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.