Archive of Our Own

— Michael and Sam; in the foyer… 

The haunted house is totally lame. 

From the outside it looks pretty cool: boarded up windows, dilapidated exterior, flickering porch light bulb. It could be any creepy, rundown mansion; the only thing that indicates that there’s organized fun to be had is a small sign tacked to the door that says HAUNTED HOUSE in red capital letters, and below that: “Free of Charge! Spooktacular fun for the whole family! Come one, come all!” Finally, below that: “Must have this much blood to enter.” There’s a little cartoon blood bag next to the last line, with a speech bubble that says in cutesy script: “I’m four pints!”

Michael looks at Sam doubtfully. “I guess you’ve probably got four pints of blood in you?” 

Sam rolls his eyes and barges past him. “They’re just saying no babies, ‘cause they’d start crying.” 

Michael’s hopes hadn’t been that high—since when has something that’s free been any good—but when he gets inside they fall anyway. It just seems like a normal house. It's huge, but totally empty and undecorated. The lights aren’t even out. 

“Well, this is a bust,” he says. “Come on, let’s go. Maybe the boardwalk will be better.” 

“The boardwalk is for little kids and horned up wastoids,” Sam says. “I wanna see what makes this place haunted.” 

Before Michael can argue, the front door slams shut behind them. They both jump and look around. 

“Okay,” Michael says, with a nervous laugh. Nobody is there, and the room is still empty. “That’s pretty cool, I guess.” He decides they might as well stay. 

But for a while it isn’t clear what they’re supposed to do now that they’re inside. They hang in the foyer for a bit, waiting to see if somebody will collect them. Then Sam does a sweep of the side tables and peeks through all the doors leading immediately off the entryway, looking for instructions of any kind. Nothing. 

“I guess we just start walking?” Michael says, without much hope. It’s weirdly bright for a haunted house, all the overhead lights blazing. He points up the stairs. “Wanna go up there?” 

Sam shrugs, and they start up. When they reach the landing it’s no more clear where they’re supposed to go, so Michael turns right and picks a door at random. 

“Oh—” he says, when he opens it and sees a girl also standing in the room. “Sorry. Wait— do you work here?”

He hopes she does; he wants the excuse to ask her questions. She’s really pretty: big eyes and a pile of locs and a swooshy skirt that’s cut all the way up her legs to her— he drags his eyes away when she turns around. 

“No,” she says. “I just walked in. I had enough blood.” 

Michael laughs. “Nice. Four pints and up club.” He holds out his fist and she just looks at it. He clears his throat and scratches his head instead. “Did you find anybody who does work here?” 

She shakes her head. “Starting to worry I just wandered into some old guy’s house.” 

“There was a sign, though…” 

“Neighborhood prank?”

“That’d be kinda messed up.” 

She shrugs. “People around here are kinda messed up.” 

It's close enough to Halloween that he wonders if she's wearing a costume—sexy pirate? Her corset is laced tightly, and it’s an effort to keep his eyes from drifting lower than her mouth. “I wouldn’t know,” he says. “Just moved here.” 

“Can I check the next room?” Sam interrupts. He’s done a sweep of this one already, and now he looks impatient. If Lucy was here she’d probably tell him off for being rude, but Michael is secretly glad to have an excuse to send him away. “Sure,” he says. “Um, don’t go up any more stairs without telling me.” 

Sam rolls his eyes and scoffs. “Oh, right, ‘cause I’ll get lost if I move three dimensionally.” 

Michael glares at him. “It's a big house,” he says through his teeth. “I just don’t think we should get too far from each other.” 

Sam disappears, and Michael turns back to the girl with a grimace. “Brothers,” he says. She doesn’t look overly sympathetic. “Um, anyway. I’m Michael.” 

“Hi, Michael,” she says. “Listen—I only came in ‘cause it looked weird. I’m not really looking to…” she trails off, and makes a weird floaty hand motion. “Fraternize.”

“No, yeah, totally,” Michael says quickly. “No fraternization necessary. I’ll just be over here, looking around.” He’s not a hundred percent sure what fraternize means. Talking, he thinks.

He turns away and pretends to look around the room. It’s basically empty—he turns a slow, complete circle but the only piece of furniture he can see is the desk that the girl had been standing at when he’d come in. She’s still there, and when he sidles up to her she’s flipping through an old telephone book. The only other thing on the desk is a telephone. 

“Find anything interesting?” Michael asks. 

She sighs. Michael remembers he was supposed to have shut up. “Not really—” she’s starting to say, when she’s interrupted. 

Somebody in the house screams a high, piercing scream. It sounds like it’s coming from just down the hall, and it sounds like the person doing the screaming is terrified. It cuts off just as suddenly as it had started, leaving a ringing silence. 

“Woah,” the girl says, after a beat. “Okay. Freaky.” 

Then the lights go out. 

Michael swears. It’s abruptly really, really dark. Like, not a speck of light. Michael blinks a couple of times but his eyes don't get anymore used to it—he really can't even see the outline of anything. Outside the room there’s the sound of quick footsteps—somebody running past them down the hallway. Sam? Or someone else? 

Michael reaches for the girl’s wrist so that they don’t lose each other or bump into each other in the dark, and when she yelps and slaps him he says quickly: “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to. Just—give me your arm.”

“No! Perv.”  

“I didn’t mean to!” He rubs his stinging ear. She’d probably been aiming for his cheek and reached a little too far. It seems neither of them have good aim. “I’m just thinking we should stay touching. So we aren’t, like, tripping over each other when we move.” 

There’s a short silence, and then Michael feels the fingertips of a reaching hand on his bicep before the girl’s hand runs down his arm and stops on his forearm, lightly gripping it. He’s glad she can’t see his face. 

“Fine,” she says. “Let’s go.” She’s already making for the door, tugging on his arm to get him moving. He trips following her, but saves himself from falling flat on the face at the last second. Stay cool, he scolds himself. So he's got a pretty girl hanging on his arm, so what? It’s happened before. Just because this one is prettier than most doesn't mean he should lose all his chill.

Outside the room it isn’t any less dark: it’s gone from full bright overhead lights to no lights whatsoever. There isn't even any light coming in from the windows, because they're all boarded up so tightly. Michael frowns. Who was running this shitshow? Somebody was going to get hurt falling down the stairs, or give themselves an injury on the worn-down corners of the house. Some of those window bars were looking a little tetanus-y.  

No wonder it was free. 

“Sam?” he calls. 

“Michael!” Down the hall there’s a flurry of voices, and then a door opens and white light spills out. Sam’s backlit face appears around the door, and then two more faces appear below him like they’ve popped out of a Scooby Doo cartoon, both of them shining flashlights back up the hallway at Michael.

“Quit that,” Michael says, covering his eyes. The flashlights drop slightly, but not completely. 

Sam’s face is bright. “That’s my brother,” he says to the other two kids peering around the door. “These are the Frog Brothers,” he informs Michael. “Edgar and Alan.” He regards the girl behind Michael. “And this is—”

“Star,” she says after a beat, resigned. Michael sighs a silent thank you to Sam.

“Can you trust him?” one of the brothers asks Sam suspiciously, glaring at Michael down the hallway. 

“Oh my God,” Sam says, exasperated. “You gonna try and stake him, too?” 

“Did you try and stake my brother?” Michael asks, shielding his eyes to look at the trio. 

“He came up behind us suddenly,” the taller brother says staunchly. “Hey—I didn’t even notice that door when we came up.” 

He had swung his beam towards the stairs, and along the way it had passed a door, slightly open, with several smeared red handprints staining the wood. 

“Huh,” Michael says. “Me neither.” He has a sneaking suspicion those red handprints hadn’t been there when they'd walked down the hallway a few minutes ago; he feels like he would have remembered that. Apart from anything else, it would have confirmed to him that they’d walked into a haunted house, and not just some old guy’s mansion. 

He walks to the door and pushes it open. It’s just as dark inside this room as the rest of the house and he motions to one of the Frog Brothers to shine their flashlight beam through the door. It illuminates another mostly empty room: just an old piano pushed against one wall, warped and off-kilter, and in the very middle of the room, a pile of clothing on the floor. 

“Creepy,” Sam says. He’s peeking in from behind Michael. Before Michael can stop him, he slips under his arm and walks up to the heap of clothes, poking it with the toe of his sneaker. “Oh, it’s a—” He pauses and leans down. “It’s a mannequin,” he says, sounding unsure. 

“Sam,” Michael says weakly. “I think—” 

Sam has leaned down still farther, and now he puts his hand out. The other two kids have come up behind him, and they shine their flashlights over his shoulder. 

Sam’s hand lands on the crumpled shape, and the pile of clothing shifts and resolves as the bloodied corpse rolls over onto its back. 

— Company; in the sitting room…

The next few minutes are a confusion. Michael hustles all three kids out of the room, forcibly restraining one of the Frog Brothers from touching the body. 

“I just need to chop its head off!” he’s saying excitedly, brandishing a bread knife. “Just to be sure it's really dead!”

“Oh my God,” Michael says, and pushes him out through the door. “We are not mutilating corpses on my watch. And not with a bread knife, Jesus. Just—go downstairs. Sam—” 

“On it,” Sam says, and grabs the elbow of each Frog Brother. “Come on, you can exhume the grave later.” 

“Oh, yeah.” The boys, looking mollified, allow themselves to be dragged downstairs, and Michael belatedly realizes they’ve taken the only sources of light with them. He turns to Star. “Have you found a light switch? Somebody should guard this room or something until the police get here…” 

“Not it,” Star says. She turns to hop down the stairs after the three boys. “Enjoy Corpse Watch, Michael. Nice to meet you and everything.” 

“Wait—” he calls, and moves to follow. No way he's letting her out of his sight until he can get her number, or at least get a good look at her car. Santa Carla seems pretty small, she can’t be that hard to find again if he can just see what she’s driving—

He collides with a body at the top of the stairs, which has emerged out of the gloom from the other direction. 

Michael is seized with a sudden, stomach-lurching fear: there’s a hand on his elbow, gripping a little too tight. Then he realizes the hand is guiding him away from the top step, holding him back from a fall that might have broken his back. He stumbles away from the staircase, nearly falling into the other person instead. 

The flashlights have already swung around the corner at the bottom of the stairs, and he can’t see anything. The body is solid and smells like leather; when Michael stumbles into it there’s a jingling sound, like he’s collided with a windchime. 

“Watch it,” says a voice, low and amused. “Wouldn’t want to risk your neck on these stairs.” 

Michael, steady on his feet again, pulls himself away. “Sorry,” he says. He squints, but there's nothing to see. The darkness is total, and his retinas have the afterimage of Edgar or Alan's flashlight beam imprinted on them. “Um—do you work here?” 

There’s a pause before the voice says, “I’m not a haunted house employee, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Michael is beginning to wonder if there are any employees in the whole fucking building.

“Have you seen anyone else in here?” 

“I came in with people. They’re around.” 

That’s unnecessarily ominous. And unhelpful. “Did you see anybody who works here?” Michael presses. 

“Need your ticket punched?” The guy sounds indulgent, cheerful. His voice is rich and deep and drawling. “Parking validated? Don’t tell me you seriously came in here for spooktacular fun. You seem a little old for that kind of thing.” 

“I need to talk to a manager. Or—like, a crew member. Anyone.” 

“No refunds.”

Michael pauses. “The sign said it was free,” he says. “I didn’t pay anything.” 

“Just your pride,” the guy says sadly. He pats Michael’s shoulder; it’s firm and jolting. “Can’t give you that back, I’m afraid. Taken at the door.” 

Michael grits his back molars together and contemplates throwing a punch. Instead he takes a deep breath to ground himself and says calmly: “Look—we found somebody. A body. A dead one.” 

“Oh?” The guy’s inflection is of mild interest. 

“Yeah. He—” 

Suddenly light shines up the stairs from the front entranceway again. Star has taken one of the flashlights. “Michael,” she calls up to him, “We’ve got a problem. Every door down here is locked, and every window is barred. We’re locked in, and the phones aren’t working.” 

What the hell… 

“It’s not just us, either,” she continues. “Come down. We’ve got a full house.” The flashlight flickers to the side, and her voice is wary when she adds: “You too, I guess, whoever you are.”  

Michael turns to see who he’s run into, and finds himself looking into the intense eyes of a guy about his own age, but way out of his usual social sphere—on another planet, basically. He’s fully decked out in leather—pants; coat; studded gloves; studded choker; combat boots—and silver jewelry, which explains the jingling. His hair is a bleached-white blond and styled into a swoop of a mullet, and he’s wearing not-so-subtle eyeliner. 

The guy smiles. “Michael, huh? Nice to meet you. I’m David.” His lips are a little too red, but splotchily, like he’s just drank a cup of raspberry Kool-aid. “Better go down,” he says, and winks. “Whatever happened to predictability, right?”

He starts down the stairs, humming the opening bars of what Michael eventually realizes is the Full House theme song. 

Michael starts after him, unsettled, Corpse Watch forgotten.

At the bottom of the stairs Star leads them into a room that feels like a living room, except that it’s only got one sofa and nothing else. David immediately sits on it, slinging his arm over the other guy who’s already there. They share a glance, quick and conspiratorial. Then they both look at Michael again, still smiling. Feeling caught out, Michael looks away. 

He runs his eyes around the room, does a quick head count. There are eleven people there, counting himself. They’re all looking at him, like he’s some kind of authority figure. “Does anybody work here?” he asks. 

Around the room, everyone shakes their heads. He sighs. “Has anybody seen somebody who works here?” Again, the shaking heads. Jesus. What had he and Sam walked into?

Star has her arm around a girl with crimped blonde hair, whose mascara is streaked down her face in two black lines. It’s kind of pretty, like she might have done it on purpose, except that her eyes are also red-rimmed and shining. 

“This is Supernova,” Star says, and pushes her forward a little, towards Michael. “Go on,” she prompts, when Supernova looks nervous. 

Supernova takes a quick shaky breath. “I found him,” she whispers. “That guy, in the piano room. He actually walked into the house at the same time as us, we only just met outside…” She looks miserable. “He told me he was a guitar player and he could hook me up with an audition for his band. He didn’t even say I had to blow him first.” She sniffs. “He was nice.” 

Low bar, Michael thinks privately, but doesn’t say out loud. “You were the one who screamed?” 

Supernova frowns. “No, that was him. We went different directions at the top of the stairs, ‘cause I had to go with them—” She gestures at the Frog Brothers, “—but when he screamed I went to see what happened… That's when I found the body. Then the lights went out.” 

Alright. That gives them a time stamp. 

“That was—what, ten minutes ago?” He looks around the room. “Nobody saw anyone else in the house? Nobody saw anybody leave?” Everyone shakes their heads again, but more slowly this time. The implications are pretty clear.  

“So the killer could still be in the house?” Supernova asks in a whisper. 

“Could’ve been any of us,” David says, wiping his hand across his mouth. 

“Well,” Michael says with a frown. “Not me. Or Star. We were together—we can vouch for each other.” 

“Dwayne vouches for me,” David says lazily. 

“I vouch for David,” says the guy next to him. Dwayne, Michael guesses.

Suddenly people are piping up all over the room. Sam vouches for the two kids he’d been with, and they vouch for him. A guy called Marko vouches for a guy called Paul, and vice versa. By the time everyone has said their piece, there’s only one person who doesn’t have a buddy speaking up for their presence when the lights were out. 

He looks terrified. “It wasn’t me!” he squeaks. “I was alone but I wasn’t anywhere near him! And I don’t have a weapon!” 

There’s a sharp clatter and a knife falls to the ground next to him. It’s red with blood. The guy looks down at it, then back up at Michael. “That’s not mine! I’m being framed! I don’t even know how to use a knife!”

“Chill out, man,” Michael says. He backs up a step in case the guy gets violent. “Just… kick the knife over here.”  

The guy looks around at the room like he’s realizing there’s no escape. All the color drains from his face before he crumples to the ground in a dead faint. 

There’s a brief silence, then Marko snorts a laugh. 

“Okay…” Michael says slowly. “I guess this guy is our first suspect.” He bends down and roots around until he finds the guy’s wallet. “Pete,” he says, peering at the student ID. In his picture Pete is smiling a goofy grin. The printing has oversaturated the colors so that his hair looks even more carroty than in person. Michael looks around. “Does anybody know him?”

There’s a chorus of shaking heads and mumbled negatives. David looks pleased. “That’s it, then,” he says. “Mystery solved.” 

“Wait,” Sam says. He kneels down and nudges the knife, his sleeve wrapped around his hand. “This can’t be the murder weapon. The body upstairs was stabbed with something way different. Like a grilling poker or something. He just had two holes on his neck, like a—” He suddenly stops talking. 

Michael feels queasy. “You’re sure?” he asks. Sam nods. “So Pete is being framed,” Michael says slowly. 

Sam looks up at him from where he’s still crouched over the knife, wide-eyed. “The blood is still wet, Mikey.”

Earlier today, Michael had been worried that the crumpled dollar bills in his pocket would be too soft to go through a vending machine. He’d been considering if working at a place called “Dracula’s Putt Putt” would be bad for his street cred. Now he’s picking up the knife, wondering why somebody would use a grilling poker as a murder weapon when they had a perfectly good switchblade to throw around. 

He straightens and looks around the room. “Nobody panic,” he says. “The important thing is that we all stay calm while we figure out what to do next.” He tries to ignore that his own heart is going a million miles an hour, and focuses on keeping his voice level. 

“I think the killer is in here.” 

— Company; in the sitting room…

Everyone immediately panics. Supernova starts wailing; the Frog Brothers start talking in overlapping voices—something about how much blood was left in the body? Michael gets queasy and stops listening; Star wants to check all the windows again; and Sam is pulling on Michael’s sleeve, muttering that the knife has his fingerprints on it now. 

“Not helpful,” Michael says, although now he feels stupid for picking it up. “Better I have it than somebody else.” His eyes find David without meaning to. David doesn’t look particularly perturbed to be in the same room as a murderer; he and Dwayne are laughing about something, still lounging on the couch. It's like being at the weirdest house party of all time, and Michael got stuck babysitting the lightweight. 

Pete stirs, and Michael helps him sit up as he comes to. The first thing he says when he’s conscious is: “I don’t like that guy in the leather. I think he’s been smoking—” He drops his voice to a whisper, “—marajuana.” 

Michael rolls his eyes. “You okay? Need some water?”

When Pete is back on his feet Michael clears his throat and shouts for quiet. For whatever reason everybody listens to him. The room goes silent, and he suddenly wishes he’d thought through what he was going to say before people were waiting for him to say it. 

“Um,” he says. His eyes involuntarily drag to David again. He raises his eyebrows quizzically and Michael looks away quickly. “Star’s right, we should try all the doors and windows again,” he says. “And look for other possible exits. And—um—keep checking the phones. First priorities are getting out of the house or calling for help.” 

“Or solving the murder,” Alan pipes up. 

“No,” Michael says firmly. He looks around. “We’ve got two flashlights?” 

Alan and Edgar upend their backpacks and a cacophony of supplies tumbles out: granola bars, water bottles, water guns (Michael doesn’t ask), stakes (Michael also doesn’t ask), and several spare flashlights.  

“Great, thanks,” Michael says, surprised and grateful for these kids—whoever they are. “This house is huge—let’s split up and do a sweep. We’ll use the buddy system, so that we’ve got enough flashlights, but hopefully the lights come back on soon.” 

“I don't want to be alone with that guy,” Supernova says, pointing at Pete. “Maybe he’s framed himself.”

Pete opens his mouth to defend himself but he’s drowned out as everyone immediately starts talking again, trying to choose their buddy. 

“We’ll draw straws,” Michael finally says over the din. He already knows he’s going to cheat to get Star. “Come on guys, we’ve got to get moving.”

“But—one of us is the murderer!” Pete yelps. “I don’t want to be alone with him—” His eyes dart to Star, “Or, um, her.” His eyes drift to Alan and he adds, weakly, “Or them.” 

Not a bad point. Michael thinks about it. “We can stay in groups of three or four as much as possible,” he says. “And, um, if your buddy dies—yell for help.”

Nobody loves this solution, but nobody argues, either. Funny what a firm voice will do.

Edgar has a collection of small yarrow stalks in his bag. (“I Ching,” he says sagely. “Good for contacting spirits beyond the veil.” Michael doesn’t ask extra, super hard.) Michael groups eleven sticks by height—four sets of two; one set of three—and then wraps his fist around them so that nobody can tell which is which from how they poke up over his fingers. He offers his fist to Star first, and she pulls one of the shortest sticks.

“So, whoever gets the one that’s the same length goes with Star,” Michael explains. “And so on. Everyone got it?” As he moves away he makes a show of tripping over the carpet and dropping all the yarrow stalks, scattering them every which way and having to scramble after them; when he gathers them all up again he stashes the shortest in his pocket. 

He goes around the room and everyone pulls a stick. Once everybody is clutching their own Michael says, “Okay, pair up.” 

He takes the stick from his back pocket and heads in Star’s direction. 

“Well, will you look at that,” says a drawling voice. “We match.” 

David hasn’t gotten up from the couch. He’s holding his stick up in front of him, one eye closed like he’s measuring its height against a far distance. 

“Oh, no, mine—” Michael stops and blinks down at his stick. He thought he’d stuffed the smallest one in his pocket, but what he’s actually holding now is a longer, unbroken yarrow stalk.

David hops up and saunters over. When he holds his own up next to Michael’s they match exactly. 

“What do you think, Michael?” he says. “Did we win the stick measuring contest?” 

Michael looks over at Star, who’s holding her stalk up to Supernova’s equally short one with a smile. His stomach sinks. Somehow he’d grabbed the wrong one. So much for cheating. 

“Yeah,” he mutters. “We sure did.”

“Aw,” David says. “Did you want to wander off into the dark with Star?”

Michael side-eyes him. “I don’t care,” he lies. 

“You’ll have to rig it better next time,” David says cheerfully, and Michael gets a jolt. Did David—? He’s grinning at Michael, and Michael decides not to give him the satisfaction of asking. 

“Okay,” he says loudly, turning to the rest of the room. “Me and David will take the top floor. If there’s an attic, we’ll check that too.”

“There is,” Marko says. “Master bedroom—door next to the closet. You can't miss it.” 

Michale nods his thanks. “Sam and… Dwayne…” His heart sounds a quiet note of worry, and he scouts around the room. “You guys, Star, and Supernova, stick together on this floor. If there’s a basement, scout that out, sometimes there are windows out from those.” 

Alan and Edgar got each other; he decides to send them to the second floor, where they’ll be in easy hollering distance from anyone. “Don’t try and solve the murder,” he says firmly. They salute him, which—weird. 

The group of three is Pete, Marko, and Paul. “Uh, you guys stay in the foyer and figure out if you can open the front door somehow. By brute force if you need to. Or if somebody knocks, shout for help.”

Pete doesn’t look super happy to be left alone with Marko and Paul, but that feeling is clearly warring with his relief at not being paired with David, so he doesn’t complain. Michael can’t blame him. He’s not entirely sure David isn’t the murderer; in fact if he had to put a bet down at this point, he’s pretty sure he knows where his money would fall. But if it comes down to it, he can take David in a fight. David’s got some muscle, but Michael’s got him beat on brawn. David looks like he needs to take somebody by surprise to win. 

Everybody gathers at the door, waiting for some invisible signal. The Frog Brothers have pulled Sam aside and stuffed something in his hand; Michael makes a note to ask him about that later. Star is retying her boot laces like she’s going into combat, and he thinks again, wistfully, that he’d rather be going upstairs with her. Everyone else is looking at him expectantly. 

He can't think of anything cool to say. Eventually he just says, lamely, “Okay, well. See you all in ten.” 

He shoves open the door to the foyer and begins to make his way up the main staircase, David hard on his heels. 

— Sam, Dwayne, Star, and Supernova; in the pantry… 

Left in the front room of the ground floor, Sam, Dwayne, Star, and Supernova all look around at each other. 

“He said to look for a basement,” Sam says eventually. 

“I don’t want to do that,” Supernova says. 

“We can all go together.” Star’s voice is coaxing. “It’ll be better than staying in here alone.” 

“I’ll stay with her,” Dwayne offers. 

The others eye him with varying degrees of suspicion. After a moment Supernova says to Star, “Okay, fine, but I get to hold one of the flashlights. And I’m not going in first, if we do find a basement.” 

The only other door in the room they're in leads to a kitchen. Like every other part of the house Sam has seen so far, it’s pretty empty: clean countertops, no appliances except a stove and a refrigerator. He opens the fridge; it’s also empty. 

Supernova is shining her torch beam around the rest of the space, the light bouncing off wooden floors and slate counters. “It’s so weird that they didn’t decorate. Aren’t haunted houses supposed to have more fake spiderwebs and stuff? Skeletons jumping out?” 

Sam doesn't answer, occupied with checking the windows. Bars on all of them, like he and Star had seen earlier, and boarded up besides. He slides one open and shoves at the boards through the bars but they don’t give, don't even budge. He yells— “HELLOOOO—? WE’RE TRAPPED!” —but if there’s anybody hearing him, they don’t yell back. 

When he turns back around, the rest of the group is all staring at him. “Sorry, was that loud?” 

Star whistles. “You’ve got pipes on you, kid. You should sing or something.” 

“We’ve got a band,” Dwayne says. “You could sing with us.” He smiles at Sam with all his teeth showing. It makes Sam nervous for some reason he can’t pin down. Maybe it’s just that the guy's got, like, mega biceps. There’s a tattoo on one that Sam can’t stop looking at. 

“What’s your band?” Supernova asks. 

Dwayne puffs out his chest. “The Lost Boys,” he says proudly. “We’re kind of a big deal around here.”  

“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of you guys. My friend went to one of your shows, she said you were—” She pauses. “Um, good. She said you were good.” 

“Why, thank you, milady.” Dwayne bows ostentatiously. “We live to serve.” 

“Speaking of bands,” Star says musingly, her own mouth twitching, “Did that guy—the dead one—mention what band he was in?” 

Supernova thinks about it, then shakes her head. “We didn't talk a lot though. Edgar and Alan were pretty excited to get inside.” 

“How do you know those kids anyway?”

“I’m their babysitter.” 

Star snorts. “How’s that going?” 

“Oh, man.” Supernova giggles. “The stories I could tell. They’ve got this crazy idea that half the people in Santa Carla are actually vamp—” 

Sam cuts her off; he doesn’t doubt she could tell stories, but he doesn’t really think that’s how they should be spending their time. “Let’s keep looking for the basement?” he suggests. He flashes his torch beam at another door leading off the kitchen. “That looked like a pantry or something, but Star and I didn’t really check it very thoroughly last time.”

They all crowd in there now. There aren’t any windows or doors, and there isn’t any food in here either, just shelving, a mop and broom, and some dusty cans of cleaning solution. Dwayne lets the door shut behind them with a click, and Sam jumps and accidentally says a word that would have cost him a buck to the swear jar if Lucy had heard it. 

His heart still pounding, he shines his flashlight all over the shelving. Supernova joins with her own, but they don’t find anything more exciting than the cleaning solutions. “Looks clear,” Sam says, a little disappointed. “There’s no reason that there should be a basement entrance in the pantry any—” 

At that moment there's a click, and a section of the shelving swings forward soundlessly. Supernova squeaks and snatches her hand away from the broom she had been leaning on. The broom handle snaps back to its original position and the door in the shelving swings closed again. 

“Woah…” Sam says, thrilled. “A secret passageway! Like in the movies!”

He makes for it immediately, but Supernova is backing away from the hidden door. “Nuh uh,” she says. “I am not going in there.” 

“That could be our way out!” Sam says. “We gotta try it!” He pulls the mop handle like Supernova had and the door swings open again on smooth, oiled hinges. So cool. He can’t wait to see where it leads. 

“Or it could be where the murderer is hiding!” Supernova says shrilly. “I am not going in, no way, Jose. Have you seen my hair?” She points at the bright blonde crimps. “If the murderer is still in this house, I die first.” 

“Well,” Sam says. “Second.” Supernova glares at him and he says hastily, “Or not at all! Not at all, probably.” 

“No thanks to the scary tunnel,” Supernova says, and crosses her arms to indicate her mind is made up.

“I’ll just go scope it out then.” 

“Alone?” Star and Supernova say, in disbelieving unison. 

“I’ll come!” Dwayne pipes up. He appears at Sam’s shoulder, looking down the passageway with interest. “It’ll be the two of us, eh, old boy?” He throws his arm around Sam and begins to tug him into the darkness. 

“Uh…” 

Michael wouldn’t be too happy if he learned that Sam had let himself be dragged down a dark, spooky hallway with a random guy, especially when the guy had so many tattoos and might be a murderer. Sam tries to calculate the odds in his head. One out of ten people—not counting himself—and he can probably discount Michael, too. So one out of nine—a little over ten percent chance that Dwayne is going to stab a grilling poker in his neck as soon as they’re out of sight of the girls. 

Okay, so. The odds aren’t great. But how many chances would Sam have to explore a secret passageway? 

Maybe he’ll just make sure they’re never out of sight. “Shine the light down the hall after us,” he says to Supernova. “We won’t go further than your light does. And, um, if I scream, can somebody come get me?” Star nods and Supernova shakes her head. “Great, thanks,” Sam says. “Cross your fingers—hopefully this is our ticket out of here.” 

First Sam, then Dwayne steps through the door cut into the shelves. 

It’s even more dusty than the rest of the house, and Sam immediately sneezes three times in a row. “Bless you,” Dwayne says to the first one. “Gesundheit,” to the second. “Alright mate, calm down,” to the third. Sam glares at him, his eyes watering. 

“You go first,” he says, and sniffs. 

“Don’t mind if I do, old boy,” Dwayne says, and slides past him. He begins to jaunt down the passageway, thumbs in the sleeves of his vest. 

The walls are just far enough to walk in single file, but there isn’t a lot of extra room. Sam shines the flashlight just over Dwayne’s shoulder so that they can both see where they’re going, and they move slowly away from the door. 

The walls are whitewashed plaster, not the dark shining wood of the rest of the house, and the ceiling is low. The sound of their footsteps is muffled, the thud of each step absorbed by the plaster as soon as Sam hears it. Supernova’s light wavers behind them, and Sam’s light wavers in front, Sam and Dwayne between the two beams like they’re birds on a power line. 

Sam thinks they’re going west, but he’s not a hundred percent sure; he’d gotten turned around in the house and it seems like the passage might be curving slightly to the left. Sure enough they haven’t gone that far before the light from Supernova’s torch is shining on a wall they’re leaving behind. Sam thinks about turning back, but he’s come this far, and it looks like there might be… 

“Stairs,” he says aloud. “I guess the passage takes us up a floor.” 

“Indubitably,” Dwayne says cheerfully. “If not two floors, what? Shall we ascend? I believe the decision is up to you, young man—so far you seem to be in charge of this little investiga—” 

“Do you always talk like that?” Sam interrupts. 

Dwayne pauses. “Like what?”

“Like—are you always British?”

“Dude, I’m totally from across the pond.”

“Well, like—there, for example. I’m pretty sure English guys don’t say ‘dude’.” 

Dwayne looks annoyed. “I’m trying something,” he says stiffly. 

“So you’re not British?”

“Not by birth,” Dwayne says, sounding snotty, “But in spirit—” 

There’s a sound like a door slamming. They wheel around simultaneously; Sam’s flashlight shining back the way they’d come. It’s shining on the curving stretch of white plaster and he takes off back down the passage, slowing only briefly when he can see the door they’d walked through just a few minutes earlier. 

The door has closed. Sam sprints towards it and slams himself against the wood. “Open the door!” he yells. “Open up!” 

But no matter how much he pounds on it with his fists, the door stays firmly closed. 

— Michael and David; in the guest room… 

Michael and David leave the Frogs on the second floor to start searching rooms for windows that aren’t shuttered and barred. In a pinch, Michael thinks he can jump out of the house from the second story, or make a rope ladder or something. He makes the boys promise twice more not to go into the room where the body is, and then also makes them promise to try the phone for a dial tone every five minutes. 

“As soon as you hear a tone, dial 9-1-1,” he says. “We’re at 787 Moore, and there’s a dead body. Got that? Repeat it.” 

“We know how to call the police,” Edgar says. 

“They won’t help anyway,” Alan mutters. “What you need is a vamp—” 

“Oooh-kay,” Michael says, and pushes them gently down the hallway, away from the room with the body. “We’ll be upstairs. Yell if you get somebody on the phone.” 

Michael and David walk up to the third floor, Michael swinging the flashlight in a slow arc in front of them as they move down the hallway. He begins opening every door systematically: bedroom, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom. Inside each room he checks the windows: all barred and boarded up; barely a crack to show light from the streetlamps.  

He’s never been in a house with so many bedrooms before. Besides the four poster frames they’re unfurnished, but still—he keeps thinking about his and Sam’s own bedroom, two twin beds pushed flush against each wall and a thin corridor of space between them. He’s only slept there three nights and he already feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin. 

“This guy must be loaded,” Michael mutters, opening the door to the third bedroom. 

“He used to be.” David has been trailing behind him, hands in his coat pockets. He walks like he’s got drugs to sell: eyes narrowed and flitting rapidly, shoulders slightly hunched.  

Michael turns to swing the flashlight at him. David turns from it, his hand up, and Michael moves it away. “Sorry. You know the owner?” 

David shrugs. “A little.”

“Is he the one running the haunted house?”

David looks thoughtful. “Define ‘running’,” he says, putting the word in air quotes. 

Michael snorts. “Right?” he says. “Couldn’t even be bothered to show up. Or hire employees. And this place is so lame. Or, it was, before the—um. Body.” 

David just looks at him. After a too-long beat, Michael turns away. His heart is racing for some reason—he can’t figure David out. Every time he looks over, David is looking back at him. It makes Michael feel weird, like he’s in a fishbowl and David is the cat looking into it. 

He keeps going, scanning each room with the flashlight, then stepping inside to look more closely at the windows and furniture. Literally all the windows are barred; not a single one has escaped the asylum treatment. It’s like the owner thought he’d been housing wild animals instead of six bedrooms’ worth of house guests. Michael tests a couple to see if the rust has made them weaker, but they’re sunk deep into the window frames and immovable without some heavier machinery than his own fingers. He gives up after trying a few, feeling stupid under David’s cool, unwavering gaze. 

“What brought you to Santa Carla, Michael?” David asks, as Michael climbs back down off a windowsill. “Couldn’t resist our spooktacular delights?” 

“Yup,” Michael says. “I’m here for the ghost tours. I hear they’re to die for.” 

This room has a bedside table as well as a bed. When he opens the drawer the only thing in it is a bible, so old the leather is crumbling. He flicks open the cover and finds a short list of names, with birth dates and death dates. He remembers Lucy telling him that people used to do this, keep a list of their family members on the first page of the family bible. He runs his finger down the list. The last two names don’t have death dates: W. Ivanov (1902– ) M. Ivanov (1927– ). 

Maybe the house belongs to M. Ivanov. Whoever that is.

Michael turns around and nearly jumps out of his skin: David had been standing right behind him. Now they're face to face, noses nearly touching. 

“Jesus,” Michael says, shoving him back. “Wear a bell.” 

“That would ruin the line,” David says, with a smug smile. He lifts his chin and runs a long, pointed nail down his own neck, over the leather choker he's wearing, past his collarbone to his sternum. Michael watches as his nail drags the fabric of his shirt down before he realizes he's doing it. He pulls his eyes away, face hot. 

“Can't mess with a good profile, Michael. You know that.”

“Not something I’ve ever considered,” Michael mutters. 

“Then it must come naturally.”

Michael glances at him sideways. That was a compliment, he's pretty sure. The problem is that David delivers compliments and insults in exactly the same way, and Michael can't tell if the lightly ironic tone is currently mocking him or not. 

David doesn't give him a chance to respond anyway. He's staring down at the open bible without touching it. “Do you know your good book, Michael?” 

Michael snorts. Lucy had raised the boys without religion, and Michael has never picked anything up. His dad had been Catholic; apparently it isn’t contagious. 

“Good boy,” David says. The way he says it makes the hair at the back of Michael’s neck prickle up. 

He sweeps the flashlight across the room one last time, then turns for the door, pausing in the doorframe to shine the light against the floor behind him so that David can see where he’s walking. The dark doesn’t seem to faze him—he hasn’t paused his padding, ambling gate through the house once, regardless of where Michael’s torch is pointing—but Michael doesn’t want to look like an asshole.

“Do you—uh—” Michael doesn’t really know how to ask. “Believe?” he finishes lamely. 

“In what?” David asks. He’s still standing on the other side of the bed next to the bedside table, over the open bible. His eyes glint in the dark.

“God, I guess. Or anything.” 

David just laughs. He closes the drawer and makes his way around the bed to the door. He stops in front of Michael, a little too close. 

“Too bad Star isn’t here,” he says, low and suggestive. “We could test out the mattress.” 

Face flaming, Michael turns and strides out through the door, David cackling softly behind him. 

— Alan and Edgar; in the music room… 

“This is sick, dude,” Alan whispers. “We should be getting fingerprints.”

“Vampires don’t leave fingerprints.” 

Alan frowns. “Why not?” 

“I dunno. They just don’t. Otherwise the police would have caught ‘em all by now.” 

“They’ve got fingers, don’t they?” 

Edgar hesitated. “Well, fine. Maybe they do. But their fingerprints aren’t the important part for catching a vampire. We should be getting fangprints.” 

“Ooh.” Alan nods eagerly. He digs around in his backpack until he finds what he’s looking for. 

“Good thinking, that’ll be perfect,” Edgar says. “You wanna do it?”

“You can,” Alan says generously.  

They creep towards the body, Edgar holding the silly putty. 

— Star and Supernova; in the foyer… 

When the door to the secret passageway slams shut it takes Star and Supernova completely by surprise. They spend a few minutes fruitlessly trying the mop handle, wriggling it up and down, before it snaps in two in Star’s hand. 

Star stares at the broken piece in her hand. “Oops,” she says weakly. 

“Oh my God,” Supernova whispers. Tears well up in her eyes. “We’ve killed them.” 

“No, no,” Star says hastily. “We didn’t kill them. We may have—like—trapped them… temporarily! But it’s a secret passageway, there’s another side. They’ll probably come out in like, an ensuite bathroom or something. A bedroom closet.” 

Supernova sniffs, then wrinkles her nose. “Ew,” she says. “You think this guy has a passageway from his kitchen to a bedroom closet?” 

“Why else would he have a secret passageway,” Star says. “It’s obviously for being a perv.” She tosses the broken mop handle aside. “Okay, new plan. We find the other side of the passage. I don’t like the idea of that kid being alone with Dwayne for too long.” 

Supernova nods. “He was weird,” she agrees. “Do you think he’s really British?”

“If he’s really British, I’ll eat my hat.”

“You don’t have a hat.” 

“I’ll eat Marko’s hat.” 

They retrace their steps back to the front hall and find it empty. “Um,” Star says, looking around. “Speaking of Marko… where did he go?”

Marko is gone, as is Paul and Pete. The front hall is empty, echoing and still. Their flashlight beam meets only darkness, and is lost. “Okay,” Star says, and spins around slowly. “Maybe they went exploring…?” 

Supernova creeps closer to her. “Are we gonna die?” she whispers.

Star puts an arm around her. She smells like the beach and talcum powder, with a light floral perfume overtop it all. “We’re going to be fine,” she says firmly. “They've got to be somewhere down here. We’ll find them, don't worry.” 

Supernova nestles into her side. “I trust you.” 

Star feels warm all the way down to her toes. Nobody's ever said that to her before. “You shouldn’t,” she says. “What if I’m the murderer?”

Supernova pauses. She steps back, disengaging from Star, and considers her for a long moment. Star lets herself be looked at, although something about the way Supernova peers at her makes her feel weirdly naked and exposed. 

“Nah,” Supernova says finally. “Your aura’s really purple. You’ve got a big heart. And you’re a truth-seeker.”

Star thinks about saying that she could probably be a truth-seeker and a murderer but decides there’s not really an upside to winning that argument. She wants to keep Supernova on her good side. She kind of wants Supernova back under her arm. 

“Come on,” she says instead. “Let’s check these rooms first. If we can’t find them we’ll go upstairs.” 

“See?” Supernova says, as they walk towards one of the doors off the foyer. “Seeking the truth. My aura reads are never wrong.” She tugs Star’s elbow as Star reaches for the door. “But, um, are we sure we want to seek this truth?” 

Star isn’t sure, but it’s better than the alternative: waiting around in the foyer twiddling their thumbs. “Yes,” she says firmly. “The only way out is through.” She grabs Supernova’s hand and squeezes it. “And we’re together, right? Let’s show this guy what two women can do when they put their minds to it.”  

— Michael and David; in the master bedroom… 

Michael finally stops in the last of the bedrooms. This is the first one that’s had anything interesting: he’s looking at another narrow door opposite from where they came in. It’s open, and they can see a steep set of stairs heading upwards. Just where Marko had said it would be—he must have been upstairs already. 

“The attic,” Michael says. 

“Looks like,” David says, behind him.  

“I guess we better check it out.” 

“What are we looking for again?” 

“A way out, or a phone.” 

“Famously things found in attics,” David says dryly. 

“I’m just trying to be thorough.” Michael says it through his teeth, feeling murderous. 

David waves his hand magnanimously. “Carry on,” he says. 

Michael puts his foot on the first step and it creaks loudly. Sam would like this, he thinks dismally. It’s exactly like being in a horror movie. Dark rooms, creaking steps, a creepy attic… He hopes Sam is okay. He hopes he won’t get in trouble for bringing Sam here. He’ll have to remind Sam not to say anything about it—assuming they make it out alive. Sighing, he starts upwards. 

David follows him up the stairs really closely. When Michael turns around to glare at him he smiles back sweetly. “You wanted a buddy system,” he says smugly. “Should we hold hands?”

He grabs for Michael’s hand and Michael shakes him off. “We’re good,” he says. “I trust you. Just don’t, um, kill me. I guess.” 

“No promises, Michael.” 

They climb up into the gloom.

— Alan and Edgar; in the music room…  

The silly putty can’t be re-extracted from the bite wounds once applied, so Edgar and Alan eventually stop trying to scoop it out and start going through the guy’s pockets instead. For clues. 

“Wow, he had a lot of cash,” Alan says. “Guy was rolling in it.” 

They count it quickly, then look at each other. 

“I mean,” Edgar says slowly. “He won’t miss it. Anymore.”

“Maybe half?” Alan suggests. 

A hundred bucks in twenties doesn’t split evenly down the middle so they take sixty, and then that doesn’t split evenly between Edgar and Alan so they take another twenty. That done, they move on to the other items in his billfold. 

“His name is ‘Slash’,” Alan says. “Dude, that’s so awesome. Bet his mom was a rockstar.” 

There’s a credit card and a library card, plus some half-punched punch cards, before they get to the best part. It’s a business card on heavy cream-colored stock, with crisp edges and a serif font. He’s only got one, and they pull it out last, from behind his punch card for Lobster Greg’s. 

The title is in bold black letters, etched into the thick cardstock with solemn gravity. 

Vampire Hunter. 

“Oh my God,” Edgar says, staring at it. “He was one of us…” 

“And we didn’t even know,” Alan finishes. He looks awed. 

“Wow, we should have asked for tips.” 

Alan frowns. “Well, we didn’t know if he was any good. I mean, I’ve never heard of him, have you?”

“Nah.” 

“Maybe he was shit. That’s why he died.”  

“Wait.” Edgar slaps his hand on Alan’s shoulder. “He was here, and a vamp got him. He was hunted. And we’re here. Does that mean…”

Alan’s eyes are dinner-plate wide. The card in his hand flutters to the ground.

“The hunters become the hunted…” he whispers. 

— Michael and David; in the attic… 

The attic turns out to be full of storage boxes, in an eclectic mixture of styles: crates, suitcases, cardboard boxes, wooden chests, a couple plastic bins. Like it’s stuff that has been accumulated over the course of decades, if not centuries. 

The room is the longest they’ve seen, the length of the whole house, although the ceiling is low and slanted so that Michael can only stand without bending over in the very middle, where the A-frame roof is at its highest. There are windows in here, too, and they’re the only ones Michael has seen that aren't barred. But they’re also narrow: too narrow for Michael's head, he thinks, and he doesn't want to try just in case he's right. 

Otherwise, no phone, no exit. Just boxes. They walk the length of the room, pausing at the other end. 

“At least you were thorough,” David says brightly. Michael wishes one of the windows was wide enough to throw him out of it. 

“What is all this, anyway,” he says, and kicks at a plastic bin. It falls over, and a stack of paper comes sliding out, spilling over the dusty wooden floor. “Shit.” He drops to the ground and begins to scoop it back up. David snorts and leans against a crate to watch him. 

Michael’s eye catches on one of the papers, which has an official-looking seal and a heading in large font: “Deed of Sale.” He scans it quickly and then pauses, looks at it more closely. “Oh, I know this place. Sam and I were in there just the other day. But it’s not a record store anymore, it’s a video store. VideoMax.” 

“Oh?” David’s voice is neutral. 

“This is only from last year. Huh. The guy must still use this place as storage, I guess.” He reads the name and laughs. “His name is Max. He sure put a lot of time into coming up with the name of his store.” It’s funny—the last name on the deed of sale doesn’t match the last name in the bible. He looks up. “You said you knew him?” 

David shrugs. “A little,” he says. Exactly what he had said the first time. 

“How come?”

“We worked together.” David’s eyes skid sideways and he pops up, sweeping his coat out behind him and making the dust fly. “Are you finished with the paperwork, Michael? The bedrooms were more fun. We could explore those more… thoroughly.” He grins as Michael’s face heats up. 

“Yeah, I’m done,” he mutters. He props the box back on the pile, balancing it less precariously than it had been before. 

“Why d’you think he’s got all his windows barred up?” Michael muses, as they make their way back through the maze of boxes and crates. “Did this used to be a bad area, or…?” 

David laughs. “It’s still a bad area. All kinds of things roam the streets of Santa Carla.” His grin is vulpine in the light of Michael’s flashlight. “But most of them wear masks, you know. You’ve probably met some already, and you didn’t even know.” 

“Sure.” Michael thinks he does know, actually. 

“You never said what pulled you out of Phoenix,” David says lightly.

Michael picks his way past a series of crates, the wood splinters catching on his jeans. “No reason,” he says. “My mom decided it was time to move. She grew up here.”

“No place like home…”

“I guess.” Michael avoids his eye. “It’s not really her home, though. She hasn’t lived here since I was born.” 

He doesn’t say that Lucy doesn’t seem any happier in Santa Carla than she had in Phoenix; that the house is tiny and dark and unfamiliar to all of them; that the bruise on his ribs is the real reason they’ve moved; that just leaving a house and dad behind doesn’t make the nightmares stop. Turns out you can want to punch through walls in a house with a sea breeze just as much as in a house without one. Sam is still clueless. Lucy still shows up at the breakfast table with red eyes and a splotchy face, her guilt scratching at the back of his neck. 

‘No place like home’? So far, every place is like home. Home follows him around like a cartoon storm cloud. 

“Family,” David remarks. “Can’t live with them…” 

He trails off. After a moment, Michael laughs just to fill the silence. He’s gotten a fair way ahead of David; he turns around to light David’s path through the boxes. “Right,” he says. “Well, I’m saving up for my own place. Just need a job first.” 

“Dracula’s Putt Putt is hiring.”

Michael sighs. “I know.”

“It’s better than you’d think.” David sounds amused. “They offer dental.”

“I just don’t think I could pull off a cape.” 

“Aw, don’t sell yourself short, Michael.” David has made his way through the maze. Michael steps aside so David can get to the door to the stairway ahead of him, but instead of walking through David claps both hands on Michael’s shoulders, like he’s about to deliver bad news, and says seriously: “You’ve got the neck for it.” 

Before Michael can decide if that’s a compliment, David sweeps past him. As he brushes by, his fingers ghost down Michael’s arm. They’re cool, and the sensation makes the hair all over Michael’s body stand up. He’s beginning to think David might be coming on to him. The thought makes something warm and melty pool low in his belly, even though David is one of the most annoying people he’s ever met, and maybe also a murderer. 

David is already halfway down the first spiral of steps, heedless of the darkness. Michael follows him down, keeping at a slight distance. The switchblade in his pocket is a comforting weight. 

As he’s descending the stairs he’s thinking that he doesn’t remember telling David he moved to Santa Carla from Phoenix. 

— Star and Supernova; in the lounge… 

The first room Supernova and Star walk into looks like it might have been a study: it has a large desk pushed against the window (shuttered and barred, like the rest) and nothing else.  Supernova shines her flashlight over Star’s shoulder as Star goes through all the desk drawers, but there's nothing in any of them. She's not even sure why she does it, she just doesn't know what else to do when they're stuck inside a house with no obvious way to get out or contact the outside world. Part of her is hoping to find a second, hidden phone that magically still works.

She closes the last drawer disappointed and turns around. Supernova is standing very close to her, and Star accidentally looks straight down her top. She isn't wearing a bra. 

“Nothing,” she says, and looks away. “Try the next one?”

The next room is a library; or, it used to be a library before somebody took away all the books. The shelves are bare and dusty. 

“What's the point of a big house that you leave empty like this?” Supernova says, letting the flashlight beam play across the empty spaces where books should have been. “Like, what does he do with this place when it's not a haunted house?”

“All the people sleeping in their cars on the boardwalk and this guy is keeping a mansion empty,” Star mutters. “I hate him.” She pauses. “Or her.”

“No, it's definitely a dude,” Supernova says. “I’ll bet anything.” They walk into the next room and Supernova says smugly, “Told you.”

“What, women can't play pool?”

“A woman wouldn't make a whole room devoted to playing with her sticks and balls. Only men design houses with a billiards—”

She cuts herself off. She's swung the flashlight across the room and it's caught a flash of movement on the other side of the velvet-topped table. When she swings it back they can't see anything. Whatever—whoever—was moving is now hiding behind the table. 

Star’s breath comes faster. Supernova’s hand is on her elbow, gripping it tight. Her nails dig into Star’s skin and Star quickly decides if it would be better to split up and skirt the table or keep close to the wall. She decides against being brave and steps sideways, pulling Supernova with her. They both press their backs to the wall, Supernova keeping the flashlight beam pointed straight in front of her. It shakes slightly; her hands are trembling. 

“Marko?” Star asks, tentatively. “Paul? Pete? Is that you? It’s us…” 

She slides sideways along the wall, and Supernova moves with her. They make it halfway down the room before they can see past the table. 

Marko and Paul are crouched behind it, squinting into the light. Their faces are wet with blood. Beneath them, Pete is lying limp and white, his neck a ravaged mess. 

Star gulps. Marko and Paul look guiltily up at her, two kids who have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. 

“He… fell.” Marko says. 

“Onto our teeth,” Paul adds. 

Supernova makes a sound like a mouse that’s been picked up by the tail. Then she turns and runs. 

Star darts after her, but not before she sees Marko and Paul leap to their feet to follow. She screams involuntarily, and when she gets to the door to the library she slams the door closed behind her. On the other side of the door, two large thumps tell her that Marko and Paul have run into it—she doesn’t stop to figure out the locks, just turns to follow the bobbing flashlight through to the study, closing that door behind her as well. 

Star and Supernova stumble out into the front hall and Supernova freezes, looking at the options available to them. Back to the front room and through to the kitchen? Up the stairs? Star tugs her hand. “There—” she says, and points through the last door: it’s a lounge—Star had poked her head in earlier.

They run in and close the door behind them just as Marko and Paul spill into the foyer. Supernova locks the door with shaking hands as Star darts over to the couch. 

“Help me,” she gasps. 

Supernova runs over and gamely attempts to help Star push the couch towards the door. Star briefly wishes she’d been chased into a room with Michael, who had looked like he might have at least touched a rack of weights in his life. Supernova contributes about as much to the couch pushing mission as a teacup poodle would contribute to a rowing crew. But together they drag the couch until it’s pushed up next to the door, and Star collapses next to it, panting. 

The door handle rattles. On the other side of the door they hear Marko say: “Man, they locked it.” 

“Let’s kick it down.” 

There’s a pause, then a thump, and somebody grunts. “Ow,” Marko says, after a moment. Paul starts laughing, and then there’s another, softer thump—the sound of a fist hitting a body—and the laughter stops. 

“Ow!” Paul this time. 

“You try it,” Marko says. 

There’s another resounding Thunk! against the door, but it holds. 

“Damn,” Paul says. He sounds admiring. “Good construction.” 

The two voices get quieter as they move away, and as much as Star strains to hear she can’t make out their conversation. It’s a few minutes before a different sound starts: a scratching sound, coming from the door handle. 

Star’s stomach drops. They’re trying to pick the lock. 

— Sam and Dwayne; in the secret passageway…  

Sam wishes he'd packed a sandwich. 

When it had become clear that Star and Supernova couldn't open the door from their side for whatever reason, Sam had resigned himself to finding the other end of the secret passageway, wherever it may be. His stomach is grumbling, and the hot dog Michael had promised him when they left the house doesn't seem to be in his near future. He doesn't want to hang around and wait; he wants to get moving. 

“Can you back off,” he snaps at Dwayne. “It’s not like I can go anywhere.” He gestures to the stretch of narrow passage in front of him. “Kind of a one-way street here, bud.” 

Dwayne raises both hands. “Sorry, mate,” he says. His British accent is back. “You smell good.”

Sam cuts his gaze over his shoulder. “I’m fifteen, by the way.” 

“Like a spring lamb,” Dwayne says musingly. 

Sam shudders. “Further than that,” he says firmly, and holds out an arm to indicate how far away Dwayne should stay from him. 

They’ve followed the curve of the passageway as far as they got last time, to the place where it ends at the foot of a steep set of stairs. Sam hesitates, then takes a deep breath. “Ready?” he asks, over his shoulder. 

“Quite so, old boy,” Dwayne says. “Lead on, my good man.” When Sam shoots what he hopes is a withering glare in his direction, his eyes are shining in the light reflected off smooth white plaster. He smiles at Sam, and it feels sinister. Sam wishes for the umpteenth time that Star and Supernova had come in with them. 

He turns back to the stairs and shines his flashlight upwards. The stairs curve in a steep spiral, and he can’t see where they end. If he’d known he’d be doing aerobic exercises today he would have worn a different shirt. 

Ready or not, here we come, he thinks, and starts the climb. 

— Star and Supernova; in the lounge… 

It becomes clear pretty quickly that neither Marko nor Paul actually know how to pick a lock. After about twenty minutes of listening to them mutter to each other outside the door, the scratching of something in the metal lock stopping and starting periodically as they argue over whether they need a screwdriver or an allen wrench, Star relaxes a little. She slides down to sit with her back against the couch next to Supernova, who’s still gripping the flashlight like her life depends on it. 

“These guys are morons,” Star whispers. “I think we might be okay.” 

Supernova looks a little comforted, if not much. “I can’t believe Alan and Edgar were right about vampires. I owe them like, twenty apology fruit roll-ups. You know that’s why we’re here? We got a flyer in the mail that said this haunted house featured ‘real vampires.’ They wanted to see if it was true.” She giggles and it sounds a little hysterical. 

“Huh,” Star says. “I guess it was. Maybe Marko and Paul were employees after all.” 

“Who’s the boss?” 

Star shrugs. 

Supernova’s brow furrows a little. “God—does that mean they’re also right about the werewolves? Because my creepy neighbor has got a hell of a back hair issue going on.”

Star giggles. “And my landlord is a ghoul,” she says. 

“The guy at The Screamery? The one with clammy hands? Zombie.” 

“Totally!”

They assign monsters to people until they run out, and by then Supernova’s hands aren’t clutching the flashlight with quite so much tension. The scratching at the lock continues, but Marko and Paul don’t seem to be getting anywhere. 

Star bumps Supernova’s shoulder. “I’m glad I’m stuck with you,” she says. “If I had to be stuck with anyone here.” 

“Me, too,” Supernova says shyly. She pauses, then adds: “You don’t wish it was with that guy? In the Letterman jacket?” 

“Not my type,” Star lies. “He seemed like a douche.” 

“Yeah. Not my type either.” 

“Do you wish you’d been stuck with that blond guy?”

“Um, I think he’s glad he got paired up with Letterman jacket.” 

Star giggles. 

“Anyway,” Supernova says. “He’s not my type either.” 

There are butterflies fluttering around Star’s belly. Supernova’s legs have nudged sideways, her white sneaker touching Star’s boot. “Oh yeah?” she says quietly, and smiles. “That’s good.” 

Supernova lets out a quiet breath, like she’d been holding it. Star twists slightly to look at her, and Supernova blinks back. Her smudged mascara has given her raccoon eyes, but her eyeshadow has stayed a perfect smudge of pink. Her eyes are a light green, ringed with brown.

“You’re so pretty,” Supernova whispers. 

“Thanks,” Star whispers back. “You are, too. Can I kiss you?”

Supernova nods. Star pushes back her hair gently. Her lips are soft and taste like lemon meringue lipgloss. 

“This isn’t such a bad way to go,” Supernova murmurs, when they break apart, both of them breathing more quickly. 

“Hey,” Star says firmly. “We aren’t going to die today. Those idiots are going to give up eventually, and if they don’t—” She mimes a small karate chop. “We’ll take ‘em out.” 

Supernova giggles. “Okay,” she says, and leans in again. “I trust you.” 

— Alan and Edgar; in the music room… 

“Okay, okay. We just have to figure out who killed him. Then we know who to stake before he fangs us.” 

“Well, the silly putty was a bust. So much for fangprints.”

“We’ll just look for other clues—turn him over.” 

“You turn him over!” 

“Chicken!” 

“Ow—quit it! I’ll get you—” 

“Stop—kicking—me—” 

“Hey! You’re on—my—jacket—” 

“You’re on my bandana, you little—” 

“Fine! Fine, I’ll turn him over.”  

“Ha.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Um.” 

“Is that…?” 

“Yeah.”

“Woah.”  

— Michael and David; in the master bedroom…  

The steps from the attic take them down to the bedroom that Michael and David had been in before, but hadn’t searched. Michael does a half-hearted sweep of his arm with the flashlight, finding exactly what he’d found in every other bedroom: a large four-poster bed made up with a dusty bedspread and several hard pillows; an empty chest of drawers; a barred window; and a fireplace, unlit and with the flue closed and locked. This bedroom—the biggest one, with its own bathroom and two barred windows—also has a large wardrobe across the room from the bed. Otherwise it’s identical to the others, and equally undecorated. 

“I hope one of the others found something,” Michael says gloomily. “Or we’re going to have to break down the front door.” 

“I’d like to see you try.”

“We’d just need something to batter it with,” Michael says. “It can’t be impossible, I’ve seen people—” 

“You misunderstand, Michael,” David interrupts. He’s sauntered up close, and Michael, following his progress with his flashlight beam, finds himself with the light pointed directly upwards, illuminating David’s face in stark light, the dark shadows eerie in contrast. “I’d like to see you try. I think it would be fun. To watch.” 

Michael swallows. “Thanks?” he ventures. David’s eyes are dark pits. Michael takes a step back and David follows him. “I’m not—” he starts, just as David lifts a hand to his jaw, cupping it gently. 

“Not what?” David asks, low. 

“Not,” Michael says, and swallows. “Not—interested.” 

“Interesting,” David remarks, in a tone that suggests it is not actually that interesting. He runs his thumb over Michael’s bottom lip, then replaces it with his own mouth. 

It feels kind of weird to be kissing somebody in the same house as a dead body. It also feels kind of weird to be kissing the person who might have been the cause of the dead body. Michael’s not one hundred percent sure David is the murderer, but he’s not one hundred percent sure he’s not the murderer, either. 

Maybe David is kissing him as a distraction, Michael thinks. Fuck—this is how he took people by surprise: he kissed them into a sense of false security. And then when they were least expecting it, he stabbed them in the neck. Michael panics briefly, getting ready to shove David away if he reaches for a knife. 

But David’s hands are very much accounted for at the moment. One is still resting against Michael’s jaw, and the other is gripping his waist. The kiss deepens, and David’s hands don’t move, except to slide a little farther around Michael’s body.

A way out, Michael thinks vaguely. We’re supposed to be looking for a way out… 

But it’s long minutes before they come up for air, and it’s David who breaks the kiss, not Michael. Michael is breathless, a little drunk on skin contact. He wants to touch his lips, to see if they’re as swollen as they feel. He’s glad Sam is downstairs. 

“I think you should get in the closet, Michael.” 

Michael blinks. David is regarding him calmly, but his hand is suddenly firmer on Michael’s face: less a caress, and more of a command.

“What?” he croaks. 

“The closet,” David repeats. His voice is different too, slightly deeper, more forceful. Michael finds himself stepping backwards towards the large wardrobe before he’s even realized he’s doing it. David’s hand comes to rest on Michael’s chest and applies gentle pressure, and Michael takes another step backwards. 

“I’ll come back for you,” David says. Michael believes him. It sounds like a promise. “Stay quiet, hm?” He reaches down and turns off the flashlight with a click. “Wait for me.”

And then Michael is inside the wardrobe and the door is closing on his face. He blinks. What. 

He’s about to open the door again, embarrassed and angry, when David says loudly, “Checking up on us, Pops?”

Michael’s hand stills on the wardrobe door. In the room beyond it, he hears the screech of iron. After a pause, a second voice says: “Hello, David. I see things have become… complicated.” 

The voice is formal and slightly nasal. There’s a crack between the two halves of the wardrobe door that Michael can peer through, but it doesn’t help: it’s just as dark in the room as it is in the wardrobe, and Michael has the flashlight. He doesn’t turn it on. Neither of the figures outside seem bothered by the total darkness. 

“A few more people walked in than we planned,” David says lightly. “Nothing we can’t handle.” 

“I asked you to take care of three people, David. Three people who were getting a little too close to finding us. I would have accepted the babysitter as collateral. Four additional victims is beyond the pale. What exactly was your plan here?”

“We sent one flyer to the guy and one to the kids,” David says. He sounds bored. “Haunted House, real vampires. They ate it up. Marko made the sign for the front door so they’d know they were at the right house; he didn’t think anyone would come in off the street. Who would be that stupid?” 

The last sentence sounds pointed. Hey, Michael thinks, offended. 

“And how do you intend to dispose of the bodies?”

“Burn the house down,” David says lazily. “You had plenty of gasoline in the basement. It’ll only take a lighter.” 

Michael’s heart sinks. 

The other man doesn’t speak for a moment. When he does he sounds vexed. “I like this house, David. When we acquired it I hoped to have it in the family for a long time.”

“Yeah, you really kept the place up, Max. When is it going to be featured in Architect Weekly?”

The man—Max—ignores this. “And there was really no need for… theatrics. I expected this to be done more quietly.”

“You said I could do it my way,” David says coolly.  

A brief silence, and then a sigh. “Well,” Max says, resignation obvious, “As long as this doesn’t lead back to me. Which have you got hiding in the closet?”

It’s David’s turn to be silent. 

“Well? Another one of your pets? Who is it, David?” 

Footsteps; Max was moving closer. Michael’s heart was pounding in his chest and he pushed himself backwards against the back wall of the closet. His hands grappled to either side, looking for anything he could use as a weapon, but the closet was nearly empty. A few empty coat hangers, a single tattered jacket, a belt slung over the coat rail… 

“I’ll just say hello, shall I? In case you plan on bringing them home one day…” The footsteps stop outside the closet and the door begins to open. 

Michael’s hand has found what feels like a cane propped up in the corner. He grabs it and yanks. 

The back of the wardrobe falls away behind him. He stumbles backwards, reeling into empty space and falling flat on his ass. Narnia? Is his embarrassing first thought, and his second thought is: Sam? 

“Mikey!” There is a hand on his shoulders, then his face. A flashlight beam bounces around, illuminating a chaotic series of images: Sam’s face, looking down at him; another guy’s face—Dwayne?—looking just as surprised as Michael feels; the claustrophobic walls of some kind of tunnel; a door swinging on its hinges. It’s through this door that the wardrobe Michael was hiding in can be seen, as well as a figure looming at its open front. Sam’s flashlight swings across the figure's face, then steadies. 

Max is a tall man in a baggy blue suit, with wavy brown hair and long fingers. His face is frighteningly distorted. He has too many teeth—or, no—his teeth are too long. They aren’t teeth at all, they’re fangs. He’s grinning, his eyes a scary, flashing yellow. 

“Come on out, boys,” he says. “You might as well meet the man of the house.” 

He steps into the wardrobe; he has to duck slightly to fit. His hand reaches out towards them, his nails long and yellow and pointed. His fist grasps for the collar of Sam’s shirt and pulls him forward—

“No—” Michael shouts. 

Sam’s hand fumbles in his jacket. As Max drags him out of the passageway entrance and into the wardrobe, lowering his face towards Sam's neck, Sam pulls out a wooden stake. 

“This haunted house sucks,” he says, and drives the stake into Max’s chest. 

Max shrieks. It’s earsplitting and bloodcurdling—Michael covers his ears and turns away, cringing. A bright flash lights the room through his closed eyes, and is gone. When he looks again, Sam is standing alone in the wardrobe, blinking down at his own hands. Max has disappeared. 

“Woah,” Sam says. “I think I killed him.” 

— Marko and Paul; in the foyer… 

Marko stops trying to pick the lock open with his fingernail. “Did you feel something?”

He and Paul look at each other. 

“Max?” Paul asks. 

Marko looks thoughtful. “Huh,” he says, then turns back to the lock. “R.I.P., old man. Hope you went out doing something you hated.” 

— Company; on the stairs —

Michael crawls out of the wardrobe and gets to his feet, clapping dust off himself. Behind him, Dwayne steps out as well and looks around. “Oh, hey Boss,” he says. “What have you been up to?”

David is leaning against the bed, one hand clutching the dusty bedspread behind him and the other on his chest. He looks stunned, his eyes unfocused. When he finally lifts his head his gaze sweeps over them, pausing on Dwayne, then Michael, before stopping on Sam. 

“Do you even know what you’ve just done?” he asks. 

“Uh, slayed a vampire, I guess?” Sam says. He looks between David and Michael. “I guess the Frogs were right about Santa Carla, huh? Full of the damn things.” 

There’s a long moment of silence. Michael is trying to figure out if they need to start running. But finally a smile breaks over David’s face and he straightens up, barking a laugh. 

“Nice one,” he says. He’s still pressing his palm into his chest, like he’s feeling for something under his own skin. “Killed your first monster, kid. For that, you get a write-up in the Santa Carla Tribune.” 

“Really?”

“No.” 

“Oh.” Sam looks disappointed. He looks between Michael and David. “Was that who trapped us in here?”

“Um,” Michael says, and David interrupts. “Yup. We can leave now.” 

Michael looks at him. “Really?”

David shrugs. “Why not? You passed the test—” He pauses, and after a moment Michael says, “Sam.” 

“You passed the test, Sam. Let’s get the hell out of here.” 

“Aw,” Dwayne says. “But it was just starting to get interesting.” 

They run into the Frog Brothers on their way downstairs. Edgar and Alan are standing on the second floor landing, arms crossed. They watch the others come downstairs, and Michael gets a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Alan has blood smear on his backpack strap, and Edgar has one on his nose. 

“Look what we found on the body,” Edgar says loudly. He's looking right at David, and his hand is held out in front of him, to show off what he’s got in his palm to everyone else. Michael takes a step closer to see more clearly, and so does everyone else: David crowds in close behind him, his hand ghosting over Michael’s back. 

Something glimmers in the center of his palm. A silver earring. Michael turns to David; the matching one is hanging in his ear. 

“I’ve been looking for that,” David says. He plucks it out of Edgar’s palm. “Thanks, kid.”

“Get him!” Edgar shouts, and raises a gun. Michael yelps before he realizes it's bright green and made out of plastic. A water gun.

“Holy water; fire!” Edgar shouts, and he and Alan release a stream of water from their water guns in unison. David ducks but not fast enough; the two streams hit him square on the chest. Edgar and Alan jump forward as David sinks to the ground, his arms over his head. He hisses, and it’s an inhuman noise; animal and afraid. 

And then: nothing happens. The Frog Brothers continue to spray him liberally with water, everywhere they can reach with their squirt guns. David’s hair and jacket are quickly soaked, and Michael can see the water running down his neck. The Frogs look more and more perturbed as they continue to spray, like they were expecting something different to happen. 

Alan’s gun runs out first, and then Edgar’s does, both of the streams going sputtery before quitting entirely with a few last, spitting bursts. After a second, David looks up, then rises to stand. 

“Done?” he asks. He runs his fingers through his hair, then shakes the worst of it out, like a dog after a lake swim. His tank top is soaked through, and Michael can see his nipples through the white cotton. He swallows, and wills his brain to turn off. 

Edgar and Alan look at each other, and then Edgar drops his water gun and reaches into his backpack. “Well—what do you think of this—?” he says, and brandishes a wooden cross at David. It’s got a Jesus on it and everything. A crucifix, Michael remembers they’re called when they’ve got the man himself as an accessory. 

David looks down at it, then at Edgar. He takes the cross and regards it thoughtfully. “I think your Jesus is hot to a historically inaccurate degree. Does the bible mention a six pack?” 

Edgar gapes at him. David hands the cross back. “Is there a reason you wanted me baptized?” he asks. “Or can I go now? I think I heard the door open.” 

They all look down the stairs as one, every flashlight turning to spotlight the front door. It’s standing wide open, the cool night air sighing in gratefully. 

“Right,” Alan says, and Edgar says “Well,” and then they both say, in overlapping voices: “Sorry Sir! Totally our bad, Sir! Won’t happen again, Sir!” 

They run down the stairs and out the door. “Your flashlights!” Michael calls after them, but they don’t stop. When he turns back to David, shrugging, David is regarding his own wet arms, looking thoughtful. Then his eyes flit towards the door and back, and his expression clears. 

“Well,” he says, and claps Michael on the shoulder. “This has been an adventure. “Marko!” he bellows, and Michael winces. “Paul!” 

After a moment two figures emerge from one side of the stairs. They squint up at the flashlight beam as David and Dwayne walk down the stairs towards them, Michael and Sam following a few steps behind. 

“Time to go,” David says. 

“Aw, you finished without us?” Marko asks. 

David glances behind him, at Michael. “Not exactly. I’ll tell you at home.” 

“Dude, did you feel Max—” 

“Let’s go,” David interrupts. “We can talk later.” He turns around and smiles sweetly at Michael. “This has been a pleasure, Michael. When will I see you again?”

Michael’s face goes hot. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him, suspicious and glaring. “I’m free… on Fridays?”

“Friday it is. Pick you up at eight.” 

“How do you know where I’ll—”

“I have my ways,” David says airily. He throws an arm around Michael’s shoulder and steers him downstairs, out through the door, and onto the porch of the old mansion. Dwayne, Marko, and Paul have already disappeared; Michael didn’t even see which direction they walked. Behind him, still in the house, Sam is gathering up the water guns and the cross that the Frogs had left behind in their hasty exit. 

“Make sure you aren’t here when the police get here,” David advises. “Could take them a while, they aren’t the brightest.” 

“You are a vampire, aren’t you?” Michael asks under his breath. David's fingers on his jaw had been cold. 

In answer, David hisses, his lips pulling back in a grin. His fangs lengthen before Michael’s eyes, canines forming points. Michael takes a step back, blood pounding in his ears. 

“So everything they say—about holy water, crosses—that’s all fake?” 

“Oh, no,” David says. “That’s all real.” His teeth shorten again, and his eyes, briefly yellow, go back to normal. “Garlic, too. Don’t get pizza before our second date.” He smiles, maddeningly cocky, and chucks Michael under the chin. 

Michael ignores that. “So why didn’t—” 

“Max never owned this house,” David interrupts. “I never saw the will, but I bet Marko’s dad passed it down to his only son. And Marko doesn’t have a death certificate on record.”

David is still smiling, but Michael doesn’t get what that has to do with anything. “So it’s Marko’s house,” he says slowly. “What does that matter?”

“He invited me in,” David says. “Just like he invited you.” He points at the sign on the door. “It’s amazing what an invitation can do.” 

Come one, come all. The Haunted House sign flaps a little in the mild breeze. Its cute little blood bag cartoon winks at him with what now seems to be sinister glee. 

“See you on Friday, Michael,” David says, and suddenly he’s floating up into the night sky, his coat billowing broadly around him. “Wear something nice. Something that shows off your neck, perhaps?” 

“I’m not letting you bite me!” Michael calls up to him.

David just laughs, and disappears into the mist.

— Star and Supernova; in the lounge…  

“Do you think they’re gone?” Supernova says against Star’s mouth. In the last twenty minutes they’ve somehow ended up horizontal behind the couch, and Star’s skirt is shoved up around her waist. “I don’t hear them anymore…”  

“Man, who cares,” Star says. She gasps, and nips at Supernova’s bottom lip. “This haunted house rocks.”