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the Halloween parties. There was something familiar about the way the figure moved.
Bonnie exchanged a harassed smile with the tall, slender witch who was directing traffic into the
Spider Room. Several junior high boys were slapping at the dangling rubber spiders and shouting and
generally making a nuisance of themselves. Bonnie hustled them on into the Druid Room.
Here the strobe lights gave the scene a dreamlike quality. Bonnie felt a grim triumph to see Mr.
Tanner stretched out on the stone altar, his white robes heavily stained with blood, his eyes glaring at
the ceiling.
"Cool!" shouted one of the boys, racing up to the altar. Bonnie stood back and grinned, waiting for
the bloody sacrifice to rear up and scare the wits out of the kid.
But Mr. Tanner didn't move, even when the boy plunged a hand into the pool of blood by the
sacrifice's head.
That's strange, Bonnie thought, hurrying up to prevent the kid from grabbing the sacrificial knife.
"Don't do that," she snapped, so he held up his gory hand instead, and it showed red in every sharp
flash of the strobe. Bonnie felt a sudden irrational fear that Mr. Tanner was going to wait until she
bent over him and then make her jump. But he just kept staring at the ceiling.
"Mr. Tanner, are you okay? Mr. Tanner? Mr. Tanner!"
Not a movement, not a sound. Not a flicker of those wide white eyes. Don't touch him, something in
Bonnie's mind told her suddenly and urgently. Don't touch him don't touch him don't touch…
Under the strobe lights she saw her own hand move forward, saw it grasp Mr. Tanner's shoulder
and shake it, saw his head flop bonelessly toward her. Then she saw his throat.
Then she began to scream.
Elena heard the screams. They were shrill and sustained and unlike any other sounds in the Haunted
House, and she knew at once that they were no joke.
Everything after that was a nightmare.
Reaching the Druid Room at a run, she saw a tableau, but not the one prepared for visitors. Bonnie
was screaming, Meredith holding her shoulders. Three young boys were trying to get out of the
curtained exit, and two bouncers were looking in, blocking their way. Mr. Tanner was lying on the
stone altar, sprawled out, and his face…
"He's dead," Bonnie was sobbing, the screams turning into words. "Oh, God, the blood's real, and
he's dead. I touched him, Elena, and he's dead, he's really dead…"
People were coining into the room. Someone else began screaming and it spread, and then everyone
was trying to get out, pushing each other in panic, knocking into the partitions.
"Get the lights on!" Elena shouted, and heard the shout taken up by others. "Meredith, quick, get to a
phone in the gym and call an ambulance, call the police… Get those lights on!"
When the lights snapped on, Elena looked around, but she could see no adults, no one entitled to
take charge of the situation. Part of her was ice-cold, her mind racing as it tried to think what to do
next. Part of her was simply numb with horror. Mr. Tanner… She had never liked him, but somehow
that only made it worse.
"Get all the kids out of here. Everybody but staff out," she said.