Chapter Two
Many
“HOW CAN THEY SHUT down a party that hasn’t even happened yet?” I whine miserably.
The sun is still up, and way too many campus police hogs are wandering around the frat house and lawn.
One unstakes the giant spider and pulls out the plug.
It deflates into a sad heap of plasticy black fabric that the cop swiftly bundles up and adds to the heap of other Halloween decorations going straight into the bin.
“Because this university sucks,” Gavin, standing beside me on the lawn, says.
I can’t disagree. If nearly three and a half years at A.S.S.
Uni. has taught me anything, it’s that this place truly lives up to its reputation as a Catholic school.
Apparently, Halloween decorations violate the student code of conduct.
Something about sinful influences or whatever, as though half the holidays modern Christians celebrate don’t have pagan influences.
Where do they think Christmas trees and Easter eggs come from?
Never read about either of those in the Bible.
There is truly nothing we can do, though. In fact, we’re lucky the cops are stopping at merely confiscating our decorations. They could write us all up, but as the party hasn’t actually occurred, they’re showing us a bit of leniency.
Of course, our party is still ruined, as is any other party that might have taken place on this street.
Whichever jerk tipped off campus police ensured they can’t ignore so much as a pumpkin on a railing anywhere along Greek Row.
The campus popo are often content to turn a blind eye and pretend they don’t see what goes on here, but once someone tells them there’s a party raging, they’re obliged to act.
Whoever did it deserves a thousand spiders in his bed, or maybe an angry spirit haunting his dick.
“I am not letting this ruin Halloween for me,” I say as the anger bubbles up.
Beside me, Gavin sighs. “Yeah, I wish, but there’s not really anything we can do about it. It’s gone. Look at this. I guess we could still throw a party, but you know campus police are going to be crawling all over this street.”
He’s right, and it only makes me angrier.
“We cannot let whoever this was ruin the holiday for everyone,” I say.
Gavin shrugs. “I think they already did.”
“No way. I’m not letting that happen.”
I look around like the answer might spring up out of the grass we never mow.
I want to know who would do this, who has such a boner for destroying fun that he’d go out of his way to kill a party that didn’t even happen, but the answer lodges itself in my throat before I manage to drag my eyes up to the window across the street.
A pale, slight figure darts away from the glass the moment I spot him, but I’d know Denis McMillan from a mile away, that little bespectacled asshole.
He’s been killing the vibe for the past year and a half, always looking down his pointy nose at us from his high tower.
I cannot imagine a more annoying twat on this entire campus, nor someone more likely to report a party before it’s begun.
It was definitely him, and that only adds fuel to the indignant fire burning in my belly.
“We’re going out,” I declare.
“Huh? Where?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say, “but tomorrow night, we’re going out. Round up some of the guys, whoever feels like coming along. We are not letting that prick ruin Halloween. There’s gotta be a haunted house or something nearby.”
Gavin groans. “A haunted house? Seriously? Aren’t those for kids?”
I finally tear my gaze from the empty window across the street. “There are some for adults. I’ll find one. We can get shitty before we go in.”
“But—”
“No complaining. We are going to salvage Halloween. I am not letting it end this way, not if it’s the last damn thing I do at this school.”
A.S.S. Uni. and guys like Denis can foist their religion on me all they want, but once I leave campus, there’s not a damn thing they can do to stop me from sinning.
And I certainly intend to sin.
“THIS CAN’T BE IT.”
I don’t dare agree out loud with Gavin’s dire assessment of the “haunted house” before us.
It’s not a house but a barn, a barn plopped right in the middle of a big empty farmer’s field more accustomed to corn than visitors.
People lounge on hay bales and eat snacks from the little gift shop off to the side.
As for the barn itself…well, they certainly tried.
Bats hang from the roof. Fake cobwebs spill down the front of the barn.
Spotlights bathe the structure in eerie green light, and every once in a while more lights flash in the windows.
Screams and laughter erupt, igniting a fragile hope that perhaps this haunted house isn’t as lame inside as it is outside.
“Whatever,” I say. “We’re here. Drink up and let’s do this.”
I take a swig from a bottle, the burn helping to sear off some of my trepidation, then pass the drink to Gavin. He chugs before passing it along to Maurice and Juan, the only other guys from the frat who I could convince to come with us on this doomed adventure.
I get why it was a hard sell, and I don’t blame my brothers, but I do kind of wish more of them were into it. The parties on campus aren’t going to rage the way they should this year, not with campus police on high alert thanks to God damn Denis reporting us before things ever kicked off.
I shouldn’t complain, though. My frat brothers have always been good to me, since the moment Gavin and I met as freshmen and he dragged me into Greek life.
He’s straight, but we were best friends right from the jump, an unlikely duo on this Christian campus.
He assured me the frat would be cool with me, even as out and unrepentant as I am, but I’ll admit I was highly suspicious at first. Time has proven him right, though.
No one at the fraternity has ever given me any trouble over being gay; there are even a couple other queer guys in the house.
I never expected to find companionship in a fraternity of all places, but sometimes life can surprise you.
Hell, I never expected to be at a Catholic university, either, but I got in and they offered me a sweet scholarship, so I enrolled.
I thought it would be four years of misery, but Gavin and the frat have flipped that on its head.
Now if only we could enjoy Halloween.
By the time we finish off the bottle, I’ve got a light buzz going, not so much that I can’t think clearly, but enough that I’m actually excited about this barn-turned-haunted-house.
I encourage the others to follow me to the doors, where a bored girl scans the QR codes they sent us when we bought tickets.
Then we’re in a very, very dark hall, the doors to the barn closing behind us.
“Alright,” I say, “let’s do this, I guess.”
I can’t even see the guy at the end of the hall until he moves to open the door for us.
He flashes bright white fake vampire teeth as he gestures us into the dimly lit room beyond.
It looks like a fucked up dentist office, complete with a blood-splattered chair and an array of tools that could have come straight out of a medieval dungeon.
Not half bad, certainly better than I expected based on the exterior.
The lights flicker, then die entirely. I huddle a little closer to the other guys, all of us bunching into a tighter group as we stand there in complete darkness.
Then the lights flash back on in a burst. I’m not ashamed to admit I scream—especially because the others also scream—when I find a blood-splattered “dentist” standing in the corner of the room wielding some kind of sharp-looking dental tool.
The dentist “chases” us from the room, and we burst into a red-lit hallway gasping and laughing.
“Okay,” Gavin says, “this might not completely suck.”
“That’s the Halloween spirit!” I slap him on the back before we plunge deeper into the haunted house.
We pass through more themed rooms. One is a dungeon, one is a classroom, one is a literal horse stall.
They all contain actors who jump out at us or appear from unexpected places or tell us some kind of spooky legend about the space.
It’s not half bad. The actors do their best to scare us, actually managing it a few times as we progress.
We’re on the second floor when the buzz starts to wear off, but I’m having enough genuine fun at this point that I don’t really mind.
Gavin and the others look like they’re enjoying themselves as well.
I’m beginning to think I’ve salvaged Halloween when we step into a room decked out like a graveyard.
A fog machine carpets the floor in a fine layer of mist. A couple fake tombstones guard heaps of dirt that may or may not have come from the corn fields outside. Cobwebs hang over everything, and only a smattering of fake stars glowing on the ceiling offer us any light at all.
Then something starts clawing its way out of one of the graves.
We gasp and jump back, prepared for another actor who will chase us into the next room.
The person in the dirt pushes open a coffin lid, neatly moving aside the heap so they can climb out (and likely so they can replace the dirt between guests).
Deathly white hands grip the edges of the coffin, then a man sits up in the box, his face painted so starkly pale I don’t recognize him at first.
The terror on his face isn’t a performance.
“Denis?”
His eyes widen behind his glasses. He leaps out of the coffin and sprints from the room, his act entirely forgotten.
“What the hell was that?” Gavin says.
I don’t hear him. I run. This absolute hypocrite is not going to stamp out our party for being a filthy heathen activity only to appear at the haunted house I’m using as a consolation prize. There is no way I’m letting that happen.
I don’t know if my friends follow. I don’t check, just keep running, darting through rooms full of fake blood and menacing props.
Denis bursts through one room, then a second.
People scream in this latter one, genuinely shocked by the two of us barreling past them.
He doesn’t simply leave this room, though.
He opens a door at the back, one hidden behind fake trees.
He tries to slam it shut after him, but I manage to catch it just in time.
We struggle, grunting as we wrestle for control of the door.
Denis gives up so abruptly that I stumble backward, almost ramming into the guests trying to enjoy the haunted house.
“Sorry, um, boo!” I say, trying to play this whole thing off as part of the attraction.
I doubt they buy it. The last thing I see before rushing after Denis is confused blinking.
I can’t worry about what strangers think of this. If they report that the haunted house wasn’t all they were hoping for, it won’t be my problem. Maybe it’ll be Denis’s problem since apparently, inexplicably he works here.
Oh, he is so not getting away with this.
What a fake! After shutting down a totally normal Halloween party for violating the student code of conduct, Denis has the gall to work at a full on haunted house. How is that not an even bigger violation? I am going to make this jerk confront his inconsistencies if it’s the last thing I do.
We’re behind all the normal haunted house rooms now, racing down some kind of back hallway I assume employees use to move around between rooms without being seen. It isn’t lit, presumably so no light slips out into the haunted house rooms, and that does not help in my pursuit.
Then I hear another door slamming. I run without a second thought, chasing the sound.
This door is closed, but not locked, thankfully, and when I burst through it, I pause for a moment, taken aback by the lights on the other side.
They’re a bit dim, but after so much spooky darkness, they feel like a spotlight.
And there’s Denis, stumbling toward the end of the hallway and a flight of stairs.
This is the back rooms of the back rooms, a place that must be purely functional.
The barn is more exposed here, all the spooky decorations forgotten.
The floor creaks as I pound toward Denis and catch him by the shoulder.
I use that shoulder to spin him, throwing him hard against the nearest wall.
He hits it with a thud, eyes squeezing shut and hands going up as though he expects me to punch him.
As much as a piece of me would like to after he ruined our party, I’m not the violent type, never have been.
I’m not some bully here to beat him up and take his lunch money. I want justice, not retribution.
Denis tries to wriggle away when he recovers, but I’m bigger than him, and I grab his wrist and easily pin it against the wall beside his head.
Behind the dorky glasses, he blinks big green eyes at me.
With his mouth parted in surprise, he’s way cuter than he should be.
I hate myself for even thinking it, but the second my brain heads that direction, my eyes flick to my hand on his wrist, the way he’s pinned to the wall, the way he’s stopped fighting.
His eyes dart that direction as well, and then this day gets even stranger than it already was because Denis, that Denis, the same one who reported a normal Halloween party for being too sinful for his delicate sensibilities, fucking blushes .
God, it’s so pretty on him.
I half expect it to fog his glasses with how hard and fast it hits.
In an instant, the consummate uptight nerd with his tidy little haircut and nerdy glasses and pasty skin flushes the loveliest shade of pink I’ve ever beheld.
His zombie makeup renders him even more pale than usual, but that blush burns right through it and turns his eyes as bright as emeralds.
The fake blood and dirt on his neck and arms don’t matter anymore.
The torn-up zombie costume fades into the background.
I forget for a moment why I was even chasing him.
All that remains is that blush, and the sudden heat of his pulse caught in my grip.
“Trick or treat indeed,” I murmur to myself, still in shock.
His swallows, throat bobbing, and warmth stirs inside me. If this is a trick and not the most unexpected and delightful treat of my life, then Denis is one hell of an actor.
Judging by his attempt at playing a zombie, he’s no kind of actor at all.