Chapter 10: Heroics in the Haunted Cafeteria
Lee searched frantically through the carnival grounds, dodging at least three people who attempted to hand him Groucho Marx glasses. There were parents and teachers everywhere, and a few children whose parents couldn't leave them at home while they were working at the carnival. Most of them were wearing costumes.
"Wasn't Amanda wearing a costume?" Lee thought. "That's right, she said that she'd be dressed like a gypsy because she'd gotten roped into helping with the fortune-telling booth." All he had to do was find the fortune-telling booth.
With a sigh of relief, he saw a red-and-white striped tent with a sign outside that said "Madame Florica, Fortune-Teller." He remembered that was the name of the character that Amanda was playing.
"Amanda?" he called, poking his head into the tent.
No one was there. But, someone had been there. One of the chairs had been knocked over, and the fishbowl that was serving as a crystal ball had fallen off the table and was lying on the ground. Underneath the table was a woman's shoe with a spiky heel. Just one shoe. Lee's blood ran cold. Tony had gotten to Amanda first.
Lee darted out of the tent, looking around wildly. Where would he take her? Maybe they hadn't gotten far, especially if Amanda was missing a shoe.
Wait! There they were! It had to be them!
Now that he knew what he was looking for, they were easy to spot, although at first glance they appeared to be merely another costumed couple strolling down the midway. The woman was dressed as a gypsy with long skirts and a colorful scarf covering her hair. The man was wearing a black cape with a hood over his head. The two of them were walking close together, but their attempt at a casual pace was spoiled by the fact that the woman was limping because she was wearing only one spiky-heeled shoe.
Lee started after them, being careful not to catch up to them too quickly. The man was holding Amanda close, trying to make it seem like he was escorting his wife or girlfriend, but Lee was sure that he had a weapon trained on her.
They were approaching the end of the midway, near the school cafeteria, and Lee was still a good distance behind them, when Amanda suddenly stumbled. Her captor turned to catch her, and as he did, he caught sight of Lee following them. Lee swore under his breath as the man grabbed Amanda and dragged her into the cafeteria.
The signs on the cafeteria doors reading "Door to Danger" and "Enter If You Dare" reminded Lee of what Amanda had told him earlier about the haunted house.
"Oh, great," he groaned inwardly. "Playing cat and mouse in a place already rigged with nasty surprises." He glanced around to make sure that no one was nearby and watching, then drew his gun and went inside.
The haunted house was dimly-lit. Black curtains had been hung to form hallways through the cafeteria. Eerie eyes, ghostly forms, and jagged bolts of lightning had been painted on the black fabric with fluorescent paint. They glowed under black lights. There was no sign of Amanda or the caped man.
"This is no good," thought Lee. "The walls aren't even solid. He could jump out at me or shoot me from anywhere, and I'd never see him coming." Not knowing where the scary surprises were hidden in the haunted house made it worse.
As an experiment, Lee picked up a plastic pumpkin sitting near the door and flung it down the hallway. As it clattered to the floor, a skeleton dropped down on a wire with a high-pitched shrieking sound. Then, the wire slowly pulled the skeleton back up out of sight. Lee followed the motion with his eyes and spotted scaffolding overhead.
"Of course," he thought. "That's where the controls for the haunted house must be."
Even the electric eye devices had to have on/off switches somewhere. The best place would be somewhere high, where the operator could see everything and trigger the surprises at just the right time. Lee ducked behind the curtains, searching for the ladder up. Finding it, he climbed up onto the scaffold and looked around.
"Now this is more like it," he thought, spotting movement further along the maze of black hallways. Carefully, trying not to make any noise, he made his way along the scaffold toward Amanda and her captor.
The man had found a section of the curtained hall that was slightly wider than the normal path. With his hand over Amanda's mouth to silence her, he now waited in a dark corner almost directly beneath where Lee was standing. His gun was pointed down the hallway in the direction he had just come from, so he was obviously planning to ambush Lee when he came along.
Lee knew that he was going to have to do something fast before the man figured out where he really was. It would be too dangerous to shoot him. Lee didn't want to risk accidentally hitting Amanda.
He glanced down at the control panel in front him, thinking that there might be something that he could use as a distraction. One of the levers on the panel was labeled "Tilting Floor." Now Lee could see why that section of the hallway was wider than the rest. They had to widen it to hold the platform for their tilting floor effect.
The lever for the tilting floor was at the point marked "center," and Amanda and her captor were standing on the right-hand side of the platform. Checking to make sure that the man's gun was still aimed away from Amanda, Lee quickly shoved the lever all the way to the end of the "left" markings.
The floor tilted swiftly, throwing them both off-balance. Amanda, in her single unsteady shoe, was the first to go down, pulling the man with her. He dropped his gun as he fell, and it went sliding off the edge of the platform, somewhere behind one of the curtains. Amanda tried to struggle out of the man's grasp, and he pulled the scarf off of her hair as he tried to grab hold of her again.
Lee jumped off of the scaffold and onto the tilted platform, landing behind the man. As Amanda's captor whirled around to face him, Lee managed to get in a good punch to his jaw, knocking him out cold.
"Lee!" Amanda called out from the floor, where she had fallen in a tangle of skirts and scarves.
"Are you alright?" he asked, helping her up.
"I think I twisted my ankle, but I'll be fine," Amanda said.
"Sorry about that, but tilting the floor was the best distraction I could come up with," Lee explained as he retrieved the man's gun from behind the curtain.
"It's not your fault," Amanda said, removing her remaining shoe. "I should never have let Mother talk me into wearing these things. Lee, that man wanted the pumpkin keychain, the one I showed you earlier. Only, when he got it out of my purse, he said it was the wrong one."
"What does that mean? Was it the keychain that you showed us earlier at the Agency?"
"Yes, but I didn't look at it closely enough when I gave it to you. The man was right, it wasn't the same keychain that Max gave me at the pumpkin patch. This one has round eyes, and the one that Max gave me had eyes shaped like triangles. The mouths were identical, with those little vampire-like teeth, but the eyes were different shapes."
"Then where is the one that Max gave you, and where did this other one come from?"
"I think I know," Amanda said with a sigh. "We have to get back to my house. I'll explain on the way."
"I have a lot to fill you in on, too. First, I'll call Billy and have him send someone to take care of this guy," Lee said, gesturing to the man on the floor. "Can you walk alright with that ankle?"
"I think I can if you let me lean on you," Amanda said.
"No problem," Lee said, putting his arm around Amanda. "I've got you."