[ Weekend ]
Nightmare on During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I drove silently and slowly in my Hyundai. Before long I caught sight of the very thing I'd been warned to avoid at my peril: the melancholy House of Nakamura.
Hokuili Street
Scares lurk at every turn in
a Mililani house of horrorHalloween Calendar
By Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.comI'd wound my way through the faceless streets of Mililani with a singular dread. I knew that for well-nigh five years this seemingly nondescript tract home on Hokuili Street had piqued the interest of hundreds of local thrill-seekers, as word of mouth of the terrifying residence spread throughout the island. And I knew that all, apparently, survived a trip through the haunted house. Nevertheless, a sensation of icy terror crept up my spine as I approached the door, a fear not alleviated when Alan Nakamura extended his hand.
"Howzit?," he said with a deceptive smile."Welcome to the house," grinned his wife Pam. "It's hot, yeah?"
It was the most terrifying friendliness I'd ever witnessed. Frozen in fear, I stared at the pair for an eternity before cautiously whispering, "What ... gave you ... the idea for a haunted house?"
"We went to one of the high school's haunted houses and they made us crawl around," said Pam.
"Yeah, it was one of those you had to crawl through," said Alan.
"But he's had surgery and I've had surgery, and we couldn't do it," his wife continued. "So we just said, 'Forget this, let's do our own.' I wanted to do Christmas instead but he wanted a haunted house. So that's how we started."
Even now I cannot shake the gloominess that came over me as the Nakamuras described the next four years. In the blink of a witch's eye they established themselves as celebrities of the crypt. The line of intrepid trick-or-treaters typically extends around the block on Halloween; in response, the family added a second night to accommodate crowds.
When: 7 to 10 p.m. tomorrow, and 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Halloween night The Nakamuras' haunted house
Where: 94-396 Hokuili St., Mililani
Admission: Free
At the threshold of the Nakamura garage I was greeted by two disturbing entities. One was the giant Purple People Eater whose sharp teeth glistened in a menacing pink light. The other was the Nakamuras' daughter Sandy, 16, whose knack for scaring visitors in a gorilla costume is the stuff of Halloween legend.
"People are just going to look at this thing and run back out," said Sandy of the People Eater, whom her father bought at a Halloween convention in Las Vegas."He bad to the bone," cackled Alan, before telling me that the ogre's piston, now on the fritz, would be replaced in time for tomorrow night's opening.
"He usually chomps but something's wrong with him. I gotta go work on him. He chomps and his belly moves."
I had barely a second to contemplate the evil possibilities of a fully functioning People Eater when a brick wall slammed shut nearby, trapping me in the tiny antechamber. I recoiled in claustrophobic horror, my hand brushing against a rat in a trap, blood oozing from the animal's neck.
"What's that?!," I yelled.
"He bad to the bone," Alan laughed.,
Just then, off in the distance, I heard an agonizing shriek, the kind of blood-curdling scream one expects from, say, a prisoner frying in an electric chair. Against my better judgment I flew down the corridor, my mind racing with thoughts of the despicable sight that awaited me.
"It's a man frying in an electric chair," said the Nakamuras' 14-year-old daughter, Corie, as I approached that truly awful piece of furniture.
"The fog's not hooked up yet, but it will be," added Alan nonchalantly, even as the prisoner before us writhed in agony, begging for his life. I looked on helplessly as the man inhaled his final breaths, his eyes pleading for my assistance.
"Flee! End this tour," he seemed to say, "lest you end up like me." That was all I needed to hear.
"Well, Mr. Nakamura, I certainly appreciate your showing me around, and certainly hope that the crowd --"
"Wait, you haven't seen the mosquitos," he interrupted.
And so we pressed forward into the bowels of the house, past werewolves and coffins, past his daughter decorating the graveyard ("That's enough hairspray, Sandy"), past severed hands and feet. But even these paled next to the paintings adorning the walls, works of pure devilment by Darlene Oshiro, a Mililani Middle School art teacher.
We finally reached our destination, the gate leading to the driveway."This is my dengue fever display," Alan intoned. Before us loomed a considerable (not yet arranged) pile of giant flying insects. "You know the studs they weld in the concrete? That's what the mosquitos are made of. That and the chairs they use to hold up the rebar to a certain height. And in Wal-Mart they had some plastic remnants we could use for wings, and the kids painted faces on the bugs."
As I gazed at the can of Raid hooked up to another fogging machine, my heart stopped as I thought of the coordination, the cooperation required to produce this diabolical family project, this Mililani badness to the boneness from which I fled.
"I guess the family that scares together, stays together," I offered limply as a parting line. Alan grinned eerily as I ran to the car. It felt like the last paragraph of a Poe story, except that the House of Usher has nothing on the House of Nakamura.
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