Serve none of joye, live e’er by nighte
Embrace thy shadowes, and bask in frighte

The inscription in the tombstone nearest Guillotine Gate had the Winter Prince staring in disbelief. “Bask in frighte,” he mouthed, eyebrows rising until they disappeared behind his mop of brown hair.

Has anything actually changed here?

Old-fashioned and in need of updating. The words had been etched there by the Nightmare King himself a long time ago, when Halloween Town was only a settlement of two hundred folk. He would have thought that the king—as much as he loved modern technology—would replace it with something more fitting for a ruler who once ordered insufferable hobgoblins cooked in meat pies. A slab of stone right outside the square? He could do better, much better. Or the entire motto could be scrapped and replaced with something modern.  The look on the king’s face if he were to suggest that would be entirely worth it.

If only they were still on good speaking terms. The prince had severed all good ties with the king here. For good reason, of course—with the way things had carried on then, there was little else to do otherwise—but it was like losing a best friend. Even more so, thanks to their past…

There came a noise by the trees on the borders of the Hinterlands. His hand automatically flew to where the hilt of his sword would rest, but he remembered his helper elves insisting he leave it. “It might offend the king,” they reasoned, but he scoffed at that. The Nightmare King would not only carry his own sword with him everywhere, he would cut a fine line across the prince’s face if he felt like it. The noise came again, and he tensed, ready to fight off whoever dared sneak an attack on him. Who knew what ghouls and ghosts were out on patrol, ready to snitch on outsiders in an instant?

“Hark! Who have we here?” someone whispered with a wicked snicker.

“Ooh, I know that coat of arms! Look there, on his satchel!” another voice tittered, high-pitched.

“‘Tis the Winter Prince, surely is!” a third voice croaked.

“Nice coat,” the first voice stated, laughing.

Common courtesy kept him from booting the fools into the woods, never to be heard from again. “Good evening.” He nodded his head—royalty was not obligated to bow to subjects of any realm. “Prince Changmin, of Christmastown, here to seek an audience with the Nightmare King over a very important matter.”

“Ooooh, he says he’s a prince!”

“King Yunho never told us we would have a visitor, no no…”

Changmin fought hard to not snap at the disembodied voices, though an inkling of curiosity spread through him. Were these the three rascals he remembered from so long ago? Or were they new guards of the town?

“Are you going to answer us or not?”

“The king does not know I am here, and I did not give him any prior notice. It is an emergency. I do not come with a light heart. Allow me safe passage into town, or I could send my own entourage forward, but they won’t be as polite as I am.”

“We wouldn’t want that!” all three voices chimed together at once, and they slid out from the shadows, one by one. The prince grinned despite the circumstances; oh, how he had missed these deviants! Lock, Shock, and Barrel—the three pranksters that ran circles around the townsfolk here and in all the realms. Older than many beings in existence, but still with the appearance of young delinquents, they were part of a memory he remembered—without fondness, of course. They were, after all, annoying children.

Lock, a little red devil of a child with horns and a pointed tail to match, skipped around Changmin’s legs. “We’re just playing with you, princeling! We know who you are!” He eyed the prince’s new coat. “That looks expensive! Rolling in the dough, huh?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that—”

Shock danced up to him, swinging his arms back and forth. “Do you like my new hat?” she trilled, touching the frayed brim of her purple witch’s hat, her wiry hair poking out from below. “Yunho gave it to me when we found him some forget-me-nots for Dr. Finkelstein’s experiment!”

Changmin tried to let go of her hand, laughing a little nervously. “That was nice of you…”

“Your Highness!” A plump boy with a round face, Barrel grinned slyly up at the prince—a little too innocently. “Got a joke for you!”

Fearing he would not get away otherwise, Changmin nodded. “Shoot.”

They all exchanged looks, and his paranoia doubled. Barrel circled one way around his feet, and Lock the other way. “What’s tall…”

“And dull…” Shock giggled.

“And stuck in a bathtub?” Lock cackled, still skipping.

“I…don’t know. What?”

“YOU!” Three pairs of hands shot out and shoved him backward, and he gave a shout of surprise. The backs of his knees hit something solid, and they gave way. Sure enough, their vile bathtub with stubby legs waited behind to catch his fall. Once he sat, sprawled at awkward angles, it began to walk toward the town, the gate shuddering open with a loud grinding noise. Lock, Shock, and Barrel waved at him from the top of the path, giggling and hitting each other, before dashing out of sight.

I wasn’t wrong. Nothing here has changed at all.

“Ha! Did you see the look on his face?”

“How does he fall for it every time? Even Yunho’s learned to not listen to any of our jokes!”

“And hey, Barrel didn’t even screw it up this time!”

“What does that mean?!”

They bickered and laughed at the prince’s expressions all the way into the Hinterlands, intending to leave the Winter Prince a nasty little surprise near his door. They all glanced around warily as they passed the cemetery gates; never had this part of the path been so quiet, not even on Halloween night itself. Where were the animals, the birds, the travelers going from realm to realm?

Shock and Barrel quietly chortled past the normal trees, but Lock stopped in his tracks, ogling the clearing where the Holiday Doors stood. “Hey, guys?” he said slowly, removing his devil’s mask. He pointed a quivering finger at the door to San Valentino, Cupid’s domain. “Uh…” Barrel looked over and gave a startled gasp; Shock screamed and covered with her hands.

The door had been ripped to shreds, barely hanging onto its wooden hinge in the trunk of the tree. Dead flower petals lay scattered at the base, crinkled and unmoving.

“And over there too!” Shock cried out. Patty’s door did not bear half the marks the other did, but the wood had been severely damaged. Indeed, each of the other doors all bore the same gouges.

“What happened here?” Barrel whispered, bending over to examine Christmastown’s door.

“Looks like something with claws came through…”

“But the rulers of the realms, they had to have noticed!”

Shock froze and turned to the others. “Maybe that’s why the princeling stopped by! What if he thinks our king has something to do with this?”

A scheming smile overtook Lock’s face. “You know what that means.” Shock clapped her hands in delight and Barrel scratched his head, frowning. “We gotta tell the boss!”