Celebrity Hell House

by Millard, Adam

  “Fine!” Peter said. “We’ll go together.” He pulled the door to Victor Hoof’s room shut and tapped the side of the torch, which had started to flicker, the way they always do when you need them to function properly. It was a cliché, but sometimes you couldn’t make these things up.

  “I’ve got so much to live for,” Dawn Clunge sobbed as she fell into single-file behind Peter.

  Peter couldn’t help but feel that her claims were exaggerated. At most, she had a year or two left in her, and he doubted they would be filled with adventure and merriment. “We’re not going to die here tonight,” he said.

  “Reckon that’s what the dwarf and the shit-stirrer thought, too,” Lorna said. “And Mark White, and probably the one-eyed Heffner-fucker.” There was something in her tone – a resigned inflection – that suggested she didn’t hold out much hope for the near future.

  “Everyone, just stay close,” Peter said as they approached the end of the hallway. He couldn’t believe this was happening, that something so ridiculously impossible would present itself on the very first night of this dumbass show. “Is this her room?” he whispered, coming to a stop in front of a shut door.

  “That’s it,” Dawn said. She was clearly having trouble with her breathing; it sounded as if there was an asthmatic greyhound in the darkness. Her breath – stale champagne and roasted peanuts – drifted all the way across to Peter, who turned his head away in disgust.

  After a few moments of silence, Lorna said, “Is this a good idea?”

  “Of course it’s not a good idea,” Peter replied. “It’s a terrible idea, but we don’t really know what we’re doing at the moment, or what’s going on. We know we can’t leave, that whatever is responsible for all this won’t let us walk out of here, not unless we want to resemble the contents of an Indian restaurant’s hoover bag.” He crossed his heart. Poor Mark. Peter just hoped that the kid had wanted to be cremated, though it was a bit late to change his mind now.

  Peter turned to the door, trained the torchlight on the doorknob, and gently knocked three times. “Crystal?” he said, barely a whisper. The truth of the matter was, he was terrified, at what might lie beyond the door, at what might be in there, waiting, hiding, licking its lips like a crack-addict without a fix. He tried again: “Crystal, if you’re alive in there, give us a sign.”

  Nothing.

  Perhaps that was the sign.

  Still nothing.

  Flipping stupid sign if it was one.

  “Okay, we’re coming in,” Peter said, and he reached down for the knob, and as he turned it, his heart stopped beating, and for a split-second he thought he was dead, that what came next wouldn’t matter either way. But then Dawn Clunge farted and kick-started Peter’s heart once again.

  The door creaked open an inch and, at the same time, a hand latched on to Peter’s forearm. He turned to find Lorna Giffard’s face, so close he could see that she had a slight blackhead issue along the bridge of her nose – nothing that a good moisturise wouldn’t cure, but still, it wasn’t what you wanted to see when you weren’t expecting it.

  “I’m scared,” Lorna said. “What if she’s dead, Peter? What if we’re next?”

  Peter sighed. His headache was worsening by the second. “We’re not going to die,” he told her, aware that it might be a lie. “And the only way we’re going to find out if Crystal is alive is by checking out her room.” He nodded; Lorna let go of his arm. “Okay.” He slowly nudged the door open with his knee and moved cautiously into the room.

  From what he could see there was no sign of the Playboy Bunny. Her bed was unmade, but she wasn’t beneath the covers, nor was she lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, which was always a bonus as far as Peter was concerned. There was a strange smell in the room, but that might have been—

  “Sorry,” Dawn Clunge said as she brought up the rear. “I’m afraid I’m old, and my digestive system is not as, erm, reliable as it once was.”

  “Thmellth like thomething crawled up inthide you and died,” said Frank.

  “My dear,” Dawn said, “it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”

  “She’s not in here,” Peter said, scanning the room with the beam of light. He didn’t know whether that was a good thing or not. He dropped to his knees and shone the light under the bed. “Frank, check the wardrobes.”

  Frank went to argue, but thought better of it when Peter straightened up. He’d lost boxing matches to smaller people than the author, not to mention the fact that this could all still be part of the show and that cameras were recording their every move.

  “Don’t worry,” Peter said. “If Mister Tumnus comes out, I’ll whack the little fucker with the torch.” It was no time to be cracking jokes, but the tension in the room was unbearable. His witticism did nothing to improve it.

  Frank moved slowly across the room, and Peter followed, keeping the torchlight trained on the giant wardrobe next to the window. It was one of those big old things that you could hide in, not like the Ikea flat-packs of today. It was certainly big enough for Crystal Cobb, and the only place left in the room where she could be.

  At the door, Frank paused. “Thith ith fucked up,” he said. “Thould I knock?”

  Peter shook his head. “Just yank that motherfucker open,” he said. “Fast as you can, and then step aside.”

  Frank nodded, though he still wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. The only thing he could hear was the steady hush-thump of blood in his ears. He decided he was going to yank the door open as fast as he could and then step aside, and if that wasn’t good enough, tough titty.

  “Do it now, Frank,” Peter said, shaking Lorna off his arm once again. She was clingier than a love-struck meerkat.

  Frank sighed deeply and reached for the wardrobe handle, and it was then that all hell broke loose once again.

  A scream from the hallway behind…everyone spun in unison…Dawn Clunge fell over because she hadn’t prepared herself for such a sudden rotation. She landed somewhere on the other side of the bed, moaning and gasping as the thing moved slowly into the room, wide-eyed and drooling tar.

  “Holy fuck!” Peter said. “Crystal!”

  Yes, it was Crystal, but on the other hand it wasn’t. Sure, most of her was all present and correct, but now she was missing both eyes, and bouncing off the furniture like a wasp trapped in a greenhouse. Her hands waved furiously out in front of her, reaching for anything they could grab a hold of. Peter couldn’t help thinking of the time, as a child, he’d been forced into a game of blind man’s bluff with a bunch of kids he didn’t know from Adam. They had spun him and spun him and then scarpered as Peter rolled around on the floor like an eel in the throes of a seizure. It wasn’t a fun game then, and it certainly didn’t appear to be much better now that he was a grown-up.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Lorna said, dodging the outstretched arms of the artist formerly known as Crystal Cobb.

  “She’th got no eyeth!” Frank said as he climbed into the wardrobe and pulled the door shut behind him.

  “I can see that,” said Lorna as Peter pulled her away from the writhing mess of limbs and hair that had once, allegedly, been Hugh Heffner’s favourite girlfriend. Looking at her now, it was difficult to fathom what he saw in her.

  “Just stay out of the way!” Peter said. “She’s obviously been attacked, and now she’s a psycho.” Obviously? he thought. Surely there was nothing obvious about it.

  “She looks like she’s possessed!” Lorna screeched from the side of the room. “The power of Christ compels you, you dirty hooker! The power of Christ comp—”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work with this one,” said Peter, elbow-barging the raving lunatic backwards toward the bedroom door. “We’re going to have to take her down!”

  Crystal snarled as if she’d understood what Peter had said, but he doubted she did. She was more animal than anything. Blood was oozing from both empty sockets, and her mouth was agape, dripping with black visc
ous fluid that looked a little like marmite, a little like baby shit, but smelt only like the latter.

  Peter swung the torch around in a wide arc, hoping to smash it into the crazy’s temple, but she moved pretty quick, a lot quicker than one might expect from a dead person, and the torch missed the back of her head by a gnat’s fart. She slammed listlessly into Peter, knocking the wind out of him and sending them both sprawling. The torch flew from his grasp and came to rest on the bed, where it was about as useful as a pair of tits on a fish.

  “Shouldn’t…have…come…here!” Crystal grunted, though not in her own voice, which Peter had found rather attractive earlier that night, despite the distinct southern-ness of it. Now she sounded as if she’d smoked fifty cigarettes a day for a hundred years, and her accent was gone, replaced by an almost aristocratic drawl, the kind you would hear on Downton Abbey, or some other period drama about uppity noble-folk and the slaves that service them.

  “Get offa me!” Peter said, kicking upwards, hoping to knock the thing over, or at least give him a chance to catch a breath.

  He did catch a breath, but regretted it almost immediately. A Dawn Clunge fart would have been preferable in that moment, right in the kisser.

  Then, something happened. There was a huge crack! And Crystal Cobb’s body went limp. Through the gloom, Peter could just about make out the shape of Lorna Giffard, and in her hand was what appeared to be a candlestick. If this had been a game of Cluedo, the ex-swimmer was bang to rights.

  “Get it off me,” Peter said. He could feel the viscous black stuff dripping onto his neck, and its warmth made him want to upchuck. After a few seconds, he managed to slide out from under the motionless body; Lorna was tugging at the corpse’s legs, but fruitlessly.

  “What…what was wrong with her!?” Lorna said, handing Peter the torch, which had gone back to flickering intermittently, as was its wont in such vital situations.

  “I don’t think that was the model,” Peter said, wiping the goo from his neck with the sleeve of his shirt. “Did you hear the voice?”

  “Like the bastard child of Joan Rivers and Christian Bale’s Batman?” Lorna sobbed. “Yeah, I heard it. Scared the shit out of me.”

  At the far side of the room, Dawn Clunge had managed to clamber to her feet. “We’re going to die in here,” she said, which wasn’t helpful in the slightest. Once again, Peter wanted to remind her that she had, whether she liked to admit it or not, pretty much exhausted her life, that she was fortunate she had made it thus far – a good innings, and all that malarkey. It was Peter and Lorna that would be losing their lives.

  And Frank.

  “Frank?” Peter said, shining the torch upon the hulking Edwardian wardrobe. “Frank, get out of there.”

  “Ith it dead?”

  Peter sighed. “Deader than it was a minute ago.” Whether it would remain dead, well that was another thing entirely.

  The door to the wardrobe rattled slightly. “Erm, it’th thtuck.”

  “What do you mean it’s fucking stuck?” Peter said. “You’re a big fella. Force it open.”

  The wardrobe rattled once again, more violently this time. “I…can’t…feelth like there’th thomething thtopping it from opening.” More rattlings, and then the whole thing began to shake, as if Frank Henry had just this second remembered that he suffered with extreme claustrophobia. “Agh, there’th thomeone in here with me! There’th…fuck, who ith that?”

  “There’s no one in there with you, Frank,” Peter said, rushing across the room and latching onto the wardrobe’s knob.

  “Actually, there is,” said a voice from within the wardrobe that wasn’t the boxer’s. It was the distinct lack of lisp, the clarity of the voice’s esses, which gave it away.

  Peter snatched his hand back as if the knob had scorched his flesh.

  “Thee,” said Frank. “There’th a motherfucker in here already. Ouch, you thonofabitch! Ouch, what the fuck are you doing? Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!”

  Peter took a step back as the wardrobe shook so violently that it danced across the wall, first one way and then the other. With the cessation of Frank’s scream came an altogether more terrifying sound…

  A gargle. A wet, choking sound that very seldom meant anything good. And then that evil, sonorous voice – the same damn voice that had, a moment ago, emerged from the dead model’s lips – said, “Be with you in a minute. This gentleman is going to take some putting down. Please do bear with me.”

  More gargling, more wardrobe dancing, and more horrific flatulence from the old dear wearing a photograph dress.

  “Oh my God we have to help him!” Lorna screeched. “We have to do something!”

  Now Peter Kane was usually very tolerant, inasmuch as it took a lot to piss him off. He didn’t much care for motorway traffic, and songs by The Darkness made his blood boil quicker than anything, but he otherwise managed to keep his shit together under most circumstances. However, Lorna Giffard’s words were like needles to his ears. Of course they had to do something, but what? The guy was in an apparently locked wardrobe, being bodily molested by an unseen entity the likes of which had no right to even exist.

  Peter had never felt so helpless.

  “Tum-de-dum-de-dum,” sang the voice from within. “Almost done. You’re going to love what I’ve done to him.”

  The room seemingly dropped twenty Celsius in less than a second. Dawn Clunge screamed as she noticed the three gossamer shapes, one large and two small, forming in the bedroom doorframe. Peter turned and immediately recognised the young girl on the right – the holographic actress he had met earlier that night. She was joined by two others, now; another girl, slightly younger than herself, and a woman of immeasurable beauty.

  “It’s them!” Lorna said. “The ones from the painting!”

  Now that she had mentioned it, Peter could see the resemblance. The sadness surrounding them was unmistakeable, exactly as it was portrayed on that canvas at the head of the stairs. They looked as if they’d lost a fiver and found a penny.

  “You’re real?” Peter said, directing his question at the girl he was already acquainted with. She nodded solemnly. Of course they were real. Nobody was that good an actress, not even Sandra Bullock or Tara Reid. “What’s happening here? You have to help us. You have to help us get out of here.” He didn’t realise it, but his feet were carrying him forwards, toward the girls and their sour-faced – and yet utterly captivating – mother. All his life, Peter had wondered if there was something else, something on the other side, and now that he knew the answer, he was too caught up in the moment to appreciate it. The fact that the wardrobe was still clattering the wall behind didn’t help matters.

  “Can’t leave,” said the mother-ghost, Rose Hathaway. “We can never leave.” She glanced sadly at each of them, as if she had just told them that they were infected with AIDS, or worse, chlamydia.

  “Is that my wife out there?” said the demonic voice from within the wardrobe. “Don’t listen to a word she says. She is, what we like to call in the afterlife, an utter moron.”

  “We have to find a way,” Peter said. “I’m not going to die because of some stupid reality show.” Before tonight, had anyone died in such a manner? Peter cast his mind back. There had been that time Bruce Forsythe suffered a massive coronary during the filming of Celebrity Chin Factor; and, of course, who could forget the moment Vanessa Feltz almost choked on a giant hamburger during the making of Celebrity Fat Fucks. But actual death? No, this was a first.

  “You must hide,” said the little girl ghost – was there anything more unsettling than a little girl ghost? – that Peter hadn’t yet met. Veronica.

  “Yes!” agreed Lorna. “That’s exactly what we need to do; anything to get away from whatever’s in that fucking wardrobe!”

  “That way,” said the mother-ghost. “The basement. Roger won’t go down there. It’s the spiders, you see. He can’t stand the little buggers. Go now. Hide…hide…hiiiiide…” Her voice faded as slowly
as her body, but, after a few seconds, she and her daughters were no longer blocking the bedroom door, looking all spooky.

  The wardrobe toppled over, crashed against the floorboards with an almighty thump that send dust and splintered wood up into the air.

  “Go!” Peter said. “Head for the basement!”

  And so they ran, even though none of them knew where the basement was. There was a very good chance it was downstairs; Peter had never been in a house where the entry to a basement was located on the first floor, and he figured it would take one helluva pissed-up architect to come up with something so daft.

  Down the stairs and along the hallway they went, searching for the door that would offer them sanctuary, a chance to regroup, to figure out how they were going to get the hell out of this mess.

  “This one!” Peter said, lunging for the oldest, most decayed door he could find. There was an old key – the kind that opened treasure chests and sex-dungeons – hanging out of the keyhole, and so he turned it one rotation to the left. He twisted the knob and pulled, and was hit almost immediately by a stale odour and a draught that would have sent a smaller person crashing back into the hallway wall behind.

  Yes, this was a basement. It was the stairs, you see; they are always a dead giveaway.

  “Quickly!” Peter said, pushing Dawn and Lorna forwards into the darkness. He removed the key and followed them through. Safely on the other side, and with the door shut, Peter searched for the keyhole, forced the old key into it, and turned. There was an audible click – a satisfying sound that brought immediate relief – and Peter relaxed back against the wall, the torchlight illuminating the terrified faces of the ladies standing on the stairs. “Well that was a fucking laugh a minute,” he said.

  “What about Frank?” whined Lorna. “What’s happened to Frank?”

  Both very good questions, Peter thought, and ones that they might never find the answer to.

  “Frank’s gone,” he said, for that much he was certain was true.

  Lorna began to sob. Behind her, Dawn Clunge began to gurn, pulling her bottom lip up over her nose. All that was missing was a tyre. And Peter, who had done everything he could not to lose his mind while everyone else fell apart around him, slid down the wall with his head in his hands, praying to whoever was up there for the chance to at least fire his agent before meeting a grisly end.