The Wellerby Mansion

[Lilaena De'Ville]

It is morning.

Penelope Winston, president of the Springfield Historical Society, cracks open a sweaty Diet Coke and waves it in the direction of Bob Powers, her assistant. “At least they got something right, I can’t live without these,” she says, taking a swig.

Bob grins, brushing back his fashionable blond surfer hair with his fingers. “Yes, we get publicity, money for the restoration of the ballroom and library, plus unlimited Diet Coke! It’s a gold mine!”

“Hush you,” Penny pretends to be mad, and turns to the blueprints spread across her desk. “Look, they’re going to be here any minute, can we be serious for once?”

“Si, fraulein,” Bob salutes, and goosesteps over to her side. “We’ve been over these camera placements already. The crew are installing them right now.”

“Yeah, I’m still not sure about the ones in the library though. They’re not screwing anything into the shelving are they? Those are all original and I don’t want anything messed up.”

“No, no, they’re not putting holes in anything. After the show is over we won’t be able to tell anyone was here. That’s what Mr. Browning promised, anyway.” Bob shrugs. “Look you’re right, the contestants will be here in a few hours. Coming by limo, of course. These reality TV shows are so predictable. Hopefully I can pick my future wife from among them - I am so looking forward to the rose ceremony.”

Penny shoves him aside as he laughs uproariously, and retorts, “Well as long as they keep them out of my office. I told them they’d have the run of the house except for in here.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Bob nods, rubbing his chest in mock pain. “They’ve set up the rooms on the third floor for the contestants - two to a room. That leaves most of them empty of course.”

She sighs, “They put white sheets over everything as well, to make it extra spooky. This dump is spooky enough. Old man Wellerby must not have cleaned house since he was sixty, if you remember how the mansion looked when we got a hold of it.”

“How can I forget! Wait, I wasn’t around then. Six years ago I was just out of high school.”

“Such a baby,” Penny says, and they leave the office, locking it behind them. “Take my word for it then, it was atrocious.”

They walk through the basement, past the door to the wine cellar, and up the stairs to the kitchens where Tim Browning meets them.

“Just the people I was looking for,” the slick Hollywood producer proclaims. “Everything set on your end?”

“Yeah,” Penelope says, “We’re all squared away.”

Bob opens the fridge, one of the few appliances in the kitchen that was upgraded by the late William Wellerby in the 1980s. “Wow, looks like they’ll be eating well.”

Browning nods, “Of course. Depending on how long they last in the mansion, there will be periodic food drops.” Bob snakes an apple from the fridge and bites into it before Penny can stop him.

She sighs, and finishes off her Diet Coke. “We’ll get out of your hair. Call me if you need anything, of course.”

“Certainly.” Tim smiles, then adds, “You are welcome to stop by the command center and watch some of the action whenever you like.”

“Sweet!” Bob proclaims. “That sounds awesome! Tina’s gonna be there, right?”

Tina Alcott, one time supermodel-turned-actress, is slated to be the hostess of the reality show. Tim smiles, “Miss Alcott will be there.”

“Awesome!”

Penny drags Bob out of the kitchens and into the back gardens, looking apologetic. Tim returns to the ‘script’ for the afternoon’s activities.

Tina is scheduled to greet each contestant, and show them to their rooms in the Wellerby Mansion. The contestants are competing to see who can stay the longest in the so-called ‘creepiest house’ in America. For almost six years the Depression-era mansion has been the subject of much speculation and fuzzy photographs, most recently appearing on an episode of Ghost Hunters on the SciFi channel. They didn’t find anything of course, except for a few orbs that could have easily been dust, and a giant rubber spider that Grant used to scare half of the investigators with.

It had been an entertaining episode. The chairman of the RTV cable channel (Reality TV, 24 hours a day!) had been looking for new shows to fill up some of the hours of their programming, and had green lighted this haunted house show. The contestant who is the ‘last one standing’, so to speak, in the mansion, will win a cool one million dollars.

They’d tried to pick people from diverse backgrounds to fill the roster of contestants. Tim checks his watch. Tina is probably to her trailer by now, getting makeup done. He barks a few orders to his production assistant, Raymond Salvatore, and leaves the house.

Tina is indeed in makeup, getting her blonde hair coiffed perfectly by a team of expert stylists. She sips coffee angrily while reading a tabloid boasting topless pictures of her trip to France. Why can’t people just leave her alone! But then, the pictures are mostly flattering, and any publicity is good publicity for a C-list actress like Alcott. She hides a smile and throws the tabloid on the ground.

Hours later everything is in place and Tina is standing at the end of a long gravel driveway, on the steps of the famed Wellerby Mansion awaiting the arrival of the first contestant.

[Kelly Perris]

"Look...I don't care what...NO! Do it right, do it my way, Robauchon, or I may delight in canning your useless behind. And I will send that puta secretary of yours packing as well."

He laughs. Just a taint of unease, but mostly, the chuckle was filled with mocking. Juicy, beefalicious mocking.

"If you're lucky, i'll see you when I get back. If not, well, I guess there's no pot o' gold at the end of your faded little rainbow."

He hung up, ripping the Bluetooth headset off of his left ear, and tossing it in his bag rather carelessly, along with his white Blackberry Pearl. Perris went through cellphones and PDAs at a oft-times alarming rate. His temper when it came to his work was one short wick on one big stick of T.N.T. You'd think that he would want to relax, but Kelly would simply deny it. He could afford to retire early several times over, but the pull of amassing the moolah was too great to ignore. Kelly Perris was a slave to the dollar, and at the same, he treated it like it did not matter, wasting cash away on one whim or another. But isn't that the way the cookie crumbles? He heaved a sigh. This haunted house thing was something he'd entered on a whim, and had been considering turning it down if he was chosen...but then the smallest of thoughts came to mind that maybe he needed this. It wasn't for the money. His work was for that. This was for himself.

Kelly was getting increasingly impatient. He rapped at the window between the limo driver and himself, which was half-open.

"Hey! How much longer is this going to take? My back end is gettin' bunions with all this sitting..Come on, we've got to be there by now."

The driver's glare in the rear view window was enough to shut him up. Kelly sunk back into his seat with a huff, crossing his muscled arms, and muttering something about a large percentage of the human race being about as useful as tits on a bull. He closed his eyes and attempted to relax, and before long, he was asleep. Shortly thereafter, the limo hit the gravelly driveway of its destination, Wellerby Mansion, pulling up close to Miss Alcott.

Kelly Perris was sawing logs hardcore.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina steps back a little as the limo pulls up, the camera crew taking in the entire scene from two different angles. When the driver opens the door, however, no bright-eyed contestant steps out.

Tina frowns.

Kelly Perris, businessman and certainly not someone who needs a million more dollars, is asleep in the backseat. She snaps her fingers at the driver, "Wake him up, for God's sake!"

Her ear piece buzzes with Tim Browning's voice. "That's a do-over, wake him up and pull up to the house again." The camera crew receives the same message, and the limo backs down the long driveway until it is out of sight around a bend. Tina adjusts her outfit, checks her cleavage to make sure its not too risque, but not overly modest either, and flips her hair over one shoulder.

The limo pulls up again, and this time Kelly Perris emerges, looking a little mussed, but not too bad. Not bad at all, really. Tina Alcott beams at the first participant as he pulls his bag out of the limo. "Welcome to Wellerby Mansion, Mr. Perris, your home for the next however-long-it-takes." She pauses for dramatic effect.

"I'll be showing you up to your room, but take a few moments to enjoy the air and the daylight of the great outdoors." She spreads her arms to indicate the manicured landscaping that surrounds the decidedly creepy looking house behind her. "These will be your last moments outside in quite a while. I'll also need to take your cell phone and/or blackberry, as you will not be in contact with the outside world except through the main house phone."

She holds out a perfectly manicured hand, ready to confiscate the businessman's communication equipment.

[Kelly Perris]

Emerging from the stretched and beautifully waxed black limo, Mr. Perris rubbed his face, faking a smile at over-perfected little woman standing in front of him before he lifted his eyes to observe what was past her. The Wellerby Mansion. The place had the typical spook movie look and feel to it from the outside, and was likely to be so on the inside, if logic would dictate such. Kelly snorted - half in bemusement, half in disgust - before turning his attention back to the little lady who appeared to still be talking. Mentally, he rolled his eyes and maintained the put-on civil look his visage held.

You have to be kidding me...This place is seriously haunted? It looks like such a fake. It looks just like all those spook flicks.

But he'd done his research on the place. And it was popular belief that the Wellerby Mansion was in fact the real thing. That didn't mean Kelly believed everything he read...or everything he was told, for that matter. Burned once, twice shy. She wanted his Blackberry? The woman had to be joking. Ah well. He was here to not be disturbed by his day-to-day life, so the most he would do was as she asked, but he removed the SIM card from his phone, as well as the SD card. There was no way in hell he would leave any of his personal information to be accessed, even if he had his cellular device fully passcoded. Things like that could be cracked. Kelly put the tiny little cards in a protective silvery case that was the size of a matchbook, and slipped that into his jeans pocket before handing over his Blackberry Pearl and accompanying Bluetooth headset.

"Here." He shrugged. "Use it as a puck for all I care."

There was a brief twinge in Tina's expression at Kelly's unwarranted rudeness and sarcasm. She clearly gave herself away in that sliver of a moment. He really smirked at that. So she was human, after all.

Probably still full of air, though. He thought, holding back a snicker.

"Alright. Get going. Show me." He nearly commanded, gesturing to the mansion. "I'm done out here."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina keeps a smile pasted onto her face, but inside she is a barely controlled sea of fury. How dare this... this... man insult her so! Doesn't he know who she is?!

Dropping the Blackberry and headset into a bag which she hands off to an intern off camera, Tina Vanna-White's the way to the front door, allowing Mr. Perris to open up the double doors himself. "You will have plenty of time to explore as the days and nights go on. Your room is on the third floor," and she steps onto the large main staircase that feeds into the entryway.

Kelly Perris follows, looking around, and Tina Alcott leads him up the stairs to the third floor and his room. "You are sharing this with another contestant," she indicates the two twin beds on opposite sides of the room, "But feel free to settle in. When everyone has arrived there will be a house meeting, after which time the six of you will be on your own."

The camera crew has remained outside, because the cameras placed inside the house are capable of capturing nearly every corner of the mansion. The only rooms without cameras are the washrooms. Tina beats a hasty retreat, leaving Mr. Perris up on the third floor.

Back downstairs and outside she huffs angrily and snatches a coffee from Raymond Salvatore. "Really! Who does he think he is!?"

Raymond looks sympathetic, but has a deadline and a timetable to keep. "He is disagreeable, I agree, Tina. But we needed an abrasive for the house, to rile up the other contestants. Mr. Perris is perfect."

"Fine, fine, whatever. As long as I don't have to stay in the damn house with him." Tina slurps the coffee and then hands it back.

Within five minutes the camera crew is taping as the second limo pulls up to the mansion.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Slowly, the limo rolled to a halt.

In the back seat, Sara Slesser toyed nervously with the strap of the bag in her lap. Having spent the last however-many hours driving around, unable to see where she was thanks to the cars blacked-out windows, she had thought that she would be eager to get out – but on eventually arriving, she found that the opposite was closer to the truth. She had a knotted, nauseating pain in her stomach. She heard a click, as someone outside pulled on the door handle. Light spilled into the limo and Tina Alcott reached out one perfectly manicured hand to draw her to her feet.

Until that moment, it had not seemed real. Hell, it still didn't seem real. She wasn't one to buy into the whole celebrity culture, but there was something surreal about standing face-to-face with Alcott, outside that old house. When she had filled out the application to be a contestant on ______, it hadn't been with any real conviction. She needed the prize money, sure, but her getting a place on the show was about as likely as winning the lottery. Now, she wished she'd bought a ticket.

"Welcome to Wellerby Mansion, Mr. Slesser, your home for the next however-long-it-takes..."

The blond hostess rolled off her welcome speech with enthusiasm. Though Sara seemed a little shellshocked, Tina preferred her mousy smile to Kelly Perris's self-importance. She ushered the girl inside as quickly as possibly, hurried on by a producers voice in her ear, and scurried back to the driveway – Perris's awkward arrival had screwed up the schedule; they were behind time.

Abandoned in the foyer, Sara stood motionless. Everything was still and quiet. Her eyes followed the staircase upwards, to the high-vaulted ceiling and touched on numerous paintings lining the old mansions walls. She wondered – was she the first one here?

“He... hello?”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina allows a stylist to see to her hair in the thirty seconds or so before the third limo starts up the drive. Flustered, she fusses angrily, but composes herself as the sleek black stretch pulls up next to her.

Inside the mansion, Sara is looking at the staircase. There is a noise to her right, perhaps in the library - a loud thump. Upstairs she can hear faint footsteps as Kelly Perris moves about his assigned room.

Each of the rooms upstairs has their names beside the bed, so it will be easy for Ms. Slesser to locate her bunk.

[Spectre]

For the last two hours, she had been sitting quietly in the back seat of the limo. She had long since kicked off her shoes, preferring to be barefoot. Silver rings adorned several of her toes, each in a different phase of the lunar cycle, symbolizing different aspects of the Goddess, to those who walked the Old Path. She had a tattoo encircling one sun tanned bare leg, a serpent devoring its own tail, Ourobouros... Allison Fallon was a Priestess of the Old Ways, but the show had been eager to have a real life witch among it's cast, so they had selected her right away. As she felt the limo roll to a stop, she lifted up the locket around her neck and opened it. The outside was a typical wicthes symbol, a silver pentacle etched in the Celtic knot style and very old. The inside housed a compass and her craft name in runes..

She had been hesitant about the show at first, signing up on a whim along with some of her ghost hunting friends. When they had called, however, she had decided to accept the offer. Not only could she really use the money, but the exposure would do wonders for others like herself. Maybe some of the masses would see that not everyone wearing a pentacle went around working black magick on the innocent. She rolled her eyes a bit, and shook her head. Then again, the burning times were not so very long ago.. Her real motivation was to try to commune with whatever spirits lingered here and help them to realize their own demise and move on.. She patted the canvas bag at her side, the words "Blessed Be" sewn in curly black script on the side.

She held out a hand as the door was opened and stepped out next to Tina. Allison beamed a smile at the camera, not giving a hoot who saw her for what she was. "Welcome to Wellerby Mansion, Ms. Fallon, your home for the next however-long-it-takes..."

And then suddenly.. she was approaching the doors. She stopped, only once before entering, to look up at the moon. She got the strange sensation that she might not see it again.

[Kale]

An individual who was not on Tina's guest list came padding up the garden walk behind the Wellerby Mansion.

She was an energetic young girl with long, three-tone hair that would have shined under the proper attention of an experienced groomer, but a life spent scrounging on the street had left her in mats and tangles. She'd long given up trying to scratch them out herself. But there was still an undeniable spark of intelligence and mischief in her large, liquid brown eyes, and a calm assurance and grace in her stride that spoke of good breeding.

She was, all things considered, quite fetching.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/stormfyre/dog2.jpg

Unlike most strays, she had never attached herself to a roving pack or marked out her own territory. Curiosity and hunger had always driven her to wander through towns, farms, parks, and housing developments seeking new horizons and new garbage cans. Occasionally a well-meaning family left food out for her and tried to adopt her as their own, but she'd never spent more than three weeks in any one place for most of her life. She was the bright, boisterous age of twenty-one - in human years, anyway - and no warm bed or brimming food dish could cure her of her wanderlust.

It had most recently brought her to this towering mansion the likes of which she had never seen before. On the asphalt pad behind the house were a few vans and a large trailer, and people were scurrying back and forth between the vehicles and the house carrying uninteresting things that didn't look remotely edible. But there was always food in houses, and she could only imagine how much she might find in a house that big.

It was a simple matter to creep past the vans unseen and hop up onto the back porch where the people were going in and out. She paused underneath the rickety porch swing and panted, grateful for the reprieve from the hot sun beating down on her black-furred back.

Then the back door swung open to admit a man carrying a metal case so large he could barely see around it. As the door began swinging back on its spring-loaded hinges, she darted in behind the man into the cool air of the Wellerby Mansion.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina escorts Ms. Fallon into the mansion, and finds that Sara Slesser is still lingering in the entry hall. The two are assigned to be roommates, so it isn't a terrible break in the plan. She explains their rooming situation, then leads the two women up the stairs to the third floor and drops them and their luggage in a room.

"Feel free to settle in. When everyone else has arrived there will be a house meeting, after which time the six of you will be on your own." Tina smiles and exits, traipsing back down the staircase. All this stair climbing was starting to have an affect on her quads.

Back out front, she awaits the fourth limo, getting some last minute directions from Raymond Salvatore, the production assistant.

In the back of the house, past the flourishing gardens, in a makeshift parking lot the 'command center' is rocking. Tim Browning is yelling at some interns when Penny Winston drives her Camry up the back drive. "All of this was supposed to be done when the contestants arrived! Get those people out of the kitchens now!"Red-faced, Tim shouts a little more, and then the interns scatter to do his bidding.

The kitchens and mudroom are cleared out as the very last of the production crew vacate the premises. Soon the door will be closed for the last time - only to be opened in case of emergency. Tim has a group of EMTs on call, just in case. You never know when someone will start hyperventilating and passing out on a show like this.

"Ah, Miss Winston!" He turns towards the head of the Springfield Historical Society with a gregarious smile, all hints of his earlier anger gone. "So glad you could come back. We're about to lock in the final three guests, then Tina is going to go over the house rules with the lot of them." He looks over her shoulder before ushering her into the command trailer. "Mr. Powers was unable to accompany you?"

"Bob had a dinner date," Penny says, walking up the steps and looking around at the banks of television screens and sound equipment inside. "Wow, this is pretty intense, huh?"

"We have yet to begin, truly," Tim answers, showing her to a seat where she won't get in the way and still has a good view of the main screen, split into four quadrants. The bottom right corner shows Tina Alcott waiting on the steps as the fourth limo arrives.

[Mu Satach]

Laura sat in the back of the limo yelling into her blackjack cell phone. "WHAT! WHAT!!! JERRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" The phone beeped at her.

<i>Signal Faded</i>

Her fingers dug into the leather seat while she muttered under her breath, "Most reliable network my eye." She began punching the number pad when suddenly it rang out with an overly loud ring that caused her to almost drop the phone.

"HELLO?!? JERRY!"

"Stop SHOUTING!"

"Oh... oh, so you can hear me?"

"YES, I can hear you, the rest of the staff can hear you, the hot dog vendor on 57th street can hear you!"

"So what did they say?"

"They absolutely loved the idea. If you can prove that this whole Wellerby thing is a gag we will so be able to spin this our way with you front and center. It will be bigger than Ripley's Believe It or Not and better than Houdini's debunking crusade."

"Jerry, I just write things. I've never been comfortable in front of a camera."

"Honey, with all the publicity this gig is going to generate the only way we can make it work is using you as the main investigative reporter. So that's part of the deal baby, using this thing cuts our publicity costs down so low to make it viable for the studio to make and the networks would be crazy to not pick it up afterwards. And even if they didn't there's always the internet and direct to DVD."

"I don't know."

"It's what's needed to take you to the next level." Jerry paced in his office with his headset on, "Think SPIN OFF!"

"Alright," Laura fumbled a pack of Marlbro Lights and a lighter out of her satchel and lit up a cigarette. "I'll do my best."

Jerry's eyebrows furrowed. "You're not still smoking are you?"

Laura's eyes shifted quickly, "What? Me? NO! No... you know I quit." She reached out quickly and rolled down the nearest window and threw out the cigarette and began waving the smoke out of the back seat.

"Good, because you remember our bet right?"

"Yeah, yeah... I get caught I have to do the funky chicken in front of Herbert." Laura could see the mansion up a head.

"AND?"

"Sing..."

"Sing what?"

"Oh sweet mystery of life. Hey look Jerry the limo's pulling up to the place now so I gotta run."

"Alright, go get'em tiger! And remember... SPIN OFF!"

Disgusted Laura hung up on him and prepared to be thrusted unwillingly into the public eye. Just as the limo pulled to a stop she buried her head in her hands and took a deep breath, "<i>It's a fake, it's a fake, it's a fake, it's a fake, it's a fake.</i>"

The door opened and Laura stepped out, tall, cool confident and in charge of herself as far as anyone could see. She smiled warmly for the cameras, shook Tina's hand, made a joke about unused rollover minutes as she handed over her phone and was led inside.

She wanted to vomit.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina Alcott ushers Laura MuSatach into the mansion, leading her up the stairs to the third floor where half of her compatriots are waiting. The third female contestant is sharing a room with a male contestant, but with three rooms and three of each gender that is just the way the cookie crumbles.

She doesn't make Laura co-habitate with Kelly Perris, however. No one could be that cruel. Showing her to the last empty room set up for the contestants, Tina smiles. "Feel free to settle in. When everyone else has arrived there will be a house meeting, after which time the six of you will be on your own."

Tina walks away, past the huge master bedroom suite, and swears she can hear someone walking around in it. A door creaks. Probably just one of the other three exploring already. She escapes down the stairs and makes it outside just as the fifth limo arrives, a little ahead of schedule.

[Charley]

Chuck wriggled his bare toes as he sat in the back of the limo. His outdoorsy boots, well-worn with use, were laid neatly to the side.

"Hey, cut down the AC, man. I'm gonna roll down the window."

"Can't do that just yet, Mr. Jackson."

Chuck shrugged, playing with his hair as the limo continued on toward the mansion. He'd hoped that he would get some green transportation, or at least something with better fuel economy than a limousine. Of course, TV shows had appearances to keep, so it wasn't worth making a fuss. Plus, he had to admit, this plush carpeting felt great on his feet. He'd backpacked from Yellowstone just to get to Springfield, and the audition was a shoe in. It didn't hurt that he'd already turned a dime on the Discovery Channel's End of the Earth competition at Tierra Del Fuego. The money he'd gotten from Under Armour endorsements alone was enough to pay most of his tuition at Oregon State. He now had enough freedom to follow where his heart lead him.

He'd seen the advertisements for the show, and the interviewers put him through a whirlwind over it. Add an all-nighter over Google, and Chuck had a kindred appreciation for the old mansion. Yeah, it may be spooky, but it had character. It was a living place, even though nobody had lived there in a while. In today's form-molded Ikea existence, it was a rare opportunity to get in touch with a slice of yesterday.

Chuck carefully unwrapped a Powerbar, taking a bite from it as the limo approached the gate. Even in this posh ride, he was concious about making a mess, and as they pulled up to the mansion, he finished his bar, neatly folded the foil wrapper, and tucked it into a pocket on his jacket.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Welcome to Wellerby Mansion, Mr. Jackson, your home for the next however-long-it-takes." Tina Alcott pauses for dramatic effect as Chuck Jackson steps out of the limo, backpack in hand.

"I'll be showing you up to your room, but take a few moments to enjoy the air and the daylight of the great outdoors. These will be your last moments outside in quite a while. I'll also need to take your cell phone and/or blackberry, as you will not be in contact with the outside world except through the main house phone."

He dutifully hands over his cell phone after digging into a pocket or two to find it, and she escorts him into the house. The double doors creak just a little as they enter, and the entryway is cool compared to the afternoon sun outside.

[Charley]

"Wow, look at these old hardwoods."

Chuck swung his backpack across a shoulder as he slowly passed through the threshold. The house had an aged, musty smell to it, but also a noticable accent of cedar. He paused at the foot of a nearby staircase, running his hands along the polished, but slightly pitted wood grains. He paused near a window, the view distorted from the blown glass and smeared with years of age. Still, the sheer size of the windows brought a good bit of natural light in the area, which cut down the need to use excess electricity.

He allowed himself to loiter a moment, taking in everything.

"You know, I don't really believe in ghosts, but I feel an energy here and its really moving me in a direction I think."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina smiles at the younger man, and says, "I hope its leading you to the third floor, Chuck. You'll have plenty of time to explore as the days and nights go on, but for now you can put your things away in the room you'll be sharing with another contestant."

The actress/model steps onto the grand staircase, leading Mr. Jackson upstairs. "After the last contestant arrives you'll all be meeting me again downstairs in the library for a house meeting. And then you'll be on your own." She smiles at him again, finding him to be charming, in his own quirky way.

On the third floor she leaves him at the door of the room he'd be sharing with Laura. Tim is chirping in her earpiece about running out of daylight and the sixth and final limo is starting the long drive up to the house. Tina hurries back down the stairs to greet the last contestant.

[Takashi Koji]

Why? That was the big question, one many people had asked him sinced he signed up for that crazy haunted house reality show, and actually gotten one of the six lucky positions, or so they described it in the letter they sent him, and the phone call, and the email. He felt as if they were trying to brain wash him, trying to conform him to the idea that he was lucky to be in on this show. Twas not luck, but fate. He had a very strong reason for stepping foot in that allegedly haunted house. It was the same reason he went to Séances and visited mediums. The same reason he had a stack of occultic books in his apartment and looked up spiritualism on the internet. He wanted to contact the spirit world, those in the afterlife, his mother.

So this haunted house had spirits, right? So why not get one of these spirits to carry a message to his mother, or discover a way of contacting his mother's spirit. People said that spirits go to heaven or hell when the body dies, but what about the theory that people who die while trying to accomplish something stay on earth until that task is completed? His mother had died while looking for his father, an agent of the Yakuza who had disappeared quite some time ago. Theoretically, his mother's spirit should still be around until he found his father, if he ever did. It was hard to devote himself to two causes, so he devoted himself to connecting his mother's spirit first before searching for his lost father. IT sounded like a drama, but such is life.

The limo had come to pick him up at his crumbling apartment building, and he had jumped right in. He had nothing to lose, nothing to worry about. It was a long drive to the Mansion, but he had his trusty iPod to keep him busy. Spinning the wheel, he selected his song with several clicks of his finger. "Die Another Day" by Madonna. The music shot through the white cable and into the earbuds positioned in his ears. Leaning back, he relaxed, not moving his body to the beat, simply relaxing in the music.

The Limousine pulled up at the mansion and Koji pushed the door open and slipped out into the fading sunlight. He heard an intake of breath, was that a gasp from the blonde standing just up the path to the door? He was dressed in all black. Long cargo pants that almost hide his black Vans, a tight black shirt that hardly hid the shape of the muscles beneath the thin fabric, and a over-sized coat that barely stayed on his narrow shoulders. His hair, naturally black, but bleached, although in need of more bleach as the black roots were starting to show again. Slung over his body was a shoulder bag that held everything he needed.

As he slipped from the limo, he did not pause for a moment and simply walked up the path toward the building, the many necklaces, bracelets, and facial peircing jingling wildly as they shifted against each other. His left ear was pierced all the way up it's length, while the other had only a simple stud in the lobe. He'd removed his eyebrow ring, because it got in the way, along with his lip and tongue rings, but the holes left behind were still visible. He'd never pierced his nose. Two of his ornaments stood out the most, one was a black leather dog-like collar that circled around his thin neck, and instead of a dog tag hanging down from the front a silver and red pentagram hung instead. Clashing with the pentagram was a large silver cross on a silver necklace that hung from around his neck.

Stepping smartly along, he walked right past the blonde before she could even finish her third word and walked straight into the building. It was clear the asian had no intention of participating in conversation.

Once inside he stood in the lobby, his blue eyes looking around the gloomy building. Hallways led off everywhere. It hardly mattered. He would love to get lost in this place, alone with only the spirits as company. Madonna ended and the shuffle kicked in, switching the song to Evanescence's "Bring me to Life". How quaint.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Tina managed not to roll her eyes at the camera, just barely, and walked into the house behind Koji. Tim Browning sat back in his chair in the control room, watching her in the black and white monitor in front of him.

Penny Winston sat forward, looking at another screen that showed Kelly Perris up in his room. He was going to be Koji's roommate, and she couldn't imagine what sort of chemistry the two would have. "So, that's it? Lock them in and throw away the key," she joked to the producer.

"Not quite," he pointed to the screen as Miss Alcott managed to lead the newest arrival up to his room. "They're going to meet in the library in a minute - what the -!" Tim sat up and pointed at the monitor that showed the room in question. "Who knocked that lamp over!"

***

Tina grumbled as she picked up a lamp that had fallen over in the library, but put on her happy face as the six contestants filed into the room. "Welcome, once more, to Wellerby Mansion. There are a few things you need to know before we get started.

"One, there is an emergency phone in the kitchen that is wired directly to the producers. At any time you may pick it up and leave the house, but you will not be allowed back in, and you cannot win any money if you opt to do this.

"Two, the kitchen is stocked with enough food to feed you all for two weeks. After that time, there will be food left on the back porch to replenish the kitchen. You may step out onto the porch to collect the food, but only to collect the food. If you step off the porch you'll be disqualified and sent home. This won't be an issue until day fifteen, but keep it in mind.

"Thirdly, there will be an assignment for you to complete every night. This may be for individuals or for you to work on as a team. These will arrive in manila envelopes slipped under the front door."

After a few more minutes spent taping the contestants and a few reaction shots that were needed for the editor, Tina bade them farewell and she and the camera crew left the mansion.

The six contestants were on their own.

[Kelly Perris]

He knew she'd been glaring at him. Ice for ice: like an eye for an eye, only not as painful and incredibly more discreet. To say, Kelly was the iceberg for Tina's Titanic. Any lustful thoughts she might have had upon first glance were quashed. This brought a bemused smirk to his face as he sat in a dusty yet regally upholstered chaise near one of the smaller cherry bookcases in the library. An awkward silence had settled over the space like a thick fog. It was interesting that nobody had anything to say as soon as that self-important prude left the room. Those were thoughts Mr. Perris chose to keep for himself. After another moment, his thoughts drifted to his daughter. A heated arguement with the teen had followed him out the door of their expansive, comfortable home in upstate New York. The 'no-parties-while-i'm-away' rule had been brought forth, and Lena had a fit. What did he expect her to do? Spend all that time in the house alone? No. As far as she was concerned, he could go to hell. She would do what she pleased. Lena had told her father to die and go to hell on the way out.

As far as anyone knew, her wish could come true any time. As far as Kelly Perris was concerned, it just might come sooner than expected. It wasn't that the man had a death wish, but he wasn't about to outrule the spontenaiety of the Grim Reaper's reach.

The businessman turned his attentions to one of the ladies in the room (whom had seated herself closest to him than the other contestants) and attempted to break through the awkward fog.

"So, I've done my research on this place." Kelly's accent was hard to place. He'd spent large portions of his life growing up in locations all over Europe, the largest of those spent in Spain and Italy, and the latter years thus far..the majority in and around New York, sometimes Chicago. He'd been born in Rome, but his parents were originally from the middle of nowhere in Montana. "And apparently this place is ripe with.." Here he made quotation marks with his fingers... "... 'spirits'...Do you believe such nonsense?"

[Spectre]

Allison took the liberty of being the last to leave the room. In the few minutes she had before she would have been considered 'late' she began a quick protection charm around her shared bedroom. Crushed rosemary and geranium powder, mixed with a bit of coarse sea salt was sprinkled in a perimeter around her bed, and the room itself. The windows, doors, mirrors and headboards were all annointed with banishing oil, and then there was the pièce de résistance, the small dried body of a toad was removed. She knew that it was extremely unattactive, and would likely be considered whacky by her cowan roommate, so she tied it beneath her bed, hung from the boxspring coils out of sight. They could not detect it's fading scent, but it was repugnant to the living impaired, reminding them of their own demise..

A powerful charm indeed..

Tucking away her little "stash" of tricks, washing her hands and making sure that the room was more or less back to rights, Allison knew she need to go, it was time to meet the others in the library. She took only one moment, to once more look out at the moons position in the sky. Upon entering the house, she hoped she had a room with a decent view of the Blessed orb, but it was not to be. At least not until it rose with the night sky.

"Oh well.. Can't win them all." With that, she put a spring in her step and headed to the library.

[Mu Satach]

"Absolutely not." Laura snorted in reply to Kelly's query. "It's all a bunch of hocus pocus hooey fooey non-sense." She fidgeted with her bic pen and absently stuck the end in the corner of her mouth.

"It's all in the mind. Somebody starts a story, it gets passed down through generations and imbellished with each telling. After that normal creaks and pops suddenly become <i>unexplained</i>." She mimic'd Perris's quotation marks.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Unconsciously, Sara began to toy with a loose thread on the arm of her chair, whose threadbare stitching had been left intact for the purposes of giving the house a little more character on camera. As the rules of the game were rolled off, she took a moment to size up the competition. Furtive glances to each of the other five contestants did little to reveal who she was up against. Paranoid, she wondered what judgments the others were passing on her, and so focused her attention on the vivacious Miss Alcott.


The introduction was mercifully brief, with the intrusive cameras disappearing and leaving the six alone. It seemed like a conversation had sprung up already, between one man and woman, and so Sara felt compelled to speak, worrying that if she did not she would somehow ostracize herself from the small group. Another equally introverted face caught her attention – a boy, she thought he might have been Japanese. Surrounded by the antiquity of the mansion, he stuck out like a sore thumb. He was, after all, wearing a dog collar. He was looking listlessly around the room, appraising everything with a kind of half-hearted interest that seemed far too effortlessly blase to be natural. His almost vacant eyes came to stop on her for a moment and Sara smiled politely.

[Kale]

Thick area rugs muffled the sound of her untrimmed claws as she meandered from the kitchen and down the hall, sweeping the floor all the way with her nose. She'd already found a few stray corn chips one of the tech crew had dropped in the kitchen while on break, but, even though the place was still redolent of food, her curiosity was drawing her to explore the rest of her new domain.

The floor was thick with the peppery scent of human, but she could clearly distinguish each trail, the subtle variances of sweet, earthy, dusty, spicy, that told her so much about each person - their gender, their age, their health, what they were wearing, even their emotional state. All the trails went into the great room; some of them had already dispersed upstairs.

She paused near the great room entrance and sniffed again, detecting a delicious bouquet of chocolate, nuts, and granola accompanying one of the trails. The human who'd left it was still in the room. Briskly, she darted from the hall rug to the plush carpet and behind the bulk of a high-backed sofa.

She heard voices - soft, casual, unremarkable. But there was also unmistakable tension of the air, a great deal of it emanating from the young female in an arm chair across the room. She couldn't see the girl, but she could locate her easily. Her ears laid back in empathy.

But then she caught the chocolate smell again coming from the other end of the couch. There was a hand dangling over the couch's arm, a hand that, according to her keen detection, had recently held a chocolate-covered power bar.

Throwing caution to the wind, she pressed her muzzle against Charley's hand and began licking his palm vigorously.

[Charley]

"Hey there, girl!"

Charley was naturally drawn to the four-legged friend and gave the dog an energetic scratching behind the ears, regarding the animal's appreciative expression as he joined the conversation.

"I don't think it's unreasonable, but I don't think it's literally dead people left behind making vapor trails in the air. I mean, I believe in a spirit...like inside you know. Something more than the sum of your parts that is who you are, and guides you. But also something that goes somewhere, man. Somewhere not here."

He leaned back, giving his four-legged friend some breathing room as he crossed a sandal-covered foot over a bare knee.

"I went basejumping with Chocubaja indians once, and they believe that we live and take energy from the sun, and that energy sort of is the stuff that we use to be who we are. When they die, they burn the dead, and it's sort of a return to the whole. It's a reciprocation of that positive life force. I think that makes sense."

[Takashi Koji]

While everyone else was partaking in the small talk, Koji was looking around. The room that is. Even just this single lobby room was full of so much... well, he could not put a word to the feeling he got here. It just felt like there was some kind of energy here, trapped, hidden in the walls. His hand snaked down to the front of his pants, slipping into his right pocket and pressed the pause/play button on his iPod. Amy Lee's voice was silenced. Yes, there it was again. That same feeling, only it was a sound just at the edge of his hearing.

He was getting a very good feeling about this place.

Stepping along, he moved closer to the rest of the group, which was sitting together in a collection of sofas and armchairs while conversing. The conversation itself was uninteresting. The same kind of spooky drivel you heard around campfires to scare the kids. Only this one was turned around and pointed the othe way. It was anxious people trying to make everyone, and themselves, feel better about the growing fear they had. The very idea of ghosts and spirits made them uncomfortable. Koji found it inviting.

Walking near the armchair occupied by one of the men, who was now busy playing with a dog, Koji moved up against the wall. His hand ran across the surface, feeling the texture, and feeling something else right at the tip of sensation. Then he placed his ear against the wall, and closed his eyes.