“Maybe he’s not happy with this gig,” Trev added, flicking Peter Kane’s audio off.
“Of course he’s not happy with it,” Callum said, chewing frantically on his cigar, if only to keep himself awake for a little while longer. “No celebrity wants to be on these shows. It’s tantamount to admitting that you’re a failure. Who ever heard of a successful celebrity taking part in something so utterly offensive?”
“You’ve obviously never seen a James Franco movie,” Nev said. He laughed and fist-bumped his brother; it was all very juvenile.
“I think he’s asleep,” Derrick said.
“I’m not,” said Callum. “I was just resting my eyes.”
“No, the author,” Derrick said, jabbing a finger feverishly toward the screen. “Looks like he’s finally popped off to dreamland.” And he was right. Peter Kane appeared to be snoozing. At least, he’d stopped cursing the man responsible for him being there. Trev flicked the audio back on, and the room was filled with the sonorous rumbling of a man deep in slumber.
“Thank fuck for that,” Callum said, pushing himself up from the chair. “What about the T-day masturbator? She still begging God to act as some sort of midget-repellent?”
Trev pushed two buttons on the console – one to shut off the author’s snoring and the other to bring up the swimmer’s audio – and took a step back, listening carefully. Nev zoomed the camera in, focussing on Lorna Giffard’s face.
“Is she…what’s she doing?” Callum knew exactly what she was doing, for he knew what day it was, and he was pretty certain there wasn’t a T in it. “Oh, that’s just fan-fucking-tastic!” he said, slumping back down into his chair. “How long do you think she’s going to be going on with that nonsense for? I mean, Jeeeeeesus Christ, it’s not like we can show that sort of thing on the show? This isn’t Celebrity Anal Beads.”
“I don’t think she’ll be at it for long,” Derrick said, wishing he was alone in the tent in that moment, just him and the monitors. Maybe he could ask for a copy of the tape later? It wasn’t every day you saw an Olympian doing…things to themselves, not unless you counted that time Usain Bolt’s sex-tape leaked, surprising everyone with just how well he managed to pace himself.
“Well, if she’s not done in ten minutes,” Callum said, yearning for his bed and yet finding himself strangely aroused by the antics taking place on the screen before him, “we’re sending in the rats anyway. I’ve had enough for one day, and we’ve got more than enough footage to be going on with for tomorrow’s first-day-in-the-house catch-up.”
And so they waited, uncomfortably, while Lorna Giffard took care of herself and Peter Kane drifted deeper and deeper into the arms of Morpheus.
*
Peter walked through the house – stumping his toes on the furniture – which was about as familiar to him as the people sleeping innocently in their respective rooms. At first he didn’t know what he was looking for. A toilet, perhaps? But his bladder was empty, for he hadn’t drunk as much as the other housemates. It wasn’t, he thought, good form to get tanked on the first night, though by midweek he expected he would be guzzling as much as he could get his hands on, just to get through this fucking thing.
So he wasn’t searching for a lavatory, which meant he was up and about for some other purpose. Had he lost his mind? Was this how it happened? You go to bed just fine and then, while you slept, your brain said, “Fuck you!” and you woke up naked on the motorway, swinging a rubber chicken and defecating on the police-officers as they grappled you to the tarmac?
Peter didn’t feel insane. The fact that he was questioning his sanity meant that he wasn’t (probably) losing his marbles. It was, he knew, the ones who didn’t notice anything different that were usually cuckoo.
“So where the fuck am I off to?” Peter said, once again clobbering his little toe against something inflexible. He felt his digits separate, and knew that there would be a right bloody bruise there in the morning.
Down the hallway he went, past the room containing the little person, past the old lady with the monochrome photograph dress, past the one-eyed Playboy Bunny, past the lisping boxer who had never won a bout in his life.
God, we’re a right bunch of losers, he thought. He’d doubted his credibility before, but nothing like this. Things had really taken a turn for the worse. Keep thinking about the money, he told himself, but he knew he was no longer interested in the money. Something far more important was about to happen.
At the end of the hallway, when all the doors ran out, Peter sighed deeply and turned his eyes to the ceiling. There, a dark aperture stared down at him like a yawning mouth. A mouth belonging to Hathaway House. A mouth the urged him to climb into it, to climb up and allow himself to be wholly devoured. He was drawn to it, though there was no real rhyme or reason for it. He had never really had strange urges towards lofts. They were, after all, just places to stuff the Christmas tree for the other 353 days a year; a home for all the unwanted clothes, books, and crockery that you will never use again, but can’t bring yourself to throw out.
This loft, though, was important. There was more than just broken CDs and old toilet brushes up there. There was something Peter needed to do, to find.
He jumped up, grabbed onto and pulled down the ladder, which clattered down like a Transformer having an epileptic fit. The last thing he wanted was to wake up his housemates, and so he was relieved when nothing in the house stirred. He made a mental note to be more cautious moving forward.
Up he went into the darkness, gripping the ladder with white-knuckled intensity. It was cold up here, noticeably chillier than the first floor. That was the thing with lofts: they were either muggy, the kind of place you could quite happily rear a tropical gecko, or absolutely freezing, the kind of place you could stuff a penguin for safekeeping. As he climbed to his feet, Peter searched the darkness for Happy Feet.
“Not far to go now, writer,” said a voice that Peter didn’t recognise. “To your left.”
“Who are you?” Peter said. “What the bleeding hell am I doing up here?”
There was a slight pause, and then the voice said, “You’re a nosey one, aren’t you? Just get the flipping gun, go downstairs, and shoot them all.”
Well that, Peter thought, was not a normal request. “Gun?” said Peter. “What bloody gun? And, I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but shooting people is a crime in this country. I’m not too keen on the idea.”
“This is only a dream,” said the voice. “You can get away with it in your dreams, and I know you want to shoot them all, because I can hear your thoughts. Trust me, everything’s above board. Blow their faces off in the dream, and then make them toast in the morning. You’ll feel better for it.”
Peter didn’t trust the voice. There was something about it, something…taunting. It was the voice of someone without feeling, a politician, perhaps, or one of those people that convince you to upgrade your TV package, even though you’re quite happy with the fifteen-hundred channels you already get.
“I don’t want to shoot anyone,” Peter said, picking up the shotgun he found at the edge of the attic. It was heavy – far heavier than one would expect from a metaphysical dream gun. “I have nothing against any of the people in here, other than the fact that they’re all a bit whiney. We’re all in the same boat, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to shoot any of them.”
“Oh, but you are!” said the voice. “You’re going to shoot them all! Have you not seen The Shining? Do you not know how this works?”
“I have seen The Shining,” Peter said, lowering the shotgun. “I thought it was okay. Nicholson was fantastic, but I didn’t like the scene with the old lady in room 237, and I wasn’t keen on Duvall’s performance. Thought she was very screamy, if you know what I mean—“
“I know exactly what you mean,” said the voice, “but that’s neither here nor there. I’m going to use you like a puppet, do you understand me? I am going to murder these people, and you�
��re going to take the blame. You shouldn’t be here! None of you! And for what? Entertainment? Fuck entertainment! Back in my day, we were lucky if we got to watch I Love Lucy or The Ed Sullivan Show. You should be ashamed of yourselves!”
“Oh I always am,” Peter said, placing the gun back in the corner, where he’d found it. “But I’m not a murderer, and this is some sort of odd dream from which I will wake any moment.”
“That might be so,” said the voice, “but that doesn’t make me any less real. I have been watching you all night, and out of everyone, you are the only one capable of doing what I ask of you. You remind me of Michael Landon, by the way. Has anyway ever told you that?”
Peter grinned, for Michael Landon was a handsome bastard. “Actually, I’ve never heard that one before,” he said. “Michael Landon? Really? Hang on, are we talking Bonanza Michael Landon or Highway to Heaven Michael Landon?”
“What difference does it make?” asked the voice, somewhat irritably.
“About twenty years, for a start,” Peter said. “And anyway, how do you know about Michael Landon? Any ghost in this house should be from the late 50’s.”
“I saw ‘I Was a Teenage Werewolf’,” said the voice. “Right before I strangled Rose with a belt and took the heads off my daughters.”
Suddenly, Peter wanted to be anywhere other than the loft. It was amazing how quickly a conversation could go from Michael Landon to murder; Peter hadn’t expected such a sudden shift in tone.
“Am I talking to Roger Hathaway?” he said, backing away from the gun, moving toward the square of light that meant his escape from this dratted place. “Is that who you profess to be?”
“I do more than profess it,” said the voice. “I am Roger Hathaway, and whether you like it or not, you will be my Jack Torrance. You will murder everyone in this house, whether you like it or not.”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t think so, me old bumchum,” he said. “I’m not overly keen on these people, but I don’t feel the need to kill them. Not yet, at least. You might have been a bit of a scoundrel, what with killing your entire family and whatnot, but we’ve developed some new stuff since the 1950s, and one of those things is Prozac. I’m on 40mg of the stuff, which prevents me from killing anyone I find annoying. It’s a remarkable thing, really. You should try some.”
Roger Hathaway’s disembodied voice grunted. “You will kill for me, writer. You will do as I tell you, for none of you are leaving this house without my say-so.”
“Said the dream voice,” Peter said. “Come on. I mean, really, I’m going to wake up in a minute, and when I do I’m going to give myself a jolly good slap for tolerating you for far longer than was necessary.” He arrived at the opening in the floor, and was about to step down onto the ladder when the voice said something that stopped him in his tracks.
“You will die in here!” it screeched. “All of you will die! Mark my words! Leave now, writer, for things are about to get very evil. I will go all Amityville on your bottom! You’ll wish you never set foot in this house! You’ll…hang on a minute, have you gone?”
Roger stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and pushed them back up into the loft. He had never heard such nonsense in all his life, and he’d once attended a Slam Poetry event.
He was halfway down the hallway, and away from the disembodied voice and the loft, when a shrill scream—
*
—woke him up. He was, of course, in the very same bed he had fallen asleep in, which meant that he had been right all along. The loft, the voice, the gun, none of it had been real. The scream, however, had been very real. A few seconds later, it came again, and Peter fell from the bed, rolled around in the dark for a moment, and then clambered to his feet.
Out on the hallway, all hell was breaking loose as celebrities emerged from their rooms. Doors creaked and slammed, floorboards whined and cracked, and Dawn Clunge said something about “almost having a bloody coronary thanks to that fucking swimmer!”
The lights all came up at once, which was marvellous as Peter hadn’t a clue where he’d put the torch. He rushed out through his bedroom door – realised he was wearing nothing but a pair of white briefs – rushed back into his room and pulled on his trousers before rushing out again.
“What the hell is going on?” he said to the gathered throng of celebrities. He didn’t know the collective noun for Z-listers, but gang didn’t sound quite right, and he didn’t feel comfortable, in that moment, referring to them as a murder.
“She says she woke up to find a rat sodomising her ear,” said Dawn Clunge, pointing at Lorna Giffard.
“I’m telling the truth!” gasped Lorna. “It was there on my pillow, giving my ear a damn good seeing to!”
Peter held placatory hands up. He’d only just noticed that Victor Hoof was completely starkers, leaning against the doorframe of his room. If anything was going to set Lorna off even more, it was the sight of the little person’s not-so-little dangly bits. “This is a very old house,” he said. “There are bound to be rats and things scuttling about in its walls.”
“Peter’th right,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t be thurprithed if they’ve put ratth in here on purpothe. Nobody liketh ratth. Or thpiderth. Ratth and thpiderth and thothe little worm thingth that live inthide dead people.”
“Maggots?” Mark White said.
“Them’th the oneth,” Frank said.
Just then a rat emerged from Lorna Giffard’s room, regarded the celebrities with what seemed like absolute disgust before scampering off along the hallway, bouncing off the skirting-board as it went. Lorna screeched again, which in turn caused Michaela to scream and Victor Hoof’s scrotum to shrivel up.
“Can we all just calm down?” Peter said. “Did you honestly think this was going to be a walk in the park? So they’ve put some rats in the house with us. Yawn. They’re just rats. Probably tame rats, too, since they’re hardly going to leave us in here with a bunch of rabid rodents. Their insurance wouldn’t cover it. You’re screaming” – he was talking to Lorna now – “about a rat that’s probably a class pet for the rest of the year.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Lorna shuddered. “It wasn’t skull-fucking you, was it?”
“I’m going back to bed,” Victor Hoof said, scratching his arse as he turned to head back into his room. “I suggest you all do the same. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.” He shut the door, and a few seconds later could be heard jumping up and down on his bed. So it was true; little people loved to bounce.
“I’m not going to sleep a wink now,” Lorna said, wrapping her wafer-thin arms around herself. “Will someone stay up with me?”
“I’d love to,” said Mark White, “but I’ll be a grumpy fucker all day tomorrow if I don’t get my eight hours. Hope the rapey rat doesn’t come back for you, though.” He winked, flashed everyone his impossibly-white gnashers, and then disappeared into his room.
“People actually like that guy?” Crystal Cobb said, stifling a yawn. “I, too, will have to give it a miss, though. Since I only have one eye, it means I have to have twice the amount of sleep as everyone else.” She shambled along the hallway to her room, nonchalantly waving across her shoulder as she went.
“Frank?” Lorna said – almost pleaded. “You don’t strike me as the type of guy that relies on beauty sleep. Will you stay up with me, just until I get the taste of that rat out of my ear?”
Frank Henry shrugged. “I would,” he said, in a tone that suggested he wouldn’t, not even if he wanted to. “I have this condithion, though. I got punched in the head tho much ath a profetthional fighter that, after dark, I find it hard to remain conthiouth. The doctorth call it TKO Thyndrome, thomething like that. It taketh a lot of work for me not to…” He trailed off as his legs gave way beneath him and he slumped to the floor, already snoozing.
“I have to admit,” Peter said, glancing down at the twitching, sleeping body of Frank Henry, “that I did not see that coming. Who wants to help me throw th
is bison into his bed?” Dawn Clunge, Michaela Strapon, and Lorna Giffard all seemed to consider volunteering, then, after taking a good look at the pile of bulk and sinew slumped on the landing, thought better of it. “Well, I guess he’ll sleep where he fell, then,” Peter said. “I suggest everyone goes to bed. I will sit up with Lorna, just in case the rampant rat returns.”
Lorna sighed – and sobbed a little – with relief. “Oh! Thank you! Thank you so much, what’s your name again?”
“It’s Peter,” Peter said, wondering if it was too late to retract his offer. “Peter Kane.”
“Of course it is,” Lorna said. “Well, you heard the man. Everyone go to bed. I’ll be fine. I’ve got Philip Kane looking after me.”
Peter shook his head and did some sighing of his own.
“Night-night, then,” Dawn said, heading down the hallway to her room. She was still wearing that strange photograph-dress, though now she’d converted it into some sort of rudimentary nightie.
“And if you see any more rats,” said Michaela, “do us all a favour and keep your screaming to an acceptable level. I’ve got a banging headache, and I don’t think they’re going to be providing us with Anadin.”
A minute later and Peter was alone with Lorna, unsure of what to do or say. He really needed to sleep, but this woman was clearly terrified, and it wasn’t every day you got rogered in the head by a rat. Peter could see why she was a little perturbed.
“Let’s go downstairs,” Peter said. “I think I saw a tin kettle on the hob. Might be able to knock together a couple of hot drinks.”
And along the hallway and down the stairs they went, and Peter, who didn’t know how much of this little event was going to be broadcast come tomorrow, couldn’t help but notice the loft-hatch as they passed beneath it, and though it was no longer open – nor had it been for a very long time – he couldn’t help but feel there was something up there that the house wanted to show him.
Celebrity Hell House Page 8