“Damn if that thing doesn’t look alive,” I said.
“Maybe you should leave it there after the haunted house.”
“Ha. Oh, look. It’s Jace. I think.”
An elegant vampire awaited us on the front porch.Damn.Lean, tall, dark-haired and impossibly handsome, Jace in vampire garb was enough to make me want to offer up my neck for immortality. Penelope had won the boyfriend lottery with this one.
“Welcome, my friends. Would you care for a drink before you go in?” He offered us a metal goblet that looked like it was brimming with blood.
“Um, yuck?” I said.
“I’ll try it,” Landon said, and I stared open-mouthed as he drank from the goblet. “Mmm, cranberry juice.”
“Are you going to do that at showtime?” I asked Jace.
He grinned. “We’ll have disposable cups, but I wanted you to get the best impression.” Then he stood taller, sweeping his cape over his shoulder, and assumed his character with a sultry voice. “I understand the Realtor sent you. In the market for a haunted house?”
I laughed. “Absolutely.”
“Then come right this way.”
The chandelier in the foyer was dimly lit and complemented by undulating colored lights. My own anticipation worked against me here. Nothing chased us, but the general decay of the space increased my sense of dread, especially with the weird sounds coming from the rest of the house — pounding music. Moans?
I glanced at Landon, whose eyebrows were raised at the ambience.
“Perhaps you’d like to see the parlor,” Jace purred as he took us that way.
In the as yet untouched parlor, furniture was covered with blood-spattered sheets under dim, undulating, atmospheric lighting, as if a murder scene was frozen in time. And then one of the “chairs” leapt up at us — a person covered in one of the bloody cloths. We both jumped, with me grabbing Landon in an embarrassing display of terror.
“Nice,” I muttered.
“Thanks,” came Wyatt’s muffled voice. “By the way, Cali took pictures already.”
“Thanks,” I said, and couldn’t help a giggle. It was hard to have a conversation with a bloody sheet.
We skipped the kitchen, which, while not renovated yet, would be used to stage provisions for the party and a small concession during the rest of the tours. The dining room was next, and it was amazing. “Floating” candles (battery-operated LEDs, my analytical mind determined) hung above a cloth-covered table covered with all manner of disgusting dishes, including a “body” with its innards spilling out. Skeletons and a couple of costumed ghouls were eating the macabre feast, and there were a lot of squishy sounds in the background that enhanced the queasy scene.
In the middle of the table was one of those chocolate fountains, only this looked like it was gushing with blood. One of the ghouls stood and moved closer, sweeping a finger through the liquid and holding it out to us. “Want a taste?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice.
This time, Landon said no, and we threw ourselves back when the ghoul stuck the finger in our faces and screamed, “We’re starving!”
“Not so scary so far,” I whispered as we got into the hallway. “I didn’t recognize those guys, but maybe it was the makeup.”
“We brought in a few of our friends from the Chamberlain Theater,” Jace whispered back, then resumed his vampiric tour guide persona. “I think you’ll appreciate the number of bedrooms we have here at the mansion. It’s very restful.” He led us up the stairs, where framed holographic photos were hung along the walls, lit just right so they seemed to be staring at us as they changed from grim-faced humans to rotten-faced creeps.
The music was getting louder, some sort of grinding, screaming metal that grated on my ears. I liked to rock out, but this was unnerving, partly because there was also a soundtrack, real or recorded, of yowling and moaning and crying layered under the death metal.
“The nursery has been decorated in such a charming way,” Jace said, showing us to the first bedroom on the long corridor.
A broken-down crib was off to one side, with a mobile hanging above it consisting of creepy dolls with eyes missing, a meat cleaver, a bloody rattle and more. Tiny coffins were stacked in another corner. With her back to us, a woman was cooing over what must have been a baby, rocking the child in her arms.
Then the woman turned toward us. Her hair was a fright (a wig?), her dress was tattered, her feet bare, and through the magic of makeup, it looked as if her eyes had been ripped out.
“Fuck,” Landon said under his breath.
The woman held out the baby toward us, and I realized that it had a bloody stump where its head was supposed to be. “Have you seen my baby’s head?” she asked in a creaky voice, and I belatedly realized it was Sloane holding the desecrated doll.
Jace guided us out the door. “That’s justdisturbing,”I whispered.
