Black Cats and Voodoo Dolls

Chapter Two: The Things That Go Bump in the Night

Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING BELONGING TO DISNEY! NOTHING! 00 I am a Disney child of poverty, you hear?

Although the rain had stopped coming down in buckets and was now nothing more than a gentle mist, the sky still had a dark, slightly sinister look to it. On a bumpy dirt road shrouded by heavy tree foliage, hardly anything could be heard but the distant hoot of an owl and the croak of a toad.

That, and the sound of a squeaky bike moving up the road.

"Dear diary," Drew said aloud with mock enthusiasm as she pushed her bike up the road. "Today, I stupidly agreed to wander about an abandoned manor for 15000 dollars. Yes, I am that materialistic." Drew stopped her narration as she maneuvered around a large rock in the middle of the road. "I am now stuck moving my bike, which, by the way, has an effing flat tire because some effing rabid raccoon bit into the wheel, up an abandoned road, looking for this deserted house, all for 15000 dollars. I am wet. I am cold. All the equipment in my bag is probably damaged from the heavy rainfall earlier. And why?" Drew asked rhetorically, dropping her bike. "Why? Why? Why?" she shouted.

"BECAUSE I WAS TOO EFFING GREEDY AND MATERIALISTIC TO TURN DOWN A FLIPPING IMPOSSIBLE JOB, THAT'S WHY!" With a cry of frustration, Drew began jumping up and down on the muddy road. Unfortunately, this didn't solve anything, it just got mud on her pants. With her temper, and pants, dampened, Drew gave a resigned sigh.

Well, this is just peachy, thought Drew. I am all alone on an abandoned road for no good reason except for monetary gain. Well, the misery ended here, decided Drew. With sudden determination, Drew dropped her duffel bag that she had toted on her shoulder all the way here, squatted down, and began rummaging through her bag for her cell phone. Nina lived only a mile away from the main road. She could call her and ask for a ride.

Suddenly, there was a bright flash of lightening, followed by a resounding clap of thunder. Drew gave a startled yelp, jumped up, spun around---

And saw an outline of a mansion in the distance. Drew nearly dropped her cell phone.

"Now that's just freaky." Drew said aloud. What made the whole thing even stranger was that now after the freak flash of lightening, there was another dirt road right in front of Drew, leading up to the house. It had probably been too dark to see when she had been walking up the road, a slightly fearful Drew reasoned. It was dark, rainy and murky. It would have been easy to miss.

Right?

Too tired to answer this question, Drew began to push her bike through the shrubbery that blocked the fork, and she went up to the Gracey Manor.

---

After 30 minutes of trying to navigate a bike on a cobblestone pathway covered with mud, then leaving at next to the base of a flight of stairs leading up to the house…

Despite the disarray the house had been left in, Drew could tell that the house had once been very beautiful. Greek columns held up the roof proudly, and cobblestone pathway lined with alternating weeping willow and elm trees led up to the house and to the porch. It pretty much said, Gone With the Wind, eat your heart out.

But even though the house looked very picturesque, there was still something a little…off about it, you could say. Many of the plants were dead, and the ones that were left had gone wild, climbing over the iron-wrought fence surrounding the property and covering a good portion of the house. The paint was peeling, the porch steps decaying, and it looked like a few shingles had slipped off the roof here and there. Not only that, but there was a strange essence of darkness around the house, as if one too many terrible things had happened here. Ravens rested in the branches, their beady black eyes staring intensely, perhaps even maliciously, down at Drew.

Drew shivered, partly from being drenched to the bone and partly because of the aura that seemed to radiate from the house.

Get out, it seemed to whisper darkly, Leave. You should not be here.

Bad aura or not, though, Drew had a job to do, and she was not about to let some silly fear get in the way. Taking a deep breath, and making a silently prayer to whatever higher power that existed to not set the ravens on her, Drew began to walk up to the house.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately to some, no ravens attacked Drew, only following her with their eyes as she gingerly climbed the porch steps and tip-toed around the porch. Not like she could tell if the porch was rotting or anything, she just wanted to play it on the safe side.

Finally, after much careful footwork, Drew had made it to the door. Now, Drew had walked up to many a door in her day, as everyone does. She had seen screen doors and painted doors, solid oak doors and office doors. But never in her life had she had seen a door like the one of the Gracey Manor that had made her feel so…nervous.

Taking a big gulp, Drew pushed her hair out of her eyes, straightened her shoulders, shifted her duffel bag around, and raised her hand to knock on the door. Eerily enough, however, the door slowly creaked open, revealing a shadowy room inside.

Cautiously, Drew stepped into the dark room. After a moment of temporary blindness, Drew's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Drew was finally able to see that she was in the main hall. A moth-eaten Oriental carpet was underneath her, and the dark wood floor panels must have had at least an inch of dust on them. The chandelier was weighed down by cobwebs, and some of it's decorations were missing. Drew was surprised that the room didn't have heavy duty scars on the wall, she would have thought…Drew's eyes fell upon the archway that led to other rooms in the mansion. Someone had hastily boarded it up, and there were disturbingly large scrapes on the door frame.

Well, um, I guess that answers my question…Drew thought more than a little uneasily. Trying to ignore the rising feeling that she should have left after the lightening, Drew looked around. Other than that archway and the door behind her, it didn't look like there were any other ways out. And where was Mr. Gracey and his assistant?

Drew shifted her weight a little, eyeing the room uneasily. "Um…hello?" she called out, "Is anyone here?" No answer.

Drew sighed. "I knew this was stupid," Drew grumbled, turning around. "I should have just stayed home and--"

"Mreow?" A pathetic mewling sound caught her ears. Slowly turning toward the right, where the sound had come from, Drew looked down to see a slightly scrawny black cat, with large yellow eyes. It looked at her in the manner that all cats do: curiously, but with a lofty arrogance that seemed to say, Who are you? in superior tones.

Drew sighed with an odd sense of relief. "Hey, there, cat," she said with teasing affection, "What are you doing here? In a place like this, I thought that they would have walled a black cat like you up."

The black cat's arrogant curiosity was replaced by one of offense. Giving a slight huff, the cat strode off. Curious herself, Drew followed it.

"Cat, where are you going? There aren't any other doors…in the...room.." Drew trailed off as the cat pushed open a door at a right angle to the entrance. It was a pretty unassuming door, made of the same wood as the floors. How had Drew missed it?

Biting her lip nervously, Drew pushed the door open a little more and peered in. It was a large, octagonal room, with four portraits on four of the eight sides. Curious, Drew opened the door all the way, and walked in. Without the slightest warning, the door slammed behind Drew, causing her to jump up and shriek. Eyeing the door warily, she walked into the dead center of the portrait gallery.

As she looked about for an exit, Drew eyed the portraits set up on the wall. Obviously, these must have been the heads of the Gracey family. One was of a pretty girl in a pink dress, carrying a parasol of the same hue. Another was of a rather smug looking man, his arms crossed in front of him defiantly. A third portrait was of a middle-aged man, obviously the patriarch. The patriarch had a dignified, authoritarian look about him, and was holding a pipe with one hand. The final portrait was of a pleasant, rosy-cheeked woman, probably in late forties or early fifties. They were nice paintings, and you could tell that the people had been as happy as anyone could be when they were alive. Well, except for that one guy with his arms folded, Drew concluded as she glanced over at that particular portrait. He looked like he must have had an unsatisfactory home life or something.

Anyways, Drew had to get back to the mission at hand: leaving the portrait gallery. Turning decisively to the right, Drew stepped forward and walked…

…straight into a wall. Backing up with a confused and slightly pained look on her face, Drew went back to the center of the gallery. Well, that was a first. Drew could have sworn that that wall was where the exit was, but then again, the wood paneling on the walls probably blended the door in.

Now at the center of the room, Drew gave the room a wary, puzzled look. Something was seriously wrong with the room, it was…stretching. That was impossible, though--a room could not stretch. That defied the laws of physics, or something like that.

Something else was wrong too, the paintings were stretching, along with the room. And the paintings weren't elongating either; they were stretching out to reveal additional parts of themselves. The patriarch's portrait was slowly stretching out to reveal that he was wearing comical, red-striped boxers, and was standing on top of a keg of dynamite with a lighted fuse. The defiant looking man was standing on top of the shoulders of a nervous looking man, who was standing on top of the shoulders of another nervous-looking man…who was standing waist deep in a pit of quicksand. The pretty girl with the parasol was calmly balancing on a fraying tight rope, a hungry crocodile waiting in the swamp below. As for the rosy-cheeked older woman, she was standing on a tombstone, presumably her husband's, and from the look of the tombstone, it looked as if the woman had done her husband in.

Drew's breath was coming out in short, jagged gasps, and her entire frame seemed to shake. "This is not happening, this is not happening," she muttered feverishly. "I have to get out of this room before I completely lose it." Quickly calming herself, she looked away from the disturbing artworks to find a door, window, anything to help her escape.

But there were no doors, and there were no windows. The wood paneling stretched high up, as if the room were a massive prison tower, with portraits of mortals and their gruesome ends to torture the prisoners.

Drew began to breath in jagged gasps again. There has to be a way to get out of this room, there has to be a way, Drew thought in a panic. There has to be!

Just then, she heard a faint, creaking noise above her, something that sounded similar to a rope creaking on wood. That was a stupid thought, though--the ceiling was completely smooth, matching the paneling on the wall. Still, despite the little voice in her telling her to not look up, she looked up.

Staring down at her from the attic rafters, grinning in the way only the dead can, was a skeleton, his flesh picked clean by birds and rats, dangling from a fraying noose. He was dressed in a now-tattered white shirt and black pants, and with every sway of on the rafter he was dangling from, the rope frayed. Drew stared up at him, transfixed in horror as the fraying rope split away from the rafter, leaving the skeleton held up by only five threads--four--three--two--one---

Then the rope fell away from the rafter, and the skeleton, still grinning, plummeted down towards the paralyzed Drew.

Drew screamed in fright as the lightening flashed, illuminating the freakish corpse once more. As if to heighten the terror even more, the lights went out. Drew closed her eyes, bracing herself for the shattering of bones all over her and then--

Ping! Two doors swung open as the lights flickered back on, leaving Drew with her eyes shut tight, her arms blocking some imaginary attacker. She looked rather comical. Cautiously, Drew cracked open one eye, then both as she stared in baffled fear at the portrait gallery. All the paintings had resumed their original forms--the patirarch, the parasol girl, all of them. Giving one last baffled glance at the portraits, Drew rushed out of the room and on to hopefully less frightful places.

----

Two minutes, in which Drew trips over several random objects and gets the shit scared out of her by a coat hanger, later…

Something was wrong with the Gracey Manor, Drew realized it now, seriously wrong, and it wasn't just with the portrait gallery. Everywhere Drew searched in the house, looking for someone, anyone, she noticed it. The way the sculptures' eyes followed her as she walked passed them, the way the wallpaper designs on the walls had taken sinister, slightly demonic appearances. Heck, even what had probably been an innocent arm chair cover had the look of a demon!

The paintings in the portrait gallery weren't the only ones that were morbid, too. When Drew was looking at some paintings in the hall a little while ago, they had suddenly changed in appearance. The painting of a girl lounging on an Egyptian chaise had the girl's lower half contort into that of a panther. The one next to of a knight riding a horse turned the knight and his horse into rotted corpses. The rest of the paintings had probably changed too, but Drew had been too busy getting out of the hall to notice.

Now she was in an abandoned funeral parlor, the coffin still in the room. Yeesh. Everything was exactly as it had been left--the chairs, the plants, everything. Though after years of neglect, the plants had taken on a withered look. Despite the coffin, Drew felt strangely calmed and a little saddened by this room. There were no ghosts here, just the sad memories of what had probably been a happy place.

Just then, Drew noticed a little movement in the corner of the room. Was it the assistant? Drew quickly walked forward, but stopped disappointedly as she realized it had just been a trick of the light. Drew glanced down at the coffin in front of her. Ishmael Hands, read the brass plate bolted down on the coffin. Drew chuckled a little a the sight of it.

"Nice name," she whispered. With a sudden interest in the caretaking of the coffin, Drew bundled up one of her sleeves and bent down to clean off the label…

Only to have two rotting hands shoot up at the top of the coffin and try to open it. Instinctively, Drew pushed the coffin back down, her eyes wide in both surprise and terror.

"Let me out!" cried a muffled voice from inside. "Let me out, I say!" Terrified at the sound, Drew jumped back and ran out of the room, her heart pounding.

It seemed that the moment the corpse had woken up and tried to get out of the coffin, the whole house had come alive with the paranormal. Down a dark hall, a candelabra floated around aimlessly, as if it's invisible carrier were hopelessly lost. The pictures of relatives on the walls contorted into disturbing creatures, their mouths wide with terror or ferocity. Doors bulged and knockers rattled, muffled screams being emitted from the other side. Drew could hear maniacal laughter coming from behind her, growing louder and louder, no matter how fast she ran from it.

Finally, at the end of a hall, she found perhaps her only way out: a door. She couldn't be 100 percent sure that there wasn't anything behind this one, but it was the only she could possibly get away. Practically leaping at it, she began to grope at the handle, desperately trying to get the door to open just enough for her to slip through.

But the door would not budge. Suddenly, the maniacal laughter started up again, coming closer and closer.

"C'mon, c'mon…" Drew muttered under her breath in frustration, pushing the door. The laughter had become softer, but it was still coming nearer to Drew every minute. With a sudden cry, Drew stepped back, rolled up her sleeves, and ran towards the door.

OOMF! Drew tumbled through the doorway and into the room. In a panic, Drew ran over to the door and slammed it shut, locking it as soon as she could.

Taking deep, shuddering breaths, Drew turned around. The dark room was illuminated with an eerie green glow, and a mist hung around at her feet. Heavy velvet curtains, moth-eaten after all the years gone by, hung around the windows. A variety of instruments lay scattered about the room, but seemed to be centered around the main object in the room: a circular table with a chair in front of it, and a crystal ball on top. Was this a séance room of some sort? Curious, Drew walked up to the table and pushed the chair back so she could get nearer to the table and examine the crystal ball with more ease. Inside of the ball, hazy purple and green smoke floated about, blurring whatever was hidden inside. Drew squinted at it. It was so strange, but it looked as if hidden behind the smoke, there was a---

"Hello, dearie," Drew jumped back a pale woman's head with frizzy dark hair formed inside of the crystal ball. "Lost your way, have you?" the woman asked teasingly. Drew simply stared wide-eyed at the ball, her mouth agape in shock.

The woman narrowed her eyes. "Have you young people no manners at all?" the woman asked. "Come, pull up a chair." Drew continued to stare at the floating head. The woman's face took on a displeased look.

"I said," the woman said with more force, "pull up a chair!" Out of the blue, the chair that Drew had pushed aside coasted up behind her, forcing her to sit down with a yelp. The woman smiled in smug satisfaction.

"Much better," the woman said slyly. "Now, to business…" The woman closed her eyes and began to mutter an incoherent incantation. With a shudder, the table and the instruments around it began to rise and spin, along with the chair that Drew was sitting in. As the chair spun around the table, the séance woman began to chant a spell:

"Serpents and spiders, tail of a rat
call in the spirits wherever they're at.
Rap on a table, it's time to respond,
send us a message from somewhere beyond.
Goblins and ghoulies from last Halloween
awaken the spirits with your tambourine.
Creepies and crawlies, toads in a pond
let there be music from regions beyond.
Wizards and witches wherever you dwell
give us a hint by ringing a bell."

Drew and the instruments began to spin around the table the table faster and faster, the room becoming a massive blur. Drew closed her eyes tightly to keep herself from feeling sick, but she could still sense the speed increasing, the chair spinning more and more wildly out of control until---

With a jolt, everything, table and all, stopped suddenly and landed neatly, albeit loudly, on the floor. Shakily, Drew got up from her chair, clutching the table for support. The woman in the ball looked somewhat pityingly at green-at-the-gills Drew.

"The first timers always have motion sickness afterwards, I never could understand it," she observed as she watched Drew return to a somewhat normal skin-tone. Drew looked at the séance woman incredulously.

"You couldn't understand it?" Drew whispered, still feeling a little sick from the séance. "Anyways, what did you just do?"

The séance woman took on a more professional tone than the one she had been using for the "session". "I integrated you into the manor, of course," the woman replied, raising an eyebrow. "It's the only way you could explore the manor and not get turned into quivering bits of meat by the more malevolent spirits, anyways. It's what we do for all those who are requested to solve the mystery of the manor."

Drew made a funny face at the floating head. "So what, I'm under contract to solve the mystery of the Gracey Manor now?" she asked. The head nodded.

"You could say that. Of course, you do realize that now that you're "under contract", as you put it, you've put something at stake if you don't fulfill what's agreed upon in the little "contract", don't you?" The séance woman smiled at Drew. It wasn't a very nice smile.

Drew eyed the floating head warily. "What did I put at stake?" she asked suspiciously. The woman's smile got even bigger.

"Why, body and soul, m'love," the séance woman said somewhat evilly. "If you fail to solve the mystery, we appropriate your body and make you ghost number 1000. This is the Gracey Manor after all, what did you expect?"

Drew did the only thing a sane, sensible girl who had had her nerves beaten to a bloody pulp could do after receiving this information. She passed out.

-fin-

A/N: Bet y'all thought I wasn't going to update, didn't you? Well, unlike my catastrophic feat known as…well, I won't mention it here, I will update this on a somewhat frequent basis! And I will finish it too! Watch!

Jasper: Of course you will, m'dear…

Me: Shut up, you stupid mutt! Anyways, you aren't supposed to be here 'til chapter 3! Skedaddle!

Anywho, onto to saying hullo to the people that commented!

Aquarian Wolf: Thank you sooo much for reviewing and adding me to your C2! I appreciate it! Thanks for the info on that HM comic by the way, I looked up and it seems pretty cool. Sorry for getting LLVL stuck in your head, hopefully you got it out by now.

Dark Goddess: Thanks! This wasn't really meant to be a Halloween-y fan fiction, though, so it doesn't really matter when I update. I just added that bit in the first chapter because Halloween was coming up.

Thank you for reviewing! Coming up for Livin' La Vid--er, Black Cats and Voodoo Dolls, Chapter 3: Cats, Dogs, and…Voodoo Porcelain Dolls? Eh, it's a work in progress!