Haunt

Curtis Jams Makes a Friend - Part 1 of 2

Weekend One - Friday night, continued

September 16, 2022

POV: Seven Wonders Park

As a second-year screamster, Curtis Jams had a choice about where he worked in the Ghosts of London house. He'd done well last year and impressed the in-costume house manager Adam. So this year, when Adam assigned rooms, Curtis grabbed the Ouija Board room before anyone else could figure out what a sweet spot it was.

Ghosts of London was the second-oldest still-functioning haunted house at the park, after Vampire's Lair. Thematically, it was a bizarre mix, having gone through several iterations (it was steampunk once, Sherlock-Holmes-themed one year, and for a while, it was a story-house about Jack the Ripper). Now, it operated simply as a long series of gothic indoor and outdoor settings where people in ghost makeup lurked about under the idea that London, you know, had a lot of ghosts.

Here was what Curtis loved about Ghosts of London. First and foremost, there was the yellowshirt manager, Quarisma (pronounced "charisma" but inexplicably spelled with a Q), a beautiful and unapproachable Venus to Curtis's young heart. She had some tall stud boyfriend, Derrick the Slab, they called him, who was constantly enraging her. Each night Curtis heard her complaining to other young women that Derrick was such a dick and such a bastard while almost simultaneously declaring that she loved him passionately and that she "wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for Derrick."

When Curtis had asked his older sister Viv about this bizarre behavior, she'd asked, "How old is Quarisma?"

"About the same as me. Nineteen or twenty, I think." He'd never dared ask Quarisma her exact age. He could hardly think straight to speak to her, much less get personal.

Viv asked, "How hot is her boyfriend?"

"I don't know," Curtis had said defensively. "He's like six-four and has all this curly long hair. The costume department puts him in bull horns and lets him walk around wearing wide-open shirts to show off all his abdominal muscles. And the girls all act like idiots around him."

"So he's super hot."

"Yeah, he's super hot. Whatever."

Viv said, "You're not un-hot, yourself."

True, Curtis was a good-looking young man from a good-looking family; he had brilliant green eyes, dark hair, good clear skin, and beautiful cheekbones. Many quiet young introverts had harbored passionate crushes on him, which he knew nothing about. He saw himself as skinny and short, and talking to attractive women made him feel like a stammering moron. If super-hot was in his future, it hadn't landed on him yet, at least not so that Quarisma would notice. To his sister's compliment, he just shrugged.

Viv explained, "Quarisma doesn't love him passionately. He's just a sexy bad boy. She even gets turned on by being mad at him. Don't worry, it won't last. Guys like that are a little hard to pin down."

Curtis added glumly, "It's not like I'd be next on her list, anyway."

"You have to have some confidence, Curts," Viv insisted. "Women respond more to confidence than to looks; it's just that hot guys usually also have a lot of confidence."

The problem was that Quarisma was also hot, like a first-rate smoke show, and being anywhere near her made Curtis's brain seize up. At least Ghosts of London let him be nearby and gave him an excuse to interact with her.

The second thing Curtis loved about Ghosts of London was the Ouija Board Room because it was an excellent place for scares. Designed like an old-fashioned London parlor, it was precisely what the name implied. Some of the decorations here were remnants of the Sherlock Holmes year, including a violin case (empty) on the bookshelf and an elegant coat tree where the deerstalker cap might have hung. In the middle of the room was a table with a Ouija Board. The lighting was all fake golden candles (no way could they allow a genuine, open flame in a haunted house), and the room was in the right spot for dry ice fog to roll in from outside, creating a fantastic, haunted ambiance.