"I don't hear him," Jess said.
"Which way do you think he went?" Tyler asked her.
She considered for a moment, then pointed. "I'm pretty sure he went that way."
They walked forward for quite a while as the terrain in the forest became more uneven. They watched their footing, making sure not to trip and hurt themselves like Jess had already done, but they still kept their eyes peeled and their heads on a swivel, listening and watching for any sign of the errant canine.
But as they got deeper and deeper into the woods, they realized that there was no sign of him anywhere, and before long they had completely lost their sense of direction.
"I think he's over here," Jess said, pointing.
"That's where we came from," Ashley said.
"No it's not," Tyler corrected her, "we came from..."
He looked around, but suddenly he decided he wasn't sure about where they had come from. In fact, none of them were. And as the sun finally crept over the horizon and disappeared for the day, letting the night roll in and leaving the woods dim and the three of them without a flashlight or any sense of direction at all, they realized they were lost.
Into the Darkened Maw
The wind picked up and it was already much colder than before. It swept across their skin, causing a frigid chill to bore down to their very bones. The three of them spun around in circles, looking in every direction for some sort of salvation, an oasis out of the unending woods they found themselves in.
"What do we do?" Ashley asked, her teeth chattering.
Their eyes were adjusting to the newfound dimness in the woods, still in that short period after the dusk faded but before the darkness fully set in, and they began to have a hard time seeing each other, let alone Buddy.
"I don't know," Tyler admitted. When he came up with the idea of coming to the infamous Bloodmoon House, he knew from the start that he would protect the girls no matter what, but presently he felt himself inadequate, and that worried him more than anything.
"Buddy?" Jess called out. "Buddy!"
No answer.
"We have to find him," she told the others. There was a desperateness to her voice, and Tyler knew that if he really wanted to protect Jess's well-being, then they had to find that dog.
"Well, all we can do right now is pick a direction and follow it," he said. He wasn't religious, but in that moment he was praying to God in his head for them to find their way back.
They stumbled through the darkening woods, beginning to wrap their arms around their torsos as they shivered in the unnatural cold. The trees began to blend together, creating one unending sea of prison bars locking them into their jail of wilderness.
Their legs became tired the more they walked, and soon their feet dragged along the ground, catching on stones and roots and causing them to stumble. Jess periodically tried calling out for her dog, but there was never any answer or sign of him. Before long, the daytime noises of the woods settled and were replaced by only crickets and the uneven rush of the wind. Every time Jess thought she heard the sound of a leash dragging through a layer of loose leaves, she perked her head up, only to realize that it was one of their feet dragging across the dirt. Her heart became extremely heavy, and there was a dull pounding at the base of her throat, making it hard for her to swallow what little saliva she had. She was tired, hungry and scared, but she forced her legs to keep moving, determining to not stop until she found her dog.
The darkness whirled around them, turning into deeper blacks and blues. The air got even colder, and their hopes for survival became desperate. Tyler was screaming in his head for the salvation he never believed in, but he believed in it now; he had to.
It felt like they were walking around in circles, even though they were sure they were going straight. But the terrain of the woods had a strange way of bending and twisting them around its warped course, like a sinister presence was guiding them to a predetermined destination.
Their hearts pounded and the entirety of their exposed skin felt the wicked nip of the biting cold settling in over the area. The house was quite high up in the woods, on a hill overlooking most of the town below, so it would naturally be colder up here, but the air seemed to be cooling at a much faster rate than any of them would expect it to, like there was something unnatural not only about the house, but the entire area around it.
Ashley stopped dead in her tracks.
Jess and Tyler bumped into her back.
"What's wrong?" Tyler asked, alarmed.
Ashley leaned forward, squinting her eyes. Then she stood bolt upright and pointed, her eyes as wide as the overhanging moon itself. "There! Your truck!"
Jess and Tyler squinted and peered forward too, trying to differentiate the mass of trees from the backdrop behind it, and then they saw it too.
Through all the darkness and picketed trees, Tyler's truck stood there, and in front of it, the monolithic house.
He became excited, parroting that they had found his truck before taking off at a trot for it.
"Wait!" Jess cried.
Tyler turned.
"What about my dog?"
He toned down his excitement and walked back to her, wrapping his hands around her wrists and looking deep into her eyes. "Jess, it's dark out now. If we keep looking for him, we're just going to get lost again, then we're going to freeze to death."
"But..."
"Buddy has a thick coat of fur," he continued. "He's going to be fine. But we don't, and we need to find some shelter."
"I'm not going back in that house," Ashley said. "I refuse!"
"We don't have to," Tyler said. "We can all wait in my truck and see if Buddy comes back."
Jess gave him a hurt look.
"...When Buddy comes back," he corrected himself.
Jess stood on the precipice between the edge of the woods and going back and looking for her dog. She was antsy, terrible guilt roiling through her and screaming at her to march back into the woods and find him. But her better judgment got a hold of her and told her that Tyler was right. She didn't want to verbally agree with him, as if that would be some betrayal to Buddy, so she silently turned and headed for the truck.
The three of them moved toward it, and Tyler and Ashley were thrilled to be out of the woods.
"I'll turn the truck on and we'll get some heat going. Plus with the headlights, we'll be able to see around the vicinity." He glanced at Jess. "Dogs have a good sense of direction, too. He'll find his way back."
Jess remained silent as he unlocked his truck and ushered them inside. Tyler climbed into the driver's seat, and Ashley hopped into the middle as Jess sat on the passenger side of the bench seat. Tyler jabbed the key into the ignition and twisted it, and the truck's engine roared into life. He flipped the headlights on and stark white beams shone on the foundation of the house in front of them. The mansion seemed to climb ever higher into the sky, like it somehow grew in the nighttime. The vibration of the truck's engine rolled through their bodies and helped to calm their rattled nerves.
Tyler put the heat on, and after a minute or two, the truck filled up with its warmth. Soon, their teeth stopped chattering.
Jess incessantly stared out the windows, trying to spot her dog. "Honk the horn," she said.
Tyler paused, deciding it wouldn't do any good, but he humored her anyway. He pressed the horn. It blared into the night, and then they waited.
"Again," she said.
"Jess..."
She leaned over Ashley and honked the horn herself repeatedly, holding the last note for a long time before letting off. Then she sat back in her seat with her hands neatly folded in her lap, frustrated that her friends weren't being as helpful as she wanted them to be.
And as the darkness of night lingered all around them and the pervading coldness patrolled outside the truck, waiting for them, a vague and terrible feeling gripped Jess. She didn't understand what it was at first, thinking it to be just some guilt from leaving Buddy all alone, but sh
e quickly understood that it was more than that. She turned her attention to the house in front of her, seeing a partial view of the front door in the headlights.
Then her uncle flashed in front of her, leaning on the hood of the truck.
Jess jumped in her seat and gasped.
Tyler and Ashley looked over at her, concerned.
Tyler's truck was the same tan color as her uncle's Oldsmobile had been, and she saw him standing in the brilliant white of the headlights. The sound of glass shattering filled her ears and made her jump again as she watched blood pour out of her uncle's mouth and stain his gray jacket. His eyes were bewildered, and Jess knew that something terrible had happened in that house. She began to whimper. She looked past her uncle at the house, knowing that something grotesque was inside and that he had gotten in way over his head. He didn't know what he was doing, and now he would soon be dead, chased out into the woods and murdered by some unknowable force.
In another flash, he was gone, stumbling off into the trees.
Jess sobbed uncontrollably, and she leaned over her friends and jammed on the horn over and over again as she heard her uncle scream. His bloodcurdling cries matched her own as she mashed on the horn endlessly, devolving into a full-blown panic attack.
Tyler and Ashley were beside themselves with confusion and worry as they watched their friend break down in front of them.
"Jess, what's going on?!" Tyler cried. "What are you doing?!"
Jess turned and threw the passenger door open then stumbled out onto the gravel below.
"Jess!" Tyler yelled. He shut off the truck and threw open his own door, running around the hood to her. He grabbed her under the armpits and tried to help her up to her feet, but she threw him off and stumbled away from him. "Jess, what is it?" he said.
"I can't stay in there!" she said at last. "I can't stay in that truck!"
"Okay, okay..." he replied, still confused and racking his brain for what to do.
Jess spun away from him and tried to settle down and work herself out of her panic attack. She realized that she hadn't seen her uncle, that he was long gone, and that she was simply haunted by the same horrible memories of what happened all those years ago.
But that changed now.
She straightened up and turned toward the house, staring up at it with intensity. "We're going back inside."
The other two looked at her in shock.
"I don't want to go back inside!" Ashley whined. "Don't make me, please..."
"Jess," Tyler started, "are you sure that—"
Jess spun around to the two of them, angry. "You're the ones who wanted to bring me up here in the first place," she snapped. "The entire reason we came was to get me to face my fears. And now I'm facing them. Don't you dare run away from me now."
Tyler and Ashley were shocked by Jess's about-face and unexpected expression of courage. They never saw this side of her before.
Jess turned back to the house and stared at its hulking mass standing in the darkness. "I'm tired of running away. I'm tired of playing the victim and hiding any time something goes wrong. That all changes right now. I'm going back inside that house and waiting for my dog to come back. If you guys really want to leave, then go be cowards. I don't care anymore."
Ashley was stunned into silence. Tyler gulped. He looked up at the house, and suddenly it didn't seem nearly as fun or interesting as it did when they first arrived. He was upset that he found himself far more scared than Jess now was, and he pulled himself together, simply for the sake of trying to be the man in the situation.
"Okay," he said. "I'm with you."
He looked over at Ashley, but she was still cowering from the idea, a look of pure terror etched into her pale features.
"We're all going to be with you," Tyler assured her. "And you can't stay out here; you're going to freeze," he added, knowing what she was thinking.
Ashley hemmed and hawed, but finally she understood that the fear of staying by herself was far worse than the fear of going back into the house with her friends. She was terrified, but she agreed.
Jess hadn't turned to face them at all, waiting for Tyler and Ashley to sort themselves out and decide if they were with her or not. When they finally joined up behind her, she took a deep breath and marched on for the porch. The three of them climbed the steps slowly. The old wood groaned under them as the bitter wind swirled around their bodies. Darkness encapsulated the porch and shrouded the front door, leaving only enough light to barely see their outlines and features.
Jess spared one last look at the woods that they had come from, but she knew Buddy wouldn't return in that moment, so she braced herself and gave the front door of the house her full attention.
It stood before them, and she stared at the grim window into the evil and corrupted abode.
She reached out and grabbed the handle. She pressed the latch open with her thumb and gave the door a soft push. The heavy and elaborately-etched slab of wood whined open on its hinges. It swung into the house, revealing the black mouth of the darkest abyss. It beckoned for them. It wanted them.
Then Jess stepped inside and the house swallowed her whole.
Cold Shoulder
Tyler closed the door behind them. He turned to face the house and was taken aback by how dark it was. He brushed his moppy brown hair out of his eyes, thinking that's what was obscuring his view. But the interior of the mansion was almost pitch-black now, with only a faint bit of reflected moonlight drifting in through the windows.
And it was silent. The only things the three of them could hear were their own heartbeats and the breath seeping out from their mouths; it was like the wind and the trees swaying outside gave pause and reverence to the dominion the house had over them.
Their hearts beat rapidly. Ashley took out her cell phone, trying to get some light. "My phone won't turn on," she said woefully. "I think the battery ran out."
Tyler tried his phone. "Mine too."
Jess pulled out hers, remembering it had the most charge out of any of their phones when they arrived, and she was elated to see the screen come on. The light from her phone was striking in the darkness, but it only illuminated a few feet around them; not enough to see for any distance. "I still have ten-percent charge left," Jess commented, fishing through her phone to find a flashlight app. When she spotted it, she turned it on, and suddenly a cone of white light stretched from the back of her phone and cut through the darkness.
"We have to get to the candles and flashlights we brought," Tyler said. His eyes flicked to and fro, spotting strange shapes in the darkness.
"Where did you put the box?" Jess asked, remembering him carrying it into the house earlier.
He thought about it for a moment, then she saw his eyes go wide in the dim off-glow of the flashlight. "I left it upstairs... in the master bedroom."
All three of their hearts skipped a beat as it dawned on them that their only sustainable source of light was in a room clear on the opposite side of the house from them, with a long gauntlet of frightening blackness separating them from it... and one whose door eerily seemed to close on its own before Buddy drew their attention away.
"I'm not going up there!" Ashley said frantically. "Please, I don't want to!"
"My phone doesn't have much charge left," Jess reminded her. "And with the flashlight on, it's going to run out very quickly. We don't have a choice."
Ashley gave a frantic sigh, but she didn't say anything else.
"It's okay," Tyler said, gripping the rifle tightly in his hands. "I've got the gun; I'll lead the way. You guys just follow behind and stick close, okay?" He looked up toward the second floor at the top of the stairs in the foyer and gulped.
"Okay," Jess said quietly.
The three of them set off very slowly, Tyler in front of them, cradling the rifle in his arms. Jess and Ashley stuck next to each other, almost pressing themselves to him as they walked. Jess held her phone over his shoulder to illuminate their path.
; The silence was unnerving. The darkness seemed to swell and slither around them, causing a strange pressure to build on their lungs and making it hard to breathe. The floorboards protested under them, and it was the only sound other than their heartbeats and respiration echoing in the house.
"Do you think ghosts really exist?" Ashley whispered suddenly.
"Not now, Ashley," Tyler said.
"What if... what if we're really not alone? Maybe this is a bad idea..."
"Ashley, there's no ghosts. Just calm down."
But she was already too far gone. The crushing dark and coldness of the house at night unraveled her nerves into a frayed and frazzled mess. "You saw something in the bathroom!" she cried. "You saw a ghost!"
"I didn't see anything!" he said.
"What?"
"You heard me." There was a hard edge in his voice. If he were in a calmer state of mind, he would be able to evaluate what he had seen a little better, but creeping through the darkness like they were now—each of them scaring each other even by virtue of how timidly and slowly they were crawling through it—he needed to deny his entire experience to maintain his own sanity.
They made it to the bottom of the curved staircase on the right and Jess shone the flashlight up the stairs and the wall. She saw the bloody smear mark that her uncle had made, and it set her teeth on edge. It was like the whole history of the house was now revealing itself to them when they were most vulnerable.
Tyler took the first step and the stair creaked. Jess and Ashley followed him up, and each stair groaned under their weight as they went. They took them very slowly, like if they did it any faster some kind of spirit would come snatch them up.
Their hearts hammered so loudly that they were audible over the groaning of the wood under their feet; a dull thumping that made it seem like the house itself was alive and breathing.
The Haunting of Bloodmoon House Page 12
