Chapter 2: Enterprising Young Men
As expected, Amanda wasn't any happier about the new neighbors than Lee was.
"What are we going to tell the boys?" Amanda asked as they drove to Amanda's house that evening.
"What do we need to tell them?" Lee asked. "Maybe the less they know the better. Maybe they won't pay any attention to the Petrescus."
Neither of them really believed it. That was part of the reason why Lee was eager to encourage the boys when they announced Philip's "Great Idea."
"I had a great idea the other day at Dad's," Philip said over dinner.
Dinner was nothing fancy, just a stew that Amanda had thrown together with the remains of the pot roast she'd made for herself and Lee the other night.
"What great idea, Sweetheart?" Amanda asked.
"This Halloween, I want to make a haunted house in the garage," Philip said.
"Yeah!" Jamie said eagerly. The boys had apparently talked it over between the two of them already.
"A haunted house?" Amanda asked. "I thought you didn't like them."
Lee knew that last year, Philip had a frightening experience with a haunted house that his father had taken them to. He thought that he'd seen a real ghost.
Philip shrugged. "They're okay. And, we already have what we need for the walls."
"What kind of walls?" Amanda asked.
"Remember the old curtains at Dad's law office?" Jamie asked.
"Those big, black, heavy things?" Amanda asked.
"Right," Philip said. "Well, they're replacing them. Dad said that they decided black was too depressing and made the place look like a funeral parlor."
"They kind of did," Amanda said to Lee.
"But, Dad told us if we wanted them, we could have them," Philip said.
"Why would you want them?" Amanda asked.
"For the haunted house!" Philip said. "Remember that haunted house we had at school a few years ago?"
"Yes," Amanda said.
Lee remembered that haunted house himself, although he couldn't explain to the boys that he had seen it and why.
"They used black curtains for the walls, and we could do the same thing," Philip said. "And, we could earn money by charging admission."
Ah, Lee thought, there's the motivation. Philip might have been badly spooked by the haunted house last year, but the prospect of earning some extra cash was enough to make him regain his courage. He'd have to find out later what the boys wanted to spend it on.
"I don't know, Sweetheart," Amanda said. "That sounds like it would take an awful lot of work."
"Jamie and I could do it," Philip insisted. "Dad already dropped off the curtains. We put them in the garage."
"Oh, did he?" Amanda sounded annoyed.
Philip either didn't hear it or decided to ignore it. "We can hang up the black curtains in the garage to make rooms, and we can get some of our friends to help."
"I can do the lighting and sound effects," Jamie said.
Lee didn't doubt it. Jamie was the electronics expert of the family. Philip wasn't bad with mechanical stuff, having already demonstrated his skills by experimenting on Lee's car (without permission, but fortunately for him, without damaging the car), but Jamie was the real science whiz.
"Well, what kind of things would you have in the haunted house?" Amanda asked. In spite of her annoyance, she wasn't saying no. At least, not right away.
Jamie started listing things. "Vampires, witches, werewolves, ghosts . . ."
"Axe murderers!" Philip said, an unholy gleam in his eyes. "With lots of blood. And zombies, flesh-eating ones!"
"I think that would be too scary for the neighborhood kids, Philip," Amanda said.
"Our friends wouldn't be that scared of axe murderers," Philip insisted. "They'd think it was cool."
"If you make the place too scary, the other kids aren't going to want to spend money to come inside," Lee pointed out. "You have to consider your audience." Amanda smiled at him.
"Come on, it's cool!" Philip said. "Who's really scared of vampires and ghosts anyway?"
"You," Jamie said pointedly.
"No!"
"Boys," Amanda said.
"Just having a bunch of ghosts in sheets would be dumb!" Philip said. "You want everyone in the neighborhood to think we're lame, Wormbrain?"
"Boys!" Amanda said.
"Linda Montez isn't here to hold your hand this time," Jamie dug at Philip.
For a moment, Philip looked almost mad enough to hit his brother. "You-!"
"Cut it out! Both of you!" Lee said, raising his voice.
The boys quieted down, glancing at their mother. She gave them a firm look, supporting Lee.
"Jamie, that was mean and uncalled-for," she said, "and Philip, I've told you many times not to call Jamie 'Wormbrain.'"
The boys mumbled apologies that they didn't completely mean.
"It sounds like you haven't really planned out what you want yet," Lee said, returning to the subject of the haunted house. "I think, before you commit yourself to building anything, you should get some things straight on paper. If you want to get a lot of people to come to your haunted house, you should make it appeal to a wide audience."
"Yeah," Jamie said. Lee wasn't sure whether he was agreeing because it was a good idea or because he was still mad at Philip. He gave Jamie a sharp look.
"But vampires and ghosts are boring!" Philip grumbled as he stirred the last of his stew. "Everyone has vampires and ghosts. Our haunted house should be . . . different."
"Well, there's all kinds of monsters and ghosts," Lee said. "My uncle and I moved around a lot when I was young, and I've heard all kinds of stories from around the world."
"Like what?" Jamie asked eagerly.
Lee searched his memory as he ladled himself another helping of stew.
"Well, there's La Llorona, the Crying Woman, who walks alongside rivers and throws people in to drown them. They say that did the same thing to her own children, and now she wails for them, even while pushing other people in to meet the same fate," Lee said in a creepy voice.
"That's pretty dark," Amanda said.
Philip said, "It's still a ghost." Before Jamie could accuse him of being scared again, he added, "But not a bad story. What else?"
Lee was thinking hard. "Jenny Greenteeth is a similar creature from England. Skinwalkers are Navajo witches who are kind of like werewolves, but they can change into different animals, and they can do it at will. They use the bones of dead people to cast evil spells."
"Gnarly!" Philip said, looking more interested.
"That still sounds pretty scary," Amanda commented.
"But, that's the idea!" Philip said.
"Can we have werewolves that use dead people bones in our haunted house?" Jamie asked, looking at his mother. "Would that be too scary for little kids?"
Amanda said, "I'm still wondering who's going to do all the work of helping you set up this haunted house. Your father gave you those curtains, but he's going to be out of town, so he can't help you hang them up."
Lee could hear that slight note of irritation in her voice. It wasn't so much that she was against the haunted house idea in general, it was that Joe had gotten the boys started and excited about a project that he had no intention of playing any part in.
But, Lee thought charitably, maybe it wasn't Joe's fault. After all, Philip wasn't a little kid. He was turning into a young man, fully capable of coming up with his own schemes. Philip had seen the haunted house at school, and Joe wasn't even in the country at the time. This idea was probably completely Philip's. And it gave Lee an idea of his own.
"I can hang them up!" Philip said. "They're just curtains."
"I wouldn't mind giving you a hand," Lee said before Amanda could protest. Amanda looked surprised.
"Really?" Jamie asked Lee.
"Sure. If it's okay with your mom," Lee added quickly. "I've never helped with a haunted house before. It might be fun."
"Alright!" Philip said.
"It's okay if Lee helps. Right, Mom?" Jamie asked. "He's a director. He could, you know, help direct us."
Lee was glad that the boys accepted his help, even if it was mostly so that they could get their way. Even though Lee wasn't really a film director, as they thought, he did have experience with giving other agents orders and seeing that the orders were followed. He thought that he could manage the boys.
"If he can help," Amanda said, looking at Lee. "Do you think you'll have time to do it?"
"I think I can make some time," Lee said. "Things have been pretty slow lately at work."
"So, we can have Skinwalkers and things like that in the haunted house?" Philip asked Lee.
Amanda was starting to look amused, waiting for Lee's answer.
Lee considered the question. "Well, we don't have to tell the younger kids that it's a Skinwalker. We could just call it a werewolf for them, and then you can explain what it really is to the older kids to make it scarier."
"Yeah, that would be good," Jamie said thoughtfully.
"You're not going to let really little kids in the haunted house, will you?" Amanda asked.
"Really little kids wouldn't have the money to pay," Philip pointed out.
Philip was turning into quite the enterprising young man, Lee thought.
"What else?" Jamie asked. "What other monsters can we have?"
Old, half-forgotten stories were coming back to Lee.
"Spring-Heeled Jack is a character with glowing red eyes that can jump really high," Lee said. "I think he also breathes fire in blue and white flames. Manticores are part man, part lion, and they've got scorpion tales."
Lee wasn't sure he should have mentioned those. He couldn't think of a good way to create a manticore for the haunted house, and Amanda might kill him if the boys used real fire.
Ignoring that for the moment, Lee continued, "Chupacabras are large and bear-like, and they suck the blood out of livestock. Banshees are spooky women who wail when someone's about to die."
"I'm writing these down," Jamie said. He got up and grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil off the kitchen counter. Sitting back down, he said, "This is good stuff. Any others?"
"There's always the Headless Horseman," Lee suggested. "We don't have a horse, but I know how to create a headless man costume for one of you to wear. Egyptian gods and goddesses look pretty freaky because they're people with animal heads. The Mongolian Death Worm spits poisonous venom."
"Also gnarly!" Philip said.
It was fun, coming up gruesome ideas to gladden the hearts of his stepsons and spark their youthful imaginations. They just had to be careful, choosing what they would finally use in the haunted house. All the monsters had to be things they could make and that weren't too disgusting or Amanda wouldn't allow them.
"Why don't you guys take some time this week to talk it over, see if your friends want to help, decide what monsters you want to use, maybe make kind of a map or plan of what you want the haunted house to look like. It would be easier to put the thing together if you already have it drawn out on paper."
"Okay," Philip said. "Thanks, Lee!"
The boys took their dishes to the sink and then ran upstairs to do their plotting. Amanda called after them to remember to do their homework, too.
"Are you okay with the boys' haunted house idea?" Lee asked as they started the dishes. "If you're really not, I could come up with something else for the boys to do on Halloween."
"I'm okay with it," Amanda said, "but it I think it's important for them to have some adult supervision so that they don't get too carried away with it. Mother isn't likely to do it. She doesn't like scary monsters or anything gory on Halloween."
"I remember. She likes to think of Halloween as a peaceful harvest festival, right?"
"Right. And, I doubt that the boys would agree to hold a barn dance. Are you sure we'll have the time to help them?"
"I think so." Lee glanced over his shoulder to make sure that the boys hadn't come back downstairs. "Our assignment is pretty routine and close to home. Things have been pretty quiet lately."
"The assignment is uncomfortably close to home. What about your premonition earlier, the 'calm before the storm'?"
Lee shrugged. "We might as well enjoy the calm while it lasts. Besides, it would be a good chance for me to get to know the boys better."
"That's true. You'll be supervising some of their friends, too. I'll have to remind them to invite only a few friends to join them. The garage isn't big enough for very many."
Lee smiled. "Just tell them if they invite too many kids to be in the haunted house, who will come visit?"
Amanda laughed.
"We can also tell them that whoever helps them should get a share in the profits, too," Lee commented. "That should make them be more choosy about their helpers."
"Good thinking."
"Something else good may come out of this," Lee said, checking around for listeners again. "Maybe this project will keep them busy enough that they won't ask any questions about our assignment or the Petrescus."
"I wouldn't count on it," Amanda said. "We're going to be doing a lot of work close to home. Moving the family in, checking security. Mother and the boys are bound to notice. What do we say?"
"I've had an idea about that. It was what Jamie said about me being a director . . ."
