Page 2 of Haunted Games

Abby

“Everyone’s going to what now?”

“It’s a fall festival,” Julia repeated patiently.

She took a delicate sip of her margarita.

Her pink manicure was fresh, which meant she’d been in trial this week.

“You know, corn maze, hayrides, pumpkins, and apple cider? And apparently, they have the best haunted house in the Metroplex all month long.”

“Sure, why not?” I shrugged, snagged a tortilla chip, and dunked it in queso. “I haven’t had fun in a hot second, and it’ll be good to have an excuse to avoid Michael now that he’s apparently in town.”

“I don’t think you’ve actually had fun in years, babe,” she said dubiously.

She tossed her platinum ponytail over her shoulder and fixed me with a look that said she wasn’t mad, just disappointed.

“I think some of the crew are bringing various coworkers and other extras. It’s time for you to sample the local cuisine.

Get over Michael by getting under a new guy, as they say. ”

The “crew” was the loose group of our classmates who’d landed in Dallas.

“Does it look like I’m not over Michael?” I asked, my tone as indignant as I could make it with a mouth full of chips. “We were barely together by the end. I’d be on my way to forgetting his name if he would just stop blowing up my phone.”

“Indeed.” She smiled an evil smile. “But I’ll admit it’s nice to know he’s suffering, because of course he is. You’re a catch, Abs. You’re gorgeous without even trying. Tall and athletic. Smart and successful. Still have a two as the first digit of your age, even!”

For, like, eight more months, but who was counting?

I took a giant swig of margarita. “Look, I said I’d go to the thing. The pumpkins and the haunted house. But no setting me up, okay? Tell your fiancé to keep his single friends to himself.”

She sniffed, sticking her nose in the air. “Fine. Jason’s friends are a mixed bag anyway.”

That was putting it mildly. At a happy hour last year, one of them spent a full thirty minutes regaling me with a play-by-play of an off-road triathlon he’d done in Alaska.

Julia lifted her glass, and I clinked mine against hers. “To pumpkins and hay and getting railed in a corn maze!” she declared.

Sounded like something she and Jason would do.

And honestly, good for them.

The weather was even chillier Saturday night, which put the entire city in a festive mood. The fall festival was packed, though the crowd was thinning as the sun went down and the parents with younger kids cleared out.

In an effort to project “not trying to meet anyone,” I’d used the cooperative weather to throw my favorite slouchy sweater over a tank top and workout leggings, and I had my trusty running shoes on.

I would be the fastest little rabbit in the haunted house.

Julia and Maria both wore some version of a chunky heeled boot, which meant they were going to end up fodder for some chainsaw-wielding maniac.

We were sitting on a hay bale, drinking cider while Jason and his buddies played a ring-toss game. It was getting rather heated. The shit-talking had reached pickup-basketball level, at least.

Maria glanced at her phone. “Oh good. Nathan and the rest of the crew are here. They said to meet at the haunted house.”

Nathan had been Maria’s mock trial partner all three years of school. They’d probably be married by now except that neither of them was into the opposite sex.

Lucky them for avoiding that particular affliction.

Julia forced Jason and company away from the games and herded us across the parking lot to where the more-adult spooky times were happening.

A bar was serving all manner of booze, including something from a smoking cauldron, and the servers were dressed as I’d imagine witches and warlocks would be if they worked at Hooters.

I eyed the haunted house as we approached.

It appeared to be a large pavilion that had been enclosed and decorated with an elaborate theater set across the front.

Fog machines, eerie lights, and creature heads abounded.

They’d have plenty of space in there to stage an elaborate maze of rooms and attractions.

I bounced on my toes and windmilled my arms to loosen up. I needed to be ready to run.

“Hey, gang!”

Nathan bounded up like an excited golden retriever, his arm linked with that of a handsome man I didn’t know. A few other familiar faces waved and fist-bumped.

And then my night went to shit.

Michael appeared from the back of the group, wearing jeans, a cashmere sweater, and his usual two-hundred-dollar GQ haircut. He shook hands with our friends from school, then made a beeline for me.

“No!” Julia jumped in front of me, waving the weird plastic chalice of smoking beverage she’d procured from the bar. “Begone, demon!”

Michael wrinkled his nose and waved the smoke away. “Abby—”

I held up a hand. “No. You don’t get to ambush me on a night out with my friends. We’re not doing this.”

He sighed the sigh of the world’s most put-upon man. “Abby, don’t be immature. We need to talk, and we can both be adults about this.”

Was that smoke coming from Julia’s chalice or out of my ears?

Maria scoffed and grabbed my hand. “Not a chance, dickhead,” she sang as she dragged me toward the haunted house entrance.

The rest of the crew realized the vibes were off and that perhaps Michael had misrepresented the situation between us when he finagled an invite to tag along. They promptly filed in behind me, separating Maria and me from a bewildered Nathan and a pissed-off Michael.

I flashed my wristband at the scary clown working the entrance, and then I disentangled myself from Maria.

“Sorry girl, I’m speedrunning this thing, and then I’m going to bail before Michael tries to talk to me again.”

She waved me away, then latched onto the side of Julia that wasn’t plastered to Jason. “You’re braver than me, babe. Good luck!”

I faced the narrow hallway, illuminated only by black lights and some creepy graffiti on the wall.

Mission Fun: Cancelled.

Mission Get the Hell Out of Here as Quickly as Possible: On.

Julia squealed behind me.

That was my cue.

I took off running into the fog.

Twenty minutes later, I’d made it through the “Shower of Slaughter,” some kind of satanic ritual room, a fun house maze where clowns lurked but had undoubtedly been warned by Legal not to touch, and a staged execution by electric chair.

My nerves were frazzled, and my adrenaline was high. I’d heard Julia screech a few times and some good-natured male shouting, so the crew wasn’t far behind me.

I was catching my breath in the relatively innocuous room I’d stumbled into. There were some bizarre murals dedicated to the seven deadly sins, but it seemed otherwise free of creepy men or jump scares.

“Abby.”

I yelped and jumped four feet backwards.

Spoke too soon, didn’t I?

Michael stepped out of an adjacent room, one I hadn’t come through.

Under the black lights, he looked like a nightmare ghost sent to haunt me by condescending to me until I checked myself into the Asylum room I’d run past on the way here.

“Are you serious?” I snapped. “You’re cornering me in the middle of a haunted house?”

He threw up his hands. “What the hell else am I supposed to do? You won’t return my calls.”

“You cheated on me. I have nothing to say to you, and you have nothing to say that I want to hear unless it’s the words, ‘I’m sorry for what I did, and I hope you have a nice life.’”

He advanced on me, anger flaring in his creepy glowing eyes. “You would throw away six years, Abby? Six years of our lives?”

My heart leapt into my throat. Michael was an inch or so taller than me and lean like a runner, and while he was a dick, he wasn’t the type to put his hands on me or become violent. Still, I was keyed up and jumpy, and my body reacted accordingly.

I put both my hands in front of me and took a giant step backwards. “Stay away from me. You are the one that threw away six years, Michael, not me.”

“I think there’s blame to go around, isn’t there? It’s not like you’re totally innocent in all of this.”

If I didn’t get away from him, I was going to crawl out of my skin.

“God, fuck off, Michael.”

He lunged for me, making a grab for my arm. “No, Abby, listen to me—”

The lights around us flashed menacingly, and three masked men barreled into the room.

“Shit!” Michael startled and retreated, plastering himself against the opposite wall.

The intruders were all big guys, each of them wearing some version of a ratty black hoodie with cut-off sleeves, unzipped to reveal muscular torsos that had been smeared with dark paint. Black ripped jeans sat low on trim hips, paired with dusty black combat boots.

Completing the look were sinister skull masks that covered their entire faces, the eye sockets empty black voids inside the white masks that glowed under the black lights.

One of them wielded an ax dripping with fake blood, and he flashed it menacingly at us.

“Run,” one of the men growled, his voice distorted by one of those things that made you sound like Darth Vader.

“Abby, ignore them,” Michael barked. “We’re not finished talking.” He composed himself, rolled his shoulders irritably, and then addressed the two men hovering in front of him. “Excuse me.”

They didn’t move, but Michael knew as well as they did that they couldn’t touch him, so he stepped around them, making a beeline toward me.

“Stay away from me,” I said, and to my horror, my voice shook. This whole thing with him was exhausting.

Embarrassing, too, in front of these masked strangers who were just trying to do their jobs.

Then the third masked man, the biggest one of them all, grabbed my hand and pulled me through the wall.