The two of them went back and forth, but then they eventually calmed down and Ashley was again returned to the fact that there wasn't much of anything to do.
She sighed. "What time's the blood moon, again?"
"Midnight," Tyler said.
"We'll have to find a good spot where we can see the moon tonight."
"Sure we will," he said. "We can even go outside to look at it."
Ashley shook her head. "Oh no, I'm not going outside in the dark. Are you crazy?"
"What? What's the big deal?"
"You have to promise that you won't try to scare us tonight, you dink. I mean it."
Tyler had a hurt look on his face. "What did I do?"
She scowled at him. "I'm still mad at you for scaring Jess last night."
He smirked. "It wasn't a big deal, I already said I was sorry, and Jess said it didn't bother her that much." He looked at her. "Right Jess? Jess? What's wrong, you seem a little quiet?"
Jess had been mindlessly playing with the friendship bracelet on her wrist that Tyler gave her, and she snapped out of her trance and looked at him. "No, nothing, I'm fine."
"You seem like something's bothering you."
She let out a long and drawn-out sigh. "There's just something about this place that makes me uncomfortable," she admitted.
Tyler leaned forward in the armchair. "But we already checked the whole place out. It's empty."
"You don't know that."
He let out an exasperated breath. "I already told you, there's no such thing as ghosts."
"I'm not saying that," Jess replied, "it's just... I don't know. I just have a bad feeling about this place, and when I think about it getting dark outside—and dark in here—I get this uneasy feeling in my stomach that I don't like."
"But we got a bunch of candles from your place," he said. "We'll light them all when it gets dark and it'll be nice in here."
"I know, but I'm still scared."
He went to grab her hand, but he chickened out at the last moment and rested his hand on the arm of the sofa. "Jess, we're here for you. If you get too scared in the night, even if there's nothing wrong, we can leave."
She looked him right in the eye. "You mean it?"
"I promise."
This helped put Jess's mind at ease, and as the three of them sat in the living room and the sun crawled across the sky, she felt herself loosen up and even have a good time joking and laughing.
Ashley asked them what they should do, and Tyler said he brought a deck of cards that they could play with. He got up and fished the deck out of one of the boxes and the three of them moved over to the dining room. They sat around one end of the long, heavy walnut table and Tyler slid the cards out of the pack and shuffled them.
"So what do you want to play?" he asked the girls.
"I know how to play War," Ashley said.
Tyler laughed. "You're pathetic."
"We can play Crazy 8s," Jess said. "That's simple enough."
"How about strip poker?" Tyler suggested.
Ashley scoffed. "Yeah right."
"No, I'm serious!" Tyler said. "We'll bet articles of clothing. If you lose, you have to take it off. The last one with clothes still on gets to make the other two do a dare."
"You're the only one who knows how to play poker," Jess said.
"Yeah, so?" Tyler said sheepishly. "I wouldn't mind seeing you naked..."
"The only time you're going to see me naked is in your dreams," Jess retorted.
"Ouch," Ashley said. "But you totally deserved that one, Tyler. I used to think you and Jess would make a cute couple, but I still hate you after what you did last night, so now I think Jess is too good for you."
Tyler lowered his head to try and hide his reddening face as he shuffled the cards.
Jess took the deck from him and said they were going to play Crazy 8s. Ashley didn't know how to play, but Jess laid the cards out and slowly taught her the rules. They played a few rounds, and Ashley started to get the hang of the game.
"So how's your mom going to feel when you're out of state at college?" Jess asked Tyler.
He looked over his cards. "I don't know. Since my dad left, I'm pretty much all she's ever had. She still sees my grandpa when he needs something, but he's pretty independent. She's already started crying thinking about when I leave."
"That must be pretty tough," she said sympathetically.
"It is. And with her being a single mom working at the hospital, I really have no idea how I'm going to pay for school. She put a little money aside over the years for me, but I'm still going to be in a lot of debt."
"Have you thought about going somewhere local instead?"
"Yeah, but if you guys are going to New Hampshire, then so am I."
Jess smiled. "Well, I'm really glad that you're coming. We'll all still get to see each other, then." As soon as the words left her tongue, they left a bitter aftertaste and she immediately thought of what Ashley told her about how little they would probably see each other in college. She knew this was on Ashley's mind too, because Ashley suddenly looked down at the table like she didn't want to talk anymore. Jess felt that acid burning in her chest that she always did when she knew something dreadful was coming up.
The room became silent quickly, and Jess tried to break the tension before it got too bad.
She cleared her throat. "So... when do you guys think that we should—"
The facedown card on the top of the deck flipped over.
The three of them stared at it.
"Tyler, what are you doing?" Ashley accused.
"What are you talking about?"
"You're cheating! You can't flip over that card. It's not your turn!"
"I didn't," he said.
They looked at Jess. "Did you touch it?" Ashley asked.
Jess shook her head, speechless.
An oppressive silence came over the house, and their eyes were glued to the overturned card sitting in between all of them.
"What moved it?" Ashley asked at last. She looked around the dining room, but they were alone.
Tyler stood up. "It was probably just a draft." He moved to the windows in the dining room and inspected them, but they were each shut tightly. He crossed over to the foyer and then to the living room, doubling back and looking in the kitchen, but all of the windows were shut and he couldn't feel a draft coming from anywhere. He came back to the table in the dining room. "Well there must be a draft coming from somewhere. It's not a big deal."
But both Jess and Ashley thought it was much more of a big deal than Tyler, and they couldn't explain it away as easily as he seemed to. But neither one of them had seen it as it happened, only noticing the card's movement in the corner of their eye.
"Maybe we should do something else," Ashley suggested, feeling a little uneasy.
"I'm going to go check on Buddy for a second," Jess said, just as uncomfortable.
She got up from the table and left out the front door. She clomped down the creaky steps of the tall porch and peeked around the pillar to see Buddy still lying on the gravel. His head was laid down on his paws, and he was enjoying a nap. He still had food and water, and he seemed to be peaceful, but he didn't look like he wanted to be brought in the house, so Jess sighed and left him alone.
As she turned and faced the house again, she looked up at the towering size of it. At only two stories, it was a lot taller than she would have guessed. It seemed to be the same size as it was in her nightmares over the years, but she'd always figured that the house grew to grotesque proportions in those disturbing nightly visitations.
She turned her head and gazed up at the sun that was now closing out its arc for the day, though it would still be another couple hours before sunset.
Sparing one last look for her dog and then for the imposing house in front of her, she steeled her nerves and went back inside.
The mood seemed a little lighter inside, and as Tyler put the cards away, Ashley suggested that they play the guessing game.
<
br /> "What's the guessing game?" Jess asked.
"You know, that game where you come up with a person and the other people have to ask questions about who you are and try to figure it out," Ashley said. "It could be fun." She shrugged.
"All right," Jess said with a smile, trying to loosen up and ignore the strange peculiarity with the card.
Ashley came up with a persona first, and it took Jess and Tyler a very long time to come to the conclusion that she was Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the only books she was ever forced to read in school, and thus one of the only books she'd ever read.
Jess went next, thinking for a while before she came up with Michael Jackson, but Tyler and Ashley guessed her persona within a minute.
"Hey! How did you do that?" Jess demanded.
"You have to make it a little harder than that," Ashley said.
"All right," Jess said bitterly, "Tyler's turn."
He thought for a moment. "Okay, I got one." He grinned.
"Are you alive?" Jess asked.
Tyler nodded.
"Are you a big, stupid idiot?" Ashley said, trying to tease him.
But Tyler nodded again, his grin stretching across his whole face.
"Oh yeah?" Ashley said. "Are you saying that you're a big, smelly, inbred troll who doesn't know what a bath is and has the IQ of a potato?"
Tyler shook his head up and down so furiously that he started to hurt his brain.
Ashley wasn't clueing in yet, but Jess offered a guess. "Are you trying to say that you're Ashley?"
"Yes!" he cried.
"Hey!" Ashley protested. "That's not fair! I don't like this stupid game anymore."
"Well, why don't we do something else?" Jess suggested.
"Like what?" Ashley asked.
Jess looked around the dining room, but if they weren't going to play cards anymore, and if they were done with this silly game, she was at a bit of a loss of what else they could do. It certainly wasn't easy for kids of her generation to give up electronics; it was like going back to the Stone Age to them.
Tyler thought for a moment, then a devilish grin came over his face.
"What now?" Ashley said.
"I have an idea."
"Well?"
He looked around at the house. "Let's play hide and seek."
Claustrophobia
The house shifted and groaned from the breeze outside, making it seem like it came to life again. The windows rattled in their frames and the old wood bent and creaked, and that chill ran through all the rooms in the house. The strange and intangible presence permeated the air, thinning the oxygen and making it harder to breathe. And suddenly all the walls seemed to close in, like the house was scrunching in on itself and trying to crush everything inside.
"Jess? So how about it?"
She snapped out of her trance and looked at Tyler.
"Only if you're the one who's it!" Ashley said sternly. "I don't want you jumping out at us when we're not expecting it!"
"No problem," Tyler said. He turned back to Jess. "So?"
She saw him and Ashley looking at her, and she felt the same pressure that she had a moment ago, but of a different sort. "I... I guess."
"Are you sure?" he asked. "It'll be fun."
Jess took a deep breath, realizing she was existing too much in her own head. "Yeah, okay. It's still bright in here, let's give it a shot."
"The most ringing endorsement of hide and seek I've ever heard!" Tyler said as he turned and surveyed the house. "All right, let's do it!"
Ashley gave his shoulder a shove. "Go hide in the corner of the living room there." She pointed at the far corner between the fireplace and the set of windows overlooking the driveway in front of the house.
"I'll give you guys ten seconds to hide," he said.
"No way!" Ashley cried. "Thirty seconds. Close your eyes and cover your ears, and count it out loudly."
Jess and Ashley watched from the foyer as Tyler went over to his corner in the living room and turned his back to them.
"Okay, I'm ready!" He faced the corner and clamped his hands over his ears. "Thirty!" he announced. "Twenty-nine!"
Ashley grabbed Jess by the wrists. "Okay," she said with a grin, "let's hide!"
She turned away from Jess and went through the living room, disappearing down a hallway on the other side from Tyler that led toward the back of the house. Jess found herself alone in the foyer, and she spun around, considering where to go. She looked at Tyler, who was slowly counting down, and she felt indecisive again as to whether she was comfortable going through with this. But seeing him there, she knew she would still be safe and she didn't want to overreact again.
She looked toward the dining room and the kitchen, then at the ballroom, but she realized that Ashley had already chosen the bottom floor to hide. So she headed for the stairs leading up to the second floor and quickly trotted up them as she glanced over her shoulder at Tyler who was still playing fair with his hands over his ears.
"Twenty-four! Twenty-three!" she heard over her shoulder as she crept down the upstairs hallway. She poked her head into the art gallery, but aside from the paintings on the walls, it was an empty room. Then she peeked in the bedrooms and small bathrooms, but unless she wanted to hide under a dusty old bed with all the dead bugs and whatever else was under there (she didn't), she would have to find a better spot.
She stopped midway down the hall and pulled open a closet door. It was big enough inside for her to squeeze in, but she felt like it was too obvious. She glanced down the far end of the hallway, seeing the door to the strange room they'd found with the chalk circle and candles on the floor. Her heart climbed up into her throat at the thought, but she remembered there was a closet in there. Tyler knew how squeamish she was about the house in general, and that room would be the last place he would look for her.
It's just some dusty candles and chalk... she told herself.
and blood
...there's no need to worry. She repeated this over and over in her head. Jess swallowed a lump down her throat, then she crept down the hallway. She paused at the bathroom next to the strange room, seeing the fancy tub. She peeked inside and was surprised to find it wasn't very dirty at all. She considered lying down in it to hide, but she took a step back into the hallway and estimated that Tyler would be able to spot her from this angle.
Knowing she didn't have a better option, she slipped through the door to the mysterious room and closed it behind her. Its frame was warped and swollen from water damage and the humidity of summer, so she had to take her time shoving it into place without making too much noise. It took a lot of her strength, and when she was done, she thought that it was no wonder they had such a hard time getting through the door in the first place.
She turned around and looked at the nearly empty room. The dusty candles and chalky circle were just as they had left them, and the old blood on the floor somehow didn't seem to be as menacing as when they had first happened upon it.
"Ten! Nine!" she heard from downstairs.
Jess took a moment to glance out the wide set of windows looking out the back of the house, seeing the sky that was cooling down and getting closer and closer to sunset.
"Five! Four!" Tyler's muffled voice said through the floorboards.
Jess turned for the closet, realizing that she didn't want to make any noise after he started looking for her. She hurried inside, the floorboards under her feet groaning, and she held her breath and tried not to be grossed out as she worked her way past dusty, moth-eaten coats and old umbrellas. The closet had a set of two sliding doors, and she kept the side she'd slipped through open a little, just as the three of them found it before, so even if Tyler had thought to look in this room, maybe he wouldn't notice the closet.
"Two! One! Ready or not, here I come!"
Jess crouched down into the back corner of the tiny space, hugging her knees as she waited. She immediately felt claustrophobic, and it wasn't something that she n
ormally experienced; she only felt that way because of the house. A surreal moment washed over her when she realized that she was hiding in a closet by herself in the very house that terrorized her as a child. The thought was almost enough to make her throw up, but she held it together and reminded herself that everything was okay.
She let out long and quiet breaths, steadying her heart rate as she listened to Tyler creeping around the bottom floor.
The muffled sound of distant floorboards creaking echoed up to the second floor, and she had a good sense of exactly where he was as he moved around the house. She wondered if Ashley had found a good spot to hide, and she wondered if Tyler would find her first. Jess began to kick herself a little for hiding in this closet, knowing that she would probably be here a while if Tyler couldn't find her. But if things got too much for her or were too overwhelming, she promised herself that she would give up and come out.
"Wheeeere... are you?" Tyler called out tauntingly from downstairs as the old spongy floorboards groaned.
Jess listened to the sounds of him moving around, followed by his taunts, for so long that she started to get bored. She leaned over in the closet, trying not to make too much noise on the floor, and she slid open the door a little so she could see the windows.
The sunlight in the sky seemed to be a lot more diffused than it was before, and she figured a thin grouping of clouds must have washed over the sky. But then she watched in real time as the sky began to darken even more, almost as if night had extinguished the light before her very eyes.
The room she was in became so dark that it looked like a storm must have been raging outside.
The breath seized in her lungs. Her heart pounded. Her eyes went wide and suddenly she had a prickling feeling crawling over the skin covering her entire body.
She didn't know what was going on, but she kept telling herself that everything was okay.
Jess heard Tyler's footsteps prowling around from almost directly under her now, followed by his voice asking again where they were.
Then another set of footsteps sounded from the upstairs hallway. They walked around, pausing here and there, and Jess knew that Ashley had come up the spiral staircase at the back of the house.
The Haunting of Bloodmoon House Page 9
