Never Dead (Welcome To Dead House Book 1)

by M. L. Bullock

  Not that Tina Louise had ever been a beauty queen, not to my knowledge, but she'd been a rock star in her day amongst our crowd. Chloe was drop-dead gorgeous, with a figure I hardly recognized.

  “I’m trying, TL. If you can help us out with the party, that would be great.”

  Suddenly, an image began to form in the mirror. Not my image, either.

  And not Tina Louise.

  I saw the faint image of a woman in a white uniform. Her face was in shadow at first, but it became clearer as I stared. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her dirty-blonde hair was in a bun. The white uniform was dingy, like she had crawled out of the ground. Her eyes were wide, and so was her mouth.

  She screamed, and I recognized the sound. Annie Hensley wasn’t running from the Screamer. She was the Screamer, and there was a reason for the anger and fear she was trying to convey.

  When the scream ended, I heard her whisper as if her lips were right next to my ear.

  “He’s coming!”

  20

  Chloe

  To Tamara's surprise, the party began to fade around eleven o’clock. I’d expected that. Most of the kids from my school had other parties to go to, ones that provided booze. It didn't surprise me there were a lot of shenanigans going on in Crystal Springs tonight, none of which parents or law enforcement knew anything about.

  It was great that so many people had come from the high school, but I still failed to make many connections. It was cool that Lynn showed up eventually and brought Trey back with her. He acted pouty, but I guess I liked that in a guy because I was sure glad to see him. Lynn wasn’t wearing a costume, but Trey wore a mummy t-shirt he’d pinned with random strips of gauze.

  At least the guy had tried. He had even gone so far as to wear white pants and tennis shoes. At some point during the night, we ransacked my medicine cabinet and found more gauze bandages to wrap around his head, but it didn't do much to make him look more like a mummy. We slow danced a few times, which was kind of nice. He’d seen Joey come down the stairs with me and admitted it pissed him off, but he got over it. I assured him Joey was just a family friend and nobody I was interested in. I didn’t mention he was dead. I'd never slow danced with anyone before tonight, and I danced quite a few times. What was more humorous was watching Kevin and that Quinton guy vying for Tamara's affection. She hustled between them in her leopard-print high heels like a busy queen bee. At least she’d lined up some potential buyers. I hoped she nailed one.

  She was doing her dead-level best to make our family look normal, but we were anything but. Happily, at least for her, she made the connections she wanted and got some appointments out of the party. Reality struck me as I undressed. One day all of this would be mine. Trey hinted about heading over to Black Snake Creek, but something about that place gave me the creeps. It was dark out, and there were no lights. There were sure to be tons of teenagers making out or doing whatever it was teenagers did on Halloween night.

  I was feeling weak, and for some reason, I wanted to stay close to home. I didn’t think we’d ever get rid of Linda Blabbermouth. I picked that name up from Tamara, and it was hard to not call her that to her face. Linda didn’t want to go home, but we slowly walked her toward the door.

  "Your family has such an interesting history, Chloe. Did you know the builder of this house, or the original house, well, he murdered his wife and his daughters all on the same night? Isn't that creepy? And then there was the case of that runaway coach who was run off the road here and everyone in it died. Oh, and then there's…"

  Tamara coughed as if to say excuse me, but Linda wasn't listening. Thankfully, Kevin walked up and offered to help Linda carry her head home since her husband had made tracks back to their residence an hour before.

  As I said goodbye to Trey, he surprised me by leaning in for a kiss. Tamara was watching us, and I didn’t feel comfortable planting one on him in front of her. I'm sure Tamara knew Trey and I had kissed already, but it seemed weird to do it in front of her.

  “Bye, Trey!” I said as I hurried up the steps to my room. Cups and plates weren’t littered everywhere, thanks to the catering company that had kept it all under control. There wasn't much to do except blow out the candles and call it a day. I would be happy to hit the hay, only I was pretty sure it would be hours before I went to sleep. I couldn’t believe how much I danced and how much fun I had. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed so hard my face hurt. Joey had behaved himself, appearing only that once. I guess the quick appearance had worn him out, but my classmates had seen him, and they all wanted to know his name. I pretended I didn’t know, which pissed them off, but I thought it was hilarious. Imagine, crushing on a ghost.

  I had barely changed my clothes when I heard a light tap on my door. I immediately began to pray, which was weird because I wasn’t the most religious person on the planet. Not by a long shot.

  "Please don't let that be Joey. Please, please, please. I am exhausted.” I glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. For some reason, just observing the hands of the clock about to move to the witching hour caused a shiver to go up my spine. Worse would be if it was a living person tapping on my door, like the investigator dude. It was only Tamara. Her cat eyeliner was smeared and her hair was sagging, but she’d changed her clothes too and was clearly getting ready to hit the sack.

  Hopefully by herself. The idea of someone having sex under the same roof was kind of gross.

  “Hey, Chloe!” Uh-oh, she sounds a little tipsy. “I know it's late, but I just wanted to say thank you for all you did tonight. Did you have a good time?"

  "Yes. It was great. I think everyone had a good time. Well, catch you in the morning." I started to close the door, but Tamara wanted to talk.

  "Listen, about Quinton." She slurred her words slightly and put her finger to her lips. Was she asking me to keep quiet? Was she hammered?

  "Hey, you don't have to explain yourself to me. I understand how things work with adults. A little birdie told me you guys used to go out. I have to say, I think your friend isn’t nearly as hot as Kevin.”

  "Oh, God! We are not having this conversation. We are not together! I swear it’s the truth! He came because I sent him the pictures of that silver and told him about the Screamer. Do you know what I found out? That Screamer is the nurse, Annie Hensley. She screamed at me from the mirror tonight. I almost pissed my pants. I think we need to help her. Or I need to help her. Is this hall wobbling?”

  I thought about asking her in. She looked as if she might topple over at any minute, but I was ready to hit the sack. I liked Tamara and all, but we were never going to be besties. Tamara did not deserve my indifference, but I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. Unlike most teenagers, I wasn’t a natural night owl.

  “I just wanted to let you know I did not invite Quinton here. He just kind of showed up."

  "Okay, then. Do you need help getting back to your room? I don’t mean this in a negative way, but you’re kind of sauced, Tam."

  Before we could get to arguing about calling her Tam, there was a loud knock on the front door. Not once or twice, but three solid knocks. The knocks were so thunderous I worried the house would fall in. Tamara was instantly sober, and I was wide awake. The two of us quietly traveled downstairs to find out who in the world was banging on the door at midnight. The party had broken up, and the caterers were gone. The DJ had been the first to leave. I heard he had a gig down by Black Snake Creek.

  As Tamara's hand reached for the doorknob, I experienced major panic. I couldn’t say why, but later I would think about this moment and concluded it was my primal spiritual being warning me. Watching Tamara’s hand reach for the doorknob was like watching a scary movie, only in slow motion. I knew something horrible was coming, but I did not know how to stop it. I choked out a whimper as the hammering suddenly resumed.

  Tamara pulled her hand away, and she was looking over my shoulder. Joey raced up behind us. The ghost had no legs, and he was spo
rting a Hello Kitty do-rag, which was clearly mine. He was also wearing shorts that were far too tight for him and a fitted pink T-shirt, and he was clutching a stuffed rabbit.

  I had been wondering where my stuffed rabbit Marco had got to.

  "What is going on? Why are you so loud? Some of us need our beauty sleep."

  As the door squeaked open, the three of us watched the horrifying scene unfold before us. There were ghosts in the front yard. Not cut-up sheets hanging from the trees or the little inflatable ghosts we had anchored near the bird fountain. These were actual ghosts, the dead, in our yard, in varying degrees of decomposition.

  Leading the pack was the lady in white. That had to be the nurse Tamara had been telling me about. As the door remained open, the three of us were frozen in our tracks. The blood-covered nurse screamed at us, and it practically blew my hair back. Then Joey screamed beside me. Tamara and I joined in the hysterical chorus.

  "Shut the door! Shut the door!" I yelled since Tamara appeared to be frozen to the spot. I slammed it shut and locked it, but no sooner had I turned then Joey took off, his silly image disappearing into the stairs. Quinton came running out of one of the guestrooms.

  "What is it? What the hell is going on? Who is doing that screaming?”

  “The Screamer! It’s Annie Hensley, and she’s not alone! Do something, Quinton!” Tamara demanded, completely sober now.

  “What? Is this a joke?”

  I could hardly get involved in this argument because there were footsteps on the front porch. Not one pair, but at least half a dozen people were clamoring onto the steps and the wraparound porch. If I dared to look out one of the windows, I believed I would see a face pressed against the glass. I wasn't going to look because that was the last thing I wanted to see.

  "What do we do? What do we do?" I muttered as Tamara and Quinton argued in the foyer. I wasn’t going to wait for those yo-yos. I took off upstairs. All I could think about was getting to my room. At least there, I knew I would have some level of protection. As I cleared the landing, I could see Joey hovering outside it.

  "Please let me in! Please let me in!" He jumped up and down as he clutched Marco bunny. His luminosity faded in and out. I felt sorry for him and agreed.

  "Wait a minute. If I let you in here, can the rest of them come in?" He shook his head, his eyes practically bouncing around in his head.

  I didn't wait for Tamara and Quinton to join us. Joey hovered in the corner of my room, acting as if he couldn't breathe. As I dug out my treasure box of paranormal goodies, I reminded him he already couldn't breathe.

  “You have to dim your light, Chloe! For the love of everything, you have to dim it down! They can see us!”

  “I don’t know how,” I confessed as I reached for the black stones and essential oils. “I don’t know how!”

  “Well, figure it out, sister, because they are coming, and there are so many of them. It’s a ghost apocalypse! I told you to dim your light. Dim it now!”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded as he began to flicker in and out of view. And then we heard running in the hallway.

  Joey yelped once before he faded.

  21

  Tamara

  “Do something, Quinton! We’ve got to stop this!” As I spoke, there was banging on the front door.

  “You’re bullshitting me, Tamara. Total bullshit! I get it. You and the cop are pulling my leg, but this isn’t funny.” He was shouting at me because of the loudness of the banging. Then it suddenly stopped. I stared at him as if he had two heads.

  “Take a look, idiot!”

  He sighed deeply and walked to the front door like he was going to open it. I meant to look from the window, not open the door. “No!” I shouted in protest, but he opened the door anyway, and to my surprise, there wasn’t a soul on the porch. Ghostly sheets hung from the trees near the front door and bounced around in the wind, but there wasn’t anything to see. No Annie Hensley, and no crowd of dead folks trying to get into the Ridaught Plantation.

  Quinton slammed the door, and immediately there was a knock. Quinton frowned at me, but I shrugged. I had no way of knowing who the hell had banged on the door. They weren’t there a few seconds ago.

  Quinton swore as he opened the door again, but he’d barely gotten it open before he slammed it again. “Holy hell!” With that, he took off, leaving me standing alone in the foyer. The banging on the front door continued.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” I asked. The activity on the porch got quiet again, and I could finally move again. To my surprise, Quinton came back out of the guestroom with his bag in his hand.

  “Where are you going?” I asked in disbelief.

  “You’ve got a problem, Tamara. I can’t help you.”

  I gasped at his declaration. “You are an investigator, Quinton. You can’t just run away. Help me figure this out.”

  He shook his head and avoided making eye contact. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m out of my element with all this. Good luck, Tamara.”

  “What?” I stupidly asked as I followed him out the kitchen door. It closed with a slam. “What are you doing?” I demanded, but he kept walking.

  There was no more banging or footsteps on the front porch, but I didn’t trust the quiet. I didn’t trust it at all.

  I heard Quinton’s van crank up and spin out of the driveway.

  The sonofabitch had left us high and dry. I had to get to Chloe.

  I hurried up the steps and burst into her room. She was pacing, and Joey was nowhere to be seen.

  “What’s going on, Tamara? Where is Quinton?”

  “Gone. He split. We have to do this on our own, Chloe. Are you okay? And Joey?”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Chloe’s eyes widened, and she raced to the window to look outside. “Oh, my God! He is gone! What the hell? Tamara, look at this. Look!”

  I pulled the curtain back and stood beside her. There were dim lights bouncing all over the yard. The dead were everywhere. The house began to shake as if an earthquake were trembling beneath it. Everything inside me told me to run—take Chloe and run—but how could I do that? This was Chloe’s legacy and her home.

  “We’re not leaving, Chloe. I know what we have to do. Do you trust me?”

  The teenager’s eyes were full of unshed tears. “I don’t know, Tamara. I don’t know! I don’t trust anyone.”

  Her confession hurt my heart, but it was an honest answer. “You can trust me, Chloe. We don’t need Quinton’s help. We can put an end to this. Annie Hensley wants our help. Your help. We have to go back down there. We have to help her.”

  “Help her how? I’m not going back down there!” Chloe said as she stepped away from the curtain.

  The trembling ended, but now the windows were rattling gently. The pounding on the door continued.

  “If you don’t, they’ll come inside. Eventually, they will come inside. We have to help her. She’s not going away,” I said firmly. “You have to help her. Trust me this once. Just once, Chloe.”

  To my surprise, she took my hand, and we headed back downstairs. In my mind, it was all coming together—how we could help Annie. She was the strongest of the unhappy dead here. She’d been screaming for our attention for weeks. If we could help her, we might be able to put everyone to rest, at least for a while. Until Chloe could get a handle on her abilities.

  And me.

  I’d been hiding them for too long. It was me Annie had reached out to, but it was Chloe’s light that had drawn her here.

  “I’m going to open the door, Chloe. She’s not going to hurt us. She just wants your help. Our help. We can do this. We have to do this because this is our house. We have to take a stand. No running away from our home—your home. Trust me, Chloe. Please say you trust me.”

  The doorknob began to rattle, and Chloe stared at it. In a voice like steel, she agreed. “Okay, I’ll try.”

  With shaking fingers and a stomach that felt like an upturned bowl of Jell-O, I reached for the doorkn
ob. It immediately stopped moving. “I’m opening the door, but you can’t come in. You cannot come in, Annie. We’re only speaking to Annie.”

  Without much effort, the door swung open. There was no one there—that I could see anyway. Then I saw the shimmering outline of someone who looked like a female. Annie?

  That was not the case for Chloe. By the expression on her face, I knew she was seeing the nurse in vibrant, horrible color.

  “Um, Tamara?”

  “Do you see her, Chloe?”

  She nodded slowly. “She’s the nurse, she’s bleeding. Her head is bleeding. Oh, God, I can’t do this.”

  “You can do it. I’m here with you. Hold my hand. I’m right here.”

  “She’s just staring at me, moaning. I don’t know how to do this. And there are more coming!”

  As she said that, I noticed there were amber-colored lights hovering at the end of the driveway. They’d come up to the house earlier but had wandered away. They were coming back now.

  “Don’t panic. Talk to her. Ask her if her name is Annie.”

  “Annie?” Chloe said as she wobbled on her feet. “Yes, that’s her name. She’s looking for Marge. Or Maggie. Oh, crap. She’s getting aggravated with me.”

  I could hear faint buzzing in my ears, but nothing specific. “Annie, please be patient with us. We’re trying to help you. You’ll have to talk louder.”

  “Marjorie! That’s the name. She is looking for Marjorie.”

  I squeezed Chloe’s hand. I could feel her trembling, and the lights were getting closer. We didn’t have much time left. “Annie, Marjorie isn’t here. She doesn’t come here anymore. She’s gone, Annie.” I wasn’t sure that was true. How could I know where Marjorie was or wasn’t? But it felt right. Annie needed to know Marjorie wasn’t her responsibility anymore.

  Suddenly an anguished face began to materialize in front of us. Her mouth twisted in a silent scream, then she vanished like smoke on the wind.