Page 10 of The King of Halloween
Not just a haunt but a hotel too?
And an invitation onto the Halloween committee?
“Ma?” Adam’s mind reeled as he stumbled through his old front door. On instinct, he glanced at the preserved sitting room, expecting to find her on the couch knitting another blanket for the grandchildren that would never come. The ancient, rabbit-eared TV played an episode of Bewitched to an empty room.
Dropping his bag, Adam called out. “You awake?” It wasn’t that late, right? He moved to check his phone, and a crick he’d been ignoring all night turned into a full-body cramp. Hissing in pain, Adam swung around to escape the agony. Light glinted off the edge of a three-foot-long butcher knife. It slashed through the air at the end of the hall, red juice dripping from the blade.
The knife turned, a black gloved hand clinging to the handle. “Mom!” Adam shouted.
“Yes, love?” White curls stuffed under a sleeping bonnet, and the cherubic face of his mother poked through the doorway. She smiled warmly at him, paying no mind to the murder weapon in her hand.
Adam stared at the knife, then into her eyes. She blinked a few times, then blushed. “Oh, sorry, dear. I was slicing up cherries for my pies.”
“The harvest sale isn’t for a few weeks.”
“I like to give them time to sit. Really soaks in the flavor.”
“And turns your pies into cherry liquor,” Adam mumbled to himself. To distract from his heart pounding a million miles an hour, he slumped onto the old couch across from the TV. Samantha wiggled her nose and made everything worse.
“What brings you by?” his mom asked, still carrying the knife like she was about to disembowel some randy teens.
He had no idea. After histriumphantperformance at the parade, all Adam wanted to do was crawl into a deep, dark hole and bury himself. But he had to laugh it off, convince people he meant to fall off of his float and crush his pumpkin. Laugh with them laughing at him. Alcohol was supposed to help.
Thenheshowed up.
Rubbing his temples, Adam stared at the fake drawer that hid his parents’ VCR. “What do you know about that old hotel out by Round Lake?”
“Oh, it was marvelous back in the day. Your father nearly proposed there.”
Confused, Adam spun around to his mother. “I thought Dad got down on one knee on a shrimp boat in the Gulf.”
“Not to me, of course.” She gave a little laugh, then wandered back into the kitchen. His mother had a supernatural knack to answer a question by only giving him more questions. “What about the old Rushford hotel?”
“Someone’s bought it,” Adam said.
“That’s wonderful. They aren’t going to tear it down and put up a mall, are they?”
A mall? He had no idea how his mother, born in the era of disco, acted like she was a nineteen-fifties housewife. “No, ma. I really doubt they’ll make it into a mall.”
“Good.”
Adam’s fingers crept along his neck. “It’s, uh, it was bought by a haunter.” He started to wrench the muscle before remembering the huge bruise where the pumpkin head bashed into it.Gah!
“A haunter?” She said that with so much emphasis, Adam swiveled in his seat and stared her in the eye.
“You already knew that.”
“Of course not, love. I had no idea there was going to be a haunted B&B out near Round Lake.” She patted his knee like she was about to get him a glass of milk and a cookie.
Adam bent over, nearly folding in half. “You were at the parade.” Maybe the couch would eat him. Sprout teeth and chomp down on his bones.
“I was at the front. You did a wonderful job.”
“Ma…”
Her lips twisted to the side like she bit down on a sour lemon drop.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
