by John Everson
“I guess a kiss couldn’t hurt,” he said. As he did, he looked at the doorway. Would not be good if Jeanie walked in again right at that moment.
Before he turned his head back, June’s lips were touching his. He closed his eyes and savored the touch. Forbidden and wrong. But he couldn’t pretend she didn’t feel good. He’d run their first kiss over and over again in his head like a film loop this week and he ultimately had to admit that he wasn’t sorry for it. June was really amazing.
The problem was, he loved Jeanie.
The other problem was…he was really feeling like he liked June a lot too.
He returned the kiss.
When he looked up, there was a woman in the doorway.
His stomach leapt, as his first thought was that it was Jeanie.
But it wasn’t.
It was a woman, but he hadn’t seen her before. She filled the doorframe. And she held a knife in her hand.
“We have company,” he whispered, pulling back from June’s touch.
“Shit,” June whispered and backed away. Starting a ‘scare’ with a kiss was not exactly optimum haunt behavior.
Bong backed away from her, but he knew he couldn’t ‘disappear’. Instead, he tried to get in a position where he could at least be…less seen.
The woman walked into the room, and as she did, Bong quickly realized she wasn’t a normal ‘guest’. She didn’t have the same hesitant step as a normal haunted house patron. She walked with a purpose. And she was walking directly toward them.
Bong raised his arms, and opened his mouth as if he were a vampiric ghost.
The woman raised her arms, and that’s when he saw she held a knife.
A long, silver, very real-looking knife.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jeanie was shambling through the front of the house when she saw Lon standing in the foyer. He ushered a group of five teenagers into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre room and then motioned her over.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I’ve gotten a half dozen different complaints tonight from people who’ve gotten their clothes ruined. Big red stains on them from somewhere. I don’t know what you guys did different tonight with makeup, but we’re going to end up with a bunch of dry cleaning bills.”
“I didn’t do anything different,” Jeanie said. “Maybe someone spilled something. Did any of them say what room they got it in?”
Lon shook his head. “Nope. They haven’t noticed it until they’re outside and walking to their cars. And then they double back to complain to me or Andreas at the ticket stand.”
Jeanie shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I can keep a look out but I haven’t seen anything messy so far tonight.”
The house manager nodded. “Keep your eyes open. If you see anything…clean it up. I don’t want to end the month on a big drag. They’re rubbing up against something messy somewhere.”
“I’ll look,” Jeanie said. “But if people are getting messed up, they must be banging into someone. It’s not like we poured fake blood on the walls or props. That stuff’s all dry.”
Lon made a face. “Well somebody dumped some shit somewhere.”
Jeanie shook her head. There was only one answer that was going to be acceptable, so she gave it. “On it.”
“Good,” Lon said, and ducked back out the front door. She stole a glimpse after him and saw the line still stretched down the gravel path and out of sight. She hoped Lon was cutting it off soon; it was already after ten p.m.
She decided to take a walk through the whole place from the start to see if she could spot any fake blood spills to make Lon happy. She couldn’t imagine why there would be any though. Jeanie walked down the hall to the Nightmare on Elm Street room. When she looked inside, she saw someone disappear into the closet. She assumed it was whoever was wearing the Freddy suit tonight. Angie was hanging from the harness in the ceiling, the front of her nightshirt shredded and stained in red.
“How’s it hanging?” she called into the room, but Angie didn’t say a word. She just hung there, staring at Jeanie.
“Nice,” she said. “Fine, stay in character.”
She backed out of the door before a group trapped her in the room. Seconds later a couple slipped by her and entered the room. She heard the guy exclaim in awe, “Wicked!”
Jeanie moved down the hallway and decided to go upstairs to check on Bong and June.
The attic was strangely quiet. The last group must have just moved through and headed down the back stairs because nothing was moving here. Above her, hanging from the ceiling, was a new prop. She looked and grinned. It was super realistic. A woman with blue hair, a tight black t-shirt and bare feet hung from the rafters on a rope noose. That noose had been hanging dramatically empty for the month, but she appreciated that someone had finally filled it. A bit too little, too late, though. What was the point on the last night?
Jeanie walked beneath the figure and felt something wet splash on her face. When she touched a finger to her cheek, it came away shiny and red.
“What the fuck?” she said, and looked up at the figure again. She could see now that the woman had cut marks all down her arms and chest. And those marks appeared to be dripping with blood.
“So that’s where the mess is coming from,” she said. Jeanie looked at the floor beneath the figure and realized it was slick with red. “Stupid,” she said. “No wonder people are getting their clothes fucked up.”
She’d have to see if Mike could come up and cut it down quickly before anyone else got dripped on. What the hell did they hang it up there wet for? She shook her head and walked through the costume maze. Somehow, it seemed creepier tonight, probably because Bill and Tanya weren’t jumping out at her. Speaking of which…where were they?
She frowned and walked over to the nursery. It was weird to have a nursery and no kids in the house, but Bong had been pretty effective in jumping out at people from his hidden vantage point. The room was scoring well with attendees, at least the ones they’d quizzed on the way out. Lon had been trying to gather some data from visitors on what they liked and what they didn’t like over the past week as they left the place. He was already thinking about next year.
She ducked her head under the ragged overhang. The entry to the room was supposed to be reminiscent of the room in the climax of House on Sorority Row, though Jeanie doubted that anyone would ever place it. Especially since, though you walked into a room that was filled with a child’s nursery items, instead of a kid or mutant childlike adult, you got a throat-slashed woman and a J-horror creeping adult. A little mix-and-match with the monsters.
Whatever. It had proven a solid room throughout the month, despite the mixed theme.
“Hey,” she said, as she poked her head inside.
June was lying on the floor. Which wasn’t usual. Ghosts didn’t usually act like corpses. The weird thing was that she was covered in blood. Her whole gimmick had been a kind of zombie thing, with a throat slash. But tonight, she looked like someone had slashed her arms and legs and chest and…well…everything. She had cuts and blood splatter all over her.
Jeanie had to admit the effect was solid. But…she hadn’t seen June do it. The last time she’d seen her, she just had the neck slash, as she had worn all month.
“Going all out tonight, huh?” she said. There was grudging admiration in her statement. At the same time, she looked at June and stifled a voice inside that said, Too bad those aren’t real, bitch.
“Coast is clear for a second,” she said with false buoyance, and looked away from June. “Bong?”
There was no answer.
Jeanie walked over to the faux hallway where she knew he hid, ready to crabwalk out when new ‘victims’ entered the room.
Bong was there, on the floor, where he usually was.
Jeanie screamed.
Becau
se Bong wasn’t going to be crabwalking out of the corridor again tonight.
His fingers were reaching out to the floor behind him, while his toes hung down on the blood-smeared floor near his vacant face.
Someone had chopped off his arms and legs and left them lying on top of his torso…only in the reverse order of where they should be. The raw gristle of his thigh was propped on the meaty opening where his arm should emanate. And vice versa.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my fucking God!” Jeanie screamed.
She looked back at June and realized the makeup artist had not added fake blood to her ensemble tonight. She had been slashed to death.
The blood was not makeup.
Jeanie dropped to her knees and reached out to Bong…but her fingers stopped short of touching him. Because…his feet were pointed at her, rather than his arms.
“Why?” she cried, and touched her fingers to his bare, bloody leg.
Somebody in the outside attic room screamed. It didn’t sound like the scream of someone scared. It sounded like someone being killed.
“What’s going on?” she whispered. Her stomach was suddenly a hard, clenched ball of fear. It hadn’t all really sunk in yet, but she knew that Bong was dead, and she was in danger.
Self-preservation took priority over her emotions for the moment. Jeanie walked to the doorway, and carefully peered around the jamb.
Another scream echoed from the attic area outside.
Jeanie could only see the shifting blue and purple light reflecting off an old hag costume on the rack in front of her. A man’s voice suddenly cried out from the direction of the stairwell.
“Please just let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
A moment later, she heard something like a wet punch. There was something else, another soft noise she couldn’t place. And a soft thud.
Then the eerie synthesizer music took over.
Jeanie stood there for what seemed like forever, breathing as quietly as she could. She hugged the wall and stared at the vacant eyes of the old hag mask, crazy gray hair streaming out in all directions around the face.
At any moment, she expected it to jump off the rack at her.
But the hag stayed still.
Jeanie started walking slowly down the aisle, straining to see past the ‘maze’ of weird costumes and masks that separated the ‘secret attic nursery’ room from the entrance to the attic. The bass on the soundtrack playing overhead was throbbing in a steady, tense rhythm. For the first time all month, Jeanie really wasn’t happy to have the soundtrack to a horror movie playing overhead. She loved horror movies…but she didn’t want to be in a real-life one.
She moved down the wall, step by step, until the main area of the attic finally came into view. She saw the feet of the corpse hanging from the ceiling and it suddenly dawned on her that it wasn’t a prop. It was a dead body, hanging from the rope.
Bleeding.
Underneath the hanging body’s feet, two other bodies lay spread out on the floor. A woman lay there on her back, black hair splashed across the wood like an explosion. Her pink t-shirt was soaked in the center with dark red color.
A man was just a couple feet away. He was curled into a half-ball on the floor, as if trying to shield himself from something. His back faced the woman’s corpse and his hands were pressed outward, as if trying to drive something back. Someone had taken more time with him; his shirt had been cut to shreds (without concern for the flesh beneath it) and his shorts had been sliced down the thigh, opening them to the private spaces within.
Those…had been removed.
“Jesus,” Jeanie whispered, as she saw the glob of red flesh that lay against the corner of the far wall.
Part of her knew what organ the glob was, and part of her refused to acknowledge it, despite seeing the man’s pants cut open, and the splash of blood that stained the half-shorts that remained around his waist, and the wooden floor beneath him.
Somebody in the house had slashed the throat and chest of this guy’s girlfriend, and then cut off his ’nads. Jeanie was about to run for the stairs down, when someone began walking up.
She saw the black hair of a thin, weathered woman with her hair tied in a ponytail, along with another fatter, pale-looking woman in a black t-shirt, plastic glasses and a plaid skirt, ascend the stairs and step onto the floor of the attic.
She saw them look at the hanging woman, and then down at the floor where the butchered bodies lay. She saw them grimace and then grudgingly approve, through the shifting lines of their faces.
And then she saw the figure moving behind the old bureau that stood on the side of the stairwell up. It was another woman, she noted, with bare pale arms, and a hand holding a long silver blade above her head.
The two women who had just walked up the stairs gave a typical, low intensity shriek and began to move quickly toward the costume maze.
Only, the knife woman followed.
And she wasn’t there simply to scare.
The blade came down and stabbed hard and fast into the ponytail woman’s shoulder.
The woman looked confused and surprised and hurt all at the same time. It made for a strangely impactful expression on her face as the killer lifted and brought the blade down again and again. The woman crumpled under the stabbing blows, before her friend even realized what was happening.
When she finally turned and saw, the plaid woman screamed. Then she ran toward the stairs. But the woman with the knife moved surprisingly swiftly. She brought the blade around in a horizontal arc and caught the fleeing woman in the cheek. Even in the garish light of the attic, Jeanie could see the line of the cut open, expand and burn red.
Plaid woman screamed and stumbled, slapping one hand to her wounded face. When she lifted it, her hand came back completely covered in blood. Her eyes bugged as she realized how badly she was hurt.
All of this happened in a moment, and in that moment, the killer did not stop moving. She stepped in front of the bleeding woman, lifted the blade and brought it down. Plaid woman made the mistake of looking up, which turned out to be the last mistake she would ever make.
The silver point flashed through the air. Then it connected with her right eye, and slid easily inside her skull.
It all happened in a flash, but the woman dropped like a brick. Her head slid back off the knife, and the killer simply stood back and watched as the plaid woman’s body spread out and shivered briefly on the floor. Her hands tremored and grasped toward the stairway, but her legs kicked once and crossed over each other. The rippling flesh of her thighs was exposed all the way to the pale wrinkles of her ass, as the plaid skirt flipped up in the wrong direction. And then she went still.
It was anything but an elegant death.
Jeanie held her breath until the killer moved again. Satisfied, apparently, that she had fully dispatched the woman, the killer turned and walked slowly to the stairs. Jeanie watched as foot by foot her body vanished down the exit until her hair dipped below the floor and disappeared. Then Jeanie crept out of her hiding place and took a deep breath. The air came in hitches, as she stifled her body from crying and yet still tried to catch her breath. She knelt down next to the body of the plaid woman and pulled her skirt down, giving her a modicum of decency in death. Something warm touched her hand, and she yanked her hand away instinctively. But it was just the growing river of Plaid’s life leaking away. Blood was puddling around the woman’s body fast.
Jeanie pushed back off the floor and forced herself toward the stairway. She wanted to go back to the farthest reach of the attic, crouch down and hide until daylight. But she knew in her head that she wouldn’t be safe until she’d gotten out of the house. And neither would anybody else. Jeanie couldn’t just curl up and hide as one by one the woman slashed and killed guest after guest. She had to find Lon and have all the houselights brought up. They had to
evacuate the house. Her heart pounded so hard she could barely breathe as she leaned against the wall and crept down, stair by stair.
The house remained full of sound – creaks and moans and the tense tones of synthesizers that made each room feel like you were walking into a movie. And there were still the distant sounds of shrieks and laughter, the sounds of people enjoying a good scare.
But it all sounded smaller somehow, the guests far away. Jeanie knew how long the line was outside, and how fast they should have been cycling people through the house. But nobody had come upstairs in several minutes.
She could hear the chainsaw revving though, down in the dining room. It was a cycle. The motor would whine to life and then crescendo louder. It shook and screamed with deadly promise, usually corresponding to Brad holding it over his head and shaking it at the guests, who would screech and run into the next room.
But right now, while it sounded like Brad was scaring people with the tool, nobody was getting past the next couple of rooms and corridors to walk up the stairs.
Where were they going then?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The line stretched back to Midlothian Turnpike, and the buzz from the crowd was slowly growing louder as the night went on. Hidden flasks kept many people warm, and others had shown up already well-liquored. People laughed and yelled, and every little while a cop walked up and down the line, watching for…whatever warning signs cops watched for when they were on crowd control duty.
A woman with shock-red, kinked hair and a loose white suit full of multi-colored polka dots nudged a fat man wearing white-face and old bum clothes covered in blood.
“Hey, Ted,” she said.
The bum-zombie next to her grunted.
“How much longer do you think?” she asked.
“What difference does it make?”
“Because I’m worried they’ll cut off the line if it gets much later.”
He shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll get a good night’s sleep at home.”
She elbowed him. “Lotta help you are,” she said.
