a surprise! Where did you say you were going tonight? The school dance?”
Angela folded her arms, putting up her defenses. Lilith was the last person she ever expected to run into tonight. “I could ask you the same thing. You’re supposed to be home with mom and dad. Handing out candy.”
She shrugged. “Happy Halloween.”
Angela snorted. “You’re going to be in trouble!”
“So are you.” She craned her neck left and right, trying to peek behind to see the counter. “Especially when they hear who you’re here with.”
When Dustin first
invited her out for Halloween Angela had been hesitant to accept, unsure how she
would be able to explain her absence from the traditional Pleasant festivities
to her family. She and Dustin been secretly dating since school began but she’d
had no trouble sneaking in dates here and there, explaining them away as extra
study sessions at the library. But this night was an entirely different story.
He said he wanted to
take her out to a proper dinner. No more shared brown-bag lunches and
snack-packs surreptitiously devoured in the back of the reference section. A
real meal they could enjoy at their leisure. Out in the open.
It wasn’t a problem, he
said. His mom would be taking Beau and the baby out trick-or-treating and she
didn’t much care what Dustin did with his free time these days.
Not so for Angela. Her
parents expected her to be at home for the night, dressing up to hand out candy
and spend time with the family. Even her grandparents and cousin would be
stopping by for an hour or two.
But then Pleasantview
High School had announced its plans to host a Halloween Bash. It was a thinly-veiled
effort to keep the mischievous teenage residents off the street that night, but
Angela saw her opening. She told her parents she, as a member of the student
council, absolutely had to be in attendance that night and they
begrudgingly agreed. Lilith had scoffed at the first mention of the event, so
there wasn’t anything to worry about on that front. She wouldn’t be caught dead
within a hundred miles of the school.
And so Mary-Sue dropped
off one of her twins at the school right as the sun was setting. Angela waved a
cheery good-bye to her mother, thanking her for the ride, and disappeared
inside the school gymnasium with the rest of her classmates. She spent about
twenty minutes working her way around the room, putting in a memorable
appearance, before quietly slipping out the back door and down to the football
field where Dustin was waiting under the bleachers.
"You know what, Lil," she sighed, shaking her head. "Let's just do us both a favor and pretend like this never even happened."
Lilith crossed her arms and shrugged.
"That's the best thing you've ever said, sis. Maybe people aren't so wrong about you. You do have a good head on your shoulders."
Angela turned to go; to return to her booth in the corner of the diner, where Dustin was waiting. Out there, she could hear the 1950's rock-and-roll that was piped through the building's speakers. Back here, all that could be heard was the occasional flush of the toilets and clunk of the pipes. Order whatever you like, doll, Dustin had told her in an affected, gangster-like accent. I’ve got some bread in my pocket
tonight.
"Happy Halloween," Angela grumbled, suddenly set on getting out of here and really having one with her boyfriend.
Hardly two steps down the hall, Angela froze, hearing a slight commotion. She doubled back, just in time to see the door to the men's room open a few inches. A familiar nose poked out, and a familiar mouth called Lilith's name.
"Dirk Dreamer," Angela exclaimed, rooting the shoes of her 1950's costume back where they had been for the past five minutes. "What're you doing here?"
He looked startled for a second upon seeing Angela but quickly accepted her presence.
"Nothing. He's doing nothing here," Lilith interjected with a nonchalant wave of her hand. "I know that you live under a rock 24/7. But people do go to diners sometimes, you know."
"Hey, Angela," Dirk mumbled and offered up a smile. "Tell Dustin I say 'hey.'"
"Oh, don't bother with them," Lilith sighed and latched onto his arm. Her voice dropped to a much lower, more tense tone. "Are you ready?"
"Uh... not so much." He gave an apologetic shrug and scratched at his hair. "The men's room was sort of out... I dunno, the diner's been really busy tonight. You're gonna have to go into the lady's and get some."
"'Get some?'" Angela echoed. An alarm went off in her head. “Exactly what are you two trying to get?"
“We have a few plans,” Lilith
admitted, pushing the door to the women's restroom open with the toe of her riding boots and ducking inside.
When she returned, she had half an armful of toilet paper rolls. Dirk's face lit up in a mischievous grin as he flopped an empty gym bag on the tiled floor and started packing the rolls up.
“What are your plans?” Angela demanded. “What are you doing with all of that?” She motioned to Dirk’s bag.
“We’re just going to have a little fun.” Lilith shrugged in mock innocence.
“It was Lilith’s idea,” Dirk explained. “We’re going to TP the Goth mansion.”
“No way,” Angela insisted, raising her voice. “I’ll tell mom.”
Lilith rolled her eyes. “No you won’t. Not if you don’t want me to tell her about your date with Dustin Broke. You know what she thinks of their family.”
Angela threw her hands up in frustration. “You’re going to get in trouble.”
"Like I said," Lilith said with an apathetic shrug. "Happy Halloween, right?"
"Lilith, don't," Angela plead - but it was too late.
Her sister and Dirk were already halfway to the front door of the diner.
* * *
The
Goth manor had towered over the rest of town for as long as any of the
teenagers could remember. The sharp rise and fall of its roof blacked out the
sky as far as they could see, darker than night itself. Each of the windows on
the top floor were dark. Empty. Closed-off and unused this Halloween night. But
downstairs, lights poured from the windows, spilling out onto the carefully
manicured lawn. Dustin, Angela, and Dirk stood at the edge of the property
line, drinking in the sight of the manor.
Lilith, however, was
already halfway across the yard.
“What are you doing?!”
Angela hissed, looking nervously around for sign of anyone who could have heard
them out here.
Instead, they all had to catch up.
“C’mon, guys. This is a stupid idea. Mortimer’s party is tonight. There’s going to be, like, a million guests there. There’s no way you won’t get caught," Angela plead for the hundredth time that night.
“That’s why we have to try,” Lilith said flippantly. “We love a good challenge.”
“No,” Angela said firmly. She folded her arms. Beneath them, her heart beat like crazy. When Lilith wanted left alone, she was almost impossible to keep track of. And following her all the way to the Goth manor had been a challenge of its own. “Like I said, not going to happen.”
"Would you weigh in here?" Angela plead, grabbing onto the arm of Dustin's mustard yellow sweater and giving it a good shake. "She's just going to get into trouble!"
Dustin, unwilling to let Angela go into the mess alone, had stomped alongside his girlfriend all the way across town. Reluctantly, he joined their little parade of trouble making, grumbling to himself about how he had already forked over the cash for the dinner he and his girlfriend hadn't even eaten. Still, he shook his head, clearly on Angela’s side. "She's right. If it's such a harmless prank anyway, why bother?"
Lilith’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head with a little smile. Angela stomped her feet in annoyance and groaned loudly. This was clearly not how she had planned on the night turning out.
"You have something bigger in mind, Dusty?" Lilith snickered.
Her sister didn’t stop. She didn’t even hesitate, as she darted between
two headstones and kept going, straight for the willow tree that grew on the
corner.
"You're not seriously going to let her do this, are you?" Angela demanded of Dirk, folding her arms and hugging herself for warmth against the sharp autumn wind.
“Dirk, you’re not seriously considering going after her,” Angela plead. “What if someone hears? Or sees? We’ll all be in trouble!”
And Dustin, she knew,
couldn’t afford any more trouble right now.
“There’s a whole
ballroom full of people in there right now. Full of witnesses,” Dustin added,
motioning toward the glowing windows of the manor. Like every year that had
passed since the family came to town, the Goths were hosting a Halloween party.
And like every other year so far, the Pleasant twins and their boyfriends had
not been invited. “Come on, man.”
“It’ll be fine,” Dirk
insisted, shouldering the bag higher.
“You don’t know that,”
Angela plead.
“Who do you think took
care of their tree last year? And the year before that?” Dirk grinned and
jogged across the yard after Lilith. He, too, didn’t spare a look back at the
hesitant couple who wanted no part in the Halloween antics. "Relax," he called back over his shoulder, at such a volume that Angela cringed. "It's just for fun!"
Lilith didn’t stop. She didn’t even hesitate, as she darted between two headstones and kept going, straight for the willow tree that grew on the corner. When she reached it, she looked back once: she motioned to Dirk to follow with the bag of toilet paper. And with a sly grin, she found a foothold in the bark and hoisted herself up into the lowest branches of the tree.
“There’s no way I’m just going to stand here
and watch them vandalize the Goth manor,” Angela scoffed and crossed her arms.
“As if we didn’t have plans already, before she had to come along and
derail them. Come on, Dustin.”
She reached down to grab
his hand, but her fingers were met by nothing other than cold, autumn air.
Angela spun in a circle, squinting in the darkness to see where her boyfriend
had gone. Did he go after Lilith and Dirk, in an attempt to stop them? Or
had he already started back toward town, to finish their date?
“Dustin!” she hissed,
her heart beating faster every second that she stood there, more sure and more
worried that the longer she did, the greater the chance that someone - anyone
- would look out one of the glowing, festive windows. They would see her,
would see the vandals in the tree, and everyone would go down for the prank -
not just Dirk and Lilith. “Dustin, come on!”
“Ange! Over here!”
She spun around again,
facing the direction the voice had come from. If she squinted, she could just
barely make out the silhouette of someone standing against the front of the
Goth’s greenhouse. Hugging her sweater closer, Angela turned her back on her sister
and hurried over to Dustin.
“What’re you doing? We
have to get out of here before someone sees them and calls the cops on all
of us!” she hissed.
But Dustin’s eyes were
fixated elsewhere.
“Do you see that?” he
mumbled, staring at the murky glass of the front door.
The whole structure
looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years - maybe since it had been built.
Angela squinted and stared hard at the warped panes of glass, trying to see
what he was. She tried to remember when the thing had been built, too, but
couldn’t. She didn’t recall ever seeing construction workers out here, or
even delivery trucks full of easy-to-assemble parts. Of course, Cassandra was
just enough years older than the teenagers that she wouldn’t have gossiped
about the addition to the property. Not to them. Besides, that had been more of
her mother’s part: boasting to the rest of Pleasantview about which new
building, what kind of fountain her husband had swiped the credit card for most
recently. But now that Angela thought about it, she hadn’t heard any word of a
greenhouse on the Goth property.
“See what?” Angela
demanded, her heart suddenly beating fast. “Dustin, cut it out. You’re scaring
me.”
“That.” Dustin nudged
her in the arm and pointed straight ahead.
“See what?” she hissed impatiently and took a step back. “I don’t see
anything! There’s nothing there!”
“See that,” he
insisted and pointed again. “There’s something in there. Something moving
around inside!”
“Dustin, stop.” She
backed up another step. “You’re just trying to scare me. Well, it’s not funny.
Just cut it out.”
“I’m not joking. I can
see it when it blocks out the moonlight,” he insisted. “Just look again!”
She opened up her cherry
red lips to protest again, but the sound of her voice was cut off before
anything came out: Something, someone, grabbed her from behind. Hands clamped
around her waist. Warm breath steamed against her neck, down the collar of her
fifties sweater.
Angela screamed.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” a
familiar voice behind her hissed.
The hands disappeared
from her waist and shoved her forward a couple of stumbling steps. Righting
herself, Angela whipped around to see her sister and Dirk standing there, with
a now empty duffle bag between the two of them.
“What do you mean?! What
are YOU doing?” Angela hissed, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of her nose.
“Don’t scare me like that! You KNOW I hate that!”
“Well you know what I
hate? You screaming and getting us all caught,” Lilith hissed and shoved
through the group to get to the door of the greenhouse. “Come on. We’ve got to
hide.”
“What, are you crazy?
I’m not going in there,” Angela protested, hanging back.
“She has a point, guys.
I saw something moving in there,” Dustin added, putting a hand on her shoulder
and squeezing. “I don’t want to end up hiding in someone else’s hiding place.
Let’s just leave.”
“Can’t,” Lilith spat and
yanked the door open. She disappeared inside without another word.
Dirk gave the rest of
his friends an apologetic look.
“Let’s just say someone
might have already seen us TP-ing the tree,” he admitted and ducked in after
Lilith.
“I don’t care. We didn’t
do anything wrong,” Angela insisted, turning to Dustin.
Shouts coming from the
manor house cut off any further conversation. Both Angela and Dustin whipped
around to look back there: shadows of people were cutting across the lawn,
heading straight for them, and shouting threats that the police were already on
their way; they’d be in “big trouble” for trying to “crash” the party.
“We weren’t trying to
crash anything!” she yelped.
“Yeah? Try telling them
that from the back of a police car,” Dustin said, latched onto Angela’s
arm, and yanked her in after the others.
The greenhouse was as
overgrown and unkempt as the exterior. Dead plants hung from the ceiling, their
tendrils cascading down and brushing the tops of everyone’s heads as they
skirted around puddles of damp potting soil and broken glass.
“Guys, you have to come
see this!” Dirk’s voice came through the damp, dark building that wreaked of
dirt and mold.
Dustin and Angela
navigated their way over a series of fallen plants and stamped-down flowers to
the very center of the greenhouse, where a massive pot housed something
wrinkled and decrepit. Whatever it was, the dead plant was as tall as any of
them. When it was alive, it must have been even bigger than that.
“What?” Angela barked, impatient and ready to be out of here, out of the proximity of the Goth manor, and back to the plans she had originally made with Dustin.
“You don’t remember
this? From school?” Lilith smirked. “I thought you were supposed to be the
smart twin.”
“Look, just tell us what
it is or don’t,” Dustin cut in.
“Fine.” Lilith’s eyes
moved from face to face to face. “It’s a cowplant.”
Everyone, even Dirk,
snorted.
“Oh, shut up,” Angela sighed and pushed Lilith’s hands away. “Would you stop being so loud? You’re going to get us caught - and over a stupid urban legend.” She kicked at the base of its crumbling pot with the toe of her shoe.
“I wouldn't do that if I were you," Lilith warned. "It's not going to matter if we get caught by Mortimer Goth - not if this thing wakes up."
Angela just rolled her eyes. She stumbled her way over the debris of a greenhouse that was once full of life, to a stone bench covered in potting soil. She brushed off a corner of it and perched on the edge, fully prepared to wait out those who searched for them and any potential legal implications that came with that.
“All I’m saying is
there’s no way Mrs. Goth got abducted by aliens,” Lilith breathed, staring
wide-eyed at the skeleton of the plant. “That thing is definitely a meat
eater.”
"First it tricks you with cake...!"
"...and then you DIE!!" Lilith announced dramatically.
“Cassie
already has a black belt in fighting off rumors about her family. You don’t
need to force her into anymore,” Angela interjected from her spot on the bench.
“Okay,
but what if it’s not a rumor?” Lilith challenged. “You really think that this
thing has never killed?”
“I’m
sure it’s ended plenty of platinum lives,” Darren mumbled, poking at the base
of the cracked planter with the toe of his shoe.
Angela
whirled around on him to share her glare with him, too.
“Or
it’s not even real. It’s probably just for decoration.”
“Really?
Then why is it in the greenhouse?”
“Who
cares?!” Angela rolled her eyes.
“Guys, I found a
backdoor!” Dustin announced, from somewhere between a whole mess of old heat
lamps. “Time to make a break for it.”
“Come
on,” Angela said and pushed herself up off the bench.
As
she followed the sound of Dustin’s voice, she brushed off the back of her
skirt. This wasn’t exactly cheap at the costume store, she lamented.
“Do
you know what they keep in greenhouses? It’s not dead plants. It’s not decorations,
Ange!” Lilith called after her, not moving an inch. She shook her head at
her sister’s disbelief. “We find a killer plant at the Goth mansion, right
after Mrs. Goth went missing?? I thought you were supposed to be smart!”
Angela
turned around, half a step away from Dustin and their ticket out of here. She
rested her hand on the handle of the greenhouse door, reassured by that alone
that they were going to get out of this alright. Lilith wasn’t going to ruin
Halloween for them. Not this time.
“Exactly.
Which is why-” she pushed the slab of glass open an inch – “you can stay here
with the ‘killer’ plant.”
“So
what? You don’t want to know what really happened? You, the oh-so-curious
Pleasant twin? You were the one who said the Goth’s were lying from the very
start!” Lilith pressed on, craning her neck to keep her eyes on the now-shadows
of her sister and Dustin. “Well, I do want to know!”
Everyone knew that between the Pleasant twins, Lilith was the one who did what she wanted to get what she wanted, even if those goals were breaking into a millionaire’s home to do recon on a killer plant that looked like a cow. But no one looked convinced that that meant they should stay. Instead, even Dirk edged toward the door.
“Seriously?”
Lilith snorted, rolling her eyes at him. “All you’re good for is a couple of
elementary school pranks, right? Because you’ll run away the second something
gets more serious.”
“You
know what?” he asked, his eyes fixated on something over her shoulder: beams of
light, flashlights, sweeping through the greenhouse. “I’m starting to
think it’s a good idea that you run away, too.”
He
latched onto her arm and took off after Dustin and Angela, who had already made
it to the edge of the property line. They weren’t stopping, heading right back
toward town. And he didn’t have any plans to stop, either. He plowed on,
dragging a very unwilling and stumbling Lilith after him.
“Why
don’t you believe me?!” she demanded, the sound of the words jarred by each
running step.
Dirk
paused, breathing hard.
“You
wanted to get caught tonight?” he challenged. “They were already searching the
greenhouse. It doesn’t matter if I believed you, because they would have found
us. And you know Mortimer: he doesn’t take lightly to people crashing his
parties. Or vandalizing his property. He’s overprotective. Obsessive.
You know that.”
Lilith
took a step closer and narrowed her eyes.
“Why
don’t you believe me?” she demanded.
Dirk
lifted up the torn hem of his shirt, shaking from the exertion of the run mixed
with the adrenalin of the night’s pranks. Lilith peered in the darkness to make
out what she was showing her: a smear of blood along his hip, where the terracotta
shards had caught him.
“I
do believe you. Now let’s go.”
“There!" Mortimer announced, pointing at the greenhouse with the tip of his wooden costume store. "There's a light on inside! What fools, these criminals... Draw your sword, Lothario!" he snapped, elbowing his guest in the ribs.
With an oof, Don unhooked the wooden sword from the side of his own costume and waved it about in the air for a good show while his host was looking.
“Vandals!" Mortimer announced, edging toward the door to the greenhouse. He adjusted his bright red wig on top of his head and motioned over his shoulder or Don to do the same. The pair fought their way through the fluttering maze of toilet paper, hung all over the weeping willow tree. "The police have already been notified and are on there way! And here, we prosecute to the full extent of the law...!"
THE END.
Happy Halloween 2015! And happy 10th year of Halloween stories! Love, KGCowbelleSims & Mahogonygreensims
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