Chapter 2: The Unexpected Revelation

"It's your husband's work; they say something's happened to Adam," Ms. Edmonds said, and she handed the frustrated teacher the phone.

Clarisse sighed.

Let me guess, she thought as she dismissed her class, He was acting stupid and fell off the roof or something. Clarisse loved her husband, of course, but the newlyweds were still adjusting to each others antics. Adam liked to be spontaneous and to take risks, whereas Clarisse was more reserved and grounded. On a day like this though, her mood was all over the map.

Clarisse put the phone to her ear once the room was empty and said "Hello?"

"Ms. Parker?" came the reply, "This is Henry Harcourt, your husband's supervisor. Your husband's been involved in an…accident. We need you to get here as soon as you can."

Clarisse got the address of the building, and rushed to her car. As she got in her vehicle and looked at the address, a cold chill seemed to run through her…

With a huge feeling of foreboding over her, she headed towards the house.

About twenty minutes later, Clarisse pulled up to a large mansion. The house looked majestic, but she could tell that it was old and dilapidated – not only because she knew her husband and his crew were restoring it, but the outside of the house was in pretty bad shape. Four large white pillars, reaching two stories, decorated the front of the mansion. At the top of the house there was a small room, with a weathervane at the very top. The house had white wood siding, a deck around all of the second level, and green shutters on the windows, but it was obvious they were no longer the beauty they had once been.

The grounds weren't faring so well either – large dead trees were on either side of the path to the front door. As Clarisse got out of her car, a breeze blew over the house, causing a few loose strands of hair that had escaped when she'd put it in a bun that morning to fly in the wind. The gust sounded oddly like a moaning noise, but Clarisse didn't really notice. What she DID notice was that no one seemed to be here. There was no sign of a construction crew except the abandoned caterpillars and other assorted machinery.

Clarisse walked up to the front steps nervously and knocked on the door, and adjusted her blouse and skirt to make a good impression on her husband's co-workers. As she waited for it to open, she looked at the front porch – the wood beneath her looked like it could break any minute.

"I'm wearing the wrong shoes for this," she muttered as she knocked on the door again.

"Hello?" She called, and tried to look in one of the windows, but it was fully concealed by a thick and dusty white curtain. All of the other windows were the same – it was as if the people who owned the house were hiding something.

Just as Clarisse was going to knock again, the front doors creaked open. She stepped in the house, and realized that she was in some sort of entry hall. It wasn't a very large room, and there were a few doors leading to the rest of the house. Dim candles flickered in sconces, and they seemed to be the only source of light for the room.

"Mr. Harcourt?" Clarisse called, and tried the doors. They wouldn't budge.

"What is this place, a ghost town?" she asked herself in annoyance. She leaned against a slanted wooden wall, waiting for someone to come to her aide.

All of a sudden, the wall she was leaning on started to move! Clarisse jumped back with a little yelp of excitement, and looked into the room as the wall stopped sliding.

It was an octagonal room, with red striped wallpaper and lit with more candles, and from what Clarisse could tell, it was some sort of gallery. There was a tall ladder in the room, leading up to the ceiling. Clarisse stepped to the center of the room to see it fully, and there were four paintings hanging in the room. One was of a young woman holding a parasol, another of a stately man wearing a suit coat and dress shirt, another of an elderly woman sitting on what looked like a white rock, and the last one of a man wearing a derby hat and looking very calm.

Clarisse stared at the paintings, and had an unusual feeling about them. They seemed normal, but she got the feeling that they hadn't been finished or something…

Just as she was about to go out and try the other doors again, when the way she had entered from suddenly slid shut.

"Hey!" She yelled, and hit on the wall, trying to open it up again. She was so busy trying to pound on the wall that she didn't realize that a disquieting metamorphosis was occurring…

"What kind of place is this!" She yelled at the door angrily, "Where's my husband?" Clarisse turned around with her hands on her hips, and suddenly realized that something was different about the room.

It was longer.

The room seemed to be…stretching…somehow. And as Clarisse looked at the paintings, she realized that something was definitely up in this house.

The painting of a girl holding a parasol got longer and revealed that she was walking a tightrope, inches away from the jaws of a hungry alligator. The man in the suit stretched to show that he was wearing no pants, and standing on a lit keg of dynamite. The third painting of the old woman elongated and revealed that she was sitting on a grave, holding an axe – and the grave had a bust of a man with an axe through his head on it. The final portrait of the man, looking quite calm showed that he was sitting on the shoulders of another man, who looked a little nervous…who in turn was sitting on the shoulders of a very worried man, sinking in quicksand.

And as these paintings stretched and just when Clarisse thought things couldn't get any weirder, she suddenly heard a deep, strong voice coming from somewhere in the room.

"Welcome, foolish mortal."

Clarisse whirled around, looking for the source of the voice, but there was no one in the room with her – just her, the ladder, and the paintings.

"This is our gallery, as you might have guessed, where you see paintings of some of our guests as they appeared in their corruptible, mortal state." The voice spoke again, and it seemed to be coming from another part of the room.

"Who are you!" Clarisse yelled, spinning and trying to find the mysterious speaker.

"Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding. Is this haunted room actually stretching?...And consider this dismaying observation: this chamber has no windows, and no doors. Which offers you this chilling challenge…to find a way out!" As the disembodied voice chuckled after saying this, Clarisse realized that it was true. There did not seem to be a way out – she was trapped.

"Of course," continued the voice, "There's always MY way…"

What happened next took a matter of seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to Clarisse.

Thunder suddenly crashed from outside, and lightning flashed, causing the lights to go out. It flashed again, and she realized that the ladder was gone – and there was a creaking noise coming from above her. Clarisse slowly looked up, and when she saw what was above her, she let out a scream of terror.

It was Adam. Dead.

His body was hanging from the top of the room, and it was like the previous ceiling had vanished, revealing a look at this new one. Adam's corpse, hung by a thick rope, slowly revolved. He looked normal, except for the fact that his eyes where bright white, and seemed to stare off into oblivion because there was no one there to look through them anymore. Plus, there was the other fact that he was dead.

Clarisse, horrified, continued to scream and tears started to form in her eyes.

All of a sudden, the lightning ceased, causing the room to go dark, and a few seconds later the candles relit themselves.

Adam was gone. The ceiling was normal.

And Clarisse, staring up in shock, collapsed to the floor.

The voice suddenly filled the room again.

"Oh, I didn't mean to frighten you prematurely…the real chills come later. Now, as they say, look 'alive'…and we'll continue our little tour."

The wall slid open again, and Clarisse realized that it now led to another part of the house.

She numbly got up and walked though the opening, and it slid shut as soon as she left.

"Who are you?" She yelled, tears in her eyes, "What are you? And why did you kill my husband?"

There was no response.

"ANSWER ME!" She screamed, and started to storm through the hallway she was in, looking for whoever was making that voice.

A/N: The Ghost Host dialog is heard in the Disney ride