Page 27 of Halloween Haunting
“I-I can’t see –” she blurted, hands outstretched and flailing. “I-I can’t do this. I can’t –”
Warmth engulfed her trembling fingers. The heat continued till Bryant’s hand was curled around her own, fingers intertwined. Stillness crept around Grace at the sensation, her eyes wide when she realized that Bryant was, in fact, directly beside her, almost touching her hip.
“You don’t need to see,” he whispered.
“Bu –”
“You just need to trust me.”
Grace gulped. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll – I’ll try.”
Bryant’s smile could be heard in his voice. “That’s good enough for me.”
With their hands tightly wound together, Bryant led the way through the haunted house’s main hall. Creatures followed them against the walls, murmuring things in a different language before letting out a shrill, ear-piercing laughter. Grace kept moving at her companion’s side, her fear masked slightly by how impressive he was. Not once did Bryant offer the haunted house even the satisfaction of a flinch. He stared straight forward, determined and sure.
Grace wouldn’t have wanted anyone else at her side.
“Here,” Bryant murmured.
The door to the graveyard room was already swung open, slightly hanging off the hinges. Smoke curled out from the doorway, beckoning them to come further inside. Bryant retrieved his bronze gun before creeping in, his grip over Grace’s hand only growing tighter. Tombstones stuck out of the floor, soil and mud brought in from the outdoors and scattered around the room. Silence answered them as they moved further into the room, and Grace’s shoulders began to deflate with the realization that their suspect might’ve not been there.
Snap!
The door slammed shut.
Bryant whipped around, keeping Grace partly behind him. He leaned forward, raising his pistol. “Clint,” he called out. “We just want to –”
The figure shot forward. Grace let out a squeal as Bryant backed into her, almost making her trip over a series of grey tombstones. Clint slipped by them, his muted and frightening clown outfit visible for only a split second, before he disappeared through a back door.
“Come on!” Bryant tugged at her as he started sprinting after him.
Grace pushed herself forward, surprised at how fast her legs went from feeling numb to being filled with a youthful power. She wanted to tackle Bryant to the ground, to say that she never signed up for long-distance running, for hunting down suspects. But her fear was too strong to even think about stopping Byant from his relentless chase. He was the only sort of protection she had – there was no way she’d be letting go of him anytime soon.
The back door out of the graveyard room opened into a wide ballroom, where Clint could be seen shoving cloth-covered tables behind him, desperately trying to stop Bryant from getting too close. Like a bloodhound, Bryant released his hold over Grace’s hand, and lunged across the tables. He landed on the other side without faltering, without even daring to break a sweat. But there was nothing stopping him then. Bryant was on the hunt, and he disappeared after Clint within seconds.
Grace tripped over her own feet as she followed, clumsily knocking her shoulder into the wall when she tried to make a sharp turn. Their footsteps once echoed in front of her, but now they were nowhere to be found. She was wandering aimlessly through the dark and shadowy halls, her hands helplessly feeling the bare walls, desperate for a breath of fresh air, for a glimpse of light, for the moon. Her chest rose and fell as she prepared a scream, moments away from shouting out for Bryant to find her.
Whoever led her to believe that haunted houses weren’t anything to be frightened of needed to be shoved into her shoes.
Grace panted as the word around her dimmed even further. “Bryant –!”
A hand clasped over her mouth, cutting his name short. She flailed but it was no use – effortlessly, as if she weighed only a pound, her attacker was dragging her across the floor, till her entire frame had disappeared into the neverending darkness.
14
Grace had never given it any thought about how she might die.
Death was not something she was entirely unfamiliar with. It reached her far sooner than it should’ve, plaguing her family before stealing her Mother away. Later, when the shadows grew larger and it returned, Grace watched as Death took her Father away next. Like clockwork, the darkness had a large presence in her life, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Despite that, Grace wasn’t one to imagine her own funeral, to wonder what might say or who would show up. She never planned out a will, never organized her things and tried to figure out who her next of kin would be. For someone who had grown so comfortable with Death’s presence, Grace was beginning to think she didn’t quite mind it.
That is, until she was being dragged across the floor of a haunted house, a rubber smelling hand latched over her lips. Tears struck down her cheeks as the floor gave way from underneath her, and she landed hard on her bottom. Manic thoughts rippled rapidly through her head, amidst the chaos:I don’t want to die, it’s not my time, it’s too early, this isn’t right, not now – it can’t be now.
Her attacker dragged Grace deeper into a room, where a haunting blue light was radiating out from behind her. The door swung shut, and a silhouette took shape in front of it. Grace kept scooting away till her back was pressing against the leg of a desk, the wood angrily biting into her skin. Her head shot up – the blue light wasn’t haunting at all. Grace’s eyes narrowed. It was a security office. A plethora of square screens lined up next to each other on top of the desk, a few stacked on top of each other. They flicked through cameras positioned within the haunted house.
“I’m sorry,” the silhouette said as it stepped closer, revealing a clown costume. “I-I really am. Honest.”
