Chapter 13
It was the Eve of Halloween when Grace was on her first stake out.
Night fell quickly on Holiday Hollow, with the tall trees eliminating any chance of watching the setting sun.
After the events of Tommy Briggs’ killer costume party, Grace was picked up the following evening by Bryant, whose familiar police car stood out like a sore thumb among the rest of the vehicles within the small town.
They hadn’t exchanged too many words during the ride, besides that they were going to see a source named Clint.
Grace glanced over at her companion. Both of his hands firmly gripped the wheel, the pressure so obvious that even Grace could see his knuckles taking on a pale white hue.
Along Bryant’s jaw, the muscles tightened and released before quickly growing tense again.
Storm clouds seemed to linger in his eyes as he was lost in thought, driving with the air of a still, unmoving statue.
And as she watched him then, a familiar question rose to the surface.
Who is Bryant Paulsen? The mysterious man was her next-door neighbor, but the only things she seemed to know about him was his interest in guitars, his previous marriage ending in a divorce, and his job as a Sheriff’s Deputy.
They were distinctly different things, but Grace found that she had been craving more.
Ever since he showed up, carrying her out of the mansion as she was overcome with the despair of the vision she had been plagued in, Grace only wanted to learn what transpired in his mind.
She ached to ask him questions, but so much held her back.
Was it odd to ask the supernatural if they were… supernatural?
When did her stares, her wonderings, become unsettling? Become rude?
Bryant released a weighted sigh as he flicked on his turn signal and drove the car into a packed parking lot.
Families piled out of their cars and children eagerly sprinted toward the exciting event of the evening: Holiday Hollow’s very own haunted house.
He parked the cop car near the entrance, earning a few pointed stares from the curious passerbys.
“A haunted house?” Grace shot him a look. “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “I thought you knew that Holiday Hollow was about…well, the holidays.”
“Well yeah, but –”
“Halloween is a holiday, isn’t it?”
Grace opened her mouth to argue but quickly shut it. “I suppose you’ve got a point.”
She gazed out the window another time. The haunted house was tall and rickety, as though it had come straight from the eighteenth century.
Angular ceilings were lined with stone shingles, with rectangular and narrow windows, the curtains drawn to show ominous shadows dancing from within.
Bats curled out of the fireplace the longer she watched, their chirping almost pleasant, till there was an entire tunnel of them, and the creatures were funneling themselves into the darkened sky above, almost blocking out the entire moon.
“Only Holiday Hollow would have a source to a crime in a haunted house,” Grace mumbled.
Bryant turned the car off and eyed her, the corner of his lip curling upward. “Don’t worry. It’s not like you’ll be going in there on your own. I’ll be with you for every step of the way.”
Though the words were only meant as a reassurance, Grace found herself jerking her head in the opposite direction, her cheeks flaming with a growing blush.
Stupid, she thought to herself. Just embarrass yourself again in front of your crush.
Are you insane? When she gathered her senses and turned back to him, Bryant watched her with that unnerving intensity once more, his dark eyes slowly narrowing.
“There are lots of people,” she murmured. “How are we supposed to find one person amongst all of them? How are we even expected to get inside with these long lines? I’m just…I just don’t know…”
Bryant twisted in his seat to face her as much as he could. “Are you nervous?”
“Nervous?” she repeated with an exaggerated scoff.
“Look at all the kids here! W-What’s there to be…
what’s there to be nervous…about…” Bryant’s persistent stare and the haunted house were enough to render her into nothing more than a ball of nerves.
And as she tried to brush it off with a fib, Grace found that she sounded even less believable, if that was at all possible.
With a sigh, her shoulders fell and the mask shattered. “I’m terrified.”
Not of the haunted house, but of what she was doing. Working with the police. Following up with sources. On an actual murder.
“Alright,” he murmured. “Let’s go over it again, then.”
Grace met his stare. It was obvious that he was trying to reassure her, even if he wasn’t all that emotionally capable of really saying so. She gratefully took it all the same, nodding her head and waiting to hear the information get passed to her once more.
“We’re looking for Clint Hayes,” Bryant explained.
“He is one of the many people who bring the holidays to life in the Hollow. This year, he volunteered to work at the haunted house. We got multiple eyewitnesses pinning Clint to the costume party and they all say he was wearing a monster costume. The same witnesses say they saw Clint getting into a pretty gnarly argument with Tommy earlier in the evening.”
“What for?”
Bryant’s eyes glinted amusingly. “Apparenty, Tommy thought it wouldn’t be a problem to start dating one of Clint’s ex-girlfriend’s. And did I mention that they’re best friends?”
“Very smart,” Grace teased.
“He left around the time Tommy would’ve been killed.”
Grace’s blood chilled and she shivered. “So Clint Hayes can be the killer.”
“He could be.”
“You don’t seem very convinced.”
“I never am,” Bryant replied. “Not until the cards start adding up. Nothing points to Clint being the same killer from ten years ago. Till that starts adding up, you’ll find that I’m a pretty skeptical guy.”
Grace glanced out the window, eyeing the long line of people waiting to get admittance into the popular haunted house.
A part of her felt the need to rub her eyes, to pinch her sensitive skin and demand to be woken from the dream she had been pulled into.
There was no way this was her reality. Grace was not a psychic consultant to the police department, she did not stumble across a dead body, and she certainly did not live in a town full of the supernatural. It has to be impossible.
But it wasn’t. No matter how many red marks were left along her arms, Grace did not wake up. The world around her remained unchanging. Bryant was still in the driver’s seat, still watching her, still waiting expectantly. Grace pulled her gaze away from the window and snatched the door handle.
“Well,” she breathed, “Killer’s not gonna catch himself, will he?”
Bryant raised a brow before he grew amused, as though he didn’t quite believe her willingness to keep going through with it. Either way, they both tumbled out of the car, and made their way toward the haunted house’s front doors.
The long line stretched around the parking lot's borders, where families and teens and young adults waited for their turn to be scared out of their minds.
Bryant wasted no time in cutting through the line, earning a few angry looks and petulant shouts before he had the chance to flash his badge to the people in line, quieting them in an instant.
At the front of the line, right before passing through the shadowy doors, was a small table, where a young girl with jack-o-lantern face paint sat with a box of tickets.
“No entry without –” she started her memorized script.
Bryant’s golden badge caught the moonlight, scattering across the girl’s surprised expression.
“Oh,” she mouthed before curiously leaning forward. “Is this about Tommy Briggs? It is, isn’t it?”
“Can you tell me where we can find Clint Hayes?” Effortlessly, Bryant avoided the girl’s question and steered the conversation. There was no doubt about who was the commanding speaker, the one who wielded all the authority.
Excitement rolled down Grace’s spine, but she was quick to swallow it.
“Clint’s been assigned to the graveyard room,” the girl murmured, her eyes wide. “Follow the main hallway till the third left. You…you shouldn’t miss it. Or him, for that matter.”
The girl’s words were weirdly ominous as Bryant led the way into the haunted house. Grace’s eye stuck to the girl as she passed her by, quickly catching the humorous glint in her mischievous gaze. Grace stepped over the threshold, and darkness swallowed any ounce of light that dared to follow them.
The haunted house was the most elaborate Halloween event Grace had ever seen.
Sure, she had attended plenty of haunted houses back in the day, but they were never as well-done as the one she was in now.
She was used to plastic skeletons, bats sticking to the walls, fake spider-webs overtaking the shadowy corners.
There would be teenagers dressed as ghouls, wielding their scythes and whispering across the air.
Shouts and screams would be had, but by the time it was over, no one was ever worried about the monsters following them out of the house.
Grace was frozen in place. This is terrifying.
Lights flicked in and out periodically, revealing a crooked face leering at them from a doorway.
Hands stretched out and grazed her before disappearing again, as if they were never there in the first place.
Mist crawled across the floor, swallowing her feet and leaving the deafening sensation of a damp coolness on her bare skin.
Screams echoed from down the hall, at first too far away to be concerned, before barreling toward her all at once.
“Grace.” Bryant’s voice cut through the darkness.
“I-I can’t see –” she blurted, hands outstretched and flailing. “I-I can’t do this. I can’t –”
Warmth engulfed her trembling fingers. The heat continued till Bryant’s hand was curled around her own, fingers intertwined. Stillness crept around Grace at the sensation, her eyes wide when she realized that Bryant was, in fact, directly beside her, almost touching her hip.
“You don’t need to see,” he whispered.
“Bu –”
“You just need to trust me.”
Grace gulped. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll – I’ll try.”
Bryant’s smile could be heard in his voice. “That’s good enough for me.”
With their hands tightly wound together, Bryant led the way through the haunted house’s main hall.
Creatures followed them against the walls, murmuring things in a different language before letting out a shrill, ear-piercing laughter.
Grace kept moving at her companion’s side, her fear masked slightly by how impressive he was.
Not once did Bryant offer the haunted house even the satisfaction of a flinch.
He stared straight forward, determined and sure.
Grace wouldn’t have wanted anyone else at her side.
“Here,” Bryant murmured.
The door to the graveyard room was already swung open, slightly hanging off the hinges.
Smoke curled out from the doorway, beckoning them to come further inside.
Bryant retrieved his bronze gun before creeping in, his grip over Grace’s hand only growing tighter.
Tombstones stuck out of the floor, soil and mud brought in from the outdoors and scattered around the room.
Silence answered them as they moved further into the room, and Grace’s shoulders began to deflate with the realization that their suspect might’ve not been there.
Snap!
The door slammed shut.
Bryant whipped around, keeping Grace partly behind him. He leaned forward, raising his pistol. “Clint,” he called out. “We just want to –”
The figure shot forward. Grace let out a squeal as Bryant backed into her, almost making her trip over a series of grey tombstones. Clint slipped by them, his muted and frightening clown outfit visible for only a split second, before he disappeared through a back door.
“Come on!” Bryant tugged at her as he started sprinting after him.
Grace pushed herself forward, surprised at how fast her legs went from feeling numb to being filled with a youthful power.
She wanted to tackle Bryant to the ground, to say that she never signed up for long-distance running, for hunting down suspects.
But her fear was too strong to even think about stopping Byant from his relentless chase.
He was the only sort of protection she had – there was no way she’d be letting go of him anytime soon.
The back door out of the graveyard room opened into a wide ballroom, where Clint could be seen shoving cloth-covered tables behind him, desperately trying to stop Bryant from getting too close.
Like a bloodhound, Bryant released his hold over Grace’s hand, and lunged across the tables.
He landed on the other side without faltering, without even daring to break a sweat.
But there was nothing stopping him then.
Bryant was on the hunt, and he disappeared after Clint within seconds.
Grace tripped over her own feet as she followed, clumsily knocking her shoulder into the wall when she tried to make a sharp turn.
Their footsteps once echoed in front of her, but now they were nowhere to be found.
She was wandering aimlessly through the dark and shadowy halls, her hands helplessly feeling the bare walls, desperate for a breath of fresh air, for a glimpse of light, for the moon.
Her chest rose and fell as she prepared a scream, moments away from shouting out for Bryant to find her.
Whoever led her to believe that haunted houses weren’t anything to be frightened of needed to be shoved into her shoes.
Grace panted as the word around her dimmed even further. “Bryant – !”
A hand clasped over her mouth, cutting his name short. She flailed but it was no use – effortlessly, as if she weighed only a pound, her attacker was dragging her across the floor, till her entire frame had disappeared into the neverending darkness.