"Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult."

- Michael Jackson

"That's not funny!" Annabeth fumed, lightly punching her date in the arm.

Percy shrugged and ran his hand through his raven hair. "I mean it, Wise Girl! We're out of gas."

Annabeth crossed her arms. Even if he was telling the truth, it was nothing to laugh about. Would you find it funny if the troublemaker you've been seeing just so happened to run out of gas right next to the haunted woods?

Of course, the woods weren't really haunted. That's just a story parents told their children to keep them from getting lost or stumbling upon some drunk teenagers.

The car rattled as Percy slammed his door shut. Gentlemanly as ever, he sauntered across to the passenger side to open the door for Annabeth.

"C'mon, I'll walk you the rest of the way home," he said with a devilish glint in his sea-green eyes—a glint Annabeth was beginning to find irresistible.

He held his hand out, waiting for her to take it.

"Okay," she said, "but straight home. No funny business."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He took her soft hand in his, which was calloused from football games, fishing trips with his friends, and whatever else it was Percy Jackson did when he wasn't driving Annabeth Chase home from the homecoming bonfire.

It might have been smarter for Annabeth to ask Percy to walk her back toward the bonfire so she could get a ride home from one of her friends. Maybe he could have gotten car help from one of his football teammates, but no. They chose to walk alongside the woods.

Percy pretended to yawn in an attempt to put his arms around Annabeth and asked her about how the planning for the homecoming dance was going—all the things teenage guys in the nineteen-fifties did to express their feelings to teenage girls without actually saying anything.

He finally found his opportunity when a chill blew down the road, sending an autumn shiver down Annabeth's spine.

"Here," he said as he draped his orange and white letterman jacket around her shoulders.

A blush rose to her cheeks as she tried to hide her smile. The most popular boy in school was lending his letterman jacket to her! She felt so small in its gentle embrace and found it incredibly hard not to pretend that with his name across her back, she might be his.

Although a million thoughts were probably racing through her mind, she simply said, "Thank you."

Percy beamed, as awkward teenagers do, and then finally, he said, "I've been thinking and..."

"And?" Annabeth teased.

"Well, what I'm trying to say is..."

"Is?"

Percy's breath appeared in a cloud around his face as he sighed in frustration. "Look, Wise Girl, I'm trying to ask you to be my girl and you're not making it very easy!"

She squealed and clutched Percy's letterman jacket to keep it from falling off her shoulders. "Percy! I thought you'd never ask!"

He muttered, "I thought you'd never let me." He took his hand from his pocket and twisted his shiny senior class ring off his middle finger.

Seeing that Percy clearly cared for her enough to bestow such a gift, Annabeth unlatched the chain from around her neck and held it out as Percy laced it through his ring.

She turned around and lifted her hair, his hot breath tickling her neck as he helped her put her necklace back on.

"Just so you know,'' Annabeth said, "I will never make things easy for you."

Percy just chuckled and continued to fiddle with the chain. "There's something else I should tell you," he said.

Still infatuated with his charm, she said, "You can tell me anything."

"I'm not like other guys, Annabeth," he said, his tone turning serious.

"I know; that's why I love you," she gushed.

"No, I mean..."

Annabeth stared at the gorgeous moonlight as Percy continued to stammer some excuse for his poor self-esteem. When the cloud finally uncovered the glow, she turned around, ready to knock some sense into him, but what she saw was no charming football quarterback.

She lurched back and screamed as Percy's once beautiful ocean eyes contracted, not unlike those of snakes. Hair sprouted down his neck and wrists as he struggled against the moonlight. His perfect posture turned to a prowl before Annabeth's very eyes.

Never had she seen such an awful sight! The monster who used to be Percy snarled, snapped, and growled as its sharp teeth grew too large for its mouth.

Annabeth screamed and ran as fast as she could into the woods, not caring that her new skirt tore against fallen branches. Once or twice she tripped over a rock or a log, but she got back up again and again, making her way deeper into the forbidden woods.

Finally, she came to a halt in a clearing. There must be a neighborhood near, or a police station, or a hospital—somewhere she can get help if only she could catch her breath long enough to find her way out of the woods.

"I should have gone to Piper's slumber party!" she cried to herself. If only she hadn't been completely smitten with Percy Jackson!

She shivered in the cold, having lost Percy's letterman jacket somewhere in the woods. There was nothing she wanted more than to find her way home to her father's house, crawl into bed, and pretend none of this ever happened.

Annabeth took a few deep breaths and hiked her skirt up, ready to make another run for it.

Leaves rustled in the woods behind her, so she ran like her life depended on it—which it did.

But it was no use. With a thump, the monster who used to be her date to the pep rally leaped from a tree and landed in front of her.

All she could do was scream and cry as the monster cornered her against the cold harsh ground, closing in with lips snarling and teeth baring.

And all Nico di Angelo did was chew his popcorn and grin like a maniac as the poor girl on-screen was dismembered limb by limb. What was wrong with him? Will simply wanted to crawl into his sweater vest and pass away!

"Nico, let's get out of here," Will whispered.

Nico furrowed his eyebrows in surprise and whispered back, "No, I'm enjoying this."

The audience in the crowded theater gasped as the werewolf howled into the night again.

"Well, I'm not." Will stood up and climbed over moviegoers' laps, muttering an excuse me at every other chair while Annabeth continued to scream bloody murder.

A glance back told him that Nico wasn't far behind; Will's sadistic boyfriend passed his popcorn bucket into the arms of the person next to him and began frantically climbing over seats, struggling in his tight pleather pants.

Will rolled his eyes. He wasn't about to be seen with the asshole who chuckled during all the scary parts of the movie and then climbed over the entirety of row C.

He watched his breath form in front of him in the crisp fall air. The soft glow of the movie theater reflected his face onto the window. As he waited with his hands in his pockets, he paid close attention to the posters advertising the movies coming out soon. A children's movie called The Last Unicorn was coming to theaters next month. Will wished he could be in the theater for that movie instead of this one.

The poster for Killer! Thriller! seemed a lot tamer than the one for Halloween III did, and yet it claimed to be the scariest movie of 1982. Will wondered if the movie he just ran out of was scarier than the third installment of the popular franchise, or if the marketing team just thought that would make more people come to see it. Either way, it worked. That theater was packed.

"Will!" Nico called as he burst through the doorway. "There you are!"

Will crossed his arms.

In exasperation, Nico said, "It's just a movie!"

Will rolled his eyes. "I wasn't scared."

"You totally were." Nico laced his hand in Will's and guided him down the sidewalk, past the drug store and the arcade. None of the stores were open, and for a moment, Will wondered if something awful happened while they were in the theater, like an alien invasion or a werewolf attack. Then, he looked at the golden watch on his wrist.

"Nico!" he scolded. "It's close to midnight!" Will's folks would kill him worse than the girl in the movie if he came home past his curfew.

"Relax," Nico insisted. "You told your parents we were going to a movie."

"And they already don't like you," Will said.

Nico sighed and Will watched as his eyes darted back and forth between the theater and the pedestrian light. "Fine," he said. "I know a shortcut that'll have you home on time, but you're not going to like it."

And because Will was desperate, he agreed to take Nico's shortcut. Hand in hand, the couple crossed the street and walked out of the square and into the next neighborhood, and then past the carwash with the junkyard attached to it. Will shivered, but not because he was cold. The fog rising over the lattice fence gave the impression that someone might be working, and the way the moonlight hit the cars' headlights caused them to light up like eyes. The sight practically paralyzed him in his tracks. If it weren't for Nico's significant annoyingness, Will might never have stopped staring at the old junkyard.

"I said you wouldn't like it," said Nico.

"I know, it's just..."

"Scared?" he asked.

"No!" Will stammered.

"Okay, Mr. I'm-Not-Scared-of-Anything," Nico teased, "what about this?"

Will grunted and pushed Nico's cold clammy hand away from his neck. "You know I hate it when you do that!"

"Hoo-Hoo!"

Will pressed his palm to his chest, trying to regain his breath. It was just an owl.

"Or what about this!"

"Woah!"

Will stumbled as he tried to keep his legs from buckling under Nico's weight. "You could have just asked for a piggyback ride!"

"I know, but this is more fun!" Nico laughed.

Sparing little effort to prevent it, Will joined in laughing. He could never stay mad at Nico for long.

At Nico's instruction, he walked further down the pathway, past the junkyard, around the condemned playground, until the pathway disappeared and Will could feel his old boots sticking into the soft ground with each step.

"Okay, I think a monster with like, forty eyes would be absolutely awesome though!"

"Absolutely terrifying," Will corrected. "Honestly, I don't know how you find all that stuff amusing."

"Because it isn't real," Nico explained. "It's all just for fun. Like, imagine an alien with massive jaws ready to bite your head off and dissect your brains!"

Will winced. "I'd rather not."

"Or... Or maybe a demon that will possess you!" Nico taunted in a Vincent Price-esque voice.

Will chuckled at the horrible impression and stopped to bend over and put his partner down.

Nico clutched his shoulder to regain his balance. "The regular pathway is just a little further ahead. It should cut right into your neighborhood."

"Should?" Will asked.

"It will. I hope you're okay with graveyards though."

"At midnight on Halloween? You've got to be kidding me!" Will yelled.

Nico turned around and took Will's shaky hands in his. "Hey, if you're scared, it's no big deal. You and I can cuddle close together when ghouls come."

"Nico!"

"I'm scarier than any ghost or goblin," Nico said.

Will rolled his eyes at his pint-sized boyfriend. "Only if we can watch a nice movie. Something with Harrison Ford in it."

"Eh, I'd rather just turn on MTV and make out during all the Michael Jackson videos."

"Don't say that so loud, Nico!" Will protested.

Nico scoffed. "Who's going to hear? The zombies?"

Will glanced at his watch. "Dangit! It's midnight!"

"Well, come on then!" Nico took Will's hand in his once again and hurried through the graveyard, ducking under branches and avoiding the tombstones. Leaves rustled beneath their feet and a gust of cool air blew Will's unruly curls into his eyes.

Nico's hand went limp as he froze in his tracks. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Hear what?"

THUD!

Will gasped. Thumping noises in a graveyard is not the kind of thing he wanted to hear on that cold Halloween night. "Let's get out of here," he said, pulling Nico back toward the path they were on, only to come face to face with a horrible monster.

"Oh my god!" he shouted.

The monster was almost human-like, with sunken eyes and patches of scab and dried blood across his face, and tattered clothes. It easily could have towered over Will if not for its horrid slouching. The monster gazed into Will's eyes and crept towards him and Nico with stiff movements, its body cracking as if it hadn't moved in thousands of years.

Nico dropped Will's hand to twist his skull-shaped ring. "Zombies..." he muttered.

Zombies, indeed. Dozens of the creatures now circled the pair of boys in the graveyard. Bony hands burst through the earth. Handless, armless, and legless zombies hobbled toward the group. One zombie pushed the sewer lid to the side and emerged through there.

An old dog broke to the surface and hobbled towards its master, dragging its own hind leg in its mouth like a chew toy.

It was safe to say that at this moment, Will was properly scared.

"Nico?" he called out, for the first time noticing that he was no longer back-to-back with the one person he'd want to be with during a crisis like this.

He turned around warily, except Nico wasn't there. Well, not entirely anyway. In his place was another zombie, one wearing Nico's leather jacket and with long patchy hair that made Will wonder if perhaps his boyfriend had been dead for years.

Without the person whom he trusted more than anyone else, Will had nothing to rely on but his instincts.

His instincts told him to run like hell hath frozen over, and to be fair, it just about hath.

He closed his eyes and shoved one slimy zombie to the ground as he ran over the hills, stumbling over the harsh terrain, not unlike the victim in that awful movie he saw.

Through the woods he wandered, snagging his sweater against trees and wetting his pant legs with soggy leaves until at last, he came upon a house in the clear.

He'd never seen the place before. Surely he would have noticed an old rickety wooden house with boarded-up windows and stairs that creak beneath his feet before tonight, but it's as if the house appeared out of nowhere. He held his fist against the door, ready to knock, but his instincts told him not to. Besides, the house's owner would know he had a visitor by now, considering Will's urgent footsteps.

Will turned the doorknob, and to his surprise, the house was unlocked. The fireplace in the disheveled living room seemed to tell a story about this house, one that Will certainly had no time to speculate, for the pounding of zombie footsteps on the porch reminded him of imminent death.

He ran into the furthest part of the house to look for something—anything—that could protect him.

CRASH!

They broke through the door, and at the moment, Will couldn't tell if it were five or ten of them breaching his not-so-safe house. He was too distracted by the hand that burst through the wall.

He screamed and scrambled to get away as it wrapped itself around his windpipe. Will fought to pry it off, but as soon as he peeled a finger off his throbbing neck, a new one seemed to replace it.

And then, out of the floorboards, came another zombie—his zombie.

"Nico..." he gasped, a tear escaping his eye. It was at this moment that he realized hope was lost. Surely, Will would succumb to his starving zombie boyfriend.

He shut his eyes and tried to remember the sweet laughter of the boy who took him to the movies, his concerned face when he could tell how scared Will was of that stupid movie, anything and everything that was Nico.

"Oh, holy crap!" Will shouted as he sat upright. Now, this wasn't a spooky house. This wasn't a zombie-infested graveyard. This wasn't the movie theater. This was the couch at Nico's house.

And Nico, who was very much alive, drew his hand back and widened his eyes. "Hey, relax. You just fell asleep. That's all."

The zombies weren't real. That stupid movie about Percy and Annabeth wasn't real either.

Nico then pressed the button on the television to shut it off. He zipped up his leather jacket and held out his hand. "Come on. I'll drive you home."

Will took his warm comforting hand in his and got to his feet. "I'd like that," he said.

Nico smiled an adorably queasy smile and threw an arm around Will's shoulder.

For a moment, it felt like claws instead of fingers against his skin, but Will was still shaken up from his nightmare, so he ignored it.

On the other hand, the sinister cackle only he seemed to hear would haunt him for the rest of the evening, if not longer.