Page 12 of Ella’s Data

“A little bit of both,” I admit. “But have no fear, I’ll be right by your side. I also can’t wait to tell you about the idea we had to revamp two of the rooms.”

“I’m so excited,” she squeals, then she starts laughing. “I’m such a dork. I don’t like watching scary movies, and I’ll probably be a wuss in the adult haunted house, but I figured I’d help Holly and Marnie with the one y’all created for the little kids.”

I pull behind the main house the club owns and park, making a note to let the prospects know to come over and cut the grass. They’re usually pretty good at keeping up with it, but we’ve had a ton of rain lately and it shows. Once I help her out and lock my truck, we walk up the steps onto the back porch and she shivers.

“Nervous?” I tease, grinning down at her.

“A little bit,” she confesses.

I unlock the back door and turn off the alarm, then hold my hand out for her to take. Something inside loosens when she laces our fingers together and I have to hide my smile at how easy it is between us. Once I’ve closed the door and locked it behind us, I wave my free hand around and say, “Every room has a theme of sorts. As you can see, we’re in the kitchen which is our mad scientist’s lab. When we get ready to open, we’ll have various ‘potions’ bubbling in the beakers.”

“Who’s going to play the mad scientist?” she asks.

“Last year, we got kids from the high school drama club to play different parts,” I tell her. “Holly’s already reached out to the school and they’re going to do it again. The potions are actually real drinks, and the actor will offer them to those coming through. He’ll also do a lot of muttering about the plans he has for his ‘victims’.” She shivers and I grin. “Let’s walk to the front door, so you can get the proper visual. Keep in mind, we’ll have fog machines going, as well as spooky sounds that are piped through the whole house.”

“Y’all really put a lot of thought into this,” she muses as she looks at the dark, textured paint that coats the hallways. What she doesn’t realize is that when the lights are dimmed, there are glowing eyes that appear to move when you walk past them. I have no clue how Psycho managed to make that happen, but props to him for his genius.

“Okay, so in this room, you can see the fortune teller’s table,” I say only to stop when she screams.

“Spiders? What on earth?” she screeches as she backs into me.

“Oh, you haven’t seen the best part yet,” I advise as I hit the light switch. The spiders start moving around the room, their eyes glowing red while the witch that sits in a chair behind the table cackles maniacally.

“Moving along, now. Please,” she huffs out, making me burst out laughing. “I’m not kidding, I detest creepy crawlies.”

“Babe,” I tease, “considering some of the places you’ve worked during natural disasters, I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of them.”

“Not on purpose!” she exclaims as she starts walking down the hall again to the family room.

The den has a huge television that will be playing a scary movie while the ‘family’, which is made up of adult skeletons, along with two child-sized skeletons and even a family dog, watch. As soon as she breaches the doorway, every head snaps in her direction, the empty eye sockets glowing. Once again, she shrieks, which has me doubled over in hysterics because I remember Marnie doing the same damn thing last year.

“You… you sound… like a woman in a horror film,” I manage to stammer. “Maybe we should tape you and work it into the sound system.”

“Don’t you dare,” she sneers, poking her finger at me. Glancing at the stairs, she sighs and says, “I suppose there are more terrifying things up there.”

“Yep, but you’re in luck, because three of our actors aren’t here. They scared the hell out of Marnie last year.”

“Who were they?” she asks as we start climbing.

“The wailing sisters. At the top of the stairs, on the landing, they would say, ‘Go back… go back’,” I reply, using the wavering voice that the actors will use again this year. “Watch this,” I tell her as I trip the mechanism right after the landing.

It’s a two-story house… kind of. At the landing, there are three more steps for the second floor, almost as if whoever initially built it had an idea but ran out of money. Regardless, it worked for our plans as we installed a false floor right before you go down the hall. As the glowing grim reaper pops up, she smacks me in the gut.

“It’s official, I will not be coming in here while it’s open for business,” she mutters as the reaper goes back and the floor closes once again. “Nope, not fucking happening.”

“Now, these next two rooms are what we’re thinking of changing this year,” I say as I open the first door. We’re going to keep the room that Paul and his buddies did because it was a huge hit last year, but as Rebel said and we decided as a club, we need to keep things fresh. “This one we want to make into a zombie morgue,” I tell her. “Put in some of those mortuary refrigerators on one wall, have some of the doors open with zombies crawling out, then a table in the center of the room where the medical examiner is trying to perform an autopsy, only the dead person comes back to life as a zombie.”

“Jesus, you’re going to need waivers or something,” she mutters.

“Already have them. Folks have to be at least sixteen to come inside and because we have flashing lights, fog machines, and things meant to scare people, we ask that anyone with any kind of health issue like epilepsy or even cardiac issues not come through,” I admit.

“Well good, because Fee’s not gonna be up to doing CPR on anyone and I’m on vacation,” she sasses, “so they’d be shit outta luck if they had a heart attack!”

“I never saw this cruel side of you before,” I murmur. “But, if you know where we can find any of that shit, let me know.”

“I’ll call Thelma, she can always get her hands on the good stuff,” she replies. “What about the other room?” she asks.

I walk across the hall and open that door and say, “Picture this, an operating room with a nurse performing an operation… an illegal and unethical one at that. We’re still trying to figure out if we want the actor to turn to whoever walks in and ask, ‘Who’s next?’ as they hold up a chainsaw.”