Page 33 of Halloween Haunting
“When I say I didn’t get out much,” Grace said, “I mean thatIdidn’t get out much. Whatever Chuck got up to was his own business. And we know what he got up to when I wasn’t around, and it sure as hell wasn’t darts.”
“Not unless there was a tournament at a bar called ‘Tiffany’s’,” Olivia teased.
The group in front of them stepped aside after failing to win any of the stuffed animals. The prizes caught Grace’s eyesimmediately as they walked up to the counter. She had her sights already set on an oversized teddy bear near the back of the booth, with open arms that seemed to just be beckoning her toward it. She rubbed her hands together and dug into the pockets of her witch’s costume to retrieve their final bout of cash.
“How many?” the man behind the counter asked. His outfit caused Grace to stutter for a moment, almost like she had forgotten that it was Halloween after all. Even though he was only dressed in a simple black hoodie and matching pants, the man’s intensive face paint depicted him to have the face of a skeleton. Long, dark hair fell down the man’s shoulders, matching the short goatee that spiked out at the bottom of his pointed chin.
“J-Just me,” Grace replied as she handed over the cash.
After collecting the payment and storing it in a small lock box, the employee gathered four slender darts and reached across the counter to set them down in front of her. At the same moment, the man’s elbow knocked over his cellphone, causing it to clatter onto the counter beside Grace. She reached for it without thinking, reaching to hand it back to the man, when the bright white vision snapped across her gaze.
Grace laid on the library floor. At first she only stared up at the domed ceiling in amazement, wondering how many volumes of the books she adored growing up were stored within its tall walls. She started to raise her arms to try and touch the painted ceiling, where naked cherubs and angelic white clouds stared back down at her. But as her arms rose, she quickly realized that they weren’t her arms at all.
A silhouette blocked out the ceiling. Knees locked on either side of Grace’s hips, tapping her in place. The arms that weren’t hers reached, desperately trying to shove the silhouette off from over her, but to no avail. The figure leaned in closer, the pungentsmell of booze and sweat filling her nostrils. A blade glinted in the darkness as the tip rested at the center of Grace’s chest, just barely beginning to pierce the fabric of her dinosaur costume.
Dinosaur costume?
Wait!
As the realization smacked into her – that she wasn’t looking through her own eyes, but Tommy Briggs’ – it was far too late. The silhouette’s face broke through the darkness, illuminated for a split second by the encroaching moonlight. Though Grace did not know the man by name, she recognized him instantly.
It was the employee at the dart throwing booth.
And right when the blade went to puncture Tommy’s vulnerable chest, Grace was jerked out of her vision, and brought back to the present.
The man –the killer– blinked at her. “I said you can go, lady.”
“What tactic is this?” Caroline whispered from her right.
“Scaring the darts into going where you aim,” Olivia whispered back from the opposite side. “Obviously.”
Anna pushed them both aside. “I think both of your constant whispering in her ear is stopping her from just giving it a shot.” She rested a reassuring hand on Grace’s back, causing her to flinch. “Relax, Gracie! It’s just a game.”
But as Grace gathered the darts in her hand, aiming the first at the dart board beyond the counter, none of it felt likejust a game.The man in front of her wasn’t pretending to be a known killer. He wasn’t dressing up as a famous villain. He wasn’t a stranger cloaked in a familiar person’s outfit.
He wasliterallythe killer.
He wasliterallythe villain.
And the only thing that Grace could think of doing was to play the game. If the employee was the killer like her vision showed, it meant that she wielded the upper hand - whichsomehow turned out to be more frightening than anything else. The most logical thing for her to do was to act like nothing happened, to play along and keep everything nice and easy. By the time the game was over, she’d call Bryant.
She’d call Bryant and he’d be there in a flash and it would be okay.
The words repeated in her mind as she threw the first dart, foolishly missing theentireboard. The dart skidded off the side, bouncing in the man’s direction. He jerked out the way, almost tumbling into the back wall of the booth.
“Careful!” he bellowed, eyes wide and – slightly – frightened.
Grace winced and raised the next dart. She glanced toward him and he was watching her close now, not daring to let his gaze drag away for even a split second. She pulled the dart back and let it fly, watching as it sunk into the outer rings, not even close enough for a handful of points. Behind her, Caroline dropped her head in her hands.
The man didn’t bother to look unimpressed. His dark eyes were simply holding onto her, and they were speaking volumes.
They seemed to sayyou know me, don’t you?
They seemed to whisperwe’ll know soon enough, won’t we?
The final dart shot through the air with a feverish intensity. Grace wasdeterminedto call Bryant even more. The dart bounced off the board as the first did, landing on the ground with a small tapping sound.
Caroline hooked an arm around Grace as she guided her in the opposite direction. “What theheck,Gracie? If you had a terrible aim, you should’ve said so! And to think – all those stuffed animals, just staring us in the face and laughing. Straightlaughing!”
