HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA BELONGS TO SONY PICTURES
THE MOVIES REFERENCED HERE ALL BELONGED TO UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, AND THE ORIGINAL STORIES, TO BRAM STOKER, MARY SHELLEY AND H.G. WELLS
"Mavis' here!"
Someone shouted and found an echo in all of the hotel, from the pool to the dungeons. And from everywhere, monsters started to come out and head for the lobby, where Mavis was standing, luggage at her feet and a wide smile on her face.
"Oh, you're here!" Mavis smiled at her uncles and aunts when she spotted them among the swarm of monsters, soon to be hugged by each one of them.
"You're not the only one coming back for Christmas." Murray said.
"How did it go? Where have you been?" Frank asked her.
Oh, she had things to tell for hours! But they were on vacations, so they had a long time to hear about it, all sat around her. Many other clients, who had stayed at the hotel for long enough to get fond of the owner's lovely daughter, also stood close to hear her talk to them about the tall buildings, the technology, the people, the five countries she and Johnny had visited in all of this time, the food, the music…She wished they could see themselves the way she saw him; they looked like little kids!
"Seems like you had the time of your life." Griffin smiled—or sounded like he was.
"Oh, yeah, I did. I really did." Mavis nodded.
"Surprised your father's not here to hear about it…He's been like: 'my baby, my baby!'" Wayne said.
"We've been talking over the phone. Johnny gave him one so we could talk—you know how he is…, he gets worried…And, uh…Well, he's too busy telling Johnny a thing or two, and starting to make plans…With a little too much anticipation, I think…"
They looked at her with confusion. Mavis smiled at them.
"…Johnny and I are getting married."
A loud gasp, followed by an ectasic commotion, grins from ear to ear, hugs, congratulations. The hotel seemed like it had exploded with glee.
"Oh, baby, my baby girl!"
"When?! Where?!"
"Congratulations! You make such a great couple!"
"And you're all invited, of course!" Mavis smiled.
"We'd never forgive you if you didn't." Eunice smirked.
"This calls for a celebration! Drinks for everyone!" Murray shouted, making the guests cheer. "Uh, can anyone lend me some bucks?"
"No need for that! It's on the house! I'm sure Dad agrees." Mavis offered herself, to which Murray responded patting her back.
While enjoying their spirits, they talked at length about the wedding, Mavis' and Johnny's ideas—which Drac would surely ignore in order to make things his own way—, and, at some point, the attendees issue was brought up.
"So I guess all of the groom's family and friends are…" Eunice said, eyebrow slightly furrowed.
"Human. Yes. I haven't met them yet, but Johnny says they're nice." Mavis said.
"You sure about that?" Wayne muttered.
Mavis was so excited about the adventures and good news she was bringing that she couldn't read the atmosphere and completely ignored the smiling fading a little in the face of her father's friends.
"Totally. I've met people. They're not bad at all. There's nothing to fear. I thought they were gonna freak out but they barely looked at me, or thought my allergy to sunlight or my fangs were weird. And when some found out I was a vampire, they took pictures of me and all! They do that to keep a memory of the things they like, don't worry. Apparently, there's a movie about me, Dracula's daughter…And you! You are famous!"
She had brought proof of that. A DVD box.
"I was hoping we'd watch them together, like a marathon, since they're barely an hour long each."
"Sure, we can do that!" Frank smiled, his hands on his hips.
"A movie about me? I gotta see that!" Murray said, grabbing the box to take a look at the cover.
Griffin whistled to get the zombies' attention. "Five tons of popcorn this way!"
"They really don't hate monsters these days. They adore us! There's tons of books and movies and stuff about us. You've got no idea! We watched a TV show with zombies called The walking dead, and it was disgusting, but Johnny told me that there are also for little kids, and these are based on some 19th century chronicles about you and are super-old and are not scary at all. He said you are like the MCU—no idea of what that is—, but classic and uglier." Mavis said, though she didn't need to add anything else: she had already interested them in the matter.
First, Dracula, 1931.
"What's that guy's name?" Wayne asked, mouth full of popcorn, pointing at the screen with a nod.
"Bela Lugosi." Griffin read on the cover of the box, though he wasn't sure he was reading it right.
"He looks a lot like Drac, doesn't he?"
And he was a good actor, too. They were all smiling when he had this duel of wills against Van Helsing, played by Edward Van Sloan, and was defeated at the sight of a cross the old hunter showed him, which made him recoil, hiding under his cape.
"Old Van Helsing never did that trick." Murray pointed out.
"I've never seen Drac fearing crosses." Wayne said, filling his mouth with popcorn again. "I mean, where did they get that from?"
"Guess they can't tell the difference between monsters and demons." Griffin said. "By the way, isn't Drac coming?"
"I told him, and he said he'd be coming later. I don't think he wants to watch himself in the movies. He says it's all rubbish, mostly the 'bleh bleh bleh!' thing." Mavis replied.
"I'm sure he's giving Johnny the lecture of his life." Murray chuckled.
"I hope not. What does he need to tell him, anyway?" Mavis asked.
"If you have a daughter one day, you will know." Wayne said. Mavis wanted to know now, but they kept it a secret.
That was so much fun. They wished Drac had stopped being a bride's father-zilla and sat to watch it with them. They would have paid to see his reactions at certain parts of the movie, especially his shameful death ("he would have kicked that Renfield guy in the ass for his incompetence!"). But now that it was over, it was when the riot started. They had gotten to Frankenstein, from the same year.
"Sure they didn't get the howl right." Frank was proud to say, sitting with his legs crossed and a smug smile on his face.
But just a while later, the smile vanished off of his face—as soon as Doctor Frankenstein appeared on screen, eyes open wide in feverish excitement. When doctor Waldman warned his young, enthusiastic, evidently out-of-his-mind pupil: «You have created a monster and he will destroy you», he crossed his arms like he was freezing. And when that little girl appeared on screen, picking up daisies, Mavis turned her head towards him to see his Adam's apple going up and down frenetically.
"You shouldn't be seeing these things. You're gonna have nightmares today." His wife was telling him, but he kept on watching, like his eyes were glued to the screen.
What was with that child? Mavis was seeing nothing wrong with this scene: it was just him, accepting the flowers she was offering him. She was very cute, smiling at him, ignoring his ugliness, wanting to play with him…
Oh, that was it. The splash, and the little girl never coming out of the water.
Frank buried his face in his big hands, a hoarse sob rising from his throat. «I thought she would float, like the flowers…She didn't…She didn't…!», Mavis, who was sitting by his side, could hear him lament.
"Do you want us to turn it off, Uncle?" She delicately asked, placing a hand on his arm.
"…No…G-Go on…" He replied.
And so the torture went on. Because for them it was an amusing movie, but to him, it seemed like torture. It took the fun out of it.
The murder of doctor Waldman. The attempt to do the same to Frankenstein's bride. The little girl's corpse, carried by her father, ending the celebration at town in the worst way possible. All of these made the giant suddenly seem tiny as a mouse, shrink in his seat.
«There can be no wedding while this horrible creation of mine is still alive. I made him with these hands, and with these hands I will destroy him.» After Frankenstein's words everyone turned their head towards Frank. His wife was shaking her head in disapproval for both those words and Frank insisting on hearing them. He had started to cry.
And, of course, the mob.
«Murderer!», «Burn the mill!», «Burn the mill! He can't get away!»
"Fire…" Frank muttered at the sight of the torches in those people's hands.
"Calm down, big guy, it's not real fire." Wayne tried to ease him before he got too nervous.
Frank's eyes were still fixed on the screen. Those torches were used to ignite the bushes around the mill and set it on fire. With nowhere to go, cornered by the fire, the Frank on the movie howled like a terrified animal, until the whole place crumbled over his head.
"Fire bad…"
So that's where that comes from…, Mavis said to herself, I thought it came from some awful kitchen experience or something…!. And she couldn't blame him. Nobody liked being burnt alive. She was surprised her father didn't use it as some kind of cautionary tale about humans. Perhaps it was too much for her childish mind.
"I know you, Uncle." Mavis tried to comfort him. "I know you wouldn't..."
"It wasn't like that! I didn't…! It was…It was an accident! I never meant to...!" He was weeping now. "They treated me like I was a blasphemy! Which I am! But I'm not the one to blame! It was my father! He made me and abandoned me, when all I wanted was a little sympathy and answers and…! Oh, Dad! I never asked you to love an abomination like me! I was just asking for...!"
"Oh, boy." Griffin muttered.
"Guess he wasn't ready for this." Wayne shook his head with pity.
"I told you! Come on, let's go get some fresh air! What a mess!" Eunice made him stand up and walk out.
"Why, Dad, WHYYYYY?!" Frank kept bawling.
"It's okay, Uncle Frank, it all ended well, didn't it? People aren't going to chase you with torches anymore! Johnny told me you're considered a tragic hero now. A hero, Uncle! You're a celebrity: you've got tons of movies, hundreds of movies! They totally love you!" 'Who could ever love me?', was Frank's response to that, making Mavis bite her under lip while she thought of what else to say. "Look, Aunt Eunice's got one! Sure this one will be a little more light-hearted! Wanna see?" Mavis showed him the disc for Bride of Frankenstein.
"That's supposed to be me?! Pheh!" Eunice spouted upon seeing Elsa Lanchester's fancy hairdo, giving her more reason to leave the room.
A tense silence followed.
"He's…got issues." Murray explained Mavis.
"I see…So…it's all true?"
"And worse. That crazy doctor who made him...The movie got that all wrong: that guy was not good. He only thought of himself and threw Frank away. What happened to him, he made poor Frank do it." Wayne said to the girl.
"That means…?"
"Well, that means it's my turn!" Murray exclaimed, evidently not scared of what he would find.
Boris Karloff was also starring The Mummy, 1932. Karloff couldn't have looked any more different than Murray: he was dead serious, squared and thin. And it seemed his story wasn't Murray's, either. He didn't stop laughing and making comments, spitting popcorn pieces and jumping of excitement on his seat, seeing him drive his discoverer mad, kill people with his stare, hypnotize the female lead.
"Oh, boy, that's some good curse!"
"You barely curse anyone nowadays." Griffin observed.
"Nobody's given me reasons. Sometimes reputation's enough." Since Mavis was looking at him inquisitively, he explained, pointing at the heroes with a fat finger. "Those graverobbers with carte blanche. They woke me up from my slumber, that's the only accurate thing. They couldn't keep their long fingers to themselves, so I cursed them the very moment I opened my eyes."
"And they died?" The girl asked.
"Nah! Just diarrhea! But it was enough to scare them away! That was in the 20s, after some people paid greatly for having disturbed good ol' Tut, and I benefited from the paranoia that followed. Now, if some scientist pyramid-digger or tourist tries to get into my pyramid, I just howl a little and they run away like chicken."
Frank returned, looking paler than usual, and sat silently. Eunice seemed to have decided this was a waste of time.
"Feeling better?" Wanda asked, looking at him with pity.
"Yeah…Oh, Murray, that's you…But that's not you."
"I wish! Look at that princess!" And he whistled seductively.
Mavis turned her eyes away from the screen and tried to imagine Murray without all those bandages…Would have he passed as a human? …What did he look like, before he died?
"At least they didn't portray you as a brutish murderer…" Frank sighed.
«But when we came to handle all her clothes and her jewels and her toilet things—you know they buried everything with them that they used in life?—well, when we came to unwrap the girl herself...»
«How could you do that?»
«Had to! Science, you know!»
"Grave-robbing!" Murray threw some popcorn at the man on the screen, preventing everyone else from hearing what else the guy said.
«Do you have to open graves to find girls to fall in love with?»
"You haven't seen the girls you can find in a pyramid!" Murray flashed a smile.
The mummy seemed much harder to sympathize with than Frankenstein. He wasn't an innocent, dim-witted brute. He knew what he was doing when he killed all those people without laying a hand on them, when he enslaved servants to bring him Thoth's papyr, what he intended to do to that poor girl…
«It was not only this body I loved, it was thy soul. I destroy this lifeless thing! Thou shall take its place but for a few moments and then...Rise again, even as I have risen!»
«The bath of natron... you shall not plunge my body into that!»
"Whoever wrote this has never been in a mummification!" Murray complained again. "A bath of natron?! How incompetent! We want to dehydrate the body and keep the spices inside the cavity, not wash it all away! Booo!"
"It's just a movie." Wayne told him.
"They're perpetuating stereotypes! If they were gonna write a movie about mummies, they should have at least asked one. I would have been glad to help!"
"Come on, you were dead when they embalmed you, what could you have said to them?" Griffin asked.
"But I was a priest! I did it all the time! When I woke up and saw the mess they had done to me, I fixed it myself!"
He kept on watching how the mummy which was surely someone different was rejected by his reincarnated sweetheart and the gods ended his misdeeds by burning the magical papyr, making him crumble as a rotten, lifeless skeleton.
"And, of course, I die. Wait, I'm technically dead. Oh, well, I give it 3 out of 5. It was entertaining." Murray got up for a second to stretch his limbs.
"My turn." Griffin pointed out. "Well, I did cover myself with bandages that time when I had to go to Queens, they got that right..."
The invisible man, 1933.
«I'll show you who I am!»
It seemed like the movie had gotten a lot of things right. Mavis wished she could see her uncle's face; however, she did get some clues of what he was thinking of the movie: he wouldn't stop fidgeting, didn't eat anymore, sometimes heard him grunt…
"Who wrote this garbage?!" He exploded, checking the credits on the DVD box.
"Don't act like it wasn't like that, Griff." Wayne said.
"They got it all wrong! The opposite way, actually! I didn't kill—at least, that was not my intention at all…! I sure landed a few punches, and broke things in people's heads, but...! I just…!"
For a moment, Griffin seemed like he didn't know whether to stay standing or seat back. After a moment of doing neither, he sat and kept watching how his cinematic doppelganger strangled cops, terrified villagers, disappointed his fiancé, killed his fellow student, who had finally understood that he was deranged and would use the advantage invisibility gave him to make evil…
"Lies!" He roared, jumping off of his seat again.
"Calm down, man." Murray patted his arm (or his leg, he wasn't sure).
"Calm down?! This is what people think I am! It's what they thought back then and what they think now!"
"Welcome to the club." Frank sadly said.
"Nobody thinks that anymore, I assure you." Mavis assured him. Though she was afraid she was lying. Johnny had shown her that Uncle Griffin had starred some movies, and…in none of them he was a good guy. Well, there was this one in which he was...wait, no, he was a thief.
Griffin sat down for the eleventh time and his glasses shook in a disapproving manner.
"I did it for science, not fame and money…Well, sure it crossed my mind, but I was a scientist…"
«Griffin, I'll do anything! Anything you'll ask of me!»
«You will? That's fine. Just sit where you are…»
Words followed by the guy feeling out of breath all of a sudden.
"I appreciated Kemp…He was my friend…I would have never killed him…He was the one who tried to kill me!" Griffin sounded really hurt now.
Mavis guessed he had reasons to be as upset as Uncle Frank was: this was so unlike him! That guy was a selfish murderer! What a killing spree! Even more than Dad, Uncle Frank and Uncle Murray together! She was sure her uncle would have never done something of the sort…, willingly, at least.
He died in this version. He died and he became visible again. A madman's face appeared on screen, lunatic and unpeaceful even in death.
He was a human. He had been a human all along, just…one that nobody could see.
"But here you are...What happened, actually?" Mavis couldn't resist asking him.
"It wasn't safe to stay in the country, so I fled. I wandered the continent until I found myself here. In Lubov's castle. Your dad considered me a human after all and wanted to suck my blood, but your mom was kind enough to listen to my story and convinced him to give me a hand till I was ready to go live in the US on my own."
"Martha was such a good woman..." Wanda sighed with sadness.
"Yeah, she was...When they killed her..." Griffin's glasses turned to look at the screen. "...Well, from that day on, I take being called a human an insult...No offense to Johnny..."
Mavis shook her head, understanding. Griffin drank a little more, the liquid falling visibly down his esophagus, and was silent for a long while.
"You know, kid," Murray told Mavis, like reading her thoughts, "sometimes, all it takes to become a monster is someone telling you are a million times…"
She glanced at her uncles, at all of them, and felt a gush of pity.
"Now I'm scared of what I'm gonna find…Well, let's get to it…It may be good, who knows..." Wayne sighed.
The Wolf Man, 1941. Wanda tried to make the kids go to bed. They wanted to watch it, but she wasn't sure it would be appropriate for them. And the rest of the gang was thankful she took them all away except for Winnie, who fell asleep on her dad's chest: they were too noisy and one had tried to rip the screen with his claws.
«Larry, to some people, life is very simple. They decide that this is good, that is bad. This is wrong, that's right. There's no right in wrong, no good in bad. No shadings and greys, all blacks and whites.»
"Wow, they nailed it." Frank was admired.
«Don't try to make me believe that I killed a man when I know that I killed a wolf!»
"Yeah, like you stopped to ask..." Wayne muttered. Mavis watched him for long, hoping he would explain himself, but he didn't. They were getting to the exciting part. That Larry guy had been bitten by the werewolf, and soon he would turn into one. As soon as the full moon appeared in the sky...With some effects that Johnny said were completely outdated but the monsters found amusing, his legs changed, and fur filled his face, rendering him unrecognizable.
"…So he changed his clothes after transforming? Like he realized it was cold outside and put a sweater on?" Wayne pointed out.
"That's stupid." Griffin replied.
"Yeah." Murray agreed.
"And doesn't look much like a wolf, either." Griffin added.
"I've seen hairier people in my trip than that." Mavis said, sipping from her drink.
"And why kill the graveyard guy? What for? Sheep don't give that much trouble and are tastier…" Wayne said after his other him claimed his first victim.
"Are you sure you've never eaten someone?" There wasn't much popcorn left, and Frank took it all with his big hand, shoved it into his big mouth. "We've all done crazy stuff when we were younger."
"How was I supposed to? A scared newly-turned wolf guy, against a bunch of crazy humans armed with hunting guns! I wouldn't have had the chance to come an inch close to one!"
Newly-turned…, Mavis tried to contain herself, because she knew she was asking too many personal questions, but was too curious.
"So…you were bitten, too?"
"Yeah. I was herding the cattle when this guy pounced on me and bit me. He tried to eat me. He apologized later, said he was starving, but that still hurt."
Mavis had never seen it, so he showed her. All of his friends had already seen it, it was almost like a badge to brag about. Under all that fur, there it was, the mark of a bite, in his underarm. He had bites all over, from his kids, but this one, though very old, hadn't completely healed and it seemed it never would, and seemed deeper, so much bigger. That had to hurt a lot. The werewolf who did this had to be massive.
"And the next full moon…?" Mavis asked.
"Yeah. But it wasn't like they show in this movie." Wayne replied, wrapping that arm around Winnie again. "You don't go back. You stay like that. And you don't go on a killing spree, come on! It's the humans who become mad and try to kill you!"
Mavis glanced at the beast on the screen which was grunting like a mindless animal. «I killed Bela. I killed Richardson. If I stay here any longer, you can't tell who'll be next.» But Uncle Wayne could talk, and he was on his sound mind…
"And nobody understood that you didn't…?"
"They only understand that you are different." Wayne sadly said.
"And if there's something humans hate, it's difference." Griffin nodded.
Wayne seemed to like the movie, nevertheless. He knew it wasn't him, just a distorted version or some other werewolf's story. He was coming to terms with a lot of things lately: him being a recognizable figure, the people not chasing him anymore, even some wanting him to infect them...However, there was still a trace of anxiety, weariness, sadness. When the the customary mob with shotguns and torches tried to find the beast which was slaughtering the town and kill it, he turned his gaze at Winnie.
"I'm kind of glad my kids were born like this. It saved them some huge disappointments." And he kissed her head.
It never ended well for the monsters. It wasn't different this time. The character played by Lon Chaney Jr. died as well, and very sadly so, in the hands of his own father, who didn't want to believe that the beast was his own son.
"Wow." Frank summed up the general feeling very well.
"Ooof! I thought they would never go to sleep! Oh, did I miss it?" Wanda came back and was upset to find that these were the last minutes.
"You can borrow it and watch it at home." Mavis proposed.
"It's okay, now that I know he dies in the end, it kind of spoils the whole movie for me."
Wanda shook her head at the sight of the dead monster.
"How dreadful…" She muttered.
"Good thing our story ended much better, huh?" Wayne comforted her.
"What a story! A village girl..."
"...a shepherd..."
"...bitten by a brute..."
"...chased out of town..."
"My own father tried to shoot me dead..."
"But he couldn't."
"He sure tried."
"...the shepherd and the village girl meet..."
"...they run away together..."
"...and now it's their children who are trying to suck all life from them."
"You smelt like a thousand devils." Wanda smiled at him.
"And you were so beautiful…" Wayne purred, his snout grazing hers.
They ignored Murray's comment about them leaving them alone for some privacy to kiss one another.
«Your suffering is over. Now you will find peace for eternity.»
Mavis looked at them and tried to imagine them without all that hair. Humans who walked around other humans, ate with them, had friends and family who were humans…
She looked at all of them.
They had all been human at some point.
Uncle Frank and Aunt Eunice had been several people. At some point, all those people died, were buried, and some crazy doctor dug them out to use the best parts to create a new life, just to feed his ego.
Uncle Murray was someone who lived a long time before, his time came as well, was buried and some greedy archeologists woke him up while attempting to loot the remains of his mortal life.
Uncle Griffin had always been a human being, he still was, but finding a way to make his flesh invisible caused him to have his humanity card removed.
Uncle Wayne and Aunt Wanda knew very well that people can tolerate humans, wolves, but not something in between.
Maybe turning 118 really had made her older in more than one sense…Because now she understood the terror in their eyes when they warned her about the dangers of the outside world, upon discovering that Johnny was a human being, even now, when people came to see them. The world had rejected them. A world which saw them as monsters even though they had never hurt anybody, and mistreated them until they were forced to do things they didn't want to do. She had been born a vampire, and her dad, too, and her grandfather; she was pretty sure their lineage had been vampire for a very long time. She couldn't imagine what it was like, being rejected by your own kind, but now…
"Well, that was nice, but it's almost noon, and I'm sleepy!" Murray got up from the seat and stretched his chubby limbs.
"We should do this more often." Griffin checked if there was really no popcorn left.
"Son of Frankenstein?" Frank checked the movies which had been left pending. "Eunice's gotta see this. I've been wanting to have a son of ages, but she never finds any pieces she likes."
"Thank you for the marathon, sweetie. It was fun." Wayne said to Mavis, handing his daughter to Wanda so she could take her to bed.
Mavis didn't reply. She just watched them all go to their rooms to rest for the day. Trying to picture them…
She took the DVD box and looked at the horrible monsters on the cover. They looked nothing like them…But she and Dad knew the truth…Perhaps that was why they became friends and came every time they could…
I really hope people are more willing to listen nowadays…, she said to herself, before turning the screen off and going to bed, too.
THE END
Note: The Queens reference comes from the European Spanish dub, which gave Griffin a Woody Allen-ish touch and changed his first line to: "I did. That's how we say hello in Manhattan." I have decided to slip his residence more as a personal headcanon than something canon.