Halloween I.F. – “Something Rich and Strange” – Finale

Fuck all this planning, Star thought frantically. He had one specific need, and that was getting this demon the hell away from his boys.

Anything else might not work. This one definitely would buy time. And if he regretted it, he’d only regret it for himself.

Still surrounded by glamour, moving as stealthily as he could, Star gathered his courage and stepped in through the door frame. He managed to make it to three feet away before Ramullin saw through his glamour, even distracted; all those eyes inside their skin snapped toward Star, looking at him. But they hadn’t turned yet. Good. Star needed them to be facing the other way to have any chance at this.

“Guess what, motherfucker,” Star said, transforming and lunging forward, planting his shoulder hard into that cracked and burning back. “It’s time to go.”

The moment he felt the impact, he willed Ramullin to stick to him. It burned—it wasn’t poisonous, like touching iron was, but he imagined this was what it was like for a human to put a hand down on the stove top. But humans could survive without a hand if needed. He gritted his teeth and whirled around, beginning to tear down the hallway, dragging Ramullin with him. 

Star kept up a babble as he ran; it was always easier to run his fastest if he talked to himself as he went, and it drowned out the imperious, furious demands that Ramullin was making. He didn’t want to hear this guy. He didn’t want to give them a last speech or anything.  “It’s time to go now! You have to go, we’re leaving now, say goodbye, we are on our way!” 

He tore through the clubhouse, kicking open the door and slamming his way through. To reach humans moving at a slow walk for eight minutes, it would instead take him, what, forty-five seconds at a full gallop? That sounded right, and if he pushed himself enough to do himself injury—which he might as well do, he thought, he wasn’t getting out of this without injury—he might do it even faster.

Witches could move pretty fast if they had encouragement, too. They’d need something they could make a big ring around, something that could fit all of them, which wouldn’t happen on the street. It would at the clubhouse. But…

He made it to them in just over forty seconds, panting and sweating. It felt now less that he’d stuck Ramullin to his side and more that Ramullin had burned to it, melted to it, fused to it. He wondered how much muscle and bone was showing and sort of hoped he didn’t find out.

The group of witches recoiled as he reared up in front of them, a flailing demon lord stuck to his side. Since he’d got Ramullin from behind, the demon wasn’t able to get a good grip to do too much to him; even if their wings and eyes were battering Star from the inside and even if Ramullin was pulling every ounce of water from his body, they couldn’t target him with the worst of their skills, which they’d need to be properly facing him to do. Then again, they didn’t need to. Star was going to run out of water in his body soon, and then he’d die no matter what. He’d have to release Ramullin before that happened, and then Ramullin would be able to turn and do worse things than simply dehydrate him to death. 

Star gulped. “This way,” he screamed at the startled group of witches. 

And then he spun back around and took off back toward the clubhouse—and the flooded track. “C’mon, Rammy! C’mon, bud, we’re going back to your girlfriend, don’t you want to see your girlfriend, it’s girlfriend time!!”

He estimated that he had less than a minute to get himself into water before he, a water spirit, would simply be unable to keep functioning. He ran, heedless of sprains or injury to his feet, forcing himself to just pound the pavement at top speed. Behind him, he smelled two dozen flares of magic going off all at once, the witches realizing the urgency and casting whatever they needed to pick up the pace. A few times, healing energy washed into him, and he spared the moment to be grateful to whoever had done that, through it wasn’t going to matter much in a few seconds.

Up ahead, Georgio and Seerose were still fighting. Both of them looked pretty badly injured, though he thought Georgio yelled something cheerily when he saw him. Star couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t hear very well. But he saw Seerose finally break away from Georgio, starting to run towards him and Ramullin, the horrible fused creature they’d become.

Star couldn’t run towards Georgio. That would be too far. Star hit the water seconds before he hit his limit.

Immediately, relief. Oh, it hurt—it hurt more than when he’d been outside, somehow, the gritty water hitting injuries he hadn’t known he had and the coldness hitting his burn wounds with a terrible intensity. But the water rushed into him, filling him even as Ramullin kept sucking it out.

Star dove, swimming down toward the center of the track. He swung around as he went, aiming the creature attached to him at the tree, and impacted it hard. He drove Ramullin down along one of the branches, releasing them from his side even as he did so, ripping them free. It wouldn’t be enough to stop a demon—would barely harm one—but it might take them a moment to free themself, and that’s all Star needed.

Seerose was swimming toward them, and he took a gamble, turning his back on her and swimming back out of the track, staggering to shore. She didn’t grab him or chase him; as he’d suspected, she must have gone to Ramullin instead to help them.

Somehow, Star made it out of the water. He wasn’t sure which form he was in at that point, and realized it must be his humanoid one only when just two legs gave out, not four. He hit the dirt, gasping, and saw several people step over him and past him, forming a circle. They were chanting in unison, a huge drone. Banishment, probably? It was a good thing they’d stepped over him, he knew distantly, because then he wouldn’t get banished too, but it was hard not to feel abandoned despite it.

Everything was blurry. He felt several arms come around him, which hurt, a familiar voice sobbing something in his ear. Another familiar hand, strong, one he knew as guiding, took his own hand, holding it. He couldn’t see or hear them; he was trying to see what was happening as his vision grew narrower and narrower. Everything hurt. The last thing he saw was the familiar track reappearing as the demon boiled it dry. He thought his sister was screaming as she hauled the demon off the branch, but Ramullin likely was pulling the water out of her along with the track. He hoped, distantly, that she survived it.

And then they were gone. The water was gone. The track was dry. Star tried to find his tongue, looked up hazily to the silver shape holding him. “Did I fucking do it?” he managed to say, or hoped he managed.

He had one more moment to have a bit of genre-aware horror—whenever anyone asked that in the movies, it meant the bad guy wasn’t really gone—and then everything went black.

[Tomorrow, the EPILOGUE will go up, along with an Author Q&A!

Rather than the usual general suggestions, please tell me the characters you
definitely want to make sure get covered in the epilogue. Not “what” —
whatever’s happened to them will be based on all your choices to date
— but if you want to see what’s happened to Georgio, Viv, or a favorite minor
NPC like Matthias or Antoine, list their names here to make SURE I get ’em!]

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