The Skeleton Haunts a House (15 page)

“Also gross. And yes, I know that's the point.”

“Room monitor?” Sid asked.

“One of the cannibals is the monitor—he drops character if he needs to.”

We'd reached the end of the hall, and started back in the other direction to reach psychology class, which featured a mannequin strapped to a table and being subjected to electroshock therapy, a scare actor confronting his arachnophobia by being trapped in a cage full of rubber spiders, and a scare actor in a straitjacket writhing and screaming about exams. The monitor doubled as the professor taking notes about the various experiments.

English class was a lot like history, except the three tableaux showed fictional horrors instead of historical ones. So we had an exorcist trying to help a really grotesque mannequin, a woman in a shower being stabbed by a psycho, and the two creepy little girls from
The Shining
.

“This is more movie than literature,” I said.

“I know, but we have to make sure the customers recognize the visuals. I suggested a stoning out of ‘The Lottery,' but Aunt Deborah was worried we'd hit somebody in the eye. Anyway, the exorcist, the psycho, and the creepy girls are all actors. With that many in the room, we haven't had a separate monitor, but Aunt Deborah may add one now.”

We moved down the hall. “The last room on this floor is the campus health center. You've got your insane nurse, your blood-covered doctor, your patient strapped to the table begging people to let her out, and amputation jokes. The spiel is that you better stay healthy, because if you're not in pain when you come to the health center, you will be when you leave.”

“Cue creepy laughter?” I asked.

Madison nodded. “Creepy laughing is surprisingly hard on the throat.”

Back in the hall, she said, “That's it for the rooms on this floor, but there are also pop-outs along the hall.”

“What's a pop-out?”

“We station scare actors in these alcoves.” Though the wall was lined with curtains, Madison knew which one to pull to reveal a gap just big enough for somebody to stand in. “They'll reach out, or jump out, or just scream, depending on how energetic they're feeling. We always have one near the door at the end of the hall to move groups along. Linda is a pop-out specialist.”

“So she could have had time to kill Kendall?”

“Right. But she didn't, did she?”

“Definitely not,” Sid assured her.

Madison opened a door at the end of the corridor to show another flight of stairs. “The stairs are always lit, by the way, and the guides make sure nobody runs or pushes. And absolutely no scares on the stairs.”

Once down, we went through a short hallway to another room. “Detention hall.”

“This is where I hid,” Sid said.

“I figured,” Madison said. “For a haunted house, we really don't have many skeletons.”

“Why would you?” Sid asked. “Skeletons aren't scary.”

Madison and I shared a look.

She went on. “I say something about making sure you do
your homework or we'll put you in detention and forget to let you out. Some of the props are motorized to rattle around, but there haven't been scare actors or monitors before now. It's not a big scare area, more a place to let people catch their breath before the big scares.”

The end of the room opened to a hall with the requisite black curtains, and signs pointing the way to the dorms, with more spooky warnings.

“Any pop-outs along here?” Sid asked.

“Nope. We want to lull people into a false sense of security.”

I knew the next room a little too well.

“This is our zombie party scene where . . . you know,” Madison said. We all looked over at the corner where the body had been found. Sid had no questions other than asking about the monitor, and I was happy to keep moving.

The room opened onto another hall. Madison said, “And on to graduation.”

The final room looked like an old-fashioned lecture hall with rows of seats on a gentle incline down to a platform with a podium and blackboard. At one point, seats must have filled most of the room, but there were only three rows left, and from our vantage point, we could see what looked like mannequins wearing mortar boards seated in the chairs, watching in rapt attention. But as we moved around, it was obvious that it was only heads on spikes, with the faces in various expressions of horror, pain, and madness, and appropriate amounts of pretend gore trailing from their severed necks. They looked kind of cheesy, but I could see how the scene would be horrifying with the right lighting.

Madison said, “There's a scare actor behind the podium, and I introduce him as the headmaster. Get it?”

“Very witty,” I said.

“He welcomes the group to commencement, and says
they were such good students he doesn't want them to leave. Ever. Then he pulls a chainsaw out from behind the podium and chases people around. By this point, they're softened up by the rest of the haunt and even the tough ones tend to lose it if somebody is chasing them with a chainsaw.”

“A prop chainsaw, I assume.”

“No, it's real.”

“You're kidding.”

“It's a real chainsaw—there's just no chain. The headmaster could still burn somebody with it if he put it right up against somebody's neck, but he's not dumb enough to do that again.”

“Again?”

“Just kidding. Aunt Deborah only lets mature cast members handle the chainsaw. Anyway, in case the headmaster isn't freaking them out enough, random professors pop out with fake axes and knives and things. That's why we took the chairs out, so there would be plenty of room for chasing. I let the customers run and scream for a while, then I open the door and yell for them to escape while they can.”

The exit led to what must have originally been some sort of courtyard or maybe a sculpture garden. Now it was tricked out as a cemetery with tombstones and a shed painted to look like a mausoleum.

“And that's the end?” I asked.

“Nope,” Madison said with a grin. “They think they're safe, but we've got random monsters out here to give them one last scare. That keeps them moving until they're out the gate. Then they're really safe.”

“That last bit scares the piss out of people,” Sid said with a snicker.

“Sometimes literally,” Madison said.

“You mean people really wet themselves?” I asked.

“Sometimes. And worse.”

“Oh. Ew.” Now I knew I'd made the right decision in not going into the haunt.

“What else do you guys need to see?”

“Didn't I hear something about secret passages throughout the building?” Sid said.

“They aren't secret passages, exactly. We've got paths along the edges of the hallway and some of the bigger rooms so our people can get to and from without being seen. It's all just plywood walls and scrim.”

We went back inside to see the maze of cramped, confusing pathways. Madison pointed out the black light bulbs and arrows painted in florescent paint that enabled the cast and crew to sneak around unseen for more effective scaring.

We ended up back at the front door. “That's it,” Madison said.

“Pretty scary,” I said.

We'd intended to go back to the greenroom, but people were already leaving, so we decided to wait for Deborah downstairs. I zipped the backpack to prevent unwanted skeletal exposure, and we leaned up against the wall to kill time. Well, that, and I was thinking about the haunt layout, and hoping I could figure out something brilliant about the murderer's approach. Apparently I couldn't.

We'd been there a few minutes when Madison asked, “Mom, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What is it with you and haunted houses?”

“I just don't see the point, that's all. If you're scared, you feel bad for being a coward. If you're not scared, you feel stupid for having wasted your money.”

“And it has nothing to do with something that happened in high school?”

“Did Sid tell you? He pinky swore!”

“It wasn't me!” said Sid from inside the backpack.

“All he said was that you quit going to haunted houses after high school, so I figured something must have happened.”

I sighed. “Okay, I may as well tell you. It's just kind of embarrassing.”

“I won't judge.”

“Me, neither,” Sid said.

I bopped his skull through the fabric of the backpack to remind him that he was supposed to be incognito. “Junior year, a group of us drove over to Springfield because we'd heard they had a really good haunted house, but we weren't impressed at first. The guy there was doing an abysmal Boris Karloff voice, and the props all looked as if they came from the Halloween decoration aisle at Target. Their fake blood looked like catsup or cherry pudding or something, and it was all over, so the place was sticky and stinky. The layouts in the first two rooms weren't very good, and we could see the people getting ready to jump at us long before they moved. We just laughed at them.”

“Scare actors hate that.”

“We couldn't help it. Then came the third room, which was all dark, and that was scary because we could hear somebody else in there moving around. Plus he kept laughing a crazy laugh. Since he knew the room and we didn't, he kept circling to come behind us and laugh some more. We were trying to find the way out, but got jumbled together, and somebody knocked my pocketbook off of my shoulder. I told my friends to wait so I could find it, but they didn't hear me. So they found the way out while I was scrambling around to find my bag. When they realized I wasn't with them, one of them called out, ‘Georgia! Where are you?' The next thing I know, the guy in the room with me started calling out ‘Georgiaaaaa' in a creepy voice that was even worse than the laugh. Of
course, if I'd been thinking, I'd have realized he'd heard my name and was just messing with me. But—”

“Dark room, creepy voice,” Madison said.

“Exactly. And that was just the start. I don't know if the scare actors had walkie-talkies or what, but when I finally made it to the next room, which was a gory butcher shop set, the people in there knew my name, too.”

“So they were all calling you?”

“Worse. One of the actors started singing.”

“Singing?”

“You know the song ‘Georgia On My Mind'?”

She nodded.

“That's what he was singing. Only it was in this eerie voice, and other people joined in. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me normally, but by that point . . .” I shivered, even all those years later. “I don't think they knew the lyrics, so they were kind of muttering and mumbling, but that made it that much scarier. My friends had gone on ahead, so I was by myself, and I was almost too afraid to move. Finally I made myself run out to the next room and when I caught up with my friends, they said I was as white as a sheet. Later, I realized it was all just a trick and that I was never in any danger. But it wasn't fun, and I never wanted to go into another haunted house. What can I say? I'm a wimp.”

“Anybody would have been freaked by that. At least you didn't wet yourself.” When I didn't respond immediately she quickly added, “Not that there would be anything to be ashamed of if you had.”

“No, I did not wet myself,” I said, though I might have if I hadn't gone to the bathroom immediately before entering the haunted house. “But I really hate that song!”

Madison leaned against me in the time-honored way in which teens show their affection and Sid was kind of nudging
from inside the backpack, so I did feel better. “Madison, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“You scare actors get irritated when people don't get scared, don't you? Laughing instead of screaming, making fun of your best bits, and so on.”

“Absolutely. We work hard to scare people.”

“But when people are really scared, and have involuntary fear reactions in their pants, you mock them unmercifully. So how are people supposed to act?”

She looked sheepish. “We're not exactly fair, are we? What we love are the people who play along. They jump and scream, but then they laugh because they know it's not real. And they don't hit us!”

“People hit you?” I said.

“Sometimes. Nobody has hit me, but Liam got hit a bunch of times last year. He was in an optical illusion room, all painted in black and white squares with strobe lights, and he wore a black and white suit so people didn't notice him. Just as the audience decided it was a mind-twister instead of a scare, he'd start moving. He didn't jump at them, just came closer, but he got socked in the stomach three times in one weekend. The people claimed it was a fear reaction, but Liam says one guy did it because he was mad about being scared. Anyway, Aunt Deborah was careful with the haunt layout. Other than in the chase scenes, nobody gets that close to the audience, and we watch out for anybody getting violent. It's much safer.”

I nodded, but wasn't entirely happy with my daughter working in a place where she could get hit. Then I started thinking. “What if Kendall hit one of the scare actors? Then he or she hit back in self-defense, and—”

“Now you're scaring me.”

“Sorry,” I said, making a mental note to save my more bizarre theorizing for when I was alone with Sid.

Deborah came down the stairs, herding the rest of her crew ahead of her. When it was just us Thackerys, she said, “I wondered where you guys had gotten to. Have you eaten? I'm starved.”

“I was planning to get something on the way home. What sounds good, Madison? Burgers, subs, Chinese?”

“Chinese!”

“Chinese it is.”

When we got May Chung's, Deborah did the ordering, and we ended up with a ludicrous number of containers.

“Are we feeding an army?” I asked.

“Just wait,” she said.