Sarah smiled, watching Davey’s fascination.
She worked three days a week after school at the local theater and could easily afford the toy sci-fi sword. She paid while Davey was still playing with it.
“Okay, good to go,” she told him.
He looked at her, surprised.
“I bought it, Davey. It’s yours.”
His eyes widened. He gave her his beautiful smile again. Then he frowned, appearing very thoughtful.
“Now we can go,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“We have to go,” he insisted. “I can save them now—Tyler and Suzie. I can save them.”
Sarah couldn’t have been more stunned. She smiled. Maybe they could catch up—and if not, well, she’d still be able to say she’d experienced the most terrifying haunted house in the city—the state, maybe even the country!
“Come on!” she said. “Sure, I mean, it will be great if we can save them. So great.”
“I have to go first. I have the Martian Gamma Sword.”
“Okay, I’m right behind you!” Sarah promised. She hurried after him.
“They don’t like this kind of light, you know.”
“Who doesn’t like it?”
“Those who are evil!” he said seriously.
He had his sword ready and held in front of him—he was prepared, he was on guard!
Sarah smiled, keeping behind him. She hoped he didn’t bat an actor over the head with the damned thing.
* * *
TYLER DIDN’T KNOW when it changed.
The haunted house was incredible, of course. He knew the decorations and fabrications, motion-activated creatures, and the costumes for the live actors had been created by some of the finest designers in the movie world.
The foyer had the necessary spiderwebs dangling from the chandelier and hanging about. As they were ushered in—the door shut behind them by the French maid—a butler appeared. He was skinny, tiny and a hunchback. Igor? He spoke with a deep voice that was absolutely chilling.
Tyler had to remind himself he was six-three and two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle. But just the guy’s voice was creepy as hell.
“Cemetery Mansion!” the butler boomed out. “The living are always ever so careless of the dead! Housing is needed…and cemeteries are ignored. And so it was when the Stuart family came to Crow Corners. They saw the gravestones…they even knew the chapel housed the dead and that a crypt led far beneath the ground. And still! They tossed aside the gravestones, and they built their mansion. Little did they know they would pay for their total disregard. Oh, Lord, they would pay! They would be allowed to stay—forever! Forever and ever…with those who resided here already!”
Suddenly, from thin air, haunts and ghouls seemed to arise and sweep through the room. Suzie let out a squeal. Even Hannah shrieked.
Good old Sean let out a startled scream and then began to laugh at himself.
It was done with projectors, Tyler realized.
“To your left, ladies and gentlemen, to your left! The music room, and then the dining room!”
They were urged to move on. The music room hosted a piano and rich Victorian furniture. There was also a child sitting on the sofa, holding a teddy bear. She turned to look at them with soulless eyes—and then she disappeared. A figure was hunched over the piano. Suzie tried to walk by it; the piano player suddenly stood, reaching out for her.
She screamed. The thing was a motion-activated figure, one who would have done any haunted mansion proud. It was a tall butler—blond and grim looking, with a striking face made up so that the cheeks were entirely hollow. It spoke with a mechanical voice. “Come closer, come closer… I can love you into eternity!”
It was nothing but a prop, an automaton. But it was real as all hell.
Suzie ran on into the next room.
The dining room…
At the head of the table was a very tall man—an actor portraying the long-dead head of the household; a man in a Victorian era suit, wearing tons of makeup that had been applied very effectively. He was sharpening a knife.
There were dummies or mannequins or maybe animatronics slumped around the table. At least their bodies were slumped there. Their heads were on it. Blood streamed from their necks and down their costumes.
“One of them is going to hop up, I know,” Hannah murmured.
She bravely stepped closer to the table. No one moved.
Tyler noticed there was a girl about their age at the end of the table. She was wearing one of this year’s passes to Haunted Hysteria around the stump of her neck.
Good touch, he thought.
The bodies around the table did not move. The master of the house watched them with bloodshot eyes. He sharpened his knife.
A girl suddenly burst into the dining room from the music room. “Run! Get out—get to the exit! He’s in the house somewhere!” she screamed.
“Yes, he is. He’s right here,” the master of the house said. He reached for her and dragged her to him. She screamed again, trying to wrench herself free. He smiled.
He took one of the knives he had been sharpening.
And he slit her throat.
* * *
SARAH DIDN’T KNOW what had gotten into Davey; he was usually the most polite person in the world. He’d been taught the importance of please and thank you.
But he was almost pushing.
And he knew their radio station tickets gave them VIP status.
Light sword held before him, he made his way to one of the actors herding the line. “VIP, please!” he told her.
“Uh, sure. Watch out for that thing!” She started to lead them up the line, toward the house. As she did so, there was a scream, and one of the actors came bursting out the front door.
She was dressed as a French maid—a vampire or zombie French maid, Sarah thought.
She stumbled out of the entry and onto the porch, grabbing for one of the columns. Blood was dripping down her arms and over her shirt—she appeared to have a number of stab wounds.
“Don’t!” she shouted. “Don’t…he’s a killer!”
Applause broke out in the line. But then someone else burst out of the house—a ghoul dressed in an Edwardian jacket.
He crashed down, a pool of blood forming right on the porch.
More applause broke out.
“No, no, that’s not supposed to happen,” the zombie leading Sarah up the line murmured.
Davey burst by her; he was headed to the house, his light saber before him.
“Davey!” Sarah shrieked. Something was wrong; something was truly wrong. They needed to stay out, needed to find out if this was an excellent piece of play-acting or…
Or what?
Imaginary creatures came to life and started killing people? Actors went crazy en masse and started knifing the populace? Whatever was going on, it seemed insane!
The sensation that crawled over Sarah then was nothing short of absolute terror—but Davey was ahead of her.
With his Martian Gamma Sword.
He was charging toward the house.
Davey! She had to follow him, stop him and get him away—no matter what!
* * *
TYLER COULD HEAR nothing but diabolical laughter.
And screaming—terrified shrieks!
Suzie hopped on a chair and grabbed a serving platter for defense.
The master of the house turned toward them, dropping the body of the girl whose throat he had slit. It fell with a flat thud.
Sean squeaked out a sound that was nearly a scream.
Hannah grabbed Sean, thrusting him between her and the big man with the massive knife.
“Back up, back up, back up!” Tyler said.
Hannah did so. Sean turned to flee.
The master of the house went for Sean. He picked him up by the neck.
“No! Stop, stop it!” Tyler shouted.
This couldn’t be happening.
“This isn’t funny. It isn?
??t right!”
The character didn’t seem to hear Tyler. And Tyler had no choice. He leaped forward, shoving Hannah away, and tried to wrest Sean from the killer. He grabbed Sean’s arm and pulled.
“No!” Suzie shrieked.
Tyler looked up.
The master of the house was approaching her with the massive knife, dragging Sean along with him. Then he turned. He came swinging toward Tyler, still dragging Sean. Tyler held on to his friend and jerked hard; Sean came free and they staggered back—Hannah, Sean and himself—until they crashed into the table.
Hannah began shrieking in earnest. As she did so, Tyler became aware of the tinny scent of blood.
Real blood.
And he looked around the table and he knew.
They were people. Real people. And they were dead.
Really dead.
“No!” Suzie shrieked.
She slammed her serving platter at the master of the house.
He just laughed.
And raised his carving knife.
* * *
DAVEY RACED ACROSS the porch, pushing aside the bleeding maid and hopping over the body of the man in the Edwardian dress.
Sarah had no choice but to follow.
He burst through into a mudroom. There were bloody handprints all over it.
Some were fake—stage blood.
Some were real—human blood.
She could tell by the smell that some of the blood was real.
Davey rushed through to the foyer, his Martian Gamma Sword leading the way. But there was no one there. He threw open another door.
“Davey, stop! Please, Davey, something is going wrong. Something is…”
They were in a music room; it was empty—other than for a bloody body stretched across a floral sofa.
“Davey!” Sarah shrieked. “No, no, please…”
She started to whirl around. There were holograms everywhere. A child in black with a headless doll appeared. And then a hanged man, the noose still around his neck. All kinds of ghouls and creatures and evil beings began to appear in the room and then disappear.
“Davey, please, we’ve got to get out. Davey!”
She gripped his arm as the terrifying images swirled around them.
“Not real,” Davey said. “Sarah, they’re not real.”
He was moving on—and she heard screams again. Terrified screams…
He went through a black hazy curtain and they were in the dining room.
And there were Tyler, Hannah… Sean and Suzie… It appeared that they were all being attacked by…a creature, by someone or something. They had fallen back, and were struggling to rise from the dining table, where there were…
Oh, God, corpses, real corpses. Dead people, all around the table. Suzie and Hannah were yelling and screaming, and Tyler was reaching out, but the carving knife was coming down and it was going to sink into Tyler’s chest at any minute!
She heard a terrible scream—high-pitched and full of fear and horror. And she realized it was coming from her…
And she had drawn the attention of the…
Man. It was a real man.
An actor gone insane? What the hell?
No, no, no, no. It was impossible. It was Halloween. It had to be a prank, an elaborate show…
The man was real.
Absolutely real.
He was tall and big and had long scraggly white hair and he might have played a maniacal killer in a slasher movie.
Except this wasn’t a movie.
And he was coming at her.
He opened his mouth and smiled, and she saw his fangs. Long fangs that seemed to drip with something red…stage blood…
Real blood.
She screamed again.
It sounded as if it was coming from someone else, but it was not. It was coming from her.
Tyler struggled up from the table. He slipped.
He was slipping in blood.
“No, no, no!” Sarah screamed.
And then Davey stepped up. He thrust her back with his arm and stepped before her, his cheap little plastic sword at the ready.
“Leave her!” Davey shouted, his voice filled with command.
The man laughed…
And Davey struck him. Struck him hard, with all his strength.
The man went flying back. He slammed into the wall, and the impact sent him flying forward once again.
He tripped on a dead girl’s leg…
And crashed down on the table.
Right on top of Tyler and Sean and Hannah, who had already been slammed down there. It was too much weight. The table broke with an awful groaning and splintering sound.
Shards and pieces flew everywhere as what remained of the table totally upended.
Tyler let out a cry of fear and fury and gripped the man’s shoulders, shoving him off with all the force of a high-school quarterback.
To Sarah’s astonishment, the man, balanced for a matter of seconds, staring furiously at Davey—and then he fell hard. And didn’t move again. She saw that he’d fallen on a broken and jagged leg of the table.
The splintered shaft was sticking straight through his chest.
Tyler got up and hunkered down by the man carefully, using one of the plates off the table as a shield.
“Dead,” he said incredulously. He looked up at the others. “He’s dead…he fell on the broken table leg there and…oh, God, it’s bad.”
“Out of here! It’s evil!” Davey commanded. “It’s still evil.”
They were all shaking so badly no one seemed able to move. Davey reached for Hannah’s arm and pulled her up. “Out!” he commanded.
And she ran. Suzie followed her, and then Sean, and then Tyler met Sarah’s eyes and took her hand, and they raced out as well, followed by Davey—who was still carefully wielding his plastic sword.
They heard sirens; police and security and EMTs were spilling onto the grounds.
The medics were struggling, trying to find the injured people among the props and corpses and demons and clowns.
When the group of friends reached a grassy spot, Sarah fell to the ground, shaking. She looked up at Davey, still not beginning to comprehend how he had known…
Or even what it was he had known.
“I told you—that house is evil,” he said. “I told you—my dad. He taught me to watch. He stays with me and tells me to watch.”
* * *
IT HAD BEEN the unthinkable—or easily thinkable, really, in the midst of all that went on at a horror-themed attraction at Halloween.
Archibald Lemming and another inmate had escaped from state prison two weeks earlier. They had gotten out through the infirmary—even though he had been in maximum security. News of the breakout had been harried and spotty, and most people assumed the embarrassment suffered by those who had let them escape had mandated that the information about it be kept secret.
Archibald Lemming had been incarcerated at the Clinton Correction Facility for killing eleven women—with a carving knife. The man had been incredibly sick. He’d somehow managed to consume some of the blood in their bodies—as if he’d been a damned vampire. He’d escaped with a fellow inmate, another killer who was adept with a knife and liked to play in blood—Perry Knowlton. Apparently, however, Lemming had turned on the man. Knowlton’s body had been found burned to little more than cinders in the crematorium at an abandoned veterinary hospital just outside the massive walls of the prison.
Sarah knew all that, of course, because it was on the news. And because, after the attack at Cemetery Mansion, the cops came to talk to her and Davey several times. One of them was a very old detective named Mark Holiday. He was gentle. His partner, Bob Green, was younger and persistent, but when his questions threatened to upset Davey, Sarah learned she could be very fierce herself. The police photographer, Alex Morrison—a nice guy, with the forensic unit—came with the detectives. He showed them pictures that caused them to relive the event—and remember it bit by bit. T
he photographer was young, like Bob Green. He tried to make things easier, too, by explaining all that he could.
“Archibald Lemming! They found his stash in prison. Idiot kept ‘history’ books. Right—they were on the Countess Bathory, the Hungarian broad who killed young women to bathe in their blood. The man was beyond depraved,” one of the cops had said that night when he’d met with the kids. He’d been shaking, just as they had been.
People were stunned and angry—furious. If there had been better information on the escape, lives might have been saved. Before the confrontation with Davey and his friends, the man had killed ten people and seriously injured many more. He’d managed to escape at a time when it was perfect to practice his horror upon others—Halloween. He had dressed up lipped into the park as one of the actors.
But many survived who might have died that night. They had lived because of Davey.
It did something to them all. Maybe they were in shock. Maybe denial. Guilt over being the ones who made it out. And confusion over what it meant, now that the normal lives ahead of them seemed all the more precious.
Sarah was with her cousin and her aunt when Tyler came to say goodbye.
He was leaving the school, going into a military academy and joining the navy as soon as he could.
Sarah was stunned. But in an odd way, she understood. She knew she had closed in on herself. Maybe they all had, and needed to do so in order to process that they were alive—and it was all right for them to go on.
She, Tyler and their friends had survived. And it was too hard to be together. Too hard to be reminded what the haunted house had looked like with all the dead bodies and the blood and things so horrible they almost couldn’t be believed.
So she merely nodded when he told her he was leaving. She barely even kissed him goodbye, although there was a long moment when they looked at each other, and even this—losing one another—was something they both accepted, and shared, and understood.
Sarah gave up cheerleading, and transferred to a private school herself, somewhere that hadn’t lost any students in the Cemetery Mansion massacre.
When college rolled around, she decided on Columbia and majored in creative writing, veering away from anything that had to do with mystery or horror. She chose a pseudonym and started out in romance.
However, romance eluded her. She was haunted by the past.