1930.

The portraits lining the walls of Finn Manor depicted figures with whom William Finn — formerly Will Singer — shared no blood but his new father, Josiah, urged him to call “family.” Yet to William, every heartbeat within those walls felt like kin, and in each face, he so often found a warm smile, eager to indulge the young master.

The only notable hold-out came from Miss Delilah, a housemaid who always seemed cold and curt. Still, she had a son, Robert, who lived on the grounds and was just two years older than Will, making him an ideal playmate.

Robert knew every hiding place and secret within Finn Manor. Sure, if Will landed in trouble, it was usually Robert’s doing — but the thrill of discovery always outweighed the sting of Miss Glenda’s punishments. Among these marvels were the body of a deer fallen deeper in the woods of the estate than Will was permitted to go, a false-bottomed chest where the chauffeur stashed “bathing beauty” photos, and a secret door in the hallway that opened a hidden passage leading to his father’s study, which he was forbidden to enter unsupervised.

In time, after catching up under the guidance of private tutors, Josiah enrolled Will in the prestigious Ellsworth Academy — the same boarding school attended by Josiah, his father, and his grandfather. By the time Will arrived, the grime of street life had been scrubbed from both his fingernails and his manners. 

Facing children born into wealth, Will succeeded in meeting their scrutiny without inciting scorn. No schoolyard challenge that could frighten Will more than the dangers of Titan City’s streets. Will laughed at any attempts to bully him, and bravado has a way of winning esteem.

However, it could be no surprise that Will found himself happiest in the company of the groundskeeper’s son, a cheerful, round-faced young man named Chester Chumley, whom the Ellsworth students had called “Chubby” so often that he had adopted the nickname himself.

Chubby Chumley never cheated at cards, dice, or checkers, and never gloated when he won nor raged when he didn’t. He knew interesting things about motor car engines, and his collection of adventure magazines could not be beat. Many a fine Saturday afternoon they spent lounging around the Ellsworth garage, poring over Amazing Stories or The Argosy, where Will met such heroes as Zorro, the Shadow, and Tarzan.

When it came to his classes, Will excelled in chemistry and Latin. He competed in track and field and performed in plays put on by the student dramatic society. While the former made Will shine in the eyes of other Ellsworth boys, who admired athletic prowess, the latter won him attention from the young women of the Fletcher School for Girls, who arrived by bus to perform the female roles.

Will received more than one love note from his castmates. He even experienced a few furtive kisses in the shadows of the Ellsworth auditorium. And with one girl, Sylvia Madison, who played opposite him as Lady Macbeth, he experienced his first romance. 

Sylvia warmed to Will’s gentle demeanor, and when he felt ready to share them with her, she thrilled to his tales of surviving the streets of Titan City. When he invited her to the spring formal, she answered an enthusiastic, “Yes.”

The night of the formal, Will and Chubby met on the steps of the Ellsworth Courtyard. The sun had set, and the still-warm night air carried with it the scent of new-blossomed flowers. Tea lights all around the stonework and shrubbery illuminated eager young men and women, as the Ellsworth boys welcomed their Fletcher counterparts.

“Gosh, Will, tonight is gonna be something, isn’t it?” said Chubby, wearing a borrowed suit. “Boys and girls, all together and… just… Gosh!”

Will smiled. “Maybe. Could be. You never know.”

“My hair is okay, right?” Chubby asked. “I don’t want to look like a total bumpkin for Kelly’s cousin.” Normally, Chubby didn’t take part in Ellsworth’s social events, but for the spring formal, one boy, Kelly Winchester, had told Chubby that his cousin would be visiting and needed a chaperone. 

Will didn’t think much of Kelly. He was a track-and-field teammate who regularly steered any conversation to the subject of his family’s fantastic wealth. Still, it warmed his heart to see Chubby so excited.

Sylvia beamed as she approached Will and Chubby, “Well, aren’t you boys a picture?”

“We are?” said Chubby. “Gosh! Just look at you!”

In the moonlight, Sylvia sparkled, silvery and luminous. Her blonde hair tumbled in elegant waves down her shimmering satin gown. “Oh, I just have to make sure I’m keeping pace with such handsome company as yourselves.” 

Then Kelly called out, “Chubby, my boy! Aren’t you looking dashing?” He strode up to the three, a girl on his arm and several young swains with their respective ladies in tow.

“Gosh, thanks,” Chubby replied.

Will went to shake Kelly’s hand. “You’re a real pal, inviting Chubby here to look after your cousin.”

“Thanks, chum,” Kelly said. And Will noticed something distracted in Kelly’s demeanor that suddenly troubled him. “Now, you’ll be an absolute gentleman, won’t you, Chubby?”

“Of course! You can count on me! One hundred percent!”

More of the others gathered around them. Later, Will would wonder which already knew what Kelly had planned.

“Promise me,” said Kelly. “I’ve told her that you will show her a very enjoyable evening.”

“And how! A more enjoyable evening couldn’t be found!”

“You promise?”

“God’s honest truth, I do.”

“Very well, my boy,” said Kelly, a grin just beginning to overtake him. “Here she is!”

At that, Kelly gave a whistle, and four of his followers came forward with Kelly’s “cousin” trotting between them. She was a fine specimen, a well-fed Yorkshire sow with a wig affixed to her head and an emerald green gown that had been dragged through mud.

Kelly crowed, “There you go, Chubby, my boy! She’s just the girl for you!”

All around them, laughter erupted, the privileged teens delighted by such mockery. Only Will, Sylvia, and poor Chubby stood silent amid the shrieking laughter, their faces unmoved as cruelty dressed itself in comedy.

“Gosh,” Chubby murmured, a tremble building in his lower lip. Then he took off, fleeing into the night before the onset of tears.

Kelly called out after him. “What’s the matter? Don’t think you’re too good for my cousin, do you? Now, doesn’t that beat all?”

“That was a rotten trick,” said Will. “What business do you have mocking him like that?”

“Surely, Chubby can take a joke, can’t he? All in good fun, Will,” said Kelly. “All in good fun.”

“It didn’t look like fun for him,” said Will, fists clenching. Even knowing the punishment he would receive, might taking a swing at Kelly be worth it?

Sylvia placed her hand upon his arm. “I’m sure Chubby will be just fine,” she said. “Let’s not let this ruin the evening.”

“Ruin? My dear, this has made the evening!” Kelly laughed. “It’s the absolute tops!”

Will saw the plea in Sylvia’s eye and held his anger in check. Later, as they swayed cheek-to-cheek on the dance floor, the two of them discussed how they might reduce Kelly to the same laughingstock he had made of Chubby.

“A good fright,” said Sylvia, “that would do him. Show him that he’s not such a big man after all.”

Will agreed. “Let’s have him whimpering like a babe.”

“But how?” Sylvia asked.

Then Will remembered the first film his father Josiah had taken him to see, The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Cheney. The scene that scared him most was when the Phantom came striding into the ball dressed as the Masque of the Red Death from Edgar Allen Poe.

“What a terror he was,” said Will. “Shook me to the core.“

“Why then, you have it!” said Sylvia, “Let’s trick Kelly into thinking he stands before Death itself! Perhaps then he might reconsider his ways.”

They agreed that Will would appear as the frightening figure, wearing as elaborate a costume as they could cobble together from the school’s theater supplies. And when they informed Chubby of their plan, he volunteered his mechanical skills to heighten the illusion’s effect.

“I’m sure I could find a way to create a fog of some kind,” said Chubby. “There was an article about liquid nitrogen in Popular Mechanics. Do you think we could get some from the school chemistry lab? I suppose they keep that locked away though…”

Will laughed, “If exploring Finn Manor taught me anything, it’s that most locks can be opened with a bit of patience.”

After a week of preparation, Sylvia sent a note to Kelly by way of a friend sworn to secrecy:

My Dear Mr. Winchester,

Since the night of the dance, it has vexed me terribly that I could not express how much I enjoyed that clever trick of yours. A pig in a wig! How delightful! What a mind you have. So brazen. So bold. 

It would mean the world if I could show you just how impressed I was, but mere words do not suffice. Let me show you in person, please. In private. It can be our secret. Would you be able to get away at night, after curfew? I do hope so. 

I will be waiting for you at the little church just down the road between Ellsworth and Fletcher. There is a grove of trees there, to the left, past the graveyard. We could spend hours there undisturbed. Please, don’t let my interest go unfulfilled.

Eagerly,

Sylvia

That night, Will overheard Kelly in the dining hall bragging to a tight circle of his most devoted.  “What can I say, boys? Some of us simply have it, you know?”

Will smiled.

Not satisfied to simply proclaim his romantic conquest after the fact, Kelly brought along three of his top toadies to sneak out of Ellsworth. At the churchyard gate, he stopped them, though. “That’s far enough. Must allow the lady a modicum of privacy, mustn’t we?”

The others laughed and offered rude words of encouragement as Kelly climbed the fence.

As he approached the little graveyard, Kelly called out in a whisper, “Are you there, my sweet? Your prince has arrived.”

Sylvia called back to him from behind a tree, “Over here! Please! I cannot wait any longer!”

He checked his breath with the palm of his hand, smoothed his hair, and strode toward the sound of her voice. “My dear, you will find Kelly Winchester a punctual paramour…”

But as he moved into position, Chubby wound the crank on a small gas generator. Its sudden crack and rumble made Kelly jump. Thick fog began to pour toward him from all sides, creeping around the headstones. Kelly coughed as the acrid bite of sulfur met his nose, a smell as harsh as if the gates of Hell had just opened up to greet him.

Then a hollow, echoing voice — unrecognizable as Chubby’s through a series of metal tubes — intoned ominously, “Kelly… Kelly Winchester…”

With faltering courage, he shouted back, “Very funny, Sylvia! Oh, yes, a real cracker!”

As if in response to his words, thunder crashed from above — Will, standing on the church rooftop, striking a metal sheet with a mallet. 

Startled, Kelly looked up to see a figure by the steeple, silhouetted against the night sky, cloak billowing in the wind, the shadows of his hood obscuring his face. At this point, Kelly soiled himself.

Will opened his arms as if inviting an embrace, and he stepped forward, off the rooftop. The harness Chubby had built held firm, letting Will float downward like a creature from beyond, immune to laws of physics. Then his grinning skull mask caught the moonlight.

The scream that came from Kelly shocked his toadies at the gate. They turned to see their proud leader running in full panic. Terror tripped him up, and as Kelly attempted to vault the churchyard fence, he caught the hem of his trousers on an iron spike, sending him face-first into the dirt. They ran to free him and as soon as his feet touched the ground, Kelly continued his sprint without a word of explanation. They followed close behind, none of them hearing the celebratory laughter in the churchyard behind them.