Haunt: Volume 2

Curtis and Lorina Address the Dress of Pockets - Part 1 of 2

Weekend Two: Saturday Night

September 24, 2022

POV: Seven Wonders Park

Curtis set himself up in the Ouija Board room before Ghosts of London opened to the public.

He then realized that his planchette was missing - he'd bet anything that Adam had taken it after hearing about last night's Ouija board antics...or maybe they should be called complaints. Well shit! How was Candy's awesome new trick supposed to work if he didn't have a planchette for the board?

He began a quick search of the room for something to replace the triangle. One of the most fun aspects of Haunt was the freedom to experiment and investigate your assigned room. Curtis wasn't sure if this ability to experiment was intentional or not. When you were assigned to a room, you were rarely told about every object, shelf, cupboard, corner and detail of your space and you had all night, hours and hours, to poke around and find things. Haunted houses functioned as attractions, but also as a kind of storage place, and after a house was operational for a few years, there was no telling what might turn up...or what might have been forgotten. Being assigned to a new room was like figuring out what tools you had at your disposal to scare. Keeping a room meant knowing exactly how best to scare. Some rooms were far better than others, but every room had something a screamster could work with.

Last year, Curtis found a broom in a corner when he was assigned to the mortician's lab. He used it to scare people (to surprisingly decent effect, too) but he was never told whether or not the broom was a prop or if it was just stored there for actual use later on by cleaners.

Predictably, Haunt rules were fuzzy about how much one could mess with the decor. You could use props, except when you couldn't, and you couldn't arrange furniture except when you could. So everyone did it anyway. Messing with the decor was permissible insofar as it resulted in terrific scares. Ultimately, nobody cared once the lights went out.

The Ouija Board room was arranged like a parlor so there was a desk with drawers in the corner. Curtis sometimes hid his water bottle in there, so he knew it was full of junk - most of it broken pieces of props that other screamsters had left behind. He now began rummaging through to find something to function as a pointer, hopefully before they turned off the lights and cranked up the music.

"Curtis," said a voice behind him, one that he knew well. It didn't have quite the same effect as usual; in fact he was somewhat annoyed at being interrupted.

He straightened to see Quarisma in the Ouija Board room, her sultry eyes appraising him. Beside her was someone Curtis didn't know, who was wearing a costume that Curtis definitely did know. That was Julie's dress - or, well, he thought it was Julie's dress. Julie was a good deal stockier than this young woman, but the dress seemed to fit her nonetheless. Was automatic sizing part of the magic done by the costume cards? Or was this particular bit of magic done by a tailor with a sewing machine? Maybe a little of both?

"Hey, I'm Curtis," he said to the new screamster.

"How do you do? I'm Lorina Gingham."

This Lorina had the look and the voice of a Ghosts of London screamster nailed. In that one sentence, she sold the London accent and the voice of a lost soul. Her features were thin and sharp, she could pass for someone of that era as if she stepped out of a photo of Victorian London. The makeup department utilized her wide, haunting eyes and made sure to detail them with darkness. Her bushy hair was spray-painted to look gray and it fell all around her lithe figure.

Quarisma said, "Lorina is the new Belgravian Banshee."

"Right." Lorina said, eyes drifting away. "Yes."