“Aar—Action Dude’s going to be in there, playing catch,” she murmured, and started walking again, faster now, practically jogging by the time she reached the door and peeked inside. There was Aaron, racing from one side of the field to the other, chasing the ball he was throwing to himself. Vel froze. She didn’t have any psychic powers, and she liked it that way. The last thing she wanted to do was start testing precog. Precogs went into a whole different training program. Precogs wound up on a whole different team.
Coincidence. Aaron spent a lot of time in the training room, since his powers were strong enough that he could seriously hurt somebody if he didn’t have them under careful control. So it was just a fluke, that was all. Anyway, she needed to head for makeup. Still . . .
“The Claw’s in the science wing arguing with his dad about genetic therapy,” she whispered, and looked to her left as she passed the door to the labs. There was David, waving his claws wildly as he tried to convince his father to try another means of curing him of his, um, lobster-ness.
Tears springing to her eyes, Velveteen broke into a run, not stopping until she reached makeup. Sparkle Bright wasn’t there. She remembered Sparkle Bright being there. She stopped, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted off her chest . . . and nearly broke into tears as Sparks walked up behind her, saying bemusedly, “Did you run all the way here? Gosh, Vel, are you okay?” (“Gosh” was, of course, on the team’s list of officially allowed “strong language.” They were all encouraged to practice it, so that it would sound natural during fights.)
“I’m fine,” said Velveteen, swallowing heavily. “Just fine.”
“Okay.” Sparkle Bright threw herself into her own makeup chair, starting to chatter happily about the upcoming appearance, and the brief freedom it would allow them. Velveteen didn’t pay any attention. She didn’t need to; when Sparks paused, she just made the appropriate noises and waited for the babbling to start up again.
What was going on?
*
The interview was hell the second time through; without the acting lessons and coaching she’d received, Velveteen wouldn’t even have been able to fake having fun.
Halloween was worse.
When bedtime finally came, she tumbled into bed before the bears were even done smoothing out the sheets, praying that this had just been a fluke, or a supervillain playing tricks, and that it would all be better when she woke up. It would all be okay.
*
It was Halloween morning.
Velveteen pled food poisoning as an excuse to stay in bed. She was pale and shaky enough that Marketing believed her, and allowed it, just this once.
*
“—hear me? Hello, can you hear me? Please, if you can hear me, do something. Nod your head. Better yet, open your eyes. Opening your eyes would be awesome.” The voice sounded calm until you listened closely; then it became clear that the speaker was somewhere pretty close to the verge of panic. She was working hard to hide it. She needed to work harder.
Velveteen didn’t recognize the voice. Or, she realized with relief, the words—if she was going precog, she hadn’t managed to precognate this. She was relieved enough to do as she was asked, and open her eyes. Then she blinked. That wasn’t her ceiling. She pushed herself up onto one elbow. This wasn’t her room. This was a big, vaguely creepy-looking room, with cobwebs in the corners and boards over all the windows. The wallpaper was flocked and peeling, which was normal enough, except that it was in a bats-and-pumpkins pattern. And this wasn’t her bed, unless she’d somehow acquired a four-poster overnight.
“Oh, thank the Great Pumpkin,” said the voice, now filled with its own measure of relief. “I wasn’t sure I could call you over.”
“Over where?” Velveteen looked to her left, and blinked again as she saw the girl sitting there. “And who are you?”
“Oh. Right. Hi.” The girl offered a wide, slightly sheepish smile. “I’m Hailey.”
“Vel.”
“I know.” Hailey looked about sixteen, with the sort of figure Velveteen was pretty sure she’d never have. Her hair was pale blonde, streaked with green and orange, and her clothes were weird, even by the standards of the superhero world. Striped purple and orange tights, a tattered black skirt, and a bright green tank top, with elbow-length fishnet gloves and bat-shaped hairclips wasn’t exactly what anybody was going to call “marketable.” She managed to clash with herself, and that was without accounting for the pumpkin-orange eyes and the green and purple nail polish. “Thanks for coming.”
“. . . I came somewhere?” Velveteen sat up the rest of the way, looking down at herself. She was wearing something that looked almost like the special Halloween costume Marketing had designed for her. Which was almost as weird as waking up somewhere that wasn’t her room, since she never went to bed in her costume. “Am I awake?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Hailey blinked. “Not complaining, but you’re taking that pretty easy.”
Velveteen shrugged. “It’s part of the Heroing 101 lesson plan. If you find yourself in an altered reality, don’t fight against it. You’ll just hurt yourself and be stuck there longer.” She paused. “Am I stuck here? Is the rest of my team here? Are they okay?”
“Um, not exactly, no, and sort of for right now, but that’s why I need your help, and that’s why I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Okay.” Vel swung her feet around to the floor, focusing her attention on Hailey. “Where are we?”
“That was my first question when this happened to me,” said Hailey, shaking her head. “This may seem a little weird to you, and I’ll completely understand if you need a few minutes to wrap your head around it, although you can’t have much more than a few minutes, because we need to get moving as soon as we can. And I know this is going to seem like it’s just crazy talk, but—”
“We’re in Halloween, aren’t we? We’re in the place that Halloween comes from.”
“Well, technically, we’re in the Autumn Land. It’s just that it’s Halloween a lot of the time, because Halloween has a lot of power here.” Hailey was openly staring at her now, expression torn between “impressed” and “I don’t believe you just said that.” “But . . . how did you know?”
“Oh. That. I guess because of the cobwebs. And your tights. And the scarecrow that’s coming up behind you.” She paused. “Is it supposed to be there?”
“No!” shouted Hailey, whipping around. “Get out of here! I’ll hold him off!” The scarecrow—a huge, hulking thing that shed bits of hay and squiggling things with every step—moaned and lurched toward her as she moved her hands through the air in an arcane pattern.
Velveteen ran.
*
The house was a crumbling old Victorian, the sort that was always occupied by Vincent Price in the black-and-white movies the cable access channels all showed at midnight. Velveteen ran out the front door and down the porch before she turned around, staring wide-eyed at the building. She could see the boarded-up windows of the room where she’d woken. They were easy to spot; those were the only boards with beams of orange and purple light bursting out from between them. The light somehow managed to be nothing like Sparkle Bright’s. Sparks shot lasers, and this was more like . . . like glitter caught in smoke. It was strange. It was a little scary. And she really hoped it meant that Hailey was winning.
A hand grabbed her wrist. Stifling a scream, Velveteen whipped around, frantically reaching out with that weird toy-radar of hers to find something, anything, that she could animate. What she found was strange, and difficult to get a handle on. It was like everything was waiting for her orders, and nothing was waiting for her at all. And she had no idea what that meant.
The hand belonged to a little boy, six or seven at most, wearing a black cat costume and watching her gravely, eyes very green in his painted face. “You’re her,” he said, revealing several missing baby teeth in the process. “You’re the one Hailey went for.” Still grave,
he looked her thoughtfully up and down. “Hope you’re worth it. C’mon.”
“What about Hailey? And who are you?” Velveteen pulled her wrist out of his hand, eyes narrowing. “What’s going on here?”
The little boy sighed, looking briefly much older. “I’m Scaredy Cat, Hailey can take care of herself, and what’s going on is an attempted takeover that we need to stop, unless you feel like finding out what happens when the monsters under your bed get rabies.”
“I—what—you—wait, what?”
Scaredy Cat sighed again. Speaking very slowly, like she was a particularly stupid child, he said, “We are standing in the middle of a big, wide, undefended street, surrounded by big, dark, scary buildings that could have just about anything inside of ’em. And this is Halloween, so ‘anything’ really means it. I don’t mind answering questions. Answering questions is pretty normal. But if we don’t go someplace safe for answering questions, we’re probably going to get attacked by something really nasty. Do you want to get attacked by something really nasty?”
Velveteen shook her head mutely.
“Good. Now come on.” Scaredy Cat turned and started walking down the street, leaving Velveteen to follow him.
Glancing back over her shoulder at the beams of light still bursting through the window, Vel followed.
*
“Autumn’s always been here,” Scaredy Cat said, apparently comfortable with giving her a history lesson as long as she kept on moving. “It’s changed a lot over the years—all the Seasons have changed a lot, since people change all the time—but it’s always Autumn Land underneath it all. The place where the leaves fall off the trees and the air goes cold and the walls get a little weird and thin. We have the hardest time keeping things under control here. Well, us, and Spring Land. At least they have Persephone to help when something goes wrong. We only get her passing through on the way to Winter, and she’s usually not in a fighting mood then. More in a ‘go away, leave me alone, I’m going to see my husband, take care of your own problems’ mood.”
“But this can’t be Autumn.” Velveteen ducked as she followed him through a hole in a long wooden fence. There was a barren field studded with haystacks on the other side. Haystacks, and scarecrows. That made her walk a little faster. “Autumn’s not a place, it’s a time.”
“You have bedtime and a bed, don’t you? Time for school and a school to go to? Every time has a place. It’s just that some of them are more abstract than others.” Hearing the word “abstract” come out of the mouth of a six-year-old was enough to make Velveteen’s head spin. “All four Seasons exist, and have their own problems. Trouble is, we get heroic turnover, and sometimes people don’t make sure that their jobs are going to be handled before they go gallivanting off to do something they think will be more ‘fun’.”
Something about the bitterness in his voice made Velveteen pause. “You mean Trick and Treat, don’t you? This is where they really come from.”
“Give the girl a candy apple,” said Scaredy Cat, and pointed toward a rickety gray-brown farmhouse in the distance. “We’re almost there. And yeah, they were our defenders, and they walked out on us without even making sure we had somebody to keep things going. Now Halloween’s in trouble, and if Halloween goes down, all of Autumn Land is in danger. We need help.”
“So why me? Why don’t you—I don’t know, why don’t you call Trick and Treat? Ask them to come back?” Velveteen’s training said not to treat this as a dream, but that was becoming increasingly difficult. It was too. . . iconic, too brightly, blatantly ghoulish. It was like walking into an amusement park version of a haunted house.
The trouble was, it was also scary. It was very, very scary. And if she admitted that, she’d have to admit that she wanted it to be a dream, she wanted it to be something she could wake up from. She was alone. She had no team. She had no toys. And if this was really real, well, then, she just wanted to go home.
The farmhouse door opened. “I’ve tried. They won’t take my calls,” said Hailey, stepping out and wiping her hands against the sides of her skirt. They left trails of green and orange glitter behind. It faded quickly. “Great Pumpkin knows, I’ve tried, but I never get past their first defenses. They left. They don’t want anything to do with us anymore. If we have problems, they’re our problems.”
“Then. . . then why are they my problems?” Velveteen lifted her chin, trying to look braver than she felt. “They’re from here. You just brought me here.”
“Here in the lands of the seasons, a holiday is only vulnerable to takeover when it’s actually happening,” said Scaredy Cat, stepping onto the porch next to Hailey. “One day a year, you can try to take it down, if that’s really what you want to do.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“I finally got your attention the twenty-first time Halloween happened,” said Hailey, in a voice that was almost devoid of emotion. “It’s happened twenty-three times so far.”
“Thirty-one’s the end,” said Scaredy Cat. “All they gotta do is run the holiday thirty-one times, and they can shatter its links to the season.”
“And then what happens?” Velveteen asked, eyes going wide.
“Halloween dies,” said Hailey. “All the Spirits of the Season with links to Halloween start to fade. The ones that survive, anyway. Or maybe Halloween doesn’t die. Maybe it just winds up under new management, and things get bad again.”
“So what am I here for?” Velveteen was starting to feel dizzy.
“Simple,” said Hailey, and smiled. Her expression wasn’t without sympathy. It also wasn’t without resolve. “You’re here to help us save Halloween.”
“Oh,” said Velveteen. “Right. So no biggie, then.”
Scaredy Cat crooked an eyebrow, once again looking briefly much older than a six-year-old in a cat suit should be capable of looking. “Girl, I can’t tell if you’re being flippant or if you’re just insane. I can’t say I’m pleased with either option.”
Velveteen’s dizziness was getting worse. She secretly hoped this was a sign that she was getting ready to wake up from this crazy, fun-house dream. Unfortunately, she’d passed the Alternate Reality Survival and Recognizing a Dreamscape in Ten Easy Steps units of Heroing 101 with flying colors, and the likelihood of this being “just a dream” was going down by the minute. Too much of what was going on didn’t fit with dreaming, even under the control of Mister Postman or Daydream Believer. For one thing, she wasn’t in her underwear, and no one was laughing at her. Not yet, anyway.
There was one test left that might determine whether this was part of a particularly vivid fantasy that had somehow managed to trick her mind into thinking she’d lived through the same day several times in succession. “Hold that thought, okay?” she said chipperly, holding up one finger in the universal “wait just one moment” gesture used by parents, teachers, and annoying babysitters the world over.
Hailey and Scaredy Cat exchanged a glance.
“I hate this part,” said Hailey, looking pained.
“Ha,” replied Scaredy Cat, spitting out the syllable so that it was less a laugh than an expression of scorn. “I remember when you insisted on going through this little dumb-show.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’ll be right back with you,” said Velveteen, turning to scan the area. The rickety old farmhouse was surrounded by what she recognized as the “standard” horror movie farm accessories—a water barrel filled almost to the top with greenish fluid, some moldy hay bales, an axe driven deep into a tree stump, a small, fenced-off garden patch filled with ripe orange pumpkins, a creepy old tree. The fact that she could recognize everything around her just encouraged her hope that she was dreaming; she was a city kid, and she’d never seen a real farm in her life. If this were a real farm, it wouldn’t have been so familiar. Right?
Right?
Even if this was a dream, she wasn’t going to risk it by messing around with the axe, and she didn’t trust the looks
of the water barrel. After taking another quick look around, she turned and walked decisively toward the creepy old tree. Not letting herself pause long enough to think about what she was doing, she put her hands to either side of the rough trunk and leaned as far back as she could before slamming her forehead, hard, into the tree.
Pain exploded behind her eyes. Before she lost consciousness, she sent a swift, silent prayer to whoever might be listening that she was going to wake up in her own bed, safe, sound, and not surrounded by crazy, creepy Halloween people. Then the blackness chased away the pain, and she crumpled mercifully to the ground.
Hailey and Scaredy Cat waited until she hit the ground before walking over to stand to either side of her crumpled body, looking down. Hailey nudged her with the tip of one boot. Velveteen didn’t respond.
“Well,” said Scaredy Cat, finally. “Guess we’d better get her inside before the scarecrows get here. You mind?”
“Just bring her,” said Hailey. With a sigh, she turned around and walked back toward the farmhouse, trying to close her ears to the squelching noises coming from behind her.
“This used to be so much simpler,” she muttered, and stepped inside.
*
The files on the so-called “Spirits of the Season” are relatively thin when compared to the files of their better-known heroic counterparts. Some of the Spirits of the Season are believed to be nothing more than standard heroes, taking the by-now-traditional route of naming themselves for pre-existing archetypes. Does anyone truly believe that the jolly fat man who dwells at the North Pole is the Santa Claus of song and story, choosing to reveal himself to the world now that we have heroes enough to make his magical nature easier for the public to comprehend? And what of his companions, Mrs. Claus, Jack Frost, and The Snow Queen? Is it better to believe them just another side-effect of the introduction of superheroes to our world, or ageless beings connected by unbreakable bonds to the spiritual power of the seasons themselves?
Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots Page 12