Adventures in the Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror

This Halloween story takes place circa 9th and 10th Grade. It is not a part of the series as the kids do not become mythical creatures at all. Rather it is a spin-off incorporating the same students but they are living more realistic lives.

Prologue
The Hollywood Tower Hotel was all the ritz in the 1930s until a freak storm struck the tower causing an entire wing of the hotel to disappear along with an elevator carrying five passengers. The Hotel was abandoned for many years after the incident but at the turn of the century the hotel was reopened. However a curse lies upon the hotel for whoever enters rarely come back out.

Storyline
Armand learns that the class has gotten a special pass to host a Halloween party at the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Armand is suspicious of the invitation as he and everyone else lives on the east coast and the hotel is on the west coast. He also objects to the idea as he believes the hotel to be cursed. The students decide to accept the invitation anyway and they take a plane to Hollywood. Armand tags along to keep an eye on them.

Arriving in Hollywood the kids are warned not to enter the hotel by the citizens of Hollywood. The kids ignore the warnings and in spite of Armand trying to convince them to turn back, they enter the hotel. Inside the kids discover that the Hotel hasn't been cleaned in years and the staff are obviously creepy-looking.

Armand decides to walk the gardens and is later joined by Willa who asks him why he thinks the hotel is cursed. Armand explains the legend of the hotel in detail and later reveals that the staff had lied to the kids by saying that the place was full when actually the kids are all alone. Watching the sunset over Hollywood Armand is about to pluck up courage to say something to Willa but is interrupted by the sound of dining guests. Puzzled the two return inside to investigate.

Meanwhile all the other kids find that they are locked in their rooms and can't get out. Jazmin eventually discovers a trapdoor in the closet of her room. Assuming it's a way out she enters into it.

Armand and Willa find their minds being played with as throughout the dining hall and the kitchen they keep hearing noises. The noises stop as soon as they are about to discover the cause only to find that it's nothing at all. The two are mystified when a ghost of a girl briefly appears before them and frightened when encountering a headless person.

In the library the two find traces of Rod Serling's television crew upon the shelves. A television set turns on by itself and shows them an uncompleted episode of the Twilight Zone describing the events of the hotel. When the television set turns back off Jazmin appears from a secret opening and tells them about the jammed door. Armand, suspecting everyone else trapped, heads to one of the other rooms to test his theory. He ends up at Alana's room and proves his theory correct. He tries opening the door but to no avail. Only when he attempts to ram it the door opens and he collides into the wall caught unaware. The door closes now trapping both Alana and Armand.

Willa and Jazmin head to the front desk to confront the bellhop. They are constantly interrupted by various phone calls all of which have weird subjects. One of the phonecalls happens to be by Armand which prompts Willa and Jazmin to help. They help Armand and Alana escape barely escaping a rabid poodle. Armand goes to the front desk to complain but is humiliated by the staff.

Another phone call reveals that the Manager of the hotel has lost his pet python. Turns out that it has ended up in Olenka's room. Armand and the girls go to help her. They get the python out but during the process Armand is knocked out and both he and Olenka get trapped in the room.

Willa, Jazmin and Alana return the python to the front desk and question the bellhop about the hotel's curse. The bellhop however denies such knowledge. The girls leave him in disgust as another phone call rings in.

Later the students gather together to go up to the top floor of the hotel to host the party. Armand, still with a headache, decides to stay below until he feels better. The bellhop leads the kids through the boiler room to the service elevators, the only lifts operating. Willa immediately notes something wrong when she sees the elevator inspection certificate dated Oct. 19, 1939 and signed by the very same manager currently owning the hotel.

As the elevator ascends upwards it makes several stops along the way. The first stop being at a corridor where they find ghosts trying to beckon them out before being struck by lightning and the corridor fading out to the night sky and leaving a window behind.

Upon feeling better Armand heads down to the boiler room to take the elevator. To his surprise the doors that open are to that of the same shaft holding the elevator that his friends boarded. What's more another elevator is waiting there with a bellhop. Seeing that the elevator which his friends is still rising Armand decides to return to the lobby to see if there are any clues.

The fifth floor was a maintenance room but to the shock of the kids it warps to the 5th dimension. To add to the surprise the elevator exits the shaft and enters the dimension.

After being confronted by a possessed talky doll and seeing a subliminal message in the directory Armand figures that a powerful evil lies upon the tower. The staff then turn on him attempting to trap him in one of the old broken passenger elevators. Armand demands to see the manager of the hotel who promptly appears. The manager, Mr. Cadwallader, shows disinterest in freeing his friends so Armand challenges Cadwallader to a deal: if Armand is successful in retrieving his friends from the elevator Cadwallader would release them, but if Armand fails, he and the kids would remain in the hotel. Seeing no harm in the game Cadwallader accepts.

Trying to reach the elevator with his friends proves to be a challenge and Armand is down in the dumps when a ghost approaches him. The ghost is that of a young girl who was one of the passengers on the doomed elevator. Taking pity on Armand she helps him by showing him a secret entrance to the 5th Dimension in the boiler room. Armand enters the dimension and manages to find and board the elevator with his friends before it returns to the shaft.

A brief fight ensures as Armand struggles with the bellhop over the control. The elevator finally stops at a level which gives the illusion that the elevator is looking down another shaft. The bellhop pushes Armand into the shaft. Willa falls in after him and the two end up back in the 5th Dimension. With the help of the ghost, they escape back into the boiler room.

Putting their evidence together, Armand and Willa discover that Cadwallader is actually the devil and the hotel has been cursed by him. The ghost adds that she and the other passengers are trapped in the other dimension and that the devil has been sending other passengers there to feed on his power. Every time an elevator ascends to the top, a storm brews and at the top lighting strikes the hotel causing the elevator to fall faster than gravity creating a warp zone and transporting its passengers to the 5th dimension. Armand and Willa board another elevator and head to the top floor where the other elevator is waiting, their friends abandoned by the bellhop.

At the top, Armand finds a spare cable and some tools and goes up to the mechanism to see if he can't attach the cable from one elevator to the other. Willa meanwhile opens the escape hatch and manages to get some students out before lighting hits the elevator causing them to fall. Luckily Armand jams the mechanism and stops the elevator from descending any further. Attaching the cable to the other elevator he manages to bring his friends down safely.

Upon exiting the shaft Armand finds himself and Willa confronted by Cadwallader who is not one to give up without a struggle. He forces them into the second elevator and toys with it before deciding to drop it. Just when he is about to he is confronted by the ghost enabling Armand and Willa to escape through the escape hatch. Cadwallader soon discovers this and goes into the elevator to give chase but lightning strikes that elevator sending him into the 5th Dimension.

With the devil out of the picture the hotel is exorcised of it's curse and the ghost thanks Armand for releasing herself and the other passengers from the curse. Armand and the others then head off to find lodgings elsewhere for the time being.

Kids
As this is a Halloween story taking place in Hollywood, the students have dressed up in costumes of film actors, actresses and celebrities.
 * Willa - Marion Cotillard (Midnight in Paris)
 * Rose Tui - Audrey Hepburn
 * Danielle - Lady Gaga
 * Alisa - Betty Boop
 * Olenka - Marilyn Monroe
 * Katherine - Michelle Pfeiffer (Batman Returns)
 * Thea - Nina Dobrev
 * Hannah - Matt Damon [Don't ask]
 * Sophia - Keira Knightley
 * Sabine - Alex Pettyfer [Don't ask]
 * Alana - Betty White
 * Jazmin - Lucille Ball
 * Rachael - Katherine Heigl
 * Armand - Pierce Brosnan
 * Gabriel - Johnny Depp
 * Taylor - Will Smith (Hancock)
 * Yaniv - Jeffrey Donovan
 * Dakota - Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future)
 * Evan - Sean Connery
 * Julian - Humphrey Bogart
 * Lukas - Jack Black (Kung Fu Panda)
 * Max - Clint Eastwood
 * Sam - Samuel L Jackson
 * David - Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Ghosts

 * The girl ghost
 * The actress ghost
 * The actor ghost
 * The nanny ghost
 * The bellhop ghost

Demons

 * Cadwallader (The Devil)
 * Zombie Bellhops
 * The Possessed Doll

Trivia

 * The story was inspired by many aspects of the Twilight Zone and the Tower of Terror attractions.
 * In a scene of the class flying to Hollywood, Armand spots a gremlin on the wing. This is a reference to the Twilight Zone episode '"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". In the same scene, Armand and Willa encounter William Shatner and John Lithgow who played the same role of a paranoid passenger in different versions of the story: Shatner in the television series and Lithgow in the movie adaption.
 * The exterior of the hotel and the floor stops resembles the attraction in Walt Disney World while interior designs such as the two-leveled boiler room and the possessed doll resembles the attraction in Disneyland Resort.
 * On the way out of the boiler room, the class passes a venue called "Willoughby Travel". This is a reference to the episode: "A Stop at Willoughby" in which a train passenger imagines himself in a small town called Willoughby leading to his death. Willoughby is also a nickname that Willa goes by: more prominently used during 11th and 12th Grade.
 * The idea of writing the story was inspired by old 1994 promotional footage of the Tower of Terror attraction in Walt Disney World.
 * In the library Willa and Armand find letters addressed to 'Victoria West' and 'Rod Serling'. These letters can be seen in the Twilight Zone episode "A World of His Own" in which a man was able to record details of items on a tape player and they would become reality. The finished tapes were kept in marked letters and if they were burned the item of the recording would disappear.
 * Elements of the plot were inspired by the 1997 film 'Tower of Terror'.
 * The Possessed Doll sequence was inspired by the Twilight Zone episode 'Living Doll'.
 * The boiler room portal and the 5th Dimension sequence were inspired by the Twilight Zone episode 'Little Girl Lost'.
 * Cadwallader was the name of the Devil in the Twilight Zone episode 'Escape Clause'. The name can actually be seen on the inspection plaque of the elevators at the attractions.
 * The phone conversations are based on those that cast members used at the queue line before the FastPass was installed at the Walt Disney World Tower of Terror.
 * The Trap Door that Jazmin uses was inspired by the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror version of the Clue game although in the game the secret passage leads from the room to the terrace while in the story the passage leads to the library.
 * This is the first and only story that Sam appears in.