Page 11

Pearl

The haunted house looked different in the morning light. Still eerie, still massive, but less… hungry. The fog from the night before had burned off with the sun, leaving behind dew-speckled grass and a faint smell of sawdust and mildew. I loved it.

We were finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of the work.

“Jake, you’ve got the front porch and left shutters. Molly, I want you inside tackling the entry hallway, test that burnt umber I mixed yesterday. Brian, windows. Clean, prime, first coat of black.”

“And me?”

Bernice asked from her seat on a folding stool, her brush kit spread open in front of her like a surgeon preparing for work.

“You’ve got the grand staircase mural. No one else touches it,”

I said, pointing toward the house’s wide, warped front door.

“It’s your canvas.”

“Damn right it is,”

she muttered, selecting a small angled brush and holding it up to the light.

“You couldn’t pay me enough to paint a thousand shingles anyway. My knees would file for divorce.”

We got to work fast, falling into an easy rhythm. Ladders clanked. Paint splashed into trays. Brushes slapped against weather-worn wood. There was something therapeutic about it, about watching a space transform under your hands. The haunted house might’ve been worn out, but there was still life beneath the layers of decay. We just had to coax it back.

I was sketching the outline of a new design inside the entryway when I caught the first whisper of tension. Not from my crew. From them.

Anchor’s men moved differently this morning. Slower. Eyes sharper. More aware. I’d seen Prime walk past twice already with a scowl, murmuring something to Post, who had his phone glued to his ear. Skull hadn’t cracked a joke once. And Anchor? I hadn’t seen him yet, but I could feel him.

Or maybe I was just hoping to.

“You notice the guys are acting weird today?”

Molly asked as she rolled another layer of texture across the entry wall.

“Weirder than usual?”

I replied.

“Yeah. Like, more serious. And they’re all wearing those same cuts again.”

“They live in those things,”

I said, even though I’d noticed it too.

“Just saying. Last night they were kind of chill. This morning? Feels like they’re all waiting for something to blow up.”

I didn’t respond. Because she wasn’t wrong. And if I was being honest, I had been hoping Anchor would stop by to check in. Not that I needed him to. But still.

He hadn’t.

And I wasn’t used to that feeling, waiting for a man.

Around noon, the crew took their lunch break outside the haunted house. Brian had brought a cooler, and we all sat on overturned paint buckets and foam tombstones that hadn’t been installed yet.

“I think the vampire hallway might be my favorite part so far,”

Molly said, chewing on a peanut butter sandwich.

“The arches? The lighting? It’s like Dracula’s goth bachelor pad.”

“I’m pretty proud of the blood pit room,”

Brian chimed in.

“Still mad we’re doing a possessed nursery,”

Jake muttered.

“Creepy babies scare the hell out of me.”

“Can’t believe we’re painting horror into something that already looks like a crime scene,”

Molly said.

“You’re not wrong,”

I said with a laugh.

The conversation was easy, light, until the crunch of boots on gravel caught my ear.

I looked up.

Anchor.

He was walking toward us with that same confident stride, hands in his pockets, and eyes locked on me. My stomach flipped. It was ridiculous how good he looked in broad daylight, sunlight catching the edge of his jaw, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the veins in his forearms standing out as he moved.

I stood before I knew I was moving, brushing my hands on my jeans.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,”

he echoed.

“Just checking in.”

“We haven’t burned anything down,” I said.

His mouth twitched at the corner.

“That’s a good start.”

The others stayed quiet, letting the two of us talk while they “casually”

eavesdropped from five feet away.

“I’m working out a design for the vampire hall,”

I said, stepping slightly away from the group and gesturing toward the notebook tucked under my arm.

“Might need a model.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“That right?”

I nodded.

“You interested in posing?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

His smile turned slow, dark.

“What you’d have me wearing.”

I laughed.

“Nothing. Shirtless vampire, obviously. Gotta sell tickets.”

“You’re trouble,”

he murmured.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

We stood there a beat too long, close enough to feel it, far enough to pretend we didn’t.

He stepped back first, the spell breaking as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

“I gotta get back,”

he said. “Meeting.”

“Of course,”

I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

He nodded toward the house.

“You’re doing good work, doll. Keep it up.”

“Always do.”

He turned and walked off, and I didn’t miss the way Molly leaned in the second he was out of earshot.

“Holy sexual tension, Batman.”

“Shut up,”

I muttered, hiding a smile.

“I saw the way he looked at you,”

Bernice said from her perch in the shade.

I turned.

“Here we go.”

“That man wants to do a lot more than check on your progress,”

she added, peeling a banana with all the smugness of a psychic who already knew the ending.

“He didn’t even touch me,”

I pointed out.

“He doesn’t need to. Men like that don’t waste energy unless they’re hunting.”

“Real subtle, Bernice,”

Jake laughed.

She winked.

“Just don’t let him distract you too much.”

“Not a chance.”

But the truth was, he already had.

We worked the rest of the afternoon in shifts, one room at a time. My brush moved across the walls, dragging color and shadow into place, but my mind kept drifting. Anchor’s voice. Anchor’s eyes. The way he’d looked at me like he wanted to bite.

By five, the light started to shift. The haunted house tour would open again in an hour, and we were clearing out to keep things clean for the guests. I wiped my hands, called it a day, and walked the short trail back to my cabin.

Bernice was already inside hers. Lights off. Out cold.

She really did go to bed by seven.

I tossed my brush kit on the counter, changed into clean jeans, and decided to go for a walk.

Just to clear my head.

The woods around the cabins were quiet, too quiet. I followed a narrow path that twisted past a storage shed and curved toward the lake. The wind off the water was cooler now.

That’s when I saw it.

A scrap of fabric, snagged on a bush just off the trail. Faded gray. Torn. The edge soaked dark like it had been wet too long.

I crouched and pulled it loose. The material was thick, canvas, maybe. Like the bottom of a jacket or—

I froze.

Red. Not bright. But deep. Dried.

Blood.

I stood up slowly, heart pounding.

In the distance, I could hear laughter echoing from the dock, the faint scream of someone getting scared on the tour.

But this?

This wasn’t fake.

This wasn’t part of the show.

And I had a feeling it never was.