Jessie Delacroix_Fright Night at the Haunted Inn

by Constance Barker

  Anika played with the levers and gave the dials a twist. “These are pretty loose and probably not calibrated very well, so I don’t know how accurate we can be. But let’s try to get close to the time and place of your childhood, Leo. It might be fun for you, and Kaya can see what life was like for you when you were growing up.”

  “Yes!” Kaya liked the idea. “That would be wonderful!”

  “How about October in Vienna?” Leo suggested. “I always loved that time of year there. But make sure it’s well before Caragea’s Plague struck.”

  “Let’s just hope we can hit Europe. These levers must be for latitude and longitude.”

  Ginny never failed to surprise me with her vast knowledge. “Well, London is pretty much on the Prime Meridian, so that’s a zero on the East-West stick. Make sure you go East from there, or you’ll end up in the Atlantic Ocean instead of the continent. And I’m pretty sure it’s somewheres around 50 degrees North. Paris is a couple degrees farther South, and Vienna is about the same…just further East.”

  We all looked at her.

  “What? I studied maps when I was in Ninja school…had to learn lots of coordinates. But I never did learn how to teleport myself from city to city like some of them Ninja professors could.”

  “Hurry, Anika.” Kaya was starting to shake and sweat now, and she doubled over suddenly.

  “Well, this is the best I can do guys. I’ve got it at 48 North, but this horizontal one is rusted and wont go very far to the East. But I’m pretty sure you’ll be in Austria or Germany or France. It should be in the 1790s in October. Good luck!”

  Then she shrunk down and seemed to disappear into the darkness. I wasn’t sure what had happened until I heard a meow. Moondance sent a message to me telepathically.

  “I’m going with them.”

  I could tell it was useless to try to stop him. He was determined. Besides, it seemed like it might be a great idea for him to explore the past with his brother.

  “Hurry!”

  Kaya was getting desperate now, as moonrise was getting very near. It seemed like the hallway down here might actually be amplifying the moon’s power now rather than protecting her, as it was still 15 minutes before moonrise.

  Leo opened the door not quite a foot.

  “It’s stuck. I can’t push it any further.” He gave it a shoulder, but it didn’t budge.

  We could hear some festive music coming from the other side. There seemed to be some sort of outdoor stage maybe 100 feet away that people were gathered around, and some kind of wooden structure rising high in the middle of it. I saw some fairly long shadows, so I knew it must have been quite late in the afternoon. People were picnicking and dancing all around the big stage, perhaps in anticipation of some sort of outdoor theatrical performance.

  Kaya arched her back and let out a loud moaning bellow towards the ceiling. I could see the hair begin to grow on her arms. She gave the door a mighty bang with her fist, and it swung open wide. Then she lunged inside, where she fell to the ground. Leo rushed in and helped her to her feet. The hair was gone from her arms, and she had good color in her cheeks and a bright smile.

  “Well, then,” she said cheerily, brushing off my T-shirt with the big orange Clemson Tiger paw print, “Let’s go see what’s happening over there.”

  Just then the crowd started chanting something in unison. It was French, I think. It sounded like “Hachez -le! Hachez -le! Hachez -le!” That’s what Granny would say to Mom when she handed her a cleaver to chop off a chicken’s head when we visited their family home in Hound Dog Bayou, Louisiana.

  “They must be getting some chickens ready to cook for their picnic,” I said, naively.

  Then there was the sound of something very heavy that had fallen on the stage and landed with a booming thud. Immediately all the arms in the crowd went up along with a great cheer. An accordion started playing, and people danced merrily.

  Leo got a worried look just as a fine lady in a beautiful royal gown ran past us, through the doorway to the Inn, with her wrists bound with rope. Two military guards in blue coats and tri-corner hats followed behind her. They bowed their heads to us as they went through the doorway and disappeared down the hallway toward the basement.

  “Oh, my…” Leo turned white as a ghost and slowly turned his head towards me. “…I’m certain that was my aunt, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. And that’s no theatrical stage…it’s a gallows, or rather a scaffold for…”

  “…Madame Guillotine.” Kaya finished Leo’s thought.

  “Yes. It’s the Reign of Terror…the French Revolution. And it was October, 1793 when Marie Antoinette was beheaded.”

  Yikes. “Well, I can’t leave you here next to a Guillotine in the middle of a head-chopping frenzy. You’ll have to come back, and we’ll reset things.”

  “I can’t!” Kaya was quite adamant. “I cannot step back through that doorway. The full moon is rising now. I would kill you all immediately.”

  Fair point.

  “We’ll be fine here, Jessie.”

  The two palace guards came back now with the queen in tow. She was holding a pierogi to her mouth with her hands still bound.

  “Please send my compliments to the chef,” she said to me. “These are quite delicious!”

  Leo looked at his royal aunt. “Tata…”

  I had been around my Cajun cousins enough to know that that was French for “Auntie.”

  She turned her head quickly towards him. She must have seen the family resemblance, and she shook her head almost imperceptibly. The guards stopped abruptly, and one of them took a step toward Leo.

  “Cette femme est ta tante?”

  “Excuse me?” Leo said, not understanding.

  The guard recognized the language. “I am asking if this woman is your aunt.”

  Again the queen sent a nearly indiscernible signal to Leo to deny their blood relationship. Their eyes locked, and Leo froze. Then Kaya stepped in and spoke with a quite convincing British accent.

  “Oh, not at all, m’lord. We’re Brits. Just saying farewell to the fine lady. ‘Ta-ta for now,’ you know.”

  The guards were convinced and marched the queen back to the line of prisoners to be executed. No doubt she would be the feature event later on.

  “Go now.” I gave Leo and Kaya a hug, and patted Moondance’s head. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  Kaya and Leo nodded reassuringly – and I knew they had Moondance and Anika to help them if necessary.

  “Remember where this portal is,” I said, “and we’ll meet you back here in 36 hours, after the moon has come and gone twice.”

  We tried closing the door, but now it was stuck wide open.

  Ginny pulled a handful of unpopped popcorn kernels out of her pocket and handed them to Leo. “Here. The chickens will probably get most of ’em, but leave a trail of these so you can find your way back to the door here.”

  I just smiled and wished them luck, and Ginny and I headed back to the Tea Room. No sooner had we gotten up to the lobby than we heard the voice of Colonel Tramador out front telling people to gather around his glass tent to watch the show begin.

  Chapter Seven

  Most of the patrons in the Tea Room had moved to the front porch and the rest were standing near the front, looking out the French doors and the windows. The front doors of the lobby were open with people gathered inside and out there as well.

  Ginny and I gave Maddy a curious look as we joined her by the front doors. Unearthly shrieks and howls were coming from outside as Colonel Tramador yowled loudly for people to gather around.

  “Hurry now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Step right up and see the eighth wonder of the natural world! The time is nigh for the natural to meet the supernatural! Straight out of your darkest fairy tales, watch the little girl, raised by wolves in Romania, transform right before your very eyes! Watch as she becomes a ferocious beast, slaughtering and devouring this entire animal!”

  Ginny starte
d wriggling her way to the porch rail for a better view, and I followed behind her. The girl in the cage was already twisting and squirming wildly on the ground. We could see the Ghost Walk group about a block away now. The eerie music and dancing laser ghosts added to the odd charm of the first Fright Night.

  The Walkers were mostly attired in monster costumes of Frankenstein, werewolves, ghosts, goblins, horror show killers, and vampires. Many other costumed folks were already gathering around the Inn and Tea Room for the Monster’s Ball in the courtyard that would begin soon. Of course, with the Super Moon tonight, werewolf costumes were very popular.

  Wally from the bakery was walking a large black dog right past the show and along the driveway by my carriage house. The friendly baker smiled and nodded as the strong animal seemed to be almost pulling him along toward the courtyard in back. Ginny waved at him.

  “I didn’t know Wally and Molly had a dog, Ginny.”

  “They don’t. He must take care of it for a friend every once in a while. I’ve seen him walking it a couple of times before when there’s a Ghost Walk. Maybe the dog’s owner is the Grim Reaper that’s leading the Walk or something.”

  Then, as the howls from the glass gazebo got louder and more blood curdling, the Ghost Walkers abandoned their show. They started running toward the glass tent just as the creature ripped its mask and toga off to reveal a fearsome and hairy face and body. It seemed to grow right before our eyes and stood erect with its arms extended, wailing and baying to the heavens through the air vents in the roof above it. The thick glass barely muffled the plaintive roars, which seemed to make the earth tremble and the stars shake. The top half of the rising blood moon was visible now at the end of Carlisle Boulevard, where the old bridge crossed the river into town.

  The poor little goat in the glass tent was shrieking as it ran around the perimeter, looking for an exit. But there was none.

  “Watch now as this little girl rips the arms and legs and head off this defenseless creature, claws open its belly, and feasts first on the entrails!”

  A cold shiver ran through me. This was awful. I never would have allowed this had I known what was going to happen. “I don’t think the ASPCA would be very happy about this, Gin.”

  “Then let’s stop it.” She took a step toward the front steps, but I grabbed her shoulder.

  “Ginny! We can’t get inside there, and that thing would eat us if we did.”

  Ginny looked at me for a moment and then nodded her head. “Point taken. So let’s just watch the show.”

  But the beast didn’t seem interested in the goat. It ran full speed into the transparent wall, butting its shoulder against the bulletproof glass.

  Tramador stood on the other side of the glass with a cocky grin as the beast grew larger and more enraged, kicking and banging on the immovable structure now.

  The crowd gasped and took a step back as the tent seemed to wobble just a little, and the fierce animal began running fast and hard from one side of the glass tent to the other, using its body as a battering ram and jolting it a little more with each vicious thud.

  “No need to worry!” Tramador reassured the crowd. “This structure is 100 percent impenetrable, made of six inches of bulletproof high-density polycarbonate space-age glass surrounded by thick titanium straps, and held in place with 12-foot spikes that go right into the very bedrock beneath us.”

  “More like murky mucky swamp beneath us,” Ginny corrected. “You can’t dig a hole more than a foot or two deep around here without it filling up with ground water. Maybe she can’t break through the glass, but give her 5 minutes and she’ll tip it over and be out of there.”

  What a frightening thought. “Oh, my gosh! I hope not! Maybe we should get all these people out of here.”

  No sooner had I spoken, than the glass structure began to tilt one way and then the other as the sasquatch-type creature kept banging away at its prison. People began to scramble off in every direction.

  Then the creature got its long fingers beneath one wall of the tent near Tramador and began to slowly lift one side up off the ground.

  “That’s impossible!” Tramador hollered. “Each of those eight polycarbonate sections weighs 600 pounds!”

  He dropped his microphone and ran up the steps to the Inn as the goat escaped beneath the thick glass. “Run! Run for your lives!” he shouted.

  Could this just be theater? I didn’t know what to expect from the carnival huckster.

  Tramador tore his way past us, through the lobby, and I stood on my tiptoes to see him disappear through the solarium and out to the courtyard in back.

  People shrieked as the beast turned its glass gazebo on its side, all in one piece. More people fled, but quite a few brave souls stood and watched to see what would happen next. The animal growled frenziedly at the rising moon, but it did not attack. As the transformation became complete it seemed to settle down and keep its rage contained. It leapt to the top of the fallen cage, 15 feet above the crowd, and faced directly into the rising moon, which was large and full and a bloody red-orange in color above the horizon.

  The beast howled loudly, then it sniffed the air three times, turning its head slightly between each inhalation. It looked at the Inn, and everyone on the porch cowered. I felt frozen and cold, but Ginny was just taking it all in, like a movie.

  “I don’t think she plans to eat us, Jess. She’s got something else on her mind.”

  Ginny was right. The people didn’t really seem to feel as though they were in danger either. They watched silently in stunned curiosity. Suddenly the huge, perhaps seven-foot tall, furry little girl leapt from the top of the cage to the ground and sniffed a petrified spectator dressed in a werewolf costume. She pushed him to the ground, turned, and leapt directly onto the roof of the porch above us, landing with a thunderous thud. It must have more than 20 feet across the driveway to the roof of the porch, but the leap looked effortless.

  Several cedar shingles fell in front of us as the animal clawed its way up the little roof, then leaping again to the very top of the three-story Inn. The people below us were looking up with their mouths wide open, in awe and disbelief.

  Ginny and I were heading for the steps to go out and get a look at the beast on the roof when we began to hear shrieks and screams from the back of the Inn. Most of the people were still looking and pointing to the roof, but others began to move to the side of the building, going around toward the commotion and screams behind the Tea Room.

  “Let’s roll!” Ginny looked at me and motioned toward the front door with her head.

  The crowd was much thinner now, and we went through the lobby and into the solarium that opened into the courtyard. Arthur was there at the doorway to the courtyard, encouraging us to hurry with his little barks. I had no doubt that Granny was in there with him.

  There was controlled chaos outside as the customers and visitors vacated the festive lights of the Monster’s Ball in the courtyard and then looked toward the tall pines, maybe 40 feet away across the lawn. Arthur ran to the edge of the courtyard bricks and then turned and yipped for us to follow him across the lawn.

  Halfway there, Arthur, Ginny, and I came to a quick stop. Shrieks of pain were coming from behind the curtain of trees.

  “Help me, Lilianna! Help me!”

  It was Tramador crying out between squeals of pain.

  “Why would he be asking Lilianna for help?” I asked Ginny. “She’s either a skinny little girl…”

  “Or else that big ol’ werewolf thing that went after Tramador in the first place.”

  “Yeah, I half-expected it might be her in the glass cage too.”

  Suddenly there was a horrendous scream accompanied by ferocious howling roars. Sounds of fighting and thrashing about seemed to be moving and echoing through the trees. Then there was one last scream, I think from Tramador, that seemed to shake the trees and provoke the wind as the bright light of the moon now peeked over the top of the Inn and into the forest.

&nb
sp; “Get out of the way!” Ginny hollered.

  An object that looked like a baseball bat came twirling out through the trees heading right for us, and we jumped out of the way as it landed in the lawn. Then another much larger projectile came spinning our way…and then another.

  The commotion in the woods seemed to stop for the moment, and Ginny and I looked at the objects near us on the ground…then we looked at each other. It was Tramador’s arm and both of his legs. One more arm came flying out, but this time there were no screams or roars. Then his head bounced twice and rolled toward us.

  The Colonel’s limbs had been very powerfully ripped from his body, still covered in his old brown uniform. His eyes were still open on his severed head and facing directly into the light of the moon, which made them glow eerily.

  Kyle and Zach, the town’s security, were taking over the scene now. Their weapons were drawn and aimed towards the forest as they approached us.

  “Come on, ladies,” Kyle said. “We still have an active crime scene here. “Go back inside.”

  Before we could obey, there was more rustling and maybe even fighting in the tall pines, which began to whisper their deep dark secrets to the wind. We heard the bark of a large dog, which then seemed to run off through the woods behind my carriage house and towards the swampy area to the south of us.

  Then there was a rush of wind and a howl as the large creature came to the edge of the lawn and paused between two tall trees. The moonlight illuminated the size and majesty of this tortured soul, which had the ears and muzzle of a wolf and the tall muscular body of something that looked more like Bigfoot. It howled at the moon, as if cursing it angrily, and then it went down on one knee and set the Colonel’s torso on the ground almost lovingly. She stood back up, howling mournfully, and I swear I could see the glimmer of a tear in her eye.

  Zach and Kyle took aim.

  “No!” I walked calmly towards them and pushed the barrels of their handguns down. “She’s just a young girl – a human girl.”