Halloween

	In a town called Halloween, a wolf howled, and scampered backwards toward a house, as a ferocious bear stepped toward it. The bear made a quick meal of the wolf, as its head was impaled by the beak of an eagle. A cougar jumped into the air, clawing the eagle, and catching a nearby skunk in its large jaws. A young girl began to cry, horrified at this chaos.

	The road was beginning to crumble, and the only hospital in the area was surrounded by strange, floating objects. The nearby hotel had recently shut down, after its owner had suffered a fatal injury. As the girl ran back to her father, he groaned, “I hate going downtown.”

	A young boy, held in the man’s arms, let out a sneeze. His sickness was the only reason they had come down. His daughter had joined them, wondering why they could no longer go downtown, why they had to stay outside of their houses. The small shelter area was cramped, and nobody particularly liked it.

	“Dad, why can’t you just go to the Rosemary house and ask the ghosts to stop?” the girl asked. Wishing to preserve her innocence, the man simply sighed and shook his head. The truth was, unfortunately, that they were afraid. The last man to investigate the house had never come back. 

	The ghosts in the manor were behind the animals’ rampage. They were the cause of the mysterious devices haunting their town. The manor, the ghosts, those were the things that plagued the small town of Halloween. And nobody, not even the bravest among them, had the courage to do so much as lift a finger against them.

	Three children had arrived a few days earlier, and had provided a fresh dose of hope and strength for the villagers, but they, too, had left for the manor, and never returned. Resigned to their fate, the citizens lived in fear all day, and all night. As the family neared the hospital, the girl tripped, and fell to the ground. 

	Before she could get back up, another wolf pounced toward her, sinking its sharp claws into her neck. Her father screamed, running forward to avenge his daughter, but was clawed from behind by a nearby bear. He screamed, as his son, too, fell to the ground, slowly suffocating beneath his father’s weight.

	This was the way things worked in Halloween. Death, fear, and pandemonium ruled this town, and none of it seemed as if it would ever change. If you had come the day before, you might think it had been that way forever. Peace existed only in stories and legends, the cruel world far too harsh to allow even a moment of it. That was the way things worked, in a town called Halloween.