Ello all you haunted house goers out there. Heres the last part of my Halloween themed article for my column at the UVU Review. Enjoy. Let me tell you about one of my first haunted houses. It was the ‘Ween of my fourteenth year and I’d rolled around in the back garden compost heap to get dirty and was painting my fingers and nails dark red. I’d gotten them proper right, as though I’d just scratched my way out of a shallow grave. Daddy said to me, “Leonar…ahem, Lydia, Why do you do the things you do?” I pointed at him and in my best zombie groan, gargled the words, “Aaahhii raaaahhv ooh.” It was that moment he said, “I love you too, but why do you do these things?” This took me by surprise. I hadn’t known my dad knew zombese.
If Dad knew zombese, perhaps he was a lost Halloween soul and I never knew. The shame.
I decided that a haunted house might just be what the doctor ordered and enable the two of us to bond for the first time in our lives. I asked my mate Knobby if he knew of any activities that I could ease Daddy into All Hallows nice and slow. He gave me a name and address and told me the place would cater to newbie’s. The name of the place was actually “All Hallows” which was a nice coincidence. Daddy wouldn’t dress up, but I managed to convince him into wearing a T-shirt that said, “I’m with scary.”
We found All Hallows down Soho, London, tucked in a back alley away from the main streets and I marveled that I’d never heard of it before. We knocked and the door opens to this big man with shades and a cigarette hanging off his bottom lip. I tell him Knobby sent us, he looks us up and down and then says, “Well it takes allsorts, come in.” I was practically shivering with anticipation. We went in the darkly lit hall and the lights flickered. The doors slammed behind us and Dad grabbed my hand.
The first thing we saw were several bodies littered across the floor, all in different states of awful. Dad asked me if they were real and then one with a very convincing face wound grabbed his ankle and murmured something unintelligible. The last body at the end of the hall was the most disturbing. They had made it look like she had relieved herself all over the floor, her nose dripped blood, her eyes flicked up repeatedly into the back of her skull and a small needle hung pathetically from her left arm. Dad clung to my arm telling me he was indeed scared. We walked up some creepy stairs to the next floor and asked a gothic woman and what appeared to be a large six-foot five leather-clad gimp where to go next. They directed us up to the fourth floor. On our way we passed weird freaks stood shaking their heads, a mad doctor with a suitcase dripping blood, assorted shifty characters and rooms full of weird screams that made Dad red in the face. Dad still swears it was chainsaw victims, wink wink. I just told him to enjoy the experience.
Well shock of all shocks, we hear crashes, shouts and sirens going on beneath us. A dozen coppers in riot gear rush through the whole premises ordering everyone on the floor and we both find ourselves at the local nick for being in a house of ill repute. Dad saw the funny side…eventually but in that cell, Daddy and I bonded and now share a passion for ‘Ween. We still speak zombese to one another and Daddy refuses to live anywhere but Elm Street whatever city he moves too.
Laaaahtasss uhhhg, lahhhvaaa bahhhm.
