Liz Jasper - Underdead 02

by Underdead in Denial

  A couple of young high school boys near the front made barking military noises of man power and stepped to the front. Just then, the doors opened behind me and Tom, my erstwhile double date, stepped slowly out. If he noticed me, he didn’t show it. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or relieved.

  The crowd quieted a little. He was dressed impeccably in top hat and tails. His shirt and gloves were gleaming white and his black patent shoes shone like they’d been rubbed with Vaseline, which they probably had. The only thing marring the look was his face, which had been made up to look like a zombie. He had deep circles under his eyes and his freckles were hidden under a convincing three-day-underground pallor. He scanned the crowd and a flapping hunk of flesh nearly fell off his face. By some miracle of makeup—probably involving crazy glue—it held. When he spoke, his voice was slow and as low as a foghorn.

  “Come with me.”

  Without looking back, he walked stiffly through the doors. I collected fifteen tickets and re-hooked the velvet rope. A short time later I heard fifteen people scream.

  In a few minutes, the next “tour guide” lurched out from behind the double doors in a halting crab-like step, hunched over and dressed as Igor—the Young Frankenstein variety. Ian was one of the principals at the theater. I knew him only slightly but wasn’t surprised he’d had gone the comic route. He was the class clown of the theater group, always playing the jokester in any production.

  “Walk this way,” he said, and scuttled back toward the door. He gave me an exaggerated, lascivious wink and disappeared inside. A couple of eleven-year-olds near the front mimicked his hunchback impersonation and the rest of the crowd followed.

  The third and last tour guide was female, dressed as a witch. Or rather, like Marcia Brady dressing as a witch. Frankly, my outfit, which, truth be told, was only recognizable as a vampire costume by the fake teeth, looked almost professional next to hers. I recognized her immediately as Angelina James, the lead female in the company, but she wasn’t wasting any of her acting skills on a haunted house. She came out, collected her group, and led them inside. I might have been invisible.

  By the time the three tour guides had cycled round again, the crowd was straining against the ropes. It looked as if Marty wouldn’t have to wait until everyone went back to school and work tomorrow for word to get out. The cell phones were doing the job.

  As I re-hooked the velvet rope, someone tried to shove their way forward enough to guarantee a spot in the next group. The crowd heaved and a kid at the front of the line went sprawling at my feet. I helped him up, invited him to wait on my side of the rope and, furious, faced the crowd.

  I crossed my arms and raised my voice, which from years of yelling to teammates across soccer fields, basketball courts and running tracks was loud enough to be heard clear out to the back of the lobby. “All pushing will stop!”

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  For a moment, I reveled in my success. And then I realized what I had done. I’d used my vampire glare. Not just on one person, but on a whole crowd. That vampire power was popping out of me with unsettling regularity of late, but I’d never done it to so many people before.

  I quickly turned away to break the spell. And found myself staring into the mirror that hung on the wall next to me.

  As I stared into it, the crowd disappeared. My stomach clenched and couldn’t seem to draw air into my body. My reflection wasn’t just dim, it was gone. Completely.

  It had happened. I’d turned.

  A squeaky voice at my elbow said excitedly, “Cool mirror. How do they do that?”

  The boy I’d pulled up from the floor was pointing excitedly at the mirror. “Look, I’ve disappeared.”

  My breath flooded back with a sudden whoosh.

  “Trick mirror,” I whispered. I’d forgotten.

  The door opened behind me and zombie Tom waltzed out for his next group. I had to try twice to unlatch the velvet rope before the mechanism opened properly, but by the time I’d taken fifteen tickets I had myself back under control.

  Marty came through the crowd and stepped around the barrier to stand beside me. I could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes as his gaze roved over the crowd.

  “This is going so well!” Dropping his voice and leaning in closer, he said, “Another night like this and we’ll be able to hire more equity actors and take the Playhouse to the next level.” His beaming smile faded abruptly. “No, no, no! Where are your vampire teeth?”

  I schooled myself not to look in the corner where I’d tossed them. “I took them out to talk and they must have fallen off the desk.”

  “Well, we’ll just get you another set!”

  Stepping behind the desk, he rummaged through a drawer for another pair. Handing them to me, he waited expectantly for me to put them in.

  I didn’t. “Really, Marty, I’d prefer not to wear them. They’re uncomfortable and they make it very hard to talk.

  The genial host disappeared. “You’re part of the haunted house experience, Jo. The face of it. The front man. The first person everyone sees. You set the tone for the whole thing.” He stabbed a finger toward the reflection-free trick mirror. “People want to see a vampire.”

  I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see them roll. Reminding myself this was for charity, I put in the teeth.

  He opened his arms wide. “There! Now you look like a proper vampire.”

  All at once, goose bumps rippled down my arms and the sweat froze on the back of my neck.

  “Indeed,” said a low voice, behind me. “The fangs and cape give it verisimilitude. Without them, who would know?”

  Slowly, I turned around. Will, wearing black Armani, leaned negligently against the will-call desk. A wide smile cut grooves into his lean cheeks and his blue eyes gleamed with laughter. He was positioned in front of a small gilt mirror—a real one.

  I was the only one who seemed to notice that he didn’t reflect. At all.

  I had never seen Will near a mirror. I had just assumed from my own reflecting issues that that part of vampire lore was true. Having my theory confirmed was hardly vindicating.

  Marty said to me, “See? He gets it.”

  I ignored him. How had Will gotten in here? As if in answer, the singsong voice of the volunteer manning the box office rang through the lobby. “Thank you, here’s your change. Go in and be haunted!”

  Will was saying something in a low voice to Marty. I was moving forward to intercede when my step was frozen by the prick of something sharp against the base of my neck. A musky perfume hit me like a blast of ammonia.

  “All it would take is one swipe,” a soft female voice whispered in my ear. It was the voice of my nightmares. “By the time anyone in this crowd realizes you aren’t playacting, you’ll have bled to death on the floor.”

  “Will would know.” The husky timbre of fear in my voice belied my brave words.

  The prick pushed deeper into my neck and hovered, vibrating, at the exact point of breaking skin.

  “You’re lucky Will protects you.”

  With a little shove, she let me go. I whipped around to face her.

  Natasha. If a horny twenty-five-year-old male were to imagine a vampire seductress, Natasha would be it. She was curvy—very—in all the right places, somehow managing to be both long legged and petite. Tonight she wore a black, barely there dress and strappy stilettos that left no one in doubt of those curves. Her long, streaky blonde hair was tousled into artless perfection that normal people could only achieve with the help of a skilled hairdresser. The only things marring the picture were her eyes. They were as cold and hard as ice.

  Nothing and no one scared me more than Natasha. Will might have bitten my neck last fall, but since then I’d seen something…honorable…in him. A throwback kernel of gentlemanly conduct. It might just be wishful thinking, but I didn’t believe he would look me in the eye and stick a knife in my back.

  Natasha, on the other hand, would do it in a heartbeat. If sh
e could get away with it.

  To the gasping delight of the teenage boys at the front of the line, Natasha was adjusting her cleavage. Either she was hiding an insultingly small pocket knife down her front or she’d just threatened me with a fingernail. Neither scenario filled me with a sense of relief. The smart mouse knows not to relax when the cat is “merely playing”.

  Marty broke off from his rapt conversation with Will and Natasha melted unseen into the crowd. Under Will’s genial blue gaze, Marty stepped purposely in my direction.

  “Jo, why don’t you take a break? I can handle it here for a while.” Winking broadly, he took the ticket basket out of my hands and steered me toward Will.

  I pulled out of Marty’s grasp and slid behind the will-call desk. Will might lack Natasha’s nasty streak, but that didn’t mean that keeping a solid hunk of wood between us wasn’t a good idea.

  “What did you say to the house manager?” I demanded.

  Will’s grin spread across his face as he focused on my mouth. “No need for those, love. If you’re interested, I would be happy to—”

  I wrenched the fake teeth out of my mouth. “What are you doing here?”

  In reply, he looked me slowly up and down in masculine appraisal. “I always thought the Hollywood portrayal of vampires a bit overdone, but now I’m beginning to like it.”

  He reached out a hand to fiddle with the ties of my cape. As his fingers grazed my collarbone, a rush of heat pounded through my body and I made the mistake of meeting his eyes. Everything became blue and serene. All the stress and worries left my body as if I were floating in a Tahitian lagoon. Barely conscious of what I was doing, I planted my hands on the desk and leaned toward him. The haunted house, the room full of people, it all faded away.

  His lips gently brushed mine. I leaned into the kiss as naturally as a wave is pulled back into the sea. The little hairs on my neck whispered warnings. I ignored them. The warnings grew louder and then rose to a shout, jolting me upright. As I blinked my surroundings back into focus, Natasha strolled up with a seductive roll of hips. Boom-shiska-boom-shiska-boom. She wrapped her arm possessively through Will’s and gave me a wolfish smile that turned my legs to ice.

  “Hello, Jo,” she purred.

  Her welcome might have been more convincing if she hadn’t just threatened to kill me.

  We were both surprised when Will gently unwound Natasha’s arm from his. She flashed me a venomous look that practically singed my eyelashes and batted her own curly, mascaraed ones at Will. Her smile would have had most men dragging her off to the bedroom but Will was not most men. It bounced right off him.

  “Leave us,” he told her softly.

  Every human male in the room started to drool as she dutifully moved through the crowd, rounded hips swaying like a siren’s call. Boom-shiska-boom-shiska-boom.

  Only she wasn’t heading away toward the exit but toward the front of the line.

  Marty was no match for her. Grinning like an idiot, he waved her forward through the crowd. A hunky young blond who looked like he’d stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog turned in annoyance when he felt her cutting up through the line. But his irritation melted away, replaced by a look of devoted wonder as she slid her arm through his.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered. I had to call someone. Gavin, my brain slowly supplied.

  I patted around my waist for what seemed like hours before I remembered my cell phone was in the women’s dressing area. I cursed myself for being so stupid and vain as to wear something without pockets.

  Marty was smiling and nodding and reaching for the door handle to let Natasha and her new arm candy into the haunted house. Somewhere in there still were a few dozen kids and their parents. I fought to shake off the strange lethargy that clung to me like spider webs. She could bite a dozen screaming victims and everyone would think it was just another performance.

  “Marty, don’t!”

  It was too late. Or maybe he didn’t hear me. He tugged at the closest double door and when it didn’t open, tugged harder.

  “Always a pleasure, Jo, love,” said a laughing voice in my ear.

  I spun back toward Will, but he was no longer there. His parting caress lingered on the bare skin at the nape of my neck like a brand.

  With a shiver of awareness, I searched the crowd. How did he disappear like that? Was he exceptionally light on his feet or was it another inexplicable, irrational vampire trait? And what the heck did he mean with that cryptic goodbye? Why had he come? To see me…or was he looking for new recruits?

  A grunt of frustration brought my attention back to the present. Marty was tugging hard now on the stubborn left double door to the haunted house. A renewed sense of fear lent wings to my clumsy feet as I pushed through the waiting group of fifteen, trying to get to Natasha.

  All at once, Marty gave up and reached for the other door, which opened so easily he stumbled a little. Regaining his poise, he waved Natasha through with a small bow. As I hurtled over the rope, she and the Abercrombie knockoff disappeared through the gap into the darkness.

  Marty shut the door firmly behind them.

  I was too late. “Marty,” I panted. “You need to let me—”

  “Hey, buddy, fix the darned door so the rest of us can get through!”

  Marty shook his head, looking as if someone had splashed water on him. Frowning, he grasped the left door handle with both hands and gave it an experimental tug, then a sharp yank.

  The door opened. Tom, deathly pale in his zombie makeup, stood in the doorway, glassy-eyed, looking back at the crowd. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, he toppled to the ground like a felled tree. His top hat rolled to a stop at my feet.

  Grinding to a halt, I stared in growing horror at Tom’s unmoving form stretched out across the entranceway to the haunted house. His right hand was a frozen claw suspended in mid-scrabble toward his chest. If he was playing dead, it was remarkably convincing.

  “Look. Dead zombie.” A young teenage boy standing behind me let out a high-pitched giggle and pointed at Tom.

  His buddy beside him snickered. “Didn’t know you could kill a zombie. Thought they were already dead.”

  It was a setup no actor could resist, but Tom didn’t bounce back to his feet. He just lay there.

  “Oh God.” My words were a silent puff of breath.

  The boys stopped high-fiving each other over their wit, their giggles replaced by a wide-eyed silence that galvanized me into motion.

  I reached for my cell phone before I remembered I didn’t have it.

  “Someone call 9-1-1!” I said aloud and positioned myself as a barrier between Tom and his tour group. Twenty people reached for their cell phones.

  Marty sprang to action as if someone had stuck a pin in him. Squatting with a vast creaking of knees, he reached two fingers toward Tom’s neck.

  His arm stopped halfway to its goal. He made a strange noise deep in his throat and tried for a pulse in Tom’s wrist instead.

  Gulping at the acid rising in my throat, I craned forward to scan Tom’s neck for bite marks. Hoping, to my shame, that the telltale marks wouldn’t be too obvious.

  Marty gently let go of Tom’s wrist and placed it neatly along Tom’s side. Meeting my intent gaze with a look of heart-wrenching disbelief, he barely shook his head. It was the first time I’d seen him unsure of what to do.

  I felt dizzy with disbelief…and guilt. It was my fault Tom was dead, as surely as if I’d killed him myself. I knew what Natasha was and yet I’d let her go in the haunted house. I should have fought harder to stop her.

  I stood there, staring at Tom’s neck, unable to look away. His skin was chalky and waxen and just a tiny bit green.

  Odd.

  I couldn’t see any blood. Or teeth marks.

  Marty hadn’t felt for a wrist pulse because Tom’s jugular was destroyed, but because his neck was encased in thick zombie latex. I was so relieved I nearly laughed aloud.

  One of the boys tapped
lightly on my shoulder. His voice cracked so badly up and down the register with nerves and hormone changes that I could barely understand him. “Um, what’s the address here?”

  “It’s…here, give it to me.” I took the phone from his clammy outstretched hand. “We’re in the front lobby of the Milverne Theater on the corner of Sixth and Long Beach Boulevard. One of the actors has collapsed on the floor.”

  I cupped my hand around the phone and lowered my voice, wanting to protect the boys from knowing what they could undoubtedly see for themselves. “He has no pulse and he’s not breathing.”

  A calm, authoritative female voice replied, “Thank you for reporting the emergency. We have already logged the incident and an emergency vehicle is on the way. Please stay on the line in case we need further assistance. Your name is…?”

  I handed the phone back to its young owner who provided his name in an excited squeak.

  The emergency operator wasn’t kidding. The EMTs must have been right around the corner, for the red fire department truck screeched to a halt in front of the theater with a blare of sirens, flooding the lobby windows with flashes of orange and yellow lights.

  “Stand back, please!”

  A paramedic parted the crowd at a jog, followed by two more paramedics carrying a stretcher. As we backed up to give them room, a black-and-white police car pulled up behind the ambulance and two patrol officers got out and came inside.

  With practiced efficiency, the EMTs fit a mask over Tom’s nose and mouth and gently pumped in air with what looked like a small blue rubber football. As they lifted him onto the stretcher, the door from the haunted house opened and a bored looking Angelina stepped into the lobby to collect her next group.

  She stopped, irritated, when she realized there wasn’t one waiting for her. It was only as she looked around for someone to blame that she noticed the paramedics. Her eyes fell to the stretcher.

  “Is that Tom? What happened? Tom!” She rushed toward him but one of the officers intercepted her. Wailing, arms flapping like windmills, she tried to resist. “Noooo!”

  The officer snapped a curt command and to my surprise she stopped at once and stood docilely where he placed her. Her witch’s hat had gone askew. Reaching up a slim hand to right it, she watched quietly with the rest of us as the EMTs whisked Tom’s unmoving form out to the ambulance and drove off in a blare of sirens.