Minipost: Halloween 2024

Halloween is back, and so is PWK! (The fancy abbreviation for Planet Whiz Kid.) Pumpkins are once again donning wild designs, children dressed as Lucifer are hooked on Skittles, black cats roam the streets, and presidential elections loom once more. Truly a horror story of terrifying proportions!

To continue with the annual tradition, I will be sharing a short Halloween story that will petrify every bit of your being, reveal your deepest fears, chill your bones, and activate a feeling of dread and fright so intense that it is ensured to leave you in a state of utter paralyzation . . . all within the confines of a PG-esque rating! So that may or may not have been a bluff; after all, I still refuse to watch Coraline at age seventeen.

So, with that, let’s get to the next installment in the unfolding Halloween story that I’ve penned on this site since 2019. For a “Previously On” segment, feel free to read the prior “episodes” I’ve published over the past few years:

I often talk big (or bigly, bigish?) regarding the ultimate compilation of this series-of-sorts, so unlike last year’s erroneous comments may indicate, this year’s post will not be the climax of the All Hallow’s Eve chronicle. (Disinformation city!) To speak in carpenters’ terms, it will act as just another step on the staircase. And a rather quick one, at that! (Given that I, as usual, decided to push writing until the last minute on Halloween evening.)

So, without further ado, I present . . .

Halloween: 2024 Edition

October 31, 2024 (Three Years After the Previous Chapter)

An eerie silence. A discomforting hush. An unnerving quiet.

That was what has plagued the mind of Count Dracula for the past three years.

Halloween of 2021 had marked the return of an unsettling new era for monsterkind . . . at least, the sect that conceals itself within the shadows of the earthly realm, the Transylvanian vampire being one of them. That year’s trick-or-treat holiday was much more heavily weighted on the “trick” scale; a small army of otherworldly creatures had invaded a handful of American towns which already held mysterious connotations: Salem, Alamo, Remer, etc. A few dozen children disappeared shortly after these bizarre occurrences were reported to have taken place; yet, on November 1, all had been returned to their homes, with no memory of anything uncanny taking place.

Alarmed parents and local law enforcement recorded these events and brought them to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who took swift action to cover up the phenomena and shield every detail from the public sphere. NDAs were signed, the Witness Protection Program was invoked, and hundreds of files locked in their respective drawers.

Of course, Dracula knew the truth.

Following his flee to Romania in 2020, the charismatic 593-year-old count (who, contrary to stereotyping and public opinion, does not appear weekly on Sesame Street) reopened his high-end inn, Hotel Transylvania. Formerly a lodge for traveling businessmen in the 19th century, during which several visitors left with bizarre teeth markings on their neck, Dracula designed the revived campground to cater towards those in the monster community; it acted as a shelter to mythical creatures like the Wawel Dragon (a frequent customer) and the Turul (something of a Hungarian snob). Of course, Dracula was smart enough to open the hotel on a supposedly cursed ground that superstitious Romanians would never go near.

One February day, an escaped mental patient named R. M. Renfield stumbled across the estate, unaware of the location’s true intention. Dracula, fearing for his and others’ lives were the lunatic to alert authorities, hypnotized Renfield into cooperation, injected him with the vampiric germ, and still utilizes him as a valuable assistant. Currently, Hotel Transylvania houses an average of eighty-five European monsters.

Concurrently, a profound sense of guilt and anxiety lurked underneath Dracula’s cool and calm demeanor. A fear of powerlessness gripped his every thought as he wrestled with prior actions that consistently haunted him. (Not literally, there’s no ghosts at Transylvania.) But ultimately, it wasn’t his past that causes the most trepidation; it was the possibility of the future.

The pale Romania had worked closely alongside his Master for over two decades; Dracula was the only one who knew his true identity, which was that of the extremely unpalatable being known as Betelgeuse, a bio-exorcist whose optimum and final goal was to merge the realm of Halloweentown with Earth itself, creating a monster-like utopia and plenty of opportunities for Betelgeuse to showcase his custom sport of one-man la crosse. Dracula had known the extent of Betelgeuse’s instability and pure wackiness, yet he desired to leverage the ghoul’s trust in him to enact an overthrow and assume the reins of Supreme Monster Master. That never happened. Betelgeuse and his forces were largely demolished in the New York battle of 2019, but Dracula knew that the dangerously unhampered ghost would be back, and bigger at that.

However, Count Dracula had been severely injured during his 2019 Halloween crusade against his former boss. Although his scars weren’t as damaging as garlic exposure or direct sunlight, the count discovered a sudden inability to use his powers. No extra strength, seasonal fang growth, or blood cravings. He was becoming more . . . human. And he didn’t like it.

Vampiric lore claims that humanistic transformation (the act of shifting from vampire to the homo sapiens species) only occurs when extreme blood loss causes a shift in the hormones and genes which facilitates an environmentally-based alteration; in other words, a vampire will adapt to their surroundings and change to whatever species is most populated around them when they lose enough of their vampiric blood. And that’s exactly what was happening to Dracula. The only cure: intake of Transylvanian blood and hibernation in a crypt for six months.

So, the count staged his exit. In 2020, when he was nearing a complete transition to human, he bit a reporter to open an excuse for his escape from America. He flew in bat form back to his original home of Transylvania, where he swiftly returned to a gore-heavy diet and slept for half-a-year. He awakened refreshed, younger, and more vampiric than ever.

He had planned to make his way back to America someway, somehow, someday following his self-medicated process. But he found himself enjoying the Transylvanian atmosphere and hearing myths circulate about the Romanian towns of a “dark emperor returning to his forested castle”. And so, he stayed . . . at a very large risk.

That risk being the very real possibility of Betelgeuse returning to take advantage of Dracula’s vanishing from the rest of the monster group and seizing an opening to accomplish his overall plan. At first, Dracula attempted to sweep it under the rug (literally, he dusted the hotel floors every night), but the feeling of worry and unease eventually could not be repressed. It consumed him each day, infecting his thoughts day-in and day-out. He had made plans to make Renfield Interim Director of the hotel and fly back to America, where he would unite with his fellow monsters and create a defensive team to guard the earthly realm from Betelgeuse’s inevitable retaliation.

This didn’t pan out as planned. The count had packed up his belongings and prepared the hotel for his departure; however, that feeling of absolute fear manifested itself in a vision of destruction, demolition, and death before Dracula’s eyes. This unexpected disturbance impeded any trip that Dracula had planned to make back to the West.

A feeling of deep unsettlement boiled within Dracula’s conscience as Halloween of 2021 approached further; and when it came, Dracula realized that his actions had been cowardly. Whether or not the ghoul’s dastardly scheme actually came to fruition, Betelgeuse had made himself known once more by reentering the earthly realm. And he was guaranteed to be back.

Count Dracula recounts this path as he stands on the balcony of his historic hotel building. He has not made any contact with his former monster clan over the past four years. That was another of his regrets. The only way they would stop Betelgeuse and whatever minions he had employed . . . was together.

As the count looks at the natural valleys and hills that surround his own monster community, he promises himself that were he to encounter Betelgeuse ever again, he would finish the job by finishing the ghoul.

Oddly, as Dracula turns back to reenter his Gothic-style office, part one of his wish appears to already come true.

Betelgeuse is standing in his office.

“Hey, vampy.” That is the deep, repugnant growl which emits from this beastly thing.

Dracula, somewhat shocked and older than he used to be, takes a minute too long to spread his arms into wing formation. His attempt to fly towards and attack the fiend is dead on arrival; Betelgeuse uses his mystical abilities to freeze Dracula in formation. The vampire is now as physically helpless as he has been mentally.

Betelgeuse smiles that awful, offensive, downright nasty smile in his effort to taunt Dracula. “The juice is loose.”

Dracula, though frozen, hears every word Betelgeuse utters as he listens with nothing but pure and absolute disdain.

“So, yer probly confused about seein’ me here,” the demon says. “Well, I’ve had myself a little vacation the last fews years. It’s been fun. Hey, I even made a movie, man! Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, now in theaters.”

Betelgeuse paces and does his typical odd motions and movements as he talks in a bizarre mixture of gibberish and eloquence.

“Thanks to yer little pals, three years ago didn’t go as I had hoped. It sucks, brother! My wildest dreams never seem to come true; trust me, I’ve tried combining chickens and frogs.” He rolls his eyes. “You’ve been a naughty little boy, Drac. And papa’s not very happy. In fact, papa’s furious! He’s like a bull with horns, and, like they say, ya don’t mess with them horns. That way, ya get the bull. And nobody wants that, amiright?! So, I paid you a visit at your creepy little cottage here to send ya a message.”

Betelgeuse runs up to Dracula and, in a phrase, spazzes out. He bugs his eyes out, whips his grotesque tongue around, and performs a variety of perturbing “dance moves”, if they can even be called that. Then he gets real close to Dracula and talks loudly in his ear.

“That was message one. Entertaining, huh? And here’s message two.”

The juicy beetle performed a circular motion with his hands, which opened up a portal to what appeared as another universe, presumably Halloweentown.

“Say hello to your little friends,” Betelgeuse proclaimed.

On the other side of the portal indeed was a prison-of-sorts, and in its cells were Dracula’s former friends, all lined up within their assigned units: the Invisible Man, Witch Mirium, Wizard Marius, Skeleton, Jack O’Lantern, and Frankenstein’s Monster.

“Don’t worry, Drac. I put a tiny spell whatcha-ma-hoozie on them so they can’t communicate. Can’t have dissent, after all.” Betelgeuse moved his eyebrows up and down rapidly.

“BUT! I’m not done yet. No, sir Bobby. Check this out.” Betelgeuse closed the current portal and opened a new one, which led to a seemingly dark and desolate room.

“I never forgot what you did to me. And I never will, Toothy. I think you oughta be reminded of what disobedience can cause.” With that, Betelgeuse levitated Dracula’s frozen body over into the portal room, as Dracula felt his internal fear increase.

Betelgeuse, grinning from disjointed ear to half-rotted ear, started to close the portal, but stopped when he realized he had a final decree to throw at the count in usual jeering mode.

“Oh, and I thought you’d wanna know . . . Mummy’s comin’ home soon. REAL soon. In the meantime, hope ya like sun and garlic, Drac. Happy Halloween!

The portal closed.

And Dracula felt that his fall was complete: he was as incapable as ever.

. . . or was he?

The count was no longer frozen in position; he seemed to be stranded in a rather small, dark room. Though he was completely isolated, in completely unknown territory, there was one piece of anticipation to which he still held.

2025 marked the year of the Jester King.

So, there ya have it! I’ll be back next year with the next part of the story. Hope you enjoyed it, even if it was relatively short and cobbled together.

In the meantime, Happy Halloween and early Merry Christmas! Keep your eye (or, preferably both eyes) out for another post of some sort to come before the end of the year.

Enjoy your buckets of candy, and don’t deny that you’re responsible for that missing Snickers bar.

Whiz Kid out