Crazy, Sexy, Ghoulish: A Halloween Romance (Crazy, Sexy, Ghoulish Book 1)



  Crazy, Sexy, Ghoulish

  A Halloween Romance

  G.G. Andrew

  Crazy, Sexy, Ghoulish: A Halloween Romance

  G.G. Andrew

  Copyright © 2015, G.G. Andrew

  First Ebook Edition

  https://ggandrew.com/

  All rights reserved. Except for short excerpts used in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means is forbidden without the express permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, zombies, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, businesses, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: G.G. Andrew and Rebecca Barray

  Join G.G. Andrew’s mailing list to get free stories, scenes, and sneak peeks at new books in this and other series!

  For Dad, for all the scary movies and haunted house visits,

  and for making even St. Patrick’s Day just a little bit creepy.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thank You for Reading!

  Excerpt from Scary, Lovesick, Foolish

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “Braaaiiinnnssss…”

  Twitching, I dragged my left leg behind me, the limb clad in ripped white fishnets and smeared with blackened blood.

  A grunt came from behind. It was Chris, his white button-down shirt bloodied and torn into long shreds, his dark skin an unhealthy gray in the dim light of the room, creased with shadows that shouldn’t be there.

  “Braaaiiinnnssss…”

  My croak filled the small, cold room, echoed off the slabs of woods that served as floors and walls. A howl came from another part of the house, followed by a deep growl that shook the floorboards—then a terrible scream.

  The scent of sawdust and cigarette smoke was heavy in the house, but there was something else underneath, something sweaty and all-too-human.

  Fear.

  It might’ve been mine.

  To my right was a darkened hall, and along with a cold draft the walls could never contain, there came a sound. Whispers.

  They were here.

  Before they appeared—before I saw him—I checked my white nurse’s costume. It was stained with blood, and so were the long clumps of matted hair which I tugged over one eye.

  I was unrecognizable. I needed to be unrecognizable.

  I wouldn’t let him remember me.

  The whispers grew louder and suddenly he was there with his friends. Six feet away from me.

  Brendan Forrester, creator of HorrorMonger, the popular horror website with thousands of followers.

  The guy I needed to terrify.

  But I jerked to a stop at his face. Stared. My mouth gaped open and drool threatened to spill out.

  My heart started thumping wildly in my chest, like it’d just learned how.

  Brendan Forrester was hot.

  Brendan had been my middle school classmate. Not a friend. A guy we—I—made fun of. At thirteen, he’d been bony under his black hoodies, unnaturally pale, one eye peeking out from a shock of black hair.

  This Brendan still had the dark hair, but he was about six-foot-three. And solidly muscled, like he spent half the day doing pull-ups on low ceiling beams in some industrial warehouse, his torso bare and gleaming sweat.

  To recap: hot.

  “Braaaiiinnnssss?”

  My gaze met his. I froze, every muscle in my body tense, waiting for him to recognize me. A shiver ran through my body as we locked eyes, like an icy breeze had blown across my skin.

  Behind him came a sandy-haired guy and a pretty redhead in skinny jeans. Chris thumped his feet heavily behind me, groaning and moving towards them, but I was rooted in place.

  I needed to do something here. Be undead. Stop staring at his pecs.

  I reached a crooked arm out and closed and opened my mouth a few times, probably looking like a dying trout, until I finally managed to rasp, “Going to eat your…broad chest…strong thighs…”

  The redhead clamped a hand over her mouth and started giggling.

  “Braaaiiinnnssss!” Chris shrieked from behind me. “We’re going to eat your braaaiiinnnssss!”

  It was more a reminder to me than an attempt to scare the three of them. Which completely hadn’t happened.

  It was dim where they stood, shadowy, but I saw the corner of Brendan’s mouth turn up into a smile. His eyes flicked down my body quickly, taking in the fishnets and my tight white uniform.

  “Braaaiiinnnssss! I’m going to eat your braaaiiinnnssss!” I screamed quickly.

  But it was over. His two friends were trying to hold back laughs—and not in a nervous, scared-but-excited way, but like they were watching Monty Python. Brendan was more subdued, trying to be polite and contain his amusement—and throwing frequent glances at me.

  “Uh, thanks,” he said, smiling a little.

  Thanks?

  They strolled by us to the nearest exit unconcerned, unhurried, as if we weren’t two hungry undead ready to consume their flesh.

  Chris reached out a clawed hand to them, but Brendan’s friend just brushed it off like a gnat, still laughing.

  They disappeared into the shadows as the guy stage-whispered to Brendan, “I think that zombie nurse liked you, bro.”

  They reached the next booth with the Mad Scientist. There was a metallic zap as he rent the air with his electrodes and the redhead screamed. So at least there was that.

  Chris sighed dramatically and straightened up.

  I turned to face him, still in a trance.

  “Hey, Nora, if you want to know the moment you lost us our Halloween bonus tonight, it’s the point when you went from scaring the visitors to sexually harassing them.” Chris unearthed a granola bar from the pocket of his blood-splattered pants, unwrapped it, and took a bite.

  “Sorry.” Dammit. I’d really needed that money.

  Tim, our manager at the Haunted Shack, had given us a Special Talk before we opened earlier that Monday evening. “Everyone needs to be at their freakiest tonight,” he’d said. “We’ve discovered that Brendan Forrester is going to be coming through our house sometime in the next six hours.”

  I’d flinched at the name. I hadn’t heard it in a long time. Hadn’t wanted to.

  “As some of you may know, Brendan is the king of horror geeks in our region of the country. He runs HorrorMonger,” Tim explained, the gravity he was trying to impose on his words somewhat ruined by the fact he was dressed as a clown with crazily-smeared red lipstick. “By all rights we should hate him because he’s twenty and already has a successful website. But he’s visiting all the haunted houses in the area and ranking them this month. And that means something to a lot of horror fans.”

  Tim cleared his throat and adjusted his bright orange wig before continuing.

  “If we make the top three this year, we’re going to make a killing with the publicity. And that’s all of us.” He twirled his index finger arou
nd the room. “You get us to be at the top of the HorrorMonger haunted house list in the region, and I’m giving you all a big fat Halloween bonus. So let’s give him some nightmares, shall we?”

  I’d straightened up, tugging my nurse costume down over my blood-splattered legs. I needed that money—desperately. I vowed to put on extra makeup to disguise myself and scare the crap out of Brendan Forrester. I’d done it years ago; how hard could it be now?

  Back in the zombie room, I groaned, resting my forehead against a wooden support beam next to Chris. It had been hard. Brendan wasn’t going to have any nightmares about me, but I’d sure as hell be having daydreams about him. That face. That body.

  That person who hates you, a little voice inside me said.

  I groaned again, but there were shuffles and more voices nearby, from the darkened hall on the right. Chris stuffed his granola bar back into his pocket. “Showtime again. Try not to eye-fuck any of these people. Not that it matters anymore.”

  My forehead still against the beam, I closed my eyes and listened for a second for Brendan and his group in the opposite direction. From the sounds of the past two minutes, they’d gone past the vampire and the werewolves and were nearing the Bigfoot room—which was really the weakest link in our haunted house. After that they’d stumble down a dark hallway, until they exited outside where Ryan chased them with his chainsaw all the way out.

  I opened my eyes. Jerked my head up. “It’s not over. I can still get him.”

  Chris, ignoring me, started grunting and clawing for the next round of visitors.

  I ran to the back of the room, sliding open a panel and slipping into the bowels of the house.

  There were corridors we haunted house workers used to move in and out of position, communicate, have a quick smoke. The scent of cigarettes hung heavy there, and on cold nights your skin puckered into gooseflesh immediately because it was so drafty.

  The hall was also shadowy, lit only by the subdued light seeping from the rooms, but I knew my way around.

  I moved quickly towards the exit, my fingertips grazing the walls.

  ***

  Here’s what you need to know about me: I’m a monster. I’m very good at it. You could say I’ve been practicing all my life.

  In middle school I was popular. I thought it was because I was prettier, smarter, and more talented than anyone else. As I grew older I realized it was just my legs, my clothes, and the way I was mean to other people.

  “Hey, Creeper,” I would say to Brendan Forrester as he opened up his locker three down from mine, his hoodie partially obscuring his face. “I didn’t see you there at first, what with all that lurking you were doing.” My friends behind me giggled. It wasn’t so much that what I said was so mean, it was more the way I said it—like I thought he was the biggest piece of shit on the face of planet.

  He never responded, just hunched over his locker more, hiding his face.

  My voice was an instrument, and I’d always been able to use it to tease a crush or terrify a boy.

  I didn’t really know Brendan then, I just knew that he wore that black hoodie almost constantly and drew weird skulls in class and barely spoke. But under my vast influence, I soon had half the school calling him that nickname to his face: Creeper. Some of us even forgot his real name, and I thought I had too. I was wrong.

  There, back in the haunted house, their voices were nearing the exit, and I started running down the corridor to the end of the tour where Ryan waited with his chainsaw.

  Their visit was not over. The worst was yet to come. I hoped.

  Back in middle school, I made fun of others, too. This girl in my English class who wore too-tight pants and looked like she never combed her hair. “Cheep, cheep,” I’d say from the desk behind her. “Is there a little birdie in your nest of hair?” She never responded, either.

  Like I said: monster.

  I got better. My dad left, and my mom and I moved to a different town for high school, and I was popular there too, but sophomore year I got into a car accident that left a nasty scar down the side of my face. “Hey, Scarface,” my friends started calling me—not meanly, but I hated the reminder that I had something so ugly on my body, something noticeable that could be pointed out. I felt awful, and I remembered Brendan and the girl. I started feeling guilty. I started becoming human. By sixteen I was decent, by seventeen what would pass as a nice person.

  In the Haunted Shack, I finally reached the back, my breath coming quick. The murmur of the crowd lined up became louder. Through the narrow opening at the end of the secret passage, I saw the rear of the house illuminated by the bright cone of a streetlight, the dark sky spotted with stars behind. The piney scent of sawdust filling my nose, I took a deep breath.

  Last year, at nineteen, I’d walked into a coffee shop in town and there was the girl from my middle school English class behind the counter. She recognized me, judging by the look on her face, fear and anger flashing over her features. I walked up and ordered an iced chai tea latte, tentatively, trying desperately to show her that now I was a Nice Girl. We were the only two people there, and she ran up my order in silence. But instead of handing me my latte, she dumped it all over my head. I’d sputtered over the cold sweet chai running over my eyelashes and nose and ran out of there, never to return.

  Those people I’d hurt back then, they didn’t want to see me, didn’t want to hear anything from me. And I didn’t want to be reminded of them—of how awful I’d been, how much of a monster I was.

  The footsteps and shuffling of Brendan and his friends approaching, I squeezed out the opening in the passage, stepped on a wooden crate, and climbed up on the low roof of the Shack. Ryan, a hockey mask over his face, tilted his head up to watch me. I put a finger to my lips.

  Despite my terrible zombie routine earlier, I was actually good at this. I started working at the Haunted Shack during Halloween two years ago because the money was awesome. I never thought I’d like it so much. But I’d fast become one of the star performers, as Tim would say. I brought the freak.

  I crouched down on the roof directly over the exit.

  The sandy-haired guy and redhead came out first. Giggling, stumbling a little from walking over the mossy floor by the exit. Not at all frightened.

  Then I saw Brendan. Brendan with all his savory parts on full display: messy black hair, strong jaw, broad shoulders. Jesus, did the son of a bitch haul lumber in his spare time? You didn’t get shoulders like that from playing video games.

  I licked my lips. I wondered what color his eyes were. I couldn’t remember, and it’d been too dark earlier.

  Swearing, I gritted my teeth as I reminded myself why I was there: to scare. That big fat Halloween bonus should have been the only thing that was getting my blood pumping.

  Ryan, standing in the wood chips by the exit with his hockey mask, started gunning his chainsaw. And gunning. And gunning.

  It didn’t start. I cringed.

  They started laughing—even Brendan. They thought this was all such a joke.

  Ryan, resigned and probably a little high, simply shrugged and didn’t even try to lunge at them as they walked toward the parking lot.

  “Wait a second, guys.” Brendan paused, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and turned around. Not noticing me, he held it up—probably to take a picture of the worst haunted house he’d be going to that week.

  That was when I did it.

  I jumped off the roof right in front of him.

  Chapter Two

  I screamed in the loudest, shrillest voice I could manage.

  “What the—” Brendan stumbled back, dropping his phone and bumping into his friends.

  The guy and the girl yelled, and Ryan gunned his chainsaw again, and, sweet mercy, it started. He began chasing the two of them as they ran in crazy figure-eights, weaving towards the lot.

  But he left Brendan for me.

  I stopped screaming and took a step towards him.

&nbs
p; Keeping his eyes on me but laughing nervously, Brendan kneeled, groping the ground to find his phone.

  “I get it,” he said over the fading sound of the chainsaw. “You set the expectations low, then you hit me with a surprise jump. Nice. I didn’t see this coming.” He was playing it cool, but I could see he was trying to catch his breath.

  I bent my head to the side—too far, unnaturally so—and locked eyes with him intensely. Even that look shook him up, made him fumble quicker for his cell.

  I saw it first and kicked it to the side.

  “What are you—”

  “I’m going to get you!” I shrieked, and lunged for him.

  Quicker now, he grasped his phone. Jumped back. Took a quick look over his shoulder for his friends.

  But it was just the two of us out there on the wood chips.

  “You’re all alone, there’s no one to save you!” I screamed as I clawed the air in front of his face. I filled my voice to the last note with panic—my panic at seeing him, the panic I wanted him to feel. Made my eyes bug out large within the dark circles painted around them.

  His eyes widening too and never leaving my face, Brendan stumbled backwards, trying not to run.

  “Wow, your voice is really creepy. And effective. Seriously.”

  I stalked him, face to face, my fists now clenched tight at my sides.

  A horror geek like him would probably note in his review that my zombie was inconsistent—slow and monosyllabic one moment, then quick and erudite the next—but at least I was scaring him.

  He took a step onto the gravel of the parking lot, glanced down, and then smiled at me. “Looks like I’m safe, though.”

  “You’re not,” I growled.

  “Really? Because seems like I’m in the parking lot and out of your jurisdiction.”

  I stepped into the lot and swiped at him.

  “Aah!” he yelled, tripping backwards over his feet and falling down on the gravel.

  Standing over him, straddling him, I bent and tried to grab a fistful of his jacket—not technically allowed—but he squirmed and rolled away from me, got to his feet, and started sprinting in the parking lot, bobbing between the cars.