A Catered Halloween Read Online Free

“People crossing a point on the floor trip a sensor that raises the coffin.”
    “Sensor?” Libby asked.
    “Yeah. It works on the same principle as a doorbell,” Mark replied.
    “Like the one we have in the store, which alerts us when customers come in,” Bernie added.
    “I know,” Libby said.
    “Well, I was just explaining it in case you didn’t,” Bernie mumbled.
    “But I do,” insisted Libby.
    Mark cleared his throat. “This is really a throwaway. Something to get you calmed down after the chain-saw scene and before the next thing.” He paused for effect. “Because the next thing, as my father used to say, is going to knock your socks off.” Mark walked to the door marked EXIT , opened it, and said, “Ladies, welcome to the Pit and the Pendulum. I have to say, I think that Poe would have approved, were he alive today.”
    Libby took a look around. The walls were mirrored, and in the center of the room was a raised platform. Four steps led up to it. On that platform was a long table, draped in a red cloth. Up above the table, a sharp-looking, curved blade swung back and forth, going lower with each swipe.
    “You have to get closer to get the full effect,” Mark said as he gave Libby a little nudge. She took a few steps. There was a headless body lying on the table.
    “See,” Mark said. “You stand in the center and you see your head being chopped off.”
    “Lovely,” Libby said. She gritted her teeth and took another step. Never let it be said that she wasn’t a goodsport. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the woman’s head sitting on the first step from the top. It stared up at her. It looked incredibly lifelike. It also looked familiar. Very familiar.
    “Shouldn’t the head be sitting in a pool of blood?” Bernie asked.
    Mark didn’t answer her. “Wait,” he said instead, and he put out his hand.
    Libby stopped.
    “Give me a moment,” Mark said.
    Libby noticed he was frowning. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    Mark didn’t reply. His attention was focused on the head.
    “Well, is there?” Bernie asked while she watched Mark take another step forward. She had a bad feeling in her gut. “Is that a hologram?” she asked. “Because it looks pretty solid if it is.”
    Libby watched as Mark stretched out one of his feet and gave the head a tentative tap with the toe of his shoe. It began rolling down the steps…bump, bump, bump…and then it kept going until it stopped at Libby’s feet.
    This is not a hologram, Libby thought. Holograms do not make noises like that.
    And then she had another thought.
    The head was not made of wax. It wasn’t made of plaster. It was flesh and blood.
    Libby didn’t know how she knew. She just did.
    And then she knew how she knew.
    Libby stared at the face staring up at her. She’d recognize those eyebrows anywhere. “It’s Amethyst Applegate,” she cried.
    Which was when Libby started screaming.

Chapter 3
    S ean Simmons took a bite of his pumpkin bar. “Not bad,” he remarked. “Not bad at all.”
    As he brushed a small piece of the pumpkin bar off his lap, he thought that in the normal course of things, his daughter Libby would have taken those words as fighting words. Tonight she hadn’t even blinked. In fact, she hadn’t said much since she and her sister had come running in, yelling about what had happened down at the Peabody School.
    Not that he was surprised. Some places just had bad karma. Of course, he hadn’t said that to Bernie and Libby when they’d told him about this job, because he didn’t like to talk about certain things. Now he was thinking that maybe he should have. Then he pushed that thought away. Better to concentrate on the known and leave the rest to all the weirdos out there.
    “You’ve added a touch more cinnamon, haven’t you?” he said.
    Libby’s eyes widened fractionally. “How can you askme something like that at a time like this?” she demanded.
    “I thought you liked talking about