Page 99 of Puzzle for Two

He listened tensely.

Those shots had come from outside the building.

But even as he made that determination, another gunshot followed—someone returning fire—and that shot seemed to echo inside the mansion.

“Fuck.”One of those shooters was almost certainly Flint. But which one?

Heart in mouth, Zach began to traverse the length of sinking floor, commando style. He had no idea what he was going to do—he wasn’t even clear where he was going—he just knew he had to get to Flint as quickly as possible.

The shots stopped as abruptly as they’d begun.

Zach was afraid to consider what that might mean.

He made it across the dining room, threw a quick, cautious look around the doorway, and dived into the next room. His thought was to get back to the outermost hall of the mansion which should, in theory, give him straight access to the main exits, but that was liable to place him directly in the path of whoever had set this trap.

He scrambled to the relative safety of the nearest corner, drew his pistol, and wondered if he’d be able to hit anything, the way his hands were shaking.

What was so wrong with being an accountant, anyway?

A loud click-and-switch sound came from overhead, and every light inside the structure flared into dazzling life. Zach was left blinking and bewildered as all around him the attractions came alive.

A witch’s shrieking cackle rippled through the speakers high above, bouncing off the papier-mâché beams and boulders of the mansion’s secret passage. A deafening and disorienting cacophony of sound followed: booming ghostly laughter, demonic wailing, a loud and disembodied owl’s ‘Who? Who?’And underneath it all tinkled the discordant melody of a broken music box.

“Welcome to the Malice Mansion. We hope you have a terrible stay!” cried a mechanical voice from the rafters. Manic chortles followed.

Zach flattened himself against the wall as the skeleton horses and pumpkin carriages pushed through the floating cobwebs and rolled slowly toward him.

The first three cars had passed when an idea occurred. Zach vaulted into the nearest carriage, crouching down in the well and peering over the sill of the carriage door. His view from inside the carriage was surprisingly different; the ticket-holder’s perspective was designed to conceal the illusion-destroying rails and ropes, nuts and bolts of what amounted to an elaborate wagon ride across an elaborately decorated stage.

As the skeleton horses rounded the corner into another shadowy tunnel, Zach spotted movement ahead. He peered through the gloom. His scalp prickled as realized the figure in front of him was human, not mechanical.

In fact, he was looking at two figures.

Both human.

One was straight out of Zach’s waking nightmare from the evening before: tall and scarecrow-thin, dressed in a shiny black raincoat. He—it—had long, flowing blonde hair—and no face. The faceless one was struggling to drag the other, inert, figure onto the tracks.

Even before he recognized the fallen man’s leather jacket and jeans, before he saw his face in the red glow of the skeleton horses’ eyes, Zach knew who the victim had to be.

Horror gave way to desperation. If Flint wasn’t already dead, he soon would be.

Zach jumped up, aiming his pistol. “Stop!” he shouted.

He definitely had the advantage of surprise. The faceless figure dropped Flint and looked around wildly, as if expecting to see one of the animatronics come to life. But the shock didn’t last long. Spotting Zach, the figure snatched their own weapon from beneath the raincoat.

Zach gasped. He fired.

And missed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fuck.

Zach ducked down as the other opened fire. The bullets sang overhead andthunkedinto the walls of the metal cars.

Almost instantly, Zach lost count of how many bullets had been fired. Too many, for damned sure. If he stayed where he was, he was going to pass right in front of this maniac, and the other could just reach over the side of the pumpkin car and shoot him point-blank.

Of course, Zach could return the favor, and they could both go out in a blaze of Hong Kong cinematic glory. He’d prefer to survive the night, though.

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