November 1, 2011 - 9:49am
A night in the Realm of Darkness
BY KATIE STEEN
I was greeted by a hermaphroditic crow-bride smoking a cigarette. The creature, a six-foot presumed male with a hooked beak and blood-spattered wedding dress, wandered about the line outside Pontiac haunted house “Realm of Darkness.” A cluster of high school boys behind me watched with caution as the mutant sauntered by, the main bro of the group daring to say, “You’re pretty cute, girl. I like your beak.”
The crow-bride stopped to examine his suitor, eyes hollow and impenetrable behind his mask.
“It’s a pecker, jackass,” he muttered, and continued on his way to confound more people waiting in line.
Other diversions outside the Realm of Darkness included a demented baby cry that persisted for 20 minutes before I thought anything of it. When I approached the entrance to the house, I realized what was making the sound: 10 feet away a scantily-clad girl writhed on the ground, slowly clawing her way toward the crowd. Everyone gawked; the group of high school guys behind me seemed particularly interested. My boyfriend warned me not to stare.
“They try to distract you with a paralyzed vampire prostitute, and then they jump out and scare you,” he told me.
Noted.
When we entered the house, a middle-aged not-scary man told us the background story of the Realm of Darkness while shining a flashlight under his chin. The basics: It’s a castle tormented by an evil wizard named Daemon. Defeat the wizard and you get double your money back. Don’t attack any of the monsters — they’re actors and you’ll look stupid if you hurt them. Also, lawsuits.
My group consisted of my boyfriend, an eight-year-old girl and her parents, who seemed particularly interested in the potential monetary compensation. I didn’t have the heart to tell them how rarely people are able to reach — let alone defeat — the wizard. Earlier I had looked at the Realm’s website, which features about 10 pictures of people who were able to defeat the wizard, including a particularly bizarre photograph of two soccer mom-looking women. The two ladies are shown both giving Daemon — a red-eyed warlock with devil horns and a stony half-smile — a kiss on the cheek.
Our first notable encounter within the Realm was with the underdressed vampire from outside, who was blocking a narrow passageway in the house. She refused to let us by, commanding that we “smell it or lick it” as she lifted her arm up in the air. The girl actually wanted us to smell or lick her armpit. Finally, my boyfriend smelled it while she moaned sensually. The eight-year-old and her parents obediently watched. The vampire mistress let him pass, and then it was my turn. The armpit? It smelled smutty.
Another character that caused me some trouble was a woodland creature whose ensemble blended in so well with the haunted forest surroundings that I didn’t realize I had walked into him. We were face-to-face for about 30 seconds before I noticed there was a leafy faceless monster in front of me. He wasn’t doing anything — just standing there. When we tried to leave the forest, my exit was obstructed once again, except the creature, again, didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, and didn’t move. Not scary; just awkward.
Another interesting ghoul in the Realm was a piano-playing zombie with a fifth of whiskey and a sign next to him that said “Beethoven’s Fifth.” Clever. There was also a giant mechanical dragon head that lunged at us at one point. Later we entered a room that was completely lightless and couldn’t find an exit for an embarrassingly long amount of time. The Realm of Darkness was too dang dark. The parents in our group mildly panicked and began yelling their daughter’s name, grasping at whatever they could find in the darkness (in other words, me). A demon clown eventually showed us the exit, shaking his red fro at our ineptitude.
Finally we reached two upstanding coffins, each of them with a person in it. The one on the right had a normal-looking lady. The one on the left had a fat troll in drag. He explained that we had to pick a coffin; one would allow us to continue on in the house, and the other would result in us getting kicked out. We debated which coffin to pick as a group, eventually picking the one with the troll.
“OK, follow me. You’re gonna go see the wizard.”
The troll led us to the next room, where he stopped, turned around and then informed us that we actually picked the wrong coffin. We were shown the exit and bade adieu with, “See ya, losers.”
I conversed with my fellow group members about the experience, who seemed quite peeved about the whole thing, deeming the Realm to be, in a word, “lame.” The high school boys left the house shouting obscenities about the coffin conundrum — apparently they had picked the wrong one, too. In the end, was I bitter that we got kicked out of haunted house after our first obstacle? Yes, but I was more resentful at the fact that it was done by a rude little troll man with a hairy fat roll hanging over his stupid pink tutu.
