In Regards to Your Concerns About Your ScareBnB Experience

by Effie Seiberg

Dear Mrs. Axelthorpe,

I’m so sorry to hear your family had a negative experience at our ScareBnB. While we aim to provide an atmosphere of family-friendly spooky overnight fun, I see that with your family’s unique experience we’ve missed the mark.

You’re right, the blood dripping down the stairs to the abandoned attic was a slipping hazard. However, we did have signs clearly stating that guests should not go up the abandoned attic stairs for precisely this reason. You’ll be glad to know that the stains will eventually come out of your family’s clothes with a little bit of bleach, but unfortunately the curse we use to keep the bloodflow going is non-removable, and your clothing will continue to drip.

After their arrival into the (closed off) attic, I understand that your children were distressed by the sounds of our attic ghost. However, after reviewing the logs and interviewing the performer on shift, Alex of the Screeching Chains, it appears that the upsetting sounds were of Alex weeping after your offspring doused him in several cans of WD-40 and tried to set him on fire. We encourage our performers to stay in character and will send him an appropriate reprimand once he’s out of the hospital.

While most of our guests are delighted by the Hallway of Knives And Very Pointy Pendulums, I am disappointed that we did not meet your requirements for entertainment. That said, after our staff put out Alex’s fire, they asked your children not to climb up the pendulums several times, as their weight would throw off the delicate balance of blade choreography. Despite this, they persisted on clambering all over the apparatus, which as a result disconnected and flew across the hall, decapitating our Haunted Knight. I understand your children were dissatisfied when they found the Haunted Knight staggering around looking for his head amusing rather than scary. For this I also apologize. (You might be interested to know that the Haunted Knight will also make a full recovery after another few rounds of ectoplasm transfusion.)

I would also like to assure you that yes, all of our bats, rats, and tarantulas have all been vaccinated. While I’m deeply sorry that your wife was bitten, the critters only nip when provoked. I understand that setting the castle’s tapestries on fire has a way of spooking them.

In regards to the tapestries, they are enchanted to show the current guests’ greatest fears. While I’m certain it’s unsettling to have your own image appear in magic needlepoint, unfortunately I am not able to determine who in your family is terrified of you. That said, we are grateful that you only burned the tapestries in the North Wing, as the South Wing’s tapestries contain the threaded souls of the damned and we do not want them getting out.

Finally, I understand that while you were asked to leave the house for the firefighters to do their work, your family wandered into the nearby (closed) graveyard. Unfortunately as this was merely the local graveyard and not part of the ScareBnB experience, we cannot be held responsible for your experiences there. That said, yes, it can be disappointing that the graves were only for the dead, and not the undead, and I understand your children’s frustration that their desecration did not yield more fruitful results. I can also understand your consternation at the arrival of the local pitchfork-wielding mob.

I’m sorry that this caused you to exit the premises, and you were not able to avail yourselves of our full overnight experience, complete with fully-locking coffins lined with the finest rotting shrouds.

For all of these, I’d like to assure you that your recent visit has been comped, and per local regulations, we’ve notified the police.

Best,

Mr. Swamppe, Director of ScareBnB Customer Service and volunteer firefighter

PS—While we are not able to offer you a discount on your next stay with us, as your account has been disabled, please instead accept these $50 gift certificates for each of our top competitors.

The 2019 Halloween Parade

by Alasdair Stuart

You get your seats for the Parade good and early this year. It’s a hot day, a little oppressive, thunder or the rumour of it bunching your shoulders and making everyone hunker down a little. Or a little more. The churro guy has your order though and you catch up and wish him well. He gives you double, tells you you may be needing them.

This year the parade doesn’t just begin with the Director. Oh she’s there, gloved, suited, precision machine tooled heels that could sever a Hydrogen atom if they so wanted but this year she’s deep in animated conversation with a janitor. He has wild, flyaway hair, a big jaw and an oddly graceful gait. It’s as though Doc Brown’s younger brother went into the service industry. As they get closer, you realize what’s disturbing you. It’s not just that this woman who, over the years you’ve come to view as the part of an inhuman authority you’re allowed to comprehend, is talking to this man. It’s that she’s talking to him as a friend. An equal.

A torchlight flashes behind them. The janitor turns, gestures for the young woman in their wake to hurry up. She’s tall, pained, fit but has had to pay for that fact. The weapon she carries shimmers as it moves, the idea of a gun, no, the discussion of the idea of a gun. The Magnum variations. But as the gun remains fluid, she remains stoic, focused. A fractal rose blooms briefly over her head and then is gone. Behind her a massive steam train looms out of the fog you didn’t notice come in. it’s battered and scarred, an angry bulldog of a thing and all the more awe inspiring for those scars. The engine towers over you and the men and women on it, ragtag fatigues, compressed air weapons and haunted eyes, lock gaze with anyone who dares to challenge them. Behind it comes a service car and a carriage all crammed with people and belongings. All bursting with ugly, untidy, glorious life.

Then there are the three men, all deep in discussion. One, dressed like a ship’s captain works hard to keep the others at distance and two in particular, apart. They’re in the middle of a blazing row and for a second you see one of them as an Eye, vast and lidless. You blink again and only the old man is there. He smiles, sees you. Just for a second, someone else is standing in his place. Someone taller. Oddly familiar. They smile, wave and-everything’s back where it was. And the Old Man, you notice is beginning to slowly fade. His two companions are hand in hand as he goes, not comfortable, not yet. But soon.

Coming after them are a trio of women, deep in discussion, all completely unique in appearance and style aside from one thing; authority. You can’t take your eyes off them as they stride by, accompanied by the accouterments of running a town like sentient streamers. Police, Firefighters, dead bodies, lovers, vengeance. It’s all here. Walking behind them, deep in conversation with the blonde mage with the trenchcoat and the wandering eye, the man with the sentient tie sticks his hands in his pockets and smiles. Next to him, the magician smiles. This, for him, is going somewhere new and new is almost always as good as different. At least for a while.

The air above them shimmers and for the split second you can see it, a spaceship outlines itself like a rollerblind opening and closing. You’re pretty sure you saw it. You’re pretty sure you saw them wave. Buddy isn’t so sure, and he takes one of your churros as he proves his point.

Then things get weird.

You don’t notice at first, but Buddy does. The men and women in slightly too precise summer gear, making their way through the crowd. One of them stumbles and puts a hand up, not to steady themselves, but to their ear.

To their earpiece.

‘It’s okay.’ Buddy says. ‘They’re not looking for anyone, they’re just establishing a perimeter.’ He grins and it’s wide and wild-eyed like everyone on the poster for his favourite movie, Summer School. ‘HERE WE GO!’

A veteran, and you can tell by the way he carries himself, walks down the middle of the street. Map in one hand, flashlight in the other, he smiles and waves to the others. He’s in animated conversation with the staff of a gas station, some of whom are definitely alive, some…are questionable on that front. They’re forming a loose perimeter around him, weapons spectral and real ready. Around them, two horseshoes of soldiers, one in uniform, one not. You can’t make out the logo on their shoulders beyond a letter P but you can see they’re either protecting the gas station staff or perhaps corralling them. Or both.

Then the atrocities arrive and Buddy HOOTS with joy. The lizard. The Plague Doctor. The stairs. The jukebox. The hotline. The light switch. The happily married and partially alive couple, the warden with the handcuffs both in and on his hands. Normal objects or normal shapes at least curdled like milk left out a little too long, their edges fuzzy, something pushing out from within.

‘THIS IS THE GOOD STUFF! Rig-‘ There is the hiss of a tazer. Buddy’s face contorts and keeps contorting, the skin stretching sideways as though someone is grabbing his face and yanking. He screams, or is it a laugh, there’s a ripping noise and-

You’re alone, just like you always are for the Parade but…the churros are gone faster than usual. Stress of the year. Maybe? You think and head up to get a new batch. The churro guy gives them to you on the house. You stand behind a soldier and he salutes you when he leaves. You can’t see his unit badge, but it ends with a P.

The Swedes come next. Each one happy and smiling, waving to the crowd in their bright clothes. At their centre, carried aloft in fact, is an explosion of flowers with the face of a woman. She’s pretty, and haggard and somehow those two are wrapped around one another. There’s a sense you get from her of resigned tranquility. This is not where she needs to be. But this is where she is and that at least is enough. She pays no mind to the bear being carried behind her. No one notices when it twitches every now and then. When a human sob echoes from somewhere near it and the family following it in silent, fervent worship.

Perhaps because the dead follow. And not just the usual dead, the ones fended off by a different group of survivors every year. They’re still here too, some new faces, some missing faces. No, what follows behind them are the true dead. The victims. The bystanders. The narrative bricks and mortar whose degradation is someone else’s character arc, whose violent death is the language another’s story is written in. You’ve never seen a group so large be so quiet. They’re shepherded along by two women. In the front, in an immaculate suit could almost be the director. But she wears no gloves, her bobbed brunette hair is loose and she’s constantly playing with a speedloader for her side arm.

Bracketing the dead is the college student. Terrified, alone (although she does shimmer like a heat haze, her outfit seeming to shift) and resolute. Poker in one hand, other reaching out into the darkness. Reaching for something certain. Terrified of finding something, or someone, broken.

Thankfully, the Broken are out of reach and VERY well dressed. Immaculate, if slightly dusty black is the order of the day and as you watch them dance their elaborate, maniacal, silent waltzes you’re reminded of nothing more than a grandfather clock going faster and faster and faster, the cogs shaking in their housing until finally.

SILENCE.

Darkness.

A spotlight

Two women, a complete set of arms between them play the cello. Nearby an individual with a glow that seems to come from within not an external souce regales their girlfriend with the story of a city beneath a city. A float follows them, a water tank filled to the brim with flood water and terror. In one corner, in an air pocket, a father contemplates what he’ll have to lose to live. The alligators circling his daughter, out in the main tank don’t seem to care, and neither does she. Eyes wide and focused she looks like one of them. An Apex Predator. No one’s victim.

The music hits and the Impala makes it’s turn. The brothers in the front, the angel and demon in the back, the family walking on either side of them in an arrowhead, behind which a thousand kids dance and sing with wild, defiant energy. Some of them are already bloody. Others soon follow. It doesn’t matter. Neither do the carols or what looks like a Santa chasing them down. They’re living for the moment, so all of us can live for the moment.

And then, the Director again. This time, somehow, in lockstep with the young woman and the notional gun. They’re even dressed alike now. Moving alike. Waving to you with the same offhand, casual interest.

The parade leaves and, after a little set up, a man with amazing hair and a skull mask begins playing music and handing out download codes. You grab one and say goodbye to the churro guy and the soldier who is watching you a little too closely and head home. As you get to your car, you realize you had double churros but can only remember eating one order You blink, a laugh you barely recognize echoing in your ears then get in the car. Time to go home.

Happy Halloween everyone!