“Anything going on?” Trev emerged from the side-tent, yawning and wiping his spectacles on the front of his boxer shorts.
Nev sighed. “Absolutely nothing,” he said. “I think the rats have all eaten one another, or got bored of watching this lot fucking sleep and eaten themselves.”
Trev plunged into his chair, which threatened to collapse underneath him. “First night’s always a slow one on these things,” he said. “You know that. We like to lull them into a false sense of security and then BAM!”
“Fuck’s sake!” said Noddy, climbing to his feet. “Yaw’m tekkin the piss.”
“Sorry Noddy,” Trev said, though he wasn’t. To his brother, he whispered, “Things will be more exciting tomorrow. Once the fun and games start you won’t be able to take your eyes off those monitors.”
Nev nodded. “I hope so,” he said. “Because I haven’t been this bored since Celebrity SuDoko Wars.”
20
“What the fuck just happened?” Lorna Giffard was back on her feet, though about as steady as a one-legged bar stool.
Peter scratched his head and slowly made his way along the hallway to the front door. “I don’t get it,” he said. He dropped to his knees and scooped up a handful of what looked like dust. “I don’t get it,” he reiterated, to prove just how much he didn’t get it. “One minute he was here, the next…” He looked down at the mound of dust in his hands. Nestled in amongst it was something small and silver. It looked like a filling, but Mark White’s teeth were the epitome of perfection, at least on the surface.
“Oh my God!” Lorna said as she crawled closer and saw what Peter was holding. “Is that Mark’s filling?”
Peter shrugged. “Did he have one?” He still couldn’t get his head around it.
Lorna began to sob. “I read a piece in Closer a few months ago…it was…it was his only filling…they made a big deal of it…oh, fuck, Peter, what the hell is going on here!?”
Peter, realising that he was holding the remains of a former housemate, dropped the mound of dust and frantically wiped the remainder on his trouser-leg. For some reason, he kept hold of the filling. “Something’s not right,” he said, which was up there in the same understatement category as “Mel Gibson’s not too keen on Jews” and “Houston, we have a problem”.
Lorna somehow managed to climb to her feet. “Close the door!” she gasped, motioning to the outside world, which was so close and yet might as well have been on the other side of the world. After what had just happened to Mark White, it was clearly a bad idea to try to leave.
Peter eased the door shut with his outstretched leg. When it clicked into place, blocking out the stars and the moon and the studio lights at the foot of the hill, he sighed with relief.
“What the hell ith going on down here?” said a voice, and both Peter and Lorna started. Frank Henry was standing at the bottom of the stairs wearing a pair of Union Jack boxer shorts; his name was embroidered on them in large golden letters. He looked as if he was about to go into battle against Ivan Drago. Despite the fact that he couldn’t box for toffee, he was built like a brick shithouse. It was difficult for Peter to comprehend that the two of them were the same age, though he imagined there was much more to Frank “Brittlejaw” Henry’s diet than just meat and vitamins.
“Mark White just exploded,” Lorna sobbed. It was all she could do to stay on her feet.
Dawn Clunge slowly made her way down the stairs, curlers in her hair, make-up smeared across her face, and still wearing that stupid photograph dress. “Darlings, is any of this necessary?” she said, yawning like a hippo to reveal nothing but gums. “If you hadn’t noticed I am ninety years old, and one thing that becomes apparent when you reach my age is that every single, solitary fucking second of beauty sleep counts.”
“Mark White jutht exthploded,” Frank told her, but there was something about the way he said it that told Peter he didn’t believe it himself.
“He’s a young, sterile man,” Dawn said, draping herself over the bannister like a taxidermy sloth. “I’m sure he’ll clean up after himself.”
Before Peter could get to his feet, Lorna was storming across the hallway. “No,” she said, angrily. “He tried to leave the house. He was all messed up and…and bloody… like he’d been beaten about the head with a double-ended dildo…and…and he tried to run out of here…and—” That was as far as she managed to get before the tears cut her off. Peter walked up behind her and stroked her shoulders.
“He tried to leave,” Peter said, “and then…I don’t know what happened but something happened, there was this fucking huge light…and…and then he wasn’t there anymore. It was like he just vanished into thin air.”
“Don’t be so absurd, dear,” Dawn said, sleepily making her way off the bottom step. “People don’t just vanish into thin air. Well, not unless you’re Amelia Earheart or that bespectacled guy from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”
“Yeah, whatever happened to that guy?” Frank asked, scratching at his balls. “One minute he wath hanging with the ghothtbuthterth, and then—”
“Look, a man just fucking died right here and all you care about is what happened to Rick Moranis? Don’t you think that’s a little fucked up?” Peter was angry – angrier than he had been in a long while, although he was a little intrigued about the whole Rick Moranis thing. He made a mental note to follow up on that later, if he should survive the night.
“What do you mean ‘a man died here’?” said Dawn. “I thought you said he simply vanished, and if I’m not mistaken there is a distinct difference between the two.”
Peter pointed to the dust in front of the door. “When he tried to leave, there was the flash, and then there was just that dust. I think…somehow… something…” He was at a loss for words, which was understandable in that moment, even for a guy who made a living from them.
“You think,” said Dawn, “that as Mark White tried to leave this house, he somehow disintegrated? Became dust?”
Peter nodded and pulled Lorna into a hug, for she was utterly distraught and unlikely to be much use for the foreseeable future. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Frank Henry sat his hulking mass down at the bottom of the stairs. Creeeeeeeaaaaaaaak! “Maybe they’re playing with uth,” he said. “Yeah, that’th what thith ith! Thome kind of game. That’th why we’re in here. People don’t jutht dithintegrate, not without good reathon.” He stood once again, moved across the room to where Peter stood with Lorna. “Thith ith all in the name of entertainment,” he said, though he sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as well as Peter. “Maketh great TV, uth lot thtanding here, debating the lawth of phythics and the thad and untimely dithappearanthe of one of the funnietht men ever to come out of America.”
“You think this is all part of the show?” Peter said, incredulous. He thought back to the little ghost girl he’d conversed with earlier that night, the work that must have gone into such a convincing effect, and yet there was something about it, now that he’d had time to wake the fuck up, that was a little too real. But that wasn’t possible, was it? Because ghosts aren’t real, and if you start believing in such nonsense then you might as well sign yourself up for Scientology classes and hand your wages over to Tom Cruise.
But something was definitely not right here. Peter knew that much.
“Frank’s right, dear,” said Dawn, stroking the former boxer’s arm as if it were one of her many (and Peter assumed she had lots of them) cats. “This is a television programme. We’re being filmed right now, right at this very moment. Don’t you think they would have come in here and pulled us out if something was going wrong?”
The woman, Peter hated to admit, made a very good point. There were cameras all over the house. Hell, from where he stood now he could see six of the little blinking fuckers, each relaying these events down to the studio at the bottom of the hill. If anything untoward had happened – other than Mark White’s sudden disappearance which, Peter fathomed,
could have been yet another one of Hell House’s many tricks – the producers would have been all over it like testosterone cream on Beyonce’s legs.
“Just a prank,” Peter muttered, turning his attention to the pile of dust that might or might not be the remains of Mark White. “Then what about this?” He held up the filling for all to see. “This was on the floor in the dust. Lorna thinks it was the guy’s only filling.”
“Oh, yes, I read about that in Closer magazine,” said Dawn. For some strange reason she was smiling. Her gums shimmered in the torchlight.
“So explain this to me, Vivian fucking Westwood. Where did this filling come from if not from the mouth of the evaporated? Huh?”
“Like I said, it was in a magazine,” Dawn said, still smiling and waving Peter’s concerns nonchalantly away with a gnarled old hand. “All it would have took is for one of the producer’s, or maybe that young hostess, to get a hold of that mag. It’s hardly rocket surgery, dear, and nor is it brain science.”
Again, Peter had to concede that she had a point. Those magazines were everywhere. You couldn’t visit a doctor or a dentist without having a mountain of the sleazy bastards forced down your throat like some paper version of Perez Hilton.
“He might not be dead?” Lorna whined as she pulled her head from Peter’s armpit. “Mark might not be dead?” A small smile crept onto her face; she looked like a Brownie who had just seen her first copy of Male Escorts.
“Of course he might not be dead,” Peter said, once again soothing her. Since when did I become the patriarch of the house? he thought. The last thing he wanted was extra responsibility. In and out in a week, Ed had said. That all seemed so long ago…
Lorna seemed to brighten even more. “And all of this is some kind of bad joke designed to freak us out?”
“Did you even read your contract?” Dawn said, like the heartless bitch that she apparently was. “From what I’ve seen so far this evening, I think it’s safe to say that the quarter of a million is as good as in my account.”
Peter glanced around at each of the people standing in the hallway at the foot of the stairs. Only now did he realise that they were a few shy. “Where are the others?” he said, his heart racing once again. “If you heard the commotion down here, then they would have heard it, too. Where are they? Where’s the dwarf and the one-eyed hooker and that woman with the shit-fetish? Where are they?”
Peter glanced at Lorna, who in turn glanced at Frank, who turned to Dawn Clunge and said, “Thleeping?”
Shaking his head, Peter said, “I highly doubt that. Come on.” He moved toward the staircase. It was only when he reached the third step (creeeeeeaaaaak!) that he realised none of the others had moved. “Oh, come on,” he said. “We’re in this mess together, and I’m fucked if I’m going up there on my own. I’m a horror writer, not Chuck bleeding Norris.”
After a few seconds, Lorna moved forwards. “He’s right,” she said. “We have to stick together. We have to find out what the hell is going on here. The only way we’re going to get out of this in one piece is if we work together.”
Frank Henry nodded. As much as he hated to admit it, the girl was right. “If you thay tho,” he said. “But I’m not happy about being the only black man in thith thcenario.” If history had taught him anything, it was that he stood more chance of being killed than these damn white folk. And if he were to make it all the way to the end, there was a very good chance he’d stick his head outside Hathaway House only to have it shot off by some overzealous sniper.
“Let’s get this over with,” Peter said, training the torch upon the top of the stairs. The painting (such a miserable rendition of the Hathaways) glared down at them, the master now looking rather pleased with himself, although that might have been a simple trick of the light.
Up they went, clueless and terrified, each wishing they’d had the gumption to turn down this gig, for it certainly wasn’t worth a measly hundred grand, not now that their pathetic lives were on the line.
21
“Snap!” Nev said, slamming his free hand down onto the pile of cards. “What’s that? Four-nil?”
Trev sighed. He didn’t even know why he’d agreed to this. Snap! was one of the games he had never been too good at. Now Hungry, Hungry Hippos…that was a different kettle of fish altogether. “Can we play something else?” he said, knowing that his brother would be loath to quit now, not while he was on such a great streak.
Nev picked up the cards and began to shuffle. “Blackjack?” he said.
“Nope.” Trev hated Blackjack almost as much as he hated Snap!. In fact, there weren’t too many card games he liked.
“Hindsight?” said Nev. “Umbridge? Colour-blind? Key of the Door? Centurion? Give or Take? Limbo? One-Up? Primetime? Get Stuck? Garbo? Snail Space? Hoodwink? Naughty Nun? Treble Duck? Jizz Breath? Welsh Whist? Cloud Nine? Crummy? Devil’s Dick?” On and on he went, and each suggestion was met with a shake of the head from his brother. “Well what do you want to play, then?” Nev finally said, more frustrated than a horny eunuch.
“Anything,” Trev said.
“Anything?” Nev replied. “Fifty-Two Card Pick-Up?”
Trev frowned. “Remind me of the rules?” he said.
Nev grinned and threw the cards high into the air. They came down onto the desk, the floor, their heads, and Noddy Holder, who didn’t look in the least bit impressed. “Yaw’m teckin’ the piss, yaw am,” said the Slade frontman as he pulled a Jack of Diamonds from the rim of his hat.
“Well, he was asking for it,” Nev said, leaning back in his chair, looking smug. “I remember now why I hated playing games with you as a kid. You never did like losing.”
Trev cracked his knuckles. “You know how much I hate card games,” he said. “If I’d known it was going to be so bloody boring, I’d have brought the classics: Connect Four, Guess Who? Hangman, that one where you have to pull the spanner from the dead guy’s arsehole without getting electrocuted.” He motioned to the screens. “Look at them all. Should have called this show Celebrity Narcolepsy. I haven’t been this bored since Season Two of The Walking Dead.”
“It’ll perk up,” Nev said. “Let them sleep, for tomorrow is a new day, and we’re going to make their lives a living hell.” He began to pick up the cards; there was no way on God’s green earth that Trev would. “Anyone for a few games of Snark? Memoranda? Cock of the Clown? Dead as a Doughnut? Pink Gash? Hormone Hell?...”
22
“Oh my Jesus Christ on a stick!” Lorna gasped upon seeing the horrors before her. “What is that?”
“What was that?” Peter corrected her, for it was clearly the dwarf – or the very little that remained of him – covered in a seething, writhing mass of filthy, blood-drenched rats. “It’s Victor Hoof.”
“Victor?” said Frank to the pile of savaged remains. “Victor, if you can hear uth, you have to wake up. You’ve got ratth on you.”
Peter shook his head, for only an idiot would try to spark up a conversation with a semi-devoured corpse. “I don’t think he can hear you, Frank,” he said.
“Thorry,” said the boxer, and then, “VICTOR! YOU’VE GOT RATTH ON YOU. WAKE THE HELL UP!”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhdammit!” Peter said. He didn’t know if slapping a hand over the former boxer’s lips was a good idea, but it was too late to ruminate for the deed had already been done. “He’s dead, Frank. As a dodo, as disco, as Doris Day.”
“Oh!” gasped Frank through Peter’s palm. “What do you think did it?”
Peter shrugged and motioned toward the rats. “Heart attack?” he said, bitterly. “Maybe he fell out of bed? It’s a helluva long way down for a little person. Or, and forgive me if I’m being a little curt here, maybe these feasting rats had a little something to fucking do with it?”
“Tho the midget got gnawed to death by ratth?” Frank said, screwing his face up. “Theemth a little unlikely.”
“This whole thing seems unlikely,” Peter said. “I mean, I’ve written
some tosh in my time but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel, plot-wise.”
A shrill scream pierced the night; the kind of scream that, no matter how used to screams you were, caused the blood to chill and the heart to pound.
Dawn Clunge emerged from the room at the end of the hallway, face ashen, mouth wide open, her bones visibly shaking. “In there,” she sobbed, poking at the darkness behind her. “The…the shit fetishist…she’s… she’s dead!” It was a tremendous performance, worthy of an applause under other circumstances. But this wasn’t other circumstances. This was really happening; people were really dying. And rightly so, those that weren’t yet dead were shit-scared of what might happen next.
“How did she die?” Peter said.
“Her heart would have stopped,” Dawn replied. “But the fact that her head looks like it’s been kicked in might have played an important role.”
“Who is doing this to us!?” Lorna screeched as she fell to her knees. “WHY!?” As performances went, it wasn’t as good as Dawn Clunge’s, but it was an admirable effort with plenty of feeling.
“Frank, would you go and check on the Playboy Bunny?” Peter said, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger. A blinding headache was already threatening to bring him to his knees. He hadn’t prepared for this nonsense, and why would he? Who would have thought that a shitty reality TV show could go so very wrong, and all on the first night?
“Thcrew that,” Frank said. He looked terrified, and not at all what one might expect from such a burly fellow. “If you hadn’t notithed, I’m the only one here that’th not white. You think I’m going invethtigating around this creaky old houthe while there’th a maniac on the loothe, you’ve got another thing coming.”
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