Page 18 of Monster Mansion

Jake’s face hardened as he picked up a glass and asked, “The one with the gargoyles out front?”

Oh, no.

“That’s the one!” I said with a smile. “The new owner actually already started updating it—put in orders for new plumbing in the bathrooms and new appliances in the kitchen. It’s much nicer on the inside than I thought it would be.”

“Pfft,” Jake scoffed. He tried to balance his displeasure with a gentle smile as if to say “it’s not your fault, you didn’t know,” but I could tell the chances of him coming back to the mansion with me at that moment were slim to none.

“Sorry, sweets,” he continued, shaking his head. “I don’t care how nice the new owner has made it, that place isbad news bears, lemme tell you.” I noticed his voice had dropped into a whisper as he spoke about the mansion, like he was afraid someone might hear him speaking about such a big no-no. The girl at the grocery store did say it was bad luck to speak about it, and Jake obviously erred on the side of better safe than sorry.

“Jake, what are you talking about?” I pressed, matching his near whisper. “It’s just a normal old house… Absolutely massive, but ‘normal’ in every other way.”

“You’ll see,” the bartender continued to whisper as he finished polishing the glassware and moved on to rolling silverware in paper napkins. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the other bartender was busy with something else so she couldn’t have been eavesdropping. “The stories say the longer you’re in there, the weirder shit gets. You’re not the first girl to come to Tallpine to ‘house-sit the mansion.’ There have been others. Most recently was this blondie about our age—I wish I could remember her name—but anyway, she used to come down here every so often for happy hour until she just… stopped.”

“Maybe she had something personal come up?” I asked with a shrug, trying to convince both him and myself that it wasn’tthatstrange of an occurrence.

“Yeah, well, that’s just the half of it,” Jake insisted. “My friends and I were kinda the ‘bad kids’ in school when I was growing up—hard to imagine, I know.” He winked.

I giggled at Jake’s inability to stop flirting, even when he was trying to convince me that the mansion was a thoroughly horrible place to be.

“But anyway, the property out there was a great spot to hang out and drink and smoke without parents figuring out where we were,” he continued his story while his hands kept rolling silverware and stacking the finished product next to him on the bar. “For a while, everything was great. What sneaky-ass kiddoesn’twant to drink their parents’ vodka out of a water bottle on the front porch of such a cool house? At least, until it wasn’t so cool anymore.”

He took a breath before getting to the next part. I could tell by the look in his eye that whatever he was about to say was genuinely upsetting to him as he stood behind the bar rolling silverware and shifting his weight side to side. I tried to reassure him as best I could by resting one of my hands over one of his, causing him to pause his work.

“I saw with my own eyes, Logan, something that I struggle to even describe,” he uttered. “It was… Huge. Bony. With a deer skull for a face. I walked around the back of the house to take a piss and came within feet of thisthingeating someone’s hunting dog like it was a chicken wing.”

I did my best to police my facial expression so as to not give Logan a hint that I knewexactlywhat he was talking about. After all, I had seen it too. The part that I couldn’t necessarily explain though, was that something like sympathy for the creature was coursing through my mind. When I came face to face with the creature, I didn’t feel like it was a predator and I was its prey. It felt more like two confused specimens observing one another.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I responded to Jake in what I hoped was a perfect blend of skepticism and empathy. This man was making it very hard for me to take him home and do what young men and women do, so I hoped my lack of concern could maybe transfer over to him by proxy.

“I am one-thousand percent not kidding you,” he assured me while using his last roll of silverware as a pointer.

“Well, I haven’t seen a deer skull monster,” I lied. “And the place seems perfectly safe.”

Jake gave me a suspicious look.

“Do unsafe places have adorable old man groundskeepers named ‘Ted’?” I asked, batting my eyes.

Jake sighed, unwilling to answer my joke of a question. “I really do want to hang out with you. A lot. Just come back to my place. My parents are not going to care.”

I leaned over and put my elbows on the bar, pushing my breasts together so that Jake would have to stare directly at my goods when I asked him my next question. “Sure they won’t care, but will you care if your parents hear us…you know.”

Jake’s cheeks and ears immediately flushed red with embarrassment, and I could almost feel his pulse quicken through the tension. I was honestly stunned by my own forwardness, but I had the perfect amount of liquor in me where I didn’t feel drunk but I did feel confident, so I’d concocted my own perfect storm.

“Well, when you put it that way,” Jake cooed, “perhaps it’s time for me to face my fears.”

Within ten minutes of him agreeing to come back to the house with me, I had closed my (incredibly cheap) tab, and Jake had clocked out. The bouncer gave Jake a knowing slap on the back as the two of us walked to my car.

“Did you want to follow me, or?” I asked, unsure what the ride situation was going to be.

“I walk to work, actually,” Jake responded. “So if you’re okay driving, I’ll just ride up with you? I can order a car to come get me whenever.”

“Or,” I said as I tossed my hair over my shoulder. “I can just bring you home, or back here, or wherever. I’m not gonna leave you hanging, dude.”

Jake tossed me the boyish smile I’d become so fond of as he slid into the passenger seat of my car and the two of us made the journey back to the mansion. He made himself at home by rummaging through my liked songs on Spotify, and we continued to lean into our shared tastes.

“Geez, they’re just as creepy as I remember,” Jake lamented as we pulled into the end of the drive. The bronze gargoyles lurched over us as if they were judging our hasty decision to come back here together.

I slid out of the car and fished the key to the gate out of my purse, doing my best to look like I wasn’t struggling with the key and lack of light as I unlocked the gate before sliding back in next to Jake and pulling the rest of the way up the drive. I already knew the monster—or potentiallymonsters—were real. I just wasn’t entirely sold on the idea that they were evil.

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