Page 36 of Girl, Haunted

They were candid shots taken from a distance.

And they were all of people in various haunted house attractions.

Mostly women. Punters in garish makeup, caught mid-scare. Patrons screaming in delighted terror.

But there, in the center of the macabre display, was a face Ella recognized. Gregory Van Allen, owner of the Screamatorium. The man whose murder had kicked off this whole nightmare.

Luca caught it, too. 'God damn. Looks like Roland was doing more than working these haunts. He was perving on the women.'

‘Or scouting for victims,’ Ella said.

A chill raced down her spine as she imagined Roland lurking in the shadows, camera in hand, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

‘Uh... Ell?’ Luca said.

But why Van Allen? What had made him a target? She scanned the other photos, looking for a connection, a pattern. But there was nothing obvious, just a sea of terrified faces staring back at her.

Ella looked through them one by one, trying to identify any other familiar faces. If Natasha Langston was amongst them, then they’d have enough circumstantial evidence to charge this guy today.

But nothing jumped out at her. No sign of Natasha. Some of the shots were close-ups, others from a distance.

‘Earth to Ella,’ Luca said from behind. Ella spun around.

‘What you got?’

Luca pointed to the back of the door. Ella followed his gaze, and her blood turned to ice water in her veins.

There, crucified on the closet door, was another teddy bear. But this one was different. Worse, somehow. Its button eyes had been gouged out, leaving dark, gaping sockets. Rusty nailspinned its paws to the wood, like a fuzzy Christ figure in a children's toy version of the Rapture.

But it was the sign around its neck that made Ella's heart lurch into a panicked gallop. A chalkboard hung from a frayed string, and scrawled across it in the unstable handwriting was a message:

‘DON'T FORGET – NOCTURNE HOUSE AT 2PM’

Then, beneath that, a crudely drawn smiley face with Xs for eyes.

Ella's blood flash-froze. Nocturne House. She'd heard that name before, seen it on the list of Yamhill's haunted attractions.

‘Nocturne House,’ Luca repeated. ‘That’s where Roland is.’

Ella checked the time on her phone. One-fifty PM.

‘Get the address, Hawkins. Quick. We need to get there right now.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Benjamin Clarke hated Halloween. No, worse than that. He loathed it with a passion that bordered on the pathological. The incessant screaming, the cheap jump scares, the sugar-fueled brats running around like gremlins on crack. It was his idea of a personal hell.

But an electrician needed to eat, and bills didn't pay themselves. So here he was, perched atop a ladder in the bowels of some haunted house, trying to ignore the cacophony of shrieks and artificial thunder that echoed through the place like a banshee's mating call.

Fake terror, manufactured horror. What a load of garbage. Benjamin had seen real terror. He'd felt it in his bones when the doctor told him his wife had six months to live. He'd tasted it in the back of his throat when he opened that final medical bill.

The stuff going on beyond the walls of this room? Child’s play.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and left a smear of grime in its place. ‘Goddamn cheapskate wiring,’ he muttered as he fiddled with a jumble of cables that looked like they'd been installed by a drunk chimp. ‘Gonna get someone killed one of these days.’

Not that anyone would notice an extra body or two in this place. The way these haunted houses kept popping up around Yamhill, it was like the whole damn town had a death wish.

According to the stenciled sign in front of him, this room was the Execution Chamber. The owner of this place had called Benny up yesterday evening, practically begging him to fix the lighting in here on the quick. Benny had idly hoped that he could get in and get out before the afternoon patrons arrived and turned this place into a shriek-fest, but luck hadn’t beenin his favor. Two hours in and he was still barely halfway into untangling this mess.

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