After returning to the neighborhood, Brian and his sister were out of the woods. While they didn't have any great plan of action, they did have a plan, if you count something as simple as talking to some neighbors as a plan. The building in front of them was a large white house. Except for the fact that the driveway now ended in a forest instead of a street and the giant spiders crawling along the roof, it looked pretty ordinary, however, neither Brian nor Elizabeth were particularly fond of spiders, so they decided that it might be best to start with a different house.

  “Yeah... no!”

  “We'll just try a different one, they likely all aren't infested by spiders. Do you know any of these people?”

  “No, they are just strangers that share a street with us, when would I have met them?”

  “Didn't you go to a party on the block once?”

  Elizabeth had gone to a party once, but it was only once, she wasn't really a huge fan of parties. Not enough crosswords usually.

  "No?"

  As they walked along the edge of the woods, looking for the perfect, non-spider-infested house to make friends with, well they were hoping to talk to the people in the house, but well, Elizabeth Bird and maybe even Brian probably wouldn't have any issue making friends with a house, houses, when they aren't infested by spiders, can be much better friends than people maybe, Elizabeth notices that the sounds of conversation could be heard from a certain house. They decided to start with that one.

  Elizabeth knocked on the door of 904 Reedwodehouse Road, the home of Dr. Edward Edwards, and currently the most happening residence around.

  The Door soon opened and the Bird siblings introduced themselves to Dr. Edwards, who had just returned downstairs and answered the door, it was his house after all. Dr. Edwards introduced them to everyone, and Brian tried to keep track of all the names and families.

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  From 902 there was George and Mindy Howard who seemed a bit in denial about everything, or at least monsters, well George anyway, Mindy was reading. From 904, the house they were in was Dr. Edward Edwards who lived alone and apparently knew their uncle very well. When he asked about him, neither Brian nor Elizabeth knew how to respond, not wanting to admit they'd just left him asleep in a monster afflicted house that then turned into a dungeon. From 906 was an individual named Tom that seemed to be about Brian's age and was very annoying, in Brians's opinion anyway. There was Susanna and Sam Everclear from 908 and a Paul and Saul Call from house 910 assuming Brian got their very rhyme names right. From 912 were Betty, her mother Mary, her father Kyle, and her grandmother Patricia. Apparently nobody had answered the door at 914 and from 916 was Ryan Winters who was mostly rememberable for his tophat. Finally, from 918 there was Anna Tusk, and also nobody from 920 was at the gathering but somewhere apparently there was somebody named Lucy Skyfish from 922 but Dr. Edwards had been unable to locate her to make the introductions.

  Anna Tusk tuned out to know their cousin Zack. Anna was rather disappointed to find out that they hadn't brought Zack with them to this gathering. He was however about to show up the party very shortly. Nobody at the party had any way of knowing this, and so Anna was very disappointed.

  Zack Bird was speeding down a hill in a shopping cart with a yellow duck on his shoulder and a bike helmet on his head. He wasn't balancing the helmet, instead, he was quite sensibly wearing it, and the duck seemed to take care of all the balance necessary to stay on his shoulder all by itself. Zack smiled and the duck quacked as the shopping cart approached the shimmering blue portal at high speeds for a shopping cart. All was right in the world, well not really but things were going alright for Zack Bird, or at the very least they were going according to the plans of the duck on his shoulder and the was okay too. The duck quaked again, letting Zack know they were about to enter the portal in front of them and everything was going just perfectly and not to worry because their speed was neither too fast nor too slow to harm them as they went through the portal. The Duck conveyed all this to Zack just by quaking but that was fine because apparently Zack was able to understand ducks now, or at least this duck.

  Zack's shopping cart entered the portal and then quickly emerged from the portal. There was a lot of confusion shouting and such as the shopping cart was halted in its journey by colliding with and knocking over George Howard who had just entered the kitchen to get some more of that yummy pasta salad. Well actually George had been in the process of scooping some pasta salad onto his plate, so not only did he get knocked down painfully, the pasta salad went everywhere. Quite the mess.