House on Haunted Hill Page #15

She looks at the room: the equipment is all there but the

room is completely EMPTY of anything living.

She lets out a small sigh of relief and TURNS to leave --

-- and suddenly in front of her is... THE PATIENT... that

Vannacutt and Nurse had originally been dissecting. He's

jittering so fast he's a blur. And then he lunges at her.

INT. MAIN SALON - SIMULTANEOUS

The SCREAMS of Melissa Marr echo wildly in the room -- long,

agonized HOWLS that just grow louder and louder. Everyone

looks up in alarm -- with the exception of Evelyn, whose sole

focus is on pouring herself a new drink.

EVELYN:

Could be old Melissa found what she was

looking for.

As the SCREAMS grow even more hideous, Price and Guests dash

out of the room. Pritchett downs the rest of his huge tumbler

of Scotch, then proceeds very halfheartedly after them --

and then the SCREAMS stop. Pritchett sits back down in his

chair, pours another drink.

PRITCHETT:

She's dead. Chalk up one for the House.

INT. HALLWAY

Price and Blackburn striding down a long hallway, eyes

darting everywhere, shouting:

PRICE:

Melissa!

BLACKBURN:

Ms. Marr!

And then hearing from down in the basement:

EDDIE (O.S.)

Oh, Jesus:
down here!

INT. BASEMENT CORRIDOR - CONTINUOUS

Price and Blackburn arrive to see Eddie and Sara standing

outside the door labeled "Cerebral Hygiene."

PRICE:

What?

BLACKBURN:

Is she alright?

SARA:

....I don't...know.

The two men follow their gaze. To the FLOOR. Lying there is

MARY'S CAMCORDER the lens shattered, the hand-grip broken

off.

BLACKBURN:

Something just must've...frightened

her, that's all.

SARA:

Yeah...something.

Sara holds up her finger: it's drenched with fresh blood. And

with it, she points into the empty room. On the tile is a

wide, red and glistening DRAG MARK leading from the doorway

to the foot of the half-rotted... OPERATING TABLE.

PRICE:

Jesus.

Price and Blackburn run into the room. Blackburn kneels down,

examines the drag mark. Utterly baffled and not a little

unnerved:

BLACKBURN:

It just...stops here.

Sara sticks her head in the door, nervously:

SARA:

Maybe....maybe she went up on the table.

Price runs a finger along the table bed; he's able to dig a

trench the entire length of it through the three-inches-deep

worth of dust.

PRICE:

Nobody, nothing's been on this in...67

years.

Eddie stomps into the room, frightened and frustrated, trying

to make sense of it all:

EDDIE:

Well, she went somewhere! She didn't

just up and disappear into thin air!

SARA:

No...not air --

The three men turn to look at her -- Sara's staring at

something above them: a spot on the... CEILING directly over

the Operating Table, where the bloody DRAG MARKS resume,

continuing all the way to the point where concrete ceiling

meets equally solid wall, and then vanish altogether.

SARA:

-- into the House.

They just stare at the sight in dead, scared-shitless

silence.

HEARD OVER:

EDDIE (V.O.)

There's gotta be some way out --

INT. MAIN SALON - SOON AFTER

Eddie seen haranguing a near-dead drunk Pritchett:

EDDIE:

-- of this place, goddamnit, Pritchett!

PRITCHETT:

Yes.

Pritchett drains the last drops of his tumbler of Scotch.

PRITCHETT:

Alcoholic coma, if you hurry.

He starts to pour another --

-- Eddie swats both glass and bottle out of his hand; they

SHATTER on the floor. In this tension-packed room, the sound

is magnified a hundred-fold. Blackburn all but jumps out of

his skin.

BLACKBURN:

Jesus H. Christ!

PRITCHETT:

Oh dear.

BLACKBURN:

(to Eddie)

If you don't calm the hell down I'm

gonna strap you in for electro-shock!

EDDIE:

(waving his pistol)

How you gonna manage that with a new

blow-hole in your dome?

SARA:

Hey, if everybody's gonna kill each

other, could you do it in another room?

I'm trying to get something accomplished

here.

We see that Sara's sitting at a desk in the room, fiddling

with the innards of Melissa Marr's camcorder.

EDDIE:

What the hell good is fixing that

gonna get us?

SARA:

An answer, I hope: exactly what -- or

who -- Melissa was taping.

EDDIE:

And then where are we?

BLACKBURN:

Put it this way:
if it's your face on

that tape, Mr. Moses, we're one gunshot

away from solving all our problems --

EDDIE:

-- f*** you!

SARA:

I got it! Something, anyway...

The room goes silent -- on the PLAYBACK SCREEN on the side of

the CAMCORDER, an erratic, wildly rolling IMAGE can be seen.

Everyone present, Pritchett included, starts gravitating

towards Sara and the desk. She hits the STOP button on the

Camcorder.

SARA:

The motor's working, but the tape's

pretty much D.O.A. -- I could only

rewind it back a couple of feet. Don't

blink, this is probably the first and

only showing.

She punches PLAY. And we see on the

CAMCORDER'S PLAYBACK

soundless:
a vision of free flight -- the lens capturing

what it saw as it dropped to the ground: a wild, herky-

jerky, ass-over-teakettle melange of --

WALL/CEILING/MARY'S HAIR -- and, finally: FLOOR as the

lens smacks TILE, fractures into a starburst of cracks,

topples onto its side. And through this veil of JAGGED,

SPIDERY LINES, we see:

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