My mom’s lips were moving, but I wasn’t listening to what she was saying. She had been going on and on all morning about having the house look perfect for the party tonight. I was leaning halfway over the back of the couch, pulling lazily at a loose string on one of the cushions.
“Molly! Look at me when I’m talking to you!” My eyes glided across the living room until they sat idly on my mom. She continued to ramble off a list of things that we were going to have to do before people started to show up. I had always liked Halloween, but my mom’s parties were dull to me. She would make it like a block party and invite all the neighbors, and their kids. Most of the people around here had little kids though, so I wasn’t too psyched about having to deal with all of them.
“So what exactly do you need me to do?” I let myself go limp against the couch, my arms dangling so my hands were on the seat cushions.
“I need you to make Zach his lunch and then keep him occupied so I can get the rest of this done.”
I hoisted myself off the couch and sighed out an “okay” before leaving the room to look for Zach.
“Zach! Where are you hiding?” I walked down the hallway, towards the stairs. “Come on, bub. It’s lunch time.” He came hopping down the stairs, grinning ear to ear-his face smeared with some unknown orange substance.
“Can I have spooky cookies?”
“Maybe, if you eat all of your real food first.” I snatched him up and carried him off to the kitchen.
* * *
I watched Zach as he ran around the front yard, piling leaves up and then destroying them. There were leaf bits stuck in his hair and the hood of his jacket.
“Zachy, come here. Let me get the leaves out of your hair.” He stopped what he was doing and stared at me, his eyes wide, before ignoring me and throwing more leaves up into the air and running around trying to catch them all. I smiled faintly, blowing on my hands as my fingers started to get cold.
“Mo! Will you make me a big pile?” He threw his arms up above his head to show me how big he wanted it. I sighed and walked over to him, dragging my feet across the lawn to push some leaves into a small pile. “No, bigger! Bigger! Make it as big as the house!”
“I can’t make it as big as the house! That would take all the leaves in the entire world!” He gasped as I mimicked his facial expression, opening my mouth and arching my eyebrows. He giggled and pulled on my leg. I faked a fall, right into a pile of leaves and he jumped in next to me-nearly landing on top of me.
“Aw, how cute.” I rolled over onto my stomach and Zach bounced up and down on my back. I narrowed my eyes at Carson, who was standing a few feet away from us.
“You’re a creeper, Carson. How long have you been here?” I reached back and pulled on Zach’s jacket, causing him to slide off of me so I could sit up. Brushing the leaves off of my self, I slowly got to my feet and crossed my arms over my chest.
“I just got here. Your mom called. She said she needed help moving furniture around.” He gestured towards himself with a bit of a playful smirk. “So here I am.” Zach had started to run around in circles around Carson, hitting his legs every now and then. I walked over there and tried to grab him to get him to stop, but he ran off and started playing in the leaves again right as I got there.
“Zach, why do you have so much energy?” I looked over my shoulder at him before turning back to Carson-who was staring down at me with a funny look on his face. “What? What is that face for?”
“You’ve got stuff in your hair.” I reached up and felt a few leaves tangled up in my hair and tried to get them out. Instead, I think I only made things worse. When I pulled on one, I heard a crunch and felt it break into a few pieces.
“Oh God.” I tried to comb them out with my fingers, but that didn’t work very well either. Carson laughed at me and grabbed my hands to stop me.
“You’re just crushing them. Stop.” He pushed my hands down and pulled a few pieces out of my hair. I looked down at my feet, my face flushing with colour involuntarily. “Ha ha, they’re so tangled up in your hair right now. You should see what this looks like.”
“Oh yeah, I bet you are just getting a huge kick out of this right now.” I crossed my arms over my chest again and glanced up at him. Zach came back over to us and started to make figure eights around our legs.
“Carson and Mo, sitting in a tree, k-” He stopped and looked up at us. “How do you spell kissing again?” Carson stopped picking the leaf bits out of my hair and quickly threw Zach over his shoulder instead.
“Shh, Zach. That’s our little secret.” He winked at me as he carried Zach into the house. I stood on the lawn for a moment or two before heading after them, trying to get the rest of the leaves out of my hair.
“Hey wait, I’m supposed to keep Zach out of the way!”
* * *
I dumped the contents of my bucket of shoes out on my floor in frustration. The party was going to start any minute and I couldn’t find the pair of pumps that I had planned on wearing. My mom came into my room, putting a pair of earrings in her ears.
“Are you almost ready? Where is Zach? Did he get his costume on?” I looked up at her as I found my shoes and nodded.
“Yes, he has his costume on and he’s probably just running around somewhere. I’m sure he’s fine.” She looked me over and I spun around slowly for her. “I’m hoping this is fine. I couldn’t find anything else.”
“You look cute.” She smiled at me and pulled on a piece of my dress, making some quick adjustments to it. “Now, will you go put the stereo on and set the food out on table, please?”
“Yeah, I’ll go do that.” Walking down the stairs was a bit of a problem for me, since I was afraid that I was going to trip and hurt myself the entire way down. When I reached the bottom, I hurried into the living room and switched the stereo on. I was on my way into the kitchen when I ran into Carson. “Holy shit. You scared me.”
“Really? I’m not even in a scary costume.” He flashed a smile and adjusted his mask. “I mean, unless you find Robin scary.”
“Not scary at all. Although, I am curious why you would opt for Robin instead of Batman.” I raised an eyebrow and looked him over. He didn’t look bad in the get up though. It was actually kind of sexy. I shook my head slightly and fixed my gaze on his face.
“Ah, my friend is coming as Batman. I lost the coin flip and got stuck with being the side kick for the night.”
“Gotcha.” I nodded and played with a bit of the frill on my dress.
“And what are you exactly?” He adjusted his mask again and smirked.
“I’m not really sure what this is. Some sort of slutty queen of Hearts or something.” He snorted a little at my description and I frowned. “Don’t laugh, it’s the only thing I could find. I think it’s fun.” I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him.
“I’m not laughing at the costume. I think it looks great on you, very cute.” He smiled again and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I mean-no, I mean that. You look cute, kitten.” I felt my ears go hot and my cheeks burn.
“Stop calling me kitten.” I walked around him and headed for the kitchen.
“Ah, wait! What are you doing? I’ll help.”
* * *
The doorbell rang and I grabbed the candy bowl off the table near the door as I opened it. I was greeted by a group of children saying “trick-or-treat” in unison. I smiled at them and dropped a few candies in their bags as they came all the way up to the door. Before I could close the door, I caught sight of a group of kids gathered in front of the house next door. I raised an eyebrow and peered out of the doorway.
There were a few flashing lights coming from the windows of the old house, I could hear eerie music faintly underneath the sound coming from my house. Glancing over my shoulder, I decided that it wouldn’t be too horrible if I just slipped away from being stuck on candy duty for a few minutes. I cut across my lawn and then started up the gravel driveway next door.
It seemed like Vincent had set his house up as a haunted house for the night. I was about to turn and go back home when Vincent appeared out of nowhere in front of me.
“Molly, how nice to see you.” He smiled and I returned the gesture weakly. He was dressed up as a vampire, which seemed fitting for him. “I was going to drop by your party later, after all the kids started to head home.”
“Ah, yeah. It’s kind of boring in there for me. I got stuck with candy duty.” I laughed nervously, afraid to say anything to make me sound like an idiot in front of him. I fidgeted with the hat on my head and smiled stupidly.
“So you are sneaking out then?” A smirk replaced his smile and he ran his fingers through his hair. “You should go through.” He gestured behind him, towards his house. “I worked on it all day. I would love to have the opinion of someone who isn’t under the age of ten.”
“Ha, no thanks. I think I’ll pass.” I shook my head quickly, flicking my gaze to the house before focusing on Vincent again. “I’m not really into the whole “haunted house” thing.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. These sort of things are what I’m good at.” His smile showed back up and I couldn’t tell him no. There was just something about when he smiled, it made my knees go weak.
“Alright, I guess it can’t be that bad.” He held his hand out to me and I took it hesitantly. We walked up the pathway to his house and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.
“Actually, I kind of had ulterior motives for asking you to go through.” He gave me a guilty look and I raised my eyebrow.
“So you like, tricked me?” He released my hand and shook his head quickly.
“No, it’s not like that, I promise. See that girl over there?” He pointed up at a girl who looked a few years younger than me standing off to the side of the door on the porch. “She wants to go through, but she’s afraid to go through alone. I can’t seem to find anyone who will go in doubles with her though. Which is odd. You would think that all these teenage boys would jump at the chance to go through a haunted house with a pretty girl.” He winked at me and I laughed uneasily.
“Right, why wouldn’t they?” I tried to pull my dress down lower, to cover up the bit of my thighs that was exposed when I caught Vincent’s eyes wandering. “I guess I could go through with her. There aren’t things that like pop out and scream at you in there, are there?” I glanced over at the girl and then back at Vincent, my eyebrows pushed up.
“If I told you, that would ruin the whole suspense effect.” He grabbed my shoulders gently and pushed me to go up the stairs. “You’ll be fine, trust me. It only lasts a few minutes.” I stumbled up the steps and over to where the girl was standing.
“Erm, hey.” I waved awkwardly at her and scrunched my face up for a moment. “I’m Molly.” She looked at me and smiled slightly.
“Um, Carissa.” There was an extremely awkward pause for a few moments.
“Vincent said you wanted someone to go through the house with you, so uh, I guess that’s what I’m here for?”
“Oh, really?” Her face lit up and she leaned towards me. “Thank you so much! I’m such a wuss, but I really want to go through. My friends all said it was really cool in there. But they wouldn’t walk through with me because they said it would be lame if I screamed.” She frowned and stared down at the ground.
“Well, to be honest, I am a bit of a wuss myself. So I don’t mind if you scream. I’ll most likely be screaming right along with you.” I gave her the warmest smile I could muster up and looked over at the door. “Whenever you’re ready.”
* * *
It took a few tries to get Carissa to go through the door. Although, I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t hesitating too. It was pitch black when we walked in, the only light a small orb that looked like it was at the end of a hallway. The floorboards creaked with each step we took, the sound barely audible over the music that was playing. I jumped when I felt something brush my hand.
“Oh, sorry. That was just me. I can’t see anything and I thought I lost you.” I squinted against the dark, trying to see Carissa, but my eyes were taking a while to adjust.
“It’s okay. Here,” I grabbed her hand and held onto it, “so we don’t lose each other.” I couldn’t see her, but I’m pretty sure that she smiled right then. We headed towards the light, which faded the closer we got to it. There was a sound off to the side and we both stopped moving for a moment. “Vincent said this was only going to take a minute and that it would be fun. It’s just dark in here. How is this fun?”
When I thought of haunted houses, I imagined fake skeletons and glow in the dark bats hanging from the ceiling. There didn’t seem to be anything in here at all. It was just empty and dark. Carissa tugged on my arm and I looked in her direction.
“I heard something again.” I squinted against the blackness once more and managed to make out a shape moving in the shadows.
“I saw something.”
“Me too.” She clutched my hand tighter and I felt her move up against the edge of my dress. “Molly, I changed my mind. This is lame, let’s get out of here.” A floorboard creaked behind us, but neither of us had moved at all. I felt my body go stiff as everything fell silent. I didn’t even notice that Carissa’s hand was no longer in mine until a few moments later.
“Carissa?” I looked around blindly. “Carissa? Where did you go?” I pushed my eyebrows together in worry and felt my heart beat pick up. “Hey, look, this is not funny. Carissa?” I cautiously took a step towards what I hoped was the front door. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, but I still couldn’t see very far ahead of me. Vincent must have blacked out the windows so not even the moonlight could get in.
The anticipation of something or someone popping out at me was making me feel panicky. I held my hands out directly in front of me, my fingers trembling uncontrollably.
“Seriously, this isn’t funny. I hate these types of things, you guys. I know there is someone in here. So just open the door and let me leave. I don’t want to be in here anymore.” There was a rustling noise somewhere in the room, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. “Carissa? Is that you?” I stopped moving and looked around again. My bottom lip trembled a little and I bit it to make it stop.
I slowly started to move towards where I thought the door was. I thought I felt something behind me, so I whipped my head to the side and looked over my shoulder. There wasn’t anything there. The overwhelming panicky feeling was growing with every step I took. I started to feel a bit disorientated, not being able to see where I was.
“Carissa, I swear,” I paused to steady my voice, “if you and Vincent planned this whole thing, I’m going to murder the both of you.” The sound of footsteps and a faint squeaking noise made me stop walking once more. I turned around in a full circle, staying in one spot on the floor. I felt something brush against my hand again and I sighed in relief. “Carissa, thank God. I thought that you had left me.” I reached out and took her hand.
My entire body shook with panic as I came in contact with something-it was not Carissa’s hand. As childish as it seems, I let out a shriek and ran off in the opposite direction of whatever I had just found. I bumped into something that felt like a body, but when I reached up to feel it’s face, there was nothing there.
I panicked and tripped as I was running around in every direction I could possibly go. The front door seemed to have just disappeared. I felt a few tears roll down my cheeks and I yelled for Carissa again. The music from earlier sounded like it had gotten louder, drowning out my cries. I stopped running for a moment to wipe my eyes and rub at a tender spot on my knee.
Not even a moment after I had started moving again, someone grabbed a hold of my arm roughly and I screamed. The hand released me just as the front door popped up out of nowhere and swung open. I practically sprinted out of the house and away from the porch. I couldn’t control the tears that were coming at that point.
“Vincent, you bastard!” He showed up in front of me moments later, his face creased with worry.
“Molly? You’re crying! Oh man, was it really that scary?” He leaned down a little to look me in the eye and I tried to suppress my sobs. I felt so silly.
“Th-there was something in there. And then I lost Carissa.”
“There’s nobody else in there. Just dummies I got from the Halloween store. You know, those robotic ones.” He wiped a tear off my chin and cocked his head to the side. “And Carissa is here. She came out a few minutes after you two went in.” Carissa poked her head out from behind Vincent and pouted out her bottom lip.
“Sorry, Molly. I thought that you had heard me say I was leaving. I thought you followed me.” I frantically wiped at my face, taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down.
“Well, I didn’t. You shouldn’t have just left me in there. What the hell kind of a haunted house is that anyway, Vincent? It’s just all dark in there! How do you expect anyone to know where they are going?” I looked over at the house and took in a shaky breath.
“Dark? There’s lights all over the place in there.” Vincent arched his eyebrows and stood up straight. “Someone in the last group must have accidentally hit a wire and pulled the plug.” He held his hand out to me again. “Come on, I’ll show you that there wasn’t anything in there.” I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded, refusing to take his hand.
Carissa tagged along with us, apologizing the entire way back up to the door. I kept telling her it was fine, but she continued to apologize until Vincent spoke.
“You two wait here. I’m going to go find that plug.” He disappeared into the house and we waited outside on the porch. Carissa kept quiet and I tried to fix my make-up without knowing what I was doing. I adjusted my hat and smoothed out my dress. Vincent pulled the front door open a few minutes later and motioned for us to come in.
“This better not be another trick. I swear to God, I’ll hurt you.” Vincent laughed a little and shook his head.
“No, I found the problem. Come see.” Carissa stepped into the house and I followed her hesitantly. Vincent shut the door behind us, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. The only light I could see was the same orb from earlier. “Watch, the lights are on a timer.” The orb faded and another light came up to the right of it, lighting up one of the dummies and cued the music. Lights went off and on like that for a few minutes, each time lighting up a different dummy scene.
I hadn’t noticed, but there were small Christmas lights on the floor that created a path that you were supposed to walk on. I chewed on my lip nervously, feeling extremely silly and embarrassed about the way I had acted. The lights showed off the last dummy, the headless one I had ran into.
“See? Just dummies in here.” Vincent’s hand slipped away from my shoulder and he opened the door to let us out. “I should have checked to make sure that it was working correctly before letting you two go through. I don’t think I can apologize enough,” Vincent stated when we were all out on the driveway again.
“It’s okay, I’ll forgive you, Vincent.” Carissa beamed up at him and dug her shoe into the gravel a little. “Um, I need to get going. I think my friends went on ahead without me.” She looked at me and smiled shamefully. “I’m sorry again, Molly. I’m glad I met you though! You seem like a really cool person.” She gave me a quick hug and smiled at me again before running off. I stared after her for a moment before turning to Vincent.
“I’m also sorry again, Molly.” He smiled at me and I felt my cheeks burn a bit.
“Just promise you won’t tell anyone that I cried. I’ve got a reputation to keep around this place,” I joked. He chuckled and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I promise, I’ll take it to the grave. It will be our secret.” His eyes met mine and I looked away quickly. “Let me make this up to you, okay? I’ll treat you to hot chocolate, or coffee, whatever you drink sometime and we can just talk. No creepy dummies or crying.” I smiled and sputtered out a laugh.
“Hot chocolate sounds good.” I played with a strand of my hair for a second before looking back up at him. “Okay,” I fanned my face quickly and shook my head. “How do I look? Is my make-up all over my face and stuff?” Vincent reached out and brushed the back of his thumb across my cheek slowly. My stomach twisted up faintly and I felt my ears flush with blood.
“No, you look amazing.” He grinned and showed off his fake fangs. “I mean, you look fang-tastic.” I raised an eyebrow at him, but couldn’t help but laugh at him.
“Wow.”
“Too cheesy?”
“Way too cheesy.” I stared up at him with a silly grin and forgot for a moment that I had sneaked away from my mom’s party. “Oh crap. I have to go! My mom has probably noticed that I’ve gone missing.”
“Ah, yes. You better get back to your party then.” He pushed my chin up with his index finger and just stared at me. “I’ll see you later on tonight.” His eyes wandered away from my face and I blushed as I took a few steps away from him.
“Alright then. I’ll see you later.” I wiggled my fingers at him and hurried down the driveway and back to my house. I took a moment to rub my knee, wincing at how much it hurt to touch it, before going back into the house. Carson was sitting on a dining room chair near the table where the candy bowl was and stood up when he saw me come in. He arched his eyebrows as I met him halfway in the entry.
“I covered for you when your mom asked where you were and told her that one of your friends showed up and you stepped out to talk to her really quick.” He pulled his mask up and left it resting on the top of his head.
“Really?” I unconsciously toyed with the frill on the edge of my dress and stared up at him. “Thanks.”
“So where did you run off to then?” He raised one eyebrow at me and I frowned.
“Not that it’s really any of your business, but I just went next door for a few minutes.”
“Over to Vincent’s?” I sighed in frustration and placed my hands on my hips.
“No Carson, I went to your house.” He frowned at my sarcasm and I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Vincent’s. Y’know, he’s got a haunted house going.” Carson reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me over to him. He extended my arm out next to him and pointed at something.
“Is that where this happened?” I glanced down and saw the start of a bruise forming on my arm, in the shape of a hand. My eyes widened a little and I yanked my arm away from Carson, covering the mark with my other hand. “Did he grab you?”
“What? Of course not.” I frowned again. “Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions like that. It was one of the robotic dummy things he had set up. It must have hit me when I walked past it.” Before Carson could say anything else to me, the doorbell rang. I grabbed the bowl of candy and went to answer the door.
“Trick-or-treat!”
