Thanks, Kate - we aim to please.
Waldorf: Aim, yes. Actually hit, no.
Here's part three.
***
Chapter Three: Castle Irene
“Okay, the soundboard needs to go in the back, and the props chest needs to go there – where are those banana cream pies?” Scooter called as he dodged a rolling costume rack.
“Eeesh de herm der banana-nana pies,” the Swedish Chef called as he loaded a giant insulated cooler into the back of the Electric Mayhem bus.
It was the morning of the first day of filming of “Ghoul on the Hill.” The street in front of the Muppet Theater had turned into a loading dock as the Muppets loaded equipment, props and goodness-knows-what-else onto the bus.
Scooter made a few tick marks on the clipboard. “Right, pies, cameras, microphones, motorized rubber chickens…” Scooter paused. “Motorized rubber chickens?” He shrugged. “Right…okay, Skeeter’s loading the lights and – whoa!” Scooter ducked as one of Lew Zealand’s fish went sailing past. “Nora should be back with the photocopied scripts, and…”
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Kermit the Frog,” a voice said crisply.
Scooter looked up from his clipboard. A woman with bobbed brown hair, wearing slacks and a fuchsia film society film sweatshirt stood there.
“He’s off taking care of something,” Scooter said. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m Maggie Pye, the film society’s second vice president. Cecil sent me to tell you that there’s going to be a meetup of all the Reel Time contestants tonight.”
“That’s great, where’s it going to be?”
“Jim’s Coffee Shop, at eight…” Her phone rang. “Hello? Yes, Cecil, we have that…Cecil, for the millionth time, that’s impossible!” She frowned. “All right, I’ll see you in a bit.” She hung up. “Eight o’clock, we'll see you then.” With that, she was off.
Kermit emerged from inside the theater, reading a map. “All right, Castle Irene is at 16 Serling Road, in the neighborhood of Vertigo Heights.” He nodded. “Nice name. How’s the loading going, Scooter?”
“Fine, boss, we’ll be ready to leave in a flash!”
Crazy Harry emerged from behind a box of gear. “Did somebody say flash?”
BOOM!
Miss Piggy coughed and choked as she came outside, clutching a duffel bag containing her makeup and accessories. “He’s not bringing his firecrackers up to the movie set, is he? If he is…”
“Calm down, Miss Piggy,” Kermit said. “Save your rage for when Uncle Deadly unleashes the rubber spiders on you in the movie.”
Miss Piggy paused. “Rubber spiders?”
“Only the best!” Uncle Deadly called from inside the bus. “Black widows and tarantulas and brown recluses!”
“Okay, cool cats and cuddly kittens, it’s all a-board!” Dr. Teeth yelled from behind the wheel of the bus.
***
The previous week’s snowfall left a sheen of ice on some of the hilliest roads around Hensonville.
Add to this the fact that the Mayhem bus’s brakes and transmission only passed the two-year inspections by the grace of some higher power.
All this was weighing very heavily on Kermit’s mind as the Muppets rattled their way up to Vertigo Heights a short time later.
“Uh, Dr. Teeth, are you sure the bus doesn’t need a tuneup?” Kermit asked over the wheeze and roar of the shifting gears.
“Oh, positively,” the band’s toothy frontman replied as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Gave it one myself just yesterday.”
“What’d you do, check the oil and stuff?”
“Nope, played it the scales in A.” Dr. Teeth laughed. The rest of the Mayhem joined in.
“Fer sure…”
“TUNE-UP! TUNE-UP!”
“Cool it, Animal, cool it!”
The bus continued climbing up on the main road through Vertigo Heights. The road was so steep in spots that the bus’s engine groaned and shuddered a few times.
“Okay, turn left onto Serling Road! It’s this next turn!” Scooter called, intently staring at a map.
Dr. Teeth shifted gears on the bus. “To every season, turn…turn…turn…”
But before the bus could turn, a black van appeared around a bend and zoomed down the road in the opposite direction, nearly cutting them off.
“Learn to drive, yokel!” Gonzo shook his fist after the van.
“Where was he going in such a hurry?” Miss Piggy wondered.
“Don’t know – but did you see the plates? They said SPOOKY,” Robin said excitedly from his perch on Sweetums’ shoulder.
The bus continued winding its way up Serling Road, and came to a stop a half-mile later.
“Well gang…here we are,” Kermit said.
A large, walled park sat at the end of Serling Road. In the middle of that park sat Castle Irene.
The Mayhem bus drove through the gate, up the circular driveway and came to a stop in front of the house’s front door. The Muppets started to pile off the bus, lugging some equipment and props as they went.
Three stories tall and made of dark gray stone, Castle Irene was an imposing Victorian-style mansion that had seen better days. Icicles glinted and gleamed off of its gutters, eaves and stonework. Shutters with peeling paint framed the tall, grime-coated windows and dead ivy clung to the walls.
Kermit took out the heavy key ring that had been reluctantly surrendered by the police.
A pair of brass door knockers gazed back at the Muppets as they crept up to the front door. Instead of the usual goblins or gargoyles, the knockers were cast as the Tragedy and Comedy drama masks.
The key turned in the lock with a rusty “chunk,” and the door creaked open in correct haunted-house fashion.
“Nice creak,” Fozzie said approvingly.
The doors opened onto a wide entrance hall with marble floors. A long staircase carpeted in dull purple wound its way up to the second and third floors, and velvet drapes coated in a thick layer of dust dangled by the windows. Doors at various intervals led off to other rooms on the ground floor.
There was very little furniture in the room, but some antique carved armchairs stood at various intervals around the hall, and a handsomely carved grandfather clock stood at attention by the stairs. A few portraits also remained on the walls.
Sweetums let out a giant sneeze, sending up a nimbus of dust that set everyone else to sneezing as well.
“We cannot work here in these unsanitary conditions,” Sam snipped.
“That's okay, Sam, we’ll clean up before we start work,” Rowlf said as they started walking inside. "I love hunting for dust bunnies...think they'll like carrots?" He guffawed.
“But leave some dust – it adds a certain baroque touch,” Gonzo reminded them. He looked under one table. “Wow! Look at the mold on these baseboards!”
Scooter and Skeeter were looking at one of the portraits on the walls.
The most recent one seemed to be dated to the late 1920s. It showed a man and a woman in formal dress, covered in capes with bizarre symbols on them. They stood by giant box with the same symbols painted on it, with the legend “Gil the Great and Mysterious Mill.”
“Gil and Mill. How about that,” Skeeter quipped.
“Here they are again,” Nora said a short distance away. She was looking at a framed wedding photo of the same couple, taken in front of Castle Irene. The caption said “Gilbert and Millicent Knebworth, 1925.”
“They must have been the old owners,” Scooter said.
Skeeter pursed her lips. “That looks like one of the last pictures of them. Wonder what happened to them?”
“Come on, you three, let’s start unloading!” Kermit called. Outside, they could hear the sound of something crashing to the ground. “That had better not be the lights!”
“We’re coming!” Skeeter called as she and Nora ran outside.
Scooter followed them, but skidded to a stop.
He thought he had seen something appear near the stairs on the second floor – a something, or someone, in a long cape with symbols on it.
He turned to get a better look…but no one was there.
“Must be seeing things,” he murmured as he ran outside.
***
Was Scooter seeing things? Who was driving that black van? And are those really just rubber spiders that Uncle Deadly plans to unleash on the actors? Stay tuned for chapter four.
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