Crypt Suzette

by Maya Corrigan

  Val then gave Sandy the Fictionistas’ names. Sandy hadn’t heard of Casper, Wilson, Ruth, or Morgan. Apparently none of them had impinged on Suzette enough that she brought them up in conversation with her cousin. “Do you remember the name of the family in the car that got smashed in the accident?” After Sandy shook her head, Val went on to her next question. “When did the accident happen?”

  “Between Thanksgiving and Christmas eight years ago. I can’t get any more specific than that. I was away at college with exams on my mind.”

  Val now had enough details to research the incident. She stepped toward the door. “I’ll call the chief of police while you finish what you have to do here. Let me know if you need more bags or boxes to pack things in.”

  She went downstairs, elated at the progress she’d made this afternoon. The information from Maria and Sandy had cemented the front-runners among the suspects. Lloyd Leerman was the most obvious person who could have harassed Suzette for years, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d killed her. Anyone who sent poison-pen notes and engaged in dirty tricks for such a long time obviously enjoyed that activity. What was the point of killing the prey you loved to torture?

  Nick remained high on Val’s list, though he almost certainly hadn’t been the person who’d harassed Suzette for years. But the harassment and the hit-and-run didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other.

  Val called the chief and recounted her conversations with Maria and Sandy. He said Sandy was welcome to drop in and talk to him anytime. He’d be in his office until seven. After giving Sandy directions to the police station, Val sat down at the computer in the study.

  She had no luck finding any mention of either Suzette or Lloyd in an accident near Cumberland. She left the names out of her next search and restricted it to the time period Sandy had given her. Scrolling through the results, she found a short article in the Cumberland Times-News, which included details about the location and time of the accident.

  The article reported that a car driven by a minor had hit another vehicle. The driver had escaped serious injury but the car owner, an adult male sitting in the passenger seat, had been taken to the hospital. The driver and three passengers of the vehicle that was struck, members of the O’Shaughnessy family from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had been hospitalized, one of them in serious but stable condition. An investigation was pending.

  Val found no follow-up articles about the investigation, leaving her in the dark about the consequences Lloyd suffered. Had he been jailed, fined, or otherwise punished so that he’d carried a grudge against Suzette for years?

  Val got up from the computer and glanced at her watch. She had just enough time to grab a bite to eat before heading to the haunted house. She looked forward to laughing at mock horrors rather than puzzling over real evils.

  Chapter 23

  The Bayport haunted house was a misnomer in all ways—not in Bayport, not a house, and not haunted by the dead who used to occupy it. It was commercial space currently without a tenant in a strip mall outside town.

  The bake sale table was set up in the arcade that ran along the storefronts. Val found a spot for the Chessie monster cookies between the tombstone brownies and a chocolate cake topped with a spider web of white icing.

  With ten minutes to go before her shift at the bake sale table started, Val went over to the ticket table outside the haunted house entrance. Ruth McWilliams was collecting money and handing out tickets. Instead of the Lady Macbeth costume she’d worn Saturday night, Ruth had opted for a glamorous witch outfit. Sequins covered her pointed hat. She wore a black beaded evening jacket, a long velvet skirt, and red claw-like fingernails.

  “I’ve been meaning to call you about catering,” Ruth said. “It’s for the New Year’s Day brunch I hold for my neighbors.”

  “That day’s available. Let’s talk soon.” Val glanced around. “I’m surprised there isn’t a line snaking around the mall to get into the haunted house.”

  “Tickets sales have been brisk,” Ruth said. “Our orderly system avoids lines. People buy tickets to enter at a certain time. They can walk around the shops until their time slot. While they’re waiting, a lot of them buy snacks from the bake sale.”

  “A smart strategy.” It would increase the money collected for the high school drama club. “I’d like two tickets for seven o’clock.”

  “Sold out. You can go in at a quarter past seven.” Ruth watched Val fish money from her shoulder bag. “Why is your wrist wrapped in an elastic bandage? Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “I tripped on my way to work this morning. I think it’s a mild sprain.”

  “Ice it and, if the pain doesn’t go away in the next day or two, have a doctor look at it.”

  “Thank you for the advice.” Which Val had also heard from several café customers. She gave Ruth the money and took the tickets.

  “There’s Wilson.” Ruth pointed to a dark green sports car going into a parking space. “You know, I wouldn’t have minded if he and Suzette got together. She was such a hard worker and would have had a good influence on him. He was quite torn up when she died.”

  “I noticed that.” Val also noticed that Ruth was now signaling that neither she nor Wilson had a reason to harm Suzette.

  “Wilson needed cheering up, so I contacted his ex-girlfriend from law school and invited her to visit.”

  He and a young woman with long blond hair got out of the car. Val watched them cross the parking lot, talking and laughing. Apparently, Wilson was recovering from Suzette’s death. “Are they visiting the haunted house?”

  “Later. First, they’re going to that escape room place that just opened.” Ruth pointed toward a storefront at the other end of the strip. “Have you been there?”

  “No, and I’ll never go. I avoid small locked rooms.”

  “Claustrophobic?” When Val nodded, Ruth looked sympathetic. “Me too. I hope Wilson’s ex isn’t. Maybe they’ll rekindle the spark if they’re enclosed in a tiny room. She’s already passed the bar exam and offered to help him study for it. Her family has the right connections.”

  Unlike Suzette’s. Val went back to the bake sale table. She waited on enough customers to keep from being bored during her stint at the table. Bram arrived while she was passing the baton to the next volunteer. He asked about her wrist, and she gave the same evasive answer she’d given everyone except Chief Yardley.

  At a quarter after seven, Val and Bram handed in their tickets and met their guide, a young man dressed like the Grim Reaper in a hooded black robe. He held the door open for the six people in the group—Val and Bram, two teenage girls, and a middle-aged couple. They stood in a dimly lit room the size of a vestibule. Fog swirled around a gate across from the door. Ominous music played, the kind that announces something bad is about to happen in a horror movie.

  The Grim Reaper spoke in a somber voice, “Hello, Boils and Ghouls. Welcome to the Bayport Halloween haunted house. Please silence your cell phones so as not to disturb the spirits.” He gave them a minute to do that and then said, “To get into the house, we must first pass through the burial ground and by the family crypt. Don’t make any loud noises in the graveyard, or you’ll wake the dead.”

  The teenagers giggled.

  He waited until they quieted down. “On Halloween night, ghosts and demons are especially active in the graveyard. I’ll follow you and try to keep the spirits from grabbing you from behind. Don’t be nervous, ladies. Remember, demons are a ghoul’s best friend.”

  Val and Bram groaned, while the girls went into fits of laughter.

  One of them moved toward the gate. “Can we go first?”

  “Only one of you can go first. The path through the graveyard is narrow. Single file, please.”

  The gate creaked open, as if pushed by an unseen hand. Val followed the girls through the gate and stepped into a cold, damp fog, Bram right behind her. The Grim Reaper pulled the gate shut once the middle-aged couple came in. It clanged with th
e finality of a prison-cell door. For a moment they were in total darkness.

  He switched on a flashlight that faintly illuminated the foggy space.

  The “path through the graveyard” was a three-foot-wide hallway with crypts painted on the side walls and moldy tombstones, probably plastic, sticking up from the fog-shrouded floor. Val was reminded of the fog on the peninsula road the morning Suzette was killed.

  Menacing sounds came through the flimsy wall on her right—jungle noises punctuated by screams of the visitors who’d made it through the graveyard and now faced more terrors inside the house. With her mild claustrophobia, Val began to get nervous. Once she made it through this tunnel-like antechamber, though, she could handle anything.

  The girls in front of her squealed, a sign that something creepy was about to happen. Val tensed up. Bats swooped down on her. She jumped back with a cry.

  Bram steadied her, his hands on her shoulders. “You promised me you wouldn’t scream.”

  “That wasn’t a scream. It was an eek.”

  His grip on her grew firmer. “You’re trembling. Are you okay?”

  “It’s chilly in here. I’m shivering.” Then she blurted out the truth, “I’m also a bit claustrophobic.”

  “Please continue,” the Grim Reaper said. “You’re holding things up.”

  The sooner Val got out of this passage, the better. As she moved forward, the floor seemed to tilt upward. She couldn’t see it because of the low-lying haze, but it felt as if she was on a ramp. The fog dissipated as she went higher and the ramp leveled off. She could clearly see the teenage girls a few feet in front of her.

  They screamed and ran forward, shaking the wood ramp.

  Val stopped and steeled herself for spiders, snakes, or slimy creatures to descend on her. She took three cautious steps. Below her, under broken floorboards, was a decomposing body with bugs crawling all over it. Yipes! She edged around the hole in the floor, assuring herself it couldn’t be a real hole or it would be a safety hazard. It must be plexiglass. She rushed down the ramp and huddled with the teenagers near the end of the passageway. Good to know that a rotting corpse being eaten by bugs could make her forget her claustrophobia.

  Where was Bram? She peered behind her and saw him dimly outlined. He was on his hands and knees peering down at the corpse. He scrambled up and came down the ramp toward her.

  “What were you doing there?” she said.

  “Checking out the insects. That was a pretty good illusion. They’re mostly plastic bugs, but with live crickets moving around them, the activity makes you believe they’re all real. Little dishes of water down there keep the crickets alive longer.”

  “Someone caught all those crickets?”

  “Someone bought them at a pet store. Food for reptile and amphibian pets.”

  Was he going to dissect every illusion at the haunted house?

  The guide followed the middle-aged couple down the ramp and said, “Now we’ll go into the house. You must not enter any room unless I tell you, and you must never touch anything. If you don’t follow those rules, one of two things will happen. You will immediately die of fright, or you will be led out by security guards. Either way, your ticket is not refundable.”

  He led them through a door in the wall behind which they’d heard squeals and screams. They entered a hall, not as narrow as the path through the graveyard, and short enough that Val could see an opening at the end. She’d gotten through the worst of the experience.

  The Grim Reaper said, “I’ll send you down this hall and the next one in pairs so you can appreciate the works of art on the walls. They have come down from the cursed family who lived here until the last one died. Some of them were murderers, others were murder victims.” He paused. “None rest easy.”

  Val and Bram stopped at a portrait of a bearded man in Renaissance garb. His image faded to reveal a hideous ghoul.

  Ugly, but way better than that pit full of crawlies, Val decided. She angled right to go down another hall, passing a painting.

  Bram said, “Hold on. We’re supposed to look at all the art.”

  Val went back to study the distorted still life with dead animals hung above a table of food. A hairy hand reached out to grab them. They both jumped back, and the hand disappeared.

  As they followed the teenagers around another corner, the guide moved forward and used his flashlight to illuminate a dark hallway. “Take a peek at the room on your right, the butler’s pantry. It’s best not to disturb the butler. He always loses his head when visitors come to the house.”

  A wire spider web prevented visitors from entering the dark room. As the group peered through the web, a dim light went on. A headless man in a white shirt and suit stood in front of a window. He held a tray of glasses in one hand and his severed head in the other hand. He stood so still that Val assumed he was a dummy. Then the butler stepped toward them, the teenagers cried out, and the room went black.

  Val was sorry to move on. “If I saw him in the light again, I might figure out where his head really was. It must have been inside his suit.”

  Bram slowed down to widen the gap between them and the teenagers. He whispered, “The thing that looked like a window behind the butler is really just a piece of black fabric with a frame around it. The butler wears a hood made of the same fabric. With the proper lighting, you can’t see the hood against the background.”

  “How do you know that?” She expected him to say he’d studied optics or stagecraft.

  “I had ambitions to be a magician as a kid. I practiced my tricks and illusions a lot, but sadly, I wasn’t good enough to make a living at magic.”

  Val was surprised and intrigued. She loved magic shows. “You’re the first magician I’ve known. I hope you’ll show me some of your tricks. But why are you whispering?”

  “The magician code of ethics forbids telling the public the methods used in any illusion.”

  “You broke a rule.” Possibly to impress her? “I won’t reveal your secret to anyone.”

  The Grim Reaper directed them to gather in an empty room off the hallway. When they were inside, he closed the door behind them. The dim lights in the room went out. The teenagers giggled nervously.

  Val tamped down her growing anxiety. The room had space for all of them, and the walls were nowhere near as close as those in the tunnel-like graveyard.

  The distant hum of an engine came from outside the building. The noise increased, suggesting an approaching vehicle. It got louder and louder.

  Val’s heart thudded. Hearing something come closer and not seeing it was terrifying. If she were outside, she’d be looking for the source of the noise and diving for cover. Why hadn’t Suzette jumped out of the way of an approaching car?

  The motor roared louder.

  One of the teenagers shouted over the noise, “I’m getting out, feeling my way to the door. I’ve got the knob. It won’t turn. We’re locked in!”

  She pounded on the door.

  Chapter 24

  The motor noise became deafening. Val covered her ears. A second later, the side wall lit up with the headlights of a huge truck coming straight for them.

  She cringed. Bram wrapped an arm around her.

  The girl at the door screamed.

  The room went black, the truck disappeared, and the Grim Reaper opened the door. “How did you like that?”

  “You shouldn’t have locked us in,” the middle-aged woman grumbled.

  “The door wasn’t locked, ma’am. That’s against fire regulations. But it fits tight in the frame. Pulling harder would have opened it.”

  Val took deep breaths to calm herself. “Why did I think this would be fun? I was scared, even knowing it was a trick.”

  Bram nodded. “That was pretty intense.”

  The Grim Reaper directed them around another corner. The partitions had turned the space into a maze. Val felt as if she was now doubling back to where they’d started.

  The Reaper passed them and stoo
d before a closed door at the end of a short hall. “You’ll have to go through these doors and the next corridor in pairs. On your way to the next turn, you’ll pass by the nursery. Be very quiet, or you’ll wake the baby. Let sleeping babies lie.”

  A discordant version of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” came from a speaker in the hall. He opened the door for the teenagers and closed it behind them. Half a minute later, the girls’ squawks were audible in the hall.

  Then it was Val and Bram’s turn to proceed through the hall. Within a few steps, they came to a large hole in the wall. Chicken wire was stretched across the opening and beyond it was only blackness. The sound of whimpering came from the other side of the wire. Val backed away from the hole. “I’m not up for carnage in a nursery or anything disgusting coming at me through the chicken wire.”

  The baby wailed lustily as if protesting Val’s indifference. The crying reminded her of Morgan’s breakdown when the Fictionistas met in the CAT Corner. After holding her grief in check during most of the meeting, it had burst out when Ruth asked about Suzette’s injuries.

  Val watched the black hole in the wall from a few feet away. The baby’s howling verged on hysteria. Bram peered through the chicken wire. The crying stopped.

  Then a huge gruesome face slammed into the wire and a banshee shriek rang out.

  Bram sprang away from the distorted face. The teenagers watching from the far end of the hall laughed.

  Val was relieved when the Grim Reaper announced their tour of the haunted house was almost over. He shepherded them toward a ten-foot-wide opening in the wall with drapes across it. “This is our final treat for the night. You have standing-room tickets for the theater, and the curtain will soon rise.”

  A voice came from behind the curtain. “It was a foggy, cloudy morning,” a man with a British accent narrated. “The dull weather and the melancholy business upon which we were engaged depressed my spirits.”

  Ominous organ music played as the curtain opened and a spotlight illuminated a dingy yellow wall with peeling wallpaper. The rest of the room remained dark. The unseen narrator spoke up again. “It was a large square room, looking all the larger from the absence of all furniture. A vulgar flaring paper adorned the walls, but it was blotched in places with mildew, and here and there great strips had become detached and hung down, exposing the yellow plaster beneath.”