Work Text:
He didn’t know their names. That was part of the fun of a big Halloween event like this, with hundreds of kids running around in costume. Behind masks and makeup, you could pretend to be someone else.
Gregory had nearly tripped over the shy boy, who looked to be about his age, and that was how it started. He complimented the kid’s awesome horror makeup—eyes pure white, leaking black cracks crisscrossing his face, shiny blood dripping from his hairline—and his rather dull, sad expression turned to teary eyes and a wobbly lip real fast. In his panic, because Gregory might be a menace by nature but even he wasn’t cool with making some kid cry at a Halloween party, Gregory had shoved one of his spooky cookies at the boy.
The shock of a frosting spider being thrust at him had stayed any tears, to Gregory’s immense relief.
“What’s your costume of?” Gregory had asked as the boy nibbled at the cookie with a look of faint surprise. “Are you possessed? Like The Exorcist or something?”
The boy’s older sister had flounced over before he could answer, with a mean look in her eyes and her arms crossed over her red dress. She was maybe only an inch or two taller than Gregory, and though she at first seemed like she was going to talk to her brother, she drew up short when Gregory eyed her.
He was pretty sure she threatened him somewhere between gaping and sending weird looks at her brother, who had only shrugged, his attention mostly focused on Gregory’s plate of cookies. Three more had been passed over before the girl, who Gregory thought was dressed as a clown, if clowns could be pretty instead of goofy-looking, darted off with an odd glint in her nearly glowing green eyes.
A moment after her departure, Gregory handed the boy a fourth cookie and said wryly, “Well, Cookie Monster, wanna go play?”
Sheepishly ducking his head, the boy nodded.
They played for the next few hours, and other kids who seemed to know Gregory’s new friend kept stopping by to join in for a while, beg food off Gregory—why they weren’t helping themselves to the numerous buffet tables, he couldn’t even begin to guess—and stare at him before disappearing back into the crowd. Among them was a pirate, a chef, a girl with matching makeup to Cookie Monster, the redhead sister, and a girl with a mask that reminded him of the laughing theater mask but painted with red and purple features. All of them, Gregory realized, were oddly blood-splattered, even when it didn’t seem to match their costume theme. And despite the obvious familiarity between them, shy possessed Cookie Monster hadn’t said a word the whole time, not to Gregory or any of his friends or his sister.
At some point as they skulked around a table laden with treats that Cookie Monster would only accept if Gregory handed them to him, they passed Vanessa.
Gregory stuck his tongue out at her and discreetly flashed her the bird. They might have come to an uneasy truce, but Gregory wasn’t above being a brat to the snappish security guard.
Hence his costume: a blood-splattered murder victim with a plastic knife sticking out of his chest.
His new friend edged behind Gregory when he spotted Vanessa, trembling a bit. Distrust filling him, Gregory snatched an entire plate of brownies with one hand, grabbed Cookie Monster’s wrist with the other, and marched away.
A handful of the other kids swarmed them as they left the table, sending nasty glares over their shoulders.
“Do you guys know Vanessa?” Gregory asked. Maybe he hadn’t been the first would-be victim to escape.
The girl with the laughing mask and the white-and-black striped leggings and shirt sleeves hummed. Raising her mask to the top of her head, she pointed hopefully at one of the brownies. Weird as it was, Gregory obliged as he had been all night and handed it to her.
“We don’t know her,” the girl said after taking a bite with a soft sigh of delight, as if the brownie was the best thing she’d ever eaten. “But we know others who were like her.”
A boy in a brown bear onesie growled. “You can’t trust ’em,” he said, and he reached out to tap the knife in Gregory’s chest.
Gregory looked at him in surprise. “How’d you know I’m like this because of her?”
Cookie Monster pressed their shoulders together tightly with a whimper. The others weren’t much better, mumbling in distress as they gathered closer.
“But you’re different from us,” a rockstar with a red bowtie said, their pointy guitar slung across their back. They gestured to the brownies, taking the one Gregory offered with a nod of thanks.
A bit confused, Gregory frowned. “So… she wasn’t the one who, y’know…”
Cookie Monster shook his head, scuffing his worn sneakers against the floor.
Wondering just how many night guards were involved in whatever crap sent Vanessa after him with a knife, Gregory glanced around the group. Across nearly half a dozen faces, they all wore the same haunted look.
“All of you?” he gasped. “Was it—here? Recently?”
“It’s complicated,” the masked girl said. “Not here, though, for any of us. Different people, different places, different reasons, sometimes.”
“But all night guards?”
“Ours was,” the rockstar answered, bumping shoulders with the brown bear. “At the time, at least.” And they both snarled quietly.
Cookie Monster wiggled his wrist free of Gregory’s grasp, only to press their palms together and link fingers instead. He offered Gregory such a sorrowful look, then, that Gregory nearly teared up himself.
“Not a night guard for him,” the masked girl said softly. She nodded at Cookie Monster when Gregory glanced at her. “But he was the first.”
Gregory squeezed his hand. He couldn’t imagine anyone hunting down the shy boy standing beside him. Maybe that was why he was so quiet.
Cookie Monster’s redheaded sister was storming toward them before he could respond. She was followed by the missing two members of the friend group, from what Gregory could tell—the girl with the matching possession makeup and the chef—and behind them was an older kid. Gregory couldn’t quite tell if he was a teenager or a young adult, not with the frankly awesome zombie costume the guy wore.
His clothes were shredded and bloodstained, his skin pale and rotting with a purple tinge, flaps of fake skin hanging from here and there, and probably the coolest contacts Gregory had ever seen, turning his eyes black with rings of yellow where his irises would be.
Gregory preemptively held out a brownie, which the possessed girl snatched with a cackle.
“See!” Cookie Monster’s sister cried, gesturing angrily at Gregory. The zombie guy watched curiously as the possessed girl practically inhaled her brownie.
“You could just say you want one.” Gregory held one out to the redhead, rolling his eyes. “I don’t get why none of you will take food from the tables. It’s help yourself, I swear.”
“Huh,” the zombie guy said, slowly accepting a brownie for himself. “Huh,” he repeated after taking a bite.
These were the weirdest people Gregory had ever met, honestly. Maybe it was the being hunted by a night guard thing. Would he become weird like them?
The zombie crouched down, and as if it was a signal, the rest of the kids scattered, save Cookie Monster and his sister. None of the others went far, all orbiting around the four of them, but still giving them space.
“Made a friend, huh?” the zombie asked Cookie Monster. He sounded sad. Gregory suspected this guy might be the other two’s big brother. There was definitely a resemblance, from what he could tell through the costume, between the boys.
Cookie Monster nodded and peeked at Gregory before tucking his chin to his chest with a wispy little hum.
To Gregory, the zombie guy said somberly, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. That you had to go through that,” he gestured first at the knife, then over at Vanessa, who kept glancing at Gregory with a bewildered expression, “and that now you’re… well.”
Gregory shrugged. “Could’ve been worse.”
All three winced. “Yeah,” the zombie croaked. “You’re, uh, you’re not wrong.” He chuckled humorlessly, one arm raising to curl protectively over his ruined torso.
“So… you too?” Gregory asked.
The sister crossed her arms tightly over her chest, turning away with a twisted set to her mouth. There was anger there, but something else, too. Regret, maybe. It probably wasn’t a story any of them liked being reminded of.
“It was a bit different for me,” the zombie said. “No night guard—well. I was the night guard. It was the animatronics.”
Gregory nodded sagely. “I swear, Monty and Roxy woulda torn chunks out of me if I’d been any slower.”
Despite the gore, the grief on the zombie’s face was pronounced. “They must scare you,” he said.
“Eh, not really. They’re cool when they’re not chasing me.” Spotting Freddy wandering nearby, Gregory waved at him, catching his attention. “See?”
“Gregory!” Freddy said, his smile audible if not quite visible with his big vampire fangs kinda preventing him from moving his jaw much. “Are you enjoying the party?”
Hefting the mostly empty plate of brownies, Gregory grinned. “You bet. These are my new friends, Freddy—” Realizing he still didn’t know any of their names, Gregory turned back to Cookie Monster. “Sorry, I guess we didn’t really introduce ourselves.”
But Cookie Monster was staring wide-eyed at him. So were his siblings.
“What?” Gregory asked.
“Gregory?” Freddy said hesitantly. “Who are speaking to?”
“Uh.” Gregory raised his and Cookie Monster’s clasped hands. “Him. And his brother and sister.”
Freddy’s eyes flickered around Gregory without seeming to focus on any of the three siblings.
Something went tight in Gregory’s chest, and his heart started to pick up speed. “They’re right in front of me, Freddy. A zombie and a clown girl.” He refused to admit he sounded a little desperate.
“I… am sorry, Gregory. It is just you and me here. I cannot see anyone else.”
The other kids drifted closer, the possessed girl and the rockstar and the boy in the brown bear onesie and the chef and the pirate and the masked girl.
“There’s a group of us now,” Gregory protested, stepping toward Freddy. Cookie Monster didn’t move with him, leaving their arms stretched between them. “A bunch of us, all in costume. Right here, c’mon.”
But Freddy only shook his head. “There are no other children with us. Are you feeling well? How much sugar have you consumed?”
Gregory whirled back around to face the kids who were clearly there, right as the zombie guy quietly said, “You’re not dead, are you?”
“I—what? Of course I’m not dead, why would—”
“Because we are,” the sister snapped. Her red dress swished as she turned sharply on her heel to glare at him.
A wordless protest burst out of Gregory, but before he could even try to figure out how to respond to that, Vanessa’s voice interrupted him.
“The hell is wrong with you, brat?”
Gregory spun again, feeling quite caught in the middle, to face her. Most of the other kids flinched back with venomous hisses, and the zombie guy shot to his feet with a snarl. Vanessa didn’t so much as glance at any of them, not even when the zombie, who was taller than her, lurched forward to loom over Gregory and Cookie Monster.
She only stood with her hands on her hips, glaring down at Gregory as if the others weren’t even there.
“Did you seriously eat all those brownies yourself?” she continued with a scowl. “No, wait, I don’t care, that’s not my problem. What are you doing with your arm? People are staring.”
“My arm?”
Vanessa flapped her hand at him. “You’re just holding it up weird for no apparent reason.”
Glancing back, Gregory eyed his arm, which was stretched out between him and a cowering Cookie Monster. If… if someone couldn’t see his friend, then Gregory would probably look strange with his arm raised, hand firmly grasping something that wasn’t there.
But that just wasn’t possible. Gregory inched away from Vanessa, sending her a nasty look. “If you’ve got a problem with boys holding hands, I—”
A sound of frustration burst out of her. “You’re not holding anyone’s hand, you brat.” And with that, Vanessa stepped forward and swiped at the air, her elbow passing clean through the zombie and her palm sending Cookie Monster’s head rippling.
She shivered violently and stumbled backward with a muttered curse. She sent a confused, almost betrayed glance at her hand.
Stunned, Gregory stepped back himself, knocking into Cookie Monster’s shoulder as he did. And none of that made sense, because his new friend was clearly there, alive and warm with his totally normal hand held in Gregory’s and his shoulder totally tangible.
“You mean…” the masked girl said, and Gregory gladly ignored whatever Vanessa was snapping in favor of looking at her instead. “You survived the night guard?” Her eyes drifted down to his chest.
“Yes,” Gregory replied, desperate. “The knife is fake, it’s all fake.”
“Fake?” the possessed girl echoed, raising her hand to a smear of blood on her cheek.
“That almost explains the food,” the rockstar mused.
Freddy was saying something, but Gregory ignored him to grip Cookie Monster’s hand tighter and whisper, “That means that… you’re dead?”
There was a ringing in Gregory’s ears, a chill creeping down his spine. But the hand in his was warm, it was, and Cookie Monster was his height, his age, with messy brown hair and blood spilling from his hairline and staining his striped black shirt. There were brownie crumbs at the corner of his mouth, and his tongue was purple from frosting.
He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t.
But his shy new friend, white eyes shining with tears, nodded.
