“Are we there yet?” said Erwin, the sarcasm in his voice unmistakable.
“That was funny the first time you said it,” Ike said. “But the joke starts to wear thin after the fifth or sixth time.”
“Well, when I asked it the first time I thought we were almost there. How was I supposed to know we still had another hour to go?”
Ike said nothing in response to his brother. If he had known that the house his location manager had found for the shoot was so far from L.A., he might not have agreed to use it. Sure it had looked good in the photos he’d been e-mailed, and it was big enough to handle the entire production, and the price had certainly been right… but it was a two-hour drive out of L.A., and on the outskirts of a small town no one had ever heard of. If something went wrong during production, or someone got hurt on-site, they might not have the means or the budget to make things right. They could have had the budget if they spent everything the network gave them to produce the series, but they’d decided to do the show on a shoestring and save the bulk of the money for the movie they’d be making afterward.
The thought of the network deal still brought a smile to Ike’s face. He’d basically gotten the network to fund a television series that would be a four-hour advertisement for the next Gowan Brothers horror film. In addition to the money they’d given them for the television show, the network had also paid up front for the television broadcast rights to the new movie, giving the Gowan brothers more money to produce this one than they’d had on their previous four films. It was a sweet deal, no doubt about it, and it was the thing that was going to put the Gowan brothers on the map. After this one they’d be doing studio films with enough money for top-shelf animatronics and CGI effects, name stars, and most important of all, they’d be rich…
Their driver turned the Navigator off the two-lane highway they’d been traveling for the past two hours and onto a gravel road that led straight into a forested area that was made up of tall pines and dark shadows, even in the middle of the day.
“Are we there yet?” Erwin said again. “I’ve got to pee.”
This time Ike turned toward the driver. “Well?”
“Five minutes down this road.”
“Can you wait that long?” Ike asked.
“No, I can’t,” said Erwin.
Suddenly, a line of water splashed against the dashboard.
“What the—” exclaimed the driver, jerking the wheel left in surprise and almost putting them into a tree before managing to get the big SUV back onto the dirt road.
Ike slowly turned around to face his brother. “Damn it, Erwin, that wasn’t funny.”
Erwin sat there with a big grin on his face and a tiny green squirt gun in his hand. “What do you mean? It was hilarious.”
Ike had to smile. “Yeah, a real pisser.”
The driver let out a sigh and shook his head ever so slightly.
“Just no more surprises until we get to the house, okay? I want to get there in one piece.”
“All right,” said Erwin, “but are we there yet?”
“Yes,” said the driver. There was relief in his voice. “Here it is.”
They rounded a curve in the road and the trees slowly began to part. There in front of them stood the old house they’d seen in the pictures.
The driver brought the car to a stop and the brothers just sat there, looking at the house.
“It looked scarier on the computer screen,” said Erwin.
At first glance, Ike had to admit that his brother was right. The old Victorian mansion didn’t appear to be all that menacing in the middle of the day. The sun shining down on it only exposed its missing shingles, broken windows, and sagging rooflines. And the trees around it were overgrown, crowding the building as if they were working on reclaiming the structure and returning it to the land. But the more Ike studied the house, the more he began to appreciate its design and construction.
At the north end of the building was a two-story turret that housed large, round, glassed-in rooms on both the first and second floors. The turret was capped by a shingled spire that towered over the rest of the house, giving it a focal point, and an ominous, fortresslike quality. There was also evidence of Gothic influences in the pointed arches that supported the roof over the porch, which went all the way around the ground floor. The longer Ike looked, the more the house gave him the creeps. “It’ll do,” he said at last.
“Hi, guys,” said a voice that was tinged with a bit of an Australian accent.
Ike looked up and saw William Olsen, their location manager, approaching them from the direction of the trailers that were set up in the empty field on the eastern side of the house. Olsen was in his late forties, with a thick brown beard and long, unruly blond hair. He had a real knack for finding places that looked great on film, and that could stand in for multiple locations.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Ike said, not wanting to let Olsen know what he really thought, just in case it might encourage the guy to ask for more money on their next project.
“It looked scarier in the pictures we saw,” said Erwin.
“Not to worry, boys,” Olsen said. “I know it doesn’t look like much now, but the network sent us this crackerjack lighting guy. He’s got all sorts of special lights set up around the house, and at night… I swear, you’ll think the whole fucking thing’s come to life.”
“That good, eh?” said Erwin, already sounding pleased.
“And the lights even shine through the windows into the house so we can save a bit on interior lighting.”
Ike liked the sound of that. “Sounds good,” he said.
“Aw, it’s great, wait till you see it.”
Ike took a look around the property. There were people moving between the trailers, and there were others going in and out of the building, probably carpenters and electricians making the house safe for the effects guys who would be arriving over the next few weeks.
One of the people hanging around was obviously not a carpenter or a plumber. The man was walking an average-sized dog on a leash and if it weren’t for the rat sitting up on his shoulder he might have been mistaken for someone from town who had just wandered onto the set.
Ike looked at Olsen and gestured in the man’s direction.
“Oh, right, let me introduce you to Ryan Mayhew, he’s our animal wrangler. I asked him to come by because I knew you two would be here today. I hope you don’t mind.”
Erwin shrugged.
“Not at all,” Ike said.
Olsen turned toward Mayhew. “Ryan, would you come here a minute? I want you to meet the Gowan brothers.”
The animal wrangler walked toward them, his hand extended in greeting. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mr. Gowan.”
“Mr. Gowan was our dad,” said Erwin.
“I’m Ike, and this is my brother, Erwin.”
“Oh, you don’t have to introduce yourselves to me, I know who you two are. I’ve enjoyed all your movies, even if there weren’t many animals in them.”
“We could never afford them before,” Ike said.
“Besides that,” said Erwin, “it’s easier to make puppets that we can chop into small bits than work with live animals. You know, I’ve never met a dog that could emote well after its head had been hacked off with an ax.”
Mayhew’s face looked pained, as if he was having trouble appreciating Erwin’s attempt at humor.
“Does the rat do any tricks?” Ike asked, changing the subject.
Without a word, Mayhew bent down and placed a cube of cheese on the toe of his shoe. Then he snapped his fingers and the rat climbed down Mayhew’s chest and pant leg to get to the cheese. After putting the food in its mouth, the rat climbed back up the wrangler’s body to its perch on his shoulder.
Mayhew smiled, proud of his animal’s accomplishment.
Ike was skeptical, not sure how they could work that trick—if you could call it that—into the show. He glanced at the dog. It was little more than a mutt, looking as if it had been dragged out of the pound earlier in the day. “What about him? He do anything special?”
“He doesn’t look all that scary to me,” said Erwin.
“Just watch,” said Mayhew. He took three steps away from the dog, caught the dog’s attention, and then gave it a silent signal by tapping his cheek three times in succession.
All at once the dog’s appearance changed. Its lips pulled back to expose two long rows of pointed fangs. It snarled and spat like a hellhound, lunging forward and moving backward as if it were in a pit and fighting for its life.
“Jesus,” said Erwin, taking a couple of steps back to get out of the dog’s way, then moving behind Olsen where he could look at the dog more safely over the man’s shoulder.
Even Ike moved aside, afraid that the dog might take a chunk out of one of his loafers.
Mayhew let the dog snap and snarl for a little while longer before tapping his other cheek. The dog suddenly fell silent and looked to the wrangler for a treat
“Wow!” said Erwin.
“Yeah,” Ike said. “Wow!”
Olsen slapped a hand on Mayhew’s shoulder. “Thanks, Ryan, that was great,” he said.
The animal wrangler nodded, then turned and led the dog away. The rat remained perched on the man’s shoulder, hardly moving as he walked.
“That was cool!” said Erwin.
“But do we really need animals?” Ike asked.
Olsen nodded. “The house has got them. At one point in the house’s history the basement was overrun by rats, thousands of them…”
“And the dog?”
“Well, the guy who owned this house, who did the killing, had a dog, and they figure the dog proved very helpful in, uh… disposing of a few of the man’s victims.”
“Ah,” Ike said with a slight nod.
“What did the dog do,” said Erwin, “bury them?”
“Uh, no,” Olsen said. “He ate them, actually.”
Erwin clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together. “This is going to be great.”
“Let’s get to the production trailer,” Olsen said, smiling. “There are a bunch of people there waiting for you.”
“Lead the way,” Ike said.
Romano Ramirez hooked the end of the crowbar under the aged plank and pulled. Nails screamed, dust flew, and the wood slowly came away from the riser.
Another step was laid bare.
Romano and his brother, Eduardo, had been building theatrical sets in southern California for the past fifteen years. Most of their work had been on low-budget, nonunion productions, but they’d never been on a job like this one before.
First of all, why would anyone want to fix such an old run-down house? It would be a lot easier to build a brand-new one, especially when they had to use secondhand wood for all their repairs. And even though they were making repairs, they’d been instructed only to fix the house so that no one would break their neck walking around inside. Romano could only shake his head at that. He and his brother had worked for some tightfisted producers over the years, guys like Roger Corman and those two cheapskates, Golan and Globus, but they’d never seen a project that cut as many corners as this one.
Romano swung the crowbar under another step. This time the hook punched a hole in the rotten plank, leaving behind a mess of tiny wooden shards that would have to be removed by hand.
At this rate, he’d be working on the stairs leading to the second floor all afternoon. The head carpenter had told him that six steps needed to be replaced, but there were twice that many in need of repair. Sure, the others would hold as long as the people using them stepped lightly…
Like ghosts.
Which was the other thing that bothered Romano about the house. Even though the sun was shining and it was hot outside, the inside of the house felt cold. Not cool like a house that hasn’t been opened in years, but cold like the inside a cooler full of ice.
It was almost like the place was really haunted, or maybe even cursed.
Romano glanced at his watch. There were fifteen minutes to go till break time, but he needed to get out of the house now. He felt uneasy, like there was somebody looking over his shoulder all the time, watching what he was doing to the house and not being too pleased about it.
He began to gather up the broken bits of wood, careful not to catch his bare hands on any of the exposed nails. His hands had become hardened by fifteen years of work, but calluses were no match for a rusty four-inch nail.
Just then, something moved at the top of the stairs.
Romano dropped a sliver of wood and looked up in time to see a shadow moving across the wall inside one of the upstairs rooms.
But there was no one upstairs… wouldn’t be anyone up there until he repaired the steps leading up to the second floor.
Romano continued to peer into the room, wondering if what he’d seen might have been just a shadow from a tree outside the upstairs window.
Yeah… that would explain it.
He took a deep breath and let out a sigh, then began backing down the stairs with the load of broken wood in his arms. The sooner this job is done, the better, he thought. There’s something wrong with this place, and it’s not just rotten wood on the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs Romano turned for the door, but as he did, he noticed something standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen. It was a dark, deformed figure that looked vaguely human. Much of the head was missing and its arms seemed to bend at strange and impossible angles.
Romano’s heart began to race and his breath quickened. He wanted to move, to run, but all he could do was look at the horrible vision.
As he watched, the thing’s misshapen arms reached out to him, as if he were a long-lost love.
And then… it moved toward him.
Romano screamed, turned for the open doorway, and ran.
He was through the door in seconds, but out on the porch his right foot broke through a rotten plank.
As he fell…
Broken wood spilled from his arms.
Jagged planking shredded his right leg, tearing it open from ankle to thigh.
His shinbone snapped in two with a loud crack!
And then he hit the porch hard, his outstretched hands and left cheek pierced by upturned nails in the scattered wood.
And then he was still.
For a moment, there was only silence, then the shouts and pounding footsteps of workers running toward the house.
His brother, Eduardo, was first on the scene. “Romano!”
Romano opened his right eye and saw there was a nail poking through his right hand. He tried to speak, but cut his tongue on the point of the nail that had pierced his cheek.
“What happened?” his brother wanted to know.
“La casa…” he whispered, too low for anyone to hear.
Instead of asking again, Eduardo got busy tying off Romano’s thigh to try and stop his brother from bleeding to death.
“Bring the truck!” Eduardo shouted. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”
The rest of the workers moved quickly.
Romano closed his eyes, hoping that if he lived, the job would be finished before he was well enough to return to work.