20 Days to Halloween
"Goooood morning, Colonel Holden High Students! We are officially twenty days out from Halloween!" Mindy Bradley's chipper voice greeted Mazie as soon as she walked in the doors of her high school just on time before the first tardy bell.
"This Friday is a home game for the Holden High Eagles and we expect to see you all there in your best vampire costumes!" Mindy practically giggled into the microphone at the prospect of donning her fangs. "That's right...this weekend's theme for the football game is vampires! Time to air out your capes!"
There truly was no other school like Colonel Holden High School - named after the great and honorable Colonel Holden who fought the Japanese in WWI not WWII long before the attack on Pearl Harbor and before the Japanese were the Japanese, whom the president, in the most racist way possible, rallied one of 'the greatest threats' to American society in camps (and no one said anything about it.) Colonel Holden sounded a little racist towards the Japanese if you asked her but that certainly didn't stop people from praising him like most other men in history.
But Holden High was more special for a lot of other reasons. Besides being one of the only schools in Oregon to offer hockey and tennis - which her mother begged her to play because she was obsessed with Serena Williams - they also celebrated every single holiday with equal parts style and cheese.
"Let's also show our support for the boys' hockey team on Thursday! It's an away game but the school will be providing transportation for those interested. There's a sign up sheet in the office. Today is the last day to sign up so don't forget."
Mazie meandered through the halls, ripping the hat off of her head and ruffing her fingers through her hair. She tossed her hands up in congenial wave to a few students on the yearbook committee that she was friends with. The walls and lockers were decorated with handmade Halloween signs. Each student was permitted to decorate they own locker for the holiday as long as it wasn't devil chants or something like that.
"In honor of Halloween, the varsity cheerleaders are hosting a Candy-and-Canned goods food drive to donate to local shelters. So bring a bag of candy and some canned goods before the end of the month!" Mindy explained.
Salacious laughter followed Mazie down the hall to her locker and she avoided glancing over her shoulder to see who it was. Most of the halls cleared as students made their way to class.
"Lastly, a reminder to the graduating class of 2019: according to Principal Andrews, senior class pranks are completely prohibited and anyone who engages in any pranking activity is subject to extensive punishments and serious consequences," Mindy informed everyone in her most motherly voice, meant to ward off pranking harm.
Mazie rolled her eyes as she hurriedly yanked open her locker.
"That's all for today, ghouls and goblins! Stay spooky!" A fake automated witch laugh echoed through the halls as Mindy signed off for her morning announcements.
When Mazie reached into her locker to pull out her Spanish book, a piece of paper folded into a square fell out and fluttered to the ground beside her books. Confusion muddled her brain, but she bent over to pick it up, dropping her black backpack at her feet. Mazie glanced back and forth down the hallway expecting the perpetrator who left the note in her locker to be lurking in the shadows.
Lightning flickered overhead, shining through the skylights above her. Thunder clapped shortly afterward, signaling that the incoming storm hovered close by.
Eerily, Mazie unfolded the note. She read it quickly before crumpling it up and tossing it into the back of her locker.
500 Hemingway Lane, Hollywood, Oregon 97061.
Hemingway Lane. Hemingway Lane.
Did she know where that was? She lived in Hollywood, Oregon, all her life but she wasn't sure she ever heard of this road before.
When the bell rang, Mazie nearly jumped out of her skin. Why was she being so crazy and crawling with nerves. Stuffing her anxiety away, Mazie grabbed her stuff and headed to class, dismissing the note as a mistaken locker.
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During her free period before lunch, Mazie found herself in the library. The young hipster librarian who was only a handful of years older than her prospective students always only wore black. Normally, this wasn't a concern for Mazie considering she enjoyed black a great deal herself. Except black ensembles made Mrs. De Salle look a little witchy. She was only missing her pointy black hat.
Which was mounted on the wall along with an old broomstick and a life-size drawing of a green grinning witch. The entire room was strung with twinkling orange lights and huge fake pumpkin lanterns lit the room in an orange-y glow. Students complained that her decorations weren't bright enough to properly study or read without straining their eyes.
Obviously, Mazie rather enjoyed the dark ambiance. And the lack of light provided solitude in the absence of students. Mazie didn't have to bring the paper with the address on it because she inherently memorized it due to her unstoppable curiosity. All morning long, she stewed over the note until she devised a course of action.
She waved politely to Ms. De Salle when she entered the lib and found a computer facing away from the front of the library. Mazie checked her surroundings before she sat down. There were a few students milling about but all of them minded their own business.
Mazie typed in her name and personal password which was assigned to each student. First, she opened a webpage on Frankenstein, a book report she was supposed to be working on. She would use that page for cover if anyone walked by. Then she opened a Google page and searched "500 Hemingway Lane, Hollywood, Oregon 97061."
No immediate or obvious search results.
She scrolled through the results, most of which related to Hollywood in California or Hemingway the author.
Mazie moved her search to Google Maps to see if she recognized the location in her hometown.
The address led to the middle of nowhere. The foliage in the forest was so thick that she couldn't even see the road or lane that supposedly existed there. No houses or forest properties existed from what she could see.
The uninhabited forests of Oregon that surrounded her hometown were vast and varied. Most people let nature be until developers moved in. Maybe Hemingway Lane wasn't developed yet.
But why would someone put this address in her locker? If it was mistakenly put in her locker, why would anyone be interested in this place?
Was there really something out there?
The electricity went in and out, lights flickering, as the storm finally hit. The sound of the rain pummeling the roof droned on like white noise. She glanced outside at the storm which pelted the windows. The brief distraction centered her back on her search.
She couldn't let this go until she knew for sure that this note wasn't meant for her.
Her own Halloween mystery.
When the electricity finally went out, a student dropped their book which caused Mazie to startle in her seat. To find the source of the clumsy student, Mazie swiveled in her chair.
At the sight of someone lurking behind her, Mazie grasped loudly and placed her hand over her heart.
Christian Slater stood directly behind her, eyes narrowed suspiciously, fists clenched tightly at his side. Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating his haunting features.
All around them, students started a commotion about the loss of electricity: what will we do without power? Do we still have class? What about lunch?
But Mazie was locked into Christian's steely gaze, everything around them fading away. He saw what she was searching. Was he watching her? Did he have something to do with this?
When the power returned, both of them broke their trance to look overhead at the twinkling Halloween lights. Christian kept his eyes locked on her as he stuffed his hands in his black jean pockets and walked out of the room in his grey hightop converse.
Finding her wits about her, Mazie speedily deleted the open browsers, logged off, and collected her belongings.
When she zoomed out of the library into the hallway, Christian Slater was already gone.
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Nightfall
Just in case Mazie was on her way to meet death, she wrote a note of her location and stuck that note on the picture of her and the twins which sat on her desk in her room. And she specified that her Doc Martins should be given to Amelia.
She informed Felecia that she was heading over to Amelia's and that she would be back before midnight. Her aunt gave her a look like she didn't quite approve but wasn't sure she should say anything. Packing a flashlight, Mazie stuck her black beanie on her head and drove off in her new whip.
She wasn't sure why she felt the need to visit Hemingway Lane in the middle of the night. But she didn't want to be caught spying on someone else's property in the middle of the day.
It was a short drive - less than twenty minutes - and she jammed to The 1975 all the way. Surprisingly, her GPS tracked her to a real location just out of town. So maybe it was someone's house.
Hemingway Lane turned out to be just that - a lane heading further into the dense forest. The trees turning burnt orange, crimson red, and mellow yellow with the season climbed high overhead and seemed to link together at the top. It appeared that these woods didn't receive much human influence. So what was out here?
Mazie hesitated before she turned onto the lane that was just large enough to squeeze in two cars if their outside tires drove in the gravel and dirt margin on the side. The moonlight was clouded by the impenetrable foliage above and blocked from view altogether.
Turning down the music, Mazie slowed her pace to a gentle roll. With her heart pounding wildly, she half-expected a masked human or deadly dangerous something-or-other to pop up in the bright LED lights of the Range.
But there was nothing but trees.
Rolling the windows down, Mazie listened for voices or human activity. So far, she only saw trees, trees, and more trees. The bright decaying leaves on the ground were the only beacon of light and life.
She tried to compare how far she had driven with what she recalled from Google Maps search. But at this time of night in the bone chilling silence, it was hard to gauge anything other than her hyper active senses and galloping heartbeat. Her hands grew clammy on the steering wheel and she fought the urge to flee.
Just when she was about to turn around, Mazie thought she saw a flicker of light in the distance straight ahead. It was a fire. A bonfire.
Mazie cut the lights and stalled the car in the middle of the road. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw several parked cars about thirty yards ahead. She counted four of them but none looked familiar save an Eagles bumper sticker from the school on a black Tahoe. So these were students?
She rolled up the windows and turned the car off. Before she got out of the car, she mapped out an escape plan in her head for a hasty departure.
All of the warning bells peeled in her head. It wasn't the people up ahead at the end of Hemingway Lane that scared her. It was all of the things in the dark damp forest that she couldn't see.
But her curiosity was killing her. Now that she was here, she might as well investigate. What did she have to lose?
She locked the doors manually from the inside so that the horn didn't sound if she used the key fob. Sliding out of her SUV, Mazie quietly plopped both feet on the gravel drive and clicked the door shut behind her. Pocketing her keys, Mazie stood as still as a statue until her eyes continued to adjust to the dark.
For all she knew, something or someone was out there watching her just as she was about to do some spying herself. Secretly, she sort of hoped she was about to uncover a coven of witches, a pack of werewolves, or a band of bloodsucking vampires. That would be totally wicked. Then again, she wasn't really in the mood to get bitten.
Mazie trekked downhill, clinging closely tot he other cars in case she needed to hide. She peered periodically into the cars, hoping to see something familiar that would put a name to the faceless people at the bonfire. The longer she stood around, the more Mazie sensed that she wasn't invited here and no one was waiting for her arrival. But it was awfully coincidental that people happened to be here when she decided to do her sleuthing.
Stepping further into the unknown, Mazie allowed the forest to close in on her, providing a dark security blanket. Voices and laughter arose in the still calm night originating from the fire.
Mazie wanted to use her flashlight so that she didn't trip over anything unseen but knew that would be a sure sign of her presence at this woodsy seance. Her all black ensemble, chosen to blend in but also to keep warm, aided in her ability to become one with the forest. The cool night chill still managed to seep into her clothes. However, her pumping adrenaline kept her warm or rather falsely so.
Holding onto trees for balance, Mazie trudged into he woods, occasionally slipping on mud softened by the rain. Mostly the leaves crunched under the soles of her feet. Circling the source of light at the end of the lane, Mazie kept a look out for a safe hideaway where the trees cleared so that she could spy on all of the people at the bonfire.
She realized suddenly that this was awfully creepy of her. Mentally, she shrugged. All hail the spooky season.
Her creeping came to an end when she spotted a clearing ahead on her left that was a little closer to the bonfire than she anticipated, but she did want to see their faces.
In the overwhelming light of the fire, Mazie realized that a ginormous black lob by the fire was actually a very ancient cabin with a sloping roof covering a caving front porch with rotting wooden steps. The cabin looked as if it hadn't been occupied for a very long time and seen better days. Mazie squinted her eyes, taking in the details. On the siding beside the front door as a number: 500.
500 Hemingway Lane. So she was definitely in the right place.
Mazie perched behind a tree large enough to cover her body and peered around the side, clutching the bark for support. The one protective item she forgot was gloves. The wind bit at her exposed skin, turning her knuckles red in aggravation.
At the sound of crackling and snapping twigs behind her, Mazie quickly glanced over her shoulder.
A heavy hand clamped over her mouth.
An arm as heavy as lead snaked around her body, rendering her immovable.
Still, she struggled relentlessly, kicking and wiggling, which only caused her assistant to clench her tighter in his hold.
Oh, God, this is how she was going to die...