The impenetrable cloud of obscurity weakened and fled before them, and finally vanished altogether. The two brave men understood that they were in the same place as before, and at the same time they were not. The second bedroom lay directly before their eyes, but it looked nothing like it had before. No longer was it empty and lifeless, dark and abandoned and left to wallow in its misery like an unwanted stepchild. No longer did a malicious rain pelt at its windows, and a neglected pallor color its walls.
No, the bedroom was now transformed as if a new breath of life had been bestowed upon it. The walls were painted golden yellow, the wood surrounding the window, along with the door and the door frame, were now a vibrant and arresting white. A full-sized bed sat in the corner of the room, with a covered mattress that lay proud and appealing to the two weary ghost hunters. The quaint spread that covered it was a rosy pink, adorned with roses whose stems were a vivid green and which twisted and snarled about like a tangled web of vines. The furniture in the bedroom was scant, with a mere side table by the bed, and a vase lamp on top colored in a drab shade of beige. Across from the bed sat a squat dresser, three drawers tall, with a large mirror resting on its top and where Buttons saw his reflection through the tiny eye of his camera. There was one last piece of furniture inside of that pretty room. This was a sturdy, wide rocking chair made of polished cherry wood, draped with back and seat cushions dyed in a strong hunter's green.
This last piece, the two men noticed, was occupied by a harsh looking woman who looked to be in her early fifties. She'd been rocking in her chair, reading from a large and sensationalist tabloid. Several such periodicals sat within arm's reach on the edge of the dresser. The woman paused and stared with some wonderment at her two unexpected visitors.
With his years of experience manning a camera, Buttons caught the old woman's quick, sharp breath. Button recorded the slight raise of her eyelids as she took in the body of the muscular Adonis that now stood before her. The look was of a sudden, unbridled and nearly reckless lust, followed by a quick swallow of saliva. Buttons had seen that look before, several times, when Hank had taken off his shirt in front of young ladies.
"Lie down on my bed." The woman said, her tone more of an order than a request. "And be prepared to please me."
"You wish, grandma." Hank ridiculed the hag. "You're Beatrice Goode, aren't you? I thought you were dead."
"Not dead." The woman corrected. "I just chose to live in my own world, instead of that tragedy that you call home. Now, are you going to lie down on my bed or not?"
"Fuck off, lady." Hank huffed and turned to exit. "Come on, Buttons. Let's check out the rest of this place."
The old woman jumped out of her chair. For a moment, Buttons imagined that she was about to run after Hank and claw at him with her fingernails. She did not do this, however, as she simply stood there and stewed like a pot just at the point of boiling.
"Get out of my room." She ordered, past gritted teeth.
Through the relentless and unforgiving eye of the camera, Buttons received numerous impressions from the woman. First, she was bitter, as if she'd been spurned by her prospective lovers too many times in the past, or as if her one true love had turned his back on her many years before. Second, the woman was a tyrant. She was used to getting her way. It angered her tremendously when she could not get what she was after.
Third, if one forgave the woman for her presently twisted features, he discovered that she was not a bad looking dame, for her age anyway. Granted, her hair was a stark black, hanging down straight and drawn back over her shoulders. Her features were sharp after years of being honed on the dark millstone of hate. To Buttons, she came across as being of the same mold as Lily Munster or Morticia Addams.
Now that she was on her feet, Buttons took a good look at the rest of her. He judged her to be at about five foot three, with a slender and possibly athletic frame. If he had to guess, he'd have commented that Beatrice had been keeping herself in shape. She was hoping to attract a lover, the cameraman supposed, but that lover had never materialized. Thus, she'd become bitter and desperate enough to ensconce her self away from the real world. Perhaps, Buttons considered further, she'd scared any potential suitors away with her less than sparkling demeanor, combined with her reprehensible dealings into the occult.
Oh, and as for what she was wearing, well, her outfit was both odd and more than a little incongruous. The fifty-something year old Beatrice Goode was wearing an Adidas tracksuit, of shiny black polyester and with dual white stripes ranging down each arm from the collar down to the cuffs. Said stripes also adorned the pants. It took Buttons a moment to recall that the rap group, Run DMC, had popularized such attire back in the eighties, when all the murders and suicides in that neighborhood were taking place.
Buttons lowered the camera slightly, filming the prominent buds on the woman's chest. C cup tits, he guessed. Lusty thoughts of a cougar interpretation of Lily Munster, Morticia Addams, and Elvira, Mistress of The Dark, started filling the man's head.
Beatrice might have realized what he was staring at. "You get out too, asshole."
Buttons scanned around the room, noting that Hank had already gone. Quickly, he scurried after his boss. He did not want to find out firsthand if that rumor about the witch's 'evil eye' was true.
"Armand will take care of you both." The old woman threatened, as she stepped over to the door and slammed it shut behind them.
As if the two men hadn't already experienced enough shocks, Buttons scanned over a brightly lit kitchen and dining room. The entire place was fully furnished and looking every bit like an inhabited home, complete with clean dishes in a dish rack, and a box of cereal sitting on the counter.
He found Hank staring out of a window in the living room, which was streaming in waves of bright and warm sunlight. There was no sign of their ghost hunting equipment anywhere. Not only was the room now furnished with couches and end tables, and even an older model but clean and crisp looking TV, but the floor was covered in plush, tan carpet. The floor was nothing like the bare collection of floorboards they'd been sitting on earlier.
That was when Buttons realized that even though the camera was still recording, Hank hadn't said a thing for a couple of minutes. He could not recall that ever happening before. If it weren't for their bizarre situation, Buttons would have started ragging on the other man for being caught speechless.
Instead, Buttons cleared his throat. "We're still rolling, Hank."
Hank glanced back, his face in shock over their impossible circumstances. The strong man looked suddenly out of place in the bright surroundings, standing there nearly naked except for his boxers.
"Tell us about Beatrice Goode." Buttons prodded him. "You never told us what happened to her."
"Beatrice Goode?" Hank repeated. He glanced around for a few seconds and blinked a few times. "Right, Beatrice Goode."
Hank took a deep breath and quickly regained his focus, which relieved Buttons in no small or insignificant way. "Nobody really knows what happened to Beatrice Goode. Even the local authorities deemed it was odd that so many of this neighborhood's residents were pointing an accusing finger toward this very house. The answers to this sudden plague of death and misery, these neighbors said, were to be found here. The police came by several times to question Betty Goode. Each time, a more and more scornful old woman greeted them at the front door. The last time a police officer knocked here, Betty Goode stepped outside and was said to have cursed him. Strangely enough, that same officer was badly hurt in an altercation just three days later. As for Betty Goode, she disappeared. She vanished into thin air back in early 1986, and she was never seen again.
"But now, we know what really happened to her. She was able to somehow create her own little universe, just like the strange dimension that our technician Bill said he experienced back at the Homestead Valley Hospital. Beatrice Goode did not move away out of fear or public scrutiny. She did not leave her neighborhood out of shame due to what was being implied that her son was doing, like some people have suggested. She did not live out the rest of her days in obscurity either, in some quiet place where nobody knew who she was. Instead, she came here, to this place." Hank pointed at the shut front door. "Let's find out just how big this place really is."
Hank opened the door and stepped onto a well-kept porch. His hands immediately went up to either side of his head, as if the sight that met his eyes was overwhelming his mind. His hands were preventing his mind from bursting, is what it looked like.
Buttons stepped up close behind the man. When Hank didn't move, the cameraman had to lean back awkwardly and sidle around him with his recording instrument. Buttons bumped into something behind him, darting around briefly and discovering that the porch swing was hanging there placidly. He scurried over to the edge of the porch and took in the broad stretch of the front yard, the dark asphalt of the street and well beyond.
There were no cars parked along the sidewalk, or drifting lazily down the avenue. There were no people out mowing their lawns, or mailmen delivering parcels, but there were plenty of residences. The houses were all brightly colored and relaxed.
The pleasant landscape did have some people in it, however, other than Betty Goode and her psychotic son Armand. Buttons counted no less than a full dozen young women, milling about or sitting on the sidewalk than ran along the outer edge of Goode property. At once, he recognized a couple of them from the pictures of the deceased women he'd seen right before they'd driven out that evening. These were all of the victims, he knew, from the murders and the suicides that had taken place way back in the eighties.
The women were of various races, from dark skinned to fair, with varying hairstyles and looks to them. They were all pretty. They wore pale and nearly transparent gowns that did little to hide their otherwise nude bodies. The unexpected thing was, the recorder noticed, that there weren't only nine young ladies out there, but twelve of them.
"Looks like we missed a few of the victims." Buttons stated, which was his way of opening up a new topic for Hank.
"Here is my theory for what happened here, in Murder City Heights." Hank went into tabloid reporter mode. "Nobody in this world loved Betty Goode, except for one person. That was her son Armand. In turn, Betty Goode loved only him. After her son was shot and killed by police, she naturally sought to bring her son's spirit here, to whatever this place is. While Betty could have been considered to be a witch by some people, or a vindictive and evil sort by others, she was certainly not a murderer. Her son Armand, on the other hand, clearly was.
"Armand discovered that his mother could gather the souls of the dead here, and keep them imprisoned in this place. He decided to go back into the real world and collect some souls of his own. This is why this neighborhood suffered so much death and demise back in 1985. Armand Goode was collecting trophies and there they are. All twelve of them."
Hank started down the steps, and this is when one of the girls on the sidewalk spotted him.
"Look!" The pretty woman pointed back at the two forms emerging from the porch.
The rest did look, like an uneven cascade of dominoes. A sudden wonder could be seen in all twelve faces. The wonder rapidly increased to awe, as the women saw what might have appeared to be the half-god Hercules stepping into the warm bask of the sun, clad only in a pair of boxers.
