The Haunting of Bloodmoon House

by Jeff DeGordick

  "All right," she said simply.

  The three of them turned for the front steps leading up to the porch. It was a tall set of steps, and even the first floor appeared to imposingly lean over them. They cautiously made their way up, Jess brushing her hand on one of the two tall pillars holding up the balcony and roof. It sent a cold chill up her arm, and her heartbeat quickened. The wood creaked and groaned under their weight as they climbed up to the porch, and it felt like it would give out and they would collapse through it at any moment. It set each of them on edge, but they continued on until they were standing in front of the door. It was ornately carved out of some heavy wood with a large brass handle, all of it scuffed and tarnished.

  Ashley looked at Jess. "Are you sure about this?"

  Jess nodded. "I'm sure." She took a deep breath, then she stepped forward and grasped the handle. It turned with a whine, and then, with a dose of courage, she shoved it open. It groaned and swung back on rusted hinges, opening up to the unknown and fearsome interior.

  With one more deep breath, she stepped inside.

  Portraits

  The house looked even bigger from the inside and the three of them marveled at the elegance and decor of the place that were still intact even after being abandoned for decades. They found themselves in a large foyer with two curved staircases leading up to the second floor in front of them. A huge crystal chandelier hung in the middle of the entrance, and the whole room was finished off with expensive wood moldings and wallpaper. Everything was old and tarnished, worn down, and in some cases, broken. But despite that, the house still retained its striking personality.

  The other side of the foyer beyond the stairs opened up into a small ballroom. To the right of the three of them was a living room, and to the left was the dining room.

  A cold presence suddenly came over Jess and she shivered.

  "Are you all right?" Tyler asked, noticing her teeth chattering.

  "Doesn't anyone else find it cold in here?" she asked.

  Both Tyler and Ashley shook their heads.

  Jess tried to shake off the feeling and she took a step forward into the foyer, looking up at the chandelier hanging above her. Everything was caked in a layer of dust, and as she looked toward the living room, she saw that all the furniture was still there and mostly intact. There was some rubble and garbage lying around from years of disrepair and brave people trespassing through the house. But even through the mess, the core of the house shone through, and it suddenly brought Jess back to the dream she had with the blood moon hanging over the house, seeming to charge it and turn it into something... alive.

  But in the starkness of the day with the hazy sunlight coming in through the windows, it seemed like nothing but an empty house.

  Tyler stepped into the living room, then pulled the rifle's strap off his shoulder and immediately plunked down into an old armchair. A plume of dust shot up into the air, and its particles wafted and glittered in the sunlight before dissipating.

  "Tyler!" Ashley chastised. "You're such a doofus!"

  He just grinned.

  Jess took a step toward the living room, but she was slow and unsure of herself. She watched her surroundings like an animal sensing danger; she was now inside the belly of the beast—the progenitor of all her nightmares and fears over the last twelve years. Tyler seemed to be taking it far more lightly than she was, and her mind was busy processing a million thoughts a minute about the blood moon incident.

  She tried to remember what the police had reported or what her parents had told her about the whole ordeal. One detail she recalled was how the police had found her uncle's blood smeared across the wall coming down the stairs.

  Jess turned her gaze toward the curved staircases and felt her heart leap up into her throat when she spotted a long and dark streak on one of the walls. She took a step closer to it. It was unmistakably the streak of a handprint, as the smear ended in five distinct points that could only be fingertips. The blood was dark and long-dried.

  She turned away, feeling sick. She looked at Ashley and Tyler, but they were too busy arguing with each other to notice her, and she was glad for it. She leaned on the entryway molding between the foyer and the living room, taking a rest and allowing herself to calm down. She hadn't anticipated feeling any emotion other than fear in this house, and she braced herself for what was to come.

  Dizzying thoughts of what her uncle was doing in this house and what happened to him clouded her mind, but she would have plenty of time tonight to think about that; for now, she just wanted to get back into the comfort of her friends' company.

  "Ew!" Ashley cried. "Is that what I think it is?" She had a look of utter revulsion on her face and Jess followed her gaze to see that she was staring at a ceramic urn sitting on a coffee table in the middle of the living room.

  "Cool!" Tyler said. He got up from the armchair and passed a sofa, picking up the urn and appraising it.

  "Don't touch it, you idiot!" Ashley said.

  Tyler ignored her and pulled off the tiny lid, twisting the urn to the sunlight so he could see inside.

  "Those aren't actually ashes, are they?" Jess asked.

  He looked up at her. "'Fraid so."

  "Oh my God," Ashley said, turning away and waving her hands in front of her face.

  Jess was almost amused watching her friend as she trotted away like someone skipping across hot sand in bare feet. As rude of an awakening as Jess thought she was in for tonight by staying in the house and confronting her fears, she found it funny that Ashley seemed to be wholly unaware how dirty and uncomfortable sleeping in an abandoned house was going to be.

  "You didn't say there was going to be dead people in the house!" Ashley said.

  Tyler smiled, looking in the urn then holding it up for her to see. "No dead people. Just dead dust, see?"

  "Oh, I didn't sign up for this," Ashley lamented. "If we're going to stay here, can we at least... clean up a little?"

  Jess gave her a sympathetic smile, then worked her way around the edge of the living room, marveling at some of the pictures that were still on the walls. Old portraits of family members who must have been the Dovers were enshrined in crooked picture frames hanging over the peeling wallpaper or even on cracked commemorative plates resting on the mantle over the fireplace. Their faces looked stern and unhappy, as Jess figured most faces from old black and white pictures did. One in particular caught her eye of who she assumed to be the man of the house... the one who murdered the rest of them. He stood outside in the portrait, next to the house. It looked like it must have just been built at the time of the photo, but he didn't seem particularly pleased. In fact, he had a very intimidating stature to him; his frame was very tall and burly, and a mane of thick hair covered his chin and billowed over his barreled chest. His wild-looking hair was combed to one side, barely keeping it tamed, and his eyes seemed colder than the others.

  Jess took her attention away and worked herself over to one of the windows overlooking the driveway in front of the house. She could just barely see Tyler's truck through the grime. She thought about Buddy and worried about him.

  "Let's not take too long, okay?" she asked her friends.

  But they weren't paying attention to her. Tyler was busy inspecting the elaborate fireplace that was the mainstay of the room, and Ashley was squeamishly inching the toe of her shoe closer to what she suspected was a dead mouse.

  "Can you imagine what this fireplace must've seen over the years?" Tyler asked in awe. "All the stories it would tell if it could talk?"

  Jess's mind went back to her uncle and that fateful night. He couldn't have been in the house while she waited in the car for more than twenty minutes, and as far as she knew he hadn't been here before that. So what possessed him to go mad within that short period of time? Would the three of them share a similar fate if they spent any more time in this house? Perhaps it was different on the blood moon. Or perhaps her uncle wasn't the only one in the house that night... The thou
ght chilled her.

  A hand fell on Jess's shoulder and she jumped.

  "Sorry!" Ashley said. "I didn't mean to scare you."

  Jess settled down. "It's okay."

  "I just wanted to know how you're doing. You know... being inside this place."

  Jess looked around again. She couldn't help but feel like there was some intangible presence in this house, and she still felt unusually cold, but those things could be attributed to nerves. Aside from that, there didn't seem to be anything terribly unusual about the house. It was old, it was musty, but it was empty.

  "I'm not feeling totally calm yet," Jess told her, "but I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would."

  Ashley twisted her head suddenly. "Oh no, what is that?!" She stared at one of the windows looking out toward the driveway as if it were the most horrid thing she'd ever laid eyes on.

  Tyler laughed. "It's just a moth, relax."

  It was on the inside of the window, continuously bumping into the glass, trying to get out. As Ashley took a step away from it, it flew up inside one of the curtains next to the window, and not being able to see it frightened her even more.

  "I'm getting out of here!" Ashley said. She turned and walked back through the foyer to the dining room on the other side.

  Jess and Tyler followed her, and they found themselves in an equally opulent room with a long, hand-carved wooden table and a set of chairs.

  "This thing must weigh a ton," Jess remarked.

  Tyler walked to one end of it, eyeing it dismissively. "It's probably not that heavy," he said, wrapping his hands underneath and lifting. The table didn't budge, and his face turned red as a blood vessel popped out in his neck. He let go of the table and leaned on it like that's all he was trying to do in the first place.

  Jess giggled and Tyler's face turned redder.

  "It looks pretty clean aside from the dust," Jess remarked, running her finger along the surface.

  "Yeah," Tyler said, looking at the bare table, "I'm surprised their last supper isn't here."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know, like one of those TV shows where they go into abandoned houses and they find the last meal they made laid out on the dining room table. Like the family just got up and decided to leave in the middle of dinner."

  "How long has this house been empty?" Ashley asked, inspecting the corners of the room for critters and creepy crawlies.

  "Since the 1930s, I think," Jess said. "So... about eighty years."

  "That's a long time for a house to be empty."

  "Well, mostly empty," Tyler remarked. His and Jess's eyes met, then he quickly looked away.

  A grandfather clock stood against the wall near the foyer. It chimed suddenly, and the three of them spun around. They counted six in total, denoting that it was six o'clock. Jess took out her phone and saw that the time was accurate.

  Tyler walked through a doorway into the kitchen. Jess saw him spin around, marveling at the ancient appliances. "Wow, this is crazy! Look how old this stove is!"

  She started to head for the kitchen herself when Tyler suddenly became petrified. "What is it?" she asked.

  He didn't answer at first, mesmerized, and then Ashley entered the kitchen and became transfixed too, staring up at something with him.

  "What?" Jess demanded.

  "Um... I don't know how to describe it," he said. He looked at her through the doorway. "I'm not sure you should come in here."

  Jess became upset. The whole point of them spending the night in this house was so she could get over her fears, and it just wouldn't do if the two of them were going to keep things from her the entire time.

  She ignored his warning and marched into the kitchen, turning her head to look at whatever it was they were so enthralled with.

  Her breath choked up in her throat.

  On the wall over the sink were three stick figures drawn in blood. Two of them had ponytails and wore triangular dresses, denoting two females and one male. And a butcher knife was stabbed into each one of them.

  "Oh my God..." Jess said, her lip trembling, "...is that us?" She looked around quickly.

  "I-I don't think so," Tyler stammered. "The blood is dark. It looks like it's been there for a long time. They can't be us."

  "How many children did the family who built this house have?" Ashley asked.

  "Yeah!" Tyler exclaimed, excited that there was a rational explanation for it. "He had a son and two daughters!"

  Jess gulped. She didn't want to play devil's advocate, but she had to. "Those knives aren't sticking into the wall by very much. Do you really think they could hang there like that for eighty years without falling out?"

  Now Tyler's heartbeat quickened. He wasn't sure anymore, and he started to experience something that he didn't think he would: fear.

  There was a noise upstairs.

  The three of them looked up.

  "What was that?" Ashley asked.

  Tyler took the rifle off his shoulder and held it so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

  "Was it a footstep?" Jess asked.

  "I don't know," Ashley said. "I thought it sounded like someone dropped something." She turned to Tyler for leadership. "What do you think?"

  "I think we're not alone," he said.

  Vigil

  The three of them waited. When the sound played out again, it confirmed their worst fears.

  "That was definitely a footstep," Jess said.

  "I don't remember seeing any other cars in the driveway," Ashley said, nervously looking back toward the front entrance of the house. "Did anyone else see any cars?"

  "No," Tyler said quietly. He continued to stare at the ceiling, like he was waiting for something. The girls looked to him, wondering what they should do. But as it turned out, Tyler didn't have any idea either.

  "Should we go up and look?" Ashley asked.

  Tyler remained silent, his fingers clutching the gun tighter and tighter.

  "No," Jess said, "we're getting out of here!"

  "What if there's not actually anyone there?" Ashley asked.

  The sound played again. The long and slow creaking of wood echoed through the old ceiling. Then at the end of the sound there was a tap, followed by another groan of wood. They all paused and listened in silence as the noise repeated in erratic rhythm. Sometimes it would start and continue for a bit, then it would fall silent for a few beats before starting up again, like someone was wandering aimlessly above them.

  "Well I'm leaving," Jess said. She looked at the other two. "Come on."

  "I'm going to go upstairs and see what it is," Tyler said at last.

  Jess glared at him. "Tyler, you promised!"

  He looked at her. "You get out of here, Jess. Go back to the truck and wait. I'll be out there in a minute." He started walking back toward the foyer, intent on heading up to the second floor and investigating the strange footsteps.

  She sighed in frustration. "Fine," she said, then she followed behind him.

  The three of them made their way back to the foyer and looked toward the upper floor.

  "I've got my phone if we need to call the police," Ashley said.

  Tyler looked at her suddenly. "Ah crap!" he said sharply. "That was the one thing I forgot!"

  "What?" Jess asked.

  "I forgot to charge our cell phones before we came." He fished his phone out of his pocket and looked at it, seeing that it only had fifteen percent of its charge left before it would run out of battery. He cursed under his breath.

  Ashley pulled out her own phone. "I've only got nine percent battery left, but I brought my charger, so don't worry!"

  Tyler gave her a sour glare. "Ashley, the house doesn't have any electricity; you can't charge anything."

  "Oh."

  "Now who's the doofus?" he said bitterly.

  "Don't call me a doofus!" she cried.

  "Enough!" Jess said. "Both of you!"

  A loud creek sounded from upstairs.

  They all p
aused and looked up the curved staircases toward the second floor. Tyler held the gun in his hands, ready to confront whatever they found, but Jess could see that his hands were shaking, and she knew that his show of courage was more on the outside than the inside. But when he steeled his nerves enough to continue, he said "Okay," then he headed for one of the curved staircases. The girls followed closely behind. Jess put her hand on the banister for support, but their weight made their own groaning footsteps as they headed up to the upper floor. When they got to the top, they found themselves in a short hallway that stretched left and right. At either end, the hallway took a ninety-degree turn and headed down toward the back of the mansion.

  tap... creeeeak...

  It was coming from their right. They turned and headed down that direction, taking the bend and gazing down the long hallway full of doors on either side. They passed bathrooms, bedrooms and closets, and even an art gallery, and they crept slowly and carefully, trying not to make too much noise. But the house was old and their own footsteps groaned under each step they took, and it would be impossible to sneak up on whoever was wandering around the house.

  They pinpointed the footsteps to a room coming up on the right side somewhere around the middle of the long hallway. The door to the room was closed, and they slowed to a stop in front of it.

  creeak... tap!... creeeeeak...

  Tyler swallowed a knot down his throat. He knew that they had already made too much noise approaching the room and that whoever was wandering around inside knew they were there. When he gained the courage, he said "Hey! We know you're in there! Tell us what you're doing here!"

  The footsteps stopped.

  The three of them listened, their breath caught in their throats.

  "We're coming in!" Tyler cried, his voice cracking.

  He reached for the doorknob. With a trembling hand, he grasped it and turned the tarnished metal. He paused for only a moment to compose himself, then he shoved the door open and raised the rifle.

  The door swung open and revealed an empty bedroom.