Page 2 of Property of Anchor

I shook my head and kept walking.My boots crunched over gravel as I made my way back toward the haunted house.

Inside, the actors were rotating for the next wave.Screams echoed down the halls, speakers blared thunder and ghostly whispers, and the smell of fog fluid hung thick in the air.Piney stood near the entrance to the torture corridor, his makeup half-rubbed off, leaning on a prop skeleton.

“You good?”I asked.

“Had some kid scream so hard he pissed himself,” he said proudly.“Think I found my calling.”

“Try not to traumatize the gueststoomuch.I don’t need parents suing.”

He grinned and ducked into the next hallway.

I took a slow lap through the house.Themed rooms lined the interior: cobwebbed dining halls, cursed nursery sets, flickering sconces, dripping red paint.The crew worked it like a well-oiled machine.Every jump scare was timed, every corner built to lead visitors into a scare zone.

Down the hall, Vin was resetting a hanging corpse rig while Cross and Push reset lighting in the rotating tunnel.Everyone had a job.Everyone pulled their weight.

We might’ve looked like chaos on the surface, but the Kings ran tight.

Always had.

Back outside, the sun was gone.The boats continued their cycle, ferrying screams back and forth across the water.

They paid us, and we gave them nightmares.

Now that was the definition of a dream job.

Chapter Two

Pearl

“Pearl!”

I jolted as the door to the Brush Masters’ office banged open.The windows rattled and a stack of paint catalogs skidded across the floor like startled birds.My dad, Bert Richardson, stood in the doorway with a grin on his face, a half-eaten jelly donut in one hand and a crumpled sheet of paper in the other.

It was barely ten a.m., and already the old box fan behind my desk was doing nothing but pushing warm air in circles.The overhead light buzzed faintly and cast a yellow sheen across the piles of invoices and paint samples cluttered on every available surface.

“We got a job!”he said and stepped inside, powdered sugar trailing behind him like confetti.

I set down the estimate I’d been reworking for the third time that morning and leaned back in my chair.“Is it the lake house in Delmore?Because Mrs.Garvey still hasn’t confirmed her budget.”

“Nope.Bigger.Better.We’re going to Skull Island.”

That woke me up.

“Skull Island?”

He grinned wider and dropped the paper onto my desk.“The haunted house.Full repaint, inside and out.It’s a big one.They want it fast, and they want it custom.”

I blinked.“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.You ever paint a torture chamber before?”

“Not unless you count that foreclosure in Baraton with the mildew walls.”

He chuckled and brushed powdered sugar off his faded polo.“These guys run a tight schedule.The haunted house stays open to the public, so we’ll have to work around them.That means early mornings and full daylight hours—no night shifts.They won’t be shutting it down.”

I picked up the sheet.It was a rough scope of work: exterior facade, multiple rooms, custom mural options.Two to three weeks.Multiple-story building.Specialized finishes.Weathered textures.Faux rust and aging.That sort of thing was right up my alley.I was the artsy one in the family; Dad was logistics.I made things look good.He made sure they stuck to the wall.

“Who contacted us?”