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“What the…”
I stare out the window at the crowds of people filling the streets and sidewalks, almost every single one of them wearing some sort of skull mask or face paint.
“What the hell is this?”
Raph snorts, turning to raise a brow at me. “Dahlia, hon, did you honestly forget what tonight is?”
I wince. Holy shit, I think I did, what with all the madness of yesterday.
It’s Halloween. I cannot believe I didn’t remember.
“There’s the lightbulb going on,” Raph chuckles. “Woodfield is famous for their Halloween Night festival. See?” He slows down and points out the window to a huge poster plastered in the window of a café. “Everyone’s probably heading to the town green for the festivities.” He grins. “Veryquaint. Rides, music, candy apples and popcorn balls. That sort of thing.”
“And the skulls?” I murmur, glancing uneasily at the crowds outside the car.
“Yeah, that’s part of it, I guess,” he shrugs. “It’s like a day of the dead thing, even though that’s not until the day after tomorrow.”
I glance at the GPS on the car’s dash. “We’re close. It’s right up here.”
The map app takes us past the crowded town green, which is full of people enjoying the Halloween festival: there’s a carousel, a fun house, snacks for sale, and a mariachi band dressed to the nines in Día de los Muertos sugar skull outfits and masks. We drive further away from the lights and the people into a dark little side street before rolling to a stop outside an old historic home with scaffolding and plastic sheets all over it.
“Well, this is it.”
Raph stops the car and then glances at me. “Dahlia, I’ve humored you thus far. But, c’mon.”
“Raph, we’ve come all this way. I’m going in there.”
“And I’m urging younotto. Hon, I know you’re playing bad girl these days with Mr. Scarypants. But this isreal, okay?”
I open the car door. Raph groans and shuts the engine off, following me out.
“I’ve made it clear that I think this is a terrible idea, yes?”
“Loud and clear, Raph. And when this turns out to be nothing, you can one hundred percent hit me with the I told you so, okay?”
The front door of the historic house under reconstruction has a padlock on it. So does the back door, but that one’s locked with a chain that has considerable slack. Raph shakes his head, but he still follows me when I wriggle inside into the darkness.
“This is such a bad idea…” he moans.
I nod. Yeah, no arguments there.
The first floor is pretty wide open: there’s nothing here. The topmost two floors are the same. I’m about to admit this was nuts, when I spot the locked door in the far corner of the old kitchen on the first floor.
“Raph…”
He shakes his head rapidly. “Nope. No fucking chance. Creepy locked door that probably leads down to abasementin an old, abandoned house? Have you ever watched even literallyonehorror movie?”
“Don’t be such a baby.”
He glares at me as I brush past him and grab a brick from the pile of construction material near a fireplace that’s clearly being worked on.
“Dahlia—DAHLIA!”
Raph gasps when I slam the brick onto the lock on the door. The padlock holds, but the eye hook bolted to the old doorframe splinters off. Gingerly, I pull open the door. Down at the bottom of the creepy old staircase, there’s another closed door, but there’s no lock on it.
And dim light is coming from the cracks around it.
“Dahlia, hon…” Raph’s voice is utterly serious now. “We’redone, okay? This is over. I’m finding a phone and calling the police.”
