Who: Alex, Magnus, Noah Where: Point Pleasant Six Witches tour When: 9.30pm, Friday 20th October. Status: Complete
Alex wasn’t the type of person to really get caught up in superstition but he didn’t deny there was a possibility things were real. He’d seen too much to automatically dismiss things such as witches or ghosts, even if he’d never personally seen them before. Still, there was something about the story of the Point Pleasant Six that he inwardly scoffed at. It was more likely just small town fears than actual witches… Well, anywhere else it would be. In a place like Point Pleasant, it seemed a very real possibility that the whole thing was true.
After the trip to the museum earlier in the week, Alex had a better idea of what to expect on the witches’ tour he'd signed up for and he was looking forward to the spooky atmosphere of the later tour. He arrived early enough to make sure he was in the right spot but not so early that he was the first one waiting. There were a couple of different groups gathered in their own little social circles. He made his way closer to one of the groups, very aware he was alone when everybody else seemed to have somebody with them. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and shuffled his foot in the dirt.
“Uh, hey,” he said softly to the group he was next to. He immediately recognized one of the guys as a customer at Joyland and his shoulders visibly relaxed at that familiarity, however slight. “Is this where we wait for the Pleasant Six tour?”
Magnus’ expectations for the Pleasant Six tour were… low, to say the least. It wasn’t the first pseudo-historic, pseudo-horror themed tour he had been on, and while all of them lived or died depending on how much interest and passion the tour guide had, most of them were, at best, mediocre. Still. They weren’t going to miss it, now that they were here.
It had taken a few attempts to find what they were pretty sure was the meeting place, and from the looks of it, Magnus and Noah weren’t the only tourists that were gathering in town; apparently the whole festival of the six thing had pulled more people in than just the two of them, after all. Not that that was what they were here for, but if it already happened to coincide with the festival and all other Halloween festivities, well. Might as well make the most of it.
He had been busy looking around when someone new approached them, and woke him from his reverie. “Yeah, I think so. Not a whole lot has happened yet, but that’s what we’re here for, anyway,” Magnus told him, with a more or less confident smile, “Are you from around here?”
They had definitely come to Point Pleasant for other, better, reasons, but who could say no to small town Halloween festivities? At least the first time. Or maybe more in the case of other people, since there had been somewhat of a turnout for the festival earlier and more than just the two of them for this tour now.
Noah hadn't known what to expect for any of this: mostly his bar had been set low when it came to cheesy witch shit. With any kind of ghost or whatever tours, there was still the distinct chance that it would prove an insurmountable hurdle. He had been on enough of these, since they were the kind of thing he had trouble passing on, to know that at best there would be some interesting historical information on what was likely the town’s past unfounded hysteria. If nothing else, there was often good fodder for heckling with Magnus. Tour guides loved Noah.
There were more people gathering as it neared the start of the tour. Noah was checking their channel email on his phone, replying to the few that warranted it, and had just hit send on one when someone new spoke and Magnus answered. He looked up--the guy was the barista at Joyland, so Noah flashed him a friendly smile. Coffee-based benevolence wasn't anything new. “Plus, no one has asked us to leave yet for loitering, so. Positive signs.”
“Yeah, that’s got to be a good thing.” Alex returned Noah’s friendly smile with a grin of his own. He turned back to Magnus to answer his question. “Yes, no… kind of?” He laughed as he took a moment to think about his answer properly then shook his head. “I’m not from here but I live here now so…” He shrugged. He couldn’t help but feel like he’d already made a terrible impression and even though it wasn’t a first one, it was the first one outside of his work and that counted for a lot in his mind. He stuck his hand out, offering the first shake to Magnus. “Sorry, hi, I’m Alex. I’m not usually this awkward, right?” He turned to Noah. “Sorry, it’s been a long day. The festival has brought a lot of people in so work was crazy.”
“Not that that would regularly happen to us, or anything.” Magnus cleared his throat, only to break out into a laugh nonetheless. “But no one’s asked us yet to pony up twenty bucks for a tour, which is also a good sign. Of a different kind.” Maybe this wasn’t just an embarrassing cash grab, the jury was still out on that one. With the amount of tourists present, Magnus would be surprised if they didn’t ask for money—but it might just be a ‘tips at the end’ sort of deal. “I can imagine, just looking at all the people here.” Magnus reached out to grab and shake Alex’ hand. “Hi, I’m Magnus. If I’m awkward, I got no excuse, that’s just me, pretty much.” He flashed him a grin. “And compared to us, I guess that makes you a local. First time doing the tour?”
It had occurred to Noah that the tour might be a ticketed event, but when he hadn’t immediately found the answer after a middlingly thorough Google search, he had given up. What was he supposed to do? Call the museum? The effort hadn’t been worth it, so he had just dragged Magnus along and hoped for the best. Noah shook Alex’s hand after Magnus had. “Nah, you’re good. I’m Noah, the guy you’ve seen wearing a shirt backwards and inside out at least once since I hadn’t had coffee yet, so. If anything, we’re definitely the awkward ones,” he said, glancing at Magnus, then back to Alex with an easy grin. “It’s nice to meet you by name. At this hopefully free witch tour that I’m sure will be exactly worth what we’re paying for, if that’s the case.”
“Nice to meet you too, officially.” Alex shook their hands politely, though he’d technically already met one of them. He hadn’t seen Magnus before or he didn’t think he had but Noah he definitely recognised. He raised his eyebrows in surprise as it occurred to him that people might have pre-booked. He hadn’t seen anything about buying tickets so he’d just turned up. “Well, I was at the museum earlier this week and nobody said anything about buying,” he said with a smile. He was sure Mike would have said something if he’d known the details of the event. “So I guess it’s free? If it’s not, I guess we can always just follow along and pretend we’re not with them, get close enough to listen…. Or even buy one ticket and ride on each other’s shoulders to get in for cheaper.” It was a ridiculous idea but it made him laugh. “I think that mostly only works for kids though, like that Adultman guy on Bojack Horseman if you’ve seen that.”
“Honestly, I feel like all of adult life is just stumbling around in a trenchcoat like Adultman.” Magnus grinned and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jean jacket. “Dibs on not being the bottommost guy, though.” The more he thought about it, the more he reasoned the whole thing would probably be the ‘tips at the end’ kind of ordeal. The picture still made him laugh, though. “But I like that idea. We are very, terribly stealthy.” He was smirking even as he said it. As he spoke, a lady dressed out in a mixture of genuinely historical clothing and terribly witches costume, entered the scene, and raised her arm and voice to get people’s attention. “Good evening, everyone! If you’re here for the Six Witches Tour, please come a little closer, and we will begin the tour once we have done a head count.” Magnus exchanged a look with Noah and Alex, then tilted his head in a ‘let’s go’ motion and walked, leisurely, a little closer.
Noah laughed, amused by the mental image. “There’s nothing stealthier than a twelve-foot tall, normal human, Adultman,” he said, glancing at Magnus. They were already super stealthy to begin with. The most stealthy, really. He grinned, though then his attention snagged on the woman in period clothing as she spoke. Raising an eyebrow, he shrugged and followed along, muttering to Alex and Magnus as the tour guide catalogued the people ahead of them. “I was told one of the tour guides takes this super seriously and one of them takes it tongue-in-cheek. Hopefully she’s the latter?” he said, not quite ready to be banned from the museum yet. From her clothing he was getting a maybe, as she counted them in and to see their IDs. Noah couldn’t quite stop from giving her a skeptical look as he produced his to which she said pleasantly, “Some of the ghosts get a little rowdy at this time of night.”
Alex had to agree with Manus. He had been an ‘adult’ for a few years, legally speaking, and if the years looking after his mother counted for anything, he had probably filled the role for a few years longer but he still felt like a kid playing dress ups. Never was he more aware of it now he lived on his own. He was distracted from his own thoughts by the lady’s arrival and since he didn’t know anybody else to join, he followed after Magnus and Noah. He gave the lady a warm smile as he produced his ID then edged a little further away from her, closer to the group but still enough at the edge that the trio could still make snarky comments to themselves. He had a feeling that was going to be the case and he liked it. He glanced back at the tour guide who still had a couple of people left to count. “So have you guys done this before?” he asked quietly, leaning in so he didn’t need to speak up. “Obviously I’m not expecting real ghosts but do they have jump scares?”
Magnus was similarly skeptical about showing his ID, but he did--rather that than hand her twenty bucks up front, really, but he was quick to retreat to their little circle. “This is the first time we’re in town, actually, so, no,” Magnus replied to Alex, once he had shot a look at Noah, though he tilted his head to the side as he thought it over, “But judging from the ones we’ve been to… I imagine it’s gonna be more history than jumpscares. Easier to do, less work. Kinda figure they just want ID in case this thing runs past curfew.” He shrugged. “But ghosts sound a little more intimidating, I guess.” He flashed Alex a grin as he added, “And who knows, maybe they will go all out and someone will curse us all the way to our grandchildren at the end?”
Noah glanced back at Magnus with a shrug as he answered Alex. “The only insight I got was from a waitress at Moxie’s, so. It’s entirely secondhand. We’ve just been on enough terrible ghost tours to be connoisseurs of a sort.” Or at least had had the words “lifetime ban” applied to them a couple places. They were already approaching this one sober, which was excessively less drunk than some of the other ones they had been on, so maybe they wouldn’t quite reach that point here. Maybe. “Wouldn’t having grandchildren be the curse?” Noah retorted jokingly. He was content to hang back with Magnus and Alex, hopefully out of tour lady’s earshot. “Maybe we’re not paying them money but Satan’ll pop up and say we’ve sold our souls and we aren’t even getting a donut out of it.”
“That only works if Satan is Ned Flanders,” Alex said with a laugh. It had been a long time since he’d watched any episodes of The Simpsons but his mom had loved it and had given him a good education in the classic episodes she’d loved. The idea that somebody would go to that much effort was amusing. Before he had the chance to say anything else, the lady who had counted out the participants made her way to the front and cleared her throat.
“Excuse me,” she called. “If we could all gather a little closer please. We just have a little bit of housework before we start…”
Alex listened half-heartedly as she explained the guidelines for the tour, many of which was simply common sense. He glanced around to see if he recognised anybody else but if they were there, he didn’t spot them in the dull light. He shuffled closer to Magnus and Noah instead. They were definitely a group now. “At least she’s not the kind to laugh at her own jokes,” he whispered after she made a particularly bad one about being sure not to offend any of the ghosts and to be wary of curses.
“Hididdlyho, your soul is going to go to hell-io?” Magnus grinned as he arched an eyebrow up, then laughed at Alex’ comment once the witch tour lady had warned them all about offending ghosts. “Honestly, in this town? I’m not sure she doesn’t actually believe what she’s saying. How would you even offend a ghost?” Magnus rolled his eyes with quite some amusement as he said it, because really—after talking to a few of the residents, and after all he had read about the place, enough people seemed to believe in Point Pleasant’s cultivated, eerie reputation. Something Magnus didn’t do; usually when bad things happened, there were very, very logical things to blame, and usually, those things were other people. “I think I forgot to pack my hex-repellant, I hope we’ll make it through this fine.”
Noah laughed. It was always easier to be around people who picked up his references without needing an explanation, since that always killed the joke. He spared a glance to the costumed lady as she went over the tour rules, but only briefly and then let his attention return to Alex and Magnus. “I don’t know. Tell it that the sheet it’s wearing really makes it look fat?” he guessed. “Insult its hair. Question its knowledge of classic horror cinema. Oh wait, that’s how I would offend you.” Noah grinned at Magnus. Smarmily. “Maybe they have a whole thing with the festival where they curse us here then we have to go pay a wizard to remove it,” he said flippantly.
“If you’ll all follow me this way, we’ll get started,” the tour guide said, holding up a lantern--Noah was pretty sure it was an LED rather than open flame--over her head and gestured them in a direction. Noah was inclined to hang toward the back with Magnus and Alex. Especially when the tour guide said something about holding hands if they got too scared, then launched into some of the actual history of the place as they walked along. “The Point Pleasant Six were…”
“...hysterically murdered by a bunch of sexist Puritans,” Noah muttered.
Alex found himself enjoying Noah and Magnus’s jokes. Even though he was on the fence about believing and had certainly seen enough weird things to have reason to consider it, at the very least, possible it didn’t mean he couldn’t see the funny side of things too. Even though there were things he couldn’t explain, a reasonable explanation was usually the first thing he tried to find. In the case of witch trials anywhere? It was definitely sexist hysteria. “You’d think that if they were really witches, they’d have used their powers to save themselves,” Alex whispered back. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“My hair is magnificent and insult proof, don’t you even dare.” Magnus shot his most half-hearted glare at Noah, then rolled his eyes as he huffed out a laugh. “Again? We haven’t even tried to lift the curse from this afternoon yet. Maybe they’ve got like, a stamp card and we’ll get every fifth curse free on the house.” Considering the sun had very much set already, the sunglasses they had gotten from Zania this afternoon were stored in the inside pocket of his jean jacket, to be forgotten about, probably, with all of her warnings about attracting the other side.
At the suggestion of holding hands, Magnus grinned his most car-salesman-esque grin and waggled his brows at Noah, then tried very hard to stifle his laugh. Sure, he didn’t take witches particularly seriously (who would?) but he could at least be polite enough not to interrupt the guide. “Right?” Alex had a point, one Magnus had figured as well. “What’s the point in being a practicing witch if you can’t witchcraft your way out of certain death? That just sounds like a lose/lose situation.” He shook his head. “Bet they just put anyone on the fire they had beef with over, like. Getting turned down.”
Noah rolled his eyes and shot Magnus his best unamused look at the eyebrow waggling, which lasted two seconds before he was grinning back at him. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing too loudly, since the tour guide was talking about how they were going to see some kind of hanging tree and stake-burning marker. Not that he really cared what anyone else on the tour thought about him, present company excluded, but he also didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to the three of them. “Getting turned down. Having their sheep coveted. Other Puritanical concerns. Because yeah, if you had real magical powers from consorting with the devil, why wouldn't you be using them to achieve things like immortality, perpetual inebriation, or being able to turn Goodman Higgenbottom into a toad when he wronged you?” Noah said, rhetorically and sarcastically. "The good old days when you could just rouse a mob to murder your beefs away. Though I guess the digital equivalent of that still happens on Twitter."
“I think they just hung people here,” Alex whispered to Magnus a second before the tour guide up ahead started talking about the hanging tree. He felt a small thrill of vindication but shrugged as if he wasn’t inwardly impressed with himself for remembering anything he’d read at the museum the day before. “Hanged,” he corrected as the group started to move forward. He stayed towards the back of the crowd because even though he was interested in listening to the history and stories, Magnus and Noah’s commentary made it slightly better. He stayed out of their gentle bickering at each other, feeling like he didn’t quite belong when they clearly knew each other so well, but he kept an ear on them with a small smile. “To be honest,” he said quietly, “I’d rather a Twitter mob come after me. At least they don’t actually know where I live.”
Magnus gave Alex a nod and shot him a grin when the tour guide confirmed what he said. “I’m a little disappointed we haven’t seen any ghosts yet. You would think this would be a prime location for it, right?” If he got hung—hanged, he mentally corrected, now that Alex had pointed it out—he figured he would most definitely stick around to haunt whoever was responsible, and all their offspring for decades to come. Gleefully. “A Twitter mob will get you fired if they can, though. There’s a word for it and everything, but I just can’t think of it.” Which would bug him now, for the rest of the evening, if he couldn’t remember it. “Those pitchforks are a little more forward, at least.” Said with a grin, before he added with a shrug, “The whole getting burnt at a stake thing, though. Less great.” Slight understatement, probably.
Noah side-eyed both of them a little bit, primarily because he was pretty sure he used Twitter more frequently than either of them (or knew definitively, as it came to Magnus) and witnessed a different experience of it, being black, but this seemed like neither the time nor place to get into how bad doxxing could get since he had been making a throwaway, if half-serious, comment. “Yeah, any violent murder site should be crawling with ghosts seeking revenge,” Noah muttered instead, since it might have been true if there was the remotest chance that ghosts were real. “Or at least a good time pranking people,” he grinned at Magnus and Alex, possibly at the wrong moment since the tour guide narrowed her eyes at them, but then called out louder that they would be moving on to the next site. Shoving his hands in his pockets, Noah hung back with the two of them, content to spend the rest of the tour providing their own commentary--hopefully out of earshot of anyone else.