Boo Read Free

a little fun.”
    “I’m not in the mood.” Ainsley smiled at her customers, out-of-towners, she guessed, by the way they marveled at the restaurant’s horrorparaphernalia. “Here are your Queasy Quesadillas, your Bloody Fingers, an order of Slime Balls, four Vampire Sodas, and one Screamy Potato.”
    The teenage boy’s eyes were wide with delight. “Does Wolfe Boone come in here any?”
    Ainsley tried to hold a steady, polite smile. “Occasionally.”
    The girl chimed in. “What’s he like? Is he scary?”
    “Oh, he’s everything you would imagine him to be,” Ainsley recited. The questions were endlessly the same.
    “What does he usually order?” the father asked.
    “Mad Cow Meatloaf.”
    “Is that really his house on the top of the hill?” the wife asked.
    “Yes.”
    The boy tried to reach the fake eyeball floating in his soda. “I bet he’s mean. He’s mean, isn’t he?”
    Ainsley had little patience for all this. The last person in the world she wanted to discuss was Wolfe Boone. He was the very reason she had to wear vampire teeth and dress like a ghoul. He was the very reason this town was nothing more than a tourist trap for the dark side. The very thought of him made her sick to her stomach. Conflicting emotions passed through her heart as she thought of her Aunt Gert, battling cancer, suffering as her mom had. Gert was the reason she stayed in this town, the only reason she stayed at this restaurant. Before it sold its soul to the devil, The Haunted Mansion was a quaint diner called Sylvia’s. Her mom and aunt’s favorite. She stayed and worked here out of principle but nothing else. She adjusted her vampire teeth so she wouldn’t sound as if she had a speech impediment.
    “Is there anything else I can get you?”
    They all shook their heads, and Ainsley returned to the counter, Garth following so closely she could hear him breathing. She turned around. “Garth! Give me some room, will you?”
    “You’re a little snippy today.”
    “Are you going to tell me the news or not?” Ainsley wiped her hands on her apron and eyed the couple in the corner waiting to be served. “It’s the busiest time of the day, you know.”
    Garth’s eyes narrowed, and a wicked little grin crept across his thin and crusty lips. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Wolfe Boone gave his life to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
    Ainsley looked hard at Garth with a fierceness she could hardly control. “Is this some sort of sick joke?”
    “Not according to Missy Peeple. Said she was watering the flowers at the church and heard him talking to Reverend Peck about the whole thing.”
    Ainsley shoved her hair out of her face. “What does she know?”
    “This makin’ you angry, darlin’?”
    “
He
makes me angry in general, and you know it.”
    Garth snickered under his breath. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
    “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got customers waiting.” She tried to smile at Garth politely. Her mom had told her always to be polite, even to people she didn’t like. And she knew Jesus had mentioned that once or twice himself.
    Ainsley walked past Garth, took the couple’s order, and then stepped outside the back of the restaurant for her fifteen-minute break. Could this be true? Missy was by far the most accurate and experienced town gossip, but it was easier to believe Garth was cloning pigs.
    A yellow cat purred its way through her legs, wrapping its tail around her ankles. “Shoo!” she instructed the cat, who hurried off to the garbage cans.
    She’d been a Christian nearly her whole life. That’s why she despised what that man had done to her wonderful little town. What had once been a nice, quiet, simple town was now a haven for all that was gruesome, horrid, and monstrous. All because of him. How could a man like that change? For real?
    She looked up to the sky. If he was faking it, then God would know.
God knows everything and brings all evil into the light
. Ainsley smiled