Inspired by the 1985 Clue movie... and plain Halloween fun.

It was the place where you'd find a corpse. Looming fortress with shutters banging in the wind, spiderwebs cobwebbing the nooks of the doors, a white sheet billowing through one of the second story windows. When the terrified woman's scream sliced the silence, June couldn't help rolling her eyes.

"This is ridiculous."

Clint pushed her forward when the lined moved forward, watching as the next handful of people were admitted into the haunted house. "Remember the roller coaster?"

"Yes" she spoke assuredly in a doubtful voice.

"This is almost the same thing."

June looked at him critically, pursing her lips and looking back to the house. "I may never have gone inside one but I know they're all cheap makeup and posed dummies. Little beasties and bumps in the night don't scare me."

"Then this'll be a walk in the park. Don't worry" he took her hand as the attendant ushered them forward. "If you start falling asleep from boredom, I'll carry you."

June giggled, ducking beneath the cobwebs strung in the front door. "That might happen sooner than you think." Her eyes moved from right to left, glancing at each of the distorted family photos that lined the entrance way. An unintentional shiver ran through her at the glowing eyes that tracked her as she passed.

Clint nudged her towards one of the portraits—a thin brunette who was nothing more than a head. "Looks like you found a relative."

She stuck her tongue out at him before moving on. At the end of the hall, a door on the left opened to a dining room set with a full spread of mummified food. Spiders crawled up and down the peeling wallpaper and one guest seemed to have had the misfortune of dying facefirst in his soup bowl.

"Inventive." June came closer to investigate. "Those are obviously animatronics" she pointed to the spiders and then to the man whose back bore a large blossom of blood "and that doesn't even look remotely like blood." Impatiently, she tugged Clint to the next room, but found him still staring at the body. "Well he does look a bit like you."

"Huh? Oh." His attention snapped away from the body. "I just could've sworn I saw someone ahead of us with that same jacket."

"Of course you'd notice a plaid jacket." She tugged him again and he obliged, stealing one last glance at the body.

Ahead of them the corridor narrowed, an electric hum coming from a single bare bulk that flickered and caught shadows dancing on the walls. An unearthly moan came somewhere from beneath their feet.

"And they call this scary."

"Well, you are a specialized operative immune to the sight of blood."

"An assassin" she stated flatly.

"Isn't that what I just said?" His foot caught on something and he pitched forward, half dragging June and coming face to blade with a steak knife.

June gave an indignant huff after she regained her footing. "They should know better than to leave their props in the middle of the hall. What if someone's grandmother tripped over that and sued?"

Slowly, Clint pushed himself onto his forearms, still studying the knife. "I think it's one of the knives from the dining room. What in the world is it…?" he trailed off when he caught sight of the body.

"Some kid probably grabbed it off the table and dropped it when a guard came after him. Mirrors!" She took off, forgetting the body.

There wasn't a pulse but it was still warm. And this time, Clint was positive it had been one of the people in line ahead of them. "June!" He scrambled up after her, reaching for his knife. A third body was wedged in a corner, a candlestick in her hand as though she'd had the notion to kill herself.

A knife, a candlestick… Clint tried to remember what he'd seen near the first body. It was starting to sound like the world's worst Clue game where all the guests died and Mr. Body did the killing.

A shrill cry echoed down the hall, making Clint's blood freeze. June's scream. He tore through the hall, ignoring the stupid vampire bats zipping through the halls on wires.

Up ahead was a coffin, presumably Dracula's, on display with wax dummies positioned around. In the open coffin was June, cowering and still screaming.

Without even thinking, Clint threw his knife to hit the slinking shadow in a corner of the room. No serial killer Mr. Body was going to end his wife while he had anything to say about it. He yanked out a second knife, ready to finish the deed when he stopped short at the sputtering heap of machinery his knife had bullseyed.

Long, scaly and hissing faintly.

He raised an eyebrow and looked up to see June peeking out of the coffin, her face flushed red.

"Snake"

"It wasn't even real!" Laughing out of relief and humor, he came over to lift her out of the coffin. "All that talk about the cheap effects and you get scared senseless over a fake snake."

A glance at the ruined body made her shiver again. "It was a snake. I wasn't about to stop and wait for it to bite me." She jabbed him hard in the chest to make him stop laughing. "It's not funny either. Snakes are never funny."

"C'mon" he squeezed her hand, resignation himself to finding the rest of the bodies before Mr. Body made them Mrs. Scarlet and Mr. Green. "Let's go find those mirrors."

Why a snake had even been put in the haunted house, Clint would never understand. It had to have been left by the killer. "So how would you theoretically kill someone with a giant animatronic snake?"

June looked at him in disgust. "Again with the snake. You're just wallowing in that, aren't you? Snakes do not and never will belong in a place like this. End of story."

Dutifully, Clint filed it away with all the other weird things he'd amassed from this place so far. Next thing he'd see would be a Clue game all set up with the three answer cards face-up.

Victim four was swinging from the rafters and Clint mentally filed away the grim possibility that he would likely be murdered with either a lead pipe, a wrench since he was pretty sure the first one had been killed by the gun.

June was still doggedly hunting for the mirrors and didn't notice the corpse. He would've pointed it out, but something like this was only sure to dissuade her from haunted houses in the future.

"There they are!" Like a child seeing her reflection for the first time, June looked this way and that at her rotund, elongated, thinned and multiple reflections in the mirrors. A gay laugh and she was dragging Clint over to stand beside her and marvel at the changes the mirrors gave him. She waddled like a penguin, tried to guess the sound of a giraffe to imitate the long neck, high-fived fifteen of her other selves and finally, with an insuppressible giggle, plopped down to sit in front of all of them.

"Now I know what to get you for your next birthday," teased Clint, unable to stop laughing at the antics of his wife.

"We'll line the house with them and ignore the weird looks we get from our visitors."

"I'd draw the line there. One room of the house, maybe, but not the whole thing or we might as well deck the whole thing out as some fun house."

Two dozen Junes scoffed at him. "Now who's taking things too far." With a final look, she rose and took his hand again. "Let's see what else is in here. Nothing will be nearly as good as these mirrors."

"I don't know… my favorite part was the snake." Clint ducked, narrowly missing the swat June aimed at his face.

"Watch it, you."

As they continued through the house—this time up a narrow staircase to the second floor, Clint couldn't shake the feeling of the killer watching them. Though, in retrospect, that might've just been all the fake glass eyes glued to the walls. He tapped one, to make sure it wasn't a real eye only to have it fall off and plunk its way down stair by stair.

"Smooth move, Hawkeye," murmured June. "Better hope they don't make us pay for that."

"I think Jack the Ripper's bill is going to be a lot higher than ours," he replied in false cheer. "All that dry-cleaning to get blood out of the carpets, plus the funeral costs and paying people off so this place doesn't get the reputation for…" he stopped when she rounded on him with that look that could only be translated I did it; I married a lunatic. "Generally speaking."

She shook her head at him and tugged him into the first room. For someone claiming to hate haunted houses, she was quickly getting into the hang of things. The only light came from between shredded curtains and a nightlight near the floor. An empty crib sat in one corner and, near it, a rocking chair that slowly moved back and forth as though an invisible mother rocked her equally invisible baby.

June looked it all over once and gave it the verdict Clint was thinking himself. "Not scary."

When they returned to the hall, they nearly walked right into another visitor who Clint immediately sized up as a potential murderer. Average build, a fedora pulled low over his eyes and a rather expensive black suit. And the only live person they'd seen.

"Some haunted house," Clint volunteered, discreetly reaching for both knives.

"I've seen better."

"Some of those effects though…" he watched Fedora for any hint of recognition. "They're a little too lethal."

Fedora might've either been rolling his eyes or glaring. "What are you talking about. This is American; it's a free country. Don't you know that?"

"I didn't know it was that free." He watched Fedora walk off and relaxed his grip on his knives.

"Clint…"

"June, there are…" he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Fedora was out of range. "There are four dead…"

She turned the next doorknob just in time for a ghost to slam into her.

"Armageddon is upon us!" wailed the ghost.

"It's already here." Clint gave June a hand up. "There are four dead bodies down there."

She threw him a look. "Those were fake. It's only my first time in here and even I know that no one would be crazy enough to kill people in a haunted house."

"Why not? It's the perfect place for a murder because anyone who sees it will automatically do what you just did—assume it's a prop and no one calls the police." While June continued to deny the absurd allegation, Clint turned to the Ghost. "How many bodies did you see?"

"Three downstairs and one up in the master bedroom."

"Sounds like he made another kill since you were downstairs. Two men, two women."

"The one up here was another man."

"Meaning…" June was still giving him that look, but he chose to ignore it for her sake. "He's got to complete the collection with another woman."

"And you just lost your last marble." June grabbed Clint's hand and pulled him back towards the stairs. "Come on and I'll show you there aren't any monsters under the bed… or dead bodies."

A creak of the floorboards ahead had Ghost wailing in terror and brandishing a rubber spider. "Don't come any closer! I'm armed and extremely lethal."

Clint had to laugh at the cowardly valiance, but he held it back and attempted to be completely serious. "June, I told you there'd come a time when there'd be no sign of danger around to you but I'd tell you to jump off the cliff and hope that you'd swallow down reason and trust me."

"I hardly think…"

"June" he dropped her hand and gave her a knife. "It's time to jump."

She looked at the knife and the empty hallway in front of them and then back at him. "If I jump, you'd better be at the bottom to catch me."

"We don't stand a chance against a murderer. There's going to be another three bodies added to the murderer's collection!"

Clint glanced around for any strategic advantages they had in their immediate area, his mind immediately classifying escape options and additional weapons. "No one gets my wife. I don't care who the Ares he thinks he is." After glancing down the railing where woman with candlestick was just visible, he adopted the demeanor he usually reserved for terrified civilians. "He may have all the odds, but my wife and I are sort of special operatives…" he grinned when Ghost's eyes popped out of his head "…you could say we've got a gift for taking down the people who want us dead."

"You're… you're…"

"Clint, stop trying to give him an aneurysm," muttered June as she set to work dragging furniture to create a blockade. "Not everyone can mentally handle meeting an Avenger." One look at the shockstilled Ghost and she knew the damage had been done already.

A roguish wink and Clint was turning to assist his wife. "I think he recognizes you too."

If there was one thing June Barton disliked, it was having to play live bait on her day off.

"You had to drag me to some kill house for a few laughs just to cross off something I never wanted to do on that stupid list of yours!" June hissed, putting all the she-devil possible into her glare. "If SHIELD was looking into a possible murder situation, you could've at least told me so I knew we were working. This" she jabbed her knife into his chest to emphasize her point. "This is not funny."

They were pressed back to back, each covering each other's six from the murderer who had yet to jump out and grab June by the throat. June was still skeptical that a murderer was even out there. "Nothing was worth this," she continued to rant. "I bet you can't come up with a single word to justify all this."

"Bet I can," countered Clint.

"Oh you do, do you? Spit it out if you're so smug about it."

"Mirrors."

June's face fell and she had to elbow him sharply in the kidney when she felt him straining to hold back laughter.

Murderers and spiders have a lot in common. Both are able to spin intricate webs to trap their prey and deliver a fatal bite. Good spiders last a long, long time longer than a bad murderer. The particular murderer stalking through the haunted house at that very moment, his eyes set on the tantalizing blonde armed with a very sharp knife should have spent more time contemplating spiders. And how very finite their little arachnid lives really were.

He crept closer toward the hall where the barricade had been erected, lead pipe ready to deliver the killing blow. When he came close enough to see his final victim, he knew he'd saved the best for last. His other victims had screamed and died with little resistance, but this one would make it worth his while for a few seconds of genuine protest.

The victim backed up twice before taking aim and throwing a knife, which skittered to a stop an inch from his foot. He tisked at her ineptitude and lunged at her, the lead pipe making an arch for her pretty head. As the pipe descended towards her head, three things seemed to happen simultaneously: the victim's knife seemed to impossibly fly out of nowhere to reappear in her hand, he was jabbed in the spine and lost his balance completely when the victim treated him to a truly lethal smile before slamming the knife into his gut. Gravity took hold and yanked him backwards. The last thing he saw was the lead pipe heading for his own head.

June bent over the body only long enough to yank out her knife, nausea rolling up when she looked too long at the dent in his skull. "Did SHIELD want this one for questioning because he won't be answering much of anything now."

"I'll note your 'killer charm' in your file." Clint retrieved the knife she'd thrown and tucked it back onto his person. "Murderer aside…"

She threw him a sharp look. "I'm done with haunted houses. Next time, you're taking me to a fun house."

"And watch you parade around the mirrors for hours…" Clint stifled a smirk, turning to Ghost in time to see him bounding down the stairs and yelling at the top of his lungs about Avengers being here. "Terrific."

It was June's turn to laugh. "Does that make me the seventh Avenger?" She struck a heroic pose, sticking out her tongue. "I could be more well-known than the famous Hawkeye."

"Well there's no better time to introduce yourself than at a murder scene." Clint made for the closest window, June right behind him, as the loud murmuring of excited fans came from downstairs.