CHAPTER NINETEEN #2
The walkie-talkie chirped on Raj’s belt. “So far, no broken plugs, but I did give a mummy eyeing me up a quick one-pump lube job.”
Okay, maybe he’s enjoying this too much.
“Should I be jealous?” Raj asked. Damn, this one was fine. He hustled around a corner, eyes down to follow the wires with his flashlight.
“You told me to. Who am I to rain on your cuckold fantasy parade?”
A small giggle broke from right beside Raj. He whipped his phone up, blinding the kid dressed in a black bat costume. “Damn, Mr. Choudhary. Warning next time.”
“Sorry.”
“So…are we getting paid?”
“Yes, if tonight…once we open. Everyone…” Raj peered through the scare hole in the wall, spotting a number of vampires flirting with zombies.
“Scare actors,” he shouted into his channel hooked to the intercom, “please remain in your hiding spots. We will be tinkering with the mechanics, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt.
” It took a few minutes, one zombie having to get a vampire’s number, before the kids wandered off.
The last thing he needed was some horny teenager getting decapitated by accident. Not that any of his props could do that, but the way his luck was going, who knew? Maybe someone snuck in a chainsaw limbo bar behind his back.
This is a bad idea. Not just the haunt, but everything. The hotel. Giving up on my career. Moving halfway across the country. Thinking I could love again.
An image of Adam on his throne bouncing a young girl on his knee flared through Raj’s mind. He didn’t remember that happening exactly, but it felt close enough to reality to wrench his heart.
“Another room down,” Adam called over the walkie-talkie. “I think I’m in a boudoir now? Ah, yes, there’s the headless lady. Don’t mind me, ma’am. Please return to your vanity.”
“Hey.”
The heavy footsteps paused on Adam’s end. “What’s up?”
“You…you do well with kids,” Raj said diplomatically.
“The trick is to go still and try to make yourself as big as possible. Or maybe that’s how to deal with cougars.”
Adam wanted a laugh, but Raj was clinging white-knuckled to his walkie-talkie. He pressed it so close to his mouth, his lips brushed against the speaker. “I mean the small ones. At the giveaway, you did great on your throne.”
“Ignoring the inevitable mutiny, you mean.” Adam chuckled. Then the silence sharpened to razor wire. “Why are you telling me this?”
He couldn’t do this. Not again. Not stand there and have his heart crushed because he was missing that key ingredient. Like he was the broken one.
“Raj…” Adam’s voice fell softly, like he was whispering in a library. “Do you have a kid?”
A laugh barked from Raj’s throat. “No. The exact opposite.”
“I’m uncertain what that means. I’d guess no testicles, but we both know that isn’t true.”
“My ex, I was… We were together for five years. It was serious. So serious we were talking weddings and forever to have and hold.”
“I see…” Adam said without a hint of emotion.
Meanwhile, Raj’s heart boiled with a brew of shame and fear.
He couldn’t stop scratching at the back of his neck like Jordan was staring at him in judgment.
“One day, he says, ‘I want to have a baby.’ Just out of nowhere. All that money we’d put aside for the wedding, for a down payment, was earmarked for a surrogate, for an egg. I didn’t know what to say.”
Whenever Raj had told him he didn’t think he’d wanted kids, Jordan had come up with an excuse.
Give it time. You’re not seeing the big picture.
You’ll get baby fever once you hit forty.
Raj hadn’t reached forty, but his life was chaos, and the idea of adding another mouth would only dump gunpowder on the fire.
“Came home one day to find the locks changed and my stuff on the sidewalk. I guess he found his new baby Daddy at the gym.”
Why was he saying this now? They were halfway around the building, it was their second date, oh—and he had mere minutes to fix this problem and save his haunt. This was easily the worst time to drop his baggage on a new guy.
“Raj…” Adam’s voice cut through the collapsing darkness. “I’ll tell them their costume is cute. I will happily take their money for all the blood capsules and vampire teeth they want. But I will never want a squealing potato that shits, eats, and pukes everywhere.”
Raj sucked in a breath so hard, his stomach hurt. “Really?”
“I might go for a cat, a black one with green eyes who doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
A cat he could deal with. Even a dog or two would be nice to have around the place. Why was he picturing himself adopting a kitten with a man who’d been his nemesis a week ago?
“I admit, Choudhary, I’m surprised you’re already thinking about kids. I mean, I knew my head game was top notch and all… Hmm, perhaps I should look into getting a Guinness record.”
Raj couldn’t stop giggling like a weight was chipped off his shoulders. He glanced behind himself, half expecting to see his ghost of ex-boyfriend past fade from existence. Instead, he stared into the eyes of a frozen werewolf.
“We should get back to work,” Raj said. “The clock’s ticking.”
“Aye aye,” Adam called back. The walkie-talkie went dead, and Raj returned to tracing down the wires. Suddenly, it chirped and Adam called out loud enough for three of the actors to hear, “But you can still call me Daddy.”
Their cross chatter died as they both dove into the weeds. On occasion, Adam would report back thinking he found the problem, only for it to solve nothing. Tension grew with every tick of the second hand. If he didn’t find this, if he didn’t solve it now, then what?
All the work he put in, the calls, the connections, the people who believed in him, the ones who didn’t—would it mean nothing? Were all his hopes and dreams about to evaporate like a spider web come dawn on November first?
It’d seemed sound. The first haunt in Anoka in decades. But maybe there was a reason why no one else had done it. Maybe no one was supposed to.
Raj’s flashlight skipped over a cord, and a strip of metal glinted. He jerked back, and his heart skipped. Was this it? Had he found the source of all of his problems?
Smiling, he bent over and took both ends in his hands. While he didn’t have a lot of expertise in joining together the male and female ends, he at least understood the basics. Tipping the plug into the hole, he gazed up, then rammed them together.
Nothing happened.
“No. No, no, no, no!” Raj flailed, shaking the cord up and down as if that could jumpstart whatever was broken. The extension cord snagged on the back of a fake fireplace and tipped the mantle. Skulls tumbled off like macabre bowling balls, and Raj nearly fell to his knees.
Pressing his hands to his mouth, he screamed. This isn’t fair. It’s not supposed to be this way. All I wanted was a spooky hotel brimming with old-school special effects. To have a hot boyfriend look at me with pride. To have a damn life!
A wounded screech slipped from his mouth.
Raj kicked the cord and skittered back on his feet until his ass slammed into the wall.
Cold wood pressed around him, trying to seal him into this bankrupt tomb.
This folly would follow him until his last days.
It’d hang off his neck like a dead albatross.
He’d be forced to work ninety-hour weeks for the rest of his life just to hope to climb partway out of his hole before they chucked his body into one by the ditch.
“Raj?”
Adam?
“You okay?”
Damn it. He must have pressed the button when he fell. Raj held the walkie-talkie in his hand, his heart pounding faster and faster.
I fucked up. There’s not going to be a haunt tonight, or tomorrow, or this season, or ever.
It’s over. The hotel can’t survive. The barn is nothing.
I blew so much money just trying to impress you.
No, in trying to prove I belonged. But I don’t.
This town doesn’t want me. It’s going to chew me up and spit me out.
And I’ll take you down with me.
“Raj? I’m coming your way. I think. Sit still and I’ll stop the bleeding, or get a priest, or whatever people do.”
I can’t take you down with me.
“Adam.” Raj managed to keep his voice taut, his lip with nary a wobble. “Forget it.”
“Forget coming to find you? Cause I think I’m in a swamp with a man-eating hippo now. Wait, is that from Murder Murder Hippos ?”
Yeah, it was. He’d worked on that movie and tons of others. None of it mattered anymore. People wouldn’t come to see their favorite movie props in a haunt that didn’t work. “Adam, I think you should find—”
Movement. A shadow disengaged from the wall. Raj craned his head to find a rail-thin figure with long arms and a massive brimmed hat walking down the hall.
“Excuse me,” he called out to the scarecrow. “Actors are supposed to stay in place.”
Whoever it was had to have heard him as they glanced back. But then they turned and took off running.
Raj rose to his feet. Maybe it was the desperation, or the abject failure, but one person disobeying him set him off in a way he’d never felt before. “Hello!” Raj shouted, taking off after the errant actor. “Can’t you hear me? You’re not supposed to be here!”
He rounded a corner and spotted the scarecrow standing next to one of the fuse boxes. It pried open the casing and started to play with the switches.
“Stop that!” Raj shouted.
The scarecrow jerked up and stared at him. For a beat, red eyes glowed below the aged burlap. Then, whoever it was, bent in half and vanished into the darkness.
Damn it all. Raj started to give chase into the next part of the haunt, before he paused. No doubt that kid just screwed things up worse. Biting down on his flashlight, Raj flung open the fuse box and started to inspect everything. It all looked the same. Maybe he hadn’t done anything to…
No. Oh, god. It couldn’t be that simple. Raj looked at the box schematic, then the switches. Growing more certain, he pressed his finger to one of the fuses and flipped it.
Everything came to life.
The whole haunt lit up from the tiny winking bat eyes to the projected fires roaring in the woods.
“Raj? Is it working on your end?”
“Yes,” he cried out. How did he miss that? Somehow, he’d created a feedback loop, causing one circuit to feed into the other. It was a good thing it kept shutting down, or else the whole place could have burned to the ground.
Skidding feet pulled him from the fuse box just as Adam leaped and wrapped his arms around him. “Congratulations,” he breathed against Raj’s ear before squeezing him tighter in a hug. “Was it the plug thing?”
“There was a circuit that wasn’t…” Raj blinked slowly, a smile rising along with the weight on his chest. He had an unfairly handsome man hanging onto him in celebration.
And to think Raj almost told him to go home and forget him.
“Yes.” He cupped a hand to Adam’s cheek and pulled him close. “It was a plug thing.”
“I knew it. When in doubt, check the plugs.”
“Why do I get the unsettling feeling I’m going to have to get used to you being right a lot?”
“Accept your fate. Fighting will only make it…harder.”
A gasp slipped from Raj as his personal phantom didn’t just cup over his pants, but reached under the waistband. There wasn’t much to grab, at first. But just a graze from Adam’s fingers turned him rigid as a gravestone.
“If you think you can get another performance out of me without—”
Adam pressed his teeth against Raj’s cheek, rolling his eyes back. “I was hoping for more of a duet this time,” he whispered and brushed his lips against Raj’s.
“Uh, boss man?”
Fuck, there are kids here.
Both men sprang apart and tried to adjust their hair while struggling to hide away the guilt.
The vampire from the blood bath scene stared at him after glancing at the vanishing Adam. “Are we good?”
“We are.” Raj called over the intercom, “Everyone. We’re going to reset the haunt and open in two minutes. Get to your places and…scare the pants off of them.”
An excited cry rose from the people he paid to sit on their asses in latex makeup and costumes. Raj only had to flip a few switches, and the lights dimmed. “You’d better go too,” he said to the vampire girl. She was staring a little too long at Adam while he tried to cover half of his face.
“Okay. Nice to see you, Mr. Stein.”
“You too, Viola,” he said.
An awkwardness that had its place in a sweaty middle school dance, or when two hands touched on a bus, flailed around them.
What was it about Adam that kept turning Raj into a brain-addled teenager?
Even knowing that he had to go out there, open the doors, and finally let people see his haunt, a part of him wanted to make good on that duet.
“So.” Raj finished slotting on the headset. He checked the walkie-talkie and faced Adam. “How does scaring teenagers for a second date sound?”
Adam’s wicked smile made Raj’s heart jump. “Perfect.”