To Walk Among The Dead - Hugs.And.Kisses (easy readers txt) 📗

"What about you?"

I shook my head. "I'll let the boys beat each other senseless by themselves. I, however, am freezing to death, pun definitely intended, and am going home."

As I stood, a flash of dizziness and fatigue overtook me, and the frost covered ground rose to meet me as the world whited out.

xXx

"Aubrey!" Shock yelled, shaking her. She didn't get a response. "Would you two idiots get over here and help?"

Me and Barrel looked up, and then ran over. "What happened?" Barrel asked, picking up her arms.

"I don't know, she said she was going home, stood up, then passed out." Shock told him. "You're going to hurt her idiot."

"Move. I can get her." I told him, picking her up easily. She was way to light to be natural. "Come on, we need to get Jack and Sally." All three of us took off toward Skellington Manor.

"Jack! Sally!" Barrel yelled, scampering up the stairs ahead of us.

The door opened. "Barrel, is something wrong?" Sally asked. Jack was behind her.

"Something's wrong with Aubrey." He panted, pointing back at Shock and I, who were about halfway up the stairs. It's not that we were slow, I was just afraid of tripping on the broken steps and dropping her.

Jack rushed down to meet us and examined Aubrey. "What happened?" Shock explained again. "She didn't say she felt sick or anything?" We all shook our heads.

"She seemed fine when we were walking back from school." Barrel muttered. "She was laughing when I hit Lock with a snowball."

Sally touched Jack's shoulder. "Maybe the doctor would know what's wrong."

Jack nodded. "Right. Lock, take Aubrey up to her room. I'm going to get Doctor Finklestein." He said and walked between us, Sally following him. All three of us scaled the stairs and went inside.

xXx

"Do you know what's wrong with her?" Jack asked Dr. Finklestein.

Doctor F. looked worried. "Jack, Sally, I need to talk to you privately." He wheeled out of the room, Jack and Sally following behind him. Jack shut the door after him. The door to the next room opened and closed.

Yeah right, like that was gonna stop us. All three of us pressed our ears to the wall. "Now, when Aubrey entered Halloween Town over a month ago, she was still very much alive."

"Doctor, we already know that." Jack said, exasperated.

"Don't interrupt Jack!" Dr. F snapped. "Her physical body is holding up perfectly, but her spirit is... deteriorating."

The three of us looked at each other, mouthing the word. How does your soul 'deteriorate'? Sally voiced our question. "Deteriorating?"

"Let me explain. Our town is built for the dead. Aubrey's soul is living, and the energy of the town is trying to fix her by destroying it."

"But if she dies, wouldn't she just end up back here?" Jack asked.

"I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. When a soul comes to Halloween Town, it is still completely, or mostly at least, intact from the time it was separated from its physical body. If Aubrey's soul continues to be destroyed like it is, she will die, but she won't get back up."

"How long until that happens?" Jack asked worriedly. The fact that he, Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, Halloween Town's ultimate scare-master, was worried scared the hell out of me.

"A week, maybe two. It depends on Aubrey's will. I'm surprised she hasn't been displaying any signs of weakening yet."

I suddenly thought of all the times at school where Aubrey had seemed incredibly tired, nearly passing out a few times. And she'd been getting sick a lot lately.

I looked over at her. Her breathing was rhythmic, but it was ragged, almost forced. She was paler than usual and had gotten a lot thinner.

"Isn't there a way to stop it?" Sally asked.

"Not anymore my dear. The only way to reverse what is happening would be to get Aubrey back to the living world. But that feat is now impossible since the door is gone."

I pulled away from the wall. "Lock?" Barrel asked. "You okay?"

"No, Barrel, I'm not okay!" I snapped. "How did I not notice something was wrong?"

"Lock, chill. Aubrey didn't want us to know. She always said she was fine, how were we supposed to know?"

Shock crossed her arms. "Personally, I blame our uniforms. They're so baggy that you wouldn't be able to tell that she was getting so sickly skinny."

I hit my forehead. "I should've known, though! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" I hit my head against the wall with every "stupid."

"Stop it Lock!" Shock said, pulling me away from the wall. "It isn't your fault and beating yourself up won't do anyone any good! The best thing we can do is try to help find a way to living world."

"How?" I asked. "The door's gone."

"Sandy Claws!" Barrel exclaimed excitedly.

"What?" Shock and I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "Sandy Claws. He goes to the living world every year. Maybe he could take Aubrey back."

Shock and I looked at each other. "You know, that's actually a pretty good idea." Shock muttered.

"Then let's go tell Jack!" I ordered, running to the door.

We ran into Jack's study, which is conveniently located right next to Aubrey's room, ecstatic. "Jack! Jack!"

"What is it?" The skeleton asked.

"We've got an idea." Shock grinned.

"It was my idea, I wanna tell him!" Barrel whined.

"Well?" Jack asked, crossing his arms.

I rolled my eyes and clapped a hand over each of their mouths. "What if you asked Sandy Claws to take Aubrey back?"

Jack brightened immediately. "That's a wonderful idea! Sally, you come with me. You three watch Aubrey. If she shows any sign of getting worse, one of you come get me. Doctor, thank you for your assistance." He and Sally walked out quickly, Doctor Finklestein not far behind them.

"Lock?" A quiet voice called.

I took a step toward the door, and then turned to look at Shock and Barrel. Shock shoved me out of the room. "She asked for you, not us."

I walked into the room and shut the door. Aubrey was sitting propped up against a pillow and the bed's headboard. There were three or four tear tracks on her cheeks. "You were awake?"

She nodded. "Since 'our town is built for the dead'."

I sat down next to her on the bed. "Why didn't you tell us, Aubrey?" I asked. "We might've been able to help!"

"I don't know. I thought it would just go away." She 'tch'-ed. "Shows how much I know."

"You know plenty. You just don't use it sometimes." I told her.

She bit her lip. "I'm scared, Lock. I don't wanna die, but I don't wanna leave either!"

I hugged her. It was the only thing I could think to do. I felt her grip my shirt. "If I had to choose, I think I'd rather have you live and never see you again than have you die and never see you again."

"What's the point?" She muttered into my shoulder. "Both of them end with 'and never see you again'."

"Yeah, but at least with the first one I know you're okay."

She pulled out of my hug, but was still holding onto my shirt. "You wouldn't know. If I go back, I could get another boyfriend and you'd never know."

"But you wouldn't." I told her.

"How do you know?"

I grinned. "Aubrey, you've dated me. Any other guy would pale in comparison."

She smirked. "I don't know, they don't get much paler than you."

"Your wonderfully cynical sense of humor's back, you're okay." I said, loosening her grip and getting up.

She pulled on my arm. "No, stay here. Please? We haven't had a chance to just talk in a while." She smiled.

I sat back down. "Okay. I know exactly what to talk about."

The door opened and Shock and Barrel peeked in. "Is the mushy stuff over?" Barrel asked.

I frowned. "You've been eavesdropping, you should know."

"No, I've been eavesdropping. And let me tell you, I nearly lost my lunch." Shock said. "Do you want us to leave?"

I shrugged. "You can stay. I was going to tell Aubrey how we ended up meeting."

Shock cackled. "Ooh, I want to help with this."

Barrel sat down. "Yeah, you'll just screw it up."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, you two can help. But don't interrupt!"

"We won't." They both promised with oh-so-obviously fake sincerity.

I sighed and started anyway. "I was born about three centuries ago in London. If you thought that it was bad from reading about it, I can tell you honestly that the book version is highly censored. It was a hellhole. You didn't even want to walk the streets in the daytime, let alone at night. Especially if you were a girl. That's how I came around.

"My mom wanted me, she really did, but her parents threw her out of the house 'cause they thought she was a whore. They said, 'If you ever want to be accepted in this house again, get rid of him.' She kept me until I was three, but couldn't take poverty any longer after that. She ditched me at the 'Arlem's Home for Orphans' and probably ran back to her parents, begging forgiveness.

"Let me tell you, growing up in that place was not fun at all. I in the four years I lived there, I tried to off myself at least four or five different ways. When all my other attempts at getting rid of myself failed, I decided I was going to make sure I did it right this time..."

"You were going to kill yourself?" Aubrey interrupted. "And you were NINE?"

"Orphanages back then were like child labor camps. Killing myself seemed like a kindness." I explained lamely. "It wasn't like anyone would've cared- they were all sure that I was possessed by a demon or something, and when they figured out that's just how I was, it just got worse. They threw me into a lake, bound and gagged, reading from the bible just to top it off." The look on Aubrey's face was somewhere between really pissed and horrified. "Anyway, I snuck into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, wrote out a suicide note, and headed out to the lake."

"Which is when he ran into us." Barrel said.

Aubrey frowned. "Wait- what were you two doing out there?"

"Trying to sneak out." Shock explained. "We'd just gotten pulled off the streets."

"Yeah, you guys hit me in the face with a branch." Lock said dryly.

Barrel crossed his arms. "Well, you DID sneak up on us..."

"You yelled 'ZOMBIE' and smacked me with it." Aubrey giggled a little. "Anyway, we all introduced ourselves-"

"Waitwaitwait." Aubrey interrupted again. "With your real names?"

I frowned. "Yes with our real names, what'd you- oh. Oh no, not telling."

"Please, Lock?" She begged.

"I don't care if she knows." Barrel said. "Mine was William. William Rigrew."

Shock rolled her eyes. "Fine. Sarah Collens."

I remained stubbornly silent. "Lock, c'mon... please?" Aubrey stuck her lower lip out a bit. I closed my eyes. "Lock!"

"His name was Louis DuVall." Shock finally answered for me.

"Shock!"

"Thank you Shock." Aubrey said. I grumbled and