by John Everson
“What the hell?” he whispered.
“I’m dead,” Katie said. “I’ve been telling you.”
“That’s insane,” Mike said. “I’ve been with you for weeks. We’ve made love; we’ve eaten and drunk beer together. You’ve been working in the haunted house – other people have seen and touched you.”
“You thought you felt me in bed,” she said. “And you’ve dumped out a lot of nearly-full cans of beer after our nights together, haven’t you?”
He shrugged at that. He had simply figured that Katie was really a lightweight.
“I can make people see me pretty easily,” she said. “But without the locket, nobody can feel me. I’ve been careful not to get too near to anyone in the haunted house, so nobody has touched me.”
Mike kept shaking his head, as if in pantomiming no he could make the past few minutes disappear.
“I have been dead for a long, long time,” Katie said. “But I don’t want to be any longer.”
“So…” he said.
“So, I need the blood,” she said. “Living blood to touch my bones. Every night. And with every drop, I’ll come closer to being real again, instead of a ghost.”
“But I’ve touched you,” he said. “You’re not a ghost. I’ve felt you.”
“You think you have,” she said. “That locket is the key. It lets you feel me when I’m not really here.”
“What about Emery?” he asked. “I’ve touched her. She’s shoveled dirt and lifted boards with me.”
“Emery’s not the one who’s dead,” Katie answered. “I’ve kept her just as she was on the night she saved me. She sleeps on that bed of nails to constantly remind herself that she’s still alive. She grows distant, but she’s not dead like me.”
She waved a hand at the still silent man standing alone by the coffin. “If we can dress my bones with the blood of thirty victims – one every night in October – on Halloween night, my body will be reborn and my spirit will finally be able to walk again in the flesh. You’ll be able to hold me again.”
Mike shook his head as the enormity of what she suggested dawned on him. Katie was talking about stabbing people down here every night for the rest of the month. “No, no, no,” he said. “You can’t do that. If people start disappearing every night from here, they’ll shut this place down. And they’ll find you.”
Katie laughed. “They won’t find me,” she said. “They might find my bones. But I don’t think they’ll know what to do with those. They’re not taking a skeleton to prison.”
Mike couldn’t help but smile at that idea.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “People aren’t disappearing. We’re not killing anyone. In fact, right now you can help Emery bandage this one up and take him back to his natural habitat.”
Mike frowned at her. “This guy is going to go straight to the police and tell them about the two women who cut him. And now he’ll probably mention me too.”
“He won’t remember anything,” she said. “He’ll wake up and wonder how he got hurt and who bandaged him… but that’s as far as it’ll go. He’ll count the money in his wallet, count his blessings that he’s alive, and do his best to forget about it all. Does he look ready to tell tales?”
Mike looked at the man, who remained staring straight ahead, slack jawed. Blood dripped down his waist from the slice in his side.
“Fix him up,” Katie said to Emery. “It’s getting late and we don’t want him to be missed.”
Mike watched as Emery retrieved paper towels, tape and gauze from behind the coffin. She wiped off the blood, then held a piece of gauze over the wound. She looked up at him then, as if waiting for him to do something. When he didn’t move, she spoke softly. “Hold this,” she said.
Mike held the gauze in place and she covered it with medical tape. Moments later, she was guiding the man’s legs back into a pair of jeans, and Mike helped her pull a t-shirt over the man’s head. They might as well have been dressing a warm dummy; the man hadn’t moved on his own or said a word.
“When will he wake up?” Mike asked, as Emery worked on getting his shoes back on.
Katie shrugged. “Once he gets away from this house, the spell will wear off. Emery will take him to his car and drive him down the turnpike a ways. When he comes to in his car, he’ll wonder how he got hurt, but won’t remember anything. He might not even remember coming here. But a little piece of me will be reborn from the wash of his blood.”
“This is crazy,” Mike said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Katie leaned toward him and planted a kiss on his lips. He felt the spark, but as his arms instinctively went around her, they passed right through her shoulder blades.
“If you want to feel me again, you need to help Emery,” Katie said. “This is a matter of life and death. Mine.”
Mike took a breath and nodded. “C’mon,” he said to Emery and took the man’s elbow. Together they started walking the zombie-like man toward the door. When Mike looked over his shoulder to catch Katie’s eye, the room was empty.
All he saw behind him was the coffin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I knew it,” Jillie said. She pointed at a small article in the Oak Forest Daily Southtown and then reached over the table and grabbed a handful of Ted’s fries. “There was a Missing Persons Report filed a couple days ago with the police. A girl from Oak Forest High School didn’t come home, and her friends said they didn’t know where she disappeared to. They said they lost her inside the haunted house.”
Ted’s eyes rose. He took another bite of his greasy cheeseburger.
“They said we were nuts. Well, I’m sure this is the same girl that I saw in the basement of that house. I’m going to the police station to show them this missing person notice. Maybe now they’ll want to talk more about what I saw.”
She reached across the table and Ted slapped her fingers away from his plastic container.
“I’m going to file a Missing Persons Report on my fries if you keep that up.”
“They’re not good for you anyway,” she said, and avoided his hand to snatch one.
“And they’re good for you?”
She shrugged. “I have more nervous energy than you. I’ll work it off.”
She crumpled up her sandwich wrapper from inside her red plastic container and stood up suddenly. “C’mon, let’s go over to the station.”
Ted shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. They already let you go once. You want to tempt fate?”
“No, I want to prove that they should have listened to me,” she said. “And then I want to get that house closed down before the witch gets anyone else.”
She snatched up Ted’s basket of fries as he shoved the last bite of his burger into his mouth.
“C’mon,” she said, and walked the basket to the trash. She took a handful of fresh cut fries and stuffed them in her mouth before emptying the rest in the trash.
“Damn, those are good,” she said, as Ted launched himself from the table to try to stop her.
His hands passed through air as she emptied the basket and set it on the top of the garbage can.
“Drive me to the police station?” she said. It was framed as a question, but there was no query about it. Ted sighed and looked longingly at the garbage can for a moment, before walking to the exit.
* * *
Jillie was three steps ahead of him as they walked into the station. She marched up to the intake window, where a woman in a blue uniform shirt sat behind a (presumably) bulletproof pane of glass. Her voice came through a round silver vent in the glass.
“How can I help you?” the woman asked. She sounded bored.
Jillie waved the paper in the air and then set it down and pointed at the Missing Persons Report. “I need to talk to an inspector,” she said. “I saw this girl m
urdered at the Bachelor’s Grove Haunted House two nights ago.”
The woman behind the desk looked skeptical. Then she fingered a button on the phone next to her. “Hey Bill, can you come up here a moment?” Then she pointed at an uncomfortable-looking plastic couch with orange vinyl cushions on the side of the room. “If you would wait over there…”
Jillie walked triumphantly over to the couch and flopped down on the edge. She could not wait to let the cops know they’d screwed up when they refused to listen to her. She felt bad about the high school girl, but she felt good about the chance to shut down the house before more people were killed.
Ted sat next to her, but he slouched into the chair. He did not look anxious to face the police for the second time this week.
A minute later a white steel door opened to the right of the reception booth and a big man in full officer uniform stepped into the lobby.
“Can I help you?” he asked the two of them. A silver rectangle pinned to his blue shirt said ‘Richton’. Above it, a thin badge boasted, ‘Detective’.
Jillie leapt back to her feet, and crossed the room in a heartbeat, holding out the newspaper.
“This missing girl from Oak Forest,” she said. “I saw her dead the other night at the Bachelor’s Grove Haunted House. She was downstairs in the basement after the house closed.”
Detective Richton nodded slowly and took the newspaper from her.
“You’re the one they found trespassing there, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “That doesn’t matter though. The point is, I saw the girl. She was lying in a pool of blood and the cops that night didn’t believe me because someone came back and put a manikin in her place before they got there. Now you need to listen to me, because she’s missing. I was right. And someone or something at that house did her in. You need to shut the place down and actually investigate it.”
The officer looked at the newspaper article and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?” she said. “I’m telling you, the house is connected with this girl’s disappearance. And you’re not going to find her alive. She may be at the bottom of that pond by the cemetery.”
Detective Richton shook his head again.
“No, she’s not,” he said. “And we are not looking for her either.”
“What do you mean?”
“That article was out of date before the newspaper was even printed,” he said. “That girl is safe and sound back home with her family. She bumped her head, got lost and scratched up wandering around in Bremen Woods, but found her way out the next day. She’s fine.”
Jillie frowned. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “She’d been in the haunted house the night before and got separated from her friends. But she’s fine.”
“Maybe the girl I saw was someone else then,” Jillie said. “Are you investigating any other missing persons?”
Detective Richton handed her back the newspaper. “No,” he said. “We are not.”
He turned to return to the interior of the station, but then paused.
“Remember what they told you,” he said. “Stay away from that house. Stop making trouble where there isn’t any.”
Jillie’s eyes caught fire and she started to spit back a retort, but Ted grabbed her arm.
Detective Richton disappeared through the door without another word.
“C’mon,” Ted said. “Let this one die.”
“I swear that girl already did,” Jillie said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The night was alive with screams. Recorded, and real.
Mike stood behind the barricade on the left side of the attic in the dark, and watched groups of patrons thread their way through the costume aisle at the right. Periodically one of the haunters would jump out at them from a hidden location and someone would always let out a yell. Then they’d disappear into the room at the end of the path and be sent down the back stairway before the next group came into the attic.
One thing that Lon and the rest of the group had been good about was separating the groups. Some haunted houses just jammed people through in an endless line, so the rooms were never vacant enough for the scare factor to really work. Sure, there were jump scares, but it was all too fast and crowded. Lon had insisted on limiting the flow of people into the house, so they could really ‘work’ each room.
That was playing well for Mike now, as he waited in the dark.
A hand gripped his shoulder from behind. Mike jumped a little. The pale face of Emery emerged from the shadows. She said nothing, but pointed at the stairwell coming up from downstairs. Mike nodded. Then he walked out into the main room and stood next to the stairs on the other side.
When a single girl stepped up and into the room, Mike said nothing. As she saw him, he stretched out his right arm and pointed toward the small entry to the alcove that led to Emery’s secret bedroom.
The girl had neon-blue hair and wore a black t-shirt with a pattern that glowed in the black light beaming across the stairwell to illuminate a pile of bones in the corner. She was chewing gum and grinned as she saw him. Without questioning him, she moved into the small side room where Emery waited. She assumed he was a haunted house guide. Mike followed her.
When she walked two steps in and reached the center of the small space, she stopped and looked confused. Her face turned one way, and then the next, searching for where to go next, and then she turned to walk back toward Mike. There was only one way out, and that was the way she had walked in.
He said nothing, but shook his head. No exit.
Then he pointed at the floor.
The girl gave him a look. “Okay,” she said. Then she bent down and looked at the floor where Emery’s door was concealed. Mike noted that she wore a black skirt and ripped fishnets above black boots. A goth chick. Probably here on a dare that she wasn’t afraid to do the house on her own. Nothing could scare her.
We’ll see about that, Mike thought.
The door in the floor suddenly opened and Emery’s face emerged from the darkness. The goth girl jumped backward, but Mike caught her in his arms easily. Then he lifted her in the air and dangled her feet into the opening in the floor. Emery grabbed the girl by the waist as Mike took over holding the door.
“What the fuck?” the girl yelled.
But before she could get out another word, she’d disappeared down the stairs pounding at Emery’s shoulders. Mike lowered the door gently back to the floor, and the sound of her struggles disappeared. In moments, the girl would be silent, captured in whatever spell Emery and Katie wove.
He looked out at the empty attic, making sure none of the haunters had seen the girl’s abduction. At that moment, a gang of rowdy teens ascended the stairs and a few seconds later the room was echoing with laughter and screams again.
Mike watched them disappear down the hall and nodded to himself. Then he opened the door in the floor and slipped down into the secret heart of the house.
* * *
Jeanie walked down the hallway with slow, exaggerated steps. She was roaming tonight, moving from one area of the house to the next, making sure there were no stragglers. With one hand, she cradled her fake guts to her middle, as if preventing her intestines from completely falling out of her body. With the other, she touched the wall. It was a convincing gimmick that usually sent patrons moving quickly to get out of her way.
A middle-aged guy in glasses and a blue polo shirt walked out of Argento’s favorite room, with two teenage boys behind him. The group stopped when they saw Jeanie, and she reached out a hand to them and let out a horrible moan. The older guy smiled and nodded, clearly impressed with her makeup. But the younger-looking teen led the trio quickly ahead, sidestepping past her in the hall.
They ducked into the next room, and instantly she heard a scream from one of th
em. One of the haunters, Darren, was in there, with a huge machete. Jeanie grinned and slipped into Argento’s room for a moment to check it out.
The room was awash in red and blue spotlights, and a tapestry shivered on the wall to the left. A woman’s head was impaled on the blades of glass remaining in a broken window on the far end of the room. Overhead, the ceiling was a moving mass of maggots. When someone stepped on the spot in the center of the room, a handful of the tiny rubber things fell from the ceiling. That typically elicited some solid shrieks from any women who walked through and suddenly saw white maggots stuck in their hair.
Jeanie didn’t walk to the center of the room, but before she’d gone inside two steps, a black-gloved hand grabbed her from behind, and held her mouth shut. The cool touch of a metal blade touched her neck. “Take another step and I’ll cut your guts out for real,” a voice growled in her ear.
Jeanie laughed. “And I’ll shove fake bugs in your mouth.”
She turned around and grinned at Argento. The set designer loved playing the part of a giallo killer.
He dropped the knife (which had a completely filed down rounded edge) to his side, and smiled through the black latex hood that covered his head.
“Getting hot in there?” she asked. “Need me to give you a break?”
He shook his head. One of Jeanie’s roles as a floater was to give the other haunters a chance to go to the bathroom, or take a breather from sweaty costumes for a few minutes each night.
“I’ve got to rack up more kills tonight,” he said. “Can’t afford to stop.”
He and ‘Lucio’ had a bet going. Every time one of them used their favorite director’s ‘weapon of choice’ on a guest, and that guest screamed, it counted as a kill. Whoever elicited the most total kills in a week bought the other’s bar tab on their night off.
So far, Lucio was winning this week. They turned in their totals to Lon each night at close, and he was keeping the running totals on the notes app in his phone.
“What’s the score so far?” she asked.
“It’s 113 to 97,” he said. “People hate zombies.”