Chapter 5: The Shriekers
When she got to the school, Amanda parked her car as close to the carnival grounds as she could and went looking for Mrs. Kelly to find out where she should put the supplies.
The first person she ran into was Jane, who was carrying some boxes of her own.
"Help?" Jane asked pleadingly as she peered around the edge of the large box that was blocking her vision.
"Sure!" Amanda helped Jane load the boxes into her car.
"Oh, thank you!" Jane said, collapsing against the side of her car. "Do you know what Mrs. Kelly is having me do now?"
"What?"
"She's making me take all of these cookies back to the bakery where I got them because they have the wrong color of sprinkles on them! Sprinkles!" Jane started imitating Mrs. Kelly's bossy voice. "'I distinctly remember ordering black sprinkles on orange icing, and these sprinkles are clearly brown! Some of them even have yellow sprinkles! This is completely unacceptable!'"
"It seems like such a waste," Amanda said. "I doubt the children will care, and the cookies would just go to waste if you take them back."
"I know. Are you sure you don't want to stage a coup and take over the PTA? I'd gladly help with any mutiny you might be planning."
"I'm not planning a mutiny," Amanda insisted, "and I still don't want to be PTA president. Where is Mrs. Kelly now?"
"She's in the cafeteria . . . oh, excuse me, the haunted house. She told us all this afternoon that she doesn't want anyone to call it the cafeteria again until after the carnival is over. She says that it spoils the mood."
"I see," Amanda said. "Well, thank you."
The doors to the cafeteria (or "haunted house") were decorated with signs hinting at the dangers that waited inside and warning the fearful to turn back. Unlike the signs from previous years, these had been professionally printed instead of hand-drawn by the students. Amanda missed the hand-drawn ones.
Inside, heavy black curtains had been hung to form the walls of the haunted house. Most of the larger electronic displays were already in place, from the vampire that would rise out of his coffin when anyone came near it to the cackling witch stirring her cauldron. However, there were still a number of people running around, putting up last-minute decorations and testing all of the displays.
"Watch out!" one of the workmen warned Amanda as she stepped further into the haunted house. "You almost set off the electric eye!"
"Electric eye?" she asked.
"Even though everything is controlled from the catwalk," the man explained, pointing to the control panels on the scaffolding over their heads, "many of the devices in here are set off by electric eye. See, there's a beam that goes to that sensor over there, and if you get in the way and break the beam, it causes that skeleton to drop down from the ceiling."
"Oh! Well, thank you for telling me," Amanda said.
"Don't mention it. Just keep an eye out for sensors like that one. They'll be hard to see when the lights are dimmed, but you should be able to spot them pretty easily right now."
Amanda thanked the man again and continued looking for Mrs. Kelly, all the while watching carefully for the electric eye sensors. He was right, it wasn't too hard to spot them, now that she knew what to look for.
With all of the lights on, the displays didn't seem very scary, either. It was easy to tell that most of them were made of rubber and plastic. In the dark, though, everything would seem very different. Amanda hoped that it wouldn't be too scary for the children.
Up ahead, Amanda spotted Mrs. Kelly holding her usual clipboard. She was telling a man where to put the large box of plastic pumpkins that he had just brought her, calling for someone to clean up some dust that she'd found on the floor, and complaining to various people that they were making too much noise with a speed that an auctioneer would envy. Amanda was wondering if it would ever be possible for her to get a word in edgewise when Mrs. Kelly noticed her standing there.
"Oh, Mrs. King, I'm so glad that you're here! The food committee is just putting everything in the kitchen, although I don't want any cooking done during the carnival itself because of the food smells. Go and make sure that they remember to properly store all of the foods that need refrigeration."
"Okay, Mrs. Kelly, but first—"
"But not the baked goods. Baked goods never taste the same after refrigeration. When Jane gets back with those cookies, I want you to prepare trays to sell in the baked goods tent."
"That's fine, but I just wanted to tell you that—"
"We also have people bringing barbecues at five today, and if you could help them find a place to store them until the carnival opens—"
A man's voice interrupted, saying, "Dear, why don't you let Mrs. King finish what she's been trying to tell you?"
Amanda jumped slightly. A good-looking man in a dark suit had come up behind them. He had wavy brown hair, and there was a laughing look in his blue eyes.
"Oh, there you are, Charles," Mrs. Kelly said. "What do you think of the preparations for the haunted house?"
"Everything's coming along beautifully," he told her. To Amanda, he said, "I'm Charles Kelly. You'll have to pardon my wife. She gets very excited when she gets into a project."
Mrs. Kelly looked a little annoyed at her husband.
"I understand," Amanda said, earning an annoyed look for herself.
"Now, what was it you were trying to say?" Charles Kelly asked.
Amanda turned to Mrs. Kelly and asked, "Where would you like me to put the supplies I picked up this afternoon?"
"Are they food or decorations?" Mrs. Kelly asked, thumbing through the jumbled notes on her clipboard.
"Decorations," Amanda said.
"They go in the teacher's lounge," Mrs. Kelly said. "You know where that is, don't you?"
Amanda had to bite her tongue to keep from saying that her sons had attended school here since kindergarten and that she had been on the PTA all that time, so of course she knew where the teacher's lounge was. Amanda suspected that Mrs. Kelly knew all that anyway, since she had been her main rival for PTA president. Mrs. Kelly had taken an instant dislike to her once she had found that out, even though Amanda hadn't really wanted the job herself. Even though Mrs. Kelly had won, she was in the habit of sniping at Amanda and belittling her, just to make sure that she was in control.
Telling herself that none of that really mattered, Amanda merely assured Mrs. Kelly that she knew where she was going and that she would take care of it. She was about to ask Mrs. Kelly if she had a cart that she could borrow to carry the boxes when a workman dropped the box that he was carrying. As it hit the floor, it began emitting several high-pitched screams.
"The shriekers!" Mrs. Kelly cried. "I told you to be careful with those! Turn them off!"
"I'm trying, lady!" the workman said, rooting around in the box of little skull-shaped toys. "I can't tell which of them are doing the screaming!"
The little skulls began cycling through their repertoire of screams, shrieks, moans, and maniacal laughter. None of them were in sync with each other, so it sounded like a group of lost and tormented souls with no musical talent whatsoever had decided to form their own rock band. Actually, that kind of reminded Amanda of some of the student bands from her school days.
Mr. Kelly winced and covered his ears.
Several people dropped what they were doing and ran over to try to stop the unearthly racket. Amanda decided that it would be better to leave this to Mrs. Kelly and just take care of her supplies. Her boxes were heavy, but at least they didn't scream.
Making her escape from the haunted house, Amanda set about unloading the supplies from her station wagon. She really wished Lee could have come with her to help with some of the heavier boxes.
"Let me give you a hand with those," a voice behind her offered.
Amanda turned to find that Charles Kelly had followed her out of the cafeteria, er, "haunted house."
"It didn't look like there was much I could do to help back there, so I decided to see if you could use a hand," he explained.
"That's very nice of you," Amanda said. "I could use some help."
As they carried the boxes to the teacher's lounge, they chatted a bit about the carnival.
"I'm really looking forward to it," Mr. Kelly said. "Not only will it be a great opportunity to show off my company's products, but I'll be able to spend some time with my wife and kids. Seeing all these decorations and carnival games makes me feel like a kid myself."
Amanda smiled. Charles Kelly was a charming man, the complete opposite of his wife.