Story: The Annual Halloween Assasins

 The Annual Halloween Assassins

To some, Halloween is all about costumes, candy, and fun. To me, Halloween is the day someone tries to kill me. It doesn’t matter what day Halloween falls on, it doesn’t matter what time of the day, and it doesn’t even matter where I’m at… Someone always tries to kill me. I hate Halloween.  

Assassins coming to kill me wasn’t really something new, it had been happening all my life. It was the reason why I knew Karate, why I learned how to throw knifes, why I was fluent in 5 different languages and ultimately, I think it was the reason I had been recruited to a special task-force of the CIA at the age of 16. The agent that was head of the group, Agent Finley, adopted me after I agreed to join the task force. This avoided all the chaos of getting State approval for something so classified. The task-force was highly classified and dealt in all things strange. It had a total of four people on it, myself included. 

The people on the task-force had backgrounds just as strange as mine. The only difference between me and the others, was they knew their backgrounds. They knew why they had this skill or why this happened to them. I didn’t have the same luck. All I knew was, 1) assassins attempted to kill me every Halloween and 2) I had no known relatives, I was an orphan. But, with Halloween only days away, we were investigating my case. I was determined to make this Halloween different.

“Thea!” Sam shouted my name excitedly as I walked by. He was the self-professed "tech guy" of the task force and was slightly hyper. “You know how you were saying you were only targeted on Halloween?”

I stopped walking. He definitely had me interested, “Yeah?”

“Well, I was searching the web for myths like we always do for the really odd cases. And, well, I found something. It sounds kinda ridiculous and far-fetched at first, but when you think about it, it really  does makes sense.” I could tell he sincerely meant what he said, that he wasn’t trying to give me false hope. So I nod my head and follow him to his station. 

He gestures to his screen, “This forum post talks about the chance of there being a portal that opens up every Halloween, it’s the only day it opens. And it’s from another planet or galaxy, they aren’t really clear on that part. But what they are clear about is that only one person or thing comes through the portal. It says that that’s been the case ever since they noticed it."

"Now get ready, ‘cause this is the kicker. This portal didn’t really get very much activity until 15 or 16 years ago. Do you wanna know what they think happened?” he asked looking at me. I nod.

“Well.  They think that someone or something came through it that is very important. That they want back. Why do they think this, you ask? It’s because every year, every Halloween, someone or something comes through. And they don’t go back.”

“That has a lot of similarities to my assassins. The only problem is that portals and other galaxies don’t exist.” 

“No. That’s not true,” says a voice belonging to Natalie, the fourth and final member of the task force. She’s leaning against a filing cabinet, sipping a glass of something. “In one case, a while back, an agent had an encounter with a person coming through a portal. Of course that person didn’t tell the agent anything. But everyone who wrote a case file on it believed that it was a portal.”

“Um, Gals? I’m not done yet, I dug just a bit further. I wanted to see if there were newspaper articles or reports of what the thing or who the person was that came out of the portal, sparking the annual Halloween entries.” Sam types something on his keyboard and a window pops up on his computer. It was an old newspaper clipping.

“This was in a different forum. It was otherwise scrubbed from the internet,” He looked over his shoulder at Natalie, saying, “And yes, I checked the newspaper to make sure it was real. It is. If you read it, it says that in this town, Danbury, Connecticut, there was a strange light, a noise and then suddenly a toddler appeared. The name of the toddler: Thea Burry.” 

We all paused and they looked at me. But I don’t know why, it’s not like I have any more answers than they do. All I know is that’s my name. Thankfully Natalie broke the silence, “Well. They didn’t come up with a very creative last name. Obviously the ‘Burry’ is from ‘Danbury’. Geez, that’s annoying, they couldn’t even spell it the same,” Each of us cracked up.

Sam tilted his head and asked, “So now what? Is it a coincidence? Do we believe it?”

“It’s the only clue we have and honestly, this theory makes sense,” I replied with a shrug.

“Good. Because I already have a plan,” Natalie said with a smile.

The plan consisted of hanging around the location of the portal, ready to catch who ever walked through before they had a chance to get their bearings. We would then see if the person would tell us anything. And depending on how that went, we’d figure out our next step. The plan was admittedly sparse, but neither of us had a better one. 

“Why did you have to put that pirate costume on, Sam? Are you forgetting that this is covert?” Natalie asked a very hyper Sam.

He clapped his hands excitedly before he said, "AH, Matey! It is the obvious that is so easily forgotten.”

 Natalie was about to reply, light erupted behind a tree, right where we guess the portal to be. When the light disappeared, we ran to it, ready to catch whoever came through it.

There was a guy, about mid-twenties standing there looking out of place. Betting that he was the person who had just stepped through the portal, I tackled him. Natalie took the opportunity to handcuff him. Almost instantly, he started protesting. “Hey! I’m a citizen of earth, I have rights!”

Natalie nodded her head, “Yep, definitely an alien. No earthly citizen identifies themselves as a ‘citizen of earth’,” she said with air quotes.

“So,” I said conversationally to our alien, “What do you know about Halloween assassins coming thru this portal?

His eyes got wide and he shook his head vehemently, “Nothing,”   

“Man, even I  could tell that you said that way too quickly,” Sam chirped 

The guy looked back at where the portal was, before he said, “You're obviously looking for The Hunters. For the record, I am not one. I just snuck through the portal. I knew I could never win The Raffling and I was curious about earth. So I snuck through the portal.”

“Can you explain what The Hunters are and what The Raffling is?”

He looked directly at me as he explained, ”The Hunters are tasked with hunting down the last heir to an old dynasty. King Rangor does not want the heir to be able to take back the throne, you know, he's power hungry. So he created The Hunters and The Raffling. The Hunters train to kill and then, every year, they enter The Raffling to decide who will be selected to go thru the portal, to earth, to hunt and kill the heir. It’s not really my thing,” he finished with a shrug. 

“Wait. You’re not this year’s assassin?” I asked confused.

He looked at me like I was the alien before he said, “That’s what I said. Do I look like an assassin to you?”

“Um, was there an assassin selected this year?” Sam asked nervously.

He looked at the three of us in confusion, before he said, ”Yeah. Didn’t you run into him before I came out? He went through before me,”

The three of us looked at each other. This was bad. We had let our guard down when we came up with the plan, we had let it get to our head that we didn’t have to worry about assassination attempts.

I was about to say that we should head back and regroup, when I feel pain in my leg. 

 I looked down to find a throwing star in my leg. I turn to find the assassin ready to throw another. This time with more fatal intentions, no doubt. 

That’s when I hear something wiz by my ear. That something hits the assassin square in the chest. He falls. A shocked silence falls over us. 

It’s the alien guy that disrupts it. “You should probably get a doctor. That star most assuredly had poison on it,”

Then I pass out.

THE END.