Читать книгу The Addams Family: The Story of the Movie - Calliope Glass - Страница 5

The Old Country: Thirteen Years Ago

AT THE TOP of a jagged cliff over the churning sea, preparations were under way for a wedding.

An Addams wedding.

There were no white flowers. There was no frothy lace. The town church stood empty, and the townsfolk shivered and scowled as they watched the bride stride up the street towards the cliff. Heat lightning flickered in the darkening sky. A few bats fluttered behind the bride as she and her black-clad bridesmaids made their way up to the cliff.

‘They don’t belong here!’ one townsperson hissed to another.

‘They’re frightening the children!’ she replied.

‘Who do they think they are?’ another villager spat.

They watched as the bride and her bridesmaids disappeared into the gloomy night, vanishing into the scrub that lined the path up to the top of the cliff.

The villagers glared after them.

‘They’ve got to go,’ said one, and the rest nodded.

Morticia Frump kept climbing up the hill towards the cliff that overlooked the sea. She ignored how the townsfolk whispered and pointed. She didn’t care what they thought. They were boring, normal people with small minds and prejudiced hearts.

No, today Morticia had better things to think about. She was ready to get married. Not only was she marrying the man of her dreams, but the wedding would bring together two great families. The Frumps and the Addamses were the strangest folk around, and they’d always had so much in common. Morticia smiled at the thought that her wedding would unite everyone.

She’d been preparing all morning. Her knee-high boots were bolted on. Her corset was tightened to the ‘strangle’ setting. Her nails had been dipped in molten lead for that perfect dull grey hue. And her dress looked like it had been stolen from someone’s grave … which it very well might have been.

Morticia looked terrifying. Which was exactly how she wanted to look.

She reached the top of the hill, then paused. Here, the hill evened out into a narrow strip of level land. You could walk about ten paces before you hit the crumbling edge of the cliff. One step past that edge, and you’d plummet two hundred metres down into a churning ocean. The footing was uncertain in the dark of night. The odds that someone might wander off the edge of the cliff by accident were pretty high. It was the perfect place for a wedding.

Morticia smiled. And the collected Addams and Frump clans, gathered there at that cliff to celebrate her wedding, smiled back. There were a large number of people assembled on the narrow cliff’s edge. Every single one of them was strange. Some of them were creepy. Others were kooky. One or two were altogether ooky.

And they were all of them just thrilled to be there.

Awaiting Morticia was Gomez, the groom. He sweated nervously in his funeral suit (nothing but the best for a wedding, after all). The band – a ragtag collection of organ grinders and sackbut players – began a dirge-like rendition of ‘Here Comes the Bride’, and Gomez snapped to attention.

Morticia was coming.

Gomez wasn’t sure if he’d ever been this terrified in his life. His stomach churned. His vision swam. His knees trembled and his ears rang. It was the worst he’d ever felt. He wished he could feel like this forever.

Pat, pat. Gomez patted his pockets anxiously, checking to make sure he had the ring. Pat, pat.

Pat, pat.

Pat.

Patpatpatpatpat – where was the ring?! Gomez looked around frantically. Had he dropped it? Just then, a disembodied hand scampered up. It was running on its fingers like a rat scrambling along on four legs. The hand leaped into the air and snapped its fingers sharply. Gomez looked up just in time. The hand – Thing – tossed the lost ring at him, and Gomez snatched it out of the air with a flourish.

‘Thanks, Thing!’ he murmured.

And at that moment, Morticia appeared. All the thoughts fell out of the bottom of Gomez’s brain. He just stared.

Morticia.

She looked … she looked like seventy snakes stuffed into an evening gown. She looked like someone who wouldn’t think twice before running several thousand volts of direct current through your head. She looked like a hedge witch at a nightclub. She looked like bad news. She looked like the last thing you see when you die.

She looked unspeakably beautiful – scratch that; she looked unspeakable.

Morticia came to a stop next to Gomez. ‘Cara mia,’ he murmured at her. She winked at him.

The priest stepped up, and Gomez tore his eyes away from Morticia. The wedding ceremony was beginning.

‘Dearly be-loathed,’ the priest said, raising his arms and addressing the entire crowd. ‘What an honour to witness the union of these two horrible young people … and these two perfectly awful families!’

The crowd let out a bloodcurdling (and heartwarming) cheer.

The priest turned to Morticia.

‘Do you, Morticia Frump, take Gomez Addams to have and to hurl, in sickness and depravity, until you drop dead?’

Morticia nodded eagerly.

Meanwhile, as the wedding ceremony continued, the townspeople swarmed up the hill. They’d finally had enough of the Addamses and the Frumps. They were armed with torches and ready for mob action.

‘This will teach them not to blindly conform,’ one of them muttered as they hurried along the path up to the cliff.

The priest turned to Gomez.

‘Do you, Gomez Addams—’

‘Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!’ Gomez interrupted him. He didn’t mean to be rude, he just couldn’t wait to get married! Morticia was the perfect woman. She was cold, cruel and terrifying. Gomez clutched Morticia’s hand passionately. She clutched him back, her lead-tipped fingernails digging into his palm. He winced, and shivered happily.

More and more townspeople joined the mob. Soon the crowd streaming up the hill formed a torchlit parade. They waved pitchforks, shovels, torches; several people pushed a home-made catapult.

It would have been festive if it weren’t so murderous.

The priest smiled. ‘I now pronounce you—’

‘Monsters!’ A piercing scream tore through the night air.

The assembled Frumps and Addamses turned round – there, cresting the hill, was a ravening mob of small-minded townsfolk.

‘Oh dear,’ Morticia murmured, her eyes widening. ‘A ravening mob of small-minded townsfolk.’

Frumps and Addamses screamed and ran as the mob burst in waving torches and crude weapons. Several townsfolk were setting up a catapult and loading it with firebombs.

‘Again?!’ Gomez groaned.

Morticia sighed and shook her head. ‘Why do hordes of angry villagers follow us everywhere we go?’ she said, dodging a shoe flung by an outraged farmer’s wife. ‘Don’t they have better things to wave pitchforks at?’

A ball of flame rocketed towards them, launched by the catapult. Gomez swept Morticia out of its path. ‘Perhaps we should discuss it later,’ he suggested. Around them, panicked family members scrambled and ran, slipping through the crowds of angry villagers and scattering into the night.

The villagers ran after them. Morticia and Gomez fled with Gomez’s mother and his brother Fester. Soon they were cornered.

‘I’ll hold them off,’ Grandma Addams said, drawing her sword. She slashed it viciously through the air, and the villagers flinched for a moment.

‘Grab on to my hairy back!’ Fester cried. He tore off his shirt, and Gomez and Morticia clung to his luxurious back hair as he scrambled to safety.

Morticia felt her heart breaking.

Her perfect wedding day, ruined. A memory that should have been cherished, tarnished. A family that had come together, now scattered to the ends of the earth. Morticia loved chaos and anguish, sure, but on her own terms. This … this was just mean.

Normal people were not to be trusted. It only ended in fire and tears.

Gomez wrapped a comforting arm round her. ‘We’re safe, my love,’ he said gently. ‘That’s all that matters.’

Morticia wiped tears away, being careful to smear her mascara and eyeliner as she did it.

‘You look like a zombie raccoon now,’ Gomez observed admiringly.

‘Oh, good,’ Morticia said. She already felt a little better. ‘But where on earth will we go?’ The Frumps had been driven out of nearly every community in Western Europe by now, and the Addamses had exhausted all of Eastern Europe. There had just been so many pitchfork-wielding mobs over the last few centuries. Morticia thought about it. Perhaps Zanzibar? Or maybe they could try their luck in Australia.

As if sensing her line of thought, Gomez said, ‘We will find a new homeland. Somewhere exotic. Somewhere magical. Somewhere that’s truly … us.’

‘Oh,’ Morticia breathed. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

Gomez smiled back at her. ‘Yes, my dear. We both know where we must go.’

New Jersey did not disappoint.

It was barbaric, uncultured, crass, confusing and dirty. And it smelled bad. Everywhere.

‘Unhappy, darling?’ Gomez asked, catching Morticia’s hand and kissing it as they tore along a country road in the dead of night. The trees were tall. The hills were rolling. The moon glinted through the dead marsh grass, where it was reflected in the fetid swamp water on either side of the road.

It smelled terrible. Morticia loved this state.

‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘I’m terribly unhappy. It’s wonderful.’

But now that the honeymoon was over … Morticia sighed.

‘Darling,’ Gomez said, looking concerned. ‘Is that a wrinkle I see on your pallid brow? What’s wrong?’

Morticia clutched his hand. Thing yanked the wheel, and the limo tore round another curve. A dense fog had suddenly gathered, shrouding the road in dark mist. It was impossible to see further than two metres down the road. New Jersey! What a charming place.

‘We can’t run forever, my love,’ Morticia replied. ‘I want a home again. I want our children to grow up in peace. I want to pick out cemetery plots.’

Whump!

The car gave a huge lurch as it hit something heavy, then screeched to a stop at the side of the road.

Morticia, Gomez and Thing hurried out of the car. About fifteen metres back, a huge body was lying in the centre of the road. It was an enormous man wearing a hospital gown and a straitjacket. He was out cold.

Gomez turned him over. The back of the straitjacket had the words STATE HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE stencilled on it.

Morticia looked up, and – how had she missed it before? The fog had parted for a moment. Looming up from the top of a hill beyond a wrought-iron gate was a Gothic monstrosity. A hulking, ornate wreck of a building set just far back enough from the road to feel really unfriendly. It had a crooked steeple and a million broken windows. Sudden lightning lit up the sky, and the house seemed to bend and warp in the flickering light.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Morticia said. ‘A decent place to sleep for the night.’

A faded sign hanging from the gate banged in the wind. STATE HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE, it read. The building had clearly been lying empty for a long time, with the apparent exception of the hulking wreck of a man they’d struck with their car.

Said wreck was now peeling himself off the pavement and lumbering towards Morticia and Gomez. His arms were held stiffly out in front of him, and he gave a cavernous howl.

‘NNNNYYYAAAAAGH,’ the hulk roared. He was close enough to crush Morticia and Gomez in one motion.

Gomez smiled cheerfully and stuffed their bags into his hands.

‘Thank you, old boy,’ he said. ‘Lead the way!’

The monster looked down at the bags, surprised. Then he shrugged and led Morticia and Gomez through the gate and towards the abandoned insane asylum.

Morticia smiled happily. How convenient that they had found a house that already had a butler! She watched him lurch up the path. Lurch … what a perfect name. Lurch the butler.

Morticia took Gomez’s arm, and they followed Lurch to the front door of the house. Gomez gallantly swept the POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS tape away from the front door, and they stepped in.

Stale, cold air and absolute silence greeted them. Then a faint sound came through the blackness: the scratching of rats scampering in the walls.

Morticia’s eyes adjusted to the dark. She squinted down the front hall. There was a chalk outline of a body near the staircase.

‘It’s creepy,’ Gomez said thoughtfully. ‘Kooky.’

Morticia looked up and caught the eye of a stuffed moose head. It winked at her.

‘Mysterious,’ she agreed. ‘Spooky.’

Plop! Plop! Blood dripped from the ceiling.

Gomez brushed a spider the size of a pigeon off his shoulder. ‘It’s altogether … what’s the word?’ he murmured, looking thoughtful.

Lurch lumbered up to the pipe organ at the top of the grand staircase. Thing scurried over and hopped up on to the keyboard. Together, the two of them plunked out the few notes of a decidedly twisted little tune.

‘GETTTTT OUTTTTT,’ a voice like a sinking ship moaned, interrupting the music. It seemed to come from every hall, from every nook and every cranny. The whole house trembled.

Morticia and Gomez jumped.

‘It’s hideous!’ Morticia exclaimed.

‘It’s horrible!’ Gomez agreed.

‘It’s home,’ they sighed in unison. Gomez dipped Morticia into a dramatic kiss in the doorway of their dream house, and Lurch took up the odd little tune again, with Thing snapping in cheerful rhythm.