Chapter Three
Tour

Elvira, Vampirella and Wanda mingle with the other costumed guests in the foyer and all jump when the steel door slams shut with a loud bang. The Phantom of the Opera and the black clad Luke Skywalker rush to it and tug hard.

Skywalker hits it. "Solid steel."

"I'd expect no less," the Phantom replies.

Above them the candlelit chandelier starts to sway ominously, crystalline tinkling fills the room. Those familiar with the 'House on Haunted Hill' film step well out of the way and after a few moments it stops. "They're sure not going to shatter a perfectly good chandelier every night," the Phantom says.

"You should know," Barbarella quips.

Cleopatra steps under the hanging fixture and stares up at it. "I wonder how they made it move like that," she muses. "It was really good."

She shrieks when it drops toward her.

Jack Sparrow dives, grabs her and both fall to the floor. The chandelier stops an inch from the floor, dangles for a moment and slowly rises back into position.

"Not funny!" Cleopatra exclaims as Sparrow helps her up.

"You mean you didn't see that one coming?" Annabelle Loren asks.

"No."

"Cleo doesn't seem to be getting into the spirit," slave Leia Organa observes.

"I am Queen of Egypt," Cleopatra says haughtily, clearly intending to pull rank on the princess. "You do not drop chandeliers on Queens."

"You do on the Bronx," Batman observes.

That elicits a collective groan that at least seems to cool the royal wrath.

x

The group enters the large living room beside the foyer with the sense that the party is well under way. A suited Vincent Price stands motionless at a table before the double doors midway along the long left wall. On the black table before him is set a row of closed miniature black coffins. Price looks exactly as he had when he portrayed Frederick Loren in the original film.

"Is it a statue?" Barbarella asks.

"Wax figure," slave Leia opines. The gold filigree that doesn't attempt to cover her breasts glints in the light of the many candles and wall sconces.

"Didn't you read the literature?" Baker's Doctor Who asks in a tone as caustic as his original could manage. "It's an anamatropic robot."

"Animatronic," Wanda Maximoff corrects, trying not to laugh. This Doctor displays none of the scientific knowledge of the original, something she's very glad to find out before giving in to her initial inclination to approach him.

"Whatever. Why doesn't he say something?"

"I'm sure he will - when he has something to say."

x

Batman and Indiana Jones inspect Price while the others drift away to explore the room. With the exception of the blazing fire in the hearth in the left wall, the monochromatic recreation of the original set is amazing.

Wanda notices that Sparrow, having struck out with Vampirella, has turned his attention to Batgirl. She wishes him better luck, noting that Batman hovers four feet away.

x

Watson Pritchard stands by the organ at the right wall, the white keys of which are stained in brown blood. "George Enders murdered his wife in her bed," he relates in haunted tones. "The police found him the next morning sitting here playing, her blood on his hands."

As the people look about the impressive room, Pritchard drifts toward the couch. He pulls from a box beside the couch's arm a large butcher knife, slams the box lid to snare their attentions and brandishes the wide blade.

"This is what she used on my brother and her sister," he says dismally. "Hacked them to pieces." He meets the eyes of each of the guests, his expression more melancholy than menacing. "We found parts of the bodies all over the house, in places you wouldn't think." He's drawn to yet revolted by the blade, his manner haunted by tragic memory.

"Funny thing is, the heads have never been found. Hands and feet and things like that, but no heads." He slips into haunted reverie. "You can hear them at night. They whisper to each other... and then cry."

His words, though familiar to most, produce chills in the revelers.

"Didn't someone throw his wife into a vat of acid in the cellar?" the briefly attired Nurse obliges.

"There's been a murder almost every place in this house."

xxx

Pritchard leads the costumed throng down a dark staircase to a door at the foot of the steps. Once through it into the huge, dimly lit room, they're surrounded by massive kegs of wine laying in slots or piled atop one another. The room is surrounded by a multitude of doors, between each of which a gas lamp sconce attempts to illuminate the room. The cellar is dim, shadowy, and morbid doom hangs heavy in the air.

When the guests are assembled in the middle of the huge room, Pritchard steps over to a large wheel set into the side wall, a rope attached to it. "All this belonged to a Mr. Norton," he tells them, his voice reverberating, "who didn't die here, he was electrocuted later." He turns the crank and the pulley begins to lift a huge trap door in the floor's center in front of them.

The space below is filled almost to the brim with liquid which, though colorless, is black against the vat walls. "Mr. Norton did a good deal of experimenting with wines," Pritchard continues the chilling account over the creak of ancient, unoiled hinges, "but his wife didn't think it was any good, so he filled the vat with acid and threw her in."

"If Dracula doesn't stop staring at me," Vampirella whispers to Wanda, "he's going in."

Wanda tries not to laugh, thinking the King of the Undead is the least of the petite woman's admirers, or worries.

x

Pritchard approaches the group as they stare down into the quiescent liquid, each with his or her apprehensions. Not everyone is sure if the liquid is wine or acid. "She was supposed to stay down, but the bones came up."

He steps behind them, continues to speak as he passes. "It's a funny thing, but none of the murders here were just ordinary; just shooting or stabbing. They've all been sort of wild, violent, different." He comes to the edge of the vat on their left. "Be careful you don't fall in."

"You mean there's still acid in there?" Barbarella demands, taking her cue from the movie.

Pritchard looks about. Under a table behind and to their left he finds the desiccated corpse of a rat caught in an old trap. He carries it to the edge of the vat, reaches out as far as he can so the splash will not endanger anyone, releases the trap and the corpse falls in.

Immediately the water begins to froth. "Destroys everything with hair and flesh," he turns toward them, his tone even more morbid, "just leaves the bones." The dissolution diminishes, the rat's skeleton floats to the surface. Several guests back away, repulsed in spite of having expected this.

As Pritchard leads them back to the door and the steps beyond, several people, recalling what happened later in the film, show no desire to explore any of the surrounding rooms beyond the huge wine barrels.

Vampirella hangs back so she and Wanda are the last to ascend the wooden staircase, and she whispers to Wanda, "That really wasn't ...?"

Wanda looks back to her, shifts her shoulders so she can see the vampiress past her own high scarlet cloak top. "Really wanna know?"

Vampirella's not sure she does. "Yes."

"The bones were real, the skin was sodium with an extra catalyst additive and it dissolved in water."

"You're sure?"

"Well, I wouldn't recommend a bath based on a few moments looking at it, but I'm pretty sure." She takes a few more steps, then stops. "Kind of." A few more steps, she looks back and smirks at the apprehension in Vampirella's eyes. "I think."

xx

In an upstairs bedroom Pritchard points to a large dried stain on the ceiling. "See that stain? Blood. A young girl was killed here," he fixes them with haunted eyes, "and whatever got her wasn't human."

Cleopatra stares up at the discoloration and steps forward to get a better look.

"Don't stand there," Pritchard cautions her.

But his warning comes too late. When she stops, surprised at his sharpness, she feels moisture upon the back of her hand. Looking down, she's horrified to see drops of red blood color her skin. She looks up. Drops of fresh blood fall from the center of the dry stain.

"What the hell?" she demands, backing away in disgust.

"It's too late, they've marked you."

"What? Who the hell would want to mark me?"

"Caesar," Supergirl quips.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Didn't you see the movie?" the Cowboy asks.

"No! Bob was supposed to play Marc Anthony but he got sick and said I should come anyway."

"No wonder." The Policewoman's tone is almost sympathetic. The others suspect she's glad she's not the one who's been stained.

Cleopatra gestures helplessly, she has nothing with which to get the blood off. The Cowboy hands her a handkerchief but the red liquid only spreads, staining her hand. "Oh this is just great. It won't come off." Her voice rises as she scrubs at her stained hand.

"I'm sure it will," Sparrow says, his reasonable tone implies all it needs is to be washed.

Cleopatra tries to take the reminder in good grace, but for her the evening is no longer fun.

xx

The tour continues both downstairs and up in blithe disregard for order; they ascend and descend at whim, as though the intent is more to confuse than to orient. In due time Pritchard leads them into a chapel. Before the white altar a large mahogany coffin rests between two lit candles set on tall silver stands. There's room for twelve people to pray, three pairs of prei dieus on each side of the center aisle.

"There was no chapel in the original or the remake," Barbarella objects.

"There are many rooms I didn't get to show the others," Pritchard counters. "Trust me, this chapel has always been here. Ann Francis met her death here, her throat slashed as she stood praying before that Altar. They had her wake here, as they had so many others."

"And now a coffin is ready for the next one," Batman observes.

"By morning it may well be full," Pritchard predicts. "Possibly we will need more than one."

"It's a nice one," Wanda says appreciatively as she runs her finger along the polished mahogany, wondering how it would feel to lie in this one. The velvet padding looks so comfortable. Later, when no one else is around, she plans to get either Elvira or Vampirella to take a picture of her in it. "This coffin has character, a sense of its own history."

"You're creeping me out, Scarlet," Leia says as Wanda strokes the carved side. "You'd think you sleep in one."

"Stranger things have happened," Wanda assures her.

xx

Pritchard leads them from the third floor chapel to the main floor kitchen, which is large enough to feed a huge household. On a tremendous stove stands a large pot, covered but bubbling over a flame. He points to a knife rack that stands next to the stove. "That's where my sister-in-law got the knife she hacked my brother and her sister to pieces with.

"Over here ..." he leads them to a closet, opens it to reveal cleaning supplies, mops, buckets and brooms, but everything is stained with blood. "They found some of my brother's body here. His right leg was in that bucket and his left hand was hanging from that hook, and his hand was holding his left foot. The rest of him was scattered throughout the house." He shuts the door, turns to them. "They never found his right hand, though." He starts for the door, beckons for the group to follow.

Annabelle Loren, unable to resist her curiosity as to who had set the large pot to boiling on the stove, takes the pot holder hanging beside the stove and lifts off the lid.

A right hand reaches out for her from a blood soup. She shrieks and the lid crashes to the floor with a resounding bang.

Most of the guests stop, startled and worse. Pritchard doesn't slow down.

xx

Leading them down a second floor hall, Pritchard is about to tell the group something when he's interrupted by a low moan which seems to come from nowhere and everywhere. "Listen, the ghosts are restless. I fear they intend to move against us."

Batgirl has stopped beside a hanging arras, the image of an armored knight depicted on the brown / gray tapestry. She shrieks when the cloth reaches out and grabs her.

She breaks out of the grip, but when the white smocked Doctor pulls the arras aside, there's only a blank wall. Loud mocking laughter fills the building.

The guests, giving in to the mounting dread, try to get back into the spirit of the tour. Batgirl tries to slow her pounding heart.