Tales from the Haunted Mansion, Volume II

by John Esposito (retail) (epub)

  “What happened? Tell me.”

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t. With all you’ve been through lately…”

  “Well, now you have to tell me!”

  She wiped the tears from her face, straightening her posture. She had to look strong. The thing she had to tell him…it was monstrous. “I got a call a little while ago. From the Eternal Grace Cemetery.”

  Mark felt his insides drop. Oh, such lovely images. His mother continued: “It’s…about Uncle Rory. I’m sure you guessed as much.” She turned her head, for the moment unable to look his way. Then she uttered a sentence so unbelievable, just hearing it felt like a bad dream. “Someone dug up his grave.” She stopped. Took a breath. “His coffin’s empty. Uncle Rory’s gone.”

  Less than an hour later, Mark was in his bedroom, pacing, Uncle Rory’s words echoing in surround sound: The audience demands a proper ending. But it was impossible. Movies weren’t real life. Or were they? Because by then he knew: Uncle Rory’s corpse hadn’t been stolen. As in the movie, it had clawed its way out of its grave! If part one had come true, and Mark had a feeling it had, then what terrors did the sequel have in store? To find out, Mark would have to go back to unit 1939 and watch the ending of the most terrifying movie ever made.

  But before he left, Mark looked up Diana Durwin in The Big Book of Movie Stars, a gift from Uncle Rory. She was a star, all right. She had page 666 all to herself; her picture, credits, and awards were all there, along with some spine-tingling trivia. Diana Durwin had been blacklisted from Hollywood because of her alleged ties to witchcraft and the occult. Perfect casting, Mark thought.

  Unit 1939 had already been unlocked by the time Mark got there. They were expecting him. He rolled up the metal door and entered to find the projector once again growling in hunger and anticipation. Mark fed it some film.

  On the cinder block wall, a black-and-white world resolved into being: it was an establishing shot of a town Mark recognized—his town—only now it was mired in fog, as if it was the setting of an old-fashioned spook show. The landmarks looked different, because he’d only seen them in color before. Rosie’s Ice Cream Shop and the gazebo where Mark almost got his first kiss. But “almost” doesn’t count, except in “I almost didn’t fall off that cliff.” The location was Main Street, a scant few blocks from where he was now. A faint glow was coming from the office of the Last National Bank.

  Mark could guess where the scene was going. It was only a matter of time before…

  Scrunch! A lanky figure entered from the left of the screen. Scrunch! The sound of footsteps emerged from the speaker and the shot changed to a close-up of Uncle Rory’s burial shoes, encrusted in mud. From there, the pictures kept coming. Uncle Rory’s corpse was sauntering up the street, a mud trail in its wake. Here was a vision no makeup artist could ever achieve, nor would any want to. Uncle Rory, dirty, decomposing, and disgusting, was carrying a hatchet. Where he had found it was never explained. Movies are like that sometimes. But it wouldn’t take a spoiler to know where he was headed. The corpse had an appointment with a banker.

  The scene shifted to the banker’s office. Mr. Trevelyn was at his desk, looking even creepier in monochrome. He was there late, finishing up some paperwork, cheerfully whistling as he placed a lien on the DeToth School for the Blind.

  Kra-krak! A sound jerked him from his paperwork. Krak! The sound came again, and Trevelyn jumped out of his chair, holding his stapler defensively. “We’re closed, whoever you are! Use the ATM!” But Uncle Rory wasn’t there for money. Krak! The front door rattled. “I said we’re closed!” Trevelyn yelled again. KRRRAK! The door split down the middle. Uncle Rory’s hatchet was doing the work, coming down, going up, coming down, again and again!

  Mark yelled at the screen, a habit he normally deplored. “Run, you dummy! Get out of there!” The film then cut to the hallway outside Trevelyn’s office. The corpse turned briefly, pressing a finger to its scabbed lips. “Shhhhhhh.” Mark’s blood went cold. The corpse could see him through the screen!

  Back inside the office, Mr. Trevelyn slid away from his desk and fell over his chair, but it was too late. The corpse was in the room, and its rotting form was already standing over the banker’s body. Trevelyn could see its grisly countenance. He looked away, but it was no use. Flecks of decaying flesh peeling from the bone were reflected in the floor. Trevelyn slowly turned to face the corpse and immediately recognized the vengeful features that had survived the grave. “No! Not you! It can’t be you!” Trevelyn looked and sounded more frightened than all the victims of Mark’s favorite spook shows combined. Death had come for the banker, at twenty-four frames per second.

  Uncle Rory’s hatchet went up….

  Mark covered his eyes, something he never, ever did during a spook show. Why miss the good parts? But this movie was too realistic even for him to bear. So he shielded his eyes, forgetting about the sounds, which were far worse. Mark heard Trevelyn shouting at his uncle, continuing to insult him as he had done when Uncle Rory was alive. But Trevelyn did not beg, nor did he plead, as Uncle Rory had pleaded. He continued to be a first-class jerk right until his very last second, when, finally, he let out a scream that tested the limits of the old Bell and Howell speaker.

  Next there was a THUNK! followed by precipitous silence. Even the music stopped, as if the banker and the orchestra had been cut off mid-octave.

  Mark considered running off but knew it would be futile. You can’t outrun a horror movie. The best ones find you wherever you are, at home, in bed, or even in a storage unit. So he lowered his hands and saw what came next. Uncle Rory’s corpse was shuffling out the doorway of the Last National Bank, the suit they had buried him in splattered with what looked like chocolate syrup. He was no longer holding the hatchet. A different prop was clutched in his fist. At first, Mark couldn’t make out what it was. Then, as if on cue, Uncle Rory lifted it so the camera could get a close-up.

  Mark fell off the canisters when he saw it. The image was indelible, one he would never forget: Uncle Rory was carrying Mr. Trevelyn’s head.

  Mark’s mom was watching the news when he burst into the den, ranting about a movie he’d just seen. She tried calming him down, but when he unloaded the details, she turned ashen. She’d just seen the same details on TV. The bank’s hatchet man had been murdered (by hatchet, heh-heh) for real. The police were still looking for the fiend responsible.

  “It was Uncle Rory!” shouted Mark, shaking uncontrollably. His mother pulled him in close for a hug.

  “Hold it together, Mark, and start from the beginning.”

  “It’s better if I show you.”

  “Show me? How? What are you talking about?”

  Mark held up the key. “I’m talking about unit 1939.”

  The car ride to Buena Vista Avenue took less than five minutes, with Mark filling in all the lurid details, which his mother had a hard time swallowing. Such things only happened in, well…in the movies. Or a haunted mansion.

  Bypassing the reception area, they went straight to the unit. The roll-up door looked different—forest green instead of black—and the lock was missing. “Somebody stole the lock,” Mark explained to his mother. Not one to waste time, she grabbed the handle and yanked open the door. And after her initial survey…

  “Well?”

  Mark stepped in beside her and gasped. It was shocking. The unit had been cleared out: the canisters, the projector—all gone. “This place was packed an hour ago. Mom, I swear it! The films were stacked this high.” He approximated their height with his hand. “The projector was plugged in over there!” He pointed to the wall. But all his mother saw was an uncomfortably large spiderweb. There was no projector, not even an outlet.

  “Mark, I know you’re having a rough time, what with Uncle Rory’s passing…”

  Mark was so frustrated his head almost exploded. But almost doesn’t cou—Never mind. “I’m not crazy!” He grabbed her hand. “Come with me. Right now! I need you to meet someone.”

/>   He dragged his mother down the main stairwell, emerging into the reception area on level one. This time, there wasn’t an aged starlet behind the desk. There was an old man playing solitaire with—get this—actual cards. Right away, Mark demanded to know what had happened to the woman.

  “What woman?”

  “The one who works here!”

  The old man shook his head. “Just me, son. And has been for goin’ on twenty-two years.” He played his next card, the queen of hearts, and smiled.

  Mark’s mother took over. “My son was just here. He says unit 1939 was loaded and now it’s empty.”

  The old man lost his smile and Mark instantly knew why. Unit 1939 scared him. “That’s n-n-not possible,” stammered the old man. “Unit 1939 has been off limits for years.”

  “Why?” demanded Mark.

  “You don’t want to know why, son. Now if there’s nothing else I can do for you…” He pretended to continue his game.

  “Why are you afraid to tell us? Please, sir, I need to know. What happened up there?”

  The old man didn’t want to talk about it. These days, he didn’t even want to think about it. But there was such desperation in Mark’s voice, he decided he had to. “There was trouble up there, a bunch o’ years back. A movie star was livin’ in the unit. She couldn’t afford to live nowhere else. Sad case. She was pretty old at the time. About as old as I am now. And forgotten. It only came to our attention when the other customers started complainin’.”

  “Complaining about what?”

  “The stink. Oh, and the maggots. There’s always those.” Mark trembled, and suddenly, the old man was more than happy to share the details, as if they were the finale to his creepy campfire story. “She died up there, all alone. And her body started to rot.” The old man snapped his fingers, trying to recall. “What was her name? Famous one day, forgotten the next.”

  But Mark remembered. She had been his uncle’s favorite when the Bijou was alive. “Diana Durwin,” he said. The old man nodded. “And thanks to Uncle Rory, she will never be forgotten.”

  At the mention of the name, the old man looked up at Mark and his mom. “You knew Rory?”

  “Yes, he was my uncle,” Mark replied as his mother put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  “Of course. You’re the nephew. I should’ve known,” the old man said as he reached under the desk. “Rory left you something.”

  “I know,” said Mark. “He left me the key to unit 1939.”

  “He left you something a lot more valuable than that.” The old man handed Mark a metal film canister.

  That night, Mark carefully threaded the film into his uncle’s old projector. He had convinced his mother to let him watch it first, by himself, with the lights out, just as Uncle Rory would’ve wanted.

  The projector flickered to life. Once again, it was a black-and-white film that looked just a little too realistic. The camera glided silently through the familiar streets, passing the gazebo, passing Rosie’s Ice Cream Shop. Mark felt a swell of anticipation, because he knew where the shot was headed. And he was not wrong. The camera settled on a wide-angle view of Uncle Rory’s Bijou. The grand old movie palace was back in all its past splendor. The marquee was shining and there was a line of patrons rounding the block, waiting to pile in for the midnight spook show.

  The movie continued, the camera moving through the town. A dissolve soon gave way to the Eternal Grace Cemetery, and Mark heard a quiet shuffling sound emerge from the speaker. It grew louder and louder until, finally, the star of the show made his appearance. Uncle Rory had entered the frame, still holding the head of Mr. Trevelyn. A stunning woman in an evening gown greeted him at the entrance; it was Diana Durwin, looking as she had in 1939. She took Trevelyn’s disembodied head, turned, and handed it to a ghostly figure that had emerged from a mausoleum. The strange apparition held a cane and wore a top hat and a cloak with a high pointed collar. He took the banker’s head and placed it into a large container—a hatbox, if you will—then led them up the hill toward a grand old mansion. Uncle Rory, still deceased, thank you, but now looking a bit more like his old self, took Diana’s arm and began to walk up the hill. But before reaching the top, he stopped and slowly turned to look directly into the camera—directly at Mark.

  “The audience demands a proper ending,” he said. Then the corpse of Uncle Rory winked, and with that, Mark turned off the projector just as the scene…

  faded to black.

  William left the projection booth in a hurry, but not before giving the movie a big thumbs-down. (Everybody’s a bloody critic.) He discovered another staircase and, not heeding the librarian’s warning (because no one ever does), found his way into the attic.

  The attic extended across the entire length of the roof, as its domed ceiling suggested. It was chilly during the winter months, strangely chillier in the summer. It housed an unusual assortment of mementos, just like your attic. Old lamps hung from supports, where spiders made their homes. There were mirrors and vanities and old chests, containing who knows what, along with an accumulation of forgotten wedding gifts. But what fascinated William the most were the portraits.

  Wedding portraits, lined up against the wall, each featuring the same bride posed alongside a different groom. As William moved from painting to painting, the grooms’ heads momentarily disappeared. Passing the last one, he saw a statuesque figure in the corner. A woman, dressed in white, with her back turned. It was the bride, preparing to walk down the aisle. Once again.

  Not knowing who she was, William inquired: “Excuse me. Can you tell me about Madame Leota?”

  The bride spun around, her feet never touching the floor. “Leota is dead!” she hissed, floating toward William, her face obstructed by a veil. “I’m the one you want!”

  William was frozen, mesmerized by her ethereal presence. The bride moved closer. “We’ll live happily ever after, till death do us part.” She had something in her hands, but it wasn’t a bouquet. The bride was holding a bloody ax, the fate of her suitors as obvious as her identity. She was Constance, the black widow bride, famous for lopping off her husbands’ heads after procuring their wealth. “Here comes the bride,” she sang. “As long as we both shall live. For better or for worse. I do…I did.”

  She raised the ax. “In sickness and in wealth. You may now kiss the bride.” Her veil lifted on its own and William screamed in a way he hadn’t since he was a boy. He was looking into the eyeless sockets of a skeleton.

  The sight jolted William back, sent him rolling over a trunk that contained her dowry. The ax slammed down, shredding the trunk, and William felt a breeze as the blade missed his throat by mere inches. He scrambled to his feet, knocking over furniture.

  The bride kept coming at him, determined to have it her way. This time, she would get it right.

  William made his way back to the stairs, or at least where he remembered the stairs had been. In their place, an impish little fellow with a paintbrush was adding the finishing touches to a new portrait. It featured the bride with her latest suitor—William himself!—minus his head. The grooms in the other portraits were chanting: “I do! I do! I do!” William covered his ears to prevent madness from creeping in. There was no way out! The bride had him cornered; she was levitating directly above him. A wedding would take place, with or without his permission. Followed by a beheading.

  “Say ‘I do.’ It’ll be over fast. Close your eyes. We weren’t meant to last.” William closed his eyes, the dutiful suitor, as the ax went up. But as he awaited the final blow…

  a child’s hand took hold of his, and William felt himself being whisked out of the attic. His eyes remain closed, and it felt like he was flying, the way he used to in his dreams. It was only a few seconds before he touched down, not knowing where he had landed but grateful to be alive.

  William opened his eyes, half expecting to find himself home in bed, still a kid, having dreamed his entire adult life. That was not the case. He was still in the mansion, st
ill an adult, holding hands with the tiny stranger who’d saved his hide. “Thank you.” The girl clasping his hand did not answer. She was no more than twelve; her frail frame suggested she was even younger.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “What’s your name?” She peered into William’s eyes. Hers were the palest, saddest eyes he’d ever seen. She wore a flowered sundress and stood barefoot. “Where are your parents?”

  “She does not speak,” boomed a voice within the shadows. William turned, knowing who it was. “Arcane!” The librarian inched his way out of the darkness, his candlestick introducing light to the room. They were back in the library. “How did I get here?”

  “You never left,” replied the librarian.

  “That’s ridiculous. I just came from the attic. There’s a woman up there, a crazy lady with an ax!”

  “Yes, that would be Constance,” replied the librarian. “I did warn you not to go up there.”

  William continued to rant. “I barely made it out alive! I wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for her.” He gestured toward the girl, who remained silent.

  “Ah, yes. Mistress Camille,” the librarian said. He smiled and gave the girl a reassuring nod.

  “What about her? Why is she here?”

  “Because she chooses to be.”

  William felt a sudden and overwhelming need to protect her. “I don’t believe you. Have you been keeping her here?” He made a beeline for the librarian, getting directly in his face.

  This confounded the librarian. “Master William, we don’t keep anyone…against their will.” He beckoned the girl to his side, gently stroking her hair. “Mistress Camille may come and go as she pleases.” The librarian plucked something from her hair. It was a live cockroach.

  William needed to understand. This was no longer about him. Or Madame Leota. Or his sister. “All right, let’s go. What’s her story?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” The librarian raised his candlestick and returned to his chair, where volume two was waiting. The time had come for William to receive his final lesson…in death.