James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

“Couldn’t be much better.” Mark smiled and tried to look relaxed. Booth owned the company, yet had little to do with the actual running of it. In fact, Mark rarely saw the man. Seeing him out here, acting all chipper, was just plain weird.

Booth patted his shoulder. “Glad to hear it. Big day today, yes indeed. Should be interesting to see what everyone has to say about the new extended tour.”

Mark and Hannah had both traveled the new route several times and were still impressed by it. Hannah nodded emphatically, and Mark noticed Booth’s eyes checking her out. He managed to avoid bristling at the visual undressing. First, it wasn’t his concern, since he was a happily married man who was completely devoted to his wife Chloe and would never cheat, and second, Hannah would probably club him over the head if he acted like a teenaged boyfriend around her.

Booth smiled again, obviously enjoying the mental image he had drawn up of Hannah’s nakedness. Mark wondered how closely it matched his own. And how closely his own image matched the real one. “Well, I’m gonna go make sure everything’s set up properly,” Booth told them. “You guys be on your best behavior, okay? The press is swarming this place. Oh, and Happy Halloween.”

He headed on his way without waiting for a response.

Mark watched him go and from the corner of his eye he saw Hannah watching as well. Her eyes weren’t aimed at the back of his head, but substantially lower.

She caught him looking and smiled. “What?” She blushed a little. “He’s got a nice butt.”

“Can’t say I ever noticed.”

“It’s firm and shapely and probably inflexible to the touch, just the way I like them.” Hannah punched him playfully in the arm. “Anyway, let’s get inside. It’s lecture time again!”

“Can I have one, Aunt Jean?”

Tommy Walker looked up at his aunt and put on his most effective wide-eyed expression. It didn’t take much work, because he already had wide eyes and a face that bordered on pretty. At least that was what his uncle always said. His uncle always said weird things like that. Aunt Jean said it was because he worked in Hollywood and liked to find new ways to look at things. Mommy always said it was because Uncle Perry was a pervert.

He had no idea what a pervert was, and Mommy wouldn’t tell him, but he figured it had to be something funny, because Mommy always laughed when she said it.

He liked hearing Mommy laugh. It didn’t happen all that often.

Aunt Jean looked at the Day-Glo shirt in his hands and shook her head, but she was smiling when she did it. It seemed like there were a zillion things he wanted at the stands around them, from the neat shirts to the candy and even the books with pictures. He was in six-year-old heaven.

“Maybe when we’re done with the tour, okay, honey?”

Tommy frowned. He already knew enough of his aunt’s code to understand that meant he wasn’t going to get the shirt.

Uncle Perry was nearby on his phone, talking to somebody in a loud, angry voice. Tommy knew that he was working on a deal, and it was supposed to have been finished two weeks ago, but things hadn’t worked out right. Tommy didn’t completely understand what was going on, but Uncle Perry was pretty mad about it, and Aunt Jean was mad that he was talking on the phone during their vacation.

He hoped that Uncle Perry’s deal didn’t make them miss the tram. He wanted to see the monsters. Real ones, not like the ones in Harry Potter . He was a little scared, but Aunt Jean was there with him and she always protected him. Even when Mommy and Daddy yelled at each other, it was Aunt Jean who came over to take him to her place to sleep for the night. He spent a lot of time with his aunt.

Sometimes Uncle Perry was there, too, but a lot of times he was out of town and making movies. Tommy set down the T-shirt and pointed to the candy bars.

“Can I have one of those?”

Aunt Jean looked at the array of Haunted Forest Tour confections and sighed. “Okay, but just one. We have lunch after the tour and we don’t want to spoil it.”

Uncle Perry closed up his phone and walked back over to them. “Stupid. Stupid, stupid people. God, I hate stupid people.”

“Did he back out?”

“He’s trying to. Stupid idiot moron jerk.”

As Aunt Jean sighed, Tommy tried not to pout. He definitely wasn’t going to get a T-shirt after the tour.

Mark stood at the podium and watched Hannah as she stacked her papers together. She brought the same papers with her every time they did the lecture, but she never referred to them. He sometimes suspected they were there strictly for show and merely contained half-finished Sudoku puzzles, but either way, watching her shuffle them around and then put them back into a neat stack was always fun. Her body had the most interesting way of shaking when it came time to get the messy heap into an orderly shape.

Chloe. Right. Back to work.

The group came in as a mob, and he could tell that the auditorium was going to fill up quickly. That sounded impressive as hell, but the room only had 160 seats, enough for exactly four tram cars’ worth of people.

There was a sign that very clearly stated that Monster Biology 101 was not for the squeamish and was not recommended for younger children.

The thing about cryptozoology was that it was mostly speculative. The thing about the Haunted Forest cryptozoologists was that they got to do a shitload more hands-on work than any of their peers. Mark smiled when he thought about that. He and Hannah were the envy of damned near everyone working in their specialty. They got to play with monsters.

Well, the dead ones. He wasn’t so keen on the idea of actually trying to dissect a live one. People lost fingers and throats that way.

He checked his remote control to make sure it was on as the crowd settled in. Then he looked over at Hannah. She was straightening her skirt and looking at the crowd. For one moment he allowed himself a daydream, in which he got to play with her skirt the same way.

Chloe. Right. Back to work.

“Happy Halloween everyone!” His voice came through the PA system without any extra feedback. The microphone never had feedback. It was actually kind of unnatural and disturbing.

The audience gave an enthusiastic “Happy Halloween” right back.

“Welcome to the Haunted Forest Tour! Actually, welcome to what I like to call Monster Behavior and Biology 101. My name is Dr. Mark Harper. I’m one of those obnoxious people who put Dr. in front of their names without being medical doctors. The lovely lady to my left is Dr. Hannah Chambers, who is equally obnoxious. We’re both cryptozoologists. We get paid to study unusual life forms and to discover them whenever possible. Now, most of the people in our line of work might run across a new form of fish or even get lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a Sasquatch if they spend their entire lives hunting for it. Technically, cryptozoology is a new science, but really it’s just the name that has changed. There have been people looking for new types of life as long as there have been people, and there have been people for a long time.”

That line never got a laugh, but Mark was going to continue to use it until it did.

“The difference for us is that we get to work here, right at the edge of the Haunted Forest.”

Hannah stepped forward with a dazzling smile. “What that means is we get paid a very mediocre salary to find out about everything in there.” Several people chuckled. A few of the men looked at Hannah with decided interest. “We’ve had a few delicious encounters with the things in the Haunted Forest, and we’re going to show you a few slides of the things we’ve encountered. But, again, we do not recommend this part of the tour for anyone who is squeamish, and we also don’t suggest that any children sit through the presentation.”