“You really are a ray of sunshine today,” Callum said, wiping sheep-shit from the edge of his right brogue. “It doesn’t matter how famous these fuckers are; people will watch it anyway. It’s all about the personalities, the way they deal with the house, how hard they scream.”
Samantha had seen the plans for some of the intended “scares” in the house, and was a little underwhelmed by it all. “You really think these idiots are going to flip out over a painting with roaming eyes? An RC rat? The sound of a music box playing intermittently through the night?”
Callum grinned. That last one was his personal favourite, for there was nothing more terrifying than the tinny melody of some ancient jewellery box in the quiet hours. “Look, the celebs have no idea what to expect. We could waltz in there wearing white sheets with eyeholes and they’d panic. They’re going to be as nervous as Nazis in a synagogue. Not to mention the fact that we’ve done our research. We know everything that scares these guys. For example, did you know Michaela Strapon has an inexplicable fear of clowns?”
“I did not know that,” said Samantha. Michaela Strapon, host of such godawful programmes as How Clean is Your Toilet? and The Great British Snake-Off, had always struck Samantha as fearless. You would have to be possessed of a relatively tough constitution, Samantha thought, to sift through other people’s shit in the name of entertainment. “So, what are we going to do? Gather a horde of clowns together and march them into her room in the dead of night?”
“I believe the collective noun for clowns is a pratfall, and yes, we are going to concentrate on their individual fears. Divide and conquer, my dear. Why do you think we invited a small person to take part in the show?”
Callum was referring, of course, to Victor Hoof. Back in the 1980s, when it was perfectly acceptable to call them midgets or “half-people”, Victor had starred in a couple of low-budget horror movies, portraying creatures that were far too small for regular-sized people to play. His breakout role in The Tom Thumb Massacres had won him the attention of one George Lucas, who had employed Victor as an Ewok for Return of the Jedi, and to stand in for Kenny Baker, who was known for his extended bouts of unconsciousness on set, thanks to the hot, confined space of Artoo-Detoo’s innards.
“I thought it was because we were legally obliged to include at least one disabled person in the show, so that we appear as if we give a shit.”
Callum nodded. “True, true, that’s why we got the one-eyed Playboy Bunny in. Victor Hoof is there to freak out Lorna Giffard, who has a terrible fear of anyone shorter than Tom Cruise.”
“I didn’t think there were many celebrities shorter than Tom Cruise.”
“That’s why we booked the midget.”
“So we have Victor Hoof, a small person,” Samantha said, knowing that they no longer liked to be called ‘midgets’ or ‘nuggets’ or ‘shrimp’, “Crystall Cobb, a Playboy Bunny with only one oculus; Dawn Clunge, who is some sort of Poundshop Vivian Westwood; Lorna Giffard, ex-Olympic swimmer who is now terrified of anyone shorter than Jerry Maguire; Michaela Strapon, whose claim to fame is that she owns the only remaining Elvis Presley shit and keeps it in a jar.” She paused, scratched her head and lit another cigarette.
“Frank ‘BrittleJaw’ Henry,” Callum continued for her. “The only heavyweight boxer never to win a fight. He likes to pronounce his surname Hénry, but we all know he’s about as French as Sauerkraut.”
“And?” Samantha hadn’t paid too much attention to her brief the morning it had arrived. Even now, with the names pouring out of her producer, she hadn’t a clue who most of them were.
“And…” Callum glanced down at his clipboard, for even he was struggling to recall the final few. “…then there’s Mark White, male model and star of Channel 4’s The Only Way is Dudley.”
“Oh, TOWID,” Samantha said. She’d never felt the need to watch it, but she had stumbled across it whilst channel-hopping. She didn’t need to be a rocket-surgeon (or a brain-scientist, for that matter) to know that Mark White was a self-obsessed wank-stain with nothing between his ears but dreams of fast cars and even faster women. “And what, pray tell, does our resident dumb fuck fear?”
Callum snorted. “I have it on good authority that he’s absolutely petrified of old people. Can’t even be in the same room as someone with false teeth or saggy skin. Which is where Dawn Clunge comes in. She’s just celebrated her ninetieth birthday, which makes her almost twice as old as everyone else on the show. If that doesn’t put the wind up Marky-Mark, I don’t know what will.”
“So that’s seven,” Samantha said, counting the celebrities out on her nicotine-stained fingers.
“Is it?” Callum said, somewhat surprised. He flipped the page on his clipboard and ran a finger along it to the very bottom. “Ah, yes, you’re right. We have Peter Kane, author of such literary masterpieces as The Dawn of the Living Undead, Djinn and Tonic, and Toxic Daemons from Mars. There’s a note here from the researcher that says—”
“He’s scared of kittens?” Samantha interrupted. “No, no, he’s positively horrified by the sight of Cub Scouts, especially when they’re working on knots?”
Callum sighed. “My researcher says that they couldn’t find out if anything scared him, since he didn’t have a personal website, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed…not even a fucking Myspace site. I mean who, in this day and age, doesn’t have at least a dozen websites and fifty social media handles?”
“Peter Kane?” Samantha said. “Seriously, where do you find these people?”
“According to this,” Callum went on, “Kane was once a pretty successful horror writer. Up there with someone called Graham Masterton. From what little our researchers managed to gather online, he’s spent the last ten years battling various addictions – alcohol, drugs, tangy cheese Doritos…”
“Aaaahhhh,” Samantha said, knowingly. “Don’t tell me. You’ve put a mini-bar and a bag of coke in his room.”
Callum reached into a small rucksack nestled against his feet. “Better than that,” he said, holding up an orange bag. “Once you pop, you can’t stop.”
“That’s Pringles,” Samantha said.
“Is it? So what’s the slogan for tangy cheese Doritos?”
Samantha shook her head; she didn’t have time for this nonsense. She had lines to learn (you never could trust the teleprompter, not on a live show), and at least three hours in make-up to look forward to. “Tell me this is going to be okay, Cal,” she said. She’d never called him Cal before, and it felt unnatural, forced, and far too much trouble. “What if it bombs? What if it’s another Celebrity Fight Club?”
Callum, who had opened the bag of Doritos and was shoving them into his mouth as if they were going out of fashion, sighed. “It’s not another Celebrity Fight Club,” he said, spraying orange dust all over Samantha. “And besides, that would have been a winner if those pricks from Take That hadn’t put Anne Widdecombe in intensive care. I mean, who would have thought that Mark Owen was such a fucking maniac?”
“This has to be good, Callum. I don’t think the station is going to give us too many more chances. We need to scare the shit out of these celebs. And I mean literally scare the shit out of them. People are going to want to see mental breakdowns, seizures, the onset of madness.”
“Don’t worry,” Callum said, crumpling the empty packet and riffling through his rucksack for another. Fuck, they were addictive. It was no wonder Peter Kane had had such a problem kicking them. “These poor fuckers have no idea what’s about to happen to them. The walls of Hathaway House will be covered in vomit, blood, and faeces by the end of the night.”
Samantha closed her eyes and sighed. She hoped he was right, because you were only given so many chances before you wound up hosting Poker Night at four in the morning, when your only viewers were drunks, insomniacs, or worn-out prostitutes.
4
When the bus pulled into the depot at a quarter past six, Peter was surprised to find a uniformed man waiting for him, hol
ding a sign with his name scrawled on it in thick, black marker pen, like they do in the movies. He had a touch of the Lurch about him, did this man; six-foot-something, flat-face, dark orbs surrounding his eyes. All that was missing was a bodiless hand, crawling across his shoulder like a miniaturised face-hugger.
“I’m Peter Kane,” he said, traversing the thick body of people standing between him and his somewhat square-headed saviour. “How did you know I’d be here?” It was a damn good question. How did the studio know he didn’t drive, or that he didn’t have any friends willing to drop him off? Or that he would be arriving now, at this hour, at this very moment?
Just then, something dropped out of the air, and Lurch caught it in an oversize hand. “This drone has been following you since you left your house this morning,” he said, in a high-pitched voice that shattered any preconceptions Peter had had about him. “Right now, there are seven more of these babies tracking your future housemates across the country. Amazing, isn’t it? Technology.”
Peter didn’t think it was amazing at all. To think that miniature…thing…had been watching his every move all day made him sick. Drones were for targeting terrorists and dropping bombs on innocent people in faraway lands, not for tailing ordinary people halfway across the country. “Remarkable,” Peter lied. He slung his satchel across his shoulder and made for the exit. “So they sent a chauffeur?” he said. If there were awards for stating the bleeding obvious, he would have most definitely made the shortlist.
“We don’t like to be called that,” said Lurch, though whether that was his real name, Peter had yet to discover. “The studio calls us Personality Taxis. I prefer to think of myself as a VIP Courier.”
Outside the depot it was cold, and wet, and starting to get dark. “But you drive a limousine.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Vauxhall Corsa,” Lurch said, pushing at the button on his key-fob. Across the road, a sad-looking car bleeped and flashed simultaneously. “They stopped giving us limos when one of our drivers almost killed the entire cast of Glee.”
If anything, Peter thought, that was an extremely good reason to hand out more limos.
“Have any of the other housemates arrived at the studio yet?” Peter said as he and the gangly VIP Courier crossed the road. Truth be told, he didn’t want to be the first one on set. That would have meant he had to talk to people – producers, hosts, cameramen, lackeys – and to be quite frank, the old dear he’d spent the day sitting next to had, like some Harry Potter-ian Death Eater, sucked the mojo right out of him.
Lurch opened the boot of the Corsa and yanked the satchel unceremoniously from Peter’s shoulder. “You’ll all be arriving at the same time,” he said, tossing the bag in and slamming the boot shut. “Only trouble is, you won’t know each other until you get into the house.”
For Peter Kane, that was the worst possible scenario. That they – the producers – would simply launch eight people of varying import into Hathaway House without allowing them the courtesy of at least getting to know their counterparts, well, it was unthinkable, and just about what Peter expected from such a nefarious entity as ITV7.
He climbed into the back seat of the car, watched as Lurch poured into the driver’s seat like some malleable putty. “Can I ask you a question, mate?” Peter said.
“You can ask me two,” Lurch replied. “That was your first.”
For a moment Peter thought the strange driver was being wholly serious, but when Lurch turned his head, he was clearly smiling. His dentist, Peter thought, must charge double for all that.
“Do you think…” Peter paused, unsure if he should continue. This was his driver, after all, and nothing more; certainly not someone he should feel comfortable confiding in. And yet there was something about Lurch that suggested he wasn’t entirely pleased with his lot in life, a strange sadness etched upon his countenance, a perpetual frown wrinkling his overhanging brow. He’d been wrong before, but on this occasion, Peter felt he could trust this man. “D’you think I’m making a mistake? Coming on this show?”
Lurch sighed. Something told Peter this wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with such a question. How many people had settled into the back of Lurch’s limo/Corsa, beset with second thoughts? How many so-called celebs had bottled it at the last moment, only for Lurch to step in, tell them they were doing what they had to do, what they must do in order to get back what once was.
“I think you’re doing what you have to do,” Lurch said. “What you must do, in order to revisit your former glory.”
Close enough, Peter thought. It didn’t make him feel any better about the situation.
“Look at it another way,” Lurch said, turning fully in the front seat and banging his head against the ceiling of the car in the process, not that he seemed to notice. Hey, perhaps that was why his head was so flat in the first place. Maybe, when he’d been at the helm of a limousine, he’d looked normal. “You’re worried about whether you’re doing the right thing, but can you afford not to? I mean, if you were still a huge success, making tonnes of cash, swimming in it like that spiteful duck bastard in the cartoon, would you even be here?”
The man had a point, though Peter hated to admit it.
“Look, you seem like a decent guy,” Lurch said, turning back to the wheel and adjusting the rear-view mirror in order to see his unconvinced passenger more clearly. “And the good guys always have a chance on these shows, but even you must know that this is the Last Chance Saloon for you, for all of you. It’s time to step up and make your mark. Make the public love you, and whatever you do, don’t say anything racist, misogynistic, or reprehensible, at least not where the cameras can see you and the mics can hear you.”
Peter didn’t know whether to thank the man or feel utterly offended. He was the least racist person he knew, and he’d been around long enough to know that women were awesome and men sucked huge donkey balls. “Cheers for that,” he said, buckling himself in. “And you’re absolutely right. I’m doing this for the money and a chance at a second shot.”
“Of course you are,” Lurch said, turning the key in the ignition, The Corsa spluttered into some sort of life. “That was what I kept telling myself before I appeared in the twenty-third series of Big Brother. And with that, he pulled away from the kerb at a speed Peter didn’t think Corsas could manage.
5
The field was a quagmire of mud and cables, its sheep no longer standing around, antagonising the host, but ushered on by their owner to a place where they would be better appreciated. The main studio tent was up and fully operational. A bank of monitors filled the one end, simultaneously relaying images from each room of Hathaway House. Sitting in front of said monitors, a pair of bespectacled operators whose names no one knew flicked back and forth between shots, zooming in and out on various artefacts scattered around the place, making sure everything was just so before they went live in a little over an hour.
Outside, a crowd had gathered behind the groin-high fences leading up to the house at the top of the hill. Cars belonging to the excited spectators peppered the hill and were already sinking into the sodden field. The rain, as it was wont to do, kept on coming, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind, for tonight they were going to be live on TV, a-whooping and a-hollering at people that used to be famous, people that were going to be famous once again, if only for a week or two.
The anticipation was palpable; thankfully the Porta Potties had arrived.
“It’s wild out there,” said Samantha Bollinger as she forced her way into the main studio tent and lowered her umbrella. “I take it all back, Callum. This is going to be more successful than I imagined.”
“Told you,” Callum said, tearing open his third pack of tangy cheese Doritos and forcing a handful into his now-orange mouth. “Those people will turn up to any old shit. We should have charged car-parking, we’d have made a fortune.”
“I’ve just been chatting to that little person,” said Samantha, mesmerised by t
he monitor wall at the end of the tent.
“Victor Hoof’s here?” Callum said, somewhat irately. “And nobody thought to tell me?”
Samantha shook her head. “Callum,” she said, “you walked right past the guy about an hour ago. He was the one you patted on the head, the one you told to go find his Mommy.”
“That kid who was roaming around the set on his own?” said the producer. “You’re damn right I told him to go find his Mommy. We’re not insured for that shit. Do you have any…” He broke off as the realisation of what he’d done hit him like a sledgehammer. “Oh, fuuuuuck. I thought he was some little whippersnapper fucking with the equipment.”
“And that’s why you shouldn’t be allowed to leave this studio,” Samantha said. “Anyway, Victor told me he was a stuntman for Warwick Davis on the Leprechaun movies. Imagine that, huh? Doing all the stuff that was too dangerous for Warwick Davis.”
“Yes, that’s marvellous,” Callum said; his sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed. “Do you know your lines? We’re on in less than an hour, and that baying crowd are going to lose their shit if we fuck this up.”
Samantha lit a cigarette – her eighty-seventh of the day – and leaned against the tent wall, assuming it to be solid. It wasn’t until she was picking herself up from the floor a second later that she realised her mistake. “Of course I know my lines,” she said, dusting herself down. Thankfully, a red carpet had been rolled out across the studio floor. If it hadn’t been, she would have required an impromptu wardrobe change. “You just worry about making sure everyone else is ready to go. If anyone is going to mess this up, it’ll be one of your lot.”
Callum bit his lip, when what he really wanted was to bite Samantha’s. Clean off. Spit it back in her face. Pick it up off the floor and flick it at her—
Just then, Derrick rushed into the studio. In his hand, a walkie-talkie fizzed and crackled. “They’re all here, sir,” he said, addressing Callum, who was the only person in the studio with any real clout, as far as he was concerned. “The horror author was the last to arrive. They’re in their respective areas being fitted for suits and gowns.”
Celebrity Hell House Page 3
