Deep in the ancient, petrified forest lies an old, forgotten town, where the inhabitants long ago disappeared, never to be heard from again. Its beautiful little buildings now sit in a sense of sadness and disrepair, their windows broken, their doors boarded up, the rooms inside long-since emptied. The church that sat near the edge of town has suffered the worst, with a roof that has caved in with a gaping hole in the middle, its pews inside rotted away to barely anything, the candlesticks and stained glass gone. Even the gravestones, left unattended, have fallen down and crumbled amongst each other, the statues and memorials overgrown with wild vines and ivy, wingless angels fallen to lie in pieces on the withered grass among the weeds.

At the edge of the town lies an old theatre, which has sat abandoned for even longer than the town itself. It is rumored that the reason the townspeople left was because of the theatre, that strange things had started happening inside that place. Many people that went roaming its halls never returned, and with no trace of their whereabouts, it wasn’t long before it was common thought that the theatre was haunted by an unkind spirit. When traces of human remains were found when a manager of the theatre went missing and a search team was organized to find him, these rumors were confirmed. The building went through several more changes in ownership, with strange sightings of bizarre creatures and unexplainable things happening--lights would malfunction, backdrops would fall, items would disappear, strange figures would appear in a crowd, but no one would recognize them, then would be gone again in a flash...

Strange things like that drive people to board up buildings and leave them be.

But now, decades later, the town is vacant, as though the occupants had gotten up and left in a hurry--or simply disappeared into the night.

There is another rumor--a rumor of a creature that sleeps all year save for one night, when it wakes to feed, to slake its gluttony. This creature awakens on the night of a full moon in autumn, with eyes the color of night and claws of black silver, long teeth and animal-like speed, capable of chasing a full-grown human down from across a wheat field. It is believed that there is strength in numbers, that the creature will not hunt an entire pack by itself, that it will pick the one standing off on its own. What it feeds on is unsure. How many of them exist is unknown. Their name is a whisper, uttered only in the most serious of situations, on the darkest of nights. It is called Halloween.

It is rumored that the Halloween lives in the abandoned theatre, through the petrified forest, past the abandoned town, and that it still slips out, past the ancient boards, slipping out the windows, to feed...

It is on just this sort of night... That people caught wandering alone do not return home...

But there are few enough people now in the world, in small, isolated towns, afraid to leave their homes after dark... Something must be done about these creatures that threaten the very survival of us all.

On this night, a tall, lithe creature is slinking through a small neighborhood, going from door to door, inquiring at each for a doctor, pleading for the occupants to please, open their doors, to have a heart, that a young woman's life was at stake. The stranger is aware of the shadows that slink about, following down the street, searching for someone, anyone who would open their door to listen and offer their aide... What will you do when posed this option? Will you take your chances and open the door to let the stranger inside, or will you ignore them, roll over, and go back to sleep? It's your choice...


(It died, so I figured, since it did so well, I should attempt one more time...)

The full moon was rising, the tall, strange figure making their way hesitantly from house to house, knocking on the doors, calling, pleading at the houses' occupants for help, for someone to open up, trembling hands knocking on the doors as a shaking voice called, bright, mismatched eyes filled with tears, the thin voice letting out a choked sob as they staggered to another house, jumping nearly out of their skin when a trashbin down the lane was knocked over. The figure looked over one black-clad shoulder, to see a small cat rummaging through the spilled contents, sighing in relief.

But danger was everywhere, in the shadows of this town. Help had to be found--a doctor, a nurse, a med student would do! Someone, anyone would do to help the life of one young woman...

Slurred curses echoed of the generic off-white walls of the apartment buildings lobby. The source of the curses was from the young Dayna Bucklin whom stumbled and wobbled down the hall humming to herself through the offensive language. Tonight she was "just a little tipsy" by her standers. Dayna only had two and a half bottles of delightfully brewed beer during the last few hours of her work day.

On this dark night Dayna wobbled on her black and white Nike shoes, she paused with one hand falling lazily at her side and the other rubbing the back of her neck. Standing near dumbstruck in the middle of the hall she realized she had no idea which apartment door was hers
"Fun…" She muttered under her alcohol smelling breath.
Wasn't this a treat? She was willing to close her eyes and pick a door but she was afraid that the door might be unlocked and she might walk in on something she would rather not have. For the moment she could have cared less, she brought home part of her work (the other unopened bottles) and some old western movies from the nineties in her frayed olive green messenger boy bag. Dayna took another step, her blue jeans tugged stiffly at her legs. The movies could wait she decided, she wanted a nice hot shower and a nap first! Her bleary moss green eyes scanned the doors with gold painted numbers nailed to them. Hers was one twenty-one.
"One ten, one thirteen…nope," She drunkenly rambled as her gaze searched the surrounding doors before she moved on slowly careful not to loose her footing and fall. Ouch.

A low growl emanated from down the hall, ahead of the stumbling drunk woman, where the light in the ceiling had flickered out ages ago and the manager hadn't yet fixed it. A shadow, deep in the darkness, slunk from the corner, stepping forward, a head tilted slightly to the side, black eyes wide as they gazed at their new victim.

A black gloved hand shot out from behind, covering the drunk woman's mouth, a soft voice whispering, "Don't move... back away, very slowly... Don't scream, or he's going to pounce..."

At first Dayna thought the growl she heard was her stomach; she reached down and poked it. She didn't know why, it was a drunken thing I guess. She was hungry but not that hungry. She grumbled about the broken light as she took a step forwards squinting into the darkness to see the other door numbers. She was having trouble because it was first of all dark because the lazy manager of their never changed anything until he was being threatened to be sued. And second of all, she needed to wear glasses because she was near-sighted but she was too stubborn (or to lazy too) to wear them.

Dayna squeaked with surprise, the bottles in her bag rattled when she was shifted slightly backwards by a hand covering her mouth.

"Don't move... back away, very slowly... Don't scream, or he's going to pounce..." The voice did tell her.

'Scream? I can't scream, genius you're covering my mouth,' Dayna mental commented since she could do nothing else. Yes she was still drunk but the sharper tongued side of her brain was pretty sober tonight. Her hands had found their way to the hand covering her mouth. Clumsy fingers prodded at the wrist. Dayna was to under the influence to really have a massive reaction to it yet. 'What's gonna pounce? Kitty?' The drunker side of her mind inquired.

The shadow at the end of the hall came slowly slinking forward, huge blue-black eyes watching the pair intently as it crept forward, step by step, silent, save for a soft metallic clicking and a slight scrape of something sharp against the carpet of the hallway. There was silence again before the growl returned, a little louder,t he creature moving forward, slowly standing now on two feet, stretching to its full height of well over six feet, towering over Dayna before hissing in her face, the gloved hand tightening before the voice whispered, "Don't move... Not a sound..."