“That’s right,” Blake said.

The big stranger leered. “I’ll make sure you get what you came for. I’ll take you around, be certain you behave. You mustn’t touch anything.”

Dalton stepped closer to Cole. Jenna held hands with Chelsea.

“They call me Ham,” the man said, picking up the lantern. He reeked of dust and sweat. “Tonight I will guide you to terrors like you have never known. Sure you want to keep going?”

“The door is locked,” Dalton said weakly, twitching his chin toward the stairs.

Ham glared at Dalton. “Then you’d better stay with me.” The big man held the curtain aside. Blake led the way through. Cole and Dalton brought up the rear.

Cole was one of the shorter kids in his grade, as was Dalton. They barely came up to Ham’s chest. After they had moved beyond the curtain, Ham let it fall.

More dark curtains created a perimeter around the next space. Bones lay on the floor, some a little yellowed, some cracked or chipped. Human bones mingled with strange animal bones. To one side of the space rested a skull that was the size of a shopping cart and had a pair of thick broken tusks. It couldn’t be real. The giant skull didn’t match any animal Cole could picture, not even prehistoric ones. But it looked just as genuine as the other bones, which probably meant they were all fake.

Blake picked up what looked like an arm bone. “This feels realistic,” he said.

“Real as you are,” Ham replied.

“Run!” a young voice screamed, coming from somewhere behind the curtains to the left. “It’s almost too late. Run for it! This isn’t a—”

The voice was abruptly cut off.

Ham grinned. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. Pay it no mind.”

Dalton gave Cole a worried look. Cole had to admit the warning was a nice touch. It had sounded sincere. And Ham was unsettling. He seemed a little off—not very bright, big, creepy-looking, maybe not totally sane. He was the perfect pick to host a scary tour. Could he be a professional actor?

The curtains at the far side of the area parted, and a short swarthy woman emerged. She had a stocky build and wispy black whiskers above the sides of her mouth. Strands of gray highlighted her tangled black hair. Her clothes looked like layers of tattered rags.

“Last group,” the woman announced, her eyes on Ham. “Ansel wants to get gone.”

“Ansel is the boss,” Ham replied.

The woman turned her attention to the visitors. “You kids came here to be scared. What do you know of fear? What do you know about hardship? You come from a soft, fat world full of soft, fat communities that breed soft, fat children. What kind of world celebrates bleakness on its holidays? A world that knows no bleakness. A world where bleakness has become a novelty.”

“Is this going to be educational?” Blake sighed with despair.

The woman smiled. “I expect it might be very educational. You came here for thrills, boy, and thrills you will have.”

“I hope so,” Blake said. “These bones are about as scary as a museum.”

“If you had any sense, the bones would scare you plenty,” the woman said. “The bones are a warning. The bones are trophies. You came here to feel fear, and it is only fair you should be rewarded. Fear can be relative. What frightens one may not frighten another. Take this hunter roach, for example.”

She held up a mottled brown cockroach the size of a bar of soap. The roach squirmed and hissed, legs wriggling. A pair of long antennae swiveled and twitched. As she held it, the roach curled its head to repeatedly strike at her thumb.

“See it biting me?” the woman asked. “On the prairie, you either build up a tolerance to the venom, or you die. Would any of you care to hold it?”

Nobody volunteered.

The woman shrugged. “To you this critter might seem scary. And maybe it should, because its venom would burn and fester beneath your skin. Might even kill you. But to me it’s a snack.” She popped the cockroach into her mouth and chewed. Cole heard it crunching. Black juice dribbled from one corner of her lips. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, leaving a faint smeared stain. Cole glanced over at Dalton, who made a gagging face. Lacie and Sarah turned away, murmuring hysterically to each other. The woman’s eyes were on Blake. “Scared yet?”

“A little,” Blake admitted. “But that was more gross than scary.”

The woman gave a small smile. “You have no idea what lies beyond those curtains. You are all in quite a predicament. Would it scare you to know that your time in this world is over? Would it scare you to know that you will never see your families again? Would it scare you to know that all your plans and expectations for what your lives would hold became irrelevant when you walked down those stairs?”

“That isn’t funny,” Jenna said. “Halloween or not, you shouldn’t make those kinds of jokes.”

Cole agreed with Jenna. With those threats, the woman was crossing a line that should not be crossed. The locked door and the creepiness of Ham and the shouted warning and the eating of the bug were adding up in ways he didn’t like. They really might be in trouble. If it was all a trick, it was working.

The woman nodded. “You’re catching on. None of this is funny. You belong to us now. You kids want to be scared?” She raised her voice. “Time to pack up! Tear down the drapes! Let’s round up these stragglers and get gone!”

Many of the black curtains began to fall, torn down or hurled aside. Various men were revealed. A muscular redhead in a leather vest and buckskin trousers clutched a short metal rod. A pale, lanky man with white hair bared teeth that had been filed down to cruel triangles. A short Asian man in robes and a tightly wrapped turban held a net and a wooden pole. And a person with the head of a wolf and golden fur flexed fingers tipped with claws. If it was a costume, it was the best one Cole had ever seen.

A few other men were in view, but Cole found his attention straying past the grubby assortment of villains. His eyes went to the cages. Beyond the curtains, on both sides of the room, were cages packed with kids in Halloween costumes. The kids were seated, subdued, defeated.

Part of Cole still hoped this was all an elaborate hoax. If this was just part of the spook alley, then the creators had succeeded, because he felt certain that he and his friends were in genuine danger—that the men advancing on them were not actors in costumes, they were real criminals. The captives in the cages were definitely kids from the neighborhood. Cole recognized a few of them.