A Midsummer Night's Scream (7 page)

Shawn was desperate to get to the beach. “My wet suit’s in the back of your car,” he said, wiping hamburger juice off his chin. “But I know a shack five minutes from here where they’ll rent you guys stuff.”

“Rent us what?” I said. “Shawn, did you notice we’re not wearing swimsuits?”

Shawn snickered. “We could find an empty beach. You won’t
need
bathing suits.”

“Shut up,” Delia said, but she grinned at him.

Shawn stared out at the white-capped waves. Jake tried to start a cheeseburger discussion: Whose is better—Ruby’s, The Apple Pan, or In-N-Out Burger?

“Jake,” I said, “we have the same discussion every time we come here.”

He grinned at me. “So?”

I tried to squeeze his hand over the table. But he picked up his cheeseburger with it. He had his eyes on Delia.

I felt totally tense. My lunch was sitting in my throat. I reached into my bag and wrapped my fingers around the little potion bottle.

Was I really going to do this?

I tried to signal to Delia with my eyes. But she was watching Shawn.

Suddenly, Jake stared at me, and his expression turned serious. “Listen, I found some papers on my mom’s desk,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. “I wasn’t supposed to see them. My parents never want to tell me anything serious.”

I squinted at him. “Papers? Like what kind of papers?”

“All sorts of financial stuff. It said the studio is going bankrupt.”

My mouth dropped open. “Shut up.”

“You’re joking,” Delia said.

Jake shook his head. “
Mayhem Manor
has to be a smash hit. Or our parents will go out of business.”

I could feel my face grow hot. “Oh, wow. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“It’s scary,” Jake said. “The papers said our parents have their
own
money invested in this thing. That means if the film goes into the toilet…”

Delia finished the sentence for him. “They might have to sell your houses? You might have to move away?”

I patted her on the shoulder. “That’s Delia,” I said. “Always looking on the bright side.”

“Are you going to finish that?” Shawn asked Delia, jabbing a finger at her plate. He obviously hadn’t been listening to a word we said. He didn’t wait for her to answer. He took the cheeseburger from her hands and tilted it to his face.

Jake’s phone bleeped. He pulled it from his pocket. “Hey, it’s a text from Annalee Franklin.” He read it out loud:
“Where r u?”

I felt the blood pulse at my temples. Every time I thought of Annalee, I pictured her showing off her bod, swimming almost naked in Ross Harper’s pool.

And now she was after Jake. I’d made the mistake of telling her that I was crushing on him. Annalee was such a jealous person. She always wanted everything I wanted.

She was always stealing boyfriends. And now she wanted Jake, who wasn’t even my boyfriend.

I’d known Annalee since kindergarten. I tried to like her. I really did. But she wasn’t a nice person. And now I watched Jake texting her back, and I wondered if the two of them had already hooked up.

Time for the love potion. Definitely.

I gripped the bottle and pulled it from my bag. I held it over my lap beneath the table. My heart started to flutter in my chest. As if I’d swallowed a hummingbird.

I leaned over to Delia, beside me in the booth, and whispered in her ear. “Potion time.”

We had concocted a plan. A genius plan.

Under the table, I twisted the cap off the potion bottle and dropped it into my lap. Then I quickly raised the bottle to the tabletop.

“Jake, look at me,” I said.

He crinkled his eyes. “Huh?”

“Look at me and don’t turn away,” I said.

I didn’t give him a chance to ask any questions. I dipped two fingers into the bottle, lifted out a few flakes—and dropped them onto the top of his head.

“Hey—what’s up with that?” he cried, eyes on the bottle in my hand.

I didn’t answer. I slipped the potion to Delia. She dipped her fingers into the bottle.

“Shawn, can you take your eyes off Claire for a minute?” she asked in a sexy whisper.

Shawn had been staring at me, but now he obediently turned, and Delia sprinkled a few flakes onto the front of his blond hair.

He laughed. “Was that pepper? Why’d you do that?”

“Just keep looking at me,” Delia instructed. She reached across the table, grabbed the sides of his face, and held him in place.

“Claire, is this some kind of joke?” Jake said. “I don’t get it.”

“You will,” I said, tucking the bottle into my bag.

Then Delia and I just sat there, staring at each boy, waiting … waiting for the love.

13

“CAN I HIT YOU?”

NO ONE SAID A WORD. We just stared at one another across the table.

I couldn’t take the suspense. I felt about to burst. I broke the silence. “Jake? Do you feel strange or anything?” My voice shook.

“Who wants to know?” he snapped.

My throat felt dry. That wasn’t the response I expected.

Shawn scowled at Delia. “What are
you
looking at, fat face?”

Delia uttered a cry. “Huh? ‘Fat face’?”

I shook my head, trying to force away my confusion. “Jake, I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” I said.

“Shut up, jerk,” he replied. “Shut your ugly pie hole.”

“Wh-why are you saying those things?” I cried.

He stuck his face close to mine. “Because you’re dumb?”

Shawn laughed. “They’re both idiots.” He and Jake bumped knuckles. “Can we go get boards and ride some waves now? Why are we wasting our time with these losers?”

Delia flashed me a worried glance. Then she turned back to Shawn. She took his hand. She didn’t want to give up. “You know, I kind of have a thing about you.”

Shawn grabbed a French fry off his plate and shoved it into her nose.

Delia uttered a choked gasp and jerked back against the booth.

“Hey, now you’re starting to look good!” Shawn said.

Both boys hee-hawed.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I cried.

“Just shut up and go away,” Jake said. “Take a hike. Give us a break. Why not take a jump off the pier?”

“They both make me want to blow my lunch,” Shawn said.

Delia whipped around angrily and grabbed me by the shoulders. “What have you done?” she screamed. “Claire, what have you done?”

My heart was thudding so hard, I couldn’t breathe. “The potion—” I said. “Did I steal the wrong one? Did I—?”

I turned to see Jake on his feet, leaning over the table, waving his fist at me. “Can I hit you just once?” he said, in a low growl I’d never heard from him before. “Please? Can I hit you just once? I’ll fix your ugly nose for you.”

I could see he was serious. Delia and I were trapped in the booth. We couldn’t escape.

“Jake, please—” I said. “Sit down. Please. Do you remember who I am? Remember? I’m your friend?”

He shook the fist. He had a hideous hard expression tightening his features. “Just once. I just need to hit you once.”

“No—Jake. Don’t!” I raised both hands to protect myself.

But with a furious cry, he pulled his arm back—and swung his fist at my face.

14

AN EVIL PRESENCE

“NOOOOO!”

I ducked away.

The fist sailed over my shoulder and hit the back of the booth.

I kept my arms raised, shielding my face.

Jake stood across the table, eyes on me, breathing hard.

Was he going to swing at me again?

No. His expression softened. He let out a long sigh, like air escaping a tire. He blinked a few times. Then he sank back onto his seat.

Shawn rubbed his cheeks. He scratched his head. “What just happened?” he asked Delia and me.

Jake stared at me, his eyes kind of blank. Like he was dazed. “Whoa,” he murmured. “Whoa.”

“Why are you two staring at us like that?” Shawn asked. “Do I have lettuce stuck to my teeth or something?” He rubbed his teeth.

“Did we pay for lunch?” Jake asked.

Delia and I exchanged glances. The potion’s spell had worn off. Thank goodness we’d used only a few flakes.

What had I done? Stolen the wrong potion. This was the opposite of a love potion. Was it a
hate
potion?

“Let’s roll. Let’s pay the check,” Jake said.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “Sure. Let’s pay the check.”

“You’re suddenly in a hurry?”

“Yeah. I’m meeting up with Annalee.”

We all chipped in and paid for lunch. Then we made our way out of the restaurant. As we walked to my car, I hung back with Delia. “Well,
that
went well,” I said.

*   *   *

The first day of shooting. Were Delia and I excited? Does a butter fly?

I drove to Burbank, parked the car in the studio lot, and we started to jog toward Mayhem Manor. At the end of the path, I could see the twin gray towers rising up in the distance. Like giant bat wings. The old mansion stayed dark, even in the brightest sunshine.

A cart rolled by with a large movie projector strapped to the back. And I saw Jake’s dad, in a dark business suit as always, walking with two other business-type dudes, waving a sheet of paper in their faces and talking rapidly as they walked toward his cottage office. I waved but he didn’t see me.

A few minutes later, the gray mansion and its tall towers loomed over us, and we stepped into its shadow. The air instantly grew colder, and the stale smell of mold and mildew of the rotting shingles on the front wall invaded my nose.

“I’m a little wired,” I said. “I mean, I dreamed about this day, but now I’m really scared. You dreamed about it, too, right?”

“No,” Delia said. “I always wanted to be a princess.”

“Funny.”

“Who’s joking?”

I gasped as someone stepped out of the shadows. It took me a few seconds to recognize Pablo, Lana deLurean’s psychic. Again, he was dressed in a silky white suit, but he had pulled a blue-and-white Dodgers cap over his bald head.

“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I pulled off my sunglasses. “Dark here,” I murmured. “Hard to see.”

Delia eyed him suspiciously. “Aren’t you going inside?”

He shut his eyes. “I feel bad things about this house. I can feel the presence of something very evil.” He opened his eyes. “Do you feel it, too?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Lana went inside?” Delia asked.

He nodded with a sigh. “She wouldn’t listen to me. I warned her this wasn’t the right day to go in there. But she said the movie came first. She was angry with me. But…” His voice trailed off.

“We have to go in, too,” I said.

Delia scowled at him. “Why do you want to scare people?”

He blinked. “I have a responsibility. I have to speak what I feel, what I sense. I must be honest.”

He spread his hand over Delia’s forehead. “Shut your eyes,” he said. “Listen hard. Concentrate. Do you feel anything?”

“Yes, I feel your hand on my forehead.”

He didn’t laugh. He removed his hand. “The evil here at this house is so strong,” he said, gazing from Delia to me.

Over his shoulder, I saw the sign on the front door of the mansion:
LIVE SET. DO NOT ENTER IF RED LIGHT IS ON
. A red lightbulb had been installed at the top of the wooden door. It wasn’t lit.

“Pablo, it’s just a house,” I said. “Just a neglected, old house.”

“And now it’s just a movie set,” Delia added.

His eyes flared. “No, it isn’t,” he snapped. “It’s a graveyard, ladies. It’s a living graveyard.”

And with those words, Delia and I pulled open the front door and stepped inside.

15

“WE’LL SLICE HER IN HALF”

BACK IN 1960, MAYHEM MANOR was built on the back of the studio lot on a wide, empty field that wasn’t being used. It was meant to be a movie set, but the carpenters built an entire house with solid walls and floors and stairways that led to a basement and a second-floor attic.

It was designed to look like the scariest haunted house ever built. The ceilings are cracked, and giant spiders and tarantulas hang down on long strings from a tangle of silvery cobwebs. The stairways are narrow and winding, and the steps are steep. The floorboards squeak and groan.

The windows are narrow and dust-smeared, and sunlight slants in at odd angles, never seeming to brighten the rooms. The house feels cold even under the brightest sunlight on the warmest summer days.

The furniture is heavy, old, and dark and covered in a powdery layer of dust. Big iron candelabras hang on the cracked, stained walls, and a giant chandelier juts down from the ceiling of the front room like a fat, black insect.

I feel a chill every time I step inside. But all the equipment and wires and lights and digital high-def cameras and crew members scurrying around help remind me that it’s a movie set, not a haunted mansion.

Delia and I stepped into the vast front room and let the cold air rush over us. My eyes adjusted slowly to the eerie darkness.

The dining room had been totally transformed into a movie set. A tall scaffold stretched high above the long table and held a catwalk jammed with lights and camera equipment. I saw two guys in denim overalls hoisting themselves up the narrow rope ladder to the catwalk.

Delia tripped over a clump of cables, and I caught her before she fell. Two crew members were setting the dining-room table. The clatter of china and silverware was drowned out by shouting voices. A boom mike swung over our heads. Digital cameras were being moved into place.

I saw our director, Les Bachman, arguing with two of the camera operators. Les waves his hands a lot when he talks and always seems frantic and angry. He’s a big, blustery guy who wears big, loose sweatshirts and baggy, unwashed jeans and likes to bump you and invade your space when he talks to you. I’ve heard some crew guys call him Hurricane Les.

But everyone seems to like him and respect him. Mom says he’s the top horror director in Hollywood—mainly because he
horrifies
everyone who works for him. I told you, Mom is a riot.