Chapter 4: Monster Mash

Water pounded on top of the roof of the monster hotel as a massive rainstorm moved through the mountains. Thunder and lightning cracked through sky, creating enough artificial light to make the monsters below think it was daytime. All it did was remind Drac of all the times when Mavis was a few decades younger, used to crawl into his coffin anytime she was spooked of a daytime thunderstorm or if she'd had nightmares about an angry mob. That feeling alone helped fuel his anger as the scene played out.

"You cannot imagine the pain I will cause you," the vampire hissed threateningly, the thunder outside emphasizing his menacing tone, as if feeling his wrath. "You will regret the day that you ever set foot in my castle."

"Save me, oh, King! That lunatic stole me and took me to Hawaii," spoke a high pitched voice that came from a doll that sat in a plush of throw pillows on top of a coffin canopy bed.

"Fear not, my little princess. That redheaded gorilla will pay for taking you away from me!" Drac spoke in her regular voice as he challenged his opponent, a worn, stuffed bunny rabbit that floated around in the air on top of the bedspread.

"Oh please, King, save me! Save me!"

"Oooh wah! Huh! Hi-ya!" Dracula snatched the 'captive' raggedy doll from the pillow fort and started punching and hitting the orange, velveteen rabbit with all his might before throwing the unfortunate victim onto the bed with his magic, over and over.

"Uh Drac, what are you doing?"

The stuffed animal dropped to the bed with a soft, surprised squeak. Drac halted his attack on the despicable rabbit to see his friends Frank and Wayne staring at him from across the room.

"Oh, what? I was, uh..." Drac stammered as he shoved the stuffed animals behind his back and started twisting his wrists and floated the toys back into his daughter's dresser. "I was just freshening up in here for when Mavey comes home." He gave them a sheepish, innocent smile as he pulled out a bit of Mavis's Bloodstone perfume that she had left sitting on her vanity and started spritzing it around the room. Frank and Wayne shared a look before the wolf-man voiced his concerns.

"Drac, your daughter's having a great time traveling the world. You have her staying with monsters you know, and she has always checked in with you every time she travels to another country. She's fine."

"She wanted to go see the world. She's seen it. 'Hi, world. Nice to see you,' now come home already!" He sat on her coffin and pouted. To tell the truth, this wasn't the first time Drac had wandered into his daughter's room.

Weeks after she had taken off on her worldwide excursion, Drac had to stop himself from habitually going to her room to check up on her and invite her down to dinner or ask if she wanted to go hunting for scorpions every time he passed her room, and months later he found himself occasionally wandering into her room just to be close to the things she left behind. Making sure the hotel human friendly and up-to-date was just busy work, a slight deterrent from his depression, but what had been the final nail in the metaphorical coffin was receiving a notice that she wasn't coming home for her birthday, deciding to spend the day in Paris with Johnny instead.

It was going to be the first birthday Drac would miss in one hundred and eighteen years, and that left him thoroughly depressed. He was already melancholy that she had been gone for so long, having never been apart from her for more than a few days or a week at the most, but when he had been told that she wasn't going to be home for her birthday, the one holiday he thought would guarantee her to coming home, it left him broken. Normally, he would have already been planning a grand party that would top last year's celebration, but now he couldn't even do that. September twenty eighth was now just another day, and this left him with a huge hole in his heart.

It had been even worse when he had to call and cancel all of the orders. Not only did he have to re-explain himself the situation to his vendors, vendors that had been loyal to him for almost a century, but apparently, the smashed pumpkin boy band's appearance fee was non-refundable; he couldn't even get his deposit back. Something about interrupting their tour months after the Budapest rock festival had taken place.

"Drac, maybe you should go out and see the world a little," Frank suggested with a shrug. "The humans love us out there."

"I don't need to be a celebrity in order to feel accomplished," Drac explained. "I've lived for over half a millennium. I've already seen the world."

"We're not saying that you have to backpack across Europe. Just leave the hotel for a few hours or take a day off."

"And let the hotel fall to pieces when I'm gone? No, my place is right here at the hotel, waiting for Mavey, right here." He then underlined his decision by sitting on his daughter's bed and adamantly folded his arms with an earnest, yet proud, expression.

"Come on, Drac. This isn't healthy. I just saw you playing with Mavis's old toys-" Wayne spoke in concern.

"I told you, I was freshening up," the vampire corrected him with a slight growl, his back now arched and defensive.

"Fine, if not for you, then do it for the hotel," Wayne proposed, trying to find any excuse to get his friend to leave the house. "You've been wanting to make the hotel more human friendly, so maybe we should actually advertise it to some actual humans."

"What are you blathering on about?" Frank then took this opportunity to jump in.

"You remember that monster festival we saw last year? Well, while you chased after Johnny's plane, we stuck around for a little while, and it turns out that they wanted to invite all of us to this year's festival as guests."

"You mean you didn't come all this way just to go to Mavis's birthday party?"

"We were planning to go to the convention a little bit earlier in the afternoon and then come back before the party started in the evening when everyone's a bit more active." Drac's eyebrows raised. That certainly explained why he hadn't seen his friends since they'd had checked into the hotel.

"Griffin and Murray are already there at the convention doing Meet and Greets, and they're having the time of their lives! We just thought that since the party's cancelled, you might want some cheering up and would want to come join us." Frank continued explaining before putting his hand on Drac's shoulder. "I know you miss Mavis and want nothing more than to be here when she gets back, but you can't just always just sit and wait for things to happen. You'll make yourself sick if you do that. Is that how you want to greet Mavis after all her months of traveling? You know she wouldn't want to see you like this."

He mulled his best friend's words over in his head, suddenly feeling small and insecure as the collar of his cape drooped with his hunched shoulders.

"I don't know..."

"Look, if you change your mind, the monster festival people are still holding out their invitation for you being a surprise guest at this year's convention right until the actual day. Maybe you should take some time there to relax, go have some fun, try to advertise your hotel, and really get a start gaining some human clients. You can still RSVP." Drac glanced at his friends and bit the inside of his cheek. On one hand, going into a human town unexposed made him nervous -it had been centuries since he had walked into a human village with his presence and true identity known- but on the other hand, maybe Frank was right. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise.

By going to the convention, he would be able to advertise his hotel for human audiences and the positive attention would help establish better relationships with humans and dissuade a lot of controversy and tension on both sides, not to mention it would help get his mind off of things, like the Mavis-shaped hole in his heart. Either way, though he hated to admit it, anything was better than sulking in his daughter's bedroom, venting his frustrations onto her stuffed animals.

"Alright, I'm in," the vampire relented. "When do we do this?"


Karen had welcomed the bright Saturday morning with dread and anticipation for this year's Monster Festival- or Mon-Con 2013 as the locals called it -and so far, nothing had swayed her from those feelings. It was 7 am when Karen hustled everyone towards the bus stop and a two hour wait in-line to pick up everyone's Mon-Con badges. Since children under the age of twelve got into the convention for free, the only tickets she had to pay for were for her and Alex, and because they were One-Day passes, they were discounted at half the original price of a Four-Day Pass. Normally, she would have rather spent her only day off relaxing or catching up on some chores or laundry she had put off, or at least sleeping in until 9 am, but she wanted to make it a family outing.

After dealing with so much of the festival's annual chaos, Karen was at her limit when it came to monster conventions. She already had an aversion of the horror genre and all things macabre, being exposed to it for so much of her life. She didn't need to be in a mosh-pit of monster nerds trying to outdo each other's butchered Dracula impression to figure that out, but she had promised Jack that they could go this year for his birthday since she had relented to throwing a cowboy themed party in favor of his twin Jesse, and being the veteran that she was, Karen knew how to work the circuit.

Still, she tried not to let it weigh her down. The best part about conventions was that there were always different things going on, stuff that you could participate in if the usual main events or attractions didn't interest you. It was why she was currently dressed as Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas, helping a nine year old Jack Skellington spin a roll of toilet paper around his fifteen year old brother.

"Looking good, little brother," Karen praised while Alex gave her a dirty look.

"It's hot," he complained as she and Jack took turns spooling the roll around his legs, trying to beat the clock without breaking the ongoing strand.

"Well, good thing that toilet paper is absorbent, then," Karen retorted with a smirk before looking towards her other siblings. "How's yours coming along, Jesse?" The cowboy with zombie face-paint only responded with a mild grunt and a thumbs up, too focused on covering his baby brother Quincy with toilet paper. "You almost done there, Lucy-loo?"

"Almost..." The five year old witch stuck out her tongue as she tried to spool the last of the toilet paper onto her stuffed cat's tail before tying it like a bow at the end. She could have cared less about the contest. "There! All done!"

"She looks purr-fect." Alex rolled his eyes Karen's cheap attempt at a pun before they were covered with toilet paper. As much as she detested the painstaking effort that it took to apply her makeup this morning, Karen was grateful that Alex had lost the rock-paper-scissors fight for who would be participating in the mummy toilet paper roll contest; having done so would be uncomfortable as well as smudge all of her makeup. Her budget couldn't already afford the enormous amount of blue makeup and body paint it would have taken to make up her costume, so she just used some makeup powder, a bit of black eyeliner for the stitches and some blue eye shadow to make her eyes pop.

"DONE!" Jesse and Jack shouted in unison, throwing their hands up in the air. The judge went over and looked at the two mummies the twins had bound, both equally covered in toilet paper, but only one of them was completely covered enough to satisfy the judge.

"We have a winner!" the judge announced, lifting up the skeleton brother's hand. "Congratulations. Here's your prize." The announcer then handed him a gift basket. Karen turned towards the smaller cocoon, peeling away the layers like a spider before she managed to find a face.

"Way to be a great sport, Q-tee," Karen praised her baby brother. "As a reward, we can go get ice cream later with extra gummy bears."

"Whoo!" Quincy cheered and tore the toilet paper off of his dragon costume with great enthusiasm. Alex was starting to take his off as well before Karen grabbed his arm and clicked her tongue.

"You keep your's on."

"Come on! It's freaking hot in this thing," Alex complained.

"I don't hear Quincy complaining, and he's a seven year old wearing a Toothless onesie and toilet paper." Alex watched in envy as the seven year old tore the layers of toilet paper off of his chest and wings.

"Hey Karen, look! A monkey's paw!" Jack held up his prize, a plastic mummified hand partially wrapped in weathered ACE bandages, simply beaming with pride.

"Very cool, Jack," Karen congratulated him before giving him a high five. "Don't accidentally waste all your wishes."

"So now what are we going to do?" Jack asked.

"There's a Scary Movie marathon going on in an hour."

"Nah, even for satire, that's too scary for you kids," Karen frowned, noticing a Freddy Krueger walking into the theater, before thinking, "Oh! I wonder if they still bob for apples?"

"Why don't you go grab a guidebook rather than guess, like you said you were going to?" Alex suggested.

"I didn't want to."

"Why not?" Alex turned and followed her averting eyes that eventually landed on the clown from Stephen King's It, who was currently handing out the flyers and red balloons, and quickly gave Karen a disapproving look. "Are you serious?"

"Hey! I don't judge you for your fear of Furbies," Karen exclaimed and held up her hands defensively.

"I'm telling you, those things are possessed!" Alex argued before he stopped, a cocky grin replacing his look of disdain. "Alright. I'll make a deal with you. I'll keep the costume on if you go get a flyer from Pennywise."

"Wha-? That's not-!" Karen stuttered before rolling her head back and let out a sigh. "...Ugh, fine. If it will get you to participate." Karen hesitated before she slowly walked up to the evil clown. She could already feel her heart rapidly beating out of her chest, faster with each footstep until she locked eyes with him.

Oh dear sweet god, he has contacts! That is so freaking creepy! "H-Hi... C-Can I have a flyer, please?" There! She said it! There was no going back.

"Sure, but," the clown held out a flyer before retracting his arm, giving her a sly grin. "Don't you want a balloon instead?"

Karen felt a shiver of fear and revulsion go down her spine. Out of all people, why did they have make the creepy clown in charge of handing out flyers and programs?

"I want a balloon!" Lucy asked jubilantly, suddenly running up and appearing by her side, startling Karen. Pennywise turned towards the witch, his eyes distant and glassy, before he gave her a mischievous smile and knelt down to hand her a red balloon.

"Just the flyer, please," Karen interjected with a tight smile, blocking Lucy from the clown with her arm.

"Are you sure you don't want a balloon?"

"NO-!" Karen shrieked and smacked the balloon out of his hand, causing it to float towards the sky before catching herself. "Th-thank you. We're fine. Really."

"But I want a balloon-" Lucy protested with a frown before Karen covered her mouth.

"You don't want that balloon, sweetie," she spoke in rush, her voice sharp and jittery. "I'll get you a different balloon." She practically yanked the flyer out of the disgruntled clown's hands as she speed walked away, gripping the Mon-Con program in one hand and clutching onto Lucy's hand with the other and hurried her little sister over to the others, giving Alex her darkest look which translated into 'I'm going to put Cool Whip on your pillow and dump a colony of fire ants on you while you sleep.'

"So now that we have a program," Karen declared, trying not to grit her teeth, "what are you thinking about doing, Jack?"

"What about the How-to panel for 'How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse'?" Alex suggested. "That sounds kind of cool."

"That's for eighteen and up, Alex. Even you don't qualify for that."

"Okay then, what about the Q & A Monster panel?"

"Oooh can we go do that?" Jack bounced in excitement.

"That won't be for another hour or so, and it'll be way past your bedtime by the time it ends."

"Please, Karen!" the skeleton boy pleaded, though his eyes were covered with black paint, they were still as soulful as ever. "I promise not to be grumpy in the morning, I swear! Cross my heart and hope to die!"

"Well... I guess we can go check out whatever they've got in the movie showing room and kill some time before we go check out other stuff." Karen relented with a shrug.

Unfortunately, the only movies they could qualify for with their age requirement -meaning Karen was the only one allowed into the majority of horror movies, most of which she had absolutely no interest in viewing again- were animated children cartoons. They were about halfway through watching the second Scary Godmother movie, Scary Godmother 2: Revenge of Jimmy, as part of a double-feature when Alex looked at the time and noticed it was half past 5.

"Whoa, we better leave now if we want to do Castlevania laser tag. We're going to lose our slot if we don't start making our way toward the field."

"But that takes place during the Q & A monster panel!" Jack exclaimed. "We can't miss that!"

"We already signed up for this prior to you finding out about the panel," Alex defended. "Come on, Karen. You know how hard it is to get those kind of slots and if we don't go now, it's going to be taken over by the Humans vs Zombies tournament." Karen was torn. On one hand, she wanted to let Alex go let off some steam since this was one of the few things he was looking forward to all day, but on the other, she really didn't have the energy to run around shooting her brothers with laser pistols and monster whips.

"What if we just go by ourselves?" Jesse suggested. "That way Jack can go check out his nerd panel while Quincy, Alex, and I go slay some monsters."

"Okay, but be sure to meet up around the wax museum figures when you're done, and keep your phone on." Alex stood up and urged his brothers up from their seats, escorting the dragon and an undead cowboy behind him. Not long after they had left, and it was only a couple of minutes until the big monster panel. People were already lining up outside of the auditorium.

"Can we go get that balloon now?" Lucy asked after they left the movie viewing room.

"Sure, sweetie," Karen smiled and squeezed the little witch's hand as they moved towards one of the vendors selling purple and green Monster Festival balloons.

"Aren't you broads a little old to be trick or treating?" A witch behind her suddenly quoted.

"Aren't you a little young to be calling anyone a 'broad'?" Karen immediately fired back before she stopped as a look of recognition caused her to stop cold in her tracks. She knew this girl and it wasn't long before she squealed 'Karen!', ran up to her, and snagged her in a tight embrace.

"I can't believe you're here! What has it been? Nine years?"

"Seven," Karen corrected before breaking out into a wide, thin smile. "How are yunz?"

"Good. Great, actually," she then raised up her left hand and revealed a shiny white rock on her finger.

"You're... engaged?" she paled before giving her friend a water-downed grin and gave her friend another hug with fake enthusiasm. "Congratulations."

"Thanks. We thought about inviting you to the wedding, but it ended up being a crazy shotgun wedding in Vegas, only close friends and family. It was sort of spur of the moment."

It was all she could do to smile in this moment to help her get past the awkward, wanting to change the subject. "So you didn't go as the Sanderson sisters again this year? I thought it was a tradition."

"Well, it's just not the same without the third Sanderson sister, though if we had known you were coming, we would have gladly."

"Sorry, but I'm already taken," she placed her hand on Jack's shoulder. "And let's be honest. Yunz only wanted me to be Mary because I had the perfect sweeper for the job."

"I see that," she noticed. "Where are the boys?"

"They're playing laser tag with Alex," Lucy spoke up.

"Oh my god, who's this little witch?"

"I'm Lucy."

"Oh my gosh, she's adorable! Is she your daughter?"

Karen blanched. "No, she's my sister." She wasn't that old, was she?

"I didn't know you had a sister."

"Well, it has been seven years... a lot's happened." Now Katie seemed to be affected by the icy atmosphere.

"So what are you doing in Romania?"

"Funny thing: I kind of live here now."

"...You're kidding."

"I'm not."

"Why? You hate this kind of thing, and Romania is, like, supernatural monster central like Salem or Rome or Gary, Indiana."

A small boy with a skeleton face painted on ran up to her and tugged her arm. "Come on, Karen! They're going to be opening the auditorium doors soon!"

"Be there in a second, Jack," Karen called out before giving her friends a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry, Katie, but I need to go to a panel."

"Oh-! Uh, sure."

"But you promised we could go get a balloon," Lucy whined before huffing and crossing her arms in a defiant pout.

Karen knelt down towards her sister and said, "We can come back and get you your balloon some other time. Promise."

"Okay, well, it was good seeing you, Karen. Hit me up on my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram."

"Sure." Karen lied and grabbed onto her siblings' hands before leading them towards the panel, doubtful that she would ever be getting a friend request from her old college roommate in the near future.


Despite that Karen and her family had been crammed into the back of the auditorium, it was easy to tell where the fan-clubs were. The Wolfpack sat adjacent to the Franken-skanks and studs, the Crypt Keepers were having a lively discussion with the Walkers on if mummies were the original undead, and occasionally you could find some Buffistas or Potterheads lumped in together with a couple of witch covens and Hunters, all talking about how almost the entire community mutually agreed that Twihards were the worst, but the largest section in front of the panel were the Brides of Dracula: a large fustercluck of women of all ages wearing 19th century corsets, fangs, Gothic finger-less gloves, and eyeliner.

Rumors spoke about there having been a stunt pulled at last year's convention by what a lot of people claimed to be the real Dracula, though it was probably another publicity stunt or promotion for the latest monster horror film. Judging from the panel summary, this year didn't seem to be any different. Since most conventions didn't have it in their budget to bring in major actors unless they were desperate or out of work, a lot of people did cosplay panels where people would show dressed up as their favorite monsters and role-play with the audience for an hour or two as their respective characters.

Karen let out a dejected sigh.

She remembered the times where film could get away with being scary by having entire special effects teams put on make-up and minimal CGI- the nausea inducing transformation sequence of An American Werewolf in London had been a gruesome bout of horrific genius (at least, that was what her father always said). She could also understand that every iteration of the horror genre involving monsters had its own rules and writing quirks, that not all monster traits would be romanticized and some would fall through the cracks. However, she could not forgive ineptitude, not if the original message was lost. Vampires were masters of body horror and represented the fear of change and sexual awakening. They were to be feared and fascinating, not sparkle and put a romantic spin on abusive relationships.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, monsters of all ages, welcome to the Mon-Con 2013 Monster Q & A panel!"

The announcer declared before giving the crowd his pomp and circumstance introductions of the monsters awaiting to walk onstage to Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers "Monster Mash." Unlit torches were raised like cellphones in a rock concert as a clunky, blue-skinned man called Frankenstein walked across the stage, along with other monsters like the Mummy and the Wolfman. She wasn't even sure when the Invisible Man had gotten on stage, only seeing a floating pair of glasses that she suspected to be held up with a spool of fishing line, but she knew what everyone had come for when a hush fell over on the crowd.

"And finally, but certainly not least, the king of vampires, the Prince of Darkness himself: Count Dracula!"

The crowd's roar rattled the auditorium, the emcee barely being able to finish the introduction before fans of all ages drowned him out in a mad cheer. The vampire prince, startled briefly by the loud noise, gave a short, polite wave to the audience before taking his seat with a proud yet embarrassed grin on his face. Karen hated to admit it, but they had gotten a pretty decent impersonator this year. Minus the cape color and missing widow's peak, the guy could be a dead ringer for Bela Lugosi.

"So Count-"

"Please, Tom, call me Dracula," the vampire interjected.

"Now Dracula, I hear you came by our monster festival last year. Is this true?"

"Yes. My friends and I were driving through town on the way to the airport when we ran into oncoming traffic from your monster festival and had to walk on foot."

"I remember that. If I remember correctly, your friend Frankenstein climbed onto a balloon effigy of himself and roared at the crowd to help clear a path for you."

"So if you and your friends have been in hiding for so many years, why reveal yourselves now?"

"Ah y-yes. Well, it's a long story," he chuckled nervously.

"We've got an hour and a half."

"Well, you see, it all started about a year ago..." Dracula muttered awkwardly as he began to tell his story, and that was essentially what they did. The group talked about their journey through Brasov, a hotel for monsters, and a kid named Johnny who had fallen in love with Dracula's daughter -that part received a lot of 'awws' from the women of the audience, specifically the Brides- and the amount of wacky hi-jinks that took place.

"So let me get this straight...You run a hotel? Dracula... runs a hotel?" the emcee asked in surprise. Karen arched an eyebrow. Not exactly what she expected.

"Yeah. Drac has been running a hotel for monsters for almost a century now," the Mummy named Murray explained. "It's place where monsters can unwind without ever having to worry about humans, but now it's more like a vacation destination."

"Basically, it's a place where we can be au natural," the Invisible Man called Griffin spoke into the microphone, sounding like he was making a comedic gesture if he was visible, earning a few chuckles from the audience.

"Why would you do this?"

"Well, originally it was an idea my late wife and I had planned to be a safe haven for our daughter to grow up away from the fear and persecution from humankind," Dracula continued. "But eventually it became a place where all monsters could come and relax and be themselves, but as you can see, that didn't turn out exactly as planned." That answer gave the audience a few awkward chuckles in the background.

"And this hotel of yours, is it open to humans or is it exclusively for monsters?"

"Actually, in the near future, we're planning on re-opening the hotel to humans as well as monsters."

I knew it, Karen thought with a frown as the crowd's energy sparked to life, her negativity almost enhanced like a magnet with too much positive charges. It was a freaking hoax, just another publicity stunt to help advertise a new business or product to fulfill another person's personal agenda. She didn't know why she let a bunch of rumors get her hopes up. Monsters weren't real. She had at least hoped that it would have been actors promoting a new movie or a show showing off its special effects and pyrotechnics, not another panel of dudes in cosplay role-playing for an hour and a half. It was like going to Disney World. You go there knowing everything is a facade, but you still hope for the magic.

Thinking this, Karen looked over to see if Lucy wanted to sit on her lap to get a better view. The little witch was nowhere to be found.


Author's Note: I stole a little bit of the alternate opening for Hotel Transylvania 2's deleted scenes for the beginning of the chapter, but mainly because I think the original opening I had was a bit too depressing and unrealistic for Drac to be feeling right now, and I thought the scene was so good that it deserved a little light shed on it.