Page 11 of The King of Halloween
“No. Well, not in person. You see Bertie’s granddaughter—Stephanie—she’s got the Tock Ticks and…”
“Great. I’m internet famous.”Please, don’t let me become a meme.
His mom sensed his abject humiliation and tried to comfort him the only way she knew how. “It was tastefully done with music and everything.”
“Ma, that’s how Tik… No. Not worth it.” In times of trouble, when the world came crashing down on the skinny freak of Anoka, Adam reached for one thing. His body moved before he realized what he was doing. The little door hiding the VCR fell down, its handle clacking against the metal. Tucked to the side was the only tape anyone watched in this house.
“Did you see that nice gentleman ahead of you?” his mother asked with her disinterested voice that gave her away every time.
“Yeah. It was a little hard to miss him,” Adam said as he fished the old tape out of its tattered cardboard box. That swoosh sound as the black plastic finally escaped its cardboard trap was a weighted blanket on his soul.
“He’s quite talented, don’t you think?”
“Yep.” Adam shoved the tape into the VCR. Incredibly talented, and connected, and rich. And gunning for his crown.
The tape sank into the player, and Adam scooted back. Rather than sit on the couch next to his mom, he huddled up on the rug, his knees cupped to his chest. Static caught on the screen, then a warning label from the FBI. Adam kept watching.
“And…” His mom paused like she was about to drop the bass. “…handsome.”
Oh, yeah. Even as he’d cut Adam down to size with his little ‘entrance’ joke, Adam couldn’t stop thinking how soft those lips mocking him were. And what he could do to that mouth to shut it up.
The screen jerked through trailers for fifty-year-old movies, and Adam frowned. “How can you tell he was handsome? He was wearing a mask.”
His mom shrugged and picked up her knitting. “Don’t you think—?”
“No.” Adam interrupted. “Ma, you are not hooking us up. He’s…” Enraging. Dangerous. Devilishly handsome in a cinnamon roll body. “He’s straight.” It wasn’t a lie. Probably. Every other haunter Adam had ever met had a wife, three kids, and a spare tire around the middle. Why would Raj be any different?
“Oh. That’s too bad. All the good ones are.”
Adam snorted. He dropped his legs as the TV screen opened on a dark night in the meadow. Lighting flashed, and a goat bellowed in the distance. “Evil Sheep 2: Ewe Are Dead” filled the screen before the title cracked open and demonic sheep bones climbed out of a grave.
Sighing in relief, Adam lost himself in his comfort movie. It was schlocky horror, sure, but he adored every second. Especially the sheep puppet.
Raj slipped from Adam’s mind. The crown, the haunt, the committee—he could solve that mess tomorrow. For now, all he needed was a terrible B-movie to crawl across his brain and rewire his trauma. There was no chance a man as handsome and talented as Raj Choudhary would enjoy the blood splatter of a chainsaw.
They had nothing in common.
“Help, help! My ram. It’s—” Two horns pierced through the chest of the farmer, and Adam sighed.
?CHAPTER FOUR
?
“BOSS, WE’VE GOT a problem.”
Raj jerked at the voice out of the darkness. The tool in his hand shook, nearly slicing apart both the red and blue wires. Taking a breath, he patted the wall freshly decorated with stained wallpaper. Peering over his shoulder, he caught a hint of a man lingering in the darkness. In the bleak hotel, where light barely peeked through the rotten wood boarding up the windows, it was easy for his brain to leap right to ghost.
That’s silly. Ghosts aren’t real.
“What is it?”
“Upstairs, in the rooms.” He pointed above them, and Raj tried to not groan. There was always something up there.
Taking a deep breath, Raj patted the exposed innards of his zombie butler. “Another day, Jeeves,” he said and closed up the panel. The animatronic twisted, and the pneumatic arm dropped like it was going to slap Raj. With care, he eased around the fragile prop and joined the construction worker on the other side of the main desk. “You might as well show me.”
The Heartbreak Hotel was exactly what one pictured when told to imagine a haunted hotel. Chandeliers dusted with cobwebs hung above a grand foyer. The gold faded, and the marble grayed with age. Strange stains formed from water not only above but across the floor as well. One in particular almost looked like a body that’d fallen from the upper floors. He’d made sure to add a little paint to emphasize the illusion.
It screamed of grand opulence from a time when self-appointed nobility ran the country and no one thought the dance would end. Raj loved it the second he saw the grotesques on the turrets in the website pictures. But the years had not been kind, requiring a lot of upkeep that’d taken unexpected months. He’d been putting in double overtime back in California, doing his best to finish up the last touches on his final movie and had had to trust Logan to handle all of this. Raj should have known that one—he’d be working on CGI knife glint until the week before the movie released, and two—the hotel would be a mess.
