“Maybe like you!” Sean said, laughing. “Not me. Hey, come on—this is supposed to be the coolest thing here, ghosts coming up out of the ground from all over. They say the creatures—animatronic or whatever—are the most amazing, and they put their best ‘scare’ actors in this one. Tyler, come on, we take Davey with us all the time. But this is our night. It’s our last Halloween together. If he doesn’t want to come in, screw it!”
“Not to mention that, as I already pointed out, we don’t even know where they are anymore,” Hannah said.
“Yep, well, I do have a cell phone,” Tyler said.
“Tyler, leave it,” Suzie said. She looked guilty, too, he thought. But maybe she was right. “We have VIP tickets—we get to move into the express lane up there. We’ll be out soon and then we’ll explore the food booths—Davey will like checking those out! And we’ll hug him and tell him that he was right—we should have stayed out. It was really scary, so now we’re all hungry!”
An actor in some kind of a zombie outfit came toward them, using a deep and hollow voice to ask for their tickets. They showed their passes and were moved up quickly in the line.
They entered the mudroom of the Cemetery Mansion. Bloody handprints were everywhere. They were met by a girl in a French maid outfit—with vampire teeth and blood dripping down her chin.
“Enter if you dare!” she said dramatically.
A terrified scream sounded from within. And then another. And another.
The place had to be amazingly good.
“Ah!” said the maid. “I say again, enter if you dare! Those who have come before you seem to be just...dying to get back out!”
She opened the door from the mudroom to the foyer and stepped back.
Tyler thought she looked concerned. As if...
As if people actually were dying to get out.
* * *
“CAN WE GO look at the booth over there?” Davey asked Sarah.
He gave her a smile that made her ashamed. She had been secretly bitter; she’d wanted to go with her friends. It wasn’t terrible that she should want to; she knew her feelings were natural. But she felt guilty, anyway. Davey wasn’t being mean, she knew. He wasn’t hurting her on purpose. He had his irrational fear set in his mind.
“Come on!” She caught his hand and led him to the toy stand. This one was stocked with prop weapons.
There were all kinds of great things: realistic plastic ray guns, gold-gleaming light-up lasers and much more. There were fantastic swords, like from some 1950s sci-fi movie, she thought. They were really cool—silver and gold, and emitting light through plastic blades that shimmered in a dozen colors.
They were cheap, too. Not like the licensed merchandise. It was called a Martian Gamma Sword.
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