In which my first Halloween is a very strange one, indeed....

Yesterday was really weird. I'm still trying to figure all of it out...


Remember that little bottle thing that Maddy found out in the yard? The one Rich took up to Dr. Armitage in Arkham? He told us it was a spirit bottle, but he didn't know whose spirit was trapped inside. Not knowing that, he was more than a little nervous about releasing it. He suggested Rich bring it back here for Maddy to bury in the yard or something...

And Rich, of course, totally forgot to tell Maddy that he had the bottle. He left it in his bag on her sewing/dining room table and Maddy being Maddy, she didn't look in the bag or ask him to move it. She just set it in a little plastic storage basket with some of her works in progress, including a doll body.

And last night was Halloween, aka Samhain. Also known as the night when pretty much anything can happen, supernaturally speaking....

So really, I guess what happened next wasn't too surprising at all....

~*~

Around midnight, I was getting ready for bed and Maddy was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, she said, when we heard a big thump in the dining room, followed by all of the birds pretty much freaking out. We all ran in, thinking something was trying to break down the door....

Instead, we found the plastic bin had fallen over, and.....

"Where am I?"

"Did I give you a face?" Maddy was stunned, to say the least.

"I - did you...?" He didn't know what was going on any more than we did. "I don't know. The last thing I knew, I was in New Orleans."

"New Orleans?" Maddy, John and I said more or less together.

He nodded. "I don't remember much. I remember one of them kicking in the motel room door. I knew I was in big trouble. I knew one way or another I was dead."

"Were you in that bottle?" John said, figuring out what was going on before we all did. Everyone needs a paranormalist in the family.

"Bottle? I don't know. I know I was in something and couldn't get out. I kept working at it and I guess I knocked something off..." He looked down at himself. "This could have been much worse. I have a body, at least...."

~*~

He told us that once upon a time , he'd been from New York City - not too far away - and to just call him JT. Like he said, he didn't remember very much about what happened. He'd been in New Orleans for a show, he said, and had gone out to get something to eat. He thinks someone he talked to briefly followed him back to the motel, perhaps assuming he had a lot of money or something, which he didn't.

"The police never bothered to look into it. They put down that I died of a drug overdose and never investigated further. Because of that, my killers got away. And because of that, I can never cross over to the other side. I'm stuck here. So I was pretty much helpless when that West guy went looking for spirits to kidnap. He planned to - well, do something like this. Force us into those discarded doll bodies he'd gotten from that Bishop woman."

"Which is kind of what happened anyway..." Maddy said, looking a bit guilty.

"No, this is great, believe me. I picked this one. It has all the limbs and everything, and all of them work." He smiled. "I didn't mean to cause trouble. I just had to get out of that- you said it was a bottle?"

Rich nodded. "I shouldn't have listened to Dr. Armitage. I should have just let you out. I'm sorry."

"Listen, a couple of the other spirits he trapped, you would not have wanted to let out, believe me." JT said with a shudder. "I don't blame you at all."

"I'm sorry..." It was Val, looking kind of shy. "I found some clothes that might fit you."

"If they don't, I'll make something," Maddy said.

They fit, but she probably will anyway.

JT said he doesn't know what happened to the other bottles. Rich said they found four others and JT said there should have been at least five more.

I don't think Dr. Armitage is going to be too reassured by that.....