Halifax (18 page)

“I don’t think this is the time to be playing, junior,” Bobby chastised Rom.

“He’s not playing,” Izzy corrected Bobby. Then she wasn’t so sure. “You’re not playing, are you Rom?”

Suddenly the yo-yo shot up into the air, pulling Rom’s arm up with it. It hovered above them all like a balloon on a string. The light on it began to change colors and the yo-yo began to beep slowly.

“A ship is coming,” Rom said as he looked up at the yo-yo. “Someone’s called for a barge.”

“Someone?” Farrell said. “How?”

“This is an old point of entry,” Rom told them. “Every barge still has this location programmed into it. All you need to do is activate the emergency beacon and the next available barge comes to get you.”

“The Cambian has our codes,” Izzy said.

Bobby stepped in between the others. “I don’t get it. What barge? What’s happening?”

“Let me put it in a way even you can understand,” Izzy said to Bobby. “Someone just hailed a taxi.
To outer space
.”

“We’ve got to move,” Farrell said. He went to the front door and tried the large brass doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. “We have to find another way in. The Cambian’s planning its escape it’s taking Nora with it.”

“Why?” Izzy asked.

“I have no idea,” Farrell said. “But we have to stop it. Check all the windows and doors. Get in. Go!”

Farrell jumped off the porch and ran around one side of the house as Izzy and Bobby headed around the other. They left Rom standing alone and clutching the straps to his backpack. After a moment of indecision, he followed the others.

Using his elbow to break the glass, Farrell wasted no time in finding a way into the haunted house. He reached in through the broken pane and unlocked the window, pulling it open, and climbed in. He was fearless and ready for anything and desperate to find Nora.

Izzy and Bobby made their way to the back of the house and the locked back door. Bobby pushed Izzy back protectively with his arm. “I’ve got this,” he said dramatically. “Stand back.”

She was about to protest, but Izzy didn’t have a chance before Bobby made a run at the door, leaping into the air awkwardly, and hitting it with both feet. The door remained firmly closed and Bobby ended up on his butt on the ground. He jumped up, grimacing in pain, and dusted himself off, trying to summon what was left of his masculinity.

Izzy then thrust her arm out and pushed Bobby back. “
I
got this,” she said emphatically. “Stand back!”

She raised her leg up and side kicked the door with one strong whack of her boot. The lock broke and the door flung open. Izzy didn’t even wait to gloat. She instantly ran into the darkness. Bobby ran in after her but lost her just as quickly. They each turned in different directions and disappeared into a maze of hallways.

Rom was last. He usually was. Being last meant you were the last one to face danger and maybe, just maybe, the one who came to the rescue. It wasn’t so much a lack of bravery as it was an abundance of caution. Looking up at a window on the side of the house, a window that was already raised, Rom wasn’t eager to climb in, but that wasn’t going to stop him from doing it. There were always things, every day, he didn’t want to do, but he did them anyway.

Rom’s desire, however, didn’t match his height. He may well have been looking up at the summit of Mt. Everest. Rom stepped back a few feet and eyed the window. He then got a running start and hurtled up the side of the house where he grabbed onto the bottom of the windowsill and hung on for dear life. He dangled there and tried to hoist his body up. He was kicking and straining and making very little progress when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He looked down to see the hooded old man, the haunted house attendant, standing below him.

“What are you doing, kid?” the old man asked sternly.

“Um, I was doing…nothing.” Rom let go of the windowsill and fell all of about one foot back down to the ground. “I was…well…I jumped and then I…you know…”

Rom continued to stammer as a blue light lit his face. He looked up to see tentacles filled with the light, the tentacles of the Cambian virus, begin to reach out towards him, reach out from the body of the old man. The man was fully infected by the virus. He was a carrier and he was about to attack Rom.

“I think it’s time for you to grow up,” the old man said. “Or at least…to grow old.”

An octopus like arm appeared from beneath the old man’s robe and pushed the fabric aside just enough to reveal the shirt below. He wore a white polo shirt embroidered with a name. Rom’s eyes grew wide.

“Coach Gwynn?” he asked in disbelief.

The Lexham Academy basketball coach was now in his golden years. He was an old man. His baggy eyes with dark circles beneath them turned into black saucers as he lunged towards Rom. Rom ducked beneath the tentacles, avoiding capture, and ran away from the haunted house and across the street towards a playground next to a small church. Coach Gwynn followed wearily behind him.

Andre stumbled down the dark hallway in the haunted house as mechanical arms, bloodied, holding knives, stabbing and grabbing, lashed out from mannequins along the walls. Old Andre reached out, trying to brush them out of his way, annoyed by their obstruction.

“Nora…” he called out. “Nora where are you? I can’t see a God damn thing in here. Getting old sucks, Nora. I won’t lie to you. But there’s no escaping it. It’s coming for you.
I’m
coming for you.”

Andre struggled with his failing eyes and his stiff back and all the new ailments of the old that suddenly plagued the once athletic and handsome young man. He ran his hands along the wall and over the mannequins. He ran his hands past rubber hands and plastic torsos and inched his way towards one warm body pressed in against the cold ones. Nora’s body.

Nora held her breath. She didn’t move. She didn’t even blink as her eyes followed the path of Andre’s fingers as they inched across the wall. He was coming closer, his hands moving over the fake bodies and towards Nora. Some of the mannequins looked more realistic than others, but they all looked fuzzy in Andre’s aging vision.

“I can feel what she feels,” Andre said. “I want what she wants. And she wants you.”

Andre tripped over a protruding bloodstained boot of a demon mannequin and fell into the body next to Nora’s. She pushed back farther against the wall. Andre’s hand was lodged between Nora’s stomach and the rubbery stomach of the mannequin beside her. The mannequin had two heads. It confused Andre when he looked at it. He tried to focus his eyes, unsure if he was actually seeing two heads or if his failing vision was playing a trick on him. All the while Nora stood motionless inches away.

Andre pushed back from the wall, frustrated with his failing body. He moved slowly down the hall, bumping into walls and squinting as he tried to navigate in the darkness. He stumbled into another one of the many rooms and out of sight. Nora was safe for the moment.

She finally took a breath. She was relieved but still terrified. She was lost in a maze of horror in a house of haunts, both manufactured and real. Hiding, however, wasn’t going to get her out of it. She had to keep moving. She had to find a way out.

Bobby stepped cautiously up the staircase in the house. No matter how light-footed he tried to be, though, each stair he stepped on emitted an artificially loud
creeaaak
and threatened to expose his presence in the house. He finally reached the landing on the second level and leaned up against a wall with great relief. It would have been nice if he hadn’t lost Izzy when they first entered in the house. This wasn’t a place you wanted to be caught alone even if you weren’t looking for a murderous evil alien virus from outer space.

Bobby took a deep breath and moved on. He tried several doors, but they were all locked, forcing him to move in one direction towards one room. It was a small bathroom and it was cramped and windowless. It was lit by a single, old-fashioned clear light bulb hanging from the end of a wire. It swung back and forth near the ceiling, casting moving shadows across the filthy, rust-stained sink and the white, bloodstained shower curtain that hung around an ancient claw-foot tub.

There was a door on the other side of the bathroom and Bobby had no choice but to venture in to get to it. He stepped carefully over the threshold looking back as he went. The swinging light bulb was disorienting and Bobby ran his hand along the tiled wall to steady himself.

The bathroom wasn’t just a bathroom. Bobby knew that. Everything in the house was meant to shock or scare and he was on alert for whatever that may be. So Bobby barely flinched when a bloody arm suddenly popped out from behind the shower curtain, a knife in its rubber hand. It sliced into the air in front of Bobby as a recording of cackling laughter played out.

“Are you kidding me?” Bobby said to himself. “Give me a break.” He pushed the mechanical arm out of the way and was headed towards the door when the shower curtain was suddenly pulled over his head. Bobby clawed at it, but it tightened around him, blocking his mouth, smothering him.

Standing in the bathtub, wrapping the curtain ever more tightly around Bobby’s head, was old Andre. He used all his strength to hold Bobby’s arms down, giving Bobby little chance to pull the shower curtain away.

Bobby struggled to breathe and kicked at Andre, fighting for air and for his life, but he was quickly losing the battle. Soon he began wheezing as the air in his lungs ran out. It was a desperate sound, a deathly sound, a last gasp of life. His legs stopped kicking and Bobby’s body slumped and limply slipped down the edge of the tub.

Andre released his grip. He stood over Bobby’s body and rubbed his aching hands. He leaned down and pulled the shower curtain off of Bobby’s head and smirked at the sight of his schoolmate’s lifeless face.

“I always hated you, Gonzalez,” old Andre said.

Suddenly Bobby’s eyes opened and he reached up and grabbed Andre by the collar. He stood up and flung Andre against the sink. Andre yelled out in pain as his back crashed against the hard porcelain.

Bobby pushed Andre up against the wall, pressing his arm against Andre’s neck, strangling him. “Where’s Nora?” Bobby spit out. “Where is she?”

Andre was now the one gasping for breath. Without the element of surprise he was now no match for the much younger and much angrier Bobby Ramirez.

“Tell me now,” Bobby demanded. “Tell me…” Bobby stopped his interrogation when he noticed the name on Andre’s jacket.
Davies
. He was confused for a moment, but then put enough of the story together to realize the old man before him was the young man he so hated. “Davies? What happened to you? What…? Oh, who cares?”

Bobby hauled off and slugged Andre in the face as hard as he had ever slugged anyone before in his life, knocking him out cold. Old Andre fell to the bathroom floor, probably breaking a brittle hipbone upon impact.

“By the way,” Bobby said. “The name’s
Ramirez
.”

Izzy was on alert, all her senses heightened and every nerve on end as she passed through the various rooms of the house. She had yet to see any of the others. The maze of rooms was so vast and confusing and the sound and light effects so disorienting, it was easy to get lost or to lose someone.

“Why couldn’t it have been a supermarket or something?” Izzy said to herself as she entered a new room. “A mall or baseball stadium? Some place big and well lit. Nope. Had to be a haunted house. Fan-tastic.”

A body levitated over a bed in the center of the room. It was a female mannequin dressed in a sleeping gown and its long brown hair hung down, the ends just grazing the top of the pillow on the bed, as plaintive and annoyingly loud screams filled the room.

Izzy was about to leave, satisfied no one was in the room, when she caught her reflection in a mirror that hung above a vanity. After a moment her reflection was replaced by the reflection of a skeleton. That image disappeared and Izzy was once again looking at her own reflection. She leaned in closer to get a better look at the effect. Once again the skeleton appeared. When it disappeared, however, Izzy was no longer the only person reflected in the mirror.

Mrs. O’Brien was standing behind Izzy.

Izzy gasped and quickly turned to run, but it was too late. The old woman grabbed Izzy, putting a hand over her mouth and muffling any cries for help. The old woman wrapped her tentacles around the girl, trapping her in an inescapable tangle of light.

Coach Gwynn pulled open the gate to the church playground. A rusty teeter-totter, one end raised up, was in front of him and a few balls and tricycles lined the fence. Besides a basketball hoop that was missing its net, the only other equipment in the playground was a tall jungle gym. With its towers and slides and endless cubbyholes, it was the main attraction for any adventurous child—and the only place a boy could hide.

“Listen, kid, my knees hurt and my back is killing me,” the old coach said as he began searching for Rom around the jungle gym. “Why don’t you just come out here and we can get this over with.”

The coach peered between the slats of wood that made up the towers. He looked into the cubbyholes and around the swings. No Rom. He was about to give up and return to the haunted house when something fell at his feet. It was a Pez dispenser with a clown’s head. It had tumbled down the tunnel of one of the slides and fallen out onto the ground.

Gwynn bent down with some difficulty, holding his aching back, and looked up into the tunnel. There, suspended in the center, using his rubber-soled tennis shoes to hold himself in place, was Rom. His penguin backpack was tipped open and the many toys within were beginning to spill out and slide away.

“There you are!” Coach Gwynn said with delight. “Come on down here so I can infect you. That’s what I do now.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Rom asked, his voice sounding deeper as it vibrated down the tunnel. “A world full of old people will quickly die out and the only thing left standing will be the Cambian Virus. How would that be a good thing for you?”