The Diva Haunts the House (2 page)

Nina Reid Norwood

June Winston (Mars’s mom)

Wanda Smith (Natasha’s mom)

 

 

Ray Barnett

 

 

Jen Bauer

Vegas Lafferty

Jesse Unterberger

Blake Bennett

 

 

Me

Mars Winston & Natasha

Dana Unterberger

Maggie Bennett &

Dash Bennett

ONE

I balanced on the ladder, aimed my gun, and squeezed the trigger. A gossamer string of wax shot out, creating a creepy cobweb. I cackled with glee. Pointing the gun at the gauzy black curtain covering the front window of the haunted house, I let fine threads fly. In seconds, it looked like no one had cleaned the place in years.

A shout upstairs interrupted my fun. It had to be my neighbor, Frank Hart.

I stepped off the ladder. “Frank?” A thud upstairs worried me. Had he fallen? I dashed to the foyer in time to see Frank slam against the built-in bookcase at the top of the stairs and stumble down.

“Frank, are you okay? What happened?”

He brushed past me as though I wasn’t there, fumbled with the door handle, yanked the front door open, and staggered out to the sidewalk. His chest heaved as he gasped for air and stared up at the windows on the second floor of the haunted house. The skin on his face had turned ashen.

“Frank?” I hurried down the few steps to the brick sidewalk.

He blinked at me and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “There’s some . . . one, some . . . thing up there, Sophie.”

A tall runner in his thirties, Frank owned a wine and cheese shop in Old Town. He’d generously and most enthusiastically donated time to the creation of a community haunted house. I’d never thought of him as skittish. In fact, when another volunteer, Lulee Jenkins, bolted out of the haunted house a week ago, declaring she would never step foot inside the building again, Frank had chuckled about it.

Maybe humor would be the best approach now. Like the kids who pitched in to help with the haunted house and loved to play pranks on each other, I sang, “Psych!” With a big grin, I added, “Isn’t it great the house is so scary that we’re spooking ourselves?”

Frank didn’t laugh. Not even the hint of a smile crossed his face.

A cool October wind kicked up and shuttled dry leaves past our ankles. Frank finally shifted his gaze from the windows. He grabbed my wrist with icy fingers. “Do
not
go back in there, Sophie.”

“Now, Frank.” I tried to keep my tone light. “Exactly what happened?”

His eyes were wild with fear. “Heed my warning. Close it down, Sophie.” His voice rose. “Close it down!”

His words and behavior alarmed me. I couldn’t disappoint everyone by closing the community haunted house. I made my living as an event planner but in my spare time had taken on the creation of the haunted house as a volunteer community project, and I intended to deliver. This was my first year in charge of the haunted house, and I was determined to see it succeed. The community haunted house idea had nearly died the year before, thanks to an uninspired effort of hay bales and plastic ghosts in a school auditorium. We’d lucked into a historic building in a great location this year. The Ye Olde Candle Shoppe building was a little creepy, but that made it perfect for a haunted house. Besides, Frank really hadn’t told me what frightened him.

He took off at a jog, nearly colliding with Bernie, who’d gone for midmorning coffee and pastries. “What was that about?”

“Another defector. Frank says there’s something upstairs.”

In his charming British accent, Bernie said, “Never would have expected it of a solid fellow like Frank.” He shifted the coffees and bag of pastries to his left hand with the ease of a restaurateur and high-fived me with his right hand. “If Frank is scared—we must have nailed it.” He shot me a wickedly amused look and ran a hand through his perpetually mussed hair, which, along with the slight kink in his nose from an old break, gave him a grown-up Dennis-the-Menace appearance. Bernie, who was inclined to wear Birkenstock sandals, except in snow, had surprised us all by becoming an outstanding restaurant manager for a British absentee owner. My ex-husband’s best friend and the best man at our wedding, Bernie had flitted between jobs and towns around the world before settling in Old Town. I was a bit surprised that he’d hung around as long as he had. Maybe even vagabonds eventually found someplace to call home.

Ray Barnett stuck his head out of his store next door. Inappropriately named Le Parisien Antiques, the hazy, smoke-filled shop was closer to an indoor junkyard. “Bernie! Found what we were looking for. Could you give me a hand?”

Bernie held up the bag. “How about a pastry first?”

Ray bustled out of the shop, wiping his hands on baggy trousers. “Don’t mind if I do. Can I have a peek at the house?”

Hefty Ray led a beer-swilling, chain-smoking, bacongorging life that left him looking haggard. Dark semicircles hung under slightly bulging eyes. He could have made a living doing voice-overs. I didn’t think he was capable of a whisper with that deep, gravelly voice. He’d lived over top of the shop since his wife passed away. I shuddered to imagine what the upstairs apartment might look like.

We ushered him inside, thanking him yet again for his generosity in lending us the empty building for the haunted house. His last tenant, the Ye Olde Candle Shoppe, hadn’t fared well and had closed down after less than a year.

“I’m hopin’ some of the folks who go through will get ideas and want to lease it. It’s a right good location for a business. Gets lots of foot traffic, seein’ how close it is to King Street.”

Bernie handed out coffee and chocolate croissants in the small foyer where visitors would enter. We faced a stairway and a narrow hallway. To the left visitors would see the lights leading to the witch’s lair, where they would eventually exit, having come full circle.

“One of the kids, who have named themselves the Ghastly Guides, will emerge from the hallway to lead a small group on a tour, beginning with the stairs,” said Bernie. “They’ll wind through the upstairs rooms, down the back stairs into the kitchen, out into the small backyard—which we’re transforming into a mock graveyard—back through the kitchen, and end in the witch’s lair in the front of the house.”

Ray and I followed him up ancient stairs that creaked with our every step. Our presence triggered an automated ghost that flashed over our heads.

Upstairs, I realized that Frank had knocked over the black pumpkin we’d placed in the recessed bookcase to the right. Sometime in the checkered history of the building, a skilled craftsman had built an arched top with glass doors over a cabinet. I opened a door and set the pumpkin straight before joining Ray and Bernie. All the rooms upstairs had been decorated as bedrooms for different ghoulish creatures. The first one we took Ray into was my personal favorite, the vampire’s bedroom.

“When y’all asked if you could paint this room shiny gray, I thought you were off your rockers. Shoot, I’m no vampire, but I’d move into this room.” Ray covetously eyed a black and red smoking jacket Frank had hung on a valet.

I loved the way dim lights reflected off the walls. Heavy red velveteen curtains shrouded the window to protect the vampire from any hint of daylight. My niece had found an oversized painting destined for the trash and transformed it into a portrait of a lovely woman, complete with two holes dripping blood on her swanlike neck.

An old console had been repurposed into a bar. Frank had donated empty Vampire brand wine bottles and displayed them with elegant glasses. The opposite end of the bar featured burgundy martini glasses and a rack of test tubes, which the kids had labeled with blood types. A heavy walnut coat tree featured a cape with the opening tacked back to reveal a sumptuous blood red satin interior. A resident of Old Town had donated the clothes valet, along with the smoking jacket and black velvet slippers. My favorite part, though, was the dresser, where a gleaming manicure kit was displayed along with dental files.

The next room belonged to a werewolf. He had left bloody bones and body parts lying around, but slept in a fancy dog bed. A room belonging to hairy spiders who had cocooned their next meals against the walls creeped me out. But I thought the most ghastly bedroom belonged to the axe murderer, who had mounted a collection of axes on the wall. His trunk was rigged to open and display fake decapitated heads.

To raise the scary factor, we had scheduled at least one person to pose in each bedroom motionlessly and move when visitors were least likely to expect it. Frank had been our vampire bedroom attendant and now that he had bailed, I would have to find a substitute vampire.

Lucky me—I would be the witch in the lair, located at the end of the looped tour. As the designated witch, I could keep an eye on the front door as well as any rowdy visitors.

The doorbell rang and I went to answer it, leaving Bernie to show Ray the rest of the bedrooms. I took the back stairs down to the kitchen and passed through the witch’s lair, which featured a large display window that overlooked the street.

The screech of metal on metal drew me to the window. A Hummer was parallel parking in front of the building, but the driver didn’t seem to care about hitting the cars around her. She backed up and tried again, a cigarette hanging loosely between her lips. Finally, even though the rear of the car stood out in the street, she cut the engine and stared straight at me, mere feet from the show window, all without touching the cigarette.

I continued to the front door and opened it. Black branches arched over my head.

“Is this the haunted house?” Although he wasn’t smoking, the man standing in front of me reeked of cigarette smoke. He wore his hair short, slicked back in a way that made him seem slimy to me, but I was willing to bet other women chased him. Slender, he dressed impeccably in Old Town style—khakis and an expensive designer shirt with a fancy logo sewn just below the shoulder. High cheekbones and full lips surely drew attention to him, but I was wary of the sultry eyes that flashed with dark energy.

“Yes. Did you want to volunteer?” I hoped not, but I did my best to appear welcoming.

He assessed me, making no effort to hide his critical gaze. I’d dressed in work clothes, comfortable jeans I could throw in the wash when they were dusty from toiling in the vacant building and a simple oversized mock turtleneck in a peachy color. I’d pulled my hair back into a ponytail and for fun, I wore dangling earrings in the shape of ghosts. Somehow, under his scrutiny, I felt as though I should have dressed more formally. I held out my hand, ready to introduce myself.

Instead of placing his hand in mine, he plunked something hard into my palm. Without thinking, I pulled my hand back and whatever it was fell to the brick sidewalk, landing beside a giant pumpkin.

He picked up the item, an annoyed expression on his face. “We found these in Blake’s room, hidden under his socks.” He opened his hand to reveal teeth—teeth with prominent vampire fangs jutting from them.

I shrugged, clearly irritating him even more. The only Blake I knew of had volunteered to help but had never shown up. Before I could say that, the man launched into a tirade.