“Yeah!” said Lorna. “They made a film out of it with that guy who played The Joker and that Native American from Poltergeist 2.”
“Wha…no not One Flew Over the…the other one…never mind.” Peter was dumbstruck, which was perhaps for the best.
After a few moments of silence, Lorna closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Nice, this, isn’t it?”
Peter frowned, for he had no idea to what she was referring. Sitting in an apparently haunted house? Starring in some bullshit reality show for a channel that only aired the programmes ITV1 through 6 didn’t want? Spending time with complete strangers, many of whom were clearly not the full ticket? No, as far as Peter could see there was nothing nice about any of it.
“Lovely,” Peter said, standing and walking over to a promising-looking bureau. A miniature would do, something – anything – to wet his whistle, so to speak. It was so easy to forget that their every movement was being recorded by myriad hidden cameras, but in that moment, Peter suddenly remembered, and scanned this new room for flashing red dots, anything that whirred.
Were they live right now? If not, would this footage make the final cut for tomorrow’s show? God, he hoped not. His conversation with Lorna thus far had been tentative, to say the least, and not at all the kind of thing the viewing public wanted to see.
What they wanted to see was romance, conflict, hatred, lust, confrontation, racism, misogyny, feminism, kneecapping, pistol-whipping, kissing, licking, massaging, Chinese-burning, and as many dust-ups as you could fit in a one-hour show.
“Have you ever had a Chinese burn?” Peter said, without turning from the bureau, for it contained hidden treasure, a veritable feast of fine spirits. If only he could find the fucking key!
“Not since I was a kid,” Lorna said, slightly taken aback by the absurd question.
“Yeah, me neither,” Peter said. “Ah! Here it is!” The key had been buried beneath a stack of brown, mouldy papers sitting atop the bureau. It was cold and rusty, but turned easily enough in the keyhole.
“What are you looking for?” Lorna said, tucking her legs in and pulling herself into a tight ball in an effort to keep warm. It was cold in the sitting room. Breath crystalized in the air in front of their faces, though neither had noticed.
Peter lowered the bureau door. Unsurprisingly, it creaked like a pair of geriatric porn-stars. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’ll know it when I see it.” Because it will be in a bottle, shrouded with cobwebs and at least half a century old. The bureau, however, didn’t contain anything of the sort. Old newspapers were stacked one on top of the other. The Forest News, The Gloucestershire Echo, The Gloucester Journal, all crispy with age, all stinking to high heaven. They were probably worth something to the right person; Peter knew a guy over in Leicester who paid good money for old issues of The Tory Times, which meant there was a dickhead out there for every old bit of published tat.
“It says here,” Peter said as a headline caught his eye, “that the Queen’s Coronation Ceremony will be taking place this Tuesday in Westminster Abbey.”
“Really?” Lorna said. “Oh, shoot, we’ll still be in here on Tuesday. We’re going to miss it.”
Peter didn’t know what to say, and so he remained silent, stuffed the newspapers back from whence they came, and closed the creaky bureau door, hoping that the smell dissipated relatively quickly. “Who do you think is going to win this thing?” It was, he thought, a half-decent question, and much better than yet another awkward silence.
“Well, I think that handsome bastard will get the women’s vote,” Lorna said. “And the one-eyed Bunny will get the men’s vote.”
“Even though she’s got a huge fucking hole in the front of her face?” Peter said. For him, that was something of a deal-breaker. Again, his associate in Leicester liked nothing more than deformities of the phizog, but not him. No, Peter liked his women with both eyes – preferably pointing in the same direction.
“She’s still beautiful,” Lorna said, yawning. “You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire.”
Peter snorted. “I tend to look at the mantelpiece if one of my picture-frames has fallen onto the floor.” It was as good an analogy as any.
“Sometimes the underdog wins,” Lorna added, the sole purpose of her words to offer Peter a modicum of hope, for if he wasn’t the underdog, he didn’t have a clue who was. “The general public like nothing more than some bloke they’ve never heard of.”
“People have heard of me,” Peter muttered. At least two of his books were in the British Library system, and at least fifteen people had taken them out last year. One of them had even liked Razorjack Aquarium so much that they’d failed to return it to the library. That’s a true fan, he thought.
“What I’m trying to say is that oftentimes—”
“There’s a word you don’t hear enough of,” Peter interrupted, then settled down into his armchair with a huff.
“Oftentimes, viewers vote for the ones they’re closest to. Mark White might be preternaturally sexy, but is he real? Is he the kind of guy regular people hang around with? I mean, he’s a proper celebrity, and he has the teeth to prove it.”
“Ah,” Peter said. “I get it. So what you’re saying is that I have working-class teeth, and the viewers are going to love that because we probably share the same dentist.”
“You’re like one of them; an ordinary Joe, only with a bit of celeb in you. You’re as close to non-celeb as you can be without actually being one.”
Was there a compliment in there somewhere? Peter dug and dug and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t. And yet he’d taken it like a champ, and from someone whose main claim to fame was that she could swim on her front and back at a half-decent pace.
“You remember that time Bjork won Celebrity Mental Case?”
“I do,” Peter said, unsure of where this was going. “It was between her and Dennis Rodman in the final.” It had been an awful show, with padded bedrooms and scenes of graphic electrolysis. Surprising how Channel 5 managed to get away with that one.
“No one knows any other Bjork song other than that one where she whispers and then shouts.”
“It’s Oh So Quiet!” Peter said.
“Exactly! Name another.”
Peter couldn’t.
“But she won anyway, because she was the underdog.” Lorna smiled wonkily; Peter wondered whether the poor girl had ever suffered a stroke. “You’re the Bjork in this house, and it might just work in your favour.”
“Hmmm,” Peter said. Maybe Lorna was right. Perhaps he did have a better chance of winning than he thought. If Bjork can fucking do it…
For the next hour they bullshitted back and forth. Lorna taught Peter how to hold his breath for longer than twenty seconds, which he was extremely proud of, and Peter taught Lorna the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, a rule she told him she would never use for as long as she lived. It was, Peter thought, quite a nice way to spend an hour. Lorna was a lovely lady, as long as you were above four foot tall, and Peter found her very easy to talk to, which was remarkable as the last woman he’d conversed with had threatened to call the police.
In the hallway the grandfather clock raucously ticked off the seconds, and before Peter knew it, Lorna had curled up into a ball and fallen asleep.
He climbed from the armchair and glanced around. There, in the corner, was an old sheet, and so Peter made his way toward it as quietly as he could and pulled it from whatever it covered – which happened to be an old gramophone. After covering Lorna with the sheet (a bit of dust never hurt anyone) he returned to the gramophone.
He’d always been a huge fan of vinyl and old records. As far as he was concerned, music didn’t sound quite the same if it wasn’t jumping and scratching every few seconds. And this gramophone, with its nickel-plated horn and mahogany base, looked as if it could destroy any record placed upon its turntable.
But there were no records in the vicinity, whi
ch sort of defeated the point in owning such a beautiful-but-archaic piece of equipment.
Upon closer inspection, though, Peter discovered there was a record already in place. Well-worn and tattered at the edges, the label identified the record as “Kilima Waltz” by Lani McIntire and his Aloha Islanders.
“Never heard of ‘em,” Peter whispered. Over on the other side of the room, Lorna stirred, muttered something about cheese-on-toast, then snored once again. Peter smiled, and would have continued to smile if a sudden hissing noise hadn’t come from behind. His heart leapt up into his throat, almost choking him on the spot, as he spun around to find the turntable spinning, the gramophone’s needle dragging itself across the grooved surface of the record.
The music began, and it would have been pleasant in other circumstances – a Hawaiian lullaby that reminded Peter of palm trees, coconuts, and those colourful Lei necklaces hula-dancers wore.
“…fucking…volume…knob…” Peter frantically searched for the dial that would turn the music down. Then he remembered that it was a record, and all he had to do was lift the needle. He did so, and turned to check that Lorna’s snooze hadn’t been interrupted. Their conversation had been nice – fun in places, even – but the last thing he wanted was another two hours of it.
Lorna was still fast asleep; Peter sighed with relief.
How had the gramophone started to play of its own accord? For a moment, Peter toyed with the idea of real ghosts, but then remembered where he was, that the whole house was no doubt rigged to terrify, that all it would take was a flick of a switch, some clever engineering, and one of the most beautifully-haunting arrangements to ever come out of Hawaii, and you had yourself a jolly good scare prank.
“Bastards,” Peter muttered, removing the record from the turntable and placing it carefully down on the side. If the gramophone was rigged as one of the house scares, it wouldn’t be half as effective without the LP.
He turned from the gramophone and almost screamed out loud when his eyes fell upon the gossamer girl standing in the centre of the room. No more than twelve, she stared back at him with wide, black-circled eyes, her mouth nothing more than a thin slit in the front of her face, and below that, carved into her neck, was another, much darker slit. Her clothes reminded Peter of Little House on the Prairie, and it was strange to see a girl of her age dressed as such in this era of tank-tops, halter-necks, and skin-tight jeggings.
For the longest time Peter simply stood there, flabbergasted and terrified, watching the girl, trying to blink her away as if she was some sort of creepy oasis. When he realised that she wasn’t – no matter how hard he tried – going away, a sudden realisation washed over him.
She was a hologram!
A digital effigy, beamed into the room via some hi-tech projector. This was nothing more than one of Celebrity Hell House’s many tricks. Peter had to admit, it was pretty fucking clever, for he couldn’t see the source of the projection, and the girl didn’t flicker or falter once. He still loathed technology, but in the right hands, it could be a beautiful thing.
Might as well talk to the fucking thing, Peter thought. Lorna was still comatose in her chair. So long as he kept his voice down, he doubted she would wake.
Peter imagined what the former swimmer would do if she should open her eyes to discover the ghost (holographic projection) of a little girl standing not three feet away. There would, of course, be much screaming, and much panicking, and probably lots of running. It really didn’t bear thinking about.
“We have to be really quiet,” Peter told the semi-limpid adolescent. Immediately he felt silly. It was like talking to an imaginary friend, or worse, a real friend. “We can’t wake the nice lady. She’s had a very stressful day, and I don’t think she’d cope too well if she copped onto you.”
The apparition frowned and tilted her head slightly to the left. Peter had seen this look before, mainly on confused dogs. It meant that she didn’t understand.
“You’re really amazing,” Peter said, walking slowly toward the shimmering lass. Her eyes never left his. “I’m not lying. If you had pulled this stunt on anyone else, you’d have had a riot on your hands.” He ran a hand through the air, attempting to cut off the projector beam that was delivering her into the room. When he didn’t find it, he became even more intrigued. “So which one are you supposed to be?” he said. “I can see you’ve had your head chopped off at some point, which makes you one of the daughters, doesn’t it?”
The girl’s frown deepened.
“What was it again? Veronica and, erm, Belle! Yes, you must be…Veronica!”
The girl shook her head. This meant, Peter surmised, that the girl was interacting with him live, perhaps from one of the studio tents at the bottom of the hill, maybe from some unknown or cordoned-off room of the house.
Remarkable!
Truly astounding! Peter hadn’t expected such effort to go into this dumb programme. Maybe it wasn’t going to be an utter waste of time, after all.
“So if you’re not Veronica,” Peter said, “then that makes you Belle?”
The girl nodded.
“Marvellous! So I suppose it was you that lowered the needle on the gramophone?”
She nodded again. It made perfect sense that she couldn’t speak. If the actress was at the bottom of the hill, doing her thing (and very good at it she was, too) then any sound might betray her performance. Better to creep out the housemates in complete silence.
“I have to admit,” Peter said, leaning in to the girl, “you almost had me with that music. Was not expecting it at all. Very clever. Not as clever as you, though. You’re like something beamed out the front of a droid’s head, only much better. Less static, if you know what I mean. I suppose technology has come a long way since Star Wars.”
The girl’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Then, a darkness began to pour from her lips, and Peter took a step back, watching, trying to figure out what was going on.
“Fantastic!” he gasped, trying to keep his voice down. “Those are real cockroaches! How is that even possible?” The roaches dropped from the girl’s impossibly life-like mouth, landed on the floor, chitinous shells clattering against the bare wood, hundreds of tiny feet clicking and clacking as the insects scuttled away. “Well, I didn’t know ITV7 had such a budget. I, for one, am totally impressed. And you,” he said, running a hand through the girl’s semi-translucent torso, “are a fantastic little actress. Have I seen you in something before? You look awfully familiar. Perhaps Casualty? The Bill?”
Then he realised that his hand was cold, almost frozen, a result of touching the digital entity?
“How did they do that?” he said, staring down at his hand, which he could barely feel now. “I mean, that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
The cockroach sitting upon his shoulder seemed to nod in agreement.
Suddenly, Peter felt the urge to wake Lorna, to see what she thought of the apparition, but he knew that was out of the question, for Lorna was the scream-first-ask-questions-later kinda gal.
The girl, Belle, turned her head up to the ceiling, as if she had heard something that Peter hadn’t. For a few seconds she simply stood there, her neck wide open at the gash. Dark, thick blood trickled down her dress, turning everything it touched a deep crimson.
To be quite honest, Peter wanted to leave. He’d had enough of this charade. Yes, the little girl ghost was a touch of genius, but there was only so much gore you could take in one sitting. Just because he wrote about this stuff for a living didn’t mean he wanted to witness it first-hand.
The girl turned her attention back to Peter, but now a tremulous finger pointed toward the ceiling.
“Yeah, it’s a lovely chandelier, isn’t it?” Peter said. “Edwardian, if I’m not mistaken. I’d love one, but you can’t get the bulbs for them anymore.”
The girl shook her head and mouthed something. It was “East Dumming,” or “In Tummy”, something like that, anyway.
“I’m sorry?
” Peter said. “I don’t speak mute ghost girl.”
“For fuck’s sake,” said the little girl, planting both hands on her hips in a manner that suggested she wasn’t too impressed with having to break her silence. “What is it with you pricks? Do you have to have everything spelt out for you?”
Peter was once again taken aback. “You can talk!” he said. “Well I never. Do me a favour though, and keep your voice down, yeah? If she wakes up” – he poked a finger toward the sleeping Lorna Giffard – “we’ll be up all bloody night!”
“I said,” said the girl, “he’s coming.”
“Who’s coming?” Peter said, for he hadn’t a bleeding clue what she was prattling on about.
“Who do you think?” said the girl. “Pater. Father. Pop. Pappy. My old man. My creator. He who almost spunked me onto the kitchen floor. Dad. Papa—”
“Oh!” Roger said. “You mean Roger Hathaway!”
“That’s the bastard, yeah,” said the girl, crossing her arms. “Lopped our heads right off while we slept, he did. We’ve been stuck here ever since, wandering the rooms, bored shitless.”
“And Roger Hathaway is upstairs right now?” Peter said. He hoped the cameras were picking all of this up; it would make for fantastic viewing on tomorrow night’s show. Like the time Brigitte Nielsen went mental on Celebrity Deer Hunt and killed two deer, four runners, a squirrel, and three cameramen with a Browning T-Bolt.
“He’s going to kill all of you,” said the girl. “You can’t stop him. He’s absolutely off his head. And when he’s done killing you, Veronica and I are going to spend the next kajillion years reliving that awful night.” She swooned like some Southern American actress trying way too hard to win a role. “It’ll be like The Ed Sullivan Show. On and on and on and on and on and on—”
“As much as I’d love to stand here, chatting all night, I really do need to get my head down.” Peter could feel, just behind his eyes, the onset of a particularly nasty migraine. Maybe it was a side-effect of staring at such a magnificent projected image for so long. Perhaps the day had simply been too much for him, both mentally and physically. Either way, he was cream-crackered, and the sooner this false ghost – for that was what she was, of course – pissed off, the better.
Celebrity Hell House Page 10