Chapter 8
They had originally planned to have the director of photography, Steve Bottin, tape the special effects tour of the house, but when the brothers realized that the tour might take more than two hours to complete, they decided to use a younger and stronger man to carry the camera through the house.
“So what we’re looking for…” Ike said, hesitating as he looked at the cameraman. “What’s your name again?”
“Bruno,” he said. “Bruno Roper.”
Ike nodded. “What I want, Bruno, is a few good shots no more than ten or fifteen seconds each that I can cut to when we’re introducing the contestants or explaining what’s in store for them inside the house.”
“Got it,” the young man said, hefting the camera onto his decidedly broad shoulders.
“So it’s not all that important that you get the tour in one smooth take, but when we get into a new room I expect you to get into position, set yourself, and get a steady shot.”
“How close do you want me to get?”
“My brother will guide you on that stuff. I’d think wide shots would be safe to begin with, but zoom in when you feel it’s right.”
Bruno nodded, then said, “Speed,” to let everyone know he was taping.
Ike turned to special effects coordinator Andy Matheson. “You don’t have to explain everything you’ve got in the house, but I do expect you to point out some of the best stuff. And I want to see you get excited about it, ‘cuz I know you do.”
Andy smiled. “Sure, no problem.”
“And, Erwin?” Ike twisted around to find his brother.
“Over here.” Erwin stepped out of the shadows.
“Bruno will be looking to you for instructions, so let him know if there’s anything special you want. After that, you’ll be providing a bit of color for Andy so feel free to show everyone how demented you are, just don’t overdo it.”
“You got it, my brother.”
Ike nodded with satisfaction.
He was the producer of the show, and he had a bunch of ideas about how the entire package should look in the end. Still, he was happy to set things in motion and then let Erwin take care of the details. It was an arrangement that had served them well so far, and Ike wasn’t about to go messing around with success. “All right, then, let’s do it.”
“Well,” Andy began, “we should go into the basement first and work our way up to the top level of the house. So walk this way.”
Erwin immediately emulated Andy’s walk, which wasn’t all that distinctive, but was different enough so that people watching would get the joke.
The stairs leading down to the basement were narrow and the basement itself was only dimly lit. When Bruno was set up in one corner, Andy began to explain a few of the basement effects.
“We’ve got a couple of air conditioners hidden in the basement windows so we can make cold spots anywhere down here we want.”
“What’s so cool about cold spots?” Erwin asked, as if he were a bad actor in a high school instructional film.
“A drop in temperature signifies the presence of a spirit or ghost, so we can put ‘cold air’ ghosts into any part of the room we want.”
Erwin had pasted a couple of thimbles to his chest and was now pulling his T-shirt tight against his skin as he stepped in front of the camera. “Wow, it is cold in here,” he said, thrusting his chest out, “but I like it.”
Ike just shook his head. It was such a stupid gag, but they’d probably still end up using it in the show.
Andy moved to another spot in the basement, then adjusted his position slightly to the left, as if searching for his mark. “We’ve also got tiny blood reservoirs located throughout the house, which are hooked up to a control board in the production trailer. Anyone standing in the right place…” Blood began to drip down onto Andy’s forehead and face. “… will find themselves being bled upon.”
Erwin put his hand out to catch a few drops of blood. Then he cried out, “Blood! Mother!” echoing the famous cry Norman Bates uttered in both versions of Psycho.
Everyone in the basement laughed.
When the laughter died down, Erwin said, “Whose blood is this supposed to be anyway?”
Andy raised an eyebrow. “We’ll just have to leave that up to the viewers’ imaginations.”
“Cool,” Erwin said, nodding.
“Best of all, a few of the reservoirs hold more than a liter each, so there will be blood drips, blood spatters, and a few real gushers over the course of the night.”
Erwin made a fist, flicked his thumb into the air, and moved in close to the camera lens. “Cool!”
Ike shook his head slightly upon hearing Erwin’s dialogue. They had a writer on staff for this sort of stuff.
Andy looked around the room as if wondering if he should talk about anything else. “Let’s head up to the main floor and show you a few of the other tricks we’ve got in store for our contestants.”
Erwin and Bruno headed upstairs. Andy stayed behind to ask Ike what he thought so far. “Well?”
“That’s fine,” Ike said. “Just clean your face before you go upstairs.”
Andy touched a hand to his face and wiped off the blood as best he could. “How do I look?” he asked.
“Jesus Christ!” came a shout from upstairs.
The two men hurried up to the main floor.
Ike got there first. “What happened?”
“I was walking by this bookcase and a book fell off the shelf and hit me on the head.”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to do that,” Andy said with a bit of a smirk.
“Oh, isn’t that hilarious,” Erwin whined, gingerly rubbing the lump on the top of his head.
“There’s a pad on the floor in front of the bookcase…” Andy took a few steps, looking for it, then placed his foot deliberately onto the floor. There was a soft hiss and a book was pushed off the top shelf of the bookcase. Andy easily caught the book in his hand.
“How come when you do it, it’s a little chapbook, but when I do it, it has to be a friggin’ tome?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
Ike beamed. Erwin was turning out to be the star of this little piece and the humor would play off the somber tone of the rest of the show rather nicely.
“I’ll show you the kitchen now, but first let’s just look in that direction.”
Bruno panned the camera into the kitchen and held the shot. Smoke began to billow out of the doorway.
“We’ve got six smoke machines in the house, so we can smoke any room we want. But best of all, we’ve also got some projectors set up that can project images onto the smoke… like holograms.”
“Or ghosts,” added Erwin.
A light came on somewhere behind them and for a moment, there was an image of a woman projected onto the smoke. An attractive woman for the most part, except for the bloody gash that had been opened up across her chest and belly. There was a scream then, too, and the image of the woman disappeared in a flash of light.
“Nice,” Erwin said, nodding approvingly. “Very nice.”
Ike had to agree. It was a creepy enough image when you knew what it was and how it got to be there, but the contestants wouldn’t have that knowledge and would likely jump back and scream the moment the woman appeared.
When the smoke in the doorway cleared, Andy led them into the kitchen. “We haven’t quite finished in here yet, but we’ve got a few neat tricks set up in the cupboards.”
“Which were the ones you rigged?” Erwin asked.
“I can’t remember,” Andy said.
Erwin smiled. “So you want me to open one up and show everybody what happens, right?”
“It would be a good demonstration.”
“Okay, I’m game. Ooh, I’m hungry,” Erwin said in his instructional video voice again, this time playing the part of a contestant. “I wonder if there’s anything to eat—”
He opened up a cupboard on the wall and as he did so a blast of compressed air shot a blob of green goop at his head. It bounced off the right side of his forehead, then hit the camera lens dead center.
“Cut!” Ike shouted, even though he wasn’t actually directing the shoot.
Erwin fell to the floor, dazed.
Bruno staggered and almost went over backward with the camera.
Andy and Ike grabbed the man to keep him standing.
“What the hell was that?” Ike asked.
“Ectoplasm,” Andy said, as Erwin rubbed a hand over the welt on his head. “It’s supposed to spatter on whoever opens the cupboard door. I think the mix must have dried out a bit, and we’ve got a bit too much air pressure on the compressor.”
“You think?” said Ike. “Let’s get that fixed before it takes someone’s head off.”
“Good idea,” Erwin agreed, getting to his feet and looking none the worse for wear. “And maybe we can put some slime on the handles. You know, leaving them feeling all icky.”
Ike turned his attention to Bruno and the rented camera that had a deductible on it that was just about equal to the camera’s entire worth. “You okay?”
Bruno nodded, putting down the camera. “Had me spooked.”
Ike took a closer look at the lens. “Does this stuff clean off?”
“Should be able to peel if off in one piece,” Andy said.
“Okay, let’s take five. We’ll start up again once the camera’s clean.”
Ike knelt next to Bruno, who was beginning to peel the green goop off the camera lens, and asked, “How did it all look?”
“Picture was good. The sound is going to be a bit spotty, especially going up and down the stairs.”
“That’s okay. After we get what we need for the inserts, I’ll only need ten or so minutes of decent tape for the DVD.”
Erwin looked at his brother with a strange expression. “I didn’t know we had a DVD deal.”
“We don’t. Well, not yet, anyway,” Ike answered. “But I want to be ready for when we do.”
Erwin scowled. “Why am I always the last to know?”
* * * *
“Okay, that should do it,” Bruno announced five minutes later, after he had the lens clean.
“Anything else in the house that’s going to wipe out my cameraman?” Ike wanted to know.
“Your cameraman?” Erwin said.
“Okay, our cameraman.”
Andy shook his head. “No, that was a fluke. But you know as well as I do that that shot is a keeper.”
Ike couldn’t disagree. “Just keep him and the camera out of harm’s way for the rest of the tour.”
“Will do,” Andy said. “Now let’s head upstairs.” He led the group to the bottom of the stairs, then held back Bruno and Ike while Erwin went up the stairs ahead of them.
Erwin made it up five, six, seven steps when—
One of the steps broke away and Erwin stumbled.
He let out a shriek and grabbed the railing as if his life depended on it.
“I thought we fixed these damn steps,” Erwin cried.
“We did,” Andy said, moving up the stairs. “But one of my assistants thought it would be a great gag to have a few of the steps be breakaways.” He pointed to the broken step. “But it only drops an inch, so it’s just enough to jostle you, but not enough to seriously trip you up.”
“How many steps are there like that on these stairs?”
Andy shook his head. “I’m not telling,” then hurried up the stairs, avoiding any other broken steps along the way.
The rest of them followed Andy, doing their best to copy his footsteps exactly.
When they were all safely at the top of the stairs, Andy took an exaggerated step to the left…
And the house was suddenly filled by the haunting scream of a woman.
It was so loud and long and absolutely terrifying that Ike could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end.
And when it was over, Andy was smiling proudly. “Sounds good, doesn’t it?” He looked into the camera. “That’s a shriek by a mezzo-soprano from the Los Angeles Opera Company. We’ve also got similar screams from a tenor…”
Andy stepped on the pad again.
“A bass…”
Another step.
“And a soprano, tenor duo.”
Andy lowered his foot one last time.
Erwin grinned like a kid who had just been let out of school for the summer. “This is going to be so cool!”
After a few moments of silence, Ike half instructed, half asked, “Moving on.”
Andy led them into the nearest bedroom and when Bruno was set up, he began talking. “Each one of the contestants will be instructed to enter one of these rooms… and that’s where the serious shit happens. We’ve still got some work to do on the other rooms, but this one is pretty much finished.”
He moved close to one of the inside walls. “It’s got a combination of live-action and animatronic effects that will be sure to strike fear into anything with a heartbeat.”
Spiders began falling from the ceiling on the ends of strings made of clear filament.
One landed on Erwin’s shoulder and he jumped.
At the same time, live spiders were released from a rigged box on the floor. Andy slowly moved out of the frame and came up behind Bruno, placing three spiders onto the camera lens.
Then, as the spiders crawled back and forth over the lens, a dead body fell from the shadows on the ceiling.
The body arced down toward the floor as if it were strung up by its feet and then swung back and forth like a pendulum until it came to an uneasy rest, hanging upside down from the rafters.
“Damn, that looked good,” Erwin commented.
“And it’ll look even better once we get the face right. We’ve had one of the actors make a mold, so it’ll be his face on the mannequin during taping.”
Erwin smiled at the camera. “That’s going to be killer.”
“And the wounds in the thing will all be dressed up to look wet and fresh.”
“I love the sound of that,” Erwin said, poking his finger into the eye socket of the mannequin. “Wet and fresh.”
Andy led the group back out into the hallway.
“I could show you the rest of the rooms up here, but they’re basically variations on the same theme and I don’t want to spoil any of the surprises…”
Just then, over Andy’s shoulder, Ike saw a shadow moving in one of the bedrooms, as if someone was in there working.
“What was that?”
Andy looked behind him. “What was what?”
Apparently, Erwin had seen it, too. “In the bedroom at the end of the hallway,” he said. “Something was moving around in there.” He turned around to look at Andy. “Have you got someone up here?”
Andy smiled nervously, probably thinking the brothers were playing a gag on him. Turning the tables. “No. I had the house cleared for the tour.”
“It was a dark shape floating about a foot or two off the floor,” Erwin said. “Something like a ghost, only it was dark.”
Andy shook his head, laughing. “You guys are full of it.”
“No, there was something inside the room,” Erwin insisted. “And I want to see what it is.”
Ike wanted to see what was there, as well. However, the thing wasn’t the dark floating ghost that Erwin had described, but rather a shadow that had darkened the air, much like a swarm of insects might do.
Erwin led the group down the hall, but stopped just short of the door to the bedroom.
“What is it?” Ike said.
Erwin was silent
“Go on inside,” he prodded.
“No,” Erwin said. “I don’t want to anymore.”
Ike opened his mouth to say something, but Andy beat him to the punch.
“You’re not chicken, are you?”
“No, it’s just that…” Erwin’s voice trailed off. For a few moments everyone expected him to say something funny, but he said nothing, his mouth remaining open and silent. He stood in the doorway without moving.
Ike knew they were taping material that could be used for teasers and other inserts, but this was becoming too staged for his liking. “For crying out loud, Erwin,” he said, “move out of the way.” Ike grabbed Erwin’s flowered shirt and pulled him back from the doorway. With Erwin out of the way, Ike started into the room, but stopped just a step or two inside it.
He felt… cold.
More than just cold.
He was freezing.
Ice seemed to be flowing through his veins and a chill gnawed at his skin as if it were being pricked and prodded by a million icy needles.
“What’s the matter, Ike?” Erwin said, putting enough emphasis on his name to give it two syllables.
“Nothing, I, uh…” He was finding it a little hard to breathe and his heart was racing. He looked for the shadow in the room, but it wasn’t there.
There was nothing there.
It was just an empty room that Andy had rigged to run cold, to give people a chill.
That’s all it was.
Nothing more.
Whatever he’d seen, it had to have been a shadow cast through a window by something outside the house. Yeah, that was probably it. And to think, for a minute there he’d actually thought the house might be haunted.
Ike turned around and looked at Bruno. He was about to say, “Cut!” when a noise originating from outside the house caught everyone’s attention.
“Now what’s going on out there?” Ike said.
Just then the front door opened and William Olsen stepped into the house.
“What the hell is that?” Ike asked him from the top of the stairs.
“People from town,” Olsen answered.
Erwin had gone down the stairs and was looking out one of the foyer windows. “There’s a lot of them out there.”
Ike came down the stairs to join his brother. “How many?”
“Ten or twelve.”
“That’s a lot?” said Ike.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere.” Erwin shrugged.
Ike turned to Olsen. “What’s their problem?”
“They want you to shut down the production and leave.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Tell them to get lost.”
Olsen shook his head. “They want to talk to a Gowan.”
Ike looked over at his brother. “Why don’t you go out there?”
Erwin laughed. “Me? Uh-uh, I’d fold like a deck chair… This is the kind of situation that calls for a real asshole.”
Ike shot his brother a contemptuous look, even though everyone in the room seemed to agree with him.
“Okay, but at least you guys have to come outside with me. Okay?”
Erwin nodded. Olsen and Andy Matheson, too.
Ike went out onto the porch and found that his brother—in true Hollywood fashion—had exaggerated the number of people in the crowd. There were only six of them standing on the lawn, and four of them were old, old ladies.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Ike Gowan. Is there a problem?”
A gray-haired woman dressed in a lavender and green track suit stepped forward. “You can’t do this!” she cried, shaking her walking stick at him.
Ike smiled. “I assure you, ma’am, I can, and we will be taping a television show in this house. I’ve got all the permission I need from the state of California, your town council, and the owners of this property. In fact, if I was so inclined, I could call up the sheriffs office and have the lot of you arrested for trespassing.”
Ike hated to come down so hard on these people right out of the starting gate, but this was an unnecessary delay when there was still plenty of work to be done.
“Well, you shouldn’t be here,” the old woman said, amending her position and losing the anger from her voice.
Ike made himself comfortable, sitting on the porch railing and leaning his back against one of the heavy white posts holding up the wooden overhang. “Now why is that?”
“People died in this house. Things happened inside there that we’d rather forget about. There’s spirits in there, too, that have been dormant for years. We’ve left them alone and they’ve pretty much left us alone…”
An old man wearing a pair of tan coveralls and a baseball cap from the local Legion hall stepped to the front of the crowd. “You go messing around in there”—spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke—“and God only knows what sort of evil will be unleashed. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I was scared to death of this house when I was a kid, and I’m still scared to death of it today—and believe me, sonny, I’ve seen some pretty frightening things in my day.”
“That right?”
“You betcha.”
“That’s a fact,” the others all chimed in.
“You’re playing with something you don’t know anything about.” It was the gray-haired woman again. “You might as well be playing with matches and gasoline…”
Ike turned away from the crowd and glanced over at Bruno. “Are you getting all this?”
Bruno gave Ike the thumbs-up, then pulled his head away from the eyepiece a moment. “But I don’t think you’re going to get a release form from any of them.”
Ike laughed under his breath. “Are you kidding? Everyone wants to be on television.” He turned back around to face the crowd, flashed a smile, and turned on the charm.
“I appreciate you all taking the time to come out here and warn us about the house, and I do think it’s an important message to get across, one that we definitely want to include in our broadcast.”
“Us?” said the gray-haired lady.
“Of course, you people,” said Ike. “Who knows this house better than you do?”
A few of the women had obviously taken to the idea judging by the way their expressions had just transformed from sour to golly-gee.
“Now, why don’t we go to my trailer? We can have coffee, something stronger if you like… and then we can talk.”
Ike stepped down off the porch headed for his trailer.
The group followed closely behind him.
Like lemmings.