“The science lab!”
I put my hand up to silence them. “Wait. We need a plan. We need organization.”
While the other teams scrambled off in chaos, I sat the four of us down at one of the lunch tables and mapped out a plan. We needed to hit many areas of the school, but we were going to do them in geographical order, instead of going back and forth six times. I went to this elementary school. I knew my way around.
“All right, team,” I said, when I was done mapping out our hunt, “we can get some of these done in this room. Like a photo with a skeleton.”
“The science lab upstairs,” Lucie said.
I shook my head and pointed to a skeleton decoration taped to the wall in the gym. “Nope. Right there. Cora, you’ll take the pictures.”
We ran over to the skeleton and took a picture of Lucie standing next to it. We got Olive with a jack-o-lantern near the bowling area, and a picture of both girls wearing witch hats from the pin-the-hat game. I didn’t see any of the other teams in the gym. I had a feeling they were making this harder than it needed to be.
“A book about ghosts,” Cora read over my shoulder. “We need to go to the library.”
The four of us exited the gymnasium doors. I expected to find the other teams scrambling around and tripping over each other out there. There was nothing, no one. We walked from a crowded gym and into a dark and quiet school. Maybe it was the fact that it was Halloween, but it gave me the creeps. I had an eerie feeling as we climbed the marble staircase to get to the library. Where was everyone? There were nine or ten teams in this scavenger hunt. Where were they? And why hadn’t anyone bothered to turn on a light?
We opened the wooden door to the library. It was dark in there, too. The school had moved on from the card catalog system since I’d been there. The monitors of the computer systems glowed in the room. We headed toward them. Cora used the light from her phone to see the keyboard. She typed the word ghosts into the search bar with her free hand.
I was drawn to the way her face was lit by the light of the screen, and I studied her profile. Her little nose, her lips. Then I saw a figure move out of the corner of my eye. We weren’t the only ones in this room.
My skin filled with goose bumps instantly. I knew it was ridiculous for a grown man to be creeped out, but I sort of was. If someone else was here, why were they so quiet? Wouldn’t they be looking for ghost books, too? I shrugged it off and tried to concentrate on Cora’s lips again. I’d seen too many episodes of 48 Hours Mystery. I should start watching more sports.
“Got it,” Cora said quietly. She looked up at me with innocent, non-freaking-out eyes. She hadn’t seen the shadows moving in the stacks. The girls hadn’t either. “This way,” she said, and nodded towards the back of the library.
I held up my phone to use as a flashlight as Cora led us to the aisle of ghost stories. Just then I saw a figure dart from one aisle to another. I turned around quickly to catch the person, but I wasn’t quick enough.
“What’s wrong?” Cora asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
She led us down the aisle and swept her fingers across the spines of the books on the eye-level shelf. She found the one she wanted, pulled it off the shelf, and handed it to me. I put it next to my face and gave her a huge, goofy grin as she snapped a pic.
“Oh shoot,” she said, looking down at the phone. “It’s too dark. I need to turn on the flash.”
She pressed a few buttons on the touch-screen and then held it up to try again.
I held the book next to my head and she took another picture, this time with the flash.
Then she gasped.
“What is it?” I asked, even though I kind of knew.
She silently handed me the phone and I looked at the picture on the screen. There was something, or someone, standing behind me in the photo. The figure had a pumpkin on its head. I turned and looked behind me, but the person was gone.
She shook her head in what looked like annoyance. I could tell she didn’t want to show any fear and scare the girls. She was clearly braver than I was. She probably killed spiders in her house all by herself.
She placed the ghost story back on the shelf. “Where to next?”
“The art room,” I answered. We needed a picture of one of us with an easel showing a pumpkin drawn on it. “Let’s go.”
The art room was empty and dim just like everything else around. There was one light pointing at the art easel in the middle of the room. The easel held a large pad of paper, but the pages were blank.
“I guess we need to draw our own,” I said, looking around for crayons or markers. There were none in sight. The last team had probably hidden them. Ha. Good idea.
Cora dug around in her purse just as I saw a fifth shadow appear on the floor in front of us. Someone was standing behind us! I whipped my head around quickly. There was no one there.
I tried to shake it off as Cora pulled a pen out of her purse. She drew a pumpkin in about ten seconds. She was so self-sufficient.
“Nice!” I commented. I held up my hand for a high-five. She slapped it with zest.
I loved being part of a team. It was that kind of adrenaline that had led me to a career in live TV. Having her there with me, on my team, was such a turn on. I didn’t care about a treasure chest that was probably filled with cheap candy like Smarties and Dum Dums. But I loved it that we had a common goal and a common enemy. The four of us, I had a feeling we could go places. I mean, metaphorically. We could be something.
“A picture of a team member on stage,” she read off the sheet. “The auditorium.”
We jogged down the dark halls toward the auditorium. It was on the opposite end of the school from the gym where we’d started. We were making our way down the hall when I heard a loud bang, like someone was banging on the door of one of the classrooms.
“What is that?” Lucie asked.
“Nothing. Just keep moving,” Cora told her.
A few doors down we heard another bang. Someone was inside the classrooms banging on the doors. Wow. Someone had really gone above and beyond to make this scavenger hunt scary. I wished haunted houses and hayrides put in this much effort.
We walked into the doors of the auditorium and walked past the rows of seats to get to the stage. I lifted Olive up, set her on the stage, and Cora snapped a picture.
We all turned around at once to go. The girls screamed.
There was a person sitting in one of the seats of the auditorium. He or she was wearing black clothes and the Ghostface mask from the movie Scream. The person didn’t move. I would have thought it was a prop if not for the fact that it was not there a minute ago when we came in.
“Just run,” I mumbled to the girls, taking their hands. These people were starting to piss me off. We had six-year-olds with us. They could be seriously scarred by these pranks.
We held hands and ran up the aisle, past Ghostface, and out the doors.
“To the playground,” I ordered as we ran down the hall.
I was sure someone was just trying to trip us up. It wasn’t like there was a serial killer in the auditorium. But that didn’t mean I wanted to sit around and chit chat with the weirdo either. We had a treasure chest to win.
The playground was also pretty dark and empty. I was starting to wonder if we had been given a different list than everyone else. Or maybe every team had a different list.
We took pictures of the girls on the swing set and slide. When we turned to head back toward to school, Pumpkinhead, Ghostface, and a girl with long blonde hair who had on a mask from the movie, The Strangers, were all standing in front of the school. They each stood still with their hands clasped in front of them.
The girls screamed again.
“It’s just a joke,” I said to them quietly as we walked past them. “We have one more picture to get, and then we can go home.”
The last thing on the list was a picture of a team member with a scarecrow.
“There was a scarecrow outside the front door where we first walked in,” Cora whispered.