I’m a bit warmer in the new clothes, but I wish I’d kept my sandals, since a little bit of sole between my feet and the cold, damp ground would be nice. Still, the socks rubbing against my blisters feel a lot better than pumpkin vine straps.

  The rest of the group went on to raid the nearest souvenir stores, but Isaac, Scud, and I are walking Lance back to the restaurant, who seems under the impression it’s the other way around. I don’t think he realizes the extent of his damage, the way the twitching is getting worse.

  How much of him is still human? How deep does the wiring go? Could they even give him an X-ray or MRI, or would that just damage the already faulty machinery?

  Isaac and Scud discuss the best course of action in hushed whispers on the damaged side, the right side, which Lance seems to have mostly forgotten he has. I’ve heard of that with certain forms of brain damage, sometimes even denying that hand belongs to them. The way Isaac and Scud seem to be discussing how best to set up an operating theater for brain surgery really doesn’t help.

  And then there’s the other group, lead by the remaining soldier. Reggie, going by Barnum, seems to have been telling the truth about wanting to live and let live, but there’s still a lot that can go wrong. What if Scud is mistaken about the prions? Or Ozzy gets scared again, and starts fuming something terrible?

  “You okay?” Isaac asks, chewing the chains of his bracelet, watching me adjust the heavy cello case.

  Ozzy didn’t want to part with it. Possession is nine tenths of the law with the carrion birds, but I promised I’d keep it safe for him, stressing how much easier it would be to come back with things of value if he didn’t have to lug it around.

  “Just…been a long day,” I explain, yawning.

  “Fatigue, yes,” Scud replies, Lance silently moving ahead as the three of us pause. “Extra stress and late hours upon the body. He will carry the Venenum’s instrument, if it is too heavy.”

  “I got it,” I reply, wanting him to keep his hands clear if something happens to Lance, moving to follow the injured soldier before he gets too far ahead.

  Psychic medical knowledge, engineering that obeys no known laws of physics, and all I get is the ability to spray poison out of my ass. The least I can do is make sure those two can do something useful when the time comes.

  “…But…um…do you think the other group is going to be okay?” I ask.

  “There is a lot of them now,” Scud replies. “Patient Ironfist has the Gunsight’s remaining ammunition. They will be fast, and they will return safely.”

  “Accidents happen,” I murmur. “What happened to Lance was an accident, because no one thought to look up. And Ozzy…”

  “Reggie knows how the clowns operate,” Isaac says kindly. “He’ll think to look up.”

  I can tell he’s nervous, though. These are people Isaac knows, that he sees daily. They’re his friends, maybe not the closest, bestest of friends, but seeing them hurt and changed…it probably hurts.

  I still haven’t heard from home, either. So my mom might not have exactly been June Cleaver, but she did keep a roof over my head and clothes on my back, somehow. Her neighborhood has kids. She has a bag of candy set out for them.

  I blanch, picturing kids becoming their costumes. The people like us, we all seem to have a craving for pumpkin or green apple or candy corn. Kids on Halloween are another creature altogether, hungry, mischievous, and on the loose. I’m picturing superheros and kitty cats and cowboys and whatever else kids dress up as, but as starving vampires, out for chocolate instead of blood.

  “Do you work for the park, Scud?” I ask.

  “Medicum,” he corrects me. “The use of a title is only respectful, young miss. And seasonal. He was hoping to be recruited for regular employment, but we will probably seek our fortune elsewhere.”

  Isaac practically snorts with laughter.

  “Seriously, you want me to carry that?” Isaac asks, reaching for the cello.

  “Naw, worry about Lance, he might need you,” I answer, gesturing at the door Lance is standing in front of, staring at it like a monkey doing a math problem.

  “You good, there, Lance?” Isaac asks, stepping around the soldier to get to the door. There’s a moment of clarity when Lance sees Isaac push the door open, like he suddenly remembers that doors need to be opened.

  It’s full rain out there, which makes Isaac wince. He glances at Scud, his lack of movement in his visual range meaning he has to turn his head to make eye contact, as it were, and then back at the damaged casing and wiring at the side of Lance’s skull. I think quickly, knowing they need a minute to cover it.

  “Um…Mr. Lance, sir,” I ask. “The cello’s getting heavy. Can you give me a minute to catch my breath?”

  “He c-c-c-can-n…” Lance stammers, looping in a reaching motion, as if trying to take the cello from me.

  Working on his blind side, Scud undoes the clamps on his flat hat and places it over the soldier’s head, having slipped Isaac a bandage to tear open and place at the same time. Lance, oblivious to anything going on near his right side, never notices.

  “I’m alright, I got get it,” I smile, lifting it back.

  Walking on the slick cobblestones is hard for the damaged soldier, whose rifle isn’t meant to be used as a walking stick and doesn’t support his balance properly. I’m terrified he’s going to slip and fall, but we’re not far from the restaurant.

  Of course, the first thing that happens, after ushering the sparking, twitching steamborg with stroke symptoms into a dry place where he can get medical care, is a tear-streaked young woman rushes the door screaming.

  “Where is he? What did you do with him, you freaks? What did you do?”

  Isaac pulls Lance out of the blast radius and ushers him to the kitchen while Scud steps in to calm the woman.

  “Patient Scott went with the rest of the group to secure necessities. He will return in due time.”

  The woman, like her husband or boyfriend or whatever, has no visible changes or alterations, and Scud takes her aside to speak to her quietly, calming her down before she upsets anyone else.

  Watching her make a fuss, I realize that is if this whole “situation” is as Halloween-centered as it seems, there’s going to be a lot of…problems going forward. The people who don’t celebrate Halloween can be very vocal, and there’s going to be no living with them, once news gets out that everything came to life.

  I wonder if I can get some kind of worker’s comp for this. “I was only able to get tickets because they were discounted for contractors for the Holiday season. I mean, this all literally happened while at my workplace.”

  I wouldn’t hold my breath. Isaac, Reggie/Barnum, and Lance might have a case. If Lance’s family can get a good lawyer, they may end up owning Wonderland after this. Where was security when a clown pummeled him in the face with a hammer?

  Where is anyone? At this point, shouldn’t the National Guard be mobilizing? Isn’t this kind of a natural disaster at this point?

  Getting Lance into the kitchen is a bit more of an adventure than it should be. He still wants to help people, give orders, calm nerves. The glitching doesn’t help with any of that, and before any of the soldiers can ask about the procedures for relieving an officer of duty, Isaac places a long, tentacular finger at an exposed wire at the damaged eye and plucks it like a guitar string.

  Lance stops. He stops moving. He stops talking. He stops doing anything except breathe, still as a statue, the eyeless man retrieving Scud’s hat and handing it to the winged female slider.

  Surprised, fascinated, and a little horrified, I take a closer look at the injured soldier. He looks like an animatronic with the power cut, in mid-stride, leaning on his unloaded rifle, mouth open at the start of a sentence. It’s like someone hit “pause,” until his good eye moves, focusing in on me, fluid and normal, but absolutely horrified.

  They say the eyes are the window to the soul. That’s because the optic nerves connect to the brain. You get a lot of emotion, the read of a person’s soul, through the eyes. That’s why it’s so disturbing that Isaac has none. Your instinctive impulse, when faced with something without eyes, is that is has no soul.

  Lance’s soul is screaming.

  Whether it’s because he can’t move, he’s in pain, or he’s just realized that what this afternoon was just a bit of plastic and spirit gum can now shut down his nervous system like a computer, and a stranger knows the command prompts, I can’t really be sure.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Alright, Manowar, let’s get you fixed up,” Isaac mutters, dragging Lance into the kitchen like a mannequin.

  The female slider, still in watchful possession of Scud’s hat, has a place in the back of the kitchen cleared away, near where Scud worked on the other slider girl with the hurt leg, apparently for medical use. No matter how clean a kitchen is, they’re not exactly sterile, not like an operating theater, with food stored, cut, and prepared nearby, but she’s done her best, even using whatever spare boxes or plastic crates she could get to make a place for Lance to sit.

  I lean the cello against a wall. The female slider eyes it curiously.

  “It belongs to Ozz—um, the Venenum,” I explain.

  Possession may be nine tenths of the law to them, but she seems to understand when something is up for grabs and when it was handed off on loan with expected return, setting Scud’s hat on top of the cello and moving them both to a safe place for the time being.

  There’s not a lot to partition off Isaac’s surgical wing. The best the female, calling herself Pestilentia, can do is keep other people out, and be available if Isaac needs something. This sort of leaves me by myself, standing awkwardly from just outside the kitchen, watching Isaac swear into his tools in something that sounds European and try to reconnect the damaged wiring. At some point, the tall, slender man just pulls the griddle away from the wall and rips a red wire out of it, which literally ruffles the slider’s feathers, but she says nothing.

  Apparently, in carrion bird currency, a life is more valuable than property.

  Lance’s good eye keeps looking around the room, that look of abject terror and helplessness as can’t move anything else, posed like a doll for Isaac’s comfort and ease. It’s maddening to watch, and probably worse to experience.

  When I can’t take any more, I go to the boxes where Lance is sitting, and try to draw his attention, try to keep his gaze fixed on me. He’s watching, but I don’t know if he can hear me.

  “So what are you going to do when we get out of here, Lance?” I ask quietly, trying not to disturb Isaac, or the little pumpkin girl fetching tools out of his toolbox. “I’m going home for Thanksgiving. It’s a sixteen-hour bus ride, but it’s worth it. My mom makes the most amazing apple pie…”

  It’s not a lie, not exactly. The recipe was passed down since the Depression, and she made it a few times, when I was younger, before her own depression took her full-time. The last time she made it, I was about seven or eight, and she fell asleep drinking the brandy she used for it, and nearly burned the house down.

  She never made it again.

  Still, Lance doesn’t need to know that. Lance needs to think about there being a tomorrow, so that he can make it through the right now.

  I don’t know if it’s working, or if it’s something Isaac’s doing, perched imp-like on the three-sectioned sink, feet gripping the metal for balance, but Lance starts to drift away. He struggles to keep his eye open, fluttering it after longer and longer intervals of shutting. Eventually, the eye stays closed, and the panicked, ragged breathing slows to an even rhythm.

  “Someone may as well get some sleep,” Isaac muses softly. “I’m beginning to see what Ozzy calls you ‘Snake Charmer.’”

  “Because my mom’s apple pie story could bore a soldier to sleep during brain surgery?”

  “You calmed him down. You got him to relax.”

  “By boring him half to death!”

  “Does it matter?” Pestilentia asks. “It worked.”

  A commotion at the entrance of the restaurant shows that the second group has finally returned. Scott falls into his girlfriend’s arms, her alternating between hugging him and chastising him for running off. The newcomers filter in to some surprised looks, but they’re not attacking anyone and holding whatever blankets and food they could get, and that’s enough.

  Ozzy immediately makes a beeline toward us, pulling blankets out of his coat, wrapped up tight and still in the label, and an unopened box of candy corn.

  Isaac finishes whatever he’s doing, and then replacing the casing. Lance stirs in his sleep, the red light in his aperture coming on as he kicks and snorts, before fading away. Gently, Isaac leans him against the wall, still sitting upright.

  “That’ll have to hold until I can get a soldering iron,” the eyeless man explains, taking one of Ozzy’s blankets and wrapping around the gently snoozing soldier.

  Ozzy seems to focus in on the blanket. Having no face, I can only guess what he’s thinking, and it’s probably something like, “That blanket was for you, not him, dumbass.”

  “What now?” I ask, watching with satisfaction at the lifelike movements in Lance’s right arm, his real arm.

  “Wounded…children…vulnerables…” Ozzy muses. “Nowhere to move…can’t stay…”

  “Get ammo to the soldiers,” Isaac suggests. “Arm the ones that need it. In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can get the grill going.”

  Ozzy nods, returning the his flock, claws clacking against the floor tiles. The sliders chat among themselves at the far side of the restaurant, distributing goods to one another, Pestilentia with food, Scud with medical supplies, the other girl with blunt weapons, and the last one I don’t know with sharp weapons. Ozzy has his water and sodas.

  There is a word going around the restaurant, “ghoul.” I don’t know where it came from, if it was in the Monsterland event’s marketing, or someone heard Lance say the coward bracelets keep away the “ghoulish.” For whatever reason, that seems to be the term. Clown, steampunker, steamborg, carrion bird, anthro, masked park guest, all under a new umbrella term “ghoul.”

  They’re still changing, too. Barnum, cracking lighthearted jokes at the table with the little girl I gave the bracelet to, casually uses a knife to slice open his shoes, making room for feet that weren’t so big the last time I saw him, but swinging the knife around like he’s forgotten it’s in his hand. Isaac’s probably never going to be classed as “heavyweight,” but there’s definitely mass and tone in his physique he didn’t have before. Scud occasionally drops a feather in his wake. Ozzy has protrusions along his cervical spine and tail, like small, studded spikes trying to force their way from the leather.

  Am I changing, too? Would I notice? I’m not…craving rat for dinner, am I?

  No, still candy corn.

  “I need a power source,” Isaac muses, looking at where he pulled the wires from the griddle.

  “Obviously,” I reply, watching Barnum wave the knife around as he over-gesticulates during his jokes, getting laughs that are just as uncomfortable as they are genuine.

  “Well, getting an engine out of the parking lot is probably out of the question,” he continues. “There’s further into Singularity, but he would rather not…”

  I raise an eyebrow when Isaac switches pronouns. The ones I’ve heard do that seemed to be a little more out to lunch, like Scud and Ozzy, and while I don’t know the reason, Isaac doing it seems a bit concerning.

  “Well…we’re in a restaurant,” I mutter sarcastically, a bit distracted by the sudden shift in verbage. “Can you get an electrical charge out of lemon juice and vinegar.”

  Isaac lifts his head to look at me in slow-motion. If he had eyes, they’d be going wild.

  “Voodoo Child, I could kiss you. I’m not, but you’re brilliant and check the tables for malt vinegar. For the fries!”

  I blink, briefly wondering if he’s making a potato clock like they do on television, making my way into the dining area and scouting the tables. I don’t find anything, no salt or pepper, no ketchup.

  I look up at the sliders, moving about the group like ghostly waitstaff. Scud is tending to injuries. Pestilentia is exchanging candy apples for chapstick. Ozzy has his cello case, seated on the table, resining the bow.

  “Ozzy?” I ask, moving over toward him.

  He doesn’t look away from his task, but the change in smoke from autumn leaves to movie theater butter tells me he’s listening.

  “Isaac needs malt vinegar. Do you know where it went?”

  “Why?” he asks hoarsely, putting his bow back in its casing but pocketing the resin, head tilted.

  I suppose in the grand scheme of things, people haven’t exactly been asking for condiments.

  “I think he’s trying to make a power source for the grill,” I explain.

  His mist taking a distinct vinegar smell, he nods and he climbs down from the table. There’s a noticeable wobble that he tries to hide, a bit too long for a haunt slider trying to readjust his balance.

  He pulls Pestilentia to one side, conversing with her in their carrion bird language, her in birdlike chirps and cawing, him in reptilian hissing and clicking, just like before. Even among the carrion birds, he’s a bit of an outsider, his costume more World War 1 than medieval, his gas mask more trench than plague. Still, there’s no judgment that I can see on the other sliders.

  Whatever they’re discussing seems to be getting heated. Ozzy rubs his temple, head turned down, looking at his clawed feet. Whether it’s the signs of physiological distress or the discussion, Scud steps in to intervene, practically shoving Ozzy into a chair to get him to sit down. Eventually, Ozzy reaches into the recesses of his coat, handing over a bottle of aspirin, and then some water. Scud squawks audibly at this, hissing at the female, who shrugs and starts pulling jars of vinegar out of her coat, gathered by Ozzy who brings them to the kitchen, Scud in tow squawking vulture protests.

  “Great!” Isaac cheers from wedged behind the stove, his lean frame folded in a way that makes my knees and shoulders hurt just to look at him, parts spread all around him, including the motor from the chainsaw he found downstairs.

  Ozzy returns to his cello and starts up with Monster Mash.

  “Ozzy!” Isaac snaps from across the room. “Read the room!”

  Puffing a burst of pumpkin spice like a sigh, Ozzy switches gears to something I don’t recognize.

  “Is everything okay, Medicum?” I ask Scud as Isaac directs Ozzy to begin pouring the vinegar into one cannibalized lemonade mixer fountain.

  “Young men are often overzealous in their beliefs about their physical hardiness, often neglecting themselves and overstretching their abilities.”

  “Isaac thinks he’s ten feet tall and bullet proof?”

  “Not the I See You,” Scud corrects. “The I See You is beginning to mellow with wisdom, but his desire to care and protect are overriding his reason as well.”

  “Oh, Ozzy,” I say, putting the pieces together. “All that vapor…he’s a dehydration machine, isn’t he?”

  “Astute, Patient Snake Charmer,” Scud nods. “As his attending physician, we recommend the Venenum find a quiet place to imbibe clear fluids.”

  “You guys…probably don’t like taking your masks off, do you?” I ask, wincing slightly.

  “You are a bright young lady,” Scud nods. “But the Venenum will like it even less if he must strip him to place an intravenous line.”

  “Yeah, no, let’s try to avoid that,” I say, looking at Lance, still asleep in the corner. “I’ll see if I can get him to take a break.”

  “Do not overtax yourself, either, Patient Snake Charmer,” Scud advises, “but he would prefer not to have to perform surgery in here.”

  “I got it, Medicum. I’ll think of something.”