Part 31: Halloween Nears

Cherry was passing by Halloween-decorated neighborhoods on a green bicycle. The weather forecast of showers had cleared up at the time but gray thunderclouds were still present in the sky.

Her thoughts were racing along to the edge of her seat. The streets got deserted the closer she travelled to Dream Academy’s entrance. Looking around the place to make sure no one was following her, she took the bike to the back of the building where she locked it next to a fence.

Inside her raincoat pocket was a special device she had ingeniously created called the Lockmeister-X1 which could help her unlock any door in the world that only required a physical key to get in. By letting it scan the internal structure of the knob, it was able to effectively recreate a decoy and open the door by itself.

As the back door slowly opened up, she knew doing this meant she was likely to get caught. It stained her conscience but she needed to find Ararima. The only way to do that was to find the kitchen door in the cafeteria.

Gripping the device tightly in her left hand, she used her right to shine a flashlight that would help her navigate the dark hallways of the empty school. She noticed how festive it looked for this spook infested month. There were origami style bats hanging from the ceilings, small furry toy spiders sticking to cotton-strung cobwebs glued on the walls, purple-orange themed lights which were on surprisingly, and a whole bunch more.

Peeking her way across corners, she was noticing that her footsteps sounded like they weren’t the only ones walking. She constantly had to survey her surroundings to ensure she wasn’t being followed. The more she tried to do this though, the more often she started to swear she saw shadows of small children that were moving into a different hallway.

“What was that? Ghosts?” she whispered to herself.

Even to her, the situation looked abysmal. She was having a hard time trying to make it towards the cafeteria as the shadows of the mysterious children began to flicker as if they were running past her. Their echoes of help proceeded to ring through her ears. It was at this point where she had to turn off her flashlight and hide in darker areas to avoid being spotted by them.

“Help! Help us! Please help!” they started to cry.

This confused Cherry. She did not understand why they were saying this at first. However, while nearing the cafeteria which was now two hallways down, she started to piece together what it was.

Glitched out screams could be heard in the distance as a glitchy laughter corrupted the crying into a distress call that sounded as if each child was being held hostage. Cherry recognized it as The Traveller.

Unfortunately, her memories started to replay the time she saw The Traveller outside that mansion. Cherry knew this was not good. As she tried to get the thoughts out of her head, a clunking noise far away came to her attention. She was stuck in one of the hallways where there was a dead end with a random classroom door that she started to notice was all the way open. It looked exactly like what happened at that UVOCA facility when Star and her had to enter a door like that.

Loud footsteps started making their way down the other hallway that crossed paths with the one Cherry was in.

Cherry started to wonder if the open door was the one she actually needed to enter to find Ararima rather than enter the secret door in the kitchen. Dwelling on these thoughts, an anonymous sound of psychedelic music started to ring down the hallways. It gave off this uncanny dread that made it seem as if something was coming for her.

In that instant, the music began to steadily get faster and more unnerving as the decision to enter the dark door was too risky. She remembered where it had led her before.

Before long, Cherry chose in that split second to make an attempt to sprint towards the door as fast as possible.