Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (16 page)

A sheet dropped between the audience and the performers.  In the red light, on the sheet, devil-shadows waved their pitchforks around.  The girl screamed and the devils laughed. 

Eventually the lights went out, and the door to the next room opened.  It was an extremely dull morality story about drugs, so bland, even when the devils showed up, that it washed out some of Jenny’s horror at the first room.

In the third room, the scene opened with two boys lying in a bed.  One put his arm around the other.

“
Stop it, Peter!” the second one said. “How many times do I have to tell you?  The Bible says it’s wrong!”

“
But it feels so good, Jim!” the first one said. “You’ll like it if you try it.”

“
But it’s a sin, Peter!”

“
Just try being gay with me!  You can always change your mind later!”

“
Oh!  Okay!”  The boys pulled the blanket over their head and rolled around under it. “That feels good, Peter!”

Jenny giggled, drawing angry looks from the family, who seemed to be taking it quite seriously.

“Sorry,” she whispered.  Beside her, Seth was shaking, trying to hold in his laughter.

Predictably, devils ran out and snatched the blanket from the bed.  They attacked the boys with whips and paddles.

“Ow!” yelled Jim, the unfortunate sucker who’d given in to temptation, as a devil paddled his behind. “That hurts!  It hurts so bad when you’re being gay!”

Peter sat up, now wearing devil horns himself. “Oh, it’ll hurt a lot more…down in HELL!”

Jenny’s laughter must have echoed through the barn.  Seth broke down along with her.

“
Y’all be quiet!” the mother shouted. “I want my boys to see this!”

They apologized to the lady and stumbled together into the fourth and final room.  This one was pitch black, and extremely hot wind blew from it, probably from space heaters.  Recorded screams and cries filled the dark room.  A red light clicked on—a flashlight with a gel lens, held under the face of another guy in a devil mask.

“This is the fate of all doomed souls!” the devil said. “The final destination, the end of the line, the last stop on the track—”

Jenny and Seth were still trying to hold in their snickering from the last room.

“Learn ye well these lessons, those who still live!” The devil approached them now, waving his pitchfork around for emphasis.  “The wages of sin is death!”

“
That feels good, Peter!” Seth whispered out of the side of his mouth, and Jenny burst into fresh laughter. 

“
Okay, come on,” the devil said to them. “I’m trying to teach these kids a serious lesson here—” He turned and pointed his pitchfork at the family, and Jenny saw that he actually wore a full red suit, complete with a pointed tail that hung from his butt and jiggled when he talked.  At that moment, it was just the icing on the cake, and Jenny collapsed against Seth, laughing.

“
Enough!  That’s enough!” the devil said, and now the three kids were laughing, too, at the devil’s tantrum. “Guys!”

More devils came into the room from the other stages.  Jenny and Seth were escorted out of the House of Hell, even ushered past the smiling people at the exits offering pamphlets on how to avoid the horrible fates you’d just witnessed.

Out in the parking lot, the mother of the four kids yelled at Seth and Jenny as they passed on the way to the car. 

“
We was trying to teach our children!” she screamed. “We hope y’all proud of yourselves!  Your fault if they turn out butt-humpers!”

They hurried into Seth’s car and locked the doors.  He drove away, leaving the angry family far behind.

“That was totally romantic, Seth,” Jenny said.

“
Sorry.”

“
The audience was the scary part.”

“
So now you’re ready for the real one in Vernon Hill,” Seth said.

“
Will this one actually be scary?”

“
Supposed to be the scariest one in the state.”

“
Who said that?” Jenny asked.

“
The sign advertising it.”

The haunted house in Vernon Hill looked much more promising, a large old grain warehouse with a long line of people waiting to get inside.  The line moved slowly, it turned out, because each couple or small group was allowed to enter separately.

“Good luck,” breathed the skull-faced monk who took their cash. “Follow the ghostly glowing trail…it’s your only hope if you want to survive.”

He opened the door, and they entered the dark, narrow passage inside and followed the strip of glowing green tape on the floor, which was the only lighting.  The door closed behind them, with the sound of squealing rusty hinges, a loud slam, then cackling laughter.  Screams and undecipherable, wailing voices echoed from the darkness around them.  Jenny and Seth saw each other as floating, disembodied zombie-vampire faces.  If it weren’t for their glowing green makeup, they wouldn’t have seen each other at all. 

The glowing strip of tape led them around a corner into a room lit by two stained-glass windows (or plastic, electric-powered imitations).  They glowed onto a coffin on an elevated platform draped in dark purple.  Velvet ropes kept Jenny and Seth from going too close.

There was a rusty scraping sound, as the lid raised just a few inches.

“Join me,” a voice whispered softly from inside. Then a few pale fingers wriggled out of the slightly open coffin.  They weren’t rotten zombie fingers or pointy vampire fingernails, just normal fingers of a normal person.

“
Join me,” it whispered again. “It’s so cold when you’re dead.”

Jenny drew closer to Seth.  This was actually creeping her out. 

There was a hiss right behind Jenny, and a rush of cold compressed air blew on the back of her neck, puffing up her green wig.  She screamed and jumped against Seth, who laughed.

They left the room and followed the glowing tape into some kind of psychotic surgeon’s operating room, hung with musty green hospital curtains.  The surgical lights shown at crazy angles and cast huge, twisted shadows.  The surgeon stood at the head of the table, in a blood-splattered surgical mask and smock, gleefully waving a scalpel and a meat cleaver.  He cackled maniacally.  Jenny thought the laugh had to be a recording, since no one could keep that up for hours. 

On the operating table, among buckets and basins filled with gore, were two severed arms and one severed leg jutting up through the table, waving and wiggling around.  They occasionally lunged at the surgeon, who struck back with the big cleaver.  One arm grabbed the doctor around the throat.  As Jenny and Seth leaned forward to see what would happen, a live head sprang up, screaming, from the bloody basin closest to them.

Jenny grabbed onto Seth again, or maybe he grabbed her this time.  She was pretty sure he’d screamed when she did, too.

She kept close to him as they stepped through an open surgery cabinet, which led them to the next section of hallway.  They heard whispering as they drew close to a barred door.  When they reached it, a man with crazy hair and stitches all over his face jumped out against the bars.  His arms were bound in a straitjacket.

“
You gotta help me!” he whispered. “I don’t belong here!  I came in for the tour five years ago, and I’ve been a prisoner ever since.  Help me!  Come back!”

Around the next corner was a very rickety-looking wooden staircase, under dim, swampy lighting.  A sign beside the staircase read: “The Cursed Covered Bridge – Do Not Enter!”  The glowing tape led right up the steps, to a black-curtained doorway at the top.

“Ladies first,” Seth said.

“
Funny,” Jenny said.

Seth went ahead of her.  Each step gave a different creaking or cracking sound as you put your weight on it, and actually sank a little bit.  It felt like the whole staircase would collapse at any second.  Even the handrail wobbled.

At the top, they passed through the strips of black curtain and onto the covered footbridge.

It was just wide enough to walk single file.  The roof, walls and floors all looked like they were made of old, rotten boards, with lots of knotholes and broken slats.  The sound of a roaring river, and even the smell of dank moisture, rose from underneath the bridge.  A very small amount of pale light shone in through the knotholes in the roof. 

Seth held her hand behind his back as she followed him.  Jenny kept her feet on the glowing strip of tape, drawing her shoulders in and avoiding the walls as much as she could.  She knew that scary faces or pictures would pop up in some of the “broken” gaps in the walls, but there were way too many for her to guess where.

As they edged forward in the dark, more sounds joined the running water—splashing sounds, then groans.  They were soft, complaining groans at first, then louder and angrier the further Seth and Jenny walked into the bridge.  Jenny was beginning to think nothing would pop up at all, when a cold, wet hand seized her boot around the ankle.

Jenny screamed, and the groans rose louder, and were joined by shrieks and howls.  Voices roared all around them.  Strobe lights flickered through the holes in the roof.  Then the whole bridge tilted to the left, throwing Jenny and Seth against the wall.  Wet, decayed zombie arms reached through the left wall, pawing all over both of them.

The bridge tilted the other way, and they fell against the opposite wall, where more zombie arms grabbed at them.

“Come on, Jenny!” Seth grabbed her by both hands and pulled her up.  The bridge rocked from side to side as they ran.  Zombie arms reached for them from both walls and the ceiling.

They burst through the shredded black curtain at the end and stopped to catch their breath in the dark corridor beyond.

“This one,” Jenny gasped, “Is much scarier.”

They made their way through the rest of the haunted house, and Jenny only screamed one more time, when they were walking through a room full of spiderwebs, and a bunch of fat, bristly, wriggling, battery-powered spiders on strings had dropped from the ceiling, landing all over her.

They passed through a cemetery filled with dry ice fog at the back of the warehouse, through a gate, and they were outside.  Jenny was still shaking when they reached his car.

“
What did you think?” he asked.

“
That was awesome.” Jenny grinned around her fangs.

“
You screamed a lot.”

“
You screamed more!” she countered.

“
So we’re going to that party,” Seth said. “Unless you’re too scared.” 

“
Why should I be?” Jenny asked. “I’ll be the scariest thing there.  Even if I didn’t have a costume, I’d still have Jenny pox.” 

It was a twenty-minute drive to Barlowe.  Whatever they passed, Seth told her it was haunted.  According to him, they passed a haunted barn, a haunted cow pasture, a haunted Waffle House, a haunted Department of Motor Vehicles. 

When they reached Barlowe, Seth stopped at a railroad crossing, even though there was no train coming.  He looked up and down the tracks.

“
What are you doing?” she asked him.

“
Just watching for the ghost train,” he said. “This railroad is haunted.”

She snickered and punched him in the arm.

The farm outside Barlowe had dozens of cars and trucks lined up in the front field.  They followed the dirt road to park with everyone else.  Then they walked towards a distant barn illuminated by firelight, from which they could hear old Metallica songs, played very inexpertly by a live band without anything electric.  They crested a rise in the field and saw the band was set up in the back of a truck.  At least a hundred people were dancing, or drinking from a keg at the front of the barn, or hanging out by a bonfire.  Nearly everybody was costumed, so the crowd was a weird mix of aliens, gorillas, hobos, superheroes, ghosts, a mummy, and lots of girls who’d managed to find or make skimpy, revealing costumes, whether they’d dressed as cats, fairies, or nurses.

“
See?” Seth said. “Barlowe parties much better than Fallen Oak.”  He led the way into the crowd.

Seth high-fived a werewolf and a cowboy bandit, who pulled down his kerchief to show Seth his face.  The bandit commented on how much the Fallen Oak Porcupines sucked, and Seth responded by insulting the Barlowe Bears.  It seemed good-natured.  Then the werewolf looked at Jenny.

“Who’s your date?” the werewolf asked Seth.

Jenny wanted to open her mouth and correct him, tell him they were just friends, Seth had a girlfriend elsewhere.

“This is Jenny.” Seth introduced her to the Barlowe kids.

“
You like cider, Jenny?” the cowboy asked. “We got two full kegs over by the barn.  My cousin’s band sucks, but they get better if you drink.”

“
I like cider,” Jenny said, though she’d only had the nonalcoholic kind.

“
Then have your boyfriend take you over there and get you some.”