A Catered Halloween Read online

  “And here’s the man of the hour,” Libby said to Bernie out of the corner of her mouth as he came closer.

  Bernie nodded. He looked exactly like he did when he’d first come into their shop: like the successful entrepreneur, the go-to guy.

  “Glad to have you two on board,” he said. “I can’t wait to have a piece of your apple pie. I went in yesterday, and I had to settle for a slice of cranberry-apple. Not that that was bad. It was amazingly good. I’ve gained about ten pounds since I’ve been here, and I put it all down to your shop.”

  Libby laughed. The guy could be charming, she’d give him that, although she never quite trusted men who were like that.

  Mark gestured toward the mansion. “You like what we’ve done decoration-wise?”

  “Love it,” Bernie said.

  “You don’t think the heads on the spikes and the severed limbs dangling from the window are too much?” asked Mark.

  “Maybe a tad,” Bernie allowed.

  “In the ads I stated that no one under twelve would be admitted,” said Mark. “There are plenty of other places for young kids to go, and I wanted to do something over the top without having to worry about the little ones’ sensibilities.”

  “Good thinking,” Libby said. She couldn’t imagine the nightmares a kid would have after seeing something like this.

  “And we’re having everyone sign a liability waiver,” Mark said.

  Bernie giggled. “Like they did for some of the horror movies in the fifties.”

  Mark grinned. It made his face look slightly lopsided. He snapped his fingers. “I knew I forgot something. A doctor and an ambulance.”

  “And the nurse,” said Bernie. “Don’t forget the nurse.”

  Mark’s grin grew wider. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “So it’s going to be a good show?” Bernie asked.

  Mark rubbed his hands together. “A good show? It’s going to be a great show. The best this town has ever seen. Forget the guy in the sheet jumping out at you and yelling boo and the dime-store skeletons hanging from the door frames. We’re going to do much better than that. Come on. Let me show you what we’ve done since you were here last.”

  “We’d love to,” Libby told him, “but we have to get the batter in the fridge.” She consulted her watch. “Plus, we need setup time. We’re behind schedule as it is.”

  “Not to worry,” said Mark. He removed his phone from the clip on his belt, called someone, and spoke for a few seconds. “I just told Carl to come out,” he explained after he ended the call. “He’ll unload the van for you.”

  “I think I’d rather do it myself,” Libby said. She really didn’t like the idea of someone else handling their stuff. Actually, didn’t like was putting it mildly. Hated would be a more accurate term. Who knew what they would do to it.

  “Come on,” Bernie said to her. “It’ll be fine.”

  Libby could feel herself start to flush. No. It wouldn’t be all right. The rule was no one touched their stuff. And Bernie knew it, too.

  Mark jumped in. “Carl’s worked in restaurants all his life. Anyway, there’s no reason why ladies as lovely as yourselves should have to carry heavy things.” Before Libby could answer, Carl appeared. “Tell him what to do,” Mark ordered.

  Bernie did.

  Libby took a deep breath and told herself not to say anything now. She would talk to Bernie later. She forced a smile. “Let’s go,” she told Mark.

  He rubbed his hands together. “Good. I’m going to scare you to death.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Libby muttered as they went inside.

  Chapter 2

  Libby looked around the hallway they’d just stepped into. It had been totally transformed since she’d been there two weeks ago. The walls were now painted a dull gray and festooned with cobwebs.

  Meat hooks hanging from the ceiling rattled menacingly. The floor looked old and dusty, except for the splatters of what, Libby decided, was supposed to be blood. The overhead fluorescent lights flickered on and off, painting shadows on the walls and floor. Libby sniffed. The place even smelled musty. The only things that looked modern were the EXIT signs over two doors down the hall.

  Mark jerked his head in their direction. “The fire marshall insisted on those. I tried to talk him out of it—I think it spoils the mood—but it was a no go.”

  “I would think so,” Libby said as she took a couple of steps forward.

  No doubt about it. Mark was definitely getting on her nerves. She stopped for a moment in front of a sign on one of the walls, which said, THIS WAY TO THE EXECUTION. A black arrow pointed to the door on Libby’s right. Then she moved over to the square wooden table pushed against the wall. On it sat a cash box, a bunch of forms, and a black cup filled with pens.

  “The releases I was telling you about,” Mark said, pointing to the pile of paper.

  Bernie nodded. A notice on the table stated that the price of admission was thirty dollars.

  “A little high, isn’t it?” Libby commented.

  Mark shrugged. “High tech always is.”

  Libby was about to tell him that was why she liked low tech better, but before she could, Bernie was pointing down the hall.

  “I’m a little confused. The kitchen is the last door on the left, isn’t it?” asked Bernie.

  Mark nodded. “Correct. The corridor we’re using for the Haunted House loops around and ends up in the kitchen and the dining room. This is the back part of the mansion. The oldest part. The part where they say Esmeralda is buried.”

  “Who says?” Libby asked. She wished she could have found her chocolate. That way she wouldn’t be so grumpy.

  Mark waved his hands in the air. “People say.”

  “Well, then I guess that’s okay. I mean, if dogs said it, then it wouldn’t be so good,” replied Libby.

  Mark shot Libby a puzzled look. Obviously, he hadn’t gotten what she was saying. He took a step away from her as he glanced around. Even better. He probably thought she was nutty.

  “God, you wouldn’t believe how many rooms this place has,” Mark said. “And they all connect with one another in weird ways. Tracing the wiring was a nightmare, and I thought the guy that put in the fiber optics was going to quit on me. Let me tell you, we had a hell of a time getting this place up to code.”

  “That I believe,” Bernie said.

  Mark nodded toward the door that was marked ENTRANCE. Below it was written, ONCE YOU COME IN HERE, THERE’S NO TURNING BACK.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  “You know,” Libby said, thinking of everything they had to do, “we really are running out of time. Why don’t you and Bernie go ahead, and I’ll start in the kitchen.”

  “Nonsense,” Mark replied. “This will only take a few minutes. No more than five, I promise. We’ll just do a quick walk-through.”

  Libby was about to say they didn’t have five minutes when she caught Bernie glaring at her. Even though her sister hadn’t said anything, Libby knew what she wanted to say: something along the lines that Mark was new in town, that he was wealthy, and that he could throw lots of business their way. Which he wouldn’t do if Libby pissed him off. So Libby just nodded her head and followed Mark through the door.

  When she stepped through to the other side, Libby felt a puff of ice-cold air play up and down her spine. She jumped in spite of herself. Mark laughed.

  “That’s the oldest trick in the book,” he said. “I connected a motion detector to a compressed-air tank.”

  Libby looked around. The room was totally dark for a second; then a strobe light began flashing. She could hear a faint moan rising and falling. Then she heard another sound. It sounded like a chain saw. It was a chain saw. The chain saw got louder. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a woman over in the corner. Her arms were tied to a chain that was suspended from the ceiling. The woman started screaming. A man with a chain saw appeared from the far corner of the room. The woman’s screams got louder as the man got clo
ser.

  Libby wanted to look away, but she couldn’t as the man came nearer. She could feel her heart racing as the man lifted the saw. The flashes of light from the strobe bounced off the blade, making it dance in the light. This is all a trick, Libby told herself. It’s an optical illusion. But somehow it didn’t help.

  There was a bloodcurdling shriek as the man raised the chain saw and brought it down on the woman’s shoulder. Rivulets of something warm and wet ran down the left side of Libby’s face. She couldn’t help herself. She screamed.

  “It’s water,” Mark said. “Warm water. It was my idea. Everything is computer controlled. We also have a state-of-the-art sound system with volume controls and directional speakers.”

  Libby jumped. She’d been so focused on the scene in the room that she’d forgotten that Mark was there.

  “God, that looked real,” Bernie said. She gave a nervous giggle.

  “Holograms,” Mark said. “We can adjust the images if we want. We can adjust the screams and the sound of the chain saw. I think the blood splatter is a nice touch, don’t you? It gets everyone involved.”

  “Involved?” Libby could hear her voice rising. She took a deep breath and told herself to calm down, because what she wanted to do was throttle him. She took a second breath and a third before she regained control.

  Bernie gestured around her. “This must have taken months to figure out.”

  “Not really,” said Mark. “I hired a company, FX Productions, that specializes in this sort of thing. It took them a day and a half to set the show up.” Mark shrugged. “I’m not good with technical stuff,” he confessed.

  “Just making money,” Bernie observed.

  Mark’s grin flashed on and off. “Well, I’ve found that if you can do that, everything else falls into place. And this is only the beginning of the tour. Wait till you see what else FX has come up with.”

  “I’d rather not,” Libby told him.

  Mark reached over and took Libby’s hands in his. “But you have to.”

  “She doesn’t like gory stuff,” her sister explained.

  Mark patted Libby’s hands and then let go. “The rest of it is just scary. Promise.”

  Libby was about to say that she didn’t think that was much better when Bernie interrupted.

  “Is the whole thing movie themed?” Bernie asked.

  Mark shook his head. “Not at all. We have vampires; we have ghosts; we have a little bit of everything.”

  Libby realized she was still breathing hard. What ever happened to the days when going through a haunted house meant being blindfolded and having your hands forced into a bowl of oatmeal and spaghetti and being told that was someone’s guts?

  “After you,” Libby said to Mark. She just wanted to get this over with.

  He laughed. “My pleasure.”

  “Enjoying yourself?” Bernie asked him.

  “I have to confess that I am. I feel like I’m watching my baby take his first steps,” said Mark.

  And with that, they opened a door and stepped out into a hallway. Smog rolled around their feet and drifted upwards. A fog machine, Libby thought. She jumped as a bony hand dropped down in front of her.

  “That’s Bob,” Mark said.

  Now that Libby looked closer, she could see the outlines of someone’s arm.

  “He’s one of our actors,” added Mark.

  “Actors. That’s a laugh,” came a disembodied voice out of the ceiling.

  “Bob Small?” Bernie asked.

  “How’d you guess?” came the voice from the ceiling.

  “Your voice,” said Bernie.

  “When did you—” Libby began to say, but Bernie kicked her.

  Bob finished the sentence for her. “Get out of jail?”

  Libby rubbed her shin. “Yes.”

  “About two weeks ago,” replied Bob.

  “Comfortable up there?” Mark asked.

  Bob snorted. “Yeah. If you like being in a coffin.”

  Mark patted his hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll have someone come and relieve you in two hours.”

  “Two hours?” Bob squeaked. “What happens if I have to take a leak?”

  “We already discussed that. You hold it,” Mark told him as he guided Libby and Bernie toward the center of the room. When he got there, he stopped. “I like to give people a second chance,” he practically whispered.

  “Very noble,” Libby observed.

  Mark shot his cuffs. “No. It’s just what I call enlightened self-interest. You give a guy like that a second chance and he’s yours for life. See, we have Bob to set the mood, and then you come over here and see this.” He pointed to a big black coffin that was seemingly rising out of the floor.

  There was a creak as the coffin’s door began to open. A squeal of laughter came from a skeleton as it sat up. He had an eye patch over his left socket and a long mane of white hair that came to his shoulders. He stared straight at them and shook a bony finger.

  “Soon you’ll look just like me,” the skeleton cackled. “Just like me. Eat, drink, and be merry. We don’t have six-packs in the graveyard.” Then he lay back down as the coffin door started closing. A minute or two later, the coffin was gone.

  “It comes up through the floor,” Mark explained. “People crossing a point on the floor trip a sensor that raises the coffin.”

  “Sensor?” Libby asked.

  “Yeah. It works on the same principle as a doorbell,” Mark replied.

  “Like the one we have in the store, which alerts us when customers come in,” Bernie added.

  “I know,” Libby said.

  “Well, I was just explaining it in case you didn’t,” Bernie mumbled.

  “But I do,” insisted Libby.

  Mark cleared his throat. “This is really a throwaway. Something to get you calmed down after the chain-saw scene and before the next thing.” He paused for effect. “Because the next thing, as my father used to say, is going to knock your socks off.” Mark walked to the door marked EXIT, opened it, and said, “Ladies, welcome to the Pit and the Pendulum. I have to say, I think that Poe would have approved, were he alive today.”

  Libby took a look around. The walls were mirrored, and in the center of the room was a raised platform. Four steps led up to it. On that platform was a long table, draped in a red cloth. Up above the table, a sharp-looking, curved blade swung back and forth, going lower with each swipe.

  “You have to get closer to get the full effect,” Mark said as he gave Libby a little nudge. She took a few steps. There was a headless body lying on the table.

  “See,” Mark said. “You stand in the center and you see your head being chopped off.”

  “Lovely,” Libby said. She gritted her teeth and took another step. Never let it be said that she wasn’t a good sport. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the woman’s head sitting on the first step from the top. It stared up at her. It looked incredibly lifelike. It also looked familiar. Very familiar.

  “Shouldn’t the head be sitting in a pool of blood?” Bernie asked.

  Mark didn’t answer her. “Wait,” he said instead, and he put out his hand.

  Libby stopped.

  “Give me a moment,” Mark said.

  Libby noticed he was frowning. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Mark didn’t reply. His attention was focused on the head.

  “Well, is there?” Bernie asked while she watched Mark take another step forward. She had a bad feeling in her gut. “Is that a hologram?” she asked. “Because it looks pretty solid if it is.”

  Libby watched as Mark stretched out one of his feet and gave the head a tentative tap with the toe of his shoe. It began rolling down the steps…bump, bump, bump…and then it kept going until it stopped at Libby’s feet.

  This is not a hologram, Libby thought. Holograms do not make noises like that.

  And then she had another thought.

  The head was not made of wax. It wasn’t made of plaster. It was
flesh and blood.

  Libby didn’t know how she knew. She just did.

  And then she knew how she knew.

  Libby stared at the face staring up at her. She’d recognize those eyebrows anywhere. “It’s Amethyst Applegate,” she cried.

  Which was when Libby started screaming.

  Chapter 3

  Sean Simmons took a bite of his pumpkin bar. “Not bad,” he remarked. “Not bad at all.”

  As he brushed a small piece of the pumpkin bar off his lap, he thought that in the normal course of things, his daughter Libby would have taken those words as fighting words. Tonight she hadn’t even blinked. In fact, she hadn’t said much since she and her sister had come running in, yelling about what had happened down at the Peabody School.

  Not that he was surprised. Some places just had bad karma. Of course, he hadn’t said that to Bernie and Libby when they’d told him about this job, because he didn’t like to talk about certain things. Now he was thinking that maybe he should have. Then he pushed that thought away. Better to concentrate on the known and leave the rest to all the weirdos out there.

  “You’ve added a touch more cinnamon, haven’t you?” he said.

  Libby’s eyes widened fractionally. “How can you ask me something like that at a time like this?” she demanded.

  “I thought you liked talking about food,” Sean commented as he turned his wheelchair slightly so he could look out. The wind had picked up and was blowing the leaves on the street into the air. He could hear the creak of the store sign as it swayed back and forth. It looked as if a cold front was coming through.

  “I do, but I don’t want to talk about food now,” Libby said.

  Sean turned to face her. “Well, what do you want me to talk about?” he asked.

  Not that he didn’t know. Bernie would say he was being disingenuous, but he’d found in his years as chief of police of Longley that it was better to let the witnesses, especially if they were in a state of shock, introduce the story themselves.

  “We want to hear what you have to say about what happened at the Peabody School, of course,” Bernie said.