Chapter Twenty-Six
As Dame hurried down the sidewalk to meet Gus Morrow, she was surprised to feel a familiar surge of cold pass through her body. When she looked out onto the street, she saw it. The white Chevy. It cruised past her like a slow-moving shark, and Dame found herself wondering exactly how it got those ugly dents in the bumper. She watched the car until it took a left and disappeared out of sight.
When she finally reached the restaurant, Dame checked her phone again and realized she’d missed two calls and a text message from Gus.
Can you call me when you get this?
She knew it couldn’t be good news. And sure enough, when he answered his phone, she heard screaming on the other end.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Well, actually, no.”
“Who’s screaming like that?”
“Uh, those would be the screams of children,” he said. “But don’t worry, they’re happy screams.”
“They don’t sound happy. They sound terrified. Where are you?”
“Well, that’s why I called. One of the guys at my station got sick and I had to pick up his shift. I tried to call earlier, but I couldn’t get through.”
“You’re not” — couldn’t be — “at a fire, are you?”
Gus laughed. “Typically, we don’t answer the phone when we’re fighting fires.”
“So where —?”
“Listen, I’d still really like to see you. Is there any way you’d come here? I promise I’ll have dinner ready by the time you arrive.”
“Well, maybe. But at some point, you’ll have to tell me where ‘here’ is.”
“Right. We’re up in Weston. On Elrose and Wilson. Think you could find it?”
“I guess,” Dame said. “If I have any trouble, I’ll just follow the sounds of screaming children.”
When Dame arrived, she realized that the address Gus had given her wasn’t for a house, or a fire station. As she stepped out of the cab, she found herself on the perimeter of a sinister carnival. Rubber skeletons and Styrofoam tombstones decorated a small asphalt parking lot. Parents stood around and ate food over paper plates. A horde of relatively unsupervised tweens strolled past her, shout-speaking profane emphatics (Oh my God! What the fuck?). And in the centre of it all stood the burnt-out husk of a detached two-storey warehouse. A corpse of a building.
She found Gus in full fire regalia, turning hot dogs on an enormous barbecue.
“Hey!” he said.
“Nice place you got here.”
“Usually” — he pointed a pair of tongs over one shoulder — “we use this structure for search and rescue training. You know, smoke, gas-fed booby traps, that kind of thing. But right now, there’s something way scarier inside.”
As if on cue, a recorded cackle echoed out of the building behind him.
“You invited me to a haunted house?”
Gus shrugged. “We run this thing every year. Proceeds go to help kids with muscular dystrophy. It’s pretty popular.”
“I can see that. So, why are you wearing all your gear?”
“Part of the whole shtick. And, you know, the kids kind of like it.”
God, he was cute.
“So” — he pointed the tongs toward the barbecue — “you hungry?”
“Starved. What’s on the menu?”
“Well, today’s special is a hot dog with your choice of ketchup or mustard. On tap we have a variety of beverages. Actually” — he looked at a plastic cooler beside his feet — “it looks like we’re down to Canada Dry.”
“I’ll take a dog with the works,” Dame said, “and your finest ginger ale.”
“Excellent choice.”
A lineup had materialized behind her, so once Dame had her food, she moved a few feet away and watched the firefighter do his thing. He chatted with the kids and joked with the adults. When a flash of flame jumped up from the grill, he pretend-threatened it with a nearby extinguisher. Everyone laughed.
Dame made short work of the dog and had just cracked into her pop when the crowd cleared. She took a slurp and walked back over. “So, this works out pretty well for you, doesn’t it?”
Gus looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“This last-minute change of venue? You get to save a few bucks on pasta, show off your charity work, plus, you get to wear the uniform, which I’m sure some girls are kind of into.”
“Oh yeah? Are you into it?”
“Listen, the longer you stand behind that barbecue, the more you look like a fry cook playing dress-up.”
“Guess I better hurry up and turn it off, then.” He reached down and twisted the propane nozzle. “How about I give you the grand tour?”
More screams sounded through a first-floor window.
“Dinner and a show.” Dame took a final swig of the ginger ale, then set it down. “You really know how to show a girl a good time.”
She started walking toward the warehouse and Gus caught up. He led her past a handful of civilians waiting in line. At the front, a grim-looking firefighter stood with his brawny arms crossed and a service radio humming. Behind him, a heavy black curtain hung in the door frame.
Gus took off his helmet and coat and handed it to the man. “Hey, Rick? Could you give us a head start on the next group?”
Rick nodded and turned to Dame. “You look after him in there, ma’am. Gus scares easy.”
“Is that so?” She looked back at Gus, and then pushed her way through the curtain.
For the most part, the place was furnished with the usual fare. The walls of the hallway were painted black and lit with strobes and jack-o’-lanterns. The sound was amplified as they moved through the first antechamber: chainsaws, screams, howls. Occasionally, a ghoulish volunteer would open a door and take a half-hearted swipe at them with a plastic axe. Overall, there didn’t seem to be any real theme. Dame spotted a mummy, a werewolf, a Dracula. It was a monster mash-up of Halloween classics. Only the smell was authentic. Dame had spent enough time in burnt-out buildings to know that the carcinogenic stink usually meant death of one kind or another.
They moved slowly, and soon the group behind them caught up. A dozen or so kids pushed past, screaming their way into the hilarious horror. For a moment, Dame thought she saw a familiar face — a curly-haired little boy — moving through the crowd. In an instant, he was gone.
“You okay?” Gus put his hand on her arm after they’d triggered a mechanical zombie to sit up and moan at no one in particular.
“Yeah.” She smiled up at him. “I’m good.”
And she was. Although, she had to admit that any game this poor guy had was strictly junior high. In a way, it was kind of adorable. Kyle Harris had tried the same thing on her when she was fifteen, except instead of suspenders and boots and a haunted house, it was a varsity jacket and a midnight showing of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
When they reached a flight of metal steps, Gus stopped. “There’s an exit here if you want to leave. It’s supposed to be a little more intense upstairs.”
Dame took his hand and pulled him toward her. “I’m not the one who scares easy.” She had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him. It was the first time in over a year that she kissed someone. And the first time in more than seven years that she kissed someone without a beard. Why hadn’t she made Adam shave that awful thing off?
The stairs were all caution signs — safety first — but when they arrived at the second floor, Dame found herself in a grimy hospital wing, with flickering fluorescent lights and demented surgeons manhandling the bloody coils of their vivisected amputees.
“Jesus,” Dame said. “This is worse than St. Mike’s.”
“Our platoon chief designed this part. He used to be a paramedic.”
They walked on, past beds full of writhing blankets and surgeries gone wrong. A doctor in bloodstained scrubs carried a glistening fist of human heart that pulsed and squirted. In one room, they walked through a maze of gently swinging body bags.
“This is genuinely creepy,” Dame said.
“Told you.”
At the end of the hall, a woman dressed in a pristine nurse’s uniform stood motionless and stared at them.
“That’s Sheila from the One Thirty-One,” he whispered. “She’s really good. Never breaks character. Watch.” Gus waved his arm in the air. “Hey, Sheila!”
The woman said nothing and continued to stare. Then, slowly, she beckoned them to her. As they walked down the hall, Dame heard an unsettling noise — the sound of a baby crying. Softly at first, and then louder as they got closer. Nurse Sheila motioned toward a blue hospital partition.
“I think we’re supposed to open it,” Gus said.
“Uh, I’m not so sure —”
But before she could stop him, the firefighter pulled the curtain back. Behind it was an antique bassinet, and when Dame looked inside, she stopped breathing. A monstrous child reached toward her with disfigured purple arms.
“Maa-maa …” it wailed.
“Fuck this,” Dame said. “I’m out.”
She pushed past Gus and Sheila and ran back down the hallway, almost knocking over the wannabe cardiologist and his tray of red muscle. She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Gus calling after her. Dame? She weaved through the parents and children who jumped and cowered like she was part of the act. She ignored Rick, the firefighter-turned-bouncer, who asked, Ma’am? Everything all right?
No, she thought. Things were decidedly not all right.