REP

It came from the Spirit of Halloween

“Max, hon, are you sure that is the right place?”

Sara and Max are two “college age” (if you can call mid 30's that) idiots from the local university. Max is paler than the inside of a vanilla yogurt cup and barely breaks 5 feet, Sara is an uncanny but fiercely energetic combination of Ginger and Latina. Neither is particularly athletic, Max blew out his knees and had to switch from field studies in Ecology to a more flaccid PhD in environmental lab sciences, Sara meanwhile picked up Journalism and Science Communication. They were practically married as far as their parents were concerned, but in reality their relationship was more of Sara dragging Max out to stupid misadventures despite his newly frustrating knee braces. It had been this way before the braces, but Max's existing injuries were far from enough to keep him from being dragged along.

Neither had planned ahead for tonight's Halloween Party as usual, meaning they both needed costumes ASAP for a party at the crazy girl's place. Among their friends, the Crazy Girl was legend, an English Major or something turned paleontology expert after a wacky dehydration induced spiritual journey in Southern Utah. The cruel joke was that she swore she had a 'close encounter' with a fucking dinosaur, and the idiots fully planned to crash the party with prank dinosaur costumes. This had led Max down a google rabbit-hole looking for dinosaur costumes he could get today and somehow he'd picked this particular haunt, insisting it was the 'only game in town'. After nearly an hour of driving from downtown, the duo stared up from the smart phone they'd relied upon to direct them to this dead stripmall. They'd trekked up the I-10 West, a few dozen miles north of their stomping ground in Tucson, Arizona. This husk was well outside of what could pass as a nearby town, a dismal rotting skeleton of commerce which Max fondly remembered for its Wendy's, which was now debranded and rotting. What passed as weeds for Arizona had begun reclaiming the shattered asphalt, and it ultimately meant someone had gone well and truly out of their way to open a Spirit Halloween here. Except, that was wrong.

“Oh my god, it's Spirit of Halloween, the brand is just Spirit Halloween, Max!”

Max flashed a knowing grin, the trip wasn't supposed to go here, but when he saw it on the search results last night he just had to take Sara to one of his long-dead childhood memory zones.

“You forgot The, it is THE Spirit of Halloween! C'mon, I wanna know what moron would open shop here, I haven't been to this strip mall since I was in highschool!”

Sara shot Max her play-frown, it was real, but also not really. She rarely was the victim of her own game.

“FINE. We'll go see what's for sale at The Spirit of Halloween! You goddamn ass. They better have something in my size, there is no way to lose 100 pounds of habitual Tamales in time for the party.”

Both idiots giggled. That party was in about 12 hours, they had to get their cruel joke off. The weather seemed at first to facilitate their planned outings, a quick stop here, then up to Phoenix to actually search for last-minute costumes. The dry air of Arizona deserves its own paragraph, not because it's unique (if you've been to the southwest, you know that it's pretty much the same hairdryer heat, dust, and wind from Texas to California), but because even in the middle of fucking October, the morning is prone to hot air, blowing wind, and dust. But as if it was a cruel joke, the nominally typical Arizona air was alive with a curse of unseasonable weather that smelled like a Monsoon. Rather odd to have one blow in at 11am but this far north of Tucson, weather can be especially unpredictable. As it stood, the gathering storm that seemed to surround them had turned a scramble-like day trip into an actual scramble. A crack of lightning, the scent of wet dust, and the two seasoned “lets go hiking in the middle of the desert during monsoon season” idiots knew it was about time to leg it to their destination.

The lightning seemed like the crack of a race pistol, signaling to both it was time to race each other, and the storm, to the beckoning refuge of a sheltered walkway. Max and Sara both had their disadvantages, Max's leg braces and Sara's ungainly body weight impaired both roughly equally, and the two spat insults and jokes at each-other as they hobbled inelegantly towards The Spirit of Halloween. The two idiots quickly made their way across the rotting asphalt, hot air moving from stagnant and smothering to biting and stinging as sand picked up in a swirling dust-devil that seemed to chase them both, an encroaching pitter-patter of quarter sized raindrops starts hitting them midway through the parking lot. Max had originally planned to just sample the shop's innards, ramble about the Wendy's he and his late father used to eat at every time they came down from a trip up north to one of the dig sites in Northern Az or Utah, then go to a real Spirit Halloween. It seemed that today's agenda might be slightly disrupted, non-existent gods of Arizona seemed to conspire to wash out roads and turn the traffic of I-10 into a lobotomized crawl of terrified drivers who've no concept of 'driving near water'. This dreary outlook for their crammed time-table seemed worsed by the moment, the storm picked up in intensity, and the steady drenching rain blew sideways, swirling around them like they'd pissed off nature so badly it made a hurricane centered expressly on this parking lot. Then, Max caught a chunk of hail to one of his knees, then another to his chest. The hail started to crackle around the two idiots, both whining as they tried to cover their faces for just a few strides longer to safety.

“YEOWCH FUCK”, Max blurted as he caught a 3mm hailstone to the forehead, the injury felt hot in that way slamming your face into a corner can feel.

“Oh my god! Max! You've finally seen the light of Vishnu!”, Sara rasped as she hefted herself forward with her arms visibly scored in pockmarks of dust and mild scrapes, blocking the whipping wind, rain, and hail.

Max lurched after the normally slower Sara, his knee braces click-clacking as he strained himself to 'outrun' the storm crashing down behind them. The two finally made it to the protected landing of the Strip Mall, the clatter of hail and abrupt crack of lightning overhead making the two both scream in the high register. That of course elicited a laugh out of the two idiots. Max'd strained his knees pretty badly, and had to lean against the glass panel window of the suspicious shop they'd been pushed towards by the angry ghosts of Monsoon's past. As he gazed upon his disheveled reflection, Max had realized his forehead had gotten a clean circular bruise right above his eyebrows, center of his forehead. He grimaced as he looked at himself in the blacked-out windows of the now ominously backlit solitary stripmall business. He shot a stupid look at Sara, meeting her challenge to keep the Hindu-ish theme of the joke going.

“I guess that's Karma for not balancing my Chakras”, he smirked, knowingly.

“HEY wrong east asian religion you heathen!”, Sara chirped back, punching his arm.

“I'm sure Buddah would forgive us for being raised Catholic.”, Max sneered.

“Still wrong, you dirty cow eater!”, Sara jokingly chastised.

The actual store itself looked unusually kempt. Like the only place that had been maintained here since 2008 was this single double-size unit that almost certainly was a grocery store at some point. Max had remembered it as a dollar store but it was never this in tact. The two idiots looked over the landing twice, the rotting stucco and wood and aluminum paneling was all twisted and stained with age and decay, none of the other lots here looked like they had seen any fucking business in at least a decade, and yet this stupid seasonal business had somehow invested in managing the property, restoring its little chunk, and still had enough to put itself at the top of Max's google results with a paid advertisement. Had he not such fat fingers, his phone would've ne'er suggested the visit, it almost felt like destiny. Almost. There was one too many posters of 'sexy nurse' matching the iconography of your usual cheap on-brand Spirit Halloween store, it had to be a cheap knock-off venue meant to trap idiots like them.

“Hey, you think they'll have 'sexy dinosaur' in my size?”, Sara struck a pose, Max looked at her with a cocked eyebrow.

Sara pointed to a poster on the glass panel window nearest her, featuring a ludicrously thin figure-eight shaped woman wearing a dressed up (but still made of single use molded plastic) 'sexy' playboy style outfit. The image was more a suggestion of a theropod that featured little clawed gloves, a stick on tail, and vampire fangs to complete the 'look'. This was complimented by a scale-pattern fishnet set of sleeves and leggings; though this also tastelessly featured what clearly was a mock Native American hairband with the two feathers in the back, except with a 'visor' made out of the top of a green snoot more fitting of a crocodile. The real killer selling detail was the beady white and black googly-eyes painted narrowly overtop the 'visor' where it met the reused hairband. Truly, the highest class and for only $9.99 which had to be because of the doubtless employment of slave labor. Next to it, a masculine depiction of a Spanish Conquistador, and further down the line a terrifying shirtless white man dressed in a mixture of Native American apparel, featuring a “sold out” sticker over the price tag. Fitting, seeing as the newest trend is unironic racism but now it's a 'political statement' against the 'woke left'. Bullshit all the same, more than what these idiots could come up with.

“I don't think they'd have it in my size let alone yours, meatball.”, Max smirked evily.

'Meatball' hit him firmly over the back of the head with her open hand, a clap heard around the world.

“Thank your past lives for being reincarnated as a fleshy version of a lego figure, captain no-knees!”

“I'll have you know that mountain came at me swinging when all I wanted to do was cop a feel on its Triangle Leaf Bursage.”, Max opined.

“Next you'll say the ancient ghosts from A Mountain cursed you!”, Sara poked.

“H-hey that was ONE TIME. For an entire year. I've learned my lesson!”, Max smiled with a shit eating grin.

Part of what made Max and Sara the idiots was their persistently offensive, consistently tasteless, and often violent slapstick humor. If you weren't familiar with them, you'd call the cops for half of the shit they do to each other because they have the tact and temperament of an old married couple... from the 1950's when beating women was 'normal' and 'good' actually. Such ironic and anachronistic contradictions of humor and ethics characterized what they both claimed to be feminism, an excuse that wasn't valid even when they became friends back in 2012. Even in current year argument, both still have their reciprocal bruises from their last playfight barely a week ago; over 'Meatball' being what Max told the Barista at Starbucks for Sara's order (Sara has been trying to lose weight but not very hard, and Max is putting it on himself on account of not being a spry young freshman by more than 10 years). This whole being 30 thing really makes the bruising a lot harder to ignore, and the persistent failures of the human body have meant neither idiot could claim offense when calling each other 'meatball', though Sara preferred going for the legs on account of Max's new braces. Aside from bruises, recent altercations had resulted in small burns Max had sustained when Sara put her cigarette out on his forearm. He got her back with a nasty pinkie-finger paper cut he managed to manifest on her during their last study session (she technically did it herself with a flashcard but 'manifesting' is the new horror meme so he took the credit anyway); so they were even! Probably.

There was a flash right overhead, the kind that made the darkness of the storm and wet-dust-filled air crackle to life like a terrible force was screeching at them to take cover indoors. The roar of the storm's thunderhead sent both idiots back-first against the glass doors, which inexplicably swung inward like the snorkel of some kind of Californian bivalve. A substantial gust of hail-filled mud-wind sent them tumbling inwards, the doors springing shut as they clambered up to their feet. Both idiots brushed themselves off, shivering a little from the utterly unnecessary blast of ice-cold air conditioning, an Arizona tradition which persists even well into December for environmental disaster zones like the Walmart Superstore. The store's inside wasn't as clean and kempt as expected, being dustier and cobweb-cluttered than it appeared outside. Faintly buzzing florescent bulbs pathetically flickered overhead, it might have been easier to see if they were turned off entirely, seeing as the few working bulbs had been mostly illuminating the product shelves, rather than say, the floors or anything else of real value.

“Jinkies Velma, I think we've stumbled onto a real mystery!”, Max said, gesticulating at a whole array of Scooby Doo knock-offs which clearly didn't have the branding but had all of the off-brand iconography necessary to allude to properties of Hannah Barbara.

“Like Zoinks, Skooks, I could swoos right into a lawsuit with some of these!”, Sara screeched back, cackling like a blender shredding a cellphone with a squealing motor. Her Shaggy impersonation wasn't even good to begin with, but she knowingly made it so much worse every single time. After a pause, she smiled wryly,

“M-m-max! D-do you think this place is c-c-c-cursed?”

Max mimed holding something to his ear with one hand, waving his other as if holding some kind of microphone, mimicking the beep of a sound device and waving it around, mock-beeping louder and faster as he waved his arm towards the back of the store.

“The ectomometer is going wild with a M-I-L-F reading! We'll have to go in raw, fast, and deep to get to the bottom of this!”, Max made a serious face, looking at a 'third' person as-if a camera man were present, “Don't stop filming! You might even finally lose your virginity, Scott!”

The idiots cackled, making their way down the dusty stocks, Sara following behind as-if holding a boom microphone, both waving to their 'third' person. Unfortunately for Scott, he had called out from today's misadventure as his girlfriend did not particularly like Max and Sara. His absence is hardly acknowledged to either of them beyond the occasional joke, but they routinely haze his ass by including him in their wild hyperbolic overplayed stories about said adventures. He usually dies, or gets blue balls, during these stories, but he plays along and smiles in a way that makes it look like he is truly dead inside. Neither idiot particularly cares that Scott is their friend, but they appreciate his perpetual role as fall guy and heel, so even if he doesn't want to be involved, he's involved and his character is assassinated relentlessly. This might be why his Girlfriend does not like them.

As they made their way through the different rows of shelves, the idiots stopped to do 'glory shots', constantly instructing the hypothetical space where Scott might have been to get 'close ups' of nasty and likely spoiled halloween candy that probably wasn't legal to sell. The prices on the shelves themselves were almost melted-looking, like the ink had been left out in the heat unprotected for the entire summer. Despite this, the two took their shopping-trip turned horror movie urbex adventure further and further into the store's bowels, losing track of where the 'front' should have been. It seemed like something was nesting in the rafters, since bird shirt, feathers, rodent carcasses, and loose twigs had become a frequent sight. Despite how evidently idiotic it was to dive this deep into what almost certainly was a recently abandoned business, neither Max nor Sara were the 'open toe shoes' types after one too many misadventures in the desert. Sure, creepy crawlies might be lurking in the lumps of abandoned outfits and melted plastic, but the tresspass was for the adventure at this point.

Today was definitely a pants day for Sara anyway since she didn't bother with makeup (she'd be doing it 5 minutes before the party anyway), and Max knew better than to back out of one of his own goofs, he'd never hear the end of it from her. Thusly, knowingly unwanted by any ghouls and ghosts which might call this off-brand morgue of Halloween's Passed their home/ final resting place, the two idiots pressed on deeper. Somehow, many rows back into the store, they had passed underneath a still functional air duct which dumped cold, cold air right over their still-wet shirts. The roof tiles looked like more of a suggestion in the ceiling, the lights had become even more faint and sparse. Something clattered hollowly behind them, it sounded harmless, like a pigeon had slammed into something in the rafters above the store. It still made the two jump a little, but Max just smirked over his shoulder at Sara. He opened his stupid mouth to chew the scene more.

“Wow, a huge chill entered the room. We're gonna need a spirit board, or a speak and spell, to contact this ghost I think, Sara!”, Max smiled at Sara, who smirked back.

“Yeah, I felt that one all the way up to my tits, but I think something warm is trickling down my leg! It must be the ghost's sticky, wet ectoplasm!”

“Hey, that's rude! Don't joke about ectoplasm, remember how Scott got a full facial during our last episode, isn't that right Scott?”

Max turned his head to look at the space where 'Scott' should be, Sara following his cue. Both stopped dead in their tracks, hands awkwardly floating in the air, grasping at fake recording equipment as they both spent several heartbeats gawking mid-sentence at an unusually large shadow that had seemingly suddenly moved into the aisle behind them. It seemed the two had some sense of being followed after all. In the dim light of the dusty, run down 'store', sat an impossibly large bird. Bird wasn't right, it matched the visual profile of Deinonychus, or perhaps Utah Raptor which would be fitting since it was dad's favorite, Max thought. 'Run' he also thought, though he clearly hadn't thought it loud enough because Sara was frozen in place. Her eyes wandered back towards Max as he did the same towards her.

“Bro what the fuck was in that weed”, Sara whispered.

“Dude you did not just make that joke right now”, Max hissed back.

The critter meanwhile, seemed similarly frozen in place. It didn't blink, or breathe, or move, or anything. It also seemed preposterously frozen mid-stride, one of its massive three toed, talon-clawed feet hanging in the air over one of those stupid 12 foot tall plastic skeletons that'd apparently been knocked over. It was far too spooky to not be real, but that was of course idiotic. After a few tense moments, Sara and Max both breathed out. They must have missed the display of a six foot tall, twelve feet long feathered biped from the Cretaceous.

“Hey didn't whats-her-ass get sent to rehab because she swore up and down that she saw dinosaurs whilst wandering dehydrated for a full day in Navajo territory?”, Sara muttered.

“Don't be rude. But, yeah, kind of wacky. Do ya think it's a skinwalker then?”, Max half-mumbled back.

“Well, she seemed to believe that shit. She wasn't even all that crazy about it, y'know?”, Sara gently lowered her arms, tracing the shelving as she started to slide down the aisle towards its end-cap.

Max followed her lead, his knees trembling and clattering as he gingerly stepped over and around scattered plastic bones and torn up cardboard, tattered omens of what now didn't seem so prop-like. He felt stupid for entertaining the idea, the gal in question was almost certainly fucking nuts, describing her encounter more like a delirious paleo-science-fiction wet-dream.

“W-well yeah but she also spent all of COVID holed up in that tiny little apartment going bat-shit crazy before she went to see her folks for New Years or some shit.”, he looked away from the creature to check on Sara for just a moment, she was staring ahead and flipped her gaze back over her shoulder, eyes wide with fresh terror.

“MAX! DUDE WHAT THE FUCK, ITS GONE.”, Sara was pointing to where the dinosaur had once been.

Max looked. It was, in fact, no longer where he had just seen it. Instead, pairs of yellow eyes seemed to peer out of the darkness engulfing the front of the store.

“Oh my god. We're gonna get got by weeping angel bullshit.”, Max groaned, half-seriously.

“I can be your angle, or your bevel.”, Sara unhelpfully added out of reflex, and perhaps nerves.

The two were now holding hands, that's the kinda bullshit they hadn't pulled on each other since that time someone dropped a handgun in the library and put a 9mm round into a toilet with a negligent discharge. Neither was particularly sure if it was the appropriate time to panic, but both had exactly enough life trauma that neither was able to ground the other in sensible explanations either. The shadows in the store felt impossibly dark, like it was some kind of impossible inky blackness that had begun encroaching on them. The plastic bones and stupid costumes and props started to thin out as they tried to re-orient themselves with nonsense, almost blurry and melted aisle indicators. Sara let out a gentle squeak as she stopped suddenly, Max had been keeping his eye on the back of the aisle, but her hand squeezing rather tight made him turn on his heel. He couldn't even find a reaction appropriate for the occasion. They seemed to be turned around, how had the store gotten so... impossible to navigate? Neither bothered to acknowledge it, pausing awkwardly as they glanced around, realizing they'd been 'funneled' into a very long aisle that barely seemed real. It stretched forwards as far as they could see, black nothingness seemed to ripple around them. Clattering noises in the dark made them glance back and forth as they crept forward, trembling. Yellow eyes shined from the darkness, terrible shapes in the vague outline of predatory therapods lurked seemingly perched on the other aisle's shelves, those aisles so engulfed in darkness, it seemed like the faint light from the flickering florescent lights above was all that made it possible to see them.

Scattered in an abrupt 'clearing' of shrubs and jutting canyon-like surfacing that had simply appeared before them, was a handful of dead men wearing what could only be described as Spanish Conquistador apparel, shiny steel swords, breastplates and helmets, even a Friar-like looking monk clutching a bible or something. Arrows with colorful orange and blue plumage jutted from some of the slain Spaniards whilst others were clearly torn apart by wild animals. In a lifetime of nervous strides and a blinking lapse in memory, the two found themselves stepping from the sheltered pathway out to what must have been an ancient passway in the Grand Canyon or perhaps wedged between formations in the Painted Desert. The paintings that adorned various stones and unusual looking but colorful mile markers seemed to imply the two were hundreds of miles north and hundreds of years back in time, maybe. Cyclone-like stormclouds ominously hung overhead, the conditions of a fatal flash flood the two might be swept up within perhaps. Now in the light, they glanced backward occasionally to see the raptors behind them had fanned out, there had to be at least a dozen, or more, following them at distance. Some bore pouches, others bands of colorful beads, necklaces with turquoise or other beautiful stones, bands of colorful fabric woven into pleasant looking cloaks, and others with stony and serious looking armors. A few walked with visible limps, visible wounds with broken spears, arrows, slashes, and gunshots, terrible both in how it frightened the two idiots as much as it made them feel second-hand pain from watching such beautiful animals suffer clearly man-made inflictions so direly colonial in nature.

As they squinted through dust and hail, flashes of lightning continuously illuminated terrifying and stalking shapes in the dark cliffs above the blood-soaked trail. There were chittering, crow-like calls here and there, some deep and guttural, others more inhuman and bird like, as-if they were being stalked by men and monsters of the mountains. Eventually, they came to a dead end, the winding slaughter of Spanish men in the tight canyon maze leading out into an impossible overlook, where fires raged through what seemingly was a city carved deep into the walls of the mountains. The two idiots stared in awe, wordlessly glancing at each other as they both trembled like they were freezing in the hot fall air. Screams, and the distant roar of gunfire and cannon, crept through the canyons like the echoing cries of distant ghosts. The clouds above the impossible city swirled and cracked with lightning, and what probably passed as a prehistoric Quetzelcoatl emerged, a spiraling, impossibly large creature serpentine in shape with six glorious burning wings descended, lightning cracking from its body, carving explosive gouts of fire and ash through the streets and alleys of the burning town. Just as soon as it had began, the scene concluded, packs of theropods descending on a caravan of fleeing men and horses, hails of arrows fired by half-naked men mounted on the backs of ancient dinosaurs. A Pyrrhic victory, it seemed. The two idiots looked away from the slaughter, then both yelped in surprise.

The statue-like Utah Raptor that had stalked them earlier was so close its hot, wet breath was on their skin. The two idiots didn't dare move a muscle or say anything, they just stared into the creatures eyes as its packmates circled slowly behind it. Max and Sara's hands were clasped together so tightly, they each broke the other's skin with their fingernails. The imposing feathered creature huffed, blinked, then spoke, though neither idiot really understood so much as comprehended its meaning. To Max and Sara, it seemed to offer a trade. Trespasser for Tresspass. It had a preference to claim the White Man, its full reasoning seemed beyond either idiot's comprehension. Max swallowed hard, shooting Sara a knowing look. She simply nodded, and the two unclasped hands, hugged, and said their good-byes quietly. Max stepped forward, holding a hand out as-if he was going to somehow pull off a 'How to Train your Dragon'. The creature's scaly muzzle made gentle contact. The idiots' minds felt fuzzy. Sleepy. Neither stayed standing for long, collapsing over blood soaked, stone tiled flooring.

Sara blinked, the mid-day Arizonan Sun stung her eyeballs. How long had she been sat slumped against the door to The Spirit of Halloween? She had a single, long feather which seemed dyed with blue-like ink tucked in her hair, and somehow had been clutching the dusty braces Max was wearing. She realized, of course, he wasn't going to be needing them where he was going. The storm had ended, faintly evaporating puddles and the smell of dusty, wet air, filled the empty parking lot. It hadn't even been more than a few minutes, claimed her phone. Numb with shock, Sara dragged herself to her feet, glancing at where she expected that dark, dreary, supernatural store to be. It was long, long gone, the back of the store plainly visible from where she stood. The inky shadows beckoned all the same, and the doors were locked. There was no way in hell she was gonna let Max go like that, not after everything. Not after what seemed like a lifetime of misadventure and mutually loving abuse. She dug around in the lot for a chunk of asphalt, smashed the one of the glass panel windows, and gingerly crossed over, searching the store again and again and again. She spent all day wandering the lot, wondering just what it was Max thought he was going to show her here. Poking into the rotting buildings, mundane dives searching for something she knew was lost forever to her. The most she got as she stared at the store from the car, a pair of peering yellow eyes just past dusk, deep in the back of the store. She felt a quiet longing, like she'd let an animal go free, the spot in her mind Max used to occupy felt empty in a way the family goldfish passing would.

What of their friendship, actually, had she given up? She had nothing to show for it, but the spiraling winds. She couldn't explain anything to anyone, except for the fucking weirdo who wants to fuck dinosaurs or something. She otherwise couldn't fathom what exactly had transpired. She grabbed her phone, and texted the crazy girl.

'I believe you. They took Max.', she hit send, then closed her eyes.