The Diva Haunts the House (6 page)

“Oh, but it did. It was the address of a cemetery.”

Vegas and Jen screamed and clutched each other. Mochie leaped to the safety of the window seat.

“We couldn’t believe it. It was such a spooky day, with a bitter wind and dark clouds roiling in the sky. We strolled in, and I was certain we’d come to the end of the road. Viktor probably never lived in Paris. And then we saw it—a mausoleum with Viktor’s name on it.” June sat back, apparently pleased by our stunned silence. “He had died one hundred years before.”

The girls issued screams worthy of a horror movie. Although I’d been skeptical, a chill shuddered through me.

“And he was here? Physically in this house?” asked Vegas.

“Many times.”

“Aw, come on. That didn’t really happen,” said Jesse.

“Oh, my dear, but it did. Exactly as I told you.”

Every one of us looked around as if we expected to see Viktor emerge from the shadows.

We all jumped when the knocker on the front door sounded.

“That’ll be my dad. C’mon, Jesse.” Blake rose from the table. “See you in the morning at the haunted house. Thanks, Mrs. Winston.”

Jesse followed him to the foyer, still eating tortilla chips. I assumed his hand gesture meant “ditto for me.” I opened the door, hoping Patrick would be in a better mood. The man who stood on my stoop said, “I’m here to pick up Blake and Jesse?”

The boys walked by him and out into the night.

“Smells great! Thanks for taking care of them. I’m sure they would thank you, too, if they had any of the manners we try to drill into them.” He shouted the last part over his shoulder, as though he hoped they would hear. Smiling, he wiped his forehead in an embarrassed gesture, nudging waves of short toffee-colored hair into an unruly peak. He wore a Redskins jacket over a button-down shirt and jeans.

“Blake was very courteous.” Who was this guy? I didn’t see any vampire partials in his hands, so I extended mine and said, “Sophie Winston.”

“Dash Bennett, Blake’s dad.”

I wondered if I should ask for identification. Blake was old enough to know his own dad, though. Surely he wouldn’t have waltzed out if this man were a stranger.

Using two fingers, he gave me an informal salute. “I’ll drop him off at the haunted house in the morning.” He turned and hustled down the walk, leaving me to wonder—
If that was Blake’s dad, then who were Patrick and Maggie?

When I returned to the kitchen, I asked, “Does Blake have a stepdad?”

“Nope,” said Vegas.

A well of horror rose inside me. “Then who are Patrick and Maggie Starski?”

Vegas tossed her long hair back. “Maggie is his mom but I think her last name is still Bennett, and Patrick is Blake’s albatross. He’s Maggie’s boyfriend. Blake
hates
him.”

I could understand why. I enlisted the girls’ help in setting the table with shiny black plates. Before I left in the morning, I had thrown an orange tablecloth over the kitchen table. Anticipating the need for access to the pizzas, I skipped a centerpiece. Vegas added black napkins, and I pulled the hot pizzas from the ovens. As I ran a pizza cutter through them, I couldn’t help noticing that June had acquired admiring new friends. I didn’t often see preteens mesmerized by adults, much less anyone June’s age, but they peppered her with questions and hung on her every word. A considerable feat given that they usually weren’t interested in anything that wasn’t connected to a screen of some type.

At my urging, and undoubtedly, the fabulous scents of oregano and baked pizza dough, everyone except June moved to the table and took seats.

“June, will you help us with the haunted house?” Jen asked the question, but Vegas folded her hands in a pleading gesture.

“I would love nothing more. I’d also like to stay for dinner, but I’m told I must make an appearance at the grand party across the way,” said June. “Better get it over with.”

I saw her to the door. “Sophie, dear,” she said, “do you still have those boxes up on the third floor? The ones that belonged to Faye?”

I was a little bit ashamed to admit that I’d neither gone through them nor cleaned them out.

June was ecstatic to hear that. “Marvelous. It will be like a treasure hunt through the past.”

She walked out into the night. I could hear voices and car doors around Natasha’s house and hoped June would enjoy herself.

When I returned to the table, Viktor continued to dominate the conversation.

Without warning, Jen screeched, “It’s perfect! Our resident vampire at the haunted house has a name—Viktor. That makes it so much more real, doesn’t it? It’s a boardinghouse, run by the witch. What would a witch call a bed-and-breakfast?”

“A Dead and Breakfast,” suggested Vegas with a giggle.

“A Coffin and Cauldron?” Jen laughed.

After dinner, the girls watched a DVD of old Vincent Price movies while assembling little packets of candy corn for the haunted house visitors. I washed the dishes and cleaned up, planning to join them.

Mochie, his tummy full of sliced ham from the deli, sat by the window, no doubt interested in the sounds emanating from the party. He perked his ears and peered out the window on alert.

If Daisy hadn’t run to the front door and scratched at it, I never would have heard the knock. Someone rapped on the door down low, and not very hard, but with a rat-a-tat urgency.

I didn’t see anyone through the peephole, but Daisy’s enthusiasm gave me the courage to open the door. I hoped it wasn’t some sort of ugly Halloween trick. Holding onto Daisy’s collar so she wouldn’t barge out, I swung the door open just enough to see a little boy dressed as a devil.

“Gabriel Hart! What are you doing out by yourself?” I reached for his hand, peering outside for his father, Frank, or his mother, Anna. Surely the little three-year-old hadn’t walked over from his house by himself at this hour of the night.

He willingly took my hand but refused to enter the house. He tugged at me, saying, “There’s a bad man outside.”

FIVE

“Honey, it’s Halloween. Lots of people have scary decorations. Let’s go inside, and I’ll call your mommy.”

“No! It’s the
bad
man.” He held his ground but appeared to be on the verge of tears.

I hoped nothing had happened to Frank. After all, there had to be some reason Gabriel had turned up by himself. “Okay. Come in for one second while I get a leash for Daisy.”

That must have sounded reasonable to him, because he ventured inside and bravely waited for me to pull on a vest and snap a leash on Daisy’s collar. Vegas peered around the corner and gushed about the cute little devil. Jen promptly joined her, and the two girls made a huge fuss over Gabriel. A good thing, because the commotion probably caused him to forget about the bad man he’d seen.

“I’m taking him home,” I said. “Be right back.”

“Wait!” The girls cried in unison. Jen opened the closet and they grabbed fall pullovers that were the latest craze. Made of soft, warm fleece, the black tops snapped at the neck. When opened, they revealed a bright color inside. Jen’s was her favorite color—purple—and Vegas’s top showed bright orange. The pullovers reversed to the loud colors.

When I opened the door, each of them took one of Gabriel’s hands, and he seemed quite content to be propelled along the sidewalk by his new friends. We neared Natasha and Mars’s home at the end of the block, and the three of them stopped dead.

Lights glowed in every window of the house, and Natasha had rigged panels of some type so that it appeared that skeletons hung from nooses in two of the front windows. No wonder Gabriel had been afraid.

She’d taken great pains with the entrance to the house. A long, curving staircase arched upward from the sidewalk to her front door. The railings wore heavy garlands of shiny black magnolia leaves that must have taken Natasha forever to spray paint. Tiny lights intertwined with them for an elegant but slightly dark effect. Vultures perched on each side of the stair rail, and pumpkins glimmered on the landing at the door. Matte black pots hung from the main floor windows by chains, and real flames flickered in them. The deep notes of haunting organ music floated to us.

“Wow!” I wasn’t sure which girl said it. They appeared transfixed.

A rolling fog offered glimpses of the nook created by the curving stairs. Tall dried cornstalks formed a backdrop for hay bales that extended to the service gate, which led to the backyard. A flame in a post light oscillated as though it burned kerosene. More pumpkins with horrifying faces sat on the hay bales and the sidewalk.

“Over there.” Gabriel pointed a chubby finger at the hay bales.

We crossed the street for a closer look, Daisy leading the way. “Did you help carve the pumpkins, Vegas?” I asked.

She sounded hurt when she replied, “No. Natasha’s crew did it for her TV show, and they said they had to be perfect, not amateurish.”

Ouch!
Nothing like losing sight of the fun part of Halloween.

A pirate lolled on one of the hay bales, the fog drifting across him. He wore a patch over one eye and a dark scarf wrapped around his head. His ruffly white shirt with a deep V-neck and puffy sleeves had been crammed with something to make him appear real. He wore black trousers, stuffed into huge knee-high boots that were turned down at the tops.

The grim reaper hovered over him in a ragged black robe with a hood hiding his face.

A vampire posed on the other side, in a floor-length black cape with the collar turned up. A mask, complete with bloody fangs, made him even more frightening.

Natasha hadn’t considered children at all when planning her decorations. The ebbing mist sent shivers down my back, even though I knew it was all pretend.

Gabriel shook loose from the grip the girls had on him, grabbed my hand, and tugged me toward the pirate. He jerked on my arm and pointed at the pirate with a wail.

“Oh, honey,” I said, “these are all make-believe. They’re like . . .” I sought an analogy in a children’s fable. “. . . like the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ There’s no such thing as a witch. Look, it’s all stuffing.”

I reached out and pressed on the bared chest of the pirate, marveling at Natasha’s ability to make it seem so real. But my fingers didn’t press into packed shredded newspaper like I expected.

SIX

I pressed again, my mouth suddenly dry. Soft flesh yielded ever so slightly to my touch. I shrieked, scooped Gabriel up, and backed away a step, shaking. The pirate didn’t move. Daisy strained at her leash, sniffing the legs of the vampire.

Stressed, and unable to pull because I was holding Gabriel, I growled, “Daisy, come!”

She ignored me and stuck her head deeper under the vampire cape. One of the vampire’s legs twitched, as though to discourage Daisy. My gaze climbed to his mask. Like an eerie painting, his eyes shifted. For one long second, my eyes met his in horror. Then he bolted away, a black cat crossing his path as he disappeared into the night.

Gabriel and I screamed, but we were no match for the demonic howls coming from Vegas and Jen. The shock knocked the breath out of me. Vegas and Jen clustered close to me, but Daisy pulled at the leash, eager to run after the vampire.

Vegas shrieked and pointed at something behind me. I pivoted, new fear welling up inside me.

“What about him? Is he real?” Vegas indicated the grim reaper.

Holding Gabriel as tightly as I could, I struggled to speak calmly over his crying. “No. Definitely not.”
It was a total lie. I had no idea.
“Do either of you have your cell phones with you?”

They shook their heads.

Could Gabriel cry any louder?
Poor baby. I suspected he could feel my tension. I couldn’t make my heart pound less or slow it down. “Everything’s okay,” I cooed. “Vegas, Jen, run up to Natasha’s and call 911.”

Clutching each other, they stumbled toward the base of Natasha and Mars’s stairs. A couple dressed as Superman and Wonder Woman approached and headed up the stairs behind them.

“Call 911!” I shouted.

They laughed and the woman said, “What a great gag. Natasha always has the best ideas. Who would have thought about adding a mom and a kid to that scene? Makes it seem so real.”

Gabriel wailed in my ear, and I patted him on the back. Vegas and Jen made their way up the stairs and into the house.

I breathed just a hair easier, knowing they would summon an ambulance. But they came rushing out the door and down to the sidewalk seconds later. They couldn’t have made a call that fast. “What happened?”