"Tyler..." Ashley seethed under her breath. She turned around. "We're leaving!" she announced. She grabbed Jess by the arm and ushered her back toward the front door.
The closet door in the front hall quickly slid to the other side and a figure dressed in a bed sheet jumped out at them.
Jess and Ashley both screamed and bumped into the opposite wall. The poorly-dressed ghost yelled and raised his arms in the air, standing between them and the door. He started after them, and Jess and Ashley turned and fled. They ran to the living room, trying to duck under the bed sheets and getting tangled.
"You are so dead!" Ashley cried as she helped Jess through the disorienting maze.
From somewhere in the mess, Buddy began to bark, and he joined the fray by Tyler's side, chasing all of them through the maze.
Jess's heart rate reached a fever pitch. Even though she now knew this was all just an elaborate prank by Tyler, the whole scenario still terrified her. She was panicked, and with the unending series of sheets wrapping around her body and covering her face, she became extremely claustrophobic and started to hyperventilate.
Tyler chased after them, making cheesy ghost moans, unable to keep himself from laughing between them.
Ashley and Jess made it through to the kitchen on the other side of the living room, and thankfully it was free of any bed sheet forts. They darted through to the other end and passed the dining room, heading for the rec room. They jumped down the few steps leading onto the soft carpet before turning around and confronting their pursuer.
Tyler stopped in front of them, giggling, as Buddy came around the corner and down the steps behind him, stopping at his heels and jumping up and down as he barked.
Ashley stepped forward and ripped the bed sheet off Tyler, revealing his messy hair and laughing countenance underneath. "That's not funny, you jerk!" She punched him in the arm as hard as she could.
"Ow!" Tyler cried. "Jeez, Ashley..." He screwed up his face and rubbed his arm.
When Jess regained her composure enough to understand what was happening, she looked down at her dog. Tyler had dressed Buddy up in a small bed sheet as well to make him look like a little ghost, cutting holes out for him to see.
"You dressed up my dog?" Jess said, and there was not a single bit of humor in her voice.
"Doesn't he look good?" Tyler asked, grinning.
"How dare you?" Jess said, furious.
The smile immediately dissolved from his face. "I... I'm sorry, I... I just thought this would be fun."
"Why on Earth would you think this would be fun for Jess?" Ashley demanded.
"I don't know," he said, "I just thought it would help you warm up to stay at that Bloodmoon House tomorrow night. Like, maybe if I scared you a little, you would see it's not so bad."
And suddenly, all the anger that was inside Jess vanished. In fact, every single emotion she'd been feeling in that moment vanished. The only thing she felt was cold. She raised her hand in the air and smacked Tyler across the face. Then she turned and stormed off to her bedroom.
Tyler stood rooted to the spot, stunned. He'd winced at the stinging pain from Jess's slap, and he didn't know how to process it. Her bedroom door slammed shut upstairs.
Ashley just glared at him without saying a word. She knelt down and untied the bed sheet wrapped around Buddy, then she went off to comfort Jess, leaving Tyler alone and miserable.
Keepsakes
Ashley knocked on the door. "Jess, let me in! It's me."
Jess turned her head toward the door. "Go away!"
"Jess?"
"I don't want to talk to anyone right now. Just leave me alone for a bit, Ash."
There was a pause, then she heard Ashley shuffle away from the door, followed by a "Way to go, jerk. Look what you did now."
Jess lowered her head into her arms as she sat on the floor with her back propped against her bed. She was sick and tired of retreating into her bedroom or the bathroom and having to be saved by her friend whenever she got scared or upset. Sometimes she felt so helpless, and she hated that feeling. It seemed like she was walking through life like a victim, and sometimes she couldn't help coming down hard on herself for it. She would usually let Ashley cheer her up, but right now she just needed some time to herself to think.
That rage she had felt at Tyler was still swirling in her gut. It was burning hot, and she couldn't understand why she hated him so much. Like Ashley had always been quick to point out, Tyler sometimes did some dopey things, but surely his stupid prank didn't deserve this level of scorn from her.
And then it hit her. Tyler wasn't the object of her abhorrence; he was only the last straw. It was her uncle whom she hated. What he did to her all those years ago—scaring her, endangering her, traumatizing her, and leaving her all alone—was unforgivable. He'd left a grave scar on her that would remain for the rest of her life. But she was tired of being controlled by the fear. She wanted to figure out what happened that night.
Jess stood up and crossed the room to her closet. She reached into the back corner and pulled out a small box that her parents never knew she had.
After the incident during the last blood moon, her parents had inherited all of her uncle's belongings. Roy was Carol's brother, and her husband Stan never liked him much, and certainly didn't trust him around their daughter. Stan put his foot down after the incident and told Carol that he wanted all of Roy's stuff out of their lives, so they'd boxed up his possessions and got rid of all of it.
But unbeknownst to them, Jess snuck away with one of the boxes and hid it in her closet where they wouldn't find it. She didn't know why she did it at the time—certainly she was traumatized by the whole event—but there was a strange curiosity to know more about her uncle and why he would do the things that he did. She never really found the answer, occasionally picking through the belongings in the box, but now that it was back on her mind, she decided to give it a fresh look.
She sat back down on the floor and put the box next to her. She opened the flaps and started carefully picking through the contents. On top were some old photos that Roy had taken. Some were of landscapes or odd close-ups that Jess couldn't really place; others were of the two of them when she was really young. She eyed a large photo of the two of them standing in front of an antique telescope at the Fairbanks Museum when she was just four years old. She had the vaguest memory of that day, and looking at the picture now somehow brought back a warm and fuzzy feeling in her. And as she looked at her uncle in the picture, he was standing with his hand on her shoulder, smiling. He almost seemed normal.
Jess always remembered her uncle as somewhat of an odd person. She had distant memories of her father speaking ill of him quietly, sometimes to the scorn of her mother, but for the most part they still let her uncle take her out and spend time with her. He never married, and Jess always thought that was a little weird, sometimes asking him about it and getting strange answers. But he had always been kooky Uncle Roy, never a crazed, drunken maniac taken with the occult. That one night with him changed her view forever, and now looking at these pictures of him smiling made her feel like she was looking at an alien.
She pulled out another picture of the two of them at the park. Her mom was in this one too, and she figured her dad must have taken the photo. They were each holding an ice cream cone, and Jess pulled the picture closer to her eyes, trying to see what was on her uncle's finger. It was a little blurry, but he was wearing a silver ring, and it looked like it was molded into the shape of a skull.
Jess put the photo away and picked through more mementos. There were some old tax returns and fliers for some takeout places, then she found a pamphlet for the "Vermont Supernatural Society". She unfolded it and looked through the sloppy black ink printed on an offensively orange sheet of paper. There was a little cartoon ghost in the upper-right corner, and on the surface of it, the pamphlet didn't seem like it was advertising anything that sinister or serious.
The Minutes For Friday, August 19, 2005
, it said. Jess's eyes skimmed down the bullet points, finding most of it mundane. She remembered looking at this particular pamphlet years ago, and the one thing that caught her eye was the passage that mentioned something about discussing how to communicate with the spirits and about "thinning the barrier between worlds". Jess looked at it carefully one more time, but she couldn't glean much from it. She put it on the floor next to her and rooted back through the box.
She'd remembered asking her mom occasionally about her uncle after the incident when she was a little older, and usually it ended with her mom breaking down into tears as she recounted the tragic events. Her mother had always had a soft spot for her brother, even though it became increasingly apparent over the years that he was into some strange things. More than anything, it seemed like her mom just felt pity for Roy, feeling that whatever it was that happened that night, he got in over his head and paid the ultimate price for it. But beyond that, she had no knowledge of specifically what Roy was into or what he was trying to achieve in that house.
Jess's fingers bumped into something thick in the box. She pulled out a small black notebook and inspected it. Her brow furrowed. She didn't remember seeing this in the box before. From the outside, it was so nondescript that she could see how she would have missed it. She flipped open the pages, and at the start of it, it was nothing more than a few grocery lists. But as the pages turned, she began to notice some references to the occult. Small diagrams were drawn in a sloppy hand, most of them undecipherable. A series of circles were written on one page with some cryptic words, ones Jess wasn't even sure were English. She kept flipping through the book, and then she found two scrawled words that caught her attention:
DOVER ESTATE
That was the house. She still remembered her uncle's words that night, could hear his voice saying the name of the house as she sat terrified in the passenger seat.
She inspected the following pages carefully.
October 27
That was the night it all happened. Jess held the notebook so close to her face that her eyes strained to adjust.
Apex time is 9:43. Be there 9:30. Light candles – summon – communicate – coalesce INVITE INVITE MEET – Become ONE
The messages he'd scrawled were a mess and nearly unintelligible. Jess couldn't make heads or tails of what she was reading, and she tossed the book down in frustration. She slipped her hand back in the box and dug through some more papers, but as she took something else out and held it in front of her to read, her head suddenly slipped in tiredness.
She jerked it back up and tried to read the paper again, but she nodded off. Her back slid sideways against the edge of the bed and she comfortably laid herself down on the carpet, her eyes too tired to stay open anymore as she drifted off to sleep.
Jess opened her eyes, feeling a sense of impending doom coming upon her, but everything around her was black. She swiveled her head from side to side, but she could see nothing.
A noise filled the air. It was completely inaudible to her ears, but yet she could hear it. It was like she could feel the noise on the inside of her, reverberating, and allowing her brain to make sense of it. It sounded like sinister laughter. And then the ground shook.
She struggled to keep her balance, looking down and realizing that she was on her knees. The loose gravel dug into her bare skin and drew blood. And suddenly she knew something was in front of her, staring down at her and waiting for her to face it.
Her body shook and her teeth chattered. It was so cold. She slowly raised her head and faced the nightmare in front of her. The house. The house was there and it looked as if it had grown four stories taller, like it was bending forward and leaning over her. Everything was bathed in red and her gaze drew up higher into the night sky. It was darker than the blackest soul, but perched on that nothingness was the moon, huge and red. She strained her eyes as movement streaked across it, and it seemed like the moon was melting at first, but then she realized that's not what it was at all; it was bleeding.
The ground shook again and her heart rattled in her chest. She looked at the house again and an overwhelming red glow wrapped around its exterior. Then her eyes flicked over and caught sight of something in one of the windows on the second floor.
Her breath seized in her lungs and her heart stopped. Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened in horror. Sheer terror gripped her, far worse than anything she'd ever experienced before. She couldn't actually see anything in the window, but like the strange sound before, she could see it on the inside of her—sense it. And it was like she was staring at the Devil himself.
Pure evil stared back at her, shining out of the blackness and piercing into her soul. And suddenly she heard that sound again on the inside of her, but this time it was screaming, and it was coming from her.
Bullets and Bargains
Tyler drove his beat-up tan Ford pickup truck down the dirt road as Jess and Ashley sat next to him. Ashley sat between the other two, separating them from each other, and all morning they hadn't said much. Sleep had mellowed them out, and the fight and hurt they'd got into the night before seemed like small potatoes in the morning. Some brief apologies were made, and after that, they dropped the matter.
It was scorching hot for a Sunday morning, still a few hours from noon. The sun bore down on them and baked the old paint of the truck as it jostled over the uneven road, kicking up clouds of dirt.
Tyler scanned his eyes over the weedy fields. Jess and Ashley looked with some interest, but mostly they just felt it was nice to get out of the house and go for a drive to clear their heads.
"Your grandpa actually lives out here?" Ashley asked.
"Yeah," Tyler said. "He's done it for the last forty years." He squinted his eyes and pointed. "There it is up there."
There was a small house in the distance (really, it looked more like a shack) that seemed pretty run down.
"Grandma died a long time ago, so he's been on his own for a bit."
"Is your grandpa home?"
Tyler shook his head. "He's up at the lodge with his friends this weekend. So we've got this all to ourselves this morning." He turned and looked at Jess. "Have you ever shot before?"
"No," Jess admitted.
"You?" he asked Ashley.
"Once," she said. "My dad took me and my brother up on his hunting trip one time. I didn't actually go hunting with them, I just came up to the cabin, but my dad let me hold the gun and shoot it once. Shooting seemed kind of fun, but obviously not the killing an animal part. That's way too icky."
"Well it's really not so bad once you get the hang of it. Like you said, fun."
Tyler wheeled the truck around a bend in the road and pulled it to a stop in front of the house. It didn't look any better from close up, and there was an awning hanging over the front porch that looked like it was about ready to fall over. A thick coating of dust caked the front of the house and painted the windows in a grimy brown. A thin driveway was all that was left standing underneath patchy masses of weeds and grass grown up to their hips.
"We'll use the field out back," Tyler said. He put the truck into park and cut off the engine, then he opened the door and hopped onto the ground below. He quickly went around to the other side and opened the door for Jess. They averted their eyes from each other, still awkward from the night before, but she took the gesture and carefully climbed down onto the dirt.
The three of them made their way around to the back of the house where the field was. It was the only part of the property that his grandpa kept somewhat trimmed—low enough for them to walk over, anyway.
Tyler disappeared into the house, wrenching open a screeching screen door and coming out a couple minutes later with an old Winchester rifle. He had a few clips in his other hand and he displayed all of it to the girls. He put some of the clips in his pocket and kept one out to demonstrate how to load the gun.
"So, you slide the bolt back here," he said, locking it in place. "Take this clip and slide it in like this
. The whole thing goes right in there. Then you let go and the bolt slides right back in place. The safety's here." He held the gun up and pointed at it. "Make sure it's on if you're not planning to shoot anything. If you switch it off like this, you're good to go." He switched the safety back on. "But I'm going to keep it on for now while I go get some bottles."
The girls stood and nodded as he slung the rifle over his shoulder and went over to a dusty plastic bin propped against the house. He picked it up and carted it across the field to a set of two stumps coming out of the ground. He spaced out two empty beer bottles on each stump then set the bin off to the side and came back to where the girls were standing.
Tyler pulled the gun off his shoulder and took a good stance. He switched the safety off, reminding them about it, then he aimed the rifle at one of the bottles in the distance. "So it's pretty easy," he said. "All you gotta do is look down the sights. You see it, right here? Prop the rifle against your shoulder like this and lean forward a bit, then you just line it up with the bottle and pull the trigger. Put your finger on it like this and just squeeze it until it goes off."
The gun fired and a loud bang cracked through the open field, but all four bottles were still standing.
"It's a little tricky," he said, "but it's not too bad at all once you get the hang of it."
He stood back in position and lined up again, firing off another shot. This one missed too, and he made a disapproving sound under his breath, glancing over his shoulder at the girls as his face started to redden.
He drew in a deep breath and fired off a third attempt.
Finally, one of the bottles exploded with the crack of the gun and Tyler took a step back, smiling.
"There, see? It's not too bad. Ashley, why don't you give it a shot?"
"Okay," she said. She stepped forward and Tyler carefully handed the gun to her, reminding her of how to handle it safely. He positioned her and went over how to stand and aim the gun, and when she was ready, he left her to it.
The Haunting of Bloodmoon House Page 4
