A wide grin stretched across Callum’s face. “So it begins,” he said, sounding more like a Bond villain than a lowly producer for a station that people only watched if there was nothing else on.
“Yeeeeees,” Derrick said. He was reluctant to kill the vibe, but was about to anyway. “The thing is…well, the old fashion designer…”
“Dawn Clunge?” Callum said. “Oh, no, don’t tell me she’s gone and died on us an hour before we air.”
Callum laughed nervously. “No, nothing like that, sir, but she’s…well, let’s just say that she’s not too keen on the gown we selected for her. Says it make her look like a Disney Princess and if we insist on making her wear it, she’ll strip naked as soon as she gets in the house.”
Everyone present recoiled in horror, hissing through gritted teeth and swallowing bile as it rose in their throats.
“Well, that’s not good,” said Callum. “She’ll have viewers switching off before we’ve even set off the first scare.”
“Maybe she could be the first scare,” Samantha opined, recalling the unfortunate time she’d walked in on her grandparents in what could only be described as a display of mutual masturbation. That grotesque image had remained with her ever since. It was also to blame for her aversion to leather handbags and pugs.
To Derrick, Callum said, “Have you offered her an alternative? Maybe get her to swap with one of the other women?”
“I tried that,” Derrick said. “It’s the style she doesn’t like, not the colour. She’s very obstinate. This is what happens when you hire centuries-old fashion designers. Did you know that she once wore a pack of playing cards to a show in Milan?”
Callum shook his head. How would that even work? Not that it mattered. They didn’t have a pack of playing cards to hand.
Unless…
Yes! Callum had seen something up at the house just yesterday whilst dressing the set. A set of black and white photographs, tattered around the edges and partially faded, had been lying there in the bottom drawer of Roger Hathaway’s bedside table. They weren’t from the prop department – half of the artefacts in there belonged to the house – which meant that they were, or had once been, personal belongings of the house’s master.
“A deck of cards, you say?” Callum smiled. “Go on up to the house, Derrick. Second bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs, bottom drawer, and tell the old bag that if she doesn’t like it, we’ve got a celebrity standing by to take her place. Isn’t that right, Noddy?”
Over in the far corner of the tent, hidden partially by a stack of spare camera batteries, a man with huge ginger sideburns and a top hat nodded. “That’s blooming right,” he said. “I ay sittin’ here for me ‘ealth.”
Derrick scarpered, off to fetch the monochrome photographs with which to fashion a dress from.
“Samantha, be a good girl and get those fucktards to sign a release form. Standard stuff, really. Rights, and the fact they don’t have any; claims, and how it’ll be all but impossible to get a penny out of ITV should one of them burn their scrotum on the coal-fire; harassment policy, and an agreement that at least forty percent of them will get together for midnight orgies as it makes great TV.”
Standard stuff, Samantha thought.
“Oh, and have the little person sign another form exonerating me from my faux-pas earlier.” He chortled. “Can’t have that coming back to bite me on the arse.”
“No, you can’t,” Samantha said. “I’ve heard they have really sharp teeth. Like little piranha teeth. Don’t quote me on that.”
“Probably best if we don’t quote you on anything,” Callum said.
As Samantha left the studio tent, the crowd cheered. They knew it was almost time, time to meet the celebrities before stuffing them into Hell House, where their egos and personalities would clash like Turks and Kurds.
“Do we have any more Doritos?” Callum asked the geeky twosome operating the cameras. He took their silence as bad news. “Shit.”
6
Derrick Strunt had spent a lot of time in Hathaway House over the last few weeks. As Callum’s Number Two, he had been expected to perform the jobs that many of the other crewmembers simply couldn’t be bothered with, and so there was nothing about the house that really frightened him. It was, after all, just a house, adapted for a dumb reality show. The set had been dressed to appear ominous, forbidding, but beneath all that – the fake cobwebs, the rats living in the walls, the spooky muzak being pumped in through myriad concealed speakers – Hathaway House was a charming place. It would have made a wonderful Bed and Breakfast, should someone grow a pair of bollocks and purchase it. The only thing keeping it off the market was the fact it had been the scene of a terrible triple murder and a suicide some forty years earlier, but potential buyers looked at any old reason not to invest these days. What was worse? That Hathaway House had witnessed the brutal slaying of an entire family at the hands of one of their own almost half a century ago, or that the toilet at the top of the stairs only flushed every third attempt, and even then the cistern only released about enough water to offer a nice shower to whatever had been delivered to the bowl?
Well Derrick, who had not been scared of the place since their arrival and didn’t much believe some of the tales of what had occurred there all those years ago, entered the house with an assuredness one might expect from a sceptic, closing the large front doors behind him as he went.
The doors creaked, though they hadn’t originally. He had personally put that creak in there for dramatic effect. What was the point of a haunted house if the doors didn’t wail like some ancient Lovecraftian beast? A haunted house without creaky doors was simply a house, and a boring one, at that.
Second bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs, Derrick thought as he took the steps two at a time. He glanced up as he reached the top step, eyes falling upon the huge oil painting hanging there on the back wall.
Roger Hathaway and family, standing out in the grounds, perhaps. The tree behind them looked familiar, but weren’t all trees alike? It was rare you saw one with an afro, a gold tooth, and wearing a pair of flares.
In the painting the family appeared happy, all except for the master of the house, Roger Hathaway. He wore the same expression one might find upon a constipated silverback. It was a look that said, “I’m going to allow you to finish this painting, and then I’m going to kill you and bury you beneath the orchard.” Whether that had happened, Derrick didn’t know, but he knew that the beautiful woman standing beside Roger Hathaway in the painting had been strangled with a belt, that the two girls in the foreground had allegedly been run decapitated with one of the master’s swords, of which he was an avid collector.
“What the hell are you doing up there!?” a voice said, startling Derrick to the point that he had to grab onto the bannister to prevent him from falling backwards. He turned around, expecting to see someone standing at the foot of the stairs. “Pick up your walkie-talkie, you daft bastard.”
Ahhhhh. Derrick did just that. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said, heart crawling down from his throat. Perhaps that had been Callum’s intention. “I’m in the bedroom. Won’t be a minute.”
“No you’re bloody not,” Callum said, his voice hissing and crackling as it came through. “You’re standing on the bloody stairs looking up at that bloody painting.”
One of the hidden cameras whirred as its operator, probably Callum, zoomed in.
“Now you’re wondering which camera I’m watching you on, aren’t you?”
Derrick glanced nervously around. There was absolutely nowhere in the house that couldn’t be picked up by the cameras. He had overseen their installation himself, had instructed the fitters to make sure nothing and nobody could hide from them. These celebrities were going to be fully accessible twenty-four hours a day for the next seven days, whether they liked it or not.
“Is it the one in the grandfather clock?” said Derrick.
“This isn’t a fucking game,�
�� Callum gasped. “It doesn’t matter which one it is. Just get those photographs and get the fuck out of there. Honestly, it’s like working with two year-olds.”
Derrick clipped the walkie-talkie to his waistband and moved along the hall, the floorboards whining and complaining with every step he took. Those were natural, which was fortunate as the expense in adding artificial creaks to a wooden floor would have been astronomic.
He reached the second bedroom on the right and opened the door.
It was cold in here, almost as if someone had left open a window, and yet the utter stillness of the burgundy curtains told him that wasn’t so. He pitied the poor fucker sleeping in there tonight, but then remembered how much the celebrities were being paid and recanted his pity.
Making his way around the large bed in the centre of the room, Derrick located the bedside cabinet to which his boss had referred. It was a nice piece of furniture, not like those do-it-yourself Swedish Allen key jobbies you got nowadays. This was almost a piece of art, something that belonged in a museum, not collecting dust in a long-forgotten house.
Derrick pulled open the bottom drawer and was surprised to find it didn’t creak. Oh, well, too late to do anything about it now. Adding creaks took time; something they were fast running out of.
There, lining the bottom of the drawer, was a collection of monochrome photographs. Derrick pulled them out and began flicking through them. Here was the Hathaway family on holiday – Rose Hathaway looking rather delectable in a three-piece bathing costume and Roger Hathaway wearing a full suit and an expression that suggested it would be unwise to stare for too long at his wife. The kids, Belle and Veronica, were dressed in simple petticoats, neither of them smiling. The picture was severely lacking in the joy and merriment one might expect from a holiday snap. The whole family looked as if they’d just been shat on by a gang of errant seagulls.
The next picture was of Belle and Veronica, unwrapping Christmas presents beside a well-decorated tree. In their hands, the ugliest dolls imaginable gazed with dead eyes toward the camera. Derrick shuddered before moving swiftly on, lest his soul be stolen.
Here was one of Rose Hathaway knitting. Again, there was no smile; just the solemn expression of someone deep in thought, perhaps wondering where it had all gone wrong, maybe considering divorce, for whatever reason.
All in all there were fifty photographs, more than enough to cover the wizened old frame and sagging breasts of Dawn Clunge. It wasn’t a deck of cards, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have any problem in turning the photos into something arty-farty and fashionable.
Derrick stood, eased the drawer shut with his shin, and moved across the room. He was almost at the door when a strange sensation washed over him. Almost immediately the hairs on the nape of his neck stood to attention, and he glanced around in the semi-darkness, unsure of what he was looking for and yet knowing it was there all the same.
“Hello?” he said, which was a terrible move, for it offered whomever was there the opportunity to answer back, and that was the last thing he wanted. Fortunately, his greeting went unanswered, and after a few seconds of stock-stillness (he couldn’t move even if he’d wanted to) Derrick left the room and traversed the huge staircase as quickly as possible.
Probably just the cameras on me, he thought. Yes, that was it. Like Callum had said, nowhere was invisible to the dorks in the studio, no corner left unseen, no place for the celebrities to hide. The house was rigged with more than a hundred cameras, so it was no wonder Derrick had felt as if he was being watched.
He was.
A hundred times over.
He left Hathaway House and hurtled down the hill, past the cheering crowd to his left, past the technicians performing last-minute checks upon their equipment, and was only truly happy, free of the strange sensation he’d felt up at the house, once he was in the company of Dawn Clunge and her wardrobe assistant.
7
“I don’t know if I can do this, Ed,” Peter said, pacing back and forth across his gazeebo, the groundsheet plastically crackling as he went. “It’s pandemonium out there. They think they’re getting a celebrity, when the truth is, none of them will have a fucking clue who I am. I’m about as famous as Tiger Woods’ fucking caddy.”
“Breeeeeeathe,” Ed said, calmly. “They’re not expecting celebrities at all, mate. They know how this works, that they won’t have a clue who the hell half of you are, but that’s the fun of it. They’re there on the off-chance that someone notable is going in. You would have thought they’d learned their lesson by now.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Ed,” Peter said, trying to keep his voice low. He was sandwiched between two other tents, each of which contained participants of this little social experiment. The last thing he needed was to let them know he was having second thoughts; that this whole thing was a huge mistake, brought on by an overzealous editor and the confused and addlepated brain of a money-hungry author.
“All I’m trying to say is that you’ve come this far, Pete. The ink’s drying on your cheque as we speak. All you have to do is go in there, watch everyone else freak out over a bunch of creepy-crawlies and strange noises, and Bob’s you mother’s brother. You’ll be home in seven days, right back in the limelight and with a decent amount of money. What’s not to like?”
When he put it like that, it sounded simple, but he wasn’t the one that had to do it. Peter Kane wasn’t terribly good with people, and he was about to enter a strange environment with seven of the bastards. For a whole week. A week with seven new bastards! Agh!
He did need the money, though, which reminded him…
“Any interest from the publishers?” he said, breathing deeply, ignoring the chants and screams of the crowd beyond the canvas walls.
“Well, I wasn’t going to tell you until you came out – thought it would be a nice surprise – but Random House are suddenly very interested in your autobiography, the one we proposed a few years ago?”
Funny that, Peter thought. “I’ll bet they want a whole chapter dedicated to Celebrity Hell House, don’t they?” Of course they did; that was the only reason for their renewed interest. They wanted him to reveal every dirty detail he found out in there, anything that would sell books. If one of the housemates had once snorted crack-cocaine off the ass of a drunken camel, they would throw it in, and Peter would allow them because, hey, a writer’s got to make money somehow.
“Three – cough – chapters,” Ed said, barely audible, but Peter heard it just fine.
“You do know that the cough is supposed to disguise the words you’re trying to hide,” Peter said. Sometimes, he wondered why he even needed an agent, and this was one of them.
“I’ve told them to send a contract over. We’ll discuss it more when you leave the house. Oh, and I’ve got you a whole bunch of interviews lined up for when you get back.”
Interviews? That sounded promising. “Who are we talking about here?” Peter said, once again resigned to the fact that he was going ahead with this whole thing. “Wogan? Paxman? Parkinson?”
“DeGeneres – cough – Jedward – cough – and that chubby guy from Gavin and Stacey.”
Peter planted his face into his free palm. This had to be some sort of nightmare, from which he would wake any moment, and when he did he would fire his agent on general principle.
“Just hang on in there, Pete,” said Ed, which was easy to say when you were sitting in the comfort of your own home, sipping fine scotch and masturbating frantically to PornHub. If the shoe was on the other foot, Peter doubted Ed would be as calm. “I know how much you hate those shows, but we both know what they can do for a failing career—“
“My career is hardly failing, Ed!” Peter angrily said. “I’m just having a few off years.” It was what he liked to think of as his Cujo years, something that only readers of Stephen King would understand. “And have you ever considered the fact that the reason I’m doing so shit has something to do with my current agent?�
�
Silence.
More silence.
It was becoming uncomfortable.
“I didn’t mean that last bit, Ed,” Peter said. “It’s just that I feel like this is beneath me, you know? I’m not some glamour model clutching at fucking straws. I’m an award-winning author.”
“Yes you are,” Ed said. “Which is why you deserve to be out there again. People need to see your face, to know who you are, a gentle reminder that your books are out there and that there are more to come.”
Peter sighed. Why the hell did he even bother arguing with this guy? Nothing good ever came of it. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Ed.” And Ed was right. This was exactly the kind of thing to put him back on the map, at least for a year or two, long enough to re-establish himself as a worthy successor to Richard Laymon and Jimmy Herbert, god rest their souls. So what if he had to put up with a bunch of nonentities for a few days? It was only like being at school again, only without the head-flushing and wedgies.
“I’m going to be watching the whole thing,” Ed said. “I’ve got your back if you need pulling out of there. All I’m asking is that you give it your all. A quarter of a million is a lot nicer than a hundred grand.”
I’d settle for ten grand and a bottle of bourbon right now, Peter thought but didn’t say. “I’ll do my best.”
“Oh, and Pete…”
“Yeah?”
“If there are any real celebrities in there, would you mind grabbing me a few autographs?”
“Fuck off, Ed.” And with that, Peter hung up.
“Mister Kane, the show will be starting in…” The producer, Callum Edmonds said, trailing off as he noticed the mobile phone in Peter’s hand. “Ah, I thought those had all been collected up by now.” He looked, for want of a better description, pissed off.
Celebrity Hell House Page 4
