Looking Real Good

by C. Morgan

  Someone called my name.

  I turned to the source. From around the side of the haunted house, a woman dressed as a creepy doll approached. Her hair was done up in high, messy pigtails, her face was painted white with high rosy cheeks, and there were stitches etched into her eyebrows and the corners of her lips. She walked with a lumbering, lopsided, messy gait, and I didn’t realize until she was right in front of me that the doll was actually Kayla.

  Laughter consumed me. “I did not expect this.”

  Kayla looked down at her costume. “What?”

  “You look…” I trailed off. “Good.”

  You always look good, creepy stitches or not.

  Kayla grinned like a damn fool and pinched the hem of her tutu skirt in her fingers so she could do a little curtsy. “Thank you. It took two hours to get this costume up to snuff. Freaky, right?”

  “Very freaky.”

  She tilted her head toward the house. “Come with me. There’s a costume trailer around back. One might call it a very low budget green room.”

  “Green room?”

  “We have to get you dressed up too. Did you think you were going to get away with working a haunted house without having to dress up? Have you ever done Halloween properly?”

  I followed her around the side of the haunted house. More screams tore out of the building and I chuckled. “What would you say if I told you I hadn’t dressed up for Halloween since I was eight years old?”

  Kayla stopped in her tracks and spun to look at me. Her pigtails whipped against her cheeks and her lips parted in an incredulous gasp. “Since you were eight?”

  “Yeah, Halloween just isn’t really my thing.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I find it hard to believe any holiday is your thing, Lukas.”

  “Why’s that?” I followed her as she started walking again.

  “Because, holidays mean you’re not spending time at work. And if you could have it your way, you’d spend every minute of every day in your office. Right?”

  We rounded the back corner of the haunted house and just as Kayla had said, there was a trailer set up. The door was ajar and warm light spilled out onto the dew-covered grass. We moved into the pocket of light and Kayla entered the trailer. I followed and was met with the smell of glue and an old attic. When I spied the racks of Halloween clothes, I found the source of the smell. The costumes looked a little old, like they’d been toted around from event to event, and they’d collected a bit of a musty smell probably from spending three hundred and sixty or so days packed up in boxes.

  “I don’t know if I’d want to spend every day in my office anymore,” I admitted as Kayla began sifting through the racks of clothes. “It’s been kind of nice to get out and try new things.”

  She paused with her fingers resting on the elbow pads of an old tweed jacket and I willed her not to force me to put the monstrosity on. “Kind of nice?” she mused.

  I shrugged. “Yeah.”

  She gave me a knowing smile and shook her head before going back to sifting through the costumes. “We have a station in that haunted house to get to in half an hour, so we have to make this quick. Do any of these speak to you?”

  “Speak to me?”

  “Do you want to wear any of them?”

  I studied the racks of clothes. “Not particularly. You pick.”

  Kayla smirked and moved to the end of the rack, where she plucked a one-piece cream-colored thing from where it hung. From the back it looked like one of those terrible one-piece pajama sets that people had started wearing. When she turned it around, I realized it was not pajamas, but a one-piece clown costume with big multicolored pom-pom buttons, a jagged striped cuff on each sleeve, and a wide striped lapel that had been splashed in fake blood.

  Kayla pumped her eyebrows. “What do you think?”

  “Creepy killer clown? I think I can work with that.”

  Kayla turned to a chair that very much resembled that of a barber shop. It had the metal foot rest and everything, and it faced a wall of mirrors with a shelf over flowing with what appeared to be makeup products.

  “Have a seat,” she said. “Let’s get you ready to scare the shit out of some kids.”

  Kayla and I were assigned to a room in the haunted house that, had I been the eight-year-old version of myself, might have made me piss myself. The walls and floors were black and the lighting was poor. Mounted in the ceiling above our heads was a black light that made the fake blood on my costume seem to glow. There were no mirrors in there but Kayla and I snapped a picture of ourselves to see how we looked under the lighting, and even though I looked like the world’s most terrifying clown, I liked the picture.

  I was glad we’d taken it on my phone so I could save it without having to ask her to send it to me.

  Also in the room with us was a baby crib in which a deformed doll stood clinging to the bars. A soundtrack played on a loop of a baby crying while a woman hummed a haunting melody in the background.

  In the far corner was a rocking chair, presumably where said humming mother would be rocking her child, and Kayla had taken up post there. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins while I stood with my back to the opposite wall, shoulders hunched, head tilted down, frozen in place.

  Every time guests passed through, we’d let them see the baby. Let them creep forward toward the exit that they had to pass both of us to reach. Let them cling to each other and mutter worried whispers in each other’s ears. Let them think they were alone in the room.

  When the time was right, we’d spring to life and scream bloody murder at them.

  Most of the kids screamed and laughed, the thrill they were seeking granted, and took off running to the exit to meet their fate in the next section of the maze. Others, mostly the adults, had a hard time walking past Kayla and me at all. Sometimes, we’d have to sink back into our positions and stay still in order for them to muster the courage to pass us.

  After an hour and a half of delightfully scaring strangers, the house closed for a half-hour break. Kayla and I stayed in our room and she fished granola bars from somewhere out of her tutu. They were almond and honey bars dipped in vanilla yogurt.

  “So what do you think?” Kayla asked.

  “I think I’m having more fun than I should.” I pressed my lips together. “Is that a little sadistic?”

  Kayla giggled. “Maybe just a bit. But everyone here is signing up to be scared. It’s a bonding experience. People love the adrenaline rush and the thrill, and they love having someone to experience it with. Someone to cling onto. It’s kind of romantic, in a strange way, when couples come through.”

  “You have a strange mind, Kayla Goodfellow. A strange mind.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me.

  She’d been effectively scaring strangers all evening, but to me, she looked adorable. I tried to consider her costume objectively. If I hadn’t known her, would the doll ensemble be unsettling? Perhaps. But I did know her. And from where I was standing, the pigtails, red lips, pink cheeks, tutu, white stockings, and red sparkly shoes were cute not sinister.

  “Have you done this before?” I asked as I leaned up against one of the walls and polished off the remaining bites of my granola bar.

  Kayla shook her head. “No, I was supposed to last year but they had enough volunteers and didn’t need me, so I took the night off. It was actually very lovely.”

  It was hard to imagine what Kayla was like when she wasn’t working. Like me, she was a workaholic. “How did you spend the night?”

  Had she not been wearing layers of white face makeup, I might have been able to tell she was blushing. She went back to her rocking chair and sat down. “I went home and ate an entire box of Halloween candy by myself, watched a movie, and went to bed before ten. It was glorious. Possibly the best night of all last year. Is that sad?”

  “No, it’s not sad. I get it.”

  Kayla ran her fingers through the fold of her white t
utu, and for a moment, she looked sad, like a doll no child wanted to play with.

  Chapter 26

  Kayla

  It was embarrassing to admit that I’d spent last Halloween completely by myself locked up in my one-bedroom apartment that I could hardly afford. I’d eaten Halloween candy because I couldn’t afford a bottle of wine, and I’d crashed early because I’d been so tired from working the last sixty-five days in a row that I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes open.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what it might have been like to have someone with me that night. Someone to share the candy with so my belly didn’t get hard with bloating, someone to watch a horror movie with instead of a romantic comedy so I could sleep easy, someone to cuddle and share warmth with before dozing off to sleep.

  Someone to just be there so I wasn’t alone.

  “Kayla?”

  I glanced up at Lukas. He was watching me with a furrowed brow.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, of course I am.”

  He put his empty granola wrapper in his pocket and pushed off the wall to come stand beside my chair. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I spent Halloween last year?”

  I tilted my head back to look up at him. “How did you spend Halloween last year?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “By myself.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I stayed at the office until ten thirty. Surprise, surprise. I only left when I realized I was holding up the night-shift cleaning crew who all had families to get home to. Otherwise, there’s no telling how late I’d have stayed. When I got home, I had a drink, and then I went to bed.”

  I licked my lips. “Why are you telling me this?”

  He crouched down beside my chair, and this time, he smiled earnestly. “I just didn’t want you to feel bad about being alone. We’re both losers, you see.”

  I hesitated before throwing my head back and laughing. “I am not a loser.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe just a bit? Because in recent weeks, I’ve realized that I am most definitely a loser.”

  “You’re not a loser, Lukas. You’re just very involved in your work. And so am I.”

  “Exactly. Losers. We have no social life. No commitments outside of our careers.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He arched an eyebrow at me. “Name three social outings you have planned for the next three months.”

  “I—” I paused, frowned, and considered the question. “I don’t have any. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Do normal people?”

  He laughed and put his hand over mine. “With Thanksgiving around the corner? Yes, I would say most people have plans in the near future.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed. “We are losers.”

  “I tried to let you down easy.”

  I shifted in the rocking chair to get comfortable. It creaked and rocked softly. “Well, I guess we all make sacrifices for what is most important to us. My work is what’s most important to me. The people I help are what’s most important to me. I don’t think I’d change it. Would you?”

  He searched my eyes for a beat before shaking his head slowly. “No, I don’t think I would. I mean, maybe I’d spend more time with Lisa, and my mother, and you, but—”

  A bell rang to signal the start of the next hour of haunting. The lights went out and a hush settled over us. I wanted to hear more of what Lukas was going to say but he straightened, rolled his shoulders, and moved to claim his place against the opposite wall. He shared a small, tight-lipped smile with me as we both settled in.

  And waited.

  We heard the screams coming and knew a procession of teenagers were on their way toward us. The haunted house took about fifteen minutes to walk through, and about eight of those minutes happened up ahead of us. Lukas and I were basically dead center of the maze, so when people came to us, they were vulnerable. They knew they had a ways to go and they’d already had a few good scares before reaching us, which made them easier to trigger.

  The group of teenagers drew closer.

  Lukas sank against the corner of the wall and I tucked my chin to my knees and watched the doorway the group would enter through.

  The baby soundtrack shrieked and wailed and the mother hummed eerily in the background. For added effect, I began slowly rocking the chair.

  Lukas gave me a thumbs-up and I hid my smile behind my bent knees.

  The teenagers arrived. Two young boys entered first. They had to be around thirteen or fourteen years old. They walked shoulder to shoulder, muttering to themselves, trying to act tough, and then two young girls came in behind them. One of the girls looked truly terrified. She clung to her friend, her eyes wide with fear, her feet inching tentatively forward, her lips moving as she pleaded with her friend not to abandon her.

  I wondered if Lukas and I should hold back with this group.

  Lukas sprang to life in his corner. His arms shot up and he let out a bellow of a sound. The boys yelped and sprang forward to rush to the other door while the girls cowered at the entrance. I untangled myself from the rocking chair to tell Lukas to ease up, but I was too late.

  The terrified young girl started to scream in earnest. There was no play left in her. This was genuine fear.

  I rushed for the light switch.

  Lukas beat me to it. He flicked the light on and killed the audio, and we simultaneously shielded our eyes against the glare of the lights. My ears rang from the screaming and the loud baby crying track.

  Lukas unzipped the front of his clown costume to show the girl his T-shirt underneath. He rolled up the sleeves, exposing bare forearms, but did not move closer to her. “Hey,” he said, his voice soft and warm. “I’m just a guy. See? Just a guy in a clown costume. Do you want to leave the house?”

  The girl nodded with a trembling bottom lip. She still clung to her friend who, to her credit, had not left the girl’s side.

  Lukas turned to me. “I’m going to escort them out. Can you hold down the fort?”

  “I’m coming with,” I said. “I’ll leave behind you and turn the lights out. If you go through the next hall, there’s a door on the right. It’s hard to see but it’s there. It will lead outside so you don’t have to finish the maze.”

  Lukas nodded, turned, and led the girls out. They followed hot on his heels and I waited until they were gone to turn the audio track back on and the lights. Then I hurried out after them and caught up with them along the side of the haunted house, where Lukas was smiling at the girls and speaking with them. I hung back to listen to what he told them.

  “I’m not a huge fan of clowns either,” he said. “Honestly, I never understood them and why people wanted to dress up as them in the first place. But listen, they’re not that scary. They’re unemployed. And weird.”

  The girls smiled at him.

  “Thank you.” The frightened one’s voice trembled. “I didn’t expect to lose it like that.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” Lukas said earnestly. “I had to spend the whole night sitting across from her.” He nodded at me as I hung back. “Now that’s scary.”

  The girls giggled. He was charming even when wearing a creepy clown suit.

  Lukas and I brought the girls to the exit where they met up with their friends, and we stood shoulder to shoulder as the group of four peeled off toward the parking lot, giggling like idiots.

  “That was very nice of you,” I said.

  “I thought she was going to have a stroke.”

  “She might have,” I mused. “She was pretty terrified.”

  Lukas got a devilish look in his eye as he peered down at me.

  I frowned. “What?”

  “I have a secret mission. Do you want to help?”

  “A secret mission?” I asked suspiciously. I shook my head. “No, you’ve got that twinkle in your eye that I’ve only seen when we were kids and you were about to pull a prank on L
isa. I don’t want anything to do with that.”

  “I’ll write you a check for a quarter of a million dollars if you help me with this.”

  “A quarter of a million dollars?” I gasped.

  “Yes.”

  “For a prank?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to hide my grin. “Let’s go.”

  Lukas parked the Lykan at the curb half a block down from the duplex Lisa shared with her mother. Lisa lived on the left-side unit and her mother in the right. It was a lovely home with exposed brick on the first level and cream siding on the second. There were pumpkins on both doorsteps and autumn-themed wreaths hanging on the doors. I was struck with a sharp pang of envy that I resented as Lukas and I crept up the sidewalk in our costumes and broke off into the front yard to creep around to the back of the duplex.

  I’d always dreamed of owning a place of my own one day. It would be nice to have a place that felt like home. My apartment was a messy, crowded, haphazard, and poorly decorated clusterfuck of mismatched items I’d acquired from thrift stores or friends and family who no longer needed their coffee table or bookcases. I didn’t have the time or the money to create the atmosphere I wanted but I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what my future home might look like one day.

  Hopefully, the dreams wouldn’t always be dreams.

  The damp grass made our footsteps silent as we rounded the back corner of the duplex and moved into the backyard.

  A branch cracked under Lukas’s foot.

  We froze.

  A dog barked, one of Lisa’s mother’s dogs.

  “Oh shit.” Lukas snickered in front of me.

  I jabbed him in the shoulder. “Shh!”

  He massaged the place where I’d prodded him. “Ow.”

  The dogs started barking in earnest. All two of them.

  Lukas swore. “I forgot about the damn dogs.”

  “Do we run?”

  A back-patio door slid open. Lisa poked her head out and peered out into the darkness of her yard. Lukas and I were crouched low, pressed up against the back of the house to her right.