The Terrors of Asher Academy

[MATHIAS ANDERSEN]

Mathias had been baking all day long. He had made ghost shaped cookies, cupcakes with small gravestones on them, he brought some bone shaped candy as well, and among other things, brownies, lemonade, chips and other stuff. But of course all of this preparation took him until the night, and by the time he set out to meet his friends, he was running quite a bit late.

Some would say that he was going overboard, but they were in America after all! And this was Halloween! How could one not want to go overboard!? Plus, it was Mihai’s idea to have a fun little get together between friends, where they sat around by a campfire, to tell stories, ate food and basically celebrate Halloween together. Plus, Mihai was a good friend of his, and they always had fun together! He didn’t want to disappoint anyone!

Of course the forest seemed to be particularly dark tonight... They weren’t supposed to be going that deep inside of it, just far enough in that the lights from the school were mostly covered.

Well, by now Mathias couldn’t see the lights, and he couldn’t see the fire from his friend’s get-together either. Maybe it would’ve been best if he just put his bags down for a bit and called them. Yeah, that sounded like an idea. If they could guide him, he’d be there in no time.

So that was what he did.

He placed his bags down on the ground, and began to dig around in his pockets for his phone.

“Ah... it has to be here somewhere!” He exclaimed, “I know I stuck it in my pocket...”

But as he continued to fish around in his pockets, the wind began to pick up substantially. He had seen this over and over again in the scary movies that Antonio adored so much, so he shrugged it off with a small laugh, and was about to bend over so that he could start digging through the bags.

“Ahah!” Mathias exclaimed when he finally felt the familiar shape of his phone laying in the side of one of his bags. He began to dial Mihai’s number, when suddenly the entire forest lit up, as though the sun had decided to rise at ten o’clock.

He dropped his phone in the dirt when a pressure around his abdomen told him he was being grabbed.

“Are you ready to play a fun little game, Mathias?”

A voice rang in his ears, but he couldn’t say it was recognizable, nor was he ready to play.

((OKAY, THE GAME IS GONNA START NOW. ROME HAS ALREADY TAPED THE RULES TO A TREE RIGHT INSIDE OF THE MEETING AREA, SO YOU GUYS JUST NEED TO FIND THAT, IT’S IN AN OBVIOUS SPOT, IDC WHERE. AND PLEASE PM ME OR JUST TELL ME PRIVATELY OVER SKYPE WHAT TREES YOU’RE SEARCHING. ONLY PICK THREE AND CHECK IN THE RULES FOR ANY UPDATES))

[LARS ZUIDERDUIN]

They had been sitting there for a while now, at the very least close to thirty minutes now. Lars wasn’t sure why they couldn’t get the party started without the food, but he, and everyone else knew how Mathias could get. He would get wrapped up in cooking and forget to answer his phone. Especially if he wanted to “surprise” everyone. In fact, Antonio sitting with them at the very moment told him that Mathias had even planned on surprising him.

Lars wasn’t 100% certain why he had agreed to come along, he wasn’t the best at socializing in groups, and he was even worse at telling entertaining scary stories. But Antonio had coaxed him into coming, and it was almost embarrassing how easily he had done so. The promise of sweets and being able to spend the night with Natalya was enough to get him up and moving. Of course seeing his friends was a good reason too.

But here they were. Waiting. And doing nothing.

In fact, they were waiting for Mathias for so long, that Lars could feel his stomach beginning to rumble.

Where on earth is he!?

But just as Lars was about to stand up, he heard a very familiar yelp, let out by a very familiar person. He immediately jolted upward, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

Now, he wasn’t normally a superstitious type, but there were times that he couldn’t help himself. Being in the middle of the forest on Halloween... who knew what kind of weird people were spending their time out here doing weird things.

But that scream definitely belonged to Mathias, and even though Mathias was strong, if he was caught off guard, there was no telling what could’ve happened.

“I’m going to go look for him.” The blonde stated, finally getting up, “That sounded like Mathias. Maybe he dropped the food.”

With that, Lars walked around the camping chair he had brought along, and started to leave their meeting spot, when out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed something tacked to a palm tree.

((I'm gonna stop here so I can't control everything that happens completely ;u; ))

[MIHAI ELIADE]

... Hence he'd said that they shouldn't have waited in the first place. It wasn't a football tournament or anything, nothing that Mathias couldn't jump into whenever he got there. And there wasn't really anything that spoiled the mood more than waiting. Aside from a few idle conversations that registered at the edges of his hearing, the rest of them were just sitting there, and he was no exception–albeit a great deal more comfortable, he supposed, with his head lolling on Luk's shoulder. "I'm the one who came up with the idea," he muttered to his boyfriend. "Shouldn't I be the one who gets to make the call?" But he'd seemed to be outvoted on going ahead without Mathias, with some people protesting that they couldn't start the party without food. Which was a great call and all, if it hadn't been almost half an hour.

Having lost most of his patience for observing what was going on around him, he did nevertheless glance up when Lars stood. "What sounded like Mathias?" he asked, frowning. He hadn't heard anything, but neither had he been paying much attention to their surroundings, having preferred to make himself comfortable against Lukas and stare absently into the trees. Seeing as he had great success in doing that, he gave a small shrug when Lars suggested going to investigate the sound, reluctant to move from his spot. "Walk safe," he said, unconcerned. "Don't follow any mysterious lights, and if anything calls out to you, ignore it."

[Deleted]

To be honest, he didn’t care much for Halloween to begin with. The holiday wasn’t really celebrated in Norway, so he’d grown up used to spending the last day of October just like any other day. But, as it happened he had decided to date a horror junkie, it had been a given that he and Mihai would be doing something on the day, whether he wanted or not. Truth to be told, he didn’t really mind it as much as he’d initially claimed, and Mathias’ promise of sweets had certainly made him look forward to their little gathering a lot more.

Only, Mathias was nowhere to be seen. He was really, really late. It was starting to get on everyone’s nerves, which meant it was starting to get on his nerves, too. He was playing on his phone to kill time, but when Mihai was snuggled up against him and the rest of the group’s boredom was steadily accumulating, he found it harder and harder to focus, eventually giving up and slipping his phone back to his pocket. “Mm.” He gave a curt response to Mihai’s complaint. He was sympathetic towards him, wanting his boyfriend’s party succeed just as much as Mihai did, but he was also a little too hungry and bored and irritated to properly comfort him. Hopefully acting as a human chair would be enough for now.

Focused on his own discomfort, he didn’t quite hear the sound that came from the forest. However, he jumped a little as a sudden wave of fear washed over him, an external feeling that flowed through the crowd strong but short. It quickly softened into curiosity and slight worry as Lars stood up and people started asking questions, then faded away almost completely after a few more moments. As that happened, his own annoyance was quick to take its place, however. “Ah, come on.” He whined mostly to Mihai. “If he dropped the food I’m gonna make him pay for takeout.” He watched as Lars headed away from their little camp, not feeling up to getting up and following him. If Mathias had screwed something up he could fix his mess by himself.