Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The Librarians and the Heart of Darkness

Using this header just once, since I think this is how most fans see the show. -Ed

Ok - this one's definitely an E-ticket. Whoa. Creepy house, creepy pictures, creepy girl... yeah. Creepy! This episode's guest star is Lea Zawada as Katie, the girl that the team comes across at this house.

There are a lot of things that really worked here. The lighting, the camera angles, the diffusion and blur filters all combined to give that really cool, creepy feeling - you know, the one that happens when you get completely sucked in to a story.

Lea Zawada delivered a fantastic performance, as did Lindy Booth. And we see a bit more development in the relationship between the guys - they are just starting to act more like brothers, and it's great. We also see Cassie find strength, and that's really awesome to have her be the strong one.

Read on past the jump for the recap. SPOILER WARNING!






Slovakia - Nitra region...
Sunlight cuts through trees and bushes, and we see a house. (Vaguely reminds me a little of the opening shots in Evil Dead. It has the same spirit, if not quite the same look.) Screams come from inside the house, and a girl bursts through the door. Stopping on the porch, she sees a car. She runs for the road, and stops in front of the car. Eve slams on the brakes. They all get out of the car, and check on the girl to find her covered in blood. She says her name is Katie, and she tells them that there is a man in the house and he is going to kill her friends. Jake calms her down (calming girls seems to be his specialty now), and gives her a bottle of water.

Ezekiel is complaining. "Alright! Bloody girl in the forest, killer in the house... Who says we go back to Prague and let the lovely bird back in that nightclub?" Eve puts her hand up as she walks over to Cassie and her map. "This is me, ignoring you. Get used to it." Zeke is scanning the forest with a piece of equipment. Eve notices it. "Is that good beeping or bad beeping?" Cassie says it means they found the broken ley lines they were looking for.

Cassie waves her hands over the map. "Multi-dimensional map. Don't look at them, unless you can do the math to sort out the layers..." Her nose starts bleeding. "And you like headaches and nosebleeds." Eve is concerned and asks if it's the tumor. Cassie says she's fine - "It's always the tumor." She explains to Eve, "The vertices used to be static. And now they're not. They're all... wavy and moving. But when they stop, I can see them." Zeke overhears. "Mathgirl's doing one of her loopy-loops." Cassie is offended. "Don't call me Mathgirl..." To Eve, she says, "Mr. Jenkins said we needed to find the broken ley lines, and I say they are.... that way." "Ah. Where the blood-covered girl came from."

The group discovers, with the use of Cassie's map, that the house is in fact on a broken ley line. That means wild magic, and wild magic means a haunting. Eve calls Jenkins for a consult. He confirms Cassie's information and expresses dire worry. The scoobies drive back to the house to find out what's going on. Katie wants to go inside with them to help her friends, but Eve says no.

Cassie gives scrolls to everyone, telling them that they are anchor scrolls and need to be activated at each cardinal compass point of the house. Eve starts giving assignments. She hands Jake a crowbar. "Stone, you and I will take point. Jones, you activate the anchor scrolls. With any luck, we'll kill two birds at once." Eve takes away Cassie's scroll and gives it to Zeke, telling her that she needs to stay behind and keep an eye on Katie. Cassie makes a fuss about it. Apparently, Eve doesn't think that Cassie can handle this, but she's tactful - "Look, you did your part with the maps. Katie's half in shock! She can't be left alone."

Eve, Jake and Zeke approach the house. Eve looks at the guys scowling. "What's with the face?" Zeke answers, "More than nervous... less than terror." "Still ignoring you," she tells him. Jake is looking at the house. "This is a nineteenth century American Frontier house. What the hell's it doing in the middle of a Slovakian forest?" Eve looks at Jake. "Seriously??" "I'm just sayin' it doesn't belong here." As they go into the house, Eve tells Zeke, "We clear a room - you set the anchor."

Zeke sets the first one on the floor in the living room and it glows, then disappears. In the next cleared room, the same thing. In the third room, he sets a scroll while Eve and Jake are listening to noises. The walls start shaking, dishes fly out of cabinets. A knife levitates from the table and throws itself at Zeke. It sticks in the wall next to his head. Eve orders everyone out. They run back to the car while there is a quickening of magic within the house. Katie asks, "Who are you people?" "Librarians. We're... Librarians," says Cassie. (Roll credits. -Ed)

The guys go back into the house to set the last anchor scroll. "What librarian carries a gun?" asks Katie. Eve stammers out her answer. "We're... We do... field work for the... Library. Sometimes it gets dangerous." "Very weird librarians." "It's a very weird Library." The guys come running back from the house. Jake tells Eve that it's done, the last anchor is set so they should be good to go.

Eve tells Katie that they're going back in to save her friends, and of course she wants to go. Eve says, "No - you stay here with Cassandra." Katie starts to protest. Jake waves the crowbar. "There's three of us here, I think we can take one psycho. Well... two and a half with Jones, but still... " "Hey, I'm standing right here! I can hear you."

Cassie asks Eve why she is being sidelined. "Cassandra, nobody's being sidelined. I'm simply allocating resources as needed, and right now I need you to look after Katie, who is currently... RUNNING BACK UP THERE!!"

Katie runs back to the house and everyone follows. She goes back into the house and starts quietly calling to her friends. Eve comes up behind her and covers her mouth, pulling her back into the front room. She indicates the ceiling, from where sounds of footsteps are heard. Eve calls out a threat to whoever might be in the house. "We know you're up there, we know you can hear us. This can go one of two ways - you come down, we get these people help, nobody gets hurt. Or we go up." There's no response. Eve tells Cassie and Katie to stay downstairs - "I mean it!" She and the guys go upstairs. Katie asks Cassie if all she does is read maps.

Upstairs, Jake notices something. "These dimensions are wrong! Does this hall extend past the house?" The hall does indeed appear to be longer than the house. Zeke says that it's a sign. Eve tells them that they will clear the rooms by the numbers. Zeke offers a weak protest. "This is exactly the point in the movie where the guy in the audience is going, 'Get the hell out of the house!'"

Jake goes into a room and has a running dialogue with himself describing the old things he finds. Out in the hall, Zeke asks himself, "Why does nobody listen to the guy in the movies? Movie guy is always right..." He goes into a room with many (and I do mean MANY) pairs of shoes and boots lined up neatly along a wall three rows deep. There's an old baby's crib in the center of the room on an area rug. He sees a small picture in a frame on the wall. The picture is ripped - the heads of the people in the picture have been torn out. In the background is a house. "That is not creepy at all," says Zeke.

Eve also finds the same picture in the area she is at. She wonders out loud if the house in the picture is the house they are in. Jake also finds the same picture - and a very old crate hammer.

Meanwhile, back in Zeke's room there's a noise from a door that's ajar. Zeke approaches the closet carefully. He takes a deep breath. "The movie guy is wrong. The movie guy is wrong. The movie guy is wrong..." He opens the door and looks relieved.

Back in the hall, Eve is looking at some bloody clothes. She hears Jake calling her. When she looks up, she sees three kids and a big dark shadow of a large person holding a crate hammer. Eve pulls her gun, and draws a bead as she turns the corner - to find only Jake, who is now freaking out about having a gun pointed at him. "Whoa! Come on, man!" Zeke enters the hall behind Jake. Eve looks back to the spot where she saw the kids, and there's nothing there.

They go downstairs, and Eve is talking about what she saw. Jake said that he didn't see or hear anything, and that the kids sure as hell didn't get past him or Zeke. Eve says she's not sure what she saw. As she describes the kids, Katie says that those were her friends. She notices the bloody clothes in Eve's hands, and says that they belong to her friends. Now she's freaking out, because Eve can't tell her if her friends are ok or not. She runs out of the room. Everybody looks at Cassandra. "Oh - so I'm the Katie wrangler now?! Fine!" She goes off in a huff to get Katie.

Eve calls Jenkins. "Could anchoring the ley lines in a haunted house jumpstart the ghosts?" "You have an incredible talent for turning a bad situation into a worst-case-scenario." He says the good news is that they've successfully secured the ley lines so there will be no magical cataclysm - "Huzzah!" Eve asks him about the house itself. "Ah. The bad news..." He asks her if she's ever heard the story of the House on the Haunted Hill. "A group of paranormal researchers died in madness and terror. Or the one about the psychotic who killed a whole sorority one Halloween." Eve writes them off as urban legends. "Yeah, different stories, same house. And you're standing in it." Meanwhile, upstairs at the end of the empty hall a shadowy, robed figure appears in a cloud of black smokey... stuff.

Jenkins tells her about the six different kinds of haunted houses, and he figures out that they are in the Shadowbox house. He congratulates her on the team being the first Librarians to ever set foot in one because it has a tendency to move around. Eve wants to know how to get Katie's friends out. Jenkins says that she can't. Once the house takes victims, that's it - it moves on. The only thing that they can do is to stop it by finding it's dark heart and destroying it. Jenkins says that it could be anything - a rug, a vase, a mouse... anything. "You'll know it when you see it. But you only have until midnight." Eve tells the guys this, saying "There's no monster in the house. The house IS the monster."

She asks the guys if they remember seeing anything unusual. Jake mentions the bloody crate hammer he found, and Zeke mentions the "pram from Rosemary's Baby." They look at him funny. "No - Seriously! it's up there!" Cassie comes into the room. She tells Eve that there's something she needs to hear. Katie tells them what happened.

"Nobody lives here. We thought it was abandoned. We were going to spend the night and move on in the morning. Then he came. It was horrible! Like a shadow... he has this thing, like a hammer or a hatchet -" "What do you mean like a shadow?" "Like smoke... like he's made of smoke..." Eve asks Katie why she didn't tell them that before. "You would have thought I was crazy. Things like that don't just... happen... Do they?" Cassie tells her that they actually happen more often than she thinks.

Meanwhile, Jake has gone back to look for the crate hammer he found earlier. It's not on the pile of stuff where he left it. It's now in the middle of the room, on the floor.He goes to pick it up and it disappears in a puff of black smoke. He yells to Zeke that he has some weird stuff happening. There's a flash of light from out in the hall. He calls Zeke again, asking if he's ok.

Jake goes looking for him, and checks a room with a dollhouse on a table. No Zeke. He runs downstairs, and checks outside. The group comes running and Eve asks what's wrong. Jake tells them that Zeke is gone. "Define... gone." "He's not upstairs, he's not down here. I thought he might have run out, but the truck's still here." He seems genuinely worried about Zeke, and Katie starts freaking out. "It's the bad man... I just know it!" Jake asks Eve, "What's the play, Baird? I'm thinkin' fire. I bet if we burn the joint down, it don't move so much."

Katie worries that her friends are still in the house. "You can't burn it down!" Eve tells everyone to stop talking so she can think. She talks herself through the scenario, and an old Victrola starts playing by itself -  a creepy sounding recording of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Cassie and Jake start freaking out because apparently it wasn't there before. Eve angrily says, "I am so sick of this house!" She goes to stop the Victrola, and gets slammed up against a wall. Katie's name appears in flames and is burned into the wall above Eve's head. Katie whines, "Now it wants me?"

Eve tells Cassie to take Katie and get out of the house. "Take the car, drive back to  the Annex..." Cassie refuses. She wants to stay and help find Zeke - "We're a team!" she says. Eve responds, "We are not a team! You are the Librarians. I am the Guardian. I am telling you to take Katie, and get the hell out of this damned house!" Cassie points out that she's not sending Jake away. Eve says, "I need him. He can fight." Cassie looks defiant. Eve explains that they all have different skills, and in this situation, her skills don't apply. "If we don't find Zeke, one of us has to make it back to Jenkins." Cassie storms out of the house, with Katie following and calling for her to wait. Angrily, Cassie throws her jacket in the back seat and gets in the car.

Katie catches up and asks Cassie if she's ok. Cassie tells her to get in. "I'm taking you to the Annex, as ordered." Katie looks worried and confused. "What's the Annex?" "When you want something out of the way, that's where you put it." (This reminds me of Hoggle's explanation of an oubliette in Labyrinth. "An oubliette is where you put things to forget about them.")

Katie doesn't understand. She thinks Eve is just trying to protect them. "You, yes. Mathgirl... not so much." Who's Mathgirl?" Cassie gives a resigned sigh. "That would be me. One who could break at any second... one who betrays her friends." Katie says, "you would never betray anybody." "But I did. Once. I have a tumor. In my brain. It makes me useful... but unreliable.." Sadly, she adds, "I wouldn't trust me either."

Katie points out that Eve is trusting Cassie to get her to safety. She asks if Cassie thinks that Eve would let either of "those men" do it. "Which one? The one who wants to burn the house down, or the one that ran away? Ms. Baird trusts you. So do I."

Cassie starts the car, and there's a loud bang from the roof of the car. They get out, and the black smoke shadow man appears. He proceeds to beat the crap out of the car with the crate hammer while the girls run screaming back towards the house. He follows them.

Inside the house, Eve is gently knocking on walls. Hearing a noise from behind her, she quickly turns with her gun out, only to find that she's drawn down on Jake - "Again?!" Jake looks peeved as he ducks. "Are you kiddin' me?!" Eve is exasperated. "Really?! And where are all the shoes?" Jake doesn't know what she is talking about. Looking around, he asks "What shoes?" "Jones said this room was full of shoes." She wonders why the house is playing these games. "Why attack Katie and her friends? Why play hide-and-seek with us?" Jake smirks. "You really wish you had somethin' to shoot, don't you?" His smirk quickly turns into a grin. Eve growls, "God, I want something to shoot!"

They hear the girls creaming and banging the door on their way in. They head for the stairs, but Jake stops at the door and looks back in the room. He turns to get Eve's attention, but she's already gone. He goes back into the room, where a table has appeared with a dollhouse on it. As Jake approaches the table, a large shadow appears on the wall behind him. From out in the hall, we see a brief flash of light coming from inside the room.

Downstairs, the girls are trying to block the door with a heavy thing. Eve asks the girls what happened. "I thought I told you to go?" Cassie says, "there was a hiccup." What kind of hiccup?" Katie yells, "He's coming!" Cassie tells Eve to help them block the door. Eve goes over and helps push the heavy thing against the door. She yells for Jake, and suddenly the ruckus stops for a moment. Then a black, smokey, ethereal arm poofs through the heavy thing against the door, and in its hand is the crate hammer. It pulls back, and Cassie says she thinks they've found the dark heart.

Jake finds himself in a room - with Zeke, who is playing a video game. "Yeah, takes a second to process." Jake looks around. "The - is this... The dollhouse? We're in the dollhouse." Zeke grins. "See? Got it in one." Jake asks, "How are we.. in the dollhouse?" "This is just a guess, mind you - but I'm going to say... Magic!" He gives Jake a wink and another grin.

Eve is still yelling for Jake. She peeks into a room, and sees the dollhouse. Jake hears her outside the dollhouse, and starts yelling to get her attention. Eve bends down to look into the window. Her eye is huge, and freaks Jake out so much that he nearly falls backwards. "Yeah. Tried that already. She can't hear you. Simosa?" "No! I don't want a simosa!"

Jake gets in Zeke's face. "What's wrong with you?!" "Well, I had sliders before, but for gaming you really want something a bit more bite-sized." Jake tries the door with no luck. Outside the dollhouse, Eve is yelling at the house. "What the hell do you want?!" She fires off two shots into the ceiling. Plaster crumbles from the ceiling, and on the wall behind her, Katie's name appears in blood. Eve looks scared now.

Back inside the dollhouse, Jake is sure the house is trying to kill them. Zeke is pretty sure it's not. He's totally chill, snacking and gaming. "Ok - you'll love this. Watch... I wish I had a pint. Oh - uh... left hand." A pint glass of beer appears in his left hand. "Now tell me that's not bloody fantastic!" Jake turns into the pissed off big brother. "What've you been doing, huh? Dude - the whole time, you've been playin' video games and drinkin'?" "And simosas! Yeah! I got tired of looking at those damn pictures. I said I wished there was something better to do, and boom!" "Wait- pictures. What d'ya mean, pictures?" Pictures appear on the wall behind Zeke. Jake goes to take a better look at them.

He recognizes the first one he examines, and excitedly tells Zeke about it, saying that it's been lost since 960 A.D. Zeke keeps playing his video game. "I'll take your word for it. Have you sussed out the story yet?" Jake realizes that the house is in every one of the pictures, and there's a picture for each period of history up until the current time. He notices that the house changes to fit the period. Zeke says, "The way I reckon, this house isn't evil outright. So at first, happy family. years of that, then... somethin'." Jake realizes something. "We got this wrong... We got the whole thing wrong!"

Meanwhile downstairs, scary Shadowman is still trying to break in. Cassie and Katie are screaming. Shadowman breaks through, and Eve bodychecks him. He falls, but gets back up. Eve yells for the girls to get out of there. While she tries to pull her gun, Shadowman keeps swinging at her. He catches her in the face. Cassie grabs a wooden chair, and smashes Shadowman in the back with it. He goes down. Eve again tells the girls to go. As they run out the door, Shadowman gets up to face Eve with the crate hammer.

Outside, Cassie hears shots fired from inside the house. She stops, and Katie tries to get her to keep running. Cassie tells Katie to keep going. "I need to help my friends. The house wants you. If you get out, then all this wasn't for nothing." Katie starts babbling. "We can both go! The car's right there! We can make it to Texarkana by the morning - there's a fort there, and there's soldiers! Come on!" Cassie tells Katie that the car is wrecked, then she realizes something. "Wait - Texarkana? We're in Slovakia."

Katie seems really confused. She turns away from Cassie. "Slovakia - what? No, Jessie, this is Nevada. It's the desert. Buggies. That's what we need because the horses... " Cassie asks, "Who's Jessie?" Katie appears to be having a conversation with... someone who's not there. "Ohhh... Oh, no. you're right." Her eyes go demon white, then turn back to normal before she turns to face Cassandra. "You're Cassie. Cassandra. Jessie was in Scotland. And sooo dead." She wears a wicked, evil smile. (From this point on, Katie's long hair starts to hang in her face kind of like Samara's hair in The Ring. That only gets creepier as we go on.)

Cassie asks her what's wrong - "You're freakin' me out." "Who, me? Oh, nothing. I'm just trying to get it all straight again, you know? It's funny - I can never remember where the begging goes. Does the crying come first?" She has a psychotic look on her grinning, evil little bitch face. Cassie comes to a realization. "No... Oh my god.. .This is all you!" Katie sings, "Ashes... ashes.. they all fall down! Now's the bit where you're running?" Cassie runs for the house, screaming for Eve. Katie follows, shuffling along as she sings "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain, " specifically the verse about driving six white horses.

Cassie makes it into the house, and slowly goes into the front room, calling for Eve. The room is trashed - broken and overturned furniture. She stops, and listens. She hears heavy footsteps upstairs. Looking down, she finds Eve's gun on the floor and picks it up. She looks up at the stairs, and sees Eve's body being dragged up. Katie is at the door, still singing.

Cassie goes upstairs, and sees Eve's body being dragged into a room. She follows, and stops at the door. Looking in, she sees ghosts of many people in all manner of period dress - everything from before old slavery days up to 1950's suits, ties and hats. Katie's voice is heard over all the people chattering - "So now you know, Cassandra." "This has been going on a long, time, hasn't it?" Katie tells the story of how her family found the house. She says that they never heard the house whisper. But she did. The house granted her wishes. And it only talks to her.

Cassie looks around. "So you talk, huh? Sure wish it could talk to me." Then Cassie acts like she's hearing someone speak to her. "Ok.. Ok, so it's not actual speech but I'll work with what I've got. A good beginning. Happy... you were happy. The people... were happy. Then the bad people came - Katie's family. Katie." Cassie sees Katie in one of the pictures in the house - then another. The Victrola appears in the room, and plays a melancholy record.

Downstairs, Katie hears this. "Making friends up there? Think I don't know this house hates me? Think it doesn't try this every time?" Slowly walking through the house, Katie pauses and looks at the knife stuck in the wall. Grabbing it, she continues on. "Tries to warn people. I made a wish - it has to give me what I asked for. Every time. Until I'm done." She slowly climbs the stairs.

Cassie cautiously approaches the Victrola. Katie says she'll never be done. "Stupid house. Always playing tricks... always laughing. She'll be screaming soon. Then we'll see who's laughing." Katie enters the room where Cassie was, but the room appears empty except for the Victrola still playing. "Hiding, are we?" Katie walks over to the Victrola and stabs the vinyl record, bringing the music to an abrupt end. "Sorry - that was bothering me." Katie looks around the room. "I thought you were supposed to be Mathgirl. Not too smart, giving me only two choices." She raises the knife and opens the closet door. Nothing in there but a few wire hangers ("No wire hangers EVER!!!'") and an old bassinet. She goes over to the tall metal locker, and opens it. Empty again. (She is still rockin' the "Samara" look.)

Cassie springs up from seemingly nowhere, and knocks the knife out of Katie's hand. She tries to shoot Katie but the gun is empty. Throwing it aside, she fights with Katie for the knife. Cassie manages to turn the knife and stab Katie with it. She gets up and tries to run out of the room, but the Shadow man blocks her way. Katie pulls the knife out, and calls Cassie stupid. "Don't you know what I wished for? Don't you know what this house has made me?" "You're the dark heart..." Katie violently slashes at Cassie. "I'm DEATH! Turns out they were right, Cassandra. You ain't good for nothin' in the end!" Cassie again fights with Katie and gets her arm slashed. She begs for help, begs for it to stop. Katie smiles wickedly. "Why would I want to stop?" Cassie leans back. "I wasn't talking to you!"

Cassie makes a wish to save her friends. Katie wishes to kill them - "and I was here first!" With a psychotic scream, Katie rushes at Cassie with the knife. Suddenly, the crate hammer appears in Cassie's hand to block the knife. Cassie shoves Katie off of her and gets up off the floor.

Cassie is very emotional now. Her pain goes deep. "You think you are death? I was fifteen when they told me that my death sits right here - " Cassie points a finger to her head. "So I see it every time I look in the mirror - EVERY SINGLE DAY!" With a scream, she slashes at Katie with the crate hammer. Katie yells at the house. "Stop it! You cant! I'm the Angel! The Angel of Death!" Katie slashes at Cassie, and Cassie blocks it. "You're not the angel of death. I know what Death looks like, and she doesn't look like you. She looks like me!"

Cassie takes another slash at Katie and connects with her midsection. But instead of blood and guts, there is just the sound of dry plaster crumbling. Katie checks herself, and finds no apparent damage. "See? I told you... I always get my wish."

Smoke starts to drift from the spot where a wound should have been. Katie starts slowly turning into vapor. She screams as she disappears. (That kind of reminded me of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. "I'm melting! I'm melting! Oh, you wretched little girl! Oh, what a world...")

Cassie speaks to Katie. "This isn't about wishes, Katie. It's about need. What I really need..." Cassie collapses. She wakes on the floor, with the crate hammer next to her head. She gets up, and notices that the once empty room is pleasantly furnished. She notices an envelope propped on the dollhouse, addressed to her. She gets up, and sets the hammer down on the table. She picks up the envelope, and opens it, carefully sliding the card out. In beautifully written cursive, it simply says "Thank You." Cassie smiles. "Looks like someone's feeling better!"

Zeke and Jake are arguing in downstairs in the living room. Zeke wants to do what Zeke does - not look a gift horse in the mouth. "I'm just asking why we aren't considering our options, that's all!" Jake is frustrated with him. "What options?!' "That this house is a Star Trek transporter... or maybe even the TARDIS! Think, mate! We could own the stock market! You could be dating... whoever it is backwoods country people think is hot! This place is a gravy train!"

Eve sits on the sofa, with her hand over her face like she's annoyed. Zeke tries to talk Eve into letting him have the house. "It grants wishes, Eve!" Removing her hand from her face, she reveals a huge shiner. "Know what I wish right now? I wish I had something for this eye!"

In the door, the Shadow man appears. Jake takes a fight-ready stance, fist pulled back. Cassie steps out from behind Shadow man. "The house doesn't grant wishes. It helps people in need. It was built as a refuge. No one ever expected a serial killer to find it. It won't make the same mistake again." "So we can keep it?" asks Zeke. Jake is still primed to throw down. Cassie sees that. "Easy now, boys." A man in a butler's suit poofs into the room. He walks over to Eve and presents her with an icepack. "Guys, meet the spirit of the House of Refuge." Eve smiles in relief as she presses the icepack to her face. "Jones, you're outvoted."

Eve leans on Jake for support as they walk to the car. Cassie stands next to the Spirit, and thanks him for fixing the car. He smiles at her. "Everybody ready?" Zeke responds with his usual snark. "We're good... bloody idiots." He's still upset about not keeping the house. Everybody gets in the car. Cassie says her goodbyes to the Spirit, telling him to "be good." She gives him a kiss on the cheek, then walks to the car. Zeke is in the driver's seat. Cassie tells him to shove over. "What?" "I'm driving." The Spirit smiles like a grandfather infatuated with his grandchildren, and turns back to the house as they drive away. Then he and the house disappear.

At the Annex, Jenkins is looking at an old newspaper. The group is listening to him on speaker in the car. There is a picture of Katie's family on the front page. "The Bloody Benders. John, Catherine, Jack and Katie - an entire family of serial killers. They killed at least twelve people across Kansas and Nebraska in the eighteen-hundreds before they just... disappeared. And now we know why. They found the House of Refuge, and Katie Bender made a wish. Aside from not getting to see a mystery house for myself, all in all a job very well done."

Cassie smiles a triumphant, confident and happy smile. "Thank you, Mr. Jenkins! We'll see you in nineteen hours." Jenkins goes and makes tea. In the car, Zeke looks at Cassie. "Oh my god. I can actually feel the smugness coming off of your body. Music... I need music." The song that comes on the radio is "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" The same one that was playing on the Victrola in the house earlier. Zeke protests. "Turn it off!" Cassie says no. "I like it." Zeke pouts. In the back section of the car, the dollhouse appears out of thin air.

And THAT'S what little girls are made of!

Raven is an avid cosplayer and television fan.


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1 comment:

  1. Does anyone know what version of that song they used? Like, who sang it?

    ReplyDelete