Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

Darla felt her scalp tingle as she pictured some unknown being lurking in the shadows ready to pounce from behind a column as they passed. She wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that the theater’s actors had encountered unexplained activity late at night when they ventured down there alone. Neither could she shake the odd feeling that she’d been in this particular basement before.

Then it abruptly occurred to her that, in a manner of speaking, she had.

She realized she was walking her way through virtually the same basement that was found on the other side of the Janitor’s closet in the Haunted High books.

Scenes from the most recent novel flashed through her mind. In one, Lani discovered phosphorescent footprints that hinted the Janitor had survived his exorcism in the second book. In another, a squad of ghouls dressed as cheerleaders captured one of Lani’s living friends and held her hostage, threatening to devour the terrified girl if Lani did not surrender to them. And, in still another, Lani learned that the new vice principal had a taste for both handing out detentions and sipping fresh blood.

These and several other of the book’s more chilling incidents had all taken place in a fearsome subterranean level that lay somewhere beneath the fictional Lani’s high school. Some of the book’s characters believed the spot to be a portal to hell; others claimed it was simply a way station for the dead. Accessed by way of the Janitor’s closet, that supernatural basement had become Book Three’s battleground where Lani and the Janitor squared off as each sought to gain control of the school’s various paranormal entities. Nothing good happened there, and the physical description of the place—at once terrifyingly otherworldly and laughably mundane—described this theater’s basement as well.

So who would they encounter tonight, she wondered with a shiver: Morris, the kindly old Janitor, or Morris the sharp-toothed demon?

They halted at the entry, and Jake peered cautiously around the splintered jamb. The dialogue from the stage above was more distinct here, and Darla could follow the actors’ progress by the sound of their footsteps atop the boards. She waited until Jake gave an all-clear signal, and then joined her to take a look.

The area was larger than she expected. As best she could judge, it ran the width of the entire basement and encompassed not only the basement space under the stage but also that beneath the entire backstage area. Practical rather than architecturally stylish, this section had been walled off from the remaining basement by means of a sturdy wooden framework covered in bare sheetrock. The lighting here was only marginally better, but sufficient to make out the storage room’s layout.

Plywood had been laid over the stone floor to provide a more stable surface for a series of vertical racks, and had also been used to create shelves and pallets. These storage systems, which took up large segments of the available floor space, held all manner of old backdrops and stage props, from furniture to statuary to artificial trees. Under other circumstance, Darla would have enjoyed the chance to poke around there, but the seriousness of their mission did not allow for exploring this veritable graveyard of plays past.

Had they kept walking straight ahead, they would have found themselves on a ramp that rose to stage level and likely led right past the main stage to the backstage area. Dressing rooms and costume storage would be up there, along with areas for the props and set decorations used for the current run of plays. Would they find Hillary and Morris there, or were the two of them together somewhere here in this netherworld of theatrical discards?

“Damn it, Morris, where are you?”

The sound of Hillary’s peevish voice answered the question as to her location. The voice came from somewhere beyond the large vertical rack just inside the doorway where Darla and Jake had swiftly concealed themselves. They could hear the sound of her impatient heels tapping as she paced the plywood floor. Darla peered through one of the gaps between the canvas and wood-framed backdrops standing on end like books on a shelf. She could see a flash of pink as Hillary walked past. Yes, where is Morris? Darla wondered, aware that her palms had begun to sweat a little in nervous anticipation. She shifted her shoes from one hand to the other and blotted her free palm on her skirt.

“Damn it, Morris!” Hillary called again, “I’m not going to play games with you. Let’s finish this.”

“Let’s not.”

The sound of a second voice made Darla jump, even though she had been expecting it. The speaker was Morris. His words came from what seemed to be a spot well beyond where Hillary waited. Darla could hear a man’s faint yet solid footsteps crossing the plywood floor, though she could not spy him from her vantage point.

She exchanged a look with Jake, who signaled her to hold tight. She nodded and peered again through the slatlike gaps in the backdrops. Now, she could hear Hillary moving in the direction of where Morris seemed to be, her staccato steps revealing her agitation.

“Where are you? What do you mean, ‘let’s not’?” she demanded. “We had a deal.”

“I’ve reconsidered.”

Morris’s voice seemed a bit more distant, as if he were leading her deeper into the basement. Looking grim, Jake gestured Darla to follow behind her. They moved softly in the same direction as Hillary’s footsteps, using the props and backdrops as cover. The sounds from the actors above masked any noise the two of them made, though Darla suspected that Hillary’s only focus was Morris.

“Damn it, Morris,” she repeated, “quit running away from me. I want that money, or I’m going to reveal everything.”

The woman’s footsteps stopped abruptly. Jake and Darla halted, too, crouching behind a small grove of fake bushes that served as a handy screen for them. The light here was dimmer and seemed to flicker. Peering between the leaves, Darla frowned a little in surprise.

They had stumbled into what appeared to be the stage crew’s private lounge. Someone had arranged armchairs and a small love seat around a glass coffee table. Two accent chairs covered in red velvet sat a short distance beyond this cozy scene, pulled together as if the previous sitters had been involved in a tête-à-tête. An abandoned paperback novel lay open on one of the seats, while a couple of fast-food-chain drink cups sat on the table.

Hillary flung herself onto the love seat. “Five seconds, Morris,” she snapped, “and if that money’s not in my hand, I’m out of here.”

“I wouldn’t leave just yet, Hillary . . . not until you hear me out.”

The lights began to flicker again as Morris’s voice continued, “You think you hold all the cards here, but I assure you that you don’t. You think you have the ability to ruin me, to keep me from carrying on my sister’s legacy now that she’s dead. You think the readers will abandon the series if they find out that someone besides Valerie actually wrote the Haunted High books. Someone like me.”

Darla and Jake exchanged quick looks. So the threats that Hillary had been making weren’t about Valerie’s accident. Darla allowed herself a moment of cautious relief, for this likely meant that Morris hadn’t killed his sister. Still, it seemed she’d been right about Morris being the true author of the book. The deception didn’t much bother her, but apparently Hillary saw it as a game changer, an issue worthy of blackmail. Darla wondered why.

The agent quickly answered Darla’s unspoken question.

Hillary’s voice took on a nasty edge as, leaping to her feet again, she shot back, “Just who do you think your readers are, Morris? Most of them are teens, impressionable children. What do you think will happen when their parents find out these bestselling young adult books were written by a man who spends his nights dressed as a woman? Your books will be in the remainder bin faster than you can say Kate Gosselin.”