Page 7 of The King of Halloween
Ah!A hint of a flicker danced through the little windows like tiny candles appearing then vanishing throughout the house. Small ghosts swirled up and down the tiled roof before a great sparkle hit at the top of the weathervane. Everyone oohed and aahed, delighted by the sudden appearance of projected fireworks.
A scream. Adam jerked in shock. A physical skeleton hand tore through the little doorway and snatched up the projected trick-or-treater. He tried to follow, his brain certain the animatronic grabbed an actual doll. People lost it, hooting and hollering at the display.
Leaning farther out, he craned his neck. The wind caught his pumpkin head, spinning it around. Snarling, he grabbed the flesh and turned it back, catching a glimpse of a light change. The entire house vanished, revealing an ad for some place called the Heartbreak Hotel. Scrim. Adam smiled at not just the use but him figuring out the trick. It sure did delight the people watching, huge applause rising from the crowd.
“Thank you. Thank you.”
A shadow moved from behind the house, hand extended. Adam caught a hint of colors shifting from blue to green in the sunlight.
No. It couldn’t be.
The damn pumpkin head spun again. He let go of the chair in order to slap both hands on it and focus. With his chin planted against the interior, Adam peered through the nose hole. Brown hand waving to the crowd, green on the head. No, purple. No, it’s…
“Thank you for that amazing display!” the mayor called out. “Let’s give a big round of applause for Mr. Chowder.”
“Choudhary.”
It’s him. He…
“Oh, shi—!” The throne collapsed, flinging Adam off his perch. He fell headfirst toward the unforgiving concrete ready to pulp his brains. The pumpkin swung around, hiding his face when he struck. All he knew was darkness, then the sickening sound of broken wood raining down around him.
Quiet gasps were all that surrounded him as he fought to stand. “It’s okay. I’m all right,” he said, doing his best to ignore the stinging on his palms. As he slid back, the pumpkin head fell off. Adam took stock, surprised to not find a huge lump on his head. Then he saw it.
The pumpkin rolled over in the wind. Its grinning face smiled at him. Well, half did. The other side was completely dented inward, giving the once jolly jack o’lantern a pained look of the damned. Hushed silence was all that greeted Adam as he staggered to his feet. A cold breeze cut across his knees, and he looked down to find he’d torn open his pants. Blood dripped down the remaining fabric, and his side ached. As he tried to stretch, the wind caught the head and rolled it away. Chasing after, Adam managed to get a hand on it just as he looked back to find Raj Choudhary in his chameleon mask watching Adam’s great fall.
“Your King of Halloween, everyone!” the mayor called to no applause.
?CHAPTER THREE
?
BENDING CLOSER, RAJ tried to make out his last note in the low light. A small candle on the table revealed he was…scrutinizing his grocery list. Oh, he was out of mustard again.
“That was fantastic.”
The table in the Hardware Store, which was actually a speakeasy bar, shuddered. The squeak of a padded chair sliding back ground on Raj’s teeth, but he didn’t look up until a drink nearly landed on his pages. “Careful.” He tried to protect his work, but a man only laughed.
“What are you doing back here? The celebration’s happening at the bar.” Logan, his business partner in the Heartbreak Hotel haunt and overnight experience, slapped the table for good measure. When Raj didn’t respond, he swung back to look at where a mess of other locals gathered around the main bar.
“The whole committee is up there, along with the council members we need to get on our good side,” Logan chided him. “Go and introduce yourself before they’re too drunk to remember their own names.”
“I will,” Raj said as every fiber of his being cringed. If he wanted to work with people, he wouldn’t have spent a decade and a half hiding in a tiny room making realistic blood splatter across IMAX screens. Why did he think this was a good idea? Just uproot his entire life halfway across the country because he fell down a Wikipedia hole and found the Halloween town of America. Only exciting people would take out all their life savings and invest in a haunted attraction that required rebuilding an abandoned hotel from the twenties.
No one ever called Raj exciting.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out what went wrong with the mechanism.”
“Man, stop stressing. The float was great. Everyone loved it. We’re in.”
“The bats didn’t circle the turrets. There was no thumping under the false floorboards we spent hours getting in. Oh, and the music cues were an entire second off. I’m jotting it all down so I can troubleshoot later.”
“Why?” Logan was the kind of man who didn’t understand the meaning of the word trouble. It wasn’t that he was conceited or vapid. He’d just been blessed with the kind of incredible luck that kept him from suffering true failure. His life was lived on the escalator up. Raj hoped that at least some of that pixie dust would spill onto him.
“I don’t want to forget it.”
“Man, the parade’s over. Well, that one. This town does like five or something. I don’t know.” He slurped up his straw so loudly people pivoted in their encompassing armchairs to watch. Once they caught his sun-kissed locks and electric blue eyes, all was forgiven. Hence, the power of Logan. “We did what we needed to do. We’re good.”
