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[Transcript]

        “Oh, come now,” Davy groaned, slicing the stake out of the air and into two perfect King Solomon pieces. “That’s so crude! So Cousinhood!” He blocked a second volley of three more stakes with a flourish of his hook. “You’ve had a timeless stint in solitude to build a better bat trap! Where’s the holy water balloon? The solar flare gun? Where is the ingenious INNOVATION??”

        “Duck, you FOOL!” the Witch exclaimed.

        A massive fist tore through the fog. Davy dodged it just in time; he felt uncanny strength compress the air it struck instead. The sonic boom blew back his hair... and then the tattered cloak that had concealed the meaty arm of his assailant. Davy caught a glimpse of sutured flesh, a mottled quilt of multicolored muscle, before he was drawn deep into the dance of close-range combat.

        “Now you’re ripping ME off!” Davy laughed, aiming a riposte at his undead attacker. So THAT’S how they’d survived so long—they HADN’T!

        “YES,” the creature groaned, catching his wrist below the hook. “FIRST. THIS. ARM.” Gangrenous fingers slowly crushed him in a death grip. “THEN. THE. NEXT.” Davy winced; shattered glasses flashed beneath the creature’s hood. “THEN. I. WILL. RIP. OFF. YOUR. SCHEMING. HEAD.”

        “Every scientist stands on the shoulders of giants, Mr. Jones!” squeaked a second, muffled voice beneath the figure’s second hood. “My INNOVATION is copiloting said giant from said shoulders as he charges into battle! Isn’t that right, sweetie? Heh heh heh!”

        “HEH. HEH. HEH.”

        The two-headed hulk had driven Davy back to the hopscotch court’s third square. Free of the mist, its true form was revealed: not a cloak, but two stained lab coats stitched together; not one body, but one man’s combined with countless other chunks of eldritch matter; not a second head, but a towering tank of bright green goo extending from his shoulder.

        Sophie Sybil snapped another photo in awestruck confusion. Her eyes and smartphone failed to capture the contents of the Frankenstein’s bubbling ectoplasm receptacle. If they had, she might have found a kindred spirit: a grinning rodent bobbed inside the jar, her unprotected brain alight with arcane electricity. Each spectral spark spiraled its way down to her jagged two-pronged tail, where it spread as instant signal through the flesh that it was fused with—a mouse plugged into its host to puppeteer him with techniques more Pikachu than Ratatouille.

        Hijack’s right half glimpsed a weird brain spirit piloting a buff, blonde, and mustachioed behemoth and was instantly head over heels in love. Who was this striking someone? They had so many things in common...!

        “You and your doting husband... always WERE attached at the hip, Gwen!” Davy grimaced, pushing back against the vast undead amalgam’s crushing strength. “Neck-and-neck’s a new connection, though... and more of a commitment... than remaining hand-in-hand!” Davy grinned. He was stronger than ten men—stitching them together didn’t change that math at all. “It’s good to mix things up... after so many years of marriage... but I don’t know if this experiment can keep things fresh POST-MORTEM!”

        Davy threw the creature’s grip aside with a surge of vampiric power. The undead Doctor Burger stumbled back.

        “Let’s see how you fare SEPARATED, SHALL WE?!”

        A savage slash fell short of its mark and severed one of the arms that had nearly torn Davy’s from his shoulder. It fell to the floor with a heavy thud. Ed’s long-missing father grunted—less in pain than in frustration.

        “Believe me, Bruce, I’ve been there,” Davy chuckled, giving him a roguish wink.

        The hulking zombie snorted back at him, feinted with his lost arm’s bloodless stump, then threw a wild left hook that was easily deflected. Davy snagged his trailing lab coat, yanked the doctors to one knee, then smacked them with the Witch’s head (“OW! You rancid BRUTE!”) to add a bit of insult to the injury.

        “Well!” sighed a breathless Davy, pinning his reeling opponent to prepare a killing blow. “It was wonderful to see you both again, however briefl—AAARRGH!!”

        Davy Jones cried out in pain as a great white shark took a great white bite out of his leg. Razor Rex had lurched at him with limbs of pitch black wax, pulling him to the ground to seize him in her mighty beartrap jaws.

        “RRGH!! ANNOYING LITTLE MUTT—”

        Davy’s shout was cut short by the shadow that eclipsed him. Bruce Burger towered over his quarry, holding a wooden stake high in his sole remaining hand.

        “Likewise, Mr. Jones,” squeaked the spirit that had been Gwen from his shoulder. “I have dreamt of this reunion for what feels like an eternity.”

        The only weapon that could truly kill a vampire thrust straight down towards the heart of Davy Jones—

        “DAD!!”

        Cody hadn’t known that he could speak... just as the Doctors Burger hadn’t known that the monster they had been prepared to slay had raised a son. The stake stopped short an inch above its target. Before one second ticked into the next, Davy had exacted his revenge: a feral bite tore free a chunk of pale green flesh from Doctor Burger’s sutured calf. Kah-ting! He struck the wooden skewer from the flinching zombie’s hand, sending it sailing off across the room, then pummeled Doctor Burger with the blunt end of his backswing. Spitting eldritch sinew to the floor, Davy whirled on Razor Rex.

        There was a puff of blown-out birthday candle smoke and then a sound like cheering children. Davy’s hook struck floorboards where a shark had just been: Razor Rex was back to normal, levitating out of harm’s way with a strange box in her hand.

        “CH-CHILL OUT, DAVE!” she screeched as she retreated. “YOU’RE COVERED IN BLOOD AND YOU LOOK LIKE A BLOATED CADAVER—CAN YOU REALLY BLAME A SHARK FOR CHOWING DOWN?”

        “Th-that power!” gasped a mousey Gwen, swirling on her swaying husband’s shoulder. “How did you—”

        “OOPS!” The box that Razor Rex was holding—a gift wrapped in blue paper flecked with white shark silhouettes, tied up with a ribbon of bright, otherworldly rainbow—vanished from sight with a magical whoosh.

        Suddenly, while the Doctors Burger were distracted, Davy crashed upon them like a wave in gale-force winds.

        “I’ll keep your PIECES in FORMALDEHYDE, you labrat!” he snarled as they grappled at the portal’s shrouded threshold. “I’ll DISSECT YOUR MIND to STUDY what DEFECT could spawn DELUSIONS of DEFEATING ME!”

        Bruce Burger braced himself against the onslaught, locking his dead eyes with Davy’s. The vampire’s gaze flickered past him... then returned arm-in-arm with a devious grin.

        “On second thought... killing you would be too kind,” he hissed.

        Bruce Burger realized what he planned to do and thrust a hand towards Fauxbia, accelerated by a spark of wife-fueled reflex. The Witch shrieked as cold fingers closed like a vice around her eye socket. Davy, however, struck before the doctors had a chance to stop his scheme. The force of the blow wrenched the key from the Fear Witch’s skull.

        Ed’s parents were pushed back past reality, key held tight in Bruce’s hand, as the portal flashed and flickered closed behind them.

        The Great Unknown, through Peekaboo, stared at the closed door that had once led to the world beyond its prison. Then it slowly shrank back into fog and endless sleep.