[LN] Bubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble...

[morethanmyth]

With reality getting thinner, there were more than myth people appearing. Sometimes there were myth locations, especially ones that were appropriate to the time of year. With Halloween approaching, countless kids were watching Halloween themed movies, everything from horror movies to the more family-friendly fair. Among certain age sets, one particular Halloween movie was capturing the attention of the younger children, one that showed on TV every year. That was why a strange cabin appeared in the woods just outside of Berk, one that Jamie's friends apparently had no reservations against exploring.

"Guys, I don't think this is a good idea," Jamie said as they poked and prodded at the windows, hanging back nervously. The place looked...familiar. In a bad way. "We've been all over these woods and I don't think this was even here before."

"Oh come on, Jamie, don't be a chicken. It's probably some kinda haunted house someone set up for Halloween," said his friend Claude. He prodded at the door...which swung open. "And it looks like whoever set it up left it unlocked.

"What are you afraid of?" asked Caleb, bouncing in front of Jamie's face, wiggling his fingers. "Ghosts?"

"You know what I'm afraid of. It could be -"

"Oh, don't say it," said Claude.

"He's gonna say it," said Caleb.

"Here he goes again," said Pippa, rolling her eyes upward.

"It could be a trap set up by Pitch Black," Jamie finished firmly. "Or the fearlings. I know you guys don't believe anymore, but -"

"Jamie, that was just a weird pretend thing we all did when we were little and we let it get into our heads," said Pippa. "Pitch Black isn't real. Jack Frost isn't real. Evil little darkness gremlins that eat kids' souls aren't real. All that stuff we believed as kids wasn't real and it's a baby game to keep pretending it is.."

Jamie frowned as they said Jack wasn't real. As it always happens when kids grow up, his friends had all stopped believing, something that had been inevitable when they all turned twelve and thirteen. No matter how much he tried to get them to believe again, they refused to, and the Guardians had let it happen, feeling that it was natural. Even Jack, though he'd been sad to lose them as believers, had learned to let go.

"I think Jamie's right," said Cupcake, crossing her arms. "We shouldn't mess with it, it could be something weird. Or might have alarms."

Cupcake was the only one that held onto that belief, just as firmly as Jamie, though she was far less vocal about it, recognizing that the others weren't planning on changing their tune anytime soon. She tried to back him up when she could, usually offering real-world reasons they should do things to keep safe from the supernatural.

"Yeah, guys, it might be really dusty inside and I forgot my inhaler at home," put in Monty.

"It's not that dusty," called out Claude from inside the door. "There are even electric lights." Lights suddenly blinked on in the windows as Claude hit them. "Come on, guys, it's not even like a real, scary house. There's, like, a thing selling postcards. It's definitely meant to be some kinda haunted house business thing. A haunted museum or something. But maybe abandoned."

Monty finally shrugged and meandered closer. "Well, okay, but really, guys, this is breaking an entering and my mom will ground me forever if we get arrested. We shouldn't stay long."

Cupcake sighed and looked to Jamie. "We need to keep them out of trouble and steer them out of there as quick as he can. I don't like this."

Jamie nodded. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Always with the Star Wars line," Cupcake said, shaking her head as she made her way to the cabin's door, where the others had disappeared.

"What? It always fits, doesn't it?" Jamie said, trotting along after her.

The house was a creepy mess, filled with dust and cobwebs.

"You guys lied, it's totally dusty in here," Monty said in a nasally voice, sneezing.

"Check this out," said Caleb, looking at a display. "'This is the spell book of Winifred Sanderson. It was given to her by the devil himself. The book is bound in human skin and contains the recipes for her most powerful and evil spells.'"

"Don't touch it," Jamie said, when Caleb's hand strayed towards it. "Look, guys, we are totally in the first ten minutes of a Supernatural episode right now. Or the start of a horror movie. We need to leave."

"Don't touch it?" said Claude. "He said don't touch it, Caleb."

"Touch it?" said Caleb. "I heard you say that he said to touch it."

"Yeah, I think that's what he really meant."

"Guys, this isn't funny," said Jamie, rushing over to try to stop Caleb from touching it, but he was too late. The boy reached through the broken case and pressed his fingers against the cover. Both Caleb and Claude were looking at Jamie to see how he'd react, which was why Jamie was the only one who saw the eye on the book open -

Right before the lights went out.

"Aah! oh man, what happened to the lights?"

"Maybe it was on an old generator that busted?"

All of a sudden there was the sound of a screeching animal - possibly a cat - in the dark.

Pippa screamed. "Ow! There's something in here! It scratched me!"

"Where is it, where is it?!"

"Ow, it got me too!" yelled Monty, "It scratched my leg! What if it has rabies?! I don't want rabies!"

"I think it's a cat or a raccoon!"

"Where's the door? I can't find the door! We need to get out of here before it claws our eyes out!"

Jamie made his way towards where he remembered a little stand of lighters on the counter, finding it and grasping at one. "I think I saw a candle! And I found a lighter!" He grasped his way back to where he saw the candle.

All of a sudden he felt a cat clawing its way up his back and biting at his neck. "OW! GET OFF!"

He pulled it off and threw it in the direction he remembered the stairs being, hoping he wasn't throwing it at one of his friends, and lit the candle, hoping to give them all enough light to get out. The room was suddenly filled with dim light, enough for them to see. All of his friends but Cupcake were scratched somewhere and bleeding. The cat was nowhere to be seen.

Jamie glared at them all. "I told you this was a bad idea! We need to get -" The candle flame suddenly burned black, even though the light was still dimly filtering through the room. "- out. Uh oh."

"Uh, guys, are you seeing the candle do something super weird it shouldn't be doing, too?" asked Caleb nervously.

All of a sudden a fell wind started to blow from nowhere throughout the cabin and every lightbulb in the place started exploding. The floor boards shook and rumbled, green light spilling out from underneath them, making it impossible for them all to run or even stay upright.

"Jamie, what did you do?" shouted Pippa.

"What did I do?!" Jamie shouted back defensively. "You're the ones that ignored the fact we're in the first ten minutes of a Supernatural episode!"

It all started to die down but then every single candle in the place lit up and so did the fireplace. The front door suddenly burst up and three women stormed inside. Every single one of Jamie's friends hid behind whatever they could. It was then, hiding under a table, that Jamie finally realized why the whole place looked familiar. (He hadn't watched this movie in ages - he barely even remembered it!)

"We’re home. Oh, sweet revenge," crowed Winnifred. "Do you see, sisters, that wonderfully horrible being of darkness kept his promise when he brought us to this mortal plane! I was right to trust It and It's promises that we'd be revived from our place of purgatory!"

"Oh, that’s because thou art perfect, Winnie. Oh, I knew I left this cauldron on, didn’t I tell you? Oh, I knew it," said Sarah as she reached up behind a pillar and pulled down a mummified rat tail. "My lucky rat tail! Right where I left it."

"But who lit the black flame candle?" asked Winnifred, looking to her book. "Wake up! Wake up, sleepy head. Oh, I’ve missed you. Did you miss me too? Come on now, we’ve got work to do."

"Winnie?" asked Mary, sniffing and looking around the room.

"Yes?"

"I smell...teenagers."

"Do you now?" said Winnifred, as she and her sisters started looking around the room. "Where are yooou? We'd love to welcome you to our home. A housewarming!"

"Yes, yes, a housewarming!" cried out Sarah, clapping her hands.

"We'll warm our house by burning their young bodies!" cried out Winifred with a cackle.

"Guys, run!" said Caleb, bursting out of his hiding spot because one of the witches was almost upon it.

All at once - all of them except for Jamie, who was far more patient 0 they all made for the door, but Winnifred cast a strangle lightning out of her hands, causing them all to freeze in place.

"Cant...move," Pippa managed to grind out.

"Shall we roast them, my dear sisters?" Winnifred asked them.

"Yes!" said Sarah, hopping up and down.

"Oh yes, definitely!" said Mary.

"Ah, but the night will be a very busy one for us, my sisters, perhaps we should just trap them for now and save them for later. After all, we still have to enchant the adults here and feed from the children before the night is through. Yes, we should save them for later. Let's get them into their cages," said Winnifred, starting to lower hanging cages from the ceiling.

While they were occupied with that, Jamie made his break for it, trying to go for the book. He remembered something about it being important. Smashing one of the witches in the head with an oversized candlestick, he tried to reach into the case the book was in.

"Another teenager! He's going for the book, stop him!" Winnifred cried out, casting spells in Jamie's direction that he had to dive away from the book to avoid. Before they could hit him properly, the creature that had attacked them earlier - a black cat, suddenly jumped on Winnifred, clawing its way up her body and scratching her face. Her sisters immediately turned towards her, panicking and trying to get it off.

"Jamie...run," Cupcake ground out.

"I can't just leave you!" Jamie cried out.

"Get. Help. Get. Jack," Cupcake said, fixing him with a fierce and determined stare. "Run!"

Only hesitating half a second longer, Jamie jetted out the door and into the woods, sprinting away as fast as his legs would carry him. Jack patrolled Burgess most nights. Surely he could track him down if he made enough of a fuss and then he could swoop in and help. Yes, okay, he had a plan. To save his friends.

To save his really, monumentally stupid friends.

"Those guys!" he huffed as he run. "Are going to owe me! So much! For this!"

Having friends with no genre-savvy when you lived in a world that ran on myths was the literal worst.

Comments

Come little children, I'll take thee away...

[morethanmyth]

"Jack!" Jamie cried out as he ran through the streets. "Jack!"

Jamie's yelling, as he milled through crowds of bewildered parents and trick or treaters eventually caught a mini-fairy's attention.

Ducking into the space between two houses, Jamie held the little fairy in his hand, speaking quietly to her.

"I need you to find Jack as quick as you can! There are some evil myths in the woods and they have my friends!"

The fairy nodded, its tiny face serious, and flitted off frantically.

[letskicksomeice]

Jack had been taking the younger myths that were part of the team on a little patrol around town. Their chances of running into stray fearlings were slim to start with, so he figured it was a safe way to get them used to working together on a little mission without running into something that got them in over their heads.

And his way of teaching resonated well with them in the way a spirit of fun's teaching methods did. He was trying to make learning what they needed to know fun, while still helping them understand the seriousness of everything they had to face and how to be brave in the face of it.

That training was why he had several of the other myths in tow as he landed in the space Jamie was standing in between two houses.

"Jamie, what's going on?" he asked with concern as he landed, the others landing behind him as on the back of Mabel's magical construct Aoshima. "The mini-fairy said there was something bad, something that happened with your friends?"

[morethanmyth]

"There was a cabin in the woods that wasn't there before and my friends were being stupid because they don't believe anymore even though there's a ton of evidence right in their faces, so they inside and didn't listen to me and then they touched the book even though I told them not to touch the book but they touched it anyway and all the lights went so I lit the candle that was there but that was the wrong idea because we were in the first ten minutes of a Supernatural episode, except I was wrong, we're in a movie, and the witches showed up and now they have them trapped and -"

[letskicksomeice]

"Whoa whoa whoa, slow down, buddy," said Jack, holding a hand on his little friend's shoulder. "Deep breath, and give me the basics, okay? It sounds like we don't have a lot of time to lose."

[morethanmyth]

Jamie took a deep breath.

"I think there's a new myth that showed up. The witches from a Disney Halloween movie called Hocus Pocus. Their cabin showed up in the woods and my friends were poking around in it. They mentioned Kuk. I think he helped bring them in and now they have my friends in cages in their cabin and we don't stop them, they're going to put spells on the adults in town and feed off the life energy of all the kids!"

[letskicksomeice]

Jack stared at Jamie for a moment, eyes wide.

"Yeah, that's not good." He turned to the mini-fairy nearby, "I need you to go to the Pole and get Bunny right away, or Sam or Nico or Zac if he's not in. Tell them we need some backup in Burgess, right away, okay? There are witches - new myths - threatening the kids in town."

The mini-fairy nodded and fluttered off at rapidfire speed.

"And you guys, you should get clear of here," he said, "If they can feed off of kids, it's not safe. Patrol's over. You need to-"

There was a sudden sound, rolling lazily through the streets from far off, coming from the direction of the nearby community college. They were throwing a giant Halloween party there at night for the adults, as they always did. The music, traveling farther than normal music would have, had the adults suddenly peeling away from their children and wandering off, sometimes even stopping and getting out of their cars and leaving them in the streets.

"Oh no, it's already starting. We need to -" He blinked as he stood there. "We need to, uh..."

It sounded really fun, that music. Like he wanted to follow it, find out where all the people were, and have a fun time dancing.

"What was I saying?"

[morethanmyth]

"Jack?" Jamie questioned, nervously, tugging on his sleeve.

[letskicksomeice]

Jack held his hands over his ears, expression pained as he tried to block it out.

"I think - I think the music's getting to me. I'm kind of - in between. Adult and kid. Seventeen and over three hundred. I think it's -"

More music started, now from the other direction, carrying over the wind, as if someone was singing it from the sky above. It was beautiful.

"Come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment..."

"Beautiful. It's - it's..."

Jack looked back and forth between the directions the songs were pulling him in. Adult and eternal child, teenager caught between it all. He was both, someone who protected the joy in children and someone that felt the same kind of joy as what he protected.

"Run," the adult in him said distantly to the other kids. "Mabel, take everyone to the Pole, take Jamie - you have to - you..."

"The time's come to play, here in my garden of shadows..."

The child in him won out, pivoting his body in the direction of the voice up in the sky, and he started stumbling in the direction it was coming from - towards the cabin in the woods.

Somehow, in his mind, the voice warped into something familiar, into -

"Emma?" he said quietly.

"Follow sweet children, I'll show thee the way, through all the pain and the sorrows..."

Staff in hand, eyes going blank, he started to stumble in the direction his sister was calling him from.

[morethanmyth]

"Jack!" Jamie cried out, reaching for Jack's hand and pulling. "Jack, come back! Jack!"

The older boy was too strong, his myth strength making it so he was just tugging Jamie along with him.

"Jack, wake up!"

Oh no, Jack was such...well, a kid, just like the kids he protected him. Even though parts of him were grown up - apparently enough that the other song almost caught him, too. But he was still a kid and it look like the song had him in its grip just like all the other kids wandering through the street in the direction it was coming from - as the adults wandered off in the other direction towards the college.

"Guys, come on, you have to leave! You have to run!"

Wait, why wasn't it affecting him? Jamie rooted through his pockets, looking through the various things he was carrying with him - an iron cross, a good luck hex back, a little vial of holy water, a small wooden stake, various talismans and rune rings and - oh. Really, it was probably at least a few things in his small collection of magical items he carried with him to be crazy prepared against evil. At least one of them was possibly blocking the spell, but without knowing which one, he couldn't give it to Jack so he could use his powers to stop the others - or fight the witches.

"What do I do? What do I do?" he said, trotting alongside Jack.

The decision was made for him as a zombie - an actual zombie - ran around the corner and started running after him.

"AAUGH! Okay, run! That's what I'll do! Running now!" he shouted as he ran away from it.

And like the children of Hamelin, the children marched on...

[bestnamer]

Mikey was the second to slip off the back of the imaginary construct, mouth open in wonder.

"Dude, that singing is dope," he said, already under the spell as he wandered towards the cottage. "Who's singing that?"

[bedazzledmyface]

"It's the prettiest thing that was ever pretty," Mabel sighed, as she too slipped off the imaginary dolphin to follow him.

Aoshima dissolved beneath the rest of the passengers.

[captainbuzzkill]

The pain of his butt hitting the ground was just enough to jar Dipper - who was right on the border of being a kid and a teenager in mentality - out of his trance.

He shook his head vigorously.

"No, guys, it's a spell! I think it's a spell. You have to cover your ears!" He pulled out The Book, his head swimming as he tried to read the spells on its pages for a counter-spell, but with the state of his mind all of the words and symbols just blurred together.

A figure that looked a bit like Bill Cipher swam on the pages in a way that looked terrifying, tipping its hat, and Dipper slammed the book shut in alarm, tucking it back in his vest.

There was no way he could find something in the book to help when he was this out of it.

"Mabel, stop! We need to get out of here, call back Aoshima again!" he said, tugging on his sister's sleeve. "We need to get everyone back to the Pole!"

[bedazzledmyface]

"Pffft," Mabel responded. "Aoshima has no appreciation for song."

Silly Dipper. No sense putting pearls before swine, right? Or music before a beefy dolphin that communicated exclusively by squeaking.

[captainbuzzkill]

"Mabel!" Dipper kept tugging on her arm, but it was futile when she was stronger than him - especially as a myth. "Uugh, this is worse than when you get distracted by boys."

There was no way he was snapping her out of it and he kept feeling his mind trying to flit away, the song's tugging growing sharper and sharper until it felt like it was going to yank his brain out of his head if his body didn't follow along with it.

"This isn't working. I need to find something to cover all our ears," he muttered to himself, trying his best to cover his ears with his hands. It wasn't enough - the song kept leaking in, even though it was a little easier to ignore it.

Eyeing a nearby pharmacy he ran into it, scanning through the shelves. He knew he could just use his snowglobe and run but there was no way he was leaving his sister and the others here and the mini-fairy had already flown off the notify Bunny and the others. He was the one here right now and he had to do something to help.

"Earplugs! Earplugs, earplugs, where are the earplugs?!"

If he could get a pack, he could shove some in his ears and then shove them in the ears of the others.

"I need to find - need to find -" He stopped. "What was I looking for again?"

His eyes strayed to the door and the music filtering in from outside, dancing around the edges of his hearing, leaking through his fingers.

"No! No no no!" he shouted at himself. "Fight it! Come on, Dipper, you have to fight it!"

He sang to himself, loud and out of pitch, to try to block out the sound with his own reedy, cracking voice.

"Disco girl! Coming through! That girl is you! OOOH OOOH, OOH OOOH!"

He stumbled up an aisle, growing dizzier and dizzier as the song tried to tug at his brain. It was getting too hard to focus, too hard to maintain control.

"Disco girl! Is on the Scene! You are the queen! OOOH OOOH, OOH OOOH!"

He had to get the ear plugs and save himself so he could save the others!

But he could still hear it. The song was just so beautiful and his imagination was telling him it came from someplace equally beautiful, a place that was wondrous and strange, like all the things he tried to find back in Gravity Falls. It was an unknown and he always went running into the unknown.

But the pragmatic part of his brain knew how easily that temptation could cause him to run into danger - he'd done it before and sometimes dragged his friends into it. Even though he forgot himself sometimes, he was trying to stop doing that, trying to not let his obsessions get others into trouble.

It was just so tempting, though, it was just - he just needed to see. He needed to -

He hadn't really noticed how he'd fallen just short of the earplugs, on his face on the floor, hands slowly loosening and falling from his ears. And only once, when he was outside on the street, did he briefly wonder how he'd gotten there.

Hadn't he been doing something else? Something important?

Oh well, that didn't matter now, did it? There were secrets to uncover and mysteries to solve. There was a garden he needed to find, one that the voice promised him had wonderful things, and all he had to do was follow the singing...

[animalhats]

It tickled Molly's brain. The song. It was a weird enough sensation that it made her hesitate, just for a moment, no matter how beautiful it was.

But then, just like Jack, the voice morphed and changed until suddenly it was someone else.

"Gert?" she whispered, a smile growing slowly on her face as she broke into what was almost a run in the direction of the beautiful voice and the beautiful song. "Gert!"

It didn't matter that the real Gert couldn't sing that well by a long shot - a place as beautiful as the place that song would obviously lead her to HAD to have Gert. That's the only way it could be so wonderful.

[delightfulloony]

Luna had barely enough time to settle into this strange turn events when it hit her.

She had been casually walking along the sidewalk of a residential area marveling at the Halloween decorations. They seemed so quaint and wholesome compared to the magical decorations Hogwarts put up every year.

Her mind was toying with a series of questions while she let herself veer off the sidewalk to try out the grass that ran along it's side. It was prickly and dry against her bare feet.

The last thing she recalled was dozing off in the basement that she had been living in for the past few months. She appreciated apparently no longer being a hostage of The Dark Lord's minions but...where exactly was she now? And where were the others she had been imprisoned with?

Drifting along like a pale ghost on the deserted street Luna was worrying. People didn't think she worried but she did at times, especially lately. Her friends had been on the run, and who knew what would happen to her father now that she was missing.

Suddenly on the breeze something...beautiful. It was a song she hadn't heard in years. So many years in fact that the logical part of her mind wondered if she could even remember the sound properly.

But of course...how silly of her. She had to be remembering it properly because there it was clear as full moon at night.

A soft smile slid onto her lips and she began to follow the sound of her mother's voice singing the most beautiful song. She would often sing when she was working on something new and exciting. She had been singing the day she blew herself up in front of Luna.

None of those bothersome thoughts were getting to Luna at the moment though. All she knew was how badly she needed to find the source of this music and give her a hug.