Chapter 26: Dangerous Flight
Peach could feel her self-esteem bubbling away in the great churning of her nervous stomach. Oh, why, why had she broken that vase? Is only she hadn't been so careless on the first day and had watched where she was going. Then none of this would be happening.
The door of Licknot Manor swung open, revealing a sudden radiance that beamed across the entire entryway. It was a neon type of brightness that blinded Peach, causing her to shield her eyes and gaze at her pathetic black dress while the humble ghosts began to cheer all around, spiraling up into the great ceiling above and swimming around the peaks of the pillars as though they were bats flying around stalactites. Within all the cheering, Peach thought that she could hear Aubrey yell,
"HEAD UP!" amuck the horrific cries. Peach did as she heard (or rather, did as she thought she heard) and picked up her chin, squinting into the silver brightness that slowly began to fade. And, as it did so, movement caught the sapphire eyes of the lovely princess. Boos, not rose-colored and haughty like Booregard's, but silver and elegant were dancing about the ritzy flooring, carrying a violet ribbon in each hand. They seemed like a much more professional, honest, and higher class of suitess boos than the ones roaming around here. Their eyelashes so black, and mouths so thin. A complexion quite blinding that they entranced you like fire.
And then the many plumes of silver began to sing.
"Laugh and taunt,
Spook and Haunt.
Fill mortals with fear,
and then disappear!
Bow down on your tails,
Oh ghostly mists,
And uncover your veils,
Oh Shadow fists,
For one hovers close,
too big for words,
Too rich for spoils
and fat for birds.
The ghost of the past,
to come, and of now,
So please don't hold back,
your humble bow,
And everyone cheer,
take your bells and ring,
For here he is,
Our ghostly king!"
At that moment the silver boos all turned obediently to the doorway, their ribbons at rest by their sides. Peach quaked with fear. King? Ghostly king? The ghosts and night creatures all around seemed ecstatic, laughing, moaning, and, as the poetry spoke of within the song, ringing eerie chimes.
A mist balled up at the foot of the great door. It was powdery white, like snow picked up from the ground by an eerie wind. It swirled together, and eventually turned into a damp, cold fog, like one that you would see hanging over a lake about to freeze. Peach half-expected to hear a fog-horn off in the distant darkness of the night, signaling its grand approach.
Then they appeared to her, like they had within the dream. Two eyes, crazy and bloodshot, opening within the heavy fog, soon followed by a grin full of teeth. Somewhere amidst the crowd a violin was clawed at. A crown, rich and red like blood, with diamonds to encrust it like ice; a bloody nose with frost slowly beginning to attach. Finally, the enormous figure of a boo appeared, a boo that was, one could say, far larger than most. With its mouth in a gap at the sight of meek Peach, the dumbstruck maid before him, his fat red tongue drop out of his giant mouth as though it was a heavy burden in his mouth.
"King Boo!" Booregard said happily from behind with a charming smirk and a tip of his hat. Peach scowled at his voice. "So nice of you to come."
"Ahhh, Lord Booregard," spoke the king slowly, as though time, to him, was as worthless as his servants. He laughed like a boo, his voice resonating throughout the entire hall, and apparently catching on to the giddy ghosts.
"So very glad that you could join us," Booregard continued, as Peach could tell that he was gradually growing closer behind her.
"I wouldn't miss this stay for the world, since it is... after all... promised to be filled with lobster and fine theatre, am I right?" asked the King.
"And you are, King Boo. Here to make your stay a pleasant one," Booregard's big seductive black eyes and boyish smile suddenly greeted Peach's close-up view, "is Peach." The princess wasn't afraid to glare at him.
"Peach, eh?" said the fat Boo. "A new maid, eh? Very well, then! Seems appropriate to me, if she can keep up."
Peach swallowed hard as Booregard escaped her view so she could gaze awkwardly at the apparent monarch of these filthy, dead creatures.
"Good, then," Booregard said with a giggle. "I believe you know where your room is, up the stairs and to the left. If you have any problems, just bother Peach!"
Two blood-chilling laughs of the boos.
"I'll just settle myself in there right now!" he said. Peach was about to heave a silent sigh when, to her surprise, the Boo King had suddenly made a bold movement towards the staircase. It was like pushing a gigantic snowball through the room, only hoping that would wouldn't be run over. He glided up the small stairs, not worrying about whether or not he could fit between the stair railings, as he was transparent. As he began to roll through a wall, he suddenly disappeared into thin air. Peach rubbed her eyes at the area where he vanished. A staircase filled with the presence of a fat, greedy boo the one second, and suddenly vacant the next.
"Alright, Peaches," Booregard said as the room began to filter out boos and ghosts, leaving the two opposite-thinking brains in the room together. Peach; gentle, pure, hopeful, independent. Booregard; cruel, perverted, ghastly, love-sick. "The Big Room is on the top floor."
"What?"
"GO!"
Peach let out a shriek of confusion, much to the delight of her tenacious suitor. He giggled feverishly. Peach responded with a scowl and a red face.
"I'm kidding. Just take the elevator," the dirty Booregard spoke.
"What elevator?" she said with a sigh.
The pale boo flipped off his hat, a very slick and stylish move, and held the rim in his left hand, throwing it in the air to catch it in his right. He then threw it up with both hands, and out from the hole came, not a rabbit, but a glass phone-booth. Peach yelped as she jumped away, the elevator coming to a dangerous crash at her feet.
"This elevator!" Booregard said happily.
It's glass surface seemed unharmed from the fall, with it's golden frames that weren’t dented, even with their malleable look.
"I'm not getting in that thing!"
"Oh, you are!" Booregard persisted. With a poof, and a giggled, he disappeared from plain sight and reappeared behind the poor princess. Peach looked back at him with shock and question. An unseen door suddenly slid open on the glass elevator, inviting Peach to walk inside with a crooked smile.
"What?" Peach questioned to no one in particular.
"Heh heh, be good, Peachy," with a push and a lick to the cheek, Booregard forced her into the tall, thin shimmering box. Before she could possibly protest, the sliding door slammed shut on her. There appeared to be no door handle, or no place for fingers to reach. Trapped like a rat inside a questionable "elevator".
"Booregard!" Peach yelled. She was going to ask him what was expected to happen, but the loud echo of her panicked voice told her that his invisible ears couldn't clasp the sound. He simply grinned at her, and, with his stubby, ghostly little hand, pointed behind her.
Half expecting to find some sort of frightening creature trapped inside with her, Peach turned quickly with her hands held up near her face. On the other side of the box, there was a large plague of gold, riddled with little glossy, purple buttons. There seemed so many! And beside each button was a room number (skipping all of the rooms in the basement). She looked back to her undead enemy. He raised his eyebrows up and then down again. Out of nowhere, a white piece of paper appeared in his hands, sort of like how the flowers did on Peach's first encounter with him. He pulled a black marker out from his top hat, as though attempting to be charming. Upon the white paper he furiously scribbled something, all the while maintaining his ridiculous grin.
Once he was done he turned to Peach and held up his sign. It read a sequence of five numbers, written in, what seemed like, rather childish handwriting. 30000.
"30000?" Peach said to herself. Booregard could at least read her lips and gave her a confirmed nod. She groaned to herself as she let her arms hang limp, her head rolling to her left shoulder with her eyes looking to her fluffy bangs of gold.
As she returned her gaze to the golden plaque, her eyes scanned the buttons vertically. In the very bottom left corner, the last button of the bunch, the numbers "30000" were imprinted there. With a sigh, her eyes closed, Peach pressed the flat, glossy button with the tip of her index finger, feeling her finger nail slide across its smooth, slippery surface. A little bell sounded inside, ringing like a polite doorbell. Within the box a voice sounded. It was Booregard's.
"Room 30000," it spoke, "Peach's doom!" followed by immense laughter. Peach wanted to growl at this, but felt a bit too scared of what she was bound to meet up with on this top floor. She felt the little glass box rise into the air, and, instantly, "Oh God," popped up inside her head. She wasn't exactly surprised, but she had been hoping that she would be wrong about the elevator's transportation. She could see Booregard just below her, or, actually, literally below her. He was looking up her dress, drooling. Peach's eyes widened. She instantly grabbed the bell of her dress, closing her legs. As she glared at the little pervert, she saw him burst into a fit of laughter. Before she could stomp upon the clear glass floor as a sign of anger, the dangerous box blasted off, literally, flying through the cold air of Booregard's haunting, aristocratic mansion.
She felt her lose her balance and, to her horror, fall unto the glass wall behind her. Scared that it would break open and send her falling to an unknown floor below her, she quickly stood up, her hands plastered on the glass located at both sides of her. Her palms were sweating, and the heat of her hands pushed as hard as they could against the glass. Her eyes gazed in great amazement before her, hardly being able to follow the path that she was taking because she was going so fast. At sudden turns her adrenaline would leap like a toad into water, and she would stumble twitchingly. Not able to take it much longer, her eyelids shut tight over her dazed blue eyes. Her teeth clenched and her mouth tied into a knot. She could feel the great speed of the elevator, and actually touch the heavy vibrations emitting throughout the glass walls, feeling weaker by the second, and ready to shatter. There wasn't much she could do other than hold on for dear life and pray that she didn't die.
As this thought crossed her mind, a voice suddenly struck through the hollow containment of this horror booth. It was Booregard again, and he was apparently informing her about something in a calm, professional fashion.
"Now approaching room number 30000," he said. "Please stand there, or crouch in fear, or remained fainted, or continue whatever your doing, and prepare for departure."
Peach opened her eyes, feeling them dart from window to window. The walls of the elevator shook dangerously. The glass was trying as hard as it could to escape from the elevator, held in only by the stern golden frames that surrounded Peach like a phone booth. She swallowed hard, feeling blood instantly rush to her head. She sighed, and, suddenly, without any much warning, the flying phone booth came to a stop. This stop was so sudden, and so unpredictable, that Peach let out a scream as she was sent flying out of the death box as fast as she had been traveling. Luckily, the door had flown open as well, or the princess would have shot through the glass like a bullet. Her body tumbled across a rough, angry carpet, and her heartbeat was that of a startled mouse. She came to a stop due to the friction of the rug and laid upon the ground with lungs that looked as though they were trying to break out from her chest. She remained there, with her eyes in a flutter and her mouth in a gap, looking dizzily at a shadowy, well-painted ceiling. It wasn't even close to being as high or as large as the ceiling in the grand foyer (as this was the ceiling of a high-class hallway instead) but it was painted wonderfully nonetheless. The colors of thick paint swam inside her head, repeating soft words into her red ears, which were muffled greatly by her hard breathing and panicky heart. She felt as though she had just fallen down a steep hill, not ready yet to face the world.
But then, that certain smell met her small, dainty nose. The scent that had infatuated her this morning, when she walked out into the abandoned hallway; it now greeted her senses a second time. Peach closed her exhausted eyes, breathing in the fumes. Her spinning brain began to ease, finding something to concentrate on. It took in the smell, drawing back memories, until Peach suddenly realized what that scent was. It was the rich scent of butter, melted gluttonously over a fat, fluffy lobster. Peach furrowed her brow.
She reluctantly sat up, rubbing the back of her head. Before her was the elevator. She gave it a cold glare worthy of Booregard. It simply stood there, still and mockingly, with its door swung open as if daring Peach to step back inside. She denied its offer by spitting at it angrily. As she stood to her feet, she felt a buzz run through her body, as though it was not used to being still. She swayed a little bit as she turned around to see exactly where she was. Behind her was a large red door, encrusted with gold carvings and superior brass knockers. It was built with an arch at the top, and stood tall like a king. On either side of the door was a tall, thin vase, crafted smoothly and with great care. They were each a dark violet, like the top of the night sky as the sun went down. Great shadows loomed around this door, as though it was ancient, and shouldn't ever be touched, or even gazed at, by anybody other than the master who created it.
Peach hesitated, slowly stepping forward with a lump in her throat and a scattered mind that wouldn't let her think clearly. There was a knocker. Yes. That must be used.
She raised a shaky hand and, before grasping the brass handle, checked the gold plague next to the door to make sure it was the correct room. It read 30000 very boldly, which assured Peach to give a loud pounding to the great door. She swung the knocker and let it fall. The thick brass hit the dense wood, canceling out the sound of brass so that a great thump was heard.
Almost instantly a silver plume of a boo emerged from the door, not opening it of course, and faced Peach with half-closed eyes and a sassy mouth.
"Yes?" she asked Peach quickly.
"Oh!" Peach said loudly, jumping back in surprise. She recovered with a clearing of her throat. "Uhhh.... I'm... here to serve the... resident." Calling this great boo "King" seemed like far too much of a stretch for her.
"Oh, right you're the maid girl," she spoke without hesitation, "then come in."
The bold door swung open, and, with a sigh, Peach entered the Big Room.
