Chapter Five: The Haunted Mansion
Chapter Five: The Haunted Mansion
It was hard enough for Star and Marco to even explain to
the Ghostbusters who they were. The M.I.B. erased their memories of them. As
far as they were concerned, the princess from Mewni and the karate boy were
total strangers. They (with T’Eve, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy) were fortunate to
have bumped into Bart and Homer Simpson just a block away from Gusteau’s, which
was where they found Jacqueline Zeddemore and Drs. Venkman, Stantz, and
Spengler, along with the Descendants.
After a run-through of the events that surrounded the
Bill Cipher incident from a couple of years back, they caught the Ghostbusters
up on their current situation: helping them to find the warrior with the
chainsaw for a hand.
“O-kay,” said Venkman, sounding a little dubious. “I’m
tryin’ to decide if that’s possibly the most hardcore or weirdest thing I’ve
heard tonight.”
“It sounded pretty hardcore when I heard it,” Bart said.
“Anyways, this is one of the relics we need to find her,”
Marco indicated the Necronomicon that T’Eve carried around since they beamed
down from the Enterprise.
J.G. recognized it immediately, wide-eyed in a state of
shock.
“Where did you get that?!” he asked.
“We knew you’d recognize it!” Star exclaimed with an air
of enthusiasm. “We got it from your bookstore!”
“Yeah, I know,” Stantz offhandedly noted. “It’s the
genuine original – not those fakes Jafar sent me, years ago.”
“The Necronomicon is not the only relic we must find,”
T’Eve stated. “There is also a spellbook.”
“What kind of a spellbook?” Evie inquired.
“Uhhh…the exact details are iffy,” Marco nearly hesitated
to mention, side-eyeing an equally apprehensive Star. “All we know is that it’s
somewhere in the Manhattan borough.”
“Well, we found a weird book with a living eye embedded
in its cover when we shacked up at Gracie Manor to trap Mickey, Donald, Goofy,
and Leidy,” Evie recalled before turning to the Ghostbusters and
sympathetically telling them, “We’re so
sorry about that, by the way.”
Natalie seemed visibly maddened by her apology. “For the billionth time…we forgive you!” In spite
of Venkman’s irritation over the subject, it still brought a humbled smile to
Evie’s face just to know she and her friends were forgiven for their past evil
mistakes.
Getting back on topic, Mal concluded Evie’s story: “We
didn’t think much about that creepy book at the time, so we just left it where
we found it. But it could be the spellbook you guys are looking for.”
“Then let’s get our butts on over to Gracie Manor,”
Venkman settled, already getting up from her table and making her way towards
the Ecto-1 (still parked inside the
restaurant) with her teammates, Star, Marco, T’Eve, and the Descendants
following.
As they all clambered into the Ectomobile, Spengler and Zeddemore
shared in a brief moment of satisfaction. “How serendipitous is this?”
Jacqueline whispered to him as they sat in the rear.
“Indeed,” Spengler concurred. “It seems our investigation into your family history will begin much sooner than we anticipated.” Upon making this observation, his eyes fleetingly locked with T’Eve’s, who sat across from him. Both the Vulcan and the Ghostbuster raised an eyebrow of curiosity, sensing a strange albeit fascinating connection to each other.
“They must overhaul the heck outta that car!” Bill
observed while driving. When they finally caught up to the Ecto-1 near the
manor gates, Bill began to have second thoughts. “I really don’t think this is
a good idea. We’re interfering with their business.”
“Those crazy, fun exterminators made their business our
business when they crashed in on our family dinner night and saved us from it,”
Alice noted. “It seems only right to be in on the action!”
“Yeah!” Cricket and Tilly cheered in support of their
grandmother’s logic.
“C’mon, Dad,” Cricket said. “We’re still pumped for more
ghost-bustin’ action!”
Bill’s trepidation didn’t wane, in spite of his family’s goading. Nonetheless, he granted their wish and parked right behind the Ecto-1. As far as the Greens could tell, the Ghostbusters and their new friends weren’t in the car, which meant they were already inside the mansion.
“This is the same ol’ stuffy
house it’s always been,” Venkman criticized upon walking through the front
doors with her team and their associates.
Spengler’s P.K.E. meter whirred in hand. “The spellbook
is definitely somewhere inside here, determining from the P.K.E.’s
readings…although it could be the manor itself it’s detecting.”
They checked the first obvious place that the spellbook could’ve
been: the library. When that search didn’t lead them anywhere, they decided to
split apart and search throughout the manor. Spengler went with Zeddemore and
T’Eve; Stantz and Venkman went with Clary, Homer, and Bart; Mickey, Donald, and
Goofy went with the Descendants; and Star paired herself with Marco.
Jacqueline made use in her time along with Spengler and
T’Eve to investigate her family history. Searching in Master Gracie’s
bedchamber, she discovered Gracie’s journal. In it were details of the master’s
close friendship with Z. Edward Winston, her great-great grandfather.
The first entry caught Jacqueline’s attention right away:
Today, while
strolling through the cotton fields on this rather hot sunny Thursday, I met an
interesting Negro man, one of the slaves working on my plantation. I asked for
his name, and he told me that he didn’t have one. His parents were sold away
just a day after he was born, not giving enough time to name the child they
birthed. For the nineteen years he lived, this nameless Negro walked on my
land, working tirelessly each day ‘til his skin became as dark as night and his
body chiseled to an Adonis form. He was short-statured, not nearly as short as
the women but not as tall as the men either.
When
I asked what name he would have given himself, he thought up a rather peculiar
one: Z. Edward Winston. I asked what the “Z” stood for, and the poor boy didn’t
know. “It just sounds white,” he told me – though I couldn’t tell if he meant
“white” or “right.” Clearly, he was never taught how a proper name sounds. For
that matter, he was never taught how to read or how to write. So, I made this
boy – this “Z. Edward Winston” – a curious study of mine. No longer would he be
subjected to the heat of the sun. He’d spend his days indoors with me, learning
to read and to write.
Yes,
I realize it’s unorthodox to even educate a Negro on such things, even one that
is a slave. But this here plantation belongs to me, and I will do whatever I
wish, as long as it’s in my name!
“Did you find something?” Jacqueline’s reading was
interrupted once she heard Sean address her. T’Eve was on the other side of the
bedchamber, making scans for the spellbook with her tricorder, just as Spengler
did with his P.K.E. It’s bizarre how
alike these two are, Jacqueline mentally perceived.
“Gracie’s diary,” she whispered to him, not wanting T’Eve
to hear. “It has all the details on my great ancestor. Apparently, Gracie took
him on for some sort of pet project, teaching him to read and write.”
“Interesting,” Spengler remarked.
“Spengs, he didn’t even have a name ‘til he was
nineteen,” Jacqueline said, sounding a little disturbed of the fact. “It makes
me wonder where the ‘Zeddemore’ name even began.”
“Keep reading,” Sean suggested. “You
may find out.”
Clary’s phone rang for the
seventh consecutive time since they arrived in the manor, and she sent it to
voicemail just like the six times before. It didn’t go unnoticed by J.G. while
they walked down one of the hallways with Natalie, Bart, and Homer. “Not to
pry, but who keeps calling you?” Stantz asked Fray.
“An over-obsessive boyfriend,” Clary answered.
“Maybe you should answer it,” J.G. recommended with a
shrug. “Let him know that you’re doing alright?” Clary didn’t seem all that
concerned. In fact, she seemed a bit peeved in the eyes of Stantz.
Luckily for Clary, the conversation shifted to another
topic entirely, thanks to Venkman. “Hey, Homer, just how did we end up hirin’ you anyway?” she asked the Simpsons’
patriarch.
“You don’t remember?!” the surprised (and somewhat hurt)
Homer replied. “You were there when it happened!”
“Was I?” Venkman inquired. “I just remember comin’ back
from seein’ Hamilton and bein’
surprised when I found out. Chris tells me…”
“Who’s ‘Chris’?” Bart asked. His interruption came at
random, considering how very little he was into the conversation –
cherry-picking only one part of it that piqued his curiosity.
“Christina Melnitz,” J.G. elaborated for him. “She’s our
secretary, Bart.”
“You mean that lady who sits on her big butt all day,
answering the phone?”
“Yes, Bart,” Stantz verified, his tone bordering on
annoyance. “That’s what a ‘secretary’ does.”
Moving on from the interruption, Natalie continued, “Anyways,
Chris tells me, ‘You’ll never guess who we just hired!’ And I’m like, ‘Who? Saoirse
Ronan? That’d beat the heck outta my
fan-casting.’ And Chris tells me, ‘No. We got Homer and Bart Simpson!’ I couldn’t even sleep for two nights after that.
But, hey, at least we didn’t hire Peter Griffin.”
“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?!” an offended Homer
barked. “I was an adequate candidate with my experience as a nuclear
physicist!”
“You weren’t a nuclear physicist, Homer,” Stantz
debunked. “You were a safety inspector at a nuclear power plant.”
“But I have dealt
with the supernatural before,” Homer countered.
“From a few Treehouse
of Horror episodes that weren’t even canon,” Clary discredited.
Homer began to panic with so many of his personal facts shut
down by his teammates. In a last ditch effort, he whimpered, “B-But I have an
I.Q. of 105. That’s more smarter than Dr. Spengler. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
“Dude, your I.Q. was brought back down to 50 from a
crayon lodged in your brain – the same dang crayon you filled your résumé out!”
Venkman retorted.
“Your point being?” Homer obliviously returned.
Stantz, Venkman, and Fray ultimately gave up on the
hopeless man.
Meanwhile, Bart alerted to the
group, “Hey, is it just me or does this hallway we’ve been walkin’ down for ten
straight minutes feel like the most endless hallway you’ve ever walked down?”
“Ugh! This search is getting
us nowhere, Star!” Marco’s impatience reached its boiling point as he and the
Mewni princess walked into yet another bedchamber. “Why don’t we just use the
Necronomicon and the Calamity Box to
summon that chainsaw-armed lady here to us?”
Star reluctantly had the same idea, yet she couldn’t
bring herself to go through with it. “I really wanna do this Yen Sid’s way,
Marco,” she asserted.
“If Yen Sid really wanted us to do it step-by-step, he
would’ve given us the exact location of the spellbook and not have us wandering tirelessly in a funky old mansion,” Marco
argued.
Star realized he had a point. “You’re right,” she sighed.
“Let’s do it our way.”
They proceeded to set both the two relics in their
possession – the Necronomicon and the Calamity Box – down on the bedchamber
floor. Marco opened the Calamity Box, while Star opened the Necronomicon to the
page that had the incantation she would need to recite to trigger the other
relic.
Well, Star did read every word of the incantation correctly, and the Calamity
Box was activated, unleashing a volley of rainbow-colored energy from the box
that consumed the bedchamber, as well as Star and Marco.
-------------------
“Where in the dang blazes are
they?!” Cricket griped as he and his family waltzed into the library. The
Ghostbusters and their new friends were nowhere in sight.
“I’m tellin’ ya, this is all a big mistake,” Bill made
one last attempt in trying to talk some sense into his children and mother. “We
should just leave right now and go back ho—”
“Look, Papa!” Tilly suddenly shoved a black cat into
Bill’s face, scaring him half to death. “I found this lil’ feller hidin’
underneath that table over there. Can we keep him?”
“No, Tilly,” Bill was quick to refuse. “We already have a
cat at home.”
“Hey! What’re you guys doing here?!”
The iconic high-pitched voice of Mickey Mouse drew the
Greens’ attention towards the doorway where they spotted the mouse with Donald
Duck, Goofy, and the Descendants.
“It’s too dangerous for you all to be here,” Mal warned.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Bill concurred. “C’mon, family.
Let’s go.”
Before he could take another step, the entire foundation
of the manor quaked.
All the different groups across the manor converged in
the foyer.
“What’s goin’ on?!” Venkman yelled. “Who messed up this time?!”
Amid the congregation of people in the foyer, Jacqueline
was surprised to see a few faces she was recently acquainted with: “The Green
family?! What’re ya’ll doing here?!”
J.G., on the other hand, noticed a couple of faces
missing from the assembly. “Where are Star and Marco?” He got his answer just
as the Mewni princess and the karate boy rushed down a flight of stairs in a
state of panic.
“We need to leave this place right now!” the sweaty, out-of-breath Marco instructed.
“Why? What’s going on?” Clary asked them.
A flash of light shined from the direction Star and Marco
rushed out of a second ago. It blinded all of the houseguests, right before it
engulfed them, the foyer, and the entire mansion itself.
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