Sandi gritted her teeth as well as the steering wheel as they pulled into the parking lot of the school. Not only had she gotten stuck with driving her mom's SUV instead of her dad's cute little sports car, the two reasons for this ignominy were fawning all over Quinn in the backseat.
"Do you need more leg room, Quinn?" Sam asked, kicking the back of the driver's seat.
Chris pushed his brother aside as well as he could with the seatbelt restraining him. "Yeah, Sandi, move your seat up so Quinn can have some more room. It's not like your stumpy legs need the space."
"No, really! I'm fine!" Quinn replied with that smug smile she always had whenever guys threw themselves at her feet. Sandi could see it in the rearview mirror. They're like, ten, Quinn. Ewwwww.
She frowned harder and glared through the windshield as she pulled into a spot, but said nothing.
Tiffany, in the highly coveted shotgun seat, opened her door and looked down. "Ewwww, Sandi….puddle. I'll get my shoes all wet."
Sandi fought back her irritation, after all, Tiffany had a point. She caught Stacy's eye as she checked behind her before backing up, seeing at least one person in the car sympathized with her. Well, that was why she kept Stacy around, wasn't it? Throwing the car in reverse she found a drier spot a few places down.
When they'd all exited the car, Sandi thrust two tickets at her brothers with an air of disgust. "Here, Mom may have said I had to take you, but I'm sure as hell not going to, like, hang out."
Her brothers grabbed the tickets with glee, pushing each other as they ran into the fair.
"I'm going to the House of Horrors first." Chris called as he raced ahead of his brother.
"You're too wimpy to even go through the whole thing," Sam shot back.
"Am not!"
"Remember what happened at the wax museum?" Chris taunted.
"Shut up!"
Sandi rolled her eyes as they ran out of sight. "Geeks."
"Um, Sandi, how are we going to find them later?" Quinn asked. "Don't you have to take them home, too?"
Sandi shrugged. "They'll probably hang out in that lame haunted house thing the whole time. I wish I could just leave them here," she muttered. "Shall we get this obligatory affair over with?"
The Fashion Club went through the makeshift entry to the field by Lawndale High. Much like when they'd had the Renaissance Faire, the large field had been transformed into a long row of booths and attractions, this time with a 'spooky' Halloween theme.
The main attraction was the House of Horrors, a large tent decorated to look like a haunted house. The inside was supposedly divided into rooms, each with a different chamber of horrors theme. The school's drama club had set it up and hoped the fair would help raise money for the spring's production of 'Grease'. Ms. Li had wholeheartedly supported the fundraiser, going so far as to suggest every student either volunteer at a booth or buy twenty dollars' worth of tickets. Purely voluntary, of course.
The Fashion Club had decided there was no way they were going to spend their Saturday night in some tacky booth so they'd shelled out the twenty bucks. Except Quinn, whose tickets had been purchased for her by Jeffy. Or Joey. Whoever.
"This is so lame," Tiffany drawled as they stood at the end of the rows of student booths.
"And creepy," Satcy added as some of the theater students walked by in costume. Seeing Sandi's disdainful look she hastily added, "I mean, fake blood? Ewww."
"Right. Shall we make our rounds and then head to Cashman's?" Sandi headed to the nearest booth. She didn't see why they had to go at all, Li said they had to buy the tickets, not show up. But Stacy had worried that if they weren't there, it wouldn't count.
While they walked up and down the row, Sandi's mood did not improve. The three J's had appeared and fallen all over themselves to buy Quinn cider and hot chocolate and even one of those ridiculous tiny pumpkins the art class had painted. She'd been relieved when the lure of cheap special effects had drawn them into the House of Horrors. She didn't plan on going in, even from this far away, the loud sound effects and music mixed with terrified shrieks were giving her a headache. Another bloodcurdling scream rent the air and Sandi rolled her eyes, it was so lame.
"Gee, Quinn, it must be nice to be so popular. I'm so glad you can find the time to hang out with us." She knew it was a childish thing to say, but she was in a bad mood from the fight with her mom earlier that day. Plus she had to pee and the only facilities were the Port-o-Johns, the rent-a-cop refusing to let her into the school.
As she stalked to the portable toilet in disgust, she heard Tiffany. "Maybe you should be the President, Quinn…"
Yanking the door open furiously, Sandi wanted to scream. But all she did was mutter 'backstabber' as she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
When she returned to the group, Stacy looked at her sympathetically. "I have some hand sanitizer."
Sandi took the little bottle with a mumbled 'thanks'.
They wandered a bit more, when Stacy suddenly grabbed her phone out of her purse. "Hello? Hello?" She walked a few steps away and whispered to the group. "It's my mom, I'm going to try to get some better reception over there." She waved toward the House of Horrors tent.
"We'll meet you over there." Quinn chirped. At the bewildered looks of her other companions she shrugged, "Maybe we can find your brothers, Sandi, and go to the mall."
After scoffing at the freshmen selling misshapen pumkin-esque cookies, they walked over to the tent but didn't see Stacy anywhere.
"Maybe she went in?" Quinn suggested, even as she eyed the sign that said it was closed for the night.
Sandi couldn't imagine why, but since her brothers were probably hiding in there and she'd have go after them anyway, she sighed and pushed aside the flap. Quinn and Tiffany followed.
"It smells funny in here." Tiffany wrinkled her nose.
"Probably all the fake blood and stuff," Quinn decided.
The interior was dark and foggy, the drama club had obviously sprung for one of those party fog machines and was using it to its full potential. The small entry way had day-glo arrows pointing to the narrow opening between stacked hay bales that served as walls. The eerie music turned up a notch and a sound effect of metal slicing flesh sounded close by. Someone in the tent screamed but it was cut off. The three girls huddled close together.
Sandi straightened her spine. "Puh-lease, it's not even scary." She marched through the narrow opening in the bales.
Stopping to view the first 'scene' she had to admit (though never out loud, or to anyone else) they'd done a pretty good job. She recognized that goth girl, Amy? Audra? Andrea? whatever, dressed as a vampire. She was seated at a table draped with black velvet, a fake but not too tacky coffin leaning on the hay bales behind her. The set was crude, but Sandi had to admit the stake in her chest and the blood dripping out of her mouth looked almost too real. She lamented the loss of what was probably once a really cute corset and moved on, wondering how the girl could bear to sit there with her mouth open like that for so long.
Moving through the next small opening she heard another shriek from somewhere ahead of her. Thinking the scenes must get scarier as they went along, since she hadn't seen much of anything that made her want to scream, she didn't even pause at the freshman stretched on the rack to her left, though she wondered why they'd bothered with the fake knife in the chest. At least he gets to lay down the whole time. The odd smell Tiffany had commented on intensified as Sandi moved to the next section.
"There you are, you little brats. Get out of there, we want to go to the mall, right guys?" Sandi turned around expecting Quinn and Tiffany to agree, but there was no one behind her. She let out a disgusted sigh, thinking they'd gotten creeped out and left, if they'd even followed her in, in the first place. "Come on, and mom's gonna freak when she sees what you did to your clothes."
Sandi wasn't sure if her two brothers had asked the drama students if they could be in the display or if they'd just jumped in to the scene and dressed themselves up, but judging by the realistic look of their gaping neck wounds, and the amount of blood spilled down their chests, she guessed the students had at least helped. They were standing propped next to a fence and a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, their heads leaning back to better show the vicious slashes across their throats.
Sandi tapped her foot, but neither brother moved. "Come on! If you don't get over here right now, I'm leaving you. You can walk home." No movement, not even an eye blink. Never knowing her brothers to be still for so long, she stepped over the hay bale separating the path from the set with an angry huff. She grabbed Sam's arm. "You've been here long enough. Let's go!"
As Sam's head tipped forward and lolled from side to side, Sandi realized there was a rope under his shirt holding him to the makeshift fence. Looking over to Chris, she noticed he was unusually still, his eyes staring without seeing. "Chris, come on, this isn't funny."
Realizing she still held Sam's sleeve clutched in her fist, she gave another tug. "Sam, let's go." Her voice had lost its imperative tone and was quivering slightly. Sam's hand brushed her arm. It was ice cold.She grabbed his wrist and tugged. "Sam…Sam…come on."
She let go and backed up, her hand came away sticky and red. "Okay, meet us outside…we're going soon…" Her voice was high-pitched.
They're going to jump out and say 'boo' any second. I'm glad I already went to the bathroom. Fighting the scream that wanted to escape, Sandi lifted her hand to brush her hair out of her face. She noticed the red stains on her hand. She'd seen the end of a special on horror movie special effects on the Entertainment Channel, waiting for Fashion Vision to come on. Corn syrup and food coloring…it's just corn syrup… But that close to her face she could finally tell where the odd smell was coming from, the almost metallic tang gave it away.
Tears sprang to her eyes and she involuntarily shook her head. Okay pig's blood, they wanted to be realistic…
But the vacant, sightless eyes staring out of her brother's face didn't lie. Sandi started to shake.
She stumbled backwards over the hay bale divider and scrambled through the next opening, praying it was the exit. She tried to open her purse to find her phone, spilling lipsticks and change and realized she'd left it in the car, since the battery was dead. Dead…dead like Chris and Sam…
She looked up and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Tiffany and Quinn hadn't followed her in, but they were in the last scene. Tiffany lay facedown across a table, a knife sticking out of her back, her shirt slashed to shreds from numerous vicious stab wounds. Blood dripped out of her open mouth onto the table to form a small pool. Her expression was frozen in a silent scream of terror.
Quinn was bound to a chair, drenched in blood, but it was her face, or what was left of it, that had made Sandi scream. It had been slashed to ribbons, most of her nose was missing and her left eye dangled from the socket, held only by a thin strand of nerve. Whatever thought of this being a joke fled when Sandi saw her hair, her long, glossy red hair had been brutally hacked away along with parts of her scalp.
It was only when she took a breath to scream again when she realized she was no longer alone. She whirled around, but was too petrified to do anything but stare, her mouth frozen in a silent scream of horror.
Stacy smiled at her. "I knew you'd like it."
Sandi mouthed wordlessly.
Stacy stepped closer and Sandi could see her clothes were wet with blood from head to toe and there were drops of red staining her cheeks and forehead. "See? You said you wished you could leave Sam and Chris here, and now you can!" Stacy turned to where Tiffany lay, unmoving. "You were right, Tiffany was a backstabber. I asked her how she would like it. I guess she didn't."
Sandi's stomach tightened into a knot at the insane giggle that escaped Stacy's lips. "And now no one can say Quinn is prettier than you! Not that I ever thought that," she added in a rush. "Everything's perfect now, just the way you wanted it! I did it all for you."
Sandi stared into the cold, soulless eyes of her once friend, and for the first time, saw the madness that lay in those hollow depths.
She screamed.
It was hours before anyone came. After all, a House of Horrors is supposed to be full of dead bodies. And people are supposed to scream…