No sooner did Shawn and Michael leave the tree house, notebook in hand, then Michael said something.


"I want to do some more trick or treating." He said to Shawn flatly.

"Before we go to Celebrity drive."

"I want to get more candy because then I will be able to sort them. I am almost at 20 pieces of Tootsie Rolls and 20 Jolly Ranchers. I need 3 more Tootsie Rolls. I need 2 more Jolly Ranchers. Three and Two is five."

Shawn was about to immediately agree, but then the logic of what Michael was asking him to do kicked in. "What if you get three more Jolly Ranchers before you get three more Tootsie rolls? Also, is the candy different on Celebrity Drive, or could we trick-or-treat there and do both things?"

Michael shrugged his shoulders.

"Three and two is five."

"I need 3 more Tootsie Rolls. I need 2 more Jolly Ranchers."

Then he stared at Shawn for what seemed like a really long time.

Shawn didn't think that made much sense, but at the same time, Michael was a friend and someone he wanted to keep happy. He nodded his head. "Let's trick-or-treat every house on the way to Celebrity Drive, and we'll see how your count is doing. Sound good?"

Michael nodded.

It would have been just a hop over the fence behind the tree house to get to Celebrity Drive. However, that would have entailed landing in someone's back yard on Halloween at dusk.

And so the boys went through the neighborhood on Rodeo Drive Trick or Treating at every house en route to Celebrity Drive. The first house gave then full size Twix bars. The second house gave out Fun Dip, which Michael actually began to eat on the way towards the the next house.



However, after about the fifth or sixth house Shawn saw headlights from behind. There was a car on the road that was moving very slowly behind them.

Shawn noticed the car, and tried to see if it was the same one that had tried to egg them before. He decided to warn Michael just in case. "Look out for the car. It might be the egg one." The next house they went to, he tried to see what the car did as they headed up the driveway, whether it would continue along the road past them or keep following them.

As the they got the candy from the next house, Shawn noticed that the car had stopped at the top of the hill. When Shawn and Michael came back down from the driveway, the car began to inch forward again.

It was hard to see what time of car it was, because every time Shawn looked back, all he could see were bright headlights against a backdrop of darkness.

Remembering what happened last time, Shawn didn't openly react, but instead made sure that as they walked to the next house, their path took them close to bushes, trees, or other cover they could quickly dive behind if a sudden egging occurred.

 Shawn could feel the bright lights against his back, see his own dark shadow grow longer along the road as the car inched it’s was forward at a slow pace behind him. It was about fifty feet away and had picked up a bit of speed, just a hair, maybe  it was going about four or five miles an hour.

Michael was busy assessing the horde of candy he had gotten and was busy counting each piece. “We did not get to go trick or treating at the juvenile criminal place. Chestnut Grove I believe it was called.”

But as he was speaking Shawn sensed the ca. There was a loud screech as it lurched forward, the unmistakable sound of the engine roaring as it sped down the hill towards Shawn and Michael.

Shawn had been expecting this - another repeat of the egg throwing from earlier, so he'd already been looking for something to hide behind. He didn't wait for them to get close to see their intentions, he just warned Michael and started to move behind the nearest object. "Take cover!"

While Shawn ran away from the curb to hide behind a bush, he glanced behind him to catch the profile view of Michael's face, stoic and impassive, running towards the closest yard. The headlights bore down on him, half of Michael's face was covered in shadows and he moved with his arms and legs in a synchronized rhythm. Yet just as he reached the grass...

SCREEEEEEEEECH!!!!!

The car came to an abrupt stop. A few seconds later, the smell of burned rubber wafted towards Shawn's nose, the sound of Michael's footfalls as he padded his way to sit next to Shawn towards the adjacent bush.

The car was just sitting there for a moment longer. Then the window began to roll down.

Shawn felt a drop land on his forearm. Seconds later, it started to drizzle.

Shawn, crouched behind the bush squinted into the headlights, trying to see who was in the car. He thought back to the car that had thrown eggs at them, whether this one matched - it would be weird if this was all just a coincidence, but weirder stuff had happened tonight.

Shawn squinted into the headlights and through the drizzle that was coming down. It was not the car that had thrown the egg. It was a big car. An expensive car.

It was a pink Cadillac.

The motor hummed a low, soft purr. More like animal than a car.

Shawn saw movement from the driver’s window like the driver was about to stick something out of the window.

Shawn stayed behind the bushes for the time being. He had no idea what someone in a big expensive car would be doing tearing around the neighborhood, leaving burning rubber on the streets. Was it following them? Or maybe the driver was just looking for random kids?

Slowly, slowly, the driver's head emerged to stick itself out of the window. It looked like a woman, her eyes were squinting against the drizzle.

And with stunning clarity it all came into focus.


"Shawn!? Is that you?" Mom shouted towards the bushes, head on a swivel looking this way and that.

Shawn breathed out a sigh of relief, and immediately felt silly for not realizing what was going on. He softly called out to Michael. "Oh, it's okay, that's my Mom."

He got to his feet and headed towards the sidewalk. "Sorry Mom! I didn't realize that was you!" His tone conveyed relief and a bit of amusement - what a silly misunderstanding!

When Shawn spoke to Michael, Michael remained completely impassive and emotionless, a face of stone. It was as if Michael didn't care one way or another if it was Shawn's Mom or not.

As Shawn headed towards the sidewalk Mom's smile brightened.

"It is you!" Shawn's Mom sounded relieved, as if the sight of Shawn and his identification had put her at ease. "Come on, Get in. I want to show you." And she gestured to the passenger side of the car, beckoning Shawn to come inside with giddy enthusiasm and more than a hint of relief. Shawn got the sense that Mom had been looking for him for quite some time.

Shawn was also pretty relieved - his feelings about his Mom were pretty complicated, but she was still preferable to some jerk throwing eggs at them. "Can Michael come to? I don't want to leave him here by himself."

He paused for a moment as he remembered a promise he'd made, one he didn't dare break. "There's someone driving around throwing eggs at kids in costumes. He must be a real Dick-Bag." As instructed, he made sure he was making full eye contact with Mom when he said the word.

Shawn's Mom noticeably winced at the word "Dick-Bag". It happened at the same time that she squinted into the rain and wind, making it difficult to ascertain if she had actually heard it or willingly chose to ignore Shawn's comment.

"No, he can't come!" Mom said, as if such a thought was far, far out of the question or realm of possibility.

"Come on! I need to show you something!" Mom, said with giddy, almost uncharacteristic excitement and energy. Shawn heard the door to the passenger side open, a clear invitation for him to get into the car.

Shawn felt relieved that he wasn’t going to get in trouble for fulfilling his promise, but he definitely didn’t want to leave Michael out here by himself. “If he can’t come, can you please drop him off on the way? He only lives at <address>, it’s real close. I can’t leave him out here by himself. Right, Michael?”

"Yes." Michael said. But given the context and the flat tone, it wasn't clear if Michael was suggesting that he could or couldn't stay out alone. Or even what he was agreeing to.

"See?" Mom said quickly, as if Michael had agreed to stay by himself. "Your friend Marty will be fine by himself. OK, now get in, I can't wait to show you!" Mom said, with pure enthusiasm bordering on mania.

Shawn realized that he couldn't persuade his Mom on this, so he tried to salvage the situation as much as he could. He passed his bag of candy over to Michael "Here, this should be enough to finish your count, so head straight home, okay? And stick to streets where there's people. Don't be afraid to run if there's anything weird." The last sentence he said low enough that his Mom wouldn't hear.

Then he straightened up and headed towards the car, giving Michael an apologetic look as he headed to the passenger side door to get in.

Michael took the bag from Shawn with a stone-faced expression. He shrugged his shoulders when Shawn told him not to be afraid to run.

As Shawn got into the car, Mom pulled away with a three point turn, and just for a moment Michael was caught the headlights, looking very much like a deer before the car pulled off down the road.

The first thing that Shawn noticed was that he was sitting in the most expensive car he had ever sat in, except for, of course, the limousine that he used to ride in when going to script readings with Mr. Sellick.

Mom was jittery, constantly tapping her fingers and moving her legs while driving, the song 'Pink Cadillac' playing on the radio through a bit of static.

Shawn quickly buckled himself up as his Mom did a sharp turn and started driving them down the road, bracing himself against the seat as they drove away. The car looked nice and really fancy, which made him a little anxious about where his Mom got it. Still, he forced a cheerful look as he watched the road. "This is a really nice car! Where'd it come from?"

Mom uncharacteristically spoke at a million miles an hour.

"The car? The car is brand new. Brand new! Oh! I'm so happy to see you? I'm just going to pick up a little speed here. There, right there. Its a spooling pedal that's what the car salesman said. We got the car brand new. Brand new. Everyone knows about it! Everyone is talking about it. It's the latest model. And its pink just like the song. Its really just what we need to start our new life away from your father. Won't he be jealous? Yes he will. He'll regret all of the bad things that he did and said. And you'll be on the front page. Also, I think  you should know that we're moving to a new house too. A new house. It's brand new. Its been in the works for a while. But I wasn't able to finalize things until tonight. This time is for good. Also, we might be going to court soon."

Shawn continued to brace himself on the seat as his Mom talked a mile a minute, trying to pull enough meaning out of her meandering speech to form an answer. "Oh, did I help by doing the commercial? A lot of kids were talking about it." Shawn obviously didn't have much to do with the money he got paid for acting; it went to his parents, though sometimes they gave him extra allowance. He'd heard somewhere that some of it was supposed to be saved for when he was grown, which he assumed was happening as well.

He was holding on tight, and almost missed the last bit his Mom said. "We're going to court? What for?"

Mom fixated on the first question that Shawn asked, completely ignoring or forgetting about the second. She was sitting straight, the window down, one hand on the wheel while she freely gestured with her second hand.

"Did you ever do a good job!" She burst out in lavish praise of Shawn's commercial. "This is the best thing to happen to our family since Ronald Reagan won the Presidency. Not only is everyone talking about it in the neighborhood. Everyone is talking about it among the producers. Among the parents! Even some Hollywood people are talking about it. I'm going to be the mother of a famous child star! I'm going to be famous! I knew you were a star it just took a little while to get going is all. Especially now that your father can't control you."

Shawn had been encouraged by Mr. Clayton to be a little more cynical about his Mom, but he couldn't help but feel a little spark of joy over being praised so unabashedly. Especially if even the producers liked it. "I'm glad they all liked it. I was hoping I did well."

"So well..." Mom said, with jittery enthusiasm, "that I've got a biiiiig surprise..." And she turned the car down an unfamiliar road. What might have been a long trip back towards the rotten motel suddenly became a detour.

Shawn hadn't exactly been looking forward to going back to the motel, but he also had a healthy suspicion of surprises. He looked out the window, trying to get a sense of where they were in relation to his more familiar neighborhood even as he faked excitement. "What sort of surprise?"

Shawn looked out the window, the houses stood upon strong foundations, with bricks mortared together with loving hands. They were large, and some had enormous antennas on top of the roofs, the kind that allowed someone to watch any channel that was on.

Shawn realized that he was on Celebrity Drive.

"A big surprise!" Mom announced and suddenly she pulled the car up a driveway, it stopped in front of a large, iron gate.

There was a click and the gate opened, Mom drove the pink Cadillac up a winding driveway, towards a mansion that overlooked them from the top of a hill.

Shawn blinked with surprise as he realized that they hadn't actually travelled all that far; they were still basically in the same neighborhood. He squinted into the gloom at the mansion atop the hill, trying to figure out who they might be visiting. "Who lives here?"

"You do now!" Mom announced, though the effect of the announcement was accompanied by the screech of the Cadillac's tires as she braked hard to stop the car, the smell of freshly burned rubber and tires as the car drifted sideways.  Shawn's body lunged forward and the seat belt pulled hard against him, the car jolting before it came to a sudden stop in front of a four car garage.

Shawn pitched forward, and while he tried to hold up his hands protectively so he didn't slam into the glove box, fortunately the seatbelt saved him. It was enough of a shock that it took him a moment or two afterwards for him to process what his Mom had said. "We live here? How?" He didn't know much about how you bought a house, but he'd always thought of big mansions as something that only the rich actors and businessmen lived in.

"Because you are a star." Mom commented, opening up the door and walking around to open up the passenger side. Shawn's eyes drew in the large house. It was hard--very hard to see how all of this was somehow associated with his own family history, given that he had never lived in any place like it. Even imagining what could be inside the ostentatious mansion was difficult.

"It's all here." Mom said, standing on her tippy toes and breathing in a breath of fresh air like a baker who's bread had just been cooked and was satisfied with the result.

She started to walk up the white, marble steps leading to the door of the mansion. Then paused on the second step, turning around to face Shawn:

"Well, aren't you going to come inside?"

Shawn didn't know what to make of all this - what him being a star had to do with any of it. Really, him being a star at all didn't sound right. But he wasn't going to figure this out sitting in the car all night. He unbuckled himself and gathered up Mr. Clayton before exiting the car and following his Mom up the steps.

"Oh." Mom said as Shawn was about to make his way up the marble steps. She gestured with a limp hand at Mr. Clayton. "That...ummm. I think its better if you put that away." She said with mild disgust. "I mean, its fine if you play with it later."

Then she hurried over to the car and opened the trunk. Inside, Shawn could see an old-time suitcase.




"I stole this from your father's closet!" Mom marveled, as if stealing things from Shawn's Dad was the most fun and best thing that both Mom and Shawn could ever imagine.

"I figure he won't be needing it and besides, its a good suitcase for you to travel the world with." Then switching tones to more subdued, less enthusiastic voice "And for now you can put that toy in it."

Shawn figured Mr. Clayton could use a bit of a break after the night's excitement, and he wasn't going to be able to ask him for advice around his Mom anyway. So he followed her to the car and popped the dummy into the suitcase. "It's a nice suitcase, thanks!" He brushed past his Mom's admission of theft as he closed the suitcase. He cut a bit of an odd figure - now just a kid in a fake tuxedo carrying a suitcase.

Shawn felts something change as he put Mr. Clayton away into the suitcase, as if some part of him had been lost.

OOC: Shawn loses the following conditions listed in the 'Character conditions thread'

	Shawn	Voice In My Head	Shawn has an evil spirit in his head whose voice manifests itself
	Shawn	Evil Spirit Within	Roll: Resolve + Occult to avoid the Spirit from taking an action
	Shawn	Fatigue	-1 die to all rolls

Shawn gains the following conditions listed in the 'Character conditions thread'

PC	Roll Result	Condition	Notes and Roll (if any)
	Shawn	Without My Puppet	major hallucinations that might occur

Up they went the marble steps and towards an enormously gaudy door festooned with brass handles. Shawn could see through the windows more than a few chandeliers that cast their light upon him through those prismatic windows. Distinctly absent in this array was any notion of Halloween decorations.

Mom grabbed a hold of the door and pulled, the massive thing only budging an inch as she pulled hard to open the door of Shawn's new mansion house.

Shawn felt really odd for a moment, and he clutched his suitcase close as he followed up the stairs. The mansion was a little intimidating, and seeing that the chandeliers were already on, he wondered who else might already be in the house.

With great effort Mom opened the door, her face straining and cords standing out on her neck.

Instantly, white light cast itself out onto the front lawn, bathing Shawn in its inescapable warmth.




It was a sight to behold, even for an adult of any kind to be sure. Two huge spiral staircases.

"All of this is mine!" Mom said, and then as if remembering. "It's all yours Shawn! You did it! Welcome to your new home!"

Shawn couldn't help but gape at the sight of the massive, brightly lit foyer, but it seemed like the appropriate reaction so he didn't try too hard to hide it. "Uhhh...wow." It still didn't feel real, and he waited for his Mom to step over the threshold first, as if worried the mirage would vanish if he did anything.

"Isn't it wonderful?" Mom asked, her own mouth two rows of bright, shiny teeth eyes catching the gleam of the chandelier that basked its heavenly, opulence across the room.

"We can get anything now. You're a star. You just ask for it, and it's yours." Mom said.

"But don't ask too much." She said, contradicting herself and catching herself as if she realized she was a Mom and had to impose some kind of limits.

OOC: Shawn Adds

* * Deep Pockets Merit to his character sheet.

Shawn didn't know how a TV commercial meant all this for him, but all he could really do was accept it. "Thanks Mom! I'll be responsible." He tried to put on the air of the serious, considerate child as he replied. He didn't want to seem like a spoiled brat - to his Mom or the neighborhood kids.

The phone somewhere off in the distance rang, emitting a jangling sound that bounced around the interior of the house.

"Oh, I need to get that. That's probably Bill." Mom said. "I mean, Mr. Horwitz" She said to Shawn, as if she was correcting herself. "Why don't you go upstairs. Your room is the second room to the right." Mom pointed to the stairs, the spiral staircase to the right.

Shawn tried to recall if he knew a Mr. Horowitz, but nothing occurred to him right away. So he nodded cheerfully at his Mom and started to head up the stairs. The place was so big, it felt almost disorienting - like he was heading to a room in a hotel rather than what was ostensibly his home.

The spacious room felt more like Shawn was walking in a giant's house from Jack and the Beanstalk---a very rich giant that lived in Hollywood. The paintings on the walls of the hallway were enormous in their proportion to Shawn, and when he reached the top of the stairs he had to take a breath or two to recover his stamina.

The hallway was long and it had about seven doors in total. Seven different rooms and this was just the upstairs, Shawn hadn't gone downstairs yet to the kitchen where Mom was, let alone explored to see if there was a basement.

As Shawn was walking down the hallway to get to the second door on the right as Mom instructed, he heard something or someone. A shuffling sound coming from the first door on the right.

Shawn heard the sound coming from the first room and paused for a moment. He knew it wasn't the room he was supposed to be heading for, but it was his first time in the house, so he had a ready-made excuse for opening random doors. He decided to quietly open the first door on the right; if anyone objected, he'd just say he was trying to find out where the bathroom was.

But before Shawn could even open the door, it opened by itself.

A kid with angry eyes stared back and Shawn, a look of surprise on his face.

"What!?" He almost shouted. "Who are you!?"

Shawn was equally surprised, though his eyes were far less angry. "Huh? I'm Shawn. I was just looking for the...wait, who are you?" His Mom hadn't warned him about any other kids staying here. Though certainly it looked like there was room.

Shawn's answer sparked even more interest. The of look of surprise now a look of bewilderment.

"What!?" He repeated. "I'm Chris. And this is my house. What are you doing here?"

Shawn was equally surprised, though he was relieved that Chris didn't seem outright angry. "Umm, my Mom said I live here now? That's supposed to be my room, I think? I didn't know anyone else lived here." He pointed at the next door down - the second on the right. He hadn't been here long enough to confidently assert that it was his house.

Chris' eyes were as wide as dinner plates as if this information was all new to him.

"You're living here?" He repeated the words, like a kid trying liver and onions at dinner for the first time, and not at all liking it.

"But I live here!" He said, as if Shawn's moving in was somehow a threat and the two could not exist at the same time in the same space. Although, of course, this was definitely not the case, given that Shawn had never been in so much space in his life.

"I've spent my whole life here. Where are you even from?" Chis asked, as if Shawn was some kind of alien being that had invaded Chris' planet.

"Umm, I'm from down the street?" Now Shawn was especially confused - surely his Mom hadn't moved them into a place without telling the people who lived there, right? "Is anyone in that room right now?" He pointed at the door to the room he ostensibly was going to be living in.

"You sure are." Chris said, folding his arms as if defending his room. When Shawn pointed, Chris turned his head and looked down the hallway about a dozen feet past a gaudy painting on the wall of oil canvas Cheetah to where the next door was.

"That's the guest room." Chris said. "That's where my friends have sleep overs. We all pretend to be in the desert or in a big computer world where one of us is Max Headroom and the others are watching the TV." Christ explained, and there was a defiant tone in his voice. "And we stay up real late." he added, as if there could be no other way but staying up late and that anyone who objected to it was a total loser.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:22, Thu 23 Sept 2021.

The fact that it was a guest room made things a lot clearer to Shawn - clearly, he and his Mom were guests of Chris' mom or dad, and his Mom hadn't made that clear when they went inside. Of course, if Shawn was a guest, that made Chris a host, and he knew you should always be polite to a host. He immediately looked fascinated by Chris's sleepover story. "Oh wow, that's really cool! I bet you have a lot of friends!"

Chris seemed surprised and somewhat disarmed and taken off guard, clearly trying to work his way up to some kind of defense of his house. "I've got...friends." Chris said, finishing the last work rather lamely and unconvincingly.

Chris unfolded his arms. "About as much as anyone can call kids that live on Celebrity Drive friends." He said cryptically. "Where down the street?" Chris asked, suddenly suspicious.

"I hope we can be friends too!" Shawn was answering Chris' implied statement more than what he'd actually said, but he remained cheerful in the face of Chris' surprise and suspicion. "I'm from Main Street - it's only a few blocks from here."

Chris regarded Shawn silently. Then when Shawn said he was from Main Street, Chris said "You're from that side of the development. I know where that is. Its across the fence behind our yard. Dad says not to go back there. He says poor kids live there."

"Man, you don't even know it. You're gonna be way over your head here. This place, Celebrity Drive. It's not like a normal neighborhood."

Shawn had expected a slightly frosty reception when he revealed that he was from Main Street. But that was because Main Street was dangerous, not because it was poor. But his plan to overcome it remained the same - trying to be nice and charming and Chris' friend. "It definitely seems really different. The houses are super huge and everything. Maybe you can show me the ropes?"

"Well, it doesn't work like that. It's just where you start is where you are. Everyone here has to be something. Its not good enough just to be a normal kid. The parents here won't let that happen. Everyone has to be better than just a normal, poor kid. Everyone here has to be kind of like an adult." Chris explained, not promising anything, and certainly not warming to Shawn, but nevertheless providing his frank assessment of the situation.

"The ropes are like this: Don't trust anyone. And don't listen to anything that anyone says." Chris explained.

Shawn didn’t want to show it, but Chris’ description of having to be better, not being able to be just a normal kid sounded incredibly familiar to him. It sounded a lot like being an actor - having to know his lines, get along with everyone, never stop being patient, give the agents and directors what they wanted even if it was impossible…

But rather than dig too deep into what that meant, he pushed it deep down and maintained his seeming cheer, though he tempered it with sympathy as well. “That sounds really rough…but you seem nice at least!” Well, he hadn’t been, really. But sometimes when you said nice things about someone, they’d wind up trying to live up to it.

Chris gave a wry little smile. "You should see me when I'm hungry." And then, adding "The guest room should be clean. Mom makes sure the cleaners do the whole upstairs, downstairs and basement every Wednesday. Anyway, if I don't make it downstairs to eat breakfast before you go, it was nice talking to you."

Shawn saw Chris' smile, and while it wasn't exactly the open arms of friendship, at least it felt like a connection. "It was really nice talking to you too! See you tomorrow, hopefully." He didn't really understand the circumstances that had brought him to this house, or what he was going to be expected to do. But for the time being he was going to just go along with things until he figured more out.

He hefted his suitcase, and then gave Chris a friendly nod before heading towards the guest room.

OOC: Shawn joins thread

Shawn: The Guest Room?