Page 42 of The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

Edgar had been acting strange all weekend.

Jamie had asked if anything was on his mind, and he’d said no, but the tension set Jamie on edge as they drove out to the haunt on Monday afternoon.

Maybe Edgar’s mood was just down to their screwy schedule, and things would go back to normal when the haunt wrapped.

But a worm of doubt had been burrowing in all weekend.

Fortunately, a tricky problem distracted Jamie immediately upon arrival.

One of the swinging sandbags between the dining room and the tight hallway passage that led to the stairs had sprung a leak and was trailing sand everywhere.

It took Jamie and their coworker Dante until just before opening to fix it and clean up the mess.

When Jamie got outside for some fresh air and looked at their phone, they had fifteen missed texts and calls.

Their stomach clenched with worry until they read the first text from Edgar: Look about halfway back in the line, and you might see some familiar faces.

Jamie didn’t even look at the rest of the messages before heading for the line.

“What the…?” Jamie said softly when they saw.

Standing with Edgar were Carys, Greta, Veronica, Helen, and Poe.

When Edgar and Jamie locked eyes, a hopeful smile bloomed on Edgar’s lips.

“What are y’all doing here?” Jamie said, throat tightening with emotion as they approached the line.

“I’m here to have the shit scared out of me,” Poe said. “What else?”

“Same,” said Carys. The others agreed.

“Goddammit, don’t make me cry at work,” Jamie muttered, turning away from a chorus of aww s.

Edgar came behind them and wrapped an arm around Jamie’s chest.

“Did you do this?” Jamie asked, even though they knew he had. They turned around and wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you,” they said into Edgar’s neck.

Edgar squeezed them tight. “You’re welcome.”

“Wait, hang on. Why are you here?” Jamie asked, pulling back to look at Edgar.

Edgar swallowed hard. That was when Jamie looked at him a bit more closely. In the dark, with only floodlights casting deep shadows and the red light leaking from the signs, they hadn’t noticed how pale Edgar looked. How…green?

“Edgar,” Jamie warned.

“I’m going through the haunted house,” he announced. “I want to see all the amazing work you’ve done. This is your passion, and I want to support you. All of us do.” He gestured to the group.

“Baby,” Jamie said, heart overflowing. “You should not come in the haunted house. Thank you so much for bringing our friends to be here. But I don’t want you to be scared, and I really think you will be.”

“But I want to support you,” he said again, and Jamie realized what this was all about. Edgar was trying to make up for their family’s lack of interest and support with his own. It was incredibly sweet. Also misguided.

“Sweetheart, you do support me. You support me in every way that matters. You don’t have to do this to prove it to me. In fact, I’m asking you not to.”

“But—but I—”

Jamie pulled Edgar close and covered his mouth. Their heart was brimming with a weightless, hopeful anticipation that felt a lot like love.

“Shut up, you gorgeous, infuriating…” Jamie’s speech devolved into fond muttering as they made a quick plan.

Jamie grabbed Edgar’s hand, and they turned back to the group.

“Edgar’s going to put his ticket back in circulation,” Jamie said. “Thank you all for coming. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the other side.”

“Thank god,” Greta said. “That was gonna be hard to watch.”

Veronica, Helen, and Carys all nodded emphatically.

Poe looked like he’d received news of a death in the family. “Aw, come on, Edgar,” he said.

Jamie winked at him. “Make some new friends, Poe.” Then they took Edgar’s hand and led him away. Edgar followed easily. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a way you can watch the haunt on video.” Jamie squeezed his hand. “But you don’t have to see anything you don’t want to. You interested?”

“Yes,” Edgar said without hesitation.

Jamie opened the door to the trailer behind the haunt.

There, a bank of monitors revealed every room of the haunted house from multiple angles.

The cameras were equipped with a combination of regular and night vision lenses, and they were recording the whole time the haunt was open to make sure staff could intervene if there was a medical incident, an altercation, or if someone got too scared and needed an emergency exit.

“Hey, Trent,” Jamie said. “I’m going to take over watching for a bit. Would you tell will call to add a ticket to the wait list pile and reverse the charge for it to Edgar Lovejoy’s card? He bought one more than he needed.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said and left Jamie and Edgar alone in the cramped trailer.

“We can watch them go through on here.” Jamie pointed to the monitors. “But there’s no sound, and the picture’s really dim. And if you want to look away, I’ll tell you anything weird Poe does so you can tease him about it later.”

Edgar smiled and tucked a lock of Jamie’s hair behind their ear. It was a tender, familiar gesture, and Jamie leaned into him.

There was only room for one chair in the small space, and Jamie patted it, indicating Edgar should sit. When he did, Jamie settled onto his lap. Edgar’s arms enfolded them, settling them firmly against his chest.

He kissed the back of Jamie’s neck, and warmth radiated from the spot.

“Mm, that feels too good right now,” they murmured.

They felt Edgar start to get hard. He buried his face in Jamie’s hair and mumbled something that sounded like reticent agreement. They stayed like that for a few minutes, basking in each other’s physical comfort.

***

When Jamie saw familiar faces on the first camera, they sat up.

“Okay, they’re going in.”

Edgar rested his chin on Jamie’s shoulder to watch. Jamie tapped on the first screen, where Poe was pinning a large white button to the front of his leather jacket.

“That means he doesn’t want to be touched by any of the performers,” Jamie explained.

The haunt was set up in four zones, and Poe and Carys led the group into the first zone.

Veronica, Helen, and Greta followed, holding on to each other and looking deliciously nervous.

The interior of the Victorian home showed all the signs of being first abandoned and then repurposed as a haunted candy factory.

The dining room table was laid with lavish china and platters laden with food.

Food that was rotting and crawling with insects.

“Oh my god,” Edgar murmured.

To experience Edgar seeing their work live, even though they didn’t want to frighten him, was unexpectedly gratifying.

“That’s the chandelier you came with me to get,” Jamie said, pointing at the cobweb-swathed twist of metal above the dining table.

“You made this?” Edgar asked.

“Well, not just me. But yeah.”

“You built a whole dining room. A whole house?”

“Yeah, we did this room in sections that we could move in when we came to this location. Then the staging all happens here. We figured out how to get the effects to work in the warehouse, but you can’t know exactly how an effect will play out or how much detail is required to make it work properly until you do it in situ.

There’s a lot to consider: direction of traffic flow, how close people are likely to get to each element, the time they spend in the space, what mindset they’re bringing in from the previous zone, and how much time or attention the new element will require before they can shift gears. So—”

Edgar turned Jamie’s face to his and kissed them softly on the mouth. “You’re brilliant.”

“Aw, well. It wasn’t just me. I work with great haunters,” Jamie insisted. But they glowed at Edgar’s praise.

On the monitor, their group rounded the table. Veronica reached out a hand toward a rotting turkey carcass. Jamie grinned when she jerked back in disgust.

“What is it made of?”

“It’s a latex cast made from a real turkey—we have to have a lot of the things people can touch in case they get messed up. Then we covered the latex in a mix of Vaseline, wax, and baking soda that feels like congealed fat and grit.”

On the monitor, Poe, Greta, and Veronica startled.

“That’s the clock striking midnight.”

Carys ran a palm up the flocked wallpaper that led to the stairs, and Jamie leaned in to see if she would—

“Yes!” Jamie exclaimed, as Carys’ hand slid from the flat of drywall into sudden squish and give. Her hand sank into the wall, and she stumbled forward, then snatched her hand away.

“That was my idea,” Jamie let themself brag.

“You’re terrifying and hot,” Edgar murmured, but he kept watching, chin on Jamie’s shoulder, hugging them. “What’s happening in that part?”

There was no camera monitoring this hallway because it was packed with heavy forms that blocked any view of people moving through.

“It’s pitch-black, and there are these sandbags chained to the floor and ceiling. You have to push your way through them. It’s perfectly safe, but it kinda feels like you’re being crushed to death.”

Edgar shuddered. “Jesus. And people like this.”

“Hell yeah, they love it.” Jamie grinned.

When everyone in the group made it through and appeared on the next monitor, Jamie warned Edgar of an upcoming jump scare, and he buried his face in Jamie’s shoulder.

A figure wrapped in rotting gauze and doused with seeping blood jumped out at Carys and Greta from behind a metal gurney. They both jumped and cringed, but Carys stepped in front of Greta, ready to defend her.

“It’s over,” Jamie murmured.

Poe stalked warily at the back of the group now, looking from side to side.

“Okay, so Poe is what we call an anticipator. He’s constantly looking around to try and minimize the scares by feeling like he’s in control of the space. Those people are harder to surprise because they’re paying really close attention. But they’re also the most satisfying to scare.”

“Hmm, what about the others?”