The King of Halloween, page 4
Confused, Adam spun around to his mother. “I thought Dad got down on one knee on a shrimp boat in the Gulf.”
“Not to me, of course.” She gave a little laugh, then wandered back into the kitchen. His mother had a supernatural knack to answer a question by only giving him more questions. “What about the old Rushford hotel?”
“Someone’s bought it,” Adam said.
“That’s wonderful. They aren’t going to tear it down and put up a mall, are they?”
A mall? He had no idea how his mother, born in the era of disco, acted like she was a nineteen-fifties housewife. “No, ma. I really doubt they’ll make it into a mall.”
“Good.”
Adam’s fingers crept along his neck. “It’s, uh, it was bought by a haunter.” He started to wrench the muscle before remembering the huge bruise where the pumpkin head bashed into it. Gah!
“A haunter?” She said that with so much emphasis, Adam swiveled in his seat and stared her in the eye.
“You already knew that.”
“Of course not, love. I had no idea there was going to be a haunted B&B out near Round Lake.” She patted his knee like she was about to get him a glass of milk and a cookie.
Adam bent over, nearly folding in half. “You were at the parade.” Maybe the couch would eat him. Sprout teeth and chomp down on his bones.
“I was at the front. You did a wonderful job.”
“Ma…”
Her lips twisted to the side like she bit down on a sour lemon drop.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
“No. Well, not in person. You see Bertie’s granddaughter—Stephanie—she’s got the Tock Ticks and…”
“Great. I’m internet famous.” Please, don’t let me become a meme.
His mom sensed his abject humiliation and tried to comfort him the only way she knew how. “It was tastefully done with music and everything.”
“Ma, that’s how Tik… No. Not worth it.” In times of trouble, when the world came crashing down on the skinny freak of Anoka, Adam reached for one thing. His body moved before he realized what he was doing. The little door hiding the VCR fell down, its handle clacking against the metal. Tucked to the side was the only tape anyone watched in this house.
“Did you see that nice gentleman ahead of you?” his mother asked with her disinterested voice that gave her away every time.
“Yeah. It was a little hard to miss him,” Adam said as he fished the old tape out of its tattered cardboard box. That swoosh sound as the black plastic finally escaped its cardboard trap was a weighted blanket on his soul.
“He’s quite talented, don’t you think?”
“Yep.” Adam shoved the tape into the VCR. Incredibly talented, and connected, and rich. And gunning for his crown.
The tape sank into the player, and Adam scooted back. Rather than sit on the couch next to his mom, he huddled up on the rug, his knees cupped to his chest. Static caught on the screen, then a warning label from the FBI. Adam kept watching.
“And…” His mom paused like she was about to drop the bass. “…handsome.”
Oh, yeah. Even as he’d cut Adam down to size with his little ‘entrance’ joke, Adam couldn’t stop thinking how soft those lips mocking him were. And what he could do to that mouth to shut it up.
The screen jerked through trailers for fifty-year-old movies, and Adam frowned. “How can you tell he was handsome? He was wearing a mask.”
His mom shrugged and picked up her knitting. “Don’t you think—?”
“No.” Adam interrupted. “Ma, you are not hooking us up. He’s…” Enraging. Dangerous. Devilishly handsome in a cinnamon roll body. “He’s straight.” It wasn’t a lie. Probably. Every other haunter Adam had ever met had a wife, three kids, and a spare tire around the middle. Why would Raj be any different?
“Oh. That’s too bad. All the good ones are.”
Adam snorted. He dropped his legs as the TV screen opened on a dark night in the meadow. Lighting flashed, and a goat bellowed in the distance. “Evil Sheep 2: Ewe Are Dead” filled the screen before the title cracked open and demonic sheep bones climbed out of a grave.
Sighing in relief, Adam lost himself in his comfort movie. It was schlocky horror, sure, but he adored every second. Especially the sheep puppet.
Raj slipped from Adam’s mind. The crown, the haunt, the committee—he could solve that mess tomorrow. For now, all he needed was a terrible B-movie to crawl across his brain and rewire his trauma. There was no chance a man as handsome and talented as Raj Choudhary would enjoy the blood splatter of a chainsaw.
They had nothing in common.
“Help, help! My ram. It’s—” Two horns pierced through the chest of the farmer, and Adam sighed.
CHAPTER FOUR
“BOSS, WE’VE GOT a problem.”
Raj jerked at the voice out of the darkness. The tool in his hand shook, nearly slicing apart both the red and blue wires. Taking a breath, he patted the wall freshly decorated with stained wallpaper. Peering over his shoulder, he caught a hint of a man lingering in the darkness. In the bleak hotel, where light barely peeked through the rotten wood boarding up the windows, it was easy for his brain to leap right to ghost.
That’s silly. Ghosts aren’t real.
“What is it?”
“Upstairs, in the rooms.” He pointed above them, and Raj tried to not groan. There was always something up there.
Taking a deep breath, Raj patted the exposed innards of his zombie butler. “Another day, Jeeves,” he said and closed up the panel. The animatronic twisted, and the pneumatic arm dropped like it was going to slap Raj. With care, he eased around the fragile prop and joined the construction worker on the other side of the main desk. “You might as well show me.”
The Heartbreak Hotel was exactly what one pictured when told to imagine a haunted hotel. Chandeliers dusted with cobwebs hung above a grand foyer. The gold faded, and the marble grayed with age. Strange stains formed from water not only above but across the floor as well. One in particular almost looked like a body that’d fallen from the upper floors. He’d made sure to add a little paint to emphasize the illusion.
It screamed of grand opulence from a time when self-appointed nobility ran the country and no one thought the dance would end. Raj loved it the second he saw the grotesques on the turrets in the website pictures. But the years had not been kind, requiring a lot of upkeep that’d taken unexpected months. He’d been putting in double overtime back in California, doing his best to finish up the last touches on his final movie and had had to trust Logan to handle all of this. Raj should have known that one—he’d be working on CGI knife glint until the week before the movie released, and two—the hotel would be a mess.
Taking the staircase, Raj inspected the fake candles flickering in tree branch sconces gnarled to mimic human hands. Two of them were out. “I’ll have to fix that,” he said. At least the busts in the wall worked—their faces following him as he climbed. It was the old inverted illusion that worked better than anything mechanized. Up above, he was able to stare down and see his Pepper’s ghost effect. To those daring enough to ascend, if they glanced back at the chandelier, they’d find a ghost gleefully swinging back and forth on top of the fragile glass. Hidden in an alcove in the ceiling was a smaller animatronic with a light and a mirror.
He’d nicknamed the ghost Happy Harry. They were still working on the backstory, though the idea of a man getting drunk and celebrating New Year’s on a rickety chandelier was his favorite. Maybe they could put a hat on his head and champagne glass in his hand. Raj patted his breast pocket before he pulled out his notebook to jot the idea down.
By the time he’d gotten to changing out Harry’s hats for the holidays, the contractor paused in front of their best and most haunted suite. Instead of the bed being made up and ready for guests, the mattress sat by the window that projected a spooky graveyard outside. Two men sat in the slats of the frame, both fighting with the metal bars on their special mechanism.
“We fixed this. Tested it for up to four hundred pounds.”
“Yeah. It works great for a mess of people,” the contractor said, then he nodded to the two men. They rose from their work and slid the mattress into place. “Problem is if you only have one person in this room…” He hefted up their test skeleton and tossed it onto the bed, then nodded to a man.
The switch flipped. At first, a haunting blue light glowed under the bed. Then the bottom right corner kicked up. The skeleton fell a bit forward, just for the top left corner to leap up.
Oh. It hit Raj as the skeleton started to bounce like a popcorn kernel on a hot pan. The mechanism entered its final haunting stage, and the bed began to buck wildly. In their tests with two burly men pretending to be a married couple, they’d get a good shake to mimic a haunting. But with just the five-foot plastic skeleton, the bed went from curious ghost to full-on exorcism.
The skeleton flailed so wildly that one of its legs tore off. The limb flew back, striking the painting behind the bed. Then the rest of the poor remains jiggled to the edge until they landed against the headboard. Which was when the entire top half of the bed leaped up.
“Ah!” Raj ducked as twenty pounds of skeleton hit the wall across from them.
“Kill it,” the contractor said.
“So we lower the pressure. Or make it so only couples can stay in the suite.”
“And hope they ain’t fighting or else one of ‘em’s not walking out of here,” the man by the switch said with a laugh.
“There’s also the concern of children,” his contractor said.
“Oh, no kids. It’s not safe.” While invisible children laughing in the walls was creepy, actual ones banging on the ceiling and floors was not.
The contractor hefted the skeleton off the floor. As he grabbed onto its spine, the head tumbled back, then fell off. Raj grimaced and rubbed his face. “Cut the pneumatics down to two hundred PSI.”
“Okay, but then the bed won’t do the bucking thing at the end.”
God, that was his epic finale. No. Better to keep things safe and avoid potential broken noses than get that final oomph for people. “It’s fine. And don’t forget…”
“Yeah. We’ll lock it all up so no one can mess with it,” the contractor said.
As Raj watched them work, the back of his neck started to burn. “Are you going to have to do this for all the beds?”
“Yup.”
He had to ask the question he dreaded most in the world. “How long will that take?”
“Well…”
“There you are, partner!” Their answer was covered over by the enthusiastic shout of Logan. He swung back into the bedroom, then slapped Raj on the back before staring down at the men. “Doing a bang-up job. The place looks incredible.”
Literal wires were hanging from the ceiling for both the hidden words that’d appear in the wallpaper and the overhead lights. It was uninhabitable, and they had clients arriving in less than a week. Exasperated, Raj turned to glare at Logan. “Is it?”
“Sure. Well, good enough. I mean, we’re getting there, man. Don’t worry so much. You’ll get an ulcer.”
An ulcer was better than going three hundred thousand dollars into debt. Why did I think this was a good idea? I’m going to lose it all, and the only thing I’ll have to show for it is a butler that slaps me.
“Hey, it’s Tuesday.” Logan managed to grip onto Raj’s shoulders and pull him out of the room.
“Yes, I know. And we’re soft opening on Saturday, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah. But shouldn’t you be going?”
Going where? He had the bedrooms to finish. The animatronics to test. There was a mysterious drip in the basement that no one could figure out. Oh, and all the scare actors to teach how to do their makeup. Raj accepted he wouldn’t get a day off for ten years the moment his plane landed to a thousand new text messages.
“To the committee meeting,” Logan said.
Raj shook his head. “I don’t have time.” He tried to walk toward the other bedrooms and give the bad news, but Logan steered him around to face the staircase.
“Of course you do. We’ve got a few days, and things are more or less ready to go. A few details here and there, but…” Logan slapped his hands together in a prayer that did nothing to calm Raj’s nerves. “Look, if we want to make it, you’ve got to cozy up with the committee. Get them to include us in their Anoka haunt itinerary. If you don’t, well…”
“Well, what?” Raj gulped. His body started down the stairs while his brain whirled through a dozen disaster scenarios. One of them ended with him burning at the stake.
Logan crinkled his nose, then he laughed. “Just give it your best. I’m sure they’ll love you.”
“Or what, Logan?” Raj asked at the bottom of the stairs. “Is this about the permits? Did you get them?”
“It’s fine. It’s all fine. Go and win them over with your charm.” Logan kept shooing Raj on toward the front door. All of his excuses bounced off that golden retriever wall. He had no choice but to reach for the handle. Raising a hand to his mouth, Logan called out, “I’ll be here holding down the fort.”
“Look out!”
The expensive, antique chandelier plunged toward the floor. At the last second, it caught and jerked up. A handful of crystals and candles fell off, shattering on the marble below. As workmen streamed from every doorway to fix it, Logan gave a jolly wave. “Have fun at the meeting.”
“Yes, I’ve already handled the food trucks. Fall-afels will be there, in spite of its terrible name.”
Adam perched on his chair like a grand vizier about to pour arsenic into the sultan’s tea. He’d had a good night’s sleep with only the occasional nightmare involving a sheep with a chainsaw. The store was well stocked, his mask reveal went off without a hitch, and—best of all—the challenger to his crown was a no-show. Maybe Mr. Choudhary wasn’t as invested in this as he’d pretended to be.
“I just love their crunch patties,” the mayor said.
“Too spicy for me,” declared Mrs. Melnar. She insisted on the Mrs. despite her husband vanishing to the winds three years into marriage. It’d have been a scandal to rock the town if most people didn’t assume he hopped onto a ferry and rode the Mississippi to freedom. She pulled up her bag, and the most demonic creature to ever haunt the earth unleashed a bone-quaking growl. “Oh, is my precious hungry?”
“If that’s enough old business?” Adam asked, glancing at the mayor, who wasn’t even pretending to not be on his phone. “I have a proposal for movie night. I was recently renovating my shop’s basement and thought, if the weather turns foul, it’d be the perfect place to host it. Hang a bedsheet on the wall for the projector. Maybe put up a few decorations. What do you think?”
“That’s—”
The door swung open, alerting everyone on the committee. Carl was already here and fast asleep in the audience. Who else would bother to sit in?
Adam spotted that swoosh of black hair and his good day shattered.
“Sorry. Am I late? I’m late.” Raj dashed up the center aisle where someone had left a microphone. He swung around his bag and pulled out random scraps of paper for some reason. “I got lost and wound up in Saint Paul, I think. Anyway. Um…hi?”
“Mr. Chowdery!” Mayor Gunderson leaped to his feet in a far too excited greeting.
“Choudhery.”
“Thank heavens you’re here. We were just discussing our annual scary movie night. Come up here and join us. There’s a chair by Adam.”
Of course. Adam put on his ten-percent-discount-to-get-a-customer-out-the-door smile and pivoted. The man stumbled, his bag managing to swing into the shoulders and heads of every single committee member as he scrambled past.
“Ooh!” Mrs. Melnar exclaimed.
Raj spun back to apologize, hitting her again. A single quick laugh slipped past Adam’s guard. Instead of the ice landing on the man who hit her, he bore the brunt of the retired woman with nothing better to do. Great.
“Sorry, sorry.” Raj slipped into the chair that was too close to the table. He looked like a kid’s first time in a big boy seat—eyes wide, and mouth open in awe-filled terror. Adam couldn’t help himself, and he helped to pull Raj back.
“There. A little breathing room, for you,” Adam said.
The man steadied himself on his chair, then he turned, and the biggest, sweetest eyes pleaded with Adam. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“You’re—” Adam shook it off and focused.
“What’s this about a movie?”
“Every year for October, we do free outdoor movies on Saturday night. Cute PG ones for the kids early, then a horror one for the older crowd after,” the mayor explained.
“We also sell popcorn at ten bucks a bucket,” Marianne added.
Raj nodded to them both. “What’s the horror movie?”
“Same damn thing it is every year,” Marianne muttered to herself.
Gritting his teeth, Adam stepped in before they started talking about changing up the tradition. “It’s an old, obscure B-movie. People like to bring props, shout along with the dialogue. Have fun.” Adam glared at Marianne before he returned to Raj. “Evil Sheep 2. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
“Heard of it? It’s only the best ba-ad movie to feature a scene with arsonist gophers.”
No. There is no chance he’s seen Evil Sheep. It took Adam five years and a month’s income to get his hands on a projection reel. Having an out-of-body experience, Adam’s head turned like a creaky screen door. He stared long at Raj, who was smiling ear to ear. “You’ve…seen it?”
“More times than I can count. People like to say the original is better, but come on. The puppetry in the first is so amateurish compared to the smooth movements in the sequel. You can really feel that ram thrusting that pitchfork through the old farmer’s wife.”
“I know. And the sound design. That is the definitive brains-popping-through-a-skull sound. Without question.”
“A hem.”
