Haunt

Pickpocket Julie Makes a Deal - Part 1 of 2

Weekend One, Friday Night, Continued

September 16, 2022

POV: Seven Wonders Park

Pickpocket Julie knew this was the perfect night for a heist. The park's staff was preoccupied with one emergency after another, problems that spread like a fire throughout the park. Nobody would notice an extra yellowshirt in the offices. Out of her Haunt makeup and costume, few people even recognized Julie. It was a dramatic difference.

In Ghosts of London, she was the Belgravian Banshee, a female spirit whose horrid calls warn of an impending death in a house. Secretly, she called herself "Pickpocket Julie."

She loved to steal things. She liked to wander through Ghosts of London, grabbing things and stashing them in her full, sweeping satin dress of hidden pockets she had lovingly created. It was one of the few employee-created costumes the wardrobe department had approved for Haunt use - that's how good it was.

Julie learned to sew from her grandparents, both tailors, who had also shown her the value of a few craftily hidden pockets. Each night, when she returned to the locker room to change, she stopped in the restroom to empty her pockets into her shoulder bag. If it seemed like the heat was on and people had noticed missing items, it was easy enough to drop these things off in the trash on the way back. They'd never caught her - but it had been close. Adam seemed suspicious these days, but she didn't want to change houses. She loved being the Belgravian Banshee.

Anyway, Adam was distracted tonight, as was every manager. Crazy-town was going down. Weekend One was always chaotic, but this year? Two nights into the season, and already there were serious injuries, cops on the grounds, and Pickpocket Julie had even heard the rumors that a disease wraith had killed someone and that Cannibal had "fired" a zealous employee in Old Man Mueller's. Now Curtis Jams was hogging all the attention with some poltergeist apparition - which interested Julie quite a bit - and Adam only had eyes for the young man in the Ouija Board Room and whatever trouble was brewing there. She thought that mysteriously active planchette - which had started to spell her secret name - might need to find its way into one of her pockets. Perhaps tomorrow night.

Julie changed out of her dress and put on slacks and the sunflower yellow polo shirt she'd purchased to resemble the ones management wore. She'd looked for an opportunity to steal an authentic park uniform shirt, but God above, security was tighter for uniforms than cash drawers. This replica was good enough, though. Only close inspection would give it away as a fake.

Julie wiped the ghost makeup off her face and removed her long white wig and white costume contacts. She looked like any ordinary HR loser now.

Thus, Julie found herself in the nearly deserted employee square. "Nearly" deserted was key because being the only person there made her look suspicious - being one of a busy few made her fit right in.

A harried-looking yellowshirt zoomed by her. "Have you seen Tom?"

Julie adopted a look of exasperation. "I never know where that guy is!"

"Tell me about it," muttered the kid, rushing away.

Thus, she was free to poke around to her heart's content. She looked toward the locker room but disregarded it. No challenge and nothing much worth taking. During her first year at Haunt, the locker room was a treasure trove where people's stuff was easily up for grabs. She'd be the first to arrive at the night's end by feigning some 'medical' reason to leave the house early. Some people brought padlocks, but not everyone. It didn't matter if people reported stolen or broken property; there were no security cameras in the locker room. Hundreds of people went in and out every day. The staff had no choice but to use the locker room, as no others existed. The choice was either "suck it up" or "leave your shit in your car." Unless someone saw Julie do it, and no one ever saw her do it, she was home free.

Julie was perturbed that the most valuable item everyone consistently brought to work - their cellphones - were gathered and locked away daily. She could make a fortune off bummed phones if only the employees got to keep them on their persons. But for some reason, Seven Wonders, pretty lenient about many things, refused to let any employee keep a cell phone.

Once the locker room became dull, Julie upgraded to stealing from her haunted house. She swiped things from the guests and even her fellow Ghosts of London. The fog, darkness, and loud corridors of Victorian-themed obstacles made stealing simple. She nabbed a few decks of Magic The Gathering cards off that poor Curtis Jams, who was on her mind that night. Patrons to Ghosts of London couldn't shut up about his Ouija board tricks - and his fame had happened in a single night. She didn't like this at all; she was the star of Ghosts of London.

Two years ago, a new world opened for her. The Belgravian Banshee became a favorite with guests - they loved her wild, high-pitched scream, and her silver dress was a showstopper. Julie won Ghosts of London's Screamster of the Year award at the end of the season. Last year, she won again, even though she knew Adam didn't want to give it to her. He was jealous.

Winning this prize meant that Julie received more access to the park's power, which she honed with feverish intensity. Her favorite fabrication was a magic trick she considered woefully underutilized by the rest of the staff. With a touch, one could change the nature of an object from a replica to the real thing and vice versa. And they used this incredible power just to scare people in ridiculous haunted houses. Idiots, all of them.

If Curtis Jams got too popular with the Ouija board, he could take her title away. That would mean no power boost this year. She was so close to the dizzying power she could taste it. She'd either get that Ouija board trick for herself or ensure no one else could use it.

Last night, Pickpocket Julie scored the prize of her career. For an hour, she'd managed to get Quarisma's keyring. After lifting the keys off the distracted yellowshirt, Julie slipped back to her scaring spot. In the shadows of Banshee Alley, she retrieved a measuring tape from one of her dress's many hidden pockets and her Polaroid Instamatic camera from its hiding place underneath the gargoyle statue.

The camera, incidentally, was also stolen. She'd swiped the old Polaroid right out of a box in the props department backstage of the Colosseum, thinking it was just some amusing bit of technological archeology from the 1980s, and had been delighted to find it worked. And in fact, it worked perpetually as long as it was inside the park's boundaries. She'd never had to load film into it. It just kept taking pictures.

After dismantling the ring, she found the keys she wanted, all conveniently labeled. She laid out the measuring tape next to the keys and snapped pictures of them at different angles. This was marvelous - the flash on the camera looked like the strobe lights used throughout the park. No one noticed anything out of place. By the time Quarisma cried out in dismay that she'd lost her keys, Julie had tossed them onto the cement slab that made up the so-called "break area," where they were quickly found and returned.

All Pickpocket Julie needed was a few moments to work in the staff restrooms later. She took a sheet of thick cardboard from her back pocket and a small pair of scissors from her waist pocket. With a snip snip here and a cut cut there, she made herself an approximate replica of the staff keys. They shared the real keys' approximate shape and size.

She almost shook with excitement as she touched her crafted cardboard keys. While starting at the photographs she'd taken, she applied her skill, flexing the wish for fabrication in her mind's eye and pushing it to the cutout. In an instant, the cardboard grew heavy and metallic in her hands. She nearly jumped for joy.

The heist was on.

*****