The brightness of the moon stretches behind the numerous gray clouds in the night sky. Somewhere, off in the distance, an owl hoots, breaking the silence. The sound of gravel underfoot crunches as the camera crew makes their way into their destination.
“Make sure you get all of this. This makes me nervous,” says the woman seemingly in charge of the crew.
“Definitely a ten on the “Weird-shit-o-meter,” another opines as there ground they are walking on changes from gravel to scattered cobble with patches of dead grass in between the stones. The entire crew collectively stops as they reach the first abnormality, a large Santa head with arms coming out of it’s ears, holding onto two candy canes. It has a gaping maw, presumably for children to climb through. No one knows when that last happened, as time has caused the paint to wear away. In other places, the dirt has covered the face and beard in some spots, covering the white with shades of gray and black.
The brisk wind chills the crew who begins to proceed towards their destination. The shadows stretch across the walkway, adding to the eeriness of the situation. The next abomination they come across is a decidedly less creepy Santa Claus. This one wouldn’t be so bad if Santa wasn’t sitting like a model in some kind of magazine spread, laying on his side, propped up by one of his arms and holding his knee at that oh, so familiar angle.
Nearby, perhaps the most horrifying attraction the crew has come across so far, is some reindeer statues that have not held up half as well as the two previous Santa attractions. They eventually come up to a house standing in the back of the amusement park. The white house stands undecorated and unassuming, just as seemingly run down and dilapidated as the rest of the amusement park.
Sitting inside of the house, Ken Davison and his wife Kyra Johnson watch the crew walking up through one of the upstairs windows.
“Remind me again, why in the literal fuck are we doing this?”“Because I want to get in the right mindset. I have been off my game since I found out you’re preggers and I need to remind who everyone back in SCW who the hell I am.”“Yeah, you remember the Astrocreeps? This has that same creepy ‘we’re not so secretly a cult’ kind of vibe.”“Not my cup of tea, either. But I’m going to be honest, I am at my best when I create that uncertainty, that little seed of fear or doubt or whatever emotion I can weaponize. You know that.”“Then you’d damn well knock this out of the park. That’s all I can say. That and I think I’m gonna need a shower after this because this place is fucking gross.”“You mean we’re going to need a shower,” Ken says with a sly smile.
The crew gets to the front door, which has a handwritten note that says “Come in.” They dutifully follow the instructions and walk inside. The front room on the ground floor ran the entire width of the small house. It was illuminated only by the gray light from the window. There were hunter-green leather armchairs with footstools, a tartan plaid sofa on large ball feet, rustic oak end tables, and a section of bookshelves that held perhaps three hundred volumes. On the hearth of the big river-rock fireplace were gleaming brass and irons, and on the mantel was an old clock with two bronze stags rearing up on their hind legs. The decor was thoroughly but not aggressively masculine. No glassily staring deer or bear heads on the walls, no hunting prints, no rifles on display, just cozy and comfortable.
The house was redolent of lemon-oil furniture polish and a subtle pine-scented air freshener, as well as the faint and pleasant smell of char from the fireplace. The camera crew, still nervous, hurriedly crosses the front room to a half-open door. They opened it and went through and found a kitchen. Canary-yellow ceramic tile with knotty-pine cabinets. On the floor, gray vinyl tile speckled with yellow and green and red. Well scrubbed. Everything in its place. Quite rustic. Taped to the side of the refrigerator was a calendar already turned forward to April, with a color photograph that showed one white and one black kitten-both with dazzling green eyes-peering out from a huge spray of lilies. Based on his recent behavior, the normalcy of the house was terrifying. The gleaming surfaces, the tidiness, the homey touches, It was too perfect. You could easily picture Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia sitting down for a slice of cheesecake.
“Anyone else think this is weird?” one of the crew members blurts out.
"We already established that," the producer retorts.
There is a collective murmur amongst the rest of the crew as they make their way through the kitchen. The ambiance was very much a physical representation of Davison’s skewed mentality. The house serves its purpose much the same way each and every person in his life and has their purpose.
Through the four glass panes in the upper half, they see a back porch, a green yard, a couple of big trees, and the barn. They make their way past the rear door, pausing only momentarily to see if anyone was on the other side of it. Without any partition, the kitchen opened into the dining area, and the combined space was probably two-thirds the width of the house. The round dinette table was dark pine, supported by a thick central drum rather than legs; the four heavy pine captain's chairs featured tie-on back and seat cushions.
The noise of a running shower was apparent in the kitchen because the pipes were routed through the rear wall of the old house. Water being drawn upward to the bathroom made an urgent, hollow rushing sound through copper. Furthermore, the pipe wasn't tied down and insulated as well as it ought to have been, and at some point along its course, it vibrated against a wall stud: rapid knocking behind the plasterboard, tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta. The noise could be construed as either comforting, as there theoretically should be someone else in the home, or rather disconcerting, as the vibrations make you feel as though everything is moving, even though all except the pipes are perfectly still.
At the north end of the dining area was another door. Adorning the door is a hand-painted sign, the color of blood, are the words
“This way.” The producer turns the knob as quietly as she could, hand visibly shaking. She crosses the threshold with caution, motioning for the rest of the crew to follow her. Beyond lay a combination of laundry and storage room. A washer. An electric dryer. Boxes and bottles of laundry supplies were stored in an orderly fashion on two open shelves, and the air smells like detergent and bleach. The rush of water and the knocking pipe was even louder here than they had been in the kitchen. To the left, past the washer and dryer, was another door-rough pine, painted lime green. She opens it and sees stairs leading down to a black cellar. Her heart begins to beat faster.
Black. Pitch black.
There are absolutely no windows at all below. Not even a turbid leak of gray storm light seeping through narrow casements or screened ventilation cutouts. Dungeon dark. It’s the sort of thing where you would expect to turn on a light and find someone locked up. But if there were someone that demented and was keeping a captive down there, how odd that he wouldn't have added a lock to this upper door. It offered only the spring latch that retracted with a twist of the knob, not a real lock of any kind.
But that’s part of the game for Davison. Even without his presence, he is deep in the collective minds of the camera crew. The hopefully hypothetical captive might be sealed in a windowless room deep below, of course, or even manacled. They would have no hope of reaching these stairs and this upper door, even if left alone for days to worry at her restraints, which would explain why Davison would be confident that one more barrier to their flight wasn't necessary even when he was away from home.
The producer is snapped back into reality by the lights that came on behind her. In this day and age, everyone had a flashlight on their phones. Her shadow cast against the wall, she is leaning through the doorway, feeling along the stairwell wall for the switch, and snapped it up. Lights came on both at the upper landing and in the basement. ‘How in the hell can they aim a camera but not a flashlight?’ she thinks to herself. The bare concrete steps-a single flight-were steep. They appeared to be much newer than the house itself, perhaps even a relatively recent addition.
“Be careful of the stairs, everyone. We don’t need anyone busting their ass.”Halfway down the stairs, she glanced back and up. At the end of a trail of her wet shoe prints, the landing seemed a quarter of a mile above her, as far away as the top of the knoll had seemed from the front porch of the house. Alice down the rabbit hole into madness without a tea party.
“Do we really have to do this? It seems a little outside of our pay grade,” one of the crew members questions.
“Unfortunately,” the producer responds. She had a feeling of uneasiness. To her, this feels like one of those haunted houses that you go to on Halloween. At the open doorway between the in-kitchen dining area and the laundry room, the crew listens for something.. anything…, hoping to hear something other than their own breathing. Davison stalks the crew, who are only a few feet away from him, around the comer, past the washer and the dryer. He stands blinking but otherwise motionless in the fragrance of laundry detergent and in the wall-muffled rattle of copper pipes. 'This is going to be fun,’ Davison muses as he and Kyra make their way down a hidden staircase that leads down to the basement.
“Um… Ken? We know you’re here…uh… somewhere.”The cellar door stands open. The stairwell light is on. The crew is not in sight. Truth be told, Davison has never put a lock on the door to the cellar steps because he is concerned that it might accidentally trip, imprisoning himself down there when he is at play and unaware. With a key-operated deadbolt, of course, this catastrophe could never happen. He is incapable of imagining how any such mechanism could malfunction and trap him; nevertheless, he's too concerned about the prospect to take the risk. Just as he does inside of the ring, he considers every possibility outside of it. He takes a deep, but slow and quiet, breath. Perhaps family life had dulled Davison’s predatory spirit. Perhaps, this was going to be the game that awakened it.
After a brief hesitation, he leans through the open door and looks down the cellar stairs. The last member of the camera crew, a towheaded young man, short and slender, is only a few steps from the bottom. He's got one hand on the railing. His full attention is aimed in front of him, following the direction of the producer. as though she were the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Regardless, even if she were the piper, he was the puppetmaster pulling her strings. He could have just as easily met the crew somewhere else, but he enjoyed this feeling of control.
He eases through the doorway onto the upper landing. As close as they are, they do not hear him because all is concrete, nothing to creak. He aims his hand as though it were a pistol, pointing at the center of the blonde gentleman's back. The first shot would catapult him off his feet, send him flying with arms spread like an eagle. Instead of taking flight, the body would fall toward the basement below. The second shot would take him as he is in flight. Davison would then race down the stairs, firing the third and fourth rounds, hitting other members of the camera crew in the legs if possible. He would then tackle the producer from behind while she took in the carnage. He would drop on top of her, press the muzzle into the back of her head, and then, then, when he's totally in control of her, dominant, he can decide what to do with her. Just as the minds of the camera crew had wandered, so had Davison’s. This, however, was not that kind of hunt.
The outer wall of mortared stone was to their right. There was nowhere to go in that direction. To her left was a chamber about ten feet from front to back, and as wide as the house. The crew moved away from the foot of the stairs, into this new space. At one end stood an oil-fired furnace and a large electric water heater. At the other end were tall metal storage cabinets with vent slits in the doors, a workbench, and a tool chest on wheels. Nothing that would seem out of the ordinary, with a lone exception. Directly ahead, in a concrete-block wall, a strange door waited.
Click-whoosh. The sound of the furnace startles the crew, revealing exactly how on edge they are. Over the sound of the furnace, they could still hear the vibrating pipe. Tatta-tatta-tatta. It was faint here, but still audible.
The door in the back wall was padded like a theater door, in leather grain maroon vinyl divided into quilt-like squares by eight upholstery nails with large round heads covered in matching vinyl. The frame was upholstered in the same material. No lock, not even a spring latch, prevented her from proceeding. Putting her hand on the vinyl, the producer discovers that the padding was even plusher than it appeared to be. As much as two inches of foam covered the underlying wood. She gripped the long stainless-steel, U-shaped handle. When she pulled, the vinyl-encased door softly scraped and squeaked across the upholstery on the jamb. The fit was snug: When the door swung all the way free of the jamb and the seal was broken, there was a faint sound similar to that made when one opened a jar of vacuum-packed peanuts. The door was upholstered on the inside as well. The overall thickness was in excess of five inches. Beyond this new threshold lay a six-foot-square chamber with a low ceiling, which reminded her of an elevator, except that every surface other than the floor was upholstered. The floor was covered with a rubber mat of the kind used in many restaurant kitchens for the comfort of cooks who worked on their feet for hours at a time. In the dim light from the recessed overhead bulb, she saw that the fabric here wasn't vinyl but gray cotton with a nubbly texture.
Directly opposite the door that the producer held open was one more door. It was also padded and set in an upholstered frame. Finally, there were locks. The gray upholstery plumped around two heavy-duty brass lock cylinders. She and the rest of the crew couldn't proceed without keys. Then she noticed a small padded panel overlying the door itself at eye level, perhaps six by ten inches with a knob attached. It was like the sliding panel over the viewport in the solid door of a maximum-security prison cell. Tatta-tatta-tatta… whoever was in the shower seemed to be taking an unusually long shower. On the other hand, they hadn't been in the house more than three or four minutes; it just seemed longer. If he was having a leisurely scrub, he might not be half done.
Tatta-tatta-tatta. Beyond was rose-colored light. The port was fitted with a sturdy screen to protect the viewer from assault by whoever or whatever was within. The producer put her face to the port and saw a large chamber nearly the size of the living room under which it was situated. In portions of the space, shadows were pooled deep, and the only light came from three lamps with fringed fabric shades and pink bulbs that were each putting out about forty watts. At two places along the back wall were panels of red and gold brocade that hung from brass rods as if covering windows, but there could be no windows underground; the brocade was just set dressing to make the room more comfortable… or maybe it was designed to make the room more uncomfortable. It was hard to say. On the wall to the left, barely touched by light, was a large tattered tapestry: a scene of women in long dresses and cloche hats riding horses side-saddle through spring grass and flowers, past a verdant forest.
The furnishings included a plump armchair with antimacassars, a double bed with a white headboard painted with a scene not quite discernible in the rose light, bookcases with acanthus-leaf molding, cabinets with mullioned doors, a small dining table with a heavily carved apron, two Directoire chairs with flower-pattern upholstery flanking the table, and a refrigerator. An immense dark-stained armoire, featuring crackle-glazed flower appliques on all the door panels, was old but probably not a genuine antique, battered but handsome. A padded vanity bench sat before a makeup table with a triptych mirror in a gilded, fluted frame. In a far comer were a toilet and a sink. As weird as this subterranean room was, like a storage vault for the stage furniture from a production of Arsenic and Old Lace, the collection of dolls was by far the strangest thing about it. Kewpie dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, Raggedy Ann, and numerous other varieties, both old and new, some more than three feet tall, some smaller than a milk carton, were dressed in diapers, snowsuits, elaborate bridal dresses, checkered rompers, cowboy outfits, tennis togs, pajamas, hula skirts, kimonos, clown suits, overalls, nighties, and sailor suits. They filled the bookshelves, peered out through the glass doors of some of the cabinets, perched on the armoire, sat atop the refrigerator, stood and sat on the floor along the walls. Others were piled atop one another in a corner and at the foot of the bed, legs and arms jutting at odd stiff angles, heads cocked as on broken necks, like stacks of gaily attired corpses awaiting transport to a crematorium. Two hundred, or three hundred, or more small faces either glowed in the gentle light or were ghost-pale in the shadows, some of bisque and some of china and some of cloth, some wood and some plastic. Their glass, tin, button, cloth, and painted-ceramic eyes reflected the light, shone brightly where the dolls were placed near any of the three lamps, glowed as moodily as banked coals where they were consigned to the darker corners.
Perhaps the most jarring image is that of Kyra, who appears to be bound to the chair. Her hair is wet, hanging in front of her face. Her arms are bound to the arms of the chair with leather restraints. Her mouth is bound by a piece of cloth. Her face is covered in makeup to give her the same complexion as some of the porcelain dolls in the room.
“Holy fuck!”"She okay?”“We need to get the hell out of here.”“Help her!”The crew’s reaction seems to all blend together, like a beautiful symphony of stupor.
“What’s red and hangs around trees?” The entire production team jumps, startled by their host appearing suddenly.
“A baby hit by a snowblower.” The entire production team jumps, startled by their host appearing behind them.
“What’s green and hangs around trees? Same baby three weeks later.”Davison is obviously going for shock value, not that he needed it. His memorabilia was shocking enough. They filled the bookshelves, peered out through the glass doors of some of the cabinets, perched on the armoire, sat atop the refrigerator, stood and sat on the floor along the walls. Others were piled atop one another in a different corner and even some at the foot of the bed, legs and arms jutting at odd stiff angles, heads cocked as on broken necks, like stacks of gaily attired corpses awaiting transport to a crematorium. Two, maybe three hundred or so small faces either glowed in the gentle light or were ghost pale in the shadows. Kyra stands up having gone along with the prank, but the look on her face tells you that she certainly wasn’t pleased with Ken’s decision to give “method acting” a try.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure we got the right mood for what we are going for. I would say it worked.”“If you really wanted the right mood, you should have really tied me to that chair. But you’re still a bit of a dick, you know that?” Kyra says with an amused grin as she throws her ‘bindings’ onto the chair. In the background, some of the crew can be heard agreeing with her.
“Listen, if I’m really tying you to that chair, that’s not the type of games you’d want cameras here for.”Davison pauses as Kyra gives him a look.
“You sure about that?”Kyra chuckles and shrugs her shoulders.
“Maybe.”The crew scurries to finish setting up while Davison walks over to a panel of some sort, flipping the switches so the ambiance changes from the gentle rose color to the harshness of a deep crimson. Also, around the border of the ceiling, are strings of led christmas lights, bright enough to be seen, but not enough to change the room. Kyra takes her place back in the chair and sits down, covering herself in a blanket to cover her baby bump then placing the cloth back over her mouth. Ken stands confidently behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“Seleana Zdunich, I don't have much to say about you. It's not that I don't respect you. It's because I know the Courtney Pierce is going to handle you. However, I'll have more on that later on.”
“Peter Vaughn, I understand that this is your grand debut. They are building this as savior against savior and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. You and I do not have a connection. You and I are not brothers. You and I have not bled for or because each other. In my eyes, you are not a savior… yet.”
“You know something? When my wife and I were talking March 26th, talking about this trip to the Great White North, talking about this match in particular, it feels like ice cold water running through my veins. I am getting goosebumps. I get that hit of adrenaline like when you come off a diving board and that first blast of cold water permeates your entire body. I get the rush from head to toe, because within this company alone, I’ve won championships all over the world. Coming to Kelowna, British Columbia… Coming to Prospera Place… it’s a throwback to my days back in Baltimore. We’re in a smaller, more intimate venue, and I’ve got to tell you Vaughn, it feels like coming home.”
“People are going to ask me, why do you have to go there? Why do you have to fight your brother in arms? You’ve got nothing to prove. And why the heck are you getting in the ring with “The Mechanic”? The reason why, Vaughn, is simple. I know my time is winding down. When this is over, when I wrap this up, I want to put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, not a period. I gotta end the legacy the right way. I gotta be able to look in the eyes of my wife and my children and I will have to tell them why I did what I did. That is why I’ve fought Goth. That is why I’ve fought Mac Bane. The Saviors are bigger than any wrestling promotion in the world today and the way that you and I are going to prove that, more importantly, the way that you are going to prove that you are really[/i] a Savior, is by taking this, the first match in the Blast From the Past tournament, and showing this entire company that even though we are the past, we are also the future.”
“That’s why teaming with Courtney Pierce, a woman I have never spoken to in my life, is so appropriate. I remember how I’d travel from city to city, show to show, to whichever venue I was needed at. I would be paired up with whatever talent they thought would put on a good show with me. I’ve won championships with names like Saber and Tara ‘Spirit’ Jacobs and I know that you are asking yourself who the hell they are. But, that’s exactly my point. Those two woman are now nothing more than footnotes in my history, names lost beneath the sands of time.”
“So, when I say going back to my roots, I'm talking about coming back to the smaller venues, I’m talking about finding the success with any partner they can give me because I have something to prove. There is a reason I am a three time champion in this company. There is a reason why I have won tag team championships with more partners than I can remember. That reason, Vaughn, is because I understand my opponents, I understand who you are and what you are about. That’s why you are here. That’s why you were invited into the Parthenon of the Elite we call the Saviors.”
“So, Vaughn, I’ve got something to tell you, the story goes like this: Zdunich, you should take notes because I know enough about Courtney Pierce to know that she follows the same line of thought. Be ready for the fight of your life. I know that you have something that you need to establish yourself in this company. I know that means you are going to come at me with everything you have. Don’t come to Kelowna, don’t come to the Palace if you don't think blood’s gonna flow like wine, pretty appropriate given the number of vineyards here. This is the fight of my life, brother. This could be the last match that I fight for my family, the Hulkamaniacs, or this could be the first match on the long hard road of taking over the whole professional wrestling business once again.”
At the end of the day, I'm glad that you and I are going to be in this match together. At the end of the day, I'm glad I have a REAL partner in Courtney Pierce. Since all the bullshit with Finn Whelan started, it’s been nothing but games. It’s been a lot of pissing, whining and making excuses and that isn’t who I am. I have spent almost thirty years pounding these highways. I spent almost thirty years breaking my body in half. I spent thirty years trying to prove what this business is all about. To be constantly cheap shotted, to have the carpet pulled out from under me, its not gonna end that way. So I feel sorry for Peter Vaughn. I feel sorry for Seleana Zdunich. Courtney Pierce and I are the two most motivated team in this tournament, hands down.”
“When you walk out of Climax Control, there's gonna be one thing that's gonna happen to you, Vaughn. Either you’re going to be a man and shake my hand when I get done with you or I’m going to expel you from the Saviors myself. So in Kelowna, British Columbia, a couple of days away, I show you, Vaughn, and Courtney Pierce and I remind each and every man and woman in the locker room exactly why we are two of the best in this business.”Ken puts his hands firmly on Kyra’s shoulders, Kyra raises her right hand to hold Ken’s as the camera fades to black.
