Venture into the Nightmare Zone

The floor creaked as the two girls ventured through the door, wondering what fate would befall them inside. Susie wasn't scared. Not really. Maybe just a tiny little bit. And she knew Bonnie definitely wasn't scared. The red-headed tomboy sauntered ahead, peeping with puzzlement into the tall, dusty mirrors that lined the walls.

"Is this a joke?" she said. Far above their heads, a chandelier swayed from the arched ceiling. The lights of the carnival seeped in through tiny windows, placed almost at the roof. Bonnie wiped dust off the face of the closest mirror, and squinted in the dim light at the brass plaque just below it.

"Charlotte Thibodeux, 1785," she read. "I don't get it. It's empty."

"Is it?" said the house. "Look again."

Bonnie looked again, and rubbed her eyes. There was something deep in the depths of the mirror. She pressed her face closer to the glass, trying to see more.

A woman's bedroom, the gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze. Decorated in an old-fashioned rococo style, with ornate furniture and half-melted candles in sconces on the wall. A four-poster bed. A woman, pale and full-figured with raven-black hair, suspended above the bed. Strands of misty plasma twined around her wrists and ankles, shoulders and thighs, head and hips, anchored to the bedposts, holding her in midair. She struggled and squirmed, but they were too strong to break.

Over her bare body, her enticing full-moon breasts, plump hips and the welcoming wet shadows between her parted legs, crawled a seething mass of translucent hands. She could see right through them in the moonlight.

Ghosts!

Cold mist poured off the spectral appendages as they explored the woman's body, a hand over her face muffling her squeals. They tweaked her nipples, tantalised the soles of her feet with their scuttling fingers, stroked her face, teased her inner thighs and fondled her bottom, not caring in the slightest how she felt about it. And ghostly fingers parted her labia, readying for the approach of a floating, translucent, ectoplasm-dripping spectral member...

"Eek!"

Bonnie recoiled from the mirror in horror. "G... g... ghosts!"

"Oh, poor thing! I thought you wanted to be scared."

"But that woman was... she was..."

"Charlotte Thibodeux was scared of ghosts," said the house in a sing-song tone. "They made her skin crawl like nothing else. And she had a nightmare. One night, when she was lying in her bed, the ghosts would creep into her room. They would tie her up, and they'd have sex with her."

"You can't... but I... that's not..."

"Why, Bonnie Driscoll, you're not afraid of sex, are you?"

"Of course I'm not," said Bonnie, in a heated tone of voice. Like everyone in the world, she had lots of complicated feelings about sex, but she wasn't about to share them with a house. "I just... didn't expect it."

"But why not? Everyone's a little scared of sex. That's why so many people have such dark, dirty, sexy, naked nightmares, where all their deepest, spiciest fears and wickedest, most shameful desires are brought horribly and completely to life. You don't have any sexy nightmares, do you, Bonnie?"

"Of course not!"

"Pity. I'm always looking to add some more to my collection."