Haunted by the House

Big Steve Nelson had been through the Niles Haunted House a million times.

Or so he liked to tell the friends he annually dragged'"kicking and screaming, to the popular "Scream Park" on Mayflower Road just south of Niles-Buchanan Road.

"They never turned me into a steamer," Big Steve steamed every Halloween, "And they never will."

He was referring, of course, to the popular practice by volunteer ghouls and ghosts at the park of so frightening hapless visitors on dark and chilly nights that they lost control of certain bodily functions and thus became steamers.

"Not me," Big Steve always said, "I'm never gonna be a steamer."

Meaning that he could make his way through whatever new wrinkle they put on the old theme of scaring the bejeebbers out of people for a good cause and never so much as flinch.

His friends and family did more than flinch and more than a few of them, over the years, were frightened into total steamerhood.

You're making your way through some long, dark corridor and a guy or gal in an all too-realistic zombie mask pops out of the wall at you, or you're making good time through some eerie outdoor garden of the ghouls and a make-believe maniac "comes at you" with a chainsaw.

Steam on!

But not Big Steve.

Nobody could ever scare Big Steve Nelson at the Niles Haunted House, not even when they tried extra hard.

But something could scare Big Steve, and that something was waiting for him this very Halloween as he and some teammates from their championship high school football team of yore took to the Midway of the Macabre in search of some good scares.
The haunted treats were on Big Steve, and so he doled out the tickets and said: "Let's hit the Field of Screams first, and then Zach's Zombie Motel and then the Legend of Pirates Cove and we'll save the Niles Haunted House for last because that's the star of the show. You all ready to be steamers?"

Big Steve, of course, had explained the term on the drive over, and not one member of that solid offensive line that had taken the Bulldogs to state in the time before the new millennium wanted to be a steamer that night, or any night for that matter.

So they all fist-bumped and sucked in their sagging guts and manned up as they bulldozed their way into what was advertised as "4 bombastic displays of the raw power of sheer terror."

Ted Dawson nearly lost control in The Field of Screams when a zombie crept into his personal space in a maze of chain-link fences that was illuminated with strobe lights, and Terry O'Malley about had his melt-down in Zach's Zombie Motel when a hand reached out at him from a picture frame, but the line basically held all the way to the premiere attraction, the Niles Haunted House itself.

ITSELF!

Big Steve's four big former teammates sailed right down the first long, long dark corridor whistling their high school's fight song like there was no tomorrow.

But Big Steve wasn't whistling the fight song, Dixie, or any other darned tune because the House itself had turned on him and was taking him on his own dark night of the soul. He fell farther and farther behind his teammates and soon could not hear a single note of their whistling chorus.

The walls closed in and the air became closer and closer and then when Big Steve no longer felt quite so big, he emerged from the utter darkness into the dazzling light of that cleverly lighted feature of the House known as the "barrel of (you know what)."

Not-so-Big Steve resolved not to lose his lunch as he headed out on the narrow foot bridge that crossed through the cylinder of spinning light, and he told the House there was no way he was going to become a "steamer," but then he was pitched forward and literally fell through a black hole in the universe.

Big Steve fell and fell and fell and he felt more fear than he had felt during the worst of his worst falling nightmares. He flailed his arms and legs to absolutely no avail as he fell headlong through the vastness of interstellar space.

He screamed, but no one heard him, and Edvard Munch could not have painted a better silent scream on his most inspired day.

Finally, when not-so-Big Steve had all the fright pitched out of him, the House put him back on terra firma and spit him out the door where his teammates were all impatiently waiting for him so they could repair to the Midway of the Macabre for some hot pizza slices.

They stared and stared at not-so-Big Steve, but they did not laugh.

"What?!?" he said.

They continued staring at the man who was old enough to be their grandson. He was certainly dressed the part; complete with a grass- and mud-stained Bulldogs football uniform.

"What?!?" Little Steve said. "What is it?"

No one could quite say, but they all knew a ghost-of-games-past when they saw him, and they all stepped carefully away from the Niles Haunted House to see about those hot pizza slices.