“You would have seen a lot more blood if it’d been a goring,” Agnes said, taking shallow breaths. “It hit me more from the side like a battering ram.” She already had a creeping bruise appearing above the top of her shirt, but her health bar was still around three quarters full.

  “Okay, I get the knives—badass, by the way—” Caroline said, “but what’s up with the one little paddle thing?” She pointed at Oliver’s weapon.

  “It’s for making kettle corn.”

  Nate laughed.

  “Tell me about it,” Oliver said bitterly. “This whole place is a joke. Why do you think I was just trying to get the hell out?”

  They all sobered up.

  “I’m guessing since the path led here that we have to get through the maze to get to the next section of the park?” Laura said.

  “I should say so.”

  The next portion of the park was a more grown-up version of the scares and thrills that Witch’s Hollow offered to children, and featured more sophisticated and blood-curdling monsters. Laura tried not to think about what that would entail now.

  “Should we be just standing here?” Caroline asked, rocking back on her heels nervously. “What if more of those deer things come?”

  Graham still looked shaken up. Graham’s health had been restored by another edible item that Oliver had retrieved for him out of Agnes’ backpack, but the speed with which it had dropped from such a casual blow was certainly unnerving.

  “I agree. Let’s head back to town and get some rest,” Agnes said, still wheezing a little. “Help a lady up, will you?” Oliver pulled her to her feet. She reached over and patted Oliver on the back. “Buck up, kiddo. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “Agnes, we just watched someone we know get gutted right in front of us.”

  “Yes we did,” she said, gently but firmly. “And we’ll probably see worse than that before we’re done here.”

  The pumpkin man turned his jack o lantern head to watch them cross back towards town.

  Laura doubled her stride to catch up to Oliver at the front of the group. “So what are our options in terms of weapons? Have you found anything else we can use?”

  “Some. But a lot of it is just themed crap. You can’t just use anything as a weapon. I mean, you can try, but it’ll break in two seconds and do a fraction of the damage you’ll need it to.”

  “How much of the town have you explored?” Laura.

  “A fair bit,” Oliver said. “Not all the buildings have something to fight. All the major opportunities to gain experience we’ve found so far are marked on the map. We spent a day or two poking around the other buildings, but after a while we figured we were wasting our time and we’d get better stuff if we focused on fighting. They’re not going to keep their best weapons just lying around right? So we focused on getting as much experience as we could with what we found.”

  They found Brett still snacking near Charlie’s kiosk.

  Oliver sized him up as they approached. “Brett,” he said.

  Brett nodded stiffly in a way that was awfully funny coming from someone wearing a bright orange t-shirt.

  “Hey numbskull,” Caroline said to Brett. “What was it you said? ‘We were fine staying on the road’? We were attacked by two huge freaking deer while just sitting outside the maze!”

  Brett shrugged and slowly took another bite. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. That didn’t happen when I was there.”

  Fatigue was hitting Laura fast as all the adrenaline of the day caught up to her. She swayed to lean against the nearest lamp post.

  “Hey, you okay?” Nate said, reaching out to steady her. “I didn’t see you get hit.”

  She flushed and straightened up. “Not injured, just pregnant. And tired.” And probably low on iron and any number of other things.

  Agnes put a warm hand on Laura’s arm. “Come on, there’s a place to eat and sleep nearby. It’s only 5 tickets. I’m assuming you didn’t blow all your tickets at Charlie’s?”

  Only Caroline was short a ticket, since she hadn’t had a chance to accumulate more beyond the initial 5 they’d been given. Laura figured out a way to send her 1 ticket.

  “It’s the least I could do,” Laura said.

  “Damn straight.”

  Agnes led them to a small Victorian house with a large covered porch elevated above the street. It was tucked towards the dirt road where they’d first entered Witch’s Hollow. In its previous life in the theme park it had been a bakery and coffee shop, but it had clearly expanded its role. A sign hanging over the porch said, “Rest a While”. It was unclear if that was its name or just an attempt at an inviting decorative sign.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  When they stepped inside into a hallway Oliver pointed them to a small sitting room on the left where a woman stood behind a wooden counter. She wore spectacles and a long black dress, and her streaked gray hair was pulled into a tight bun.

  Halloween knick-knacks littered the shelves behind her and spilled over into the room. Little pumpkins, cute ghosts, bats, enticing glass replicas of candy, etc. But the longer Laura looked, the more things seemed off. The bats had fangs that were too big for their size. The pumpkins had blood dripping from their mouths, and the ghosts had black pits for eyes. Laura shivered.

  “Room or food?” The woman said briskly.

  “Both?” Caroline said.

  “Was that a question?” The woman scrutinized Caroline.

  “No?”

  “We’ll all take a room and some food, thank you,” Laura said.

  “For all of you?” She flipped open a large grimoire that seemed to serve as a ledger. “We’re limited on rooms. You’ll have to share.”

  Laura sneezed as a wave of dust from the grimoire engulfed them.

  “Bless you,” Graham said.

  The woman gave him a sharp look and snapped the grimoire closed, sending another wave of dust.

  “5 tickets for a room and basic refreshments. We have 2 rooms left. Who will be sharing?”

  Oliver, Brett, and Agnes already had rooms, so that left Laura and Caroline sharing one room and Graham and Nate sharing the other.

  “You mean it’s the same cost whether we get a room to ourselves or not?”

  “You can’t put a price on safety and peace of mind,” the woman said, peering over her glasses at them. “No mobs in here. That’s what you’re paying for. You’re lucky you get a room and a door honestly.”

  The woman noted the arrangements down. She waved a hand. “Please read and agree to the terms.”

  A message popped up:

  You are purchasing accommodation and basic food at Rest a While. The room will be available for the duration of your stay in Witch’s Hollow.

  Once you progress to another area, your room will be considered permanently vacated.

  Extras available for purchase.

  Purchase room and basic food? 5 tickets will be deducted from your total. Y/N

  Laura selected “yes”.

  A door back on the other side of the hallway creaked open as the woman handed each of them a skeleton key. As soon as it touched Laura’s hand it vanished. She looked around her.

  Agnes laughed. “Check your inventory.”

  Laura focused on her inventory tab which now had a number 1 in the corner. When she opened it she could see the key.

  Rest a While Room Key

  This is a room key for room number 5 in Rest a While - Witch’s Hollow. It lets you into your room. This item will disappear once the room is considered permanently vacated.

  Note: This item cannot be used as a weapon.

  Focusing on the key caused it to appear in her hand. It felt just as solid as any key she’d ever held. “How do…?”

  “Picture putting it away, like in a pocket.”

  The key vanished and was back in her inventory.

  “Huh, neat.”

  Caroline snatched up a figurine and made it disappear. “That’s wild!”

  “Excuse me,” the woman behind the counter said severely.

  “Sorry! Just wanted to try it out.” The figurine reappeared and Caroline gently set it back in place.

  “Basic refreshments are across the hall, otherwise you have any necessities available in your room.”

  They took the cue to vacate the room. Across the hall they found a carafe of coffee set up near a selection of cups and saucers, a tray of granola bars studded with nuts and dried fruit, and a plate of plain buns. The room was also outfitted with rocking chairs and cats. Lots of cats. Brett sneezed.

  “Allergic?” Caroline asked.

  “Yeah, and the little shits know it too. Whenever I sit down they try to swarm me.”

  Laura bit into a granola bar and felt a warming effect shoot straight through to her toes.

  You have recovered 0 HP.

  “Those have a healing perk,” Agnes said, “but you can only eat two a day. And obviously they don’t really do anything unless you have HP you need to recover.”

  “A little warning would have been nice,” Laura said. The sign had said “pick me ups” but that felt like it was underselling it. “Like a better sign or something I mean,” she added, not wanting Oliver or Agnes to think she’d meant that they should have warned her. She wondered if she’d be able to store some bars in her inventory to use later.

  “The buns are normal,” Agnes said, tucking into a pick-me-up bar and some coffee. Her health bar refilled to the top. She sighed. “Like sinking into a hot bath.”

  White cardstock menus propped up behind the trays of food offered fancier sit down meals and more elaborate pastries, like sticky buns, but the lowest priced item she saw started at 2 tickets. “The buns do fill you up even if they’re a bit boring after a while,” Oliver said.

  “It’s the same thing every day,” Brett said. “That’s why Charlie is better. He comes up with the wildest stuff, and it’s so good. When he doesn’t try to give you actual eyeballs.”

  There was a distant humph sound from the other room.

  “She doesn’t like Charlie much,” Brett said.

  “Yes but these you don’t have to pay anything extra for,” Oliver said, efficiently eating his bun in a few bites. Laura couldn’t see Oliver’s ticket count, but she would bet it was higher than anyone else’s.

  After their quick bite to eat they all turned in. It may have only been 6pm according to the spidery arms of the clock on the wall, but it was already getting dark.

  Room 5 was basic but comfortable. It had a bare wooden floor, and two twin beds pushed against opposite walls with a window and a little table in between them. A door on the left wall opened into a tiny bathroom with just a toilet and sink. (“Shower’s down the hall,” Agnes had pointed out to them before she slipped into her own room across from theirs.)

  “Imagine how fun that is,” Laura said to Caroline, “we all get back covered in gore and there’s a line for the shower.”

  “Maybe there’s a hose out back.”

  Laura laughed.

  Caroline smiled for a moment before her expression clouded over.

  They didn’t talk any more before turning in for the night and going to sleep. Laura lay awake for longer than she should have.

  She pulled up her map and examined the few markers she could see now that the area appeared on her map. One was over the pumpkin house that was covered in webs and said “Level Intermediate”. Another was over the pumpkin patch and was rated Difficult. No wonder they hadn’t bothered with that one. The maze was the gateway to the next area and it was only marked a little higher than that at Difficult-Advanced. Another marker over the bookstore with the little puppet theater said “Completed - Puppet Master - Easy-Intermediate”. The other completed marker said “Completed - Candy Maker - Easy”. It was near the shop that would have sold fudge and other similar confections. That must be where Oliver had gotten his weapon.

  True to theme park engineering there did seem to be a natural progression of the difficulty of each marker laid out in a neat circuit heading towards the maze to the next area.

  There was one more marker. It was one that she realized had been there even before she’d entered the parks. Around the corner in what had been a smaller mixed candy store made to look like a witch’s shop, was the marker that said “Vitamins”.

  The moon out the window was almost full, and it was bright enough to make out dim shapes in the room. She looked over and saw Caroline curled into a ball, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

  Laura’s heart clenched. She thought of Caroline’s mother. She thought of Danny and their own child, and their future together that was now in jeopardy. All she could do was try to pull her own weight and keep from being a liability. And the last thing she needed was to be anemic on top of everything.

  She waited until Caroline’s breathing was even and deep, then gingerly rolled out of bed.

  The hallway was empty and the sconces on the wall had all been turned down to dim the light. Laura crept down the stairs, only stopping to pull a blanket off one of the rocking chairs near the door. She wrapped it around herself as she stepped out into the night.