📚average dead mall moment (spooksoween spooktacular)

Bea is set out to make a package delivery to an odd location.

For Dainty Halloween Battle 2023; Haunted in the Haunted House

Characters: Beatrice/Gerhana, Bankie

Warnings: One instance of swearing (because Bea and Gerhana are normal people who dont swear every other sentence unlike everyone else)

Wordcount: 2,214

Vibe: hehe spooky silly (but watch out!)

YAYYYY ULTRA DIRGE NEW LOCATION WOOHOO im excited to develop it more!! anyways heres these two

not much 2 say other than i miss the whimsy of spirit halloween and halloween capitalism in general when i was younger. now it all just feels sad. anyways

theres a surpise at the end :3

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An address leading to nowhere…

How odd.

“You said you’d been there before, right Gerhana?”

Gerhana met Bea’s question with a shrug.

“…I can vaguely remember being from there. But that’s the extent of my knowledge, I don’t understand why the GPS is saying that place doesn’t exist. Dirge is documented pretty well like that, to my knowledge.”

Bea sighed and scratched her head, continuing to look at the puzzling package.

It was a delivery from an Outside World proxy shipper that Bea was assigned to complete.

Allegedly, this was the time of year that the Outside World celebrated an event known as ‘Halloween’, and someone had mass-imported ‘decorations and knicknacks’ from a Halloween superstore, according to the shipping label.

It was exciting, because Bea had never handled an Outside World shipment before! But… it seems there was a reason nobody else had taken up delivering the package.

It was supposed to be destined for an ‘Outside World-inspired haunted house exhibit’ located in the biome of the Ultra Dirge… which raised red flags on its own, being that the Dirge was considered to be a cursed location to occultists.

But that matter at hand was, despite detailed directions, actually inputting those directions into her GPS resulted in it telling Bea it was simply an empty grove.

But a job was a job. And it seems the frustration of the customer was reflected in their willingness to tip heftily upon arrival.

“So…” Bea said, stretching after her moment of pondering.

“You ready to go?”

“Ready as usual.” Gerhana nodded in response.

The main highway to Ultra Dirge was north of Megalopolis and easily accessible – the main annoyance was simply that it was a long stretch of nothing for miles. It’s not like it mattered, because Bea was used to long stretches like this… just not this specific stretch.

Still, the conversations she’d have with Gerhana would generally make up for the hours of boring driving. But… Gerhana seemed a bit different this time.

Once the landscape began its shift from the thickets that surrounded Megalopolis to the less dense trees with curled branches, Gerhana seemed to be in a bit of a trance gazing out the window.

“You good, Hana? You’re never usually this quiet.” Bea asked, tilting her gaze over to Gerhana slightly.

“Mm…” Gerhana mumbled in response.

“I guess… seeing the landscapes feels so familiar, but I can’t quite remember still. I guess I’m just trying to think.”

“No worries! I’ll just put on some music then, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

As the road went on, the landscape continued to transition – and though Megalopolis the Dirge both lacked natural light, it almost seemed like it was getting… darker. There were some offshoot roads from the highway that led into more populated areas surely, but the entire area felt… eerie.

“Hana, there’s supposed to be an old bus stop on your side of the road that’s next to a turn I need to make – can you shout it when you see it?”

“Sure thing.” Gerhana responded with a nod.

A few miles more, and like the instructions had described, a dilapidated bus station sat in front of a fork in the road.

“There!” Gerhana pointed out, causing Bea to bring the hovervan to a halt.

The road they were supposed to take wasn’t properly paved, and seemed to lead intro a more heavily forested area. Bea didn’t want to say anything about it, but the entire scene did kind of remind her of a bad horror movie – so she was a tad nervous.

She made the turn, and began driving her way down the road. But after a few minutes, the hovervan stopped moving – much to Bea’s surprise.

“The hell? This thing had a full tank when we left Megalopolis, there’s no reason for this to…” Bea started to say in a frustrated manner, which slowly faded into a grumble.

“Do you want me to check the engine?” Gerhana asked.

“No, it’s… whatever. It shouldn’t be much farther, we can just walk if you can manage to carry the package that ways, Hana.”

Gerhana just gave an understanding nod, and the two hopped out of the van – with Gerhana quickly making a detour to the back to grab the hefty package.

Now that she was out of the van, the strange energy of the Dirge was seeming to get to Bea’s nerves. It was uncomfortable, and she wanted so desperately to hold Gerhana’s hand for reassurance – but Gerhana was already using both their hands to carry the package.

It was only a short walk away to the clearing described – and, lo and behold, instead of the empty grove the GPS had described, there was… a parking lot surrounding an empty-looking strip mall. On the centermost store, there was a cheap-looking banner above the doors, with a title saying ‘SPIRITED HALLOWEEN HOUSE OF SCARES’.

“I’m not sure if this is cringeworthy or forboding…” Bea mumbled as the two approached the building.

“Did they mention… a drop point? Do we knock?” Gerhana asked with a confused air in their voice.

“It really doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for years, minus that banner.”

“Mm… let me reread it.” Bea replied with a sigh, fishing around in her hoodie’s pocket for the delivery instructions.

She unfolded the piece of paper, only to find that whatever the dropoff instructions were had been replaced with orange, slightly luminescent lettering;

COME ON IN AND ENJOY THE SHOW!

“This… wasn’t there before.” Bea said under her breath with a shudder.

Gerhana leaned over to look, and narrowed their eyes.

“I… know this isn’t going to help, but…” they started, pausing briefly.

“That handwriting feels very familiar to me.”

“Hmm… ‘ya know, everything in my body is screaming at me to just drop the package here and run away as fast as I can, buuut…” Bea started, her voice taking on an inflection of mocking optimism.

“I am kind of brutally curious now.”

“We can just drop and knock if you’re scared, Bea.”

“Me? No! I’m not scared! Besides, they promised a good tip, and that’s my fuel money.” Bea said with a huff, approaching the doors of the centermost store.

“But, uh… if anything happens, you’ll protect us, right Hana?”

“Of course.” Gerhana said with a reassuring smile and nod.

Bea swung open the door, and was greeted with… an odd space.

The linoleum tiled flooring was beige, slightly speckled, and just a bit dirty. The overall lighting of the ‘haunted house’ was dim, but there were a few overhead fluorescent lights that were actually on – a few flickering intermittently.

While the atmosphere definitely was unsettling, Bea had seen what a Halloween setup from the Outside World looked like – and this didn’t seem like it.

“Hello?” Bea called out, her voice echoing through the empty space.

“My name is Beatrice, I’m the courier with the package you ordered! Is… anyone here?”

And just like that, all the lights in the building went out.

Beatrice yelped in surprise, and quickly went to feel for her phone to use as a flashlight – but just as she was about to turn it on… the overhead lights flashed back on, and their surroundings were vastly different.

The once empty room had been seemingly transformed into a festive setup, divided up with cheap-looking fabric dividers. In the area around the doors where Bea and Gerhana were standing, there was a sort of ‘plaza’ built up with various plastic decorations and black and orange colored streamers. At the center of the plaza was a plastic statue of a humanoid-looking figure with green-tinted skin and rotting body parts molded in – which Bea could only assume was some sort of monster from Outside World culture.

She stepped forwards to investigate, but didn’t notice the pressure pad covered in black duct tape below her hooves, until…

“AUUGH!” Bea screamed out in shock, as her step on the pressure pad triggered the statue to spring forwards with a crunchy-sounding pre-recorded laugh.

Though after the initial shock, Bea was able to get a closer look at the statue and realize how silly it all looked.

“Are you ok?” Gerhana stepped forwards to ask, though their voice sounded a bit more dazed than normal.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine! That was just… unexpected, I guess.” Bea sighed.

“Are you ok though, Hana?”

Gerhana mumbled for a second before properly speaking.

“Yeah, it’s just… weird. The way it smells in here also feels all too familiar, but…” they muttered, voice wavering uncharacteristically.

“With the way my memory before the lab was erased, the memory only feels like something that’s distantly unattainable. It’s just a weird mental feeling.”

“Well, we can…” Bea started, her eyes drifting to see if the mysterious recipient of the package had appeared. They hadn’t, but there appeared to be a long counter that looked to be a front desk of sorts.

“We can just leave it at the front desk and go, then! The tip doesn’t matter too much, at least not more than you.”

Gerhana seemed to be thinking on it, as they approached the counter to set down the package.

With their hands and front-facing vision a bit more free now that they weren’t carrying the heavy box, Gerhana noticed a small hand-written note in the same handwriting that had seemingly manifested itself on the delivery instructions earlier.

Dear courier:

You may leave the package here and collect the following below as a tip!

However, I would greatly appreciate it if you could walk through my exhibit to give it a trial run! Some parts may be missing, as that is what I ordered in the shipment you delivered.

Thank you anyways!

On the note, attached with tape, was a transactional card noted to contain $250.

“…You may wanna take a look at this, Bea.” Gerhana said, picking up the note and waving it a bit in Bea’s direction.

“Ooh, is that the tip?” she replied, running to grab the paper to go over it – and upon seeing the tip amount, her eyes grew wide.

“TWO HUNDRED FIFTY? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?! WHO IS THIS PERSON?”

Gerhana gave a rare chuckle in response.

“I guess they weren’t lying when they said they’d tip handsomely, whoever they are…”

“Well…” Bea started, quickly pocketing the card before continuing.

“Did you wanna head out? Or did you wanna actually check out the exhibit?”

“Hmm…” Gerhana hummed for a second as they thought.

“…If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to… check out the exhibit. I have a feeling that… I may be able to finally jog my memory.”

“Hey, if you’re hopeful of it!” Bea smiled.

“Just don’t complain if you have to hold me, because I’m kind of a wimp, ha!”

Gerhana smiled, before flinching slightly as a stand-up arrow sign, blinking with orange lights, seemingly popped out of nowhere to indicate the entrance to the exhibit.

“Well, I’m hoping from the looks of it that this… ‘exhibit’ is more light-hearted than anything, but if anything happens, I’ll be here for you.”

Bea took Gerhana’s hand, and the two headed into the maze-like exhibit together.

To expectations, the exhibit was made up of elaborately set up Halloween-themed imported decorations – they all had an air of cheapness to them, but Beat could kind of see how that must be part of the appeal.

There were a few small and large gaps between the arrangements, marked with stickynotes labeled with what Bea could recognize as product numbers – and assumed these were the missing parts mentioned.

There were about four themed areas, all of which Bea figured were references to Outside-World horror genres she didn’t understand. There were also plenty of jumpscares triggered by pressure pads, and even though Gerhana would always point these out, Bea would still manage to accidentally trigger them and cling to Gerhana in shock anyways.

As the two made their way out of the exhibit’s exit back into the lobby and were discussing their thoughts on it, all the lights went out again.

Bea was going to say something, but her train of thought was lost as she noticed a dull orange glow among the darkness.

But before she could comment on it, the glow exploded into a loud and fantastical display of orange and red sparks, almost akin to fireworks. Bea jumped, but didn’t scream – as she’d gotten used to all the surprises from the exhibit.

“Helloooooooo courier! Thank you for your patronage!”

It was a light and bubbly voice, and the lights slowly came back on as the sparks faded – revealing the voice’s owner to be a blacephalon – one of the alien species who inhabited the Dirge.

“I hope you had fun, tell your friends!”

A business card was extended the duo’s way, and Gerhana reached to grab it – noting the exhibit owner’s name to be Bankie.

“Thank you! And thank YOU for the tip!” Bea said with a smile.

She started to go on her way to leave, but soon found Gerhana and Bankie to be staring at each other.

The silence was a bit uncomfortably long, but after the moment passed, Bankie spoke.

“Elly? Is… that you?” Bankie spoke softly, in contrast to her previously upbeat tone.

“What did they do to you?”