The Haunting of Bloodmoon House

by Jeff DeGordick

  Jess sobbed and pulled herself across the wet ground with her forearms. The rain fell harder on the back of her head than before and when she looked up she realized that she'd come out of the edge of the woods onto the long and winding driveway.

  The memories came back to her now, and she remembered being in the truck with Tyler and Ashley. She looked to her right, down the path, trying to spot the truck and see what happened to her friends, but wherever they had crashed wasn't near her. She twisted her sore neck in the other direction and craned it up the steep path leading toward the house.

  It was in that moment that she noticed the subtle change to the dim light creeping through the cracks in the rainclouds. There was a red tinge to everything now, and Jess wrenched her neck as far as it would go, tweaking it to look up into the sky.

  The blood moon. It was here. A roving cloud swept by, revealing the moon behind it. It had taken on a rusty hue, and it shone, full and red, over top of the house.

  Jess's eyes fell onto the abominable Bloodmoon House, and she could see the faint orange light glowing in the dining room and living room where they had lit candles, but then she saw a candle gliding by on the second floor, nearing the window before passing by to the next, just like what she'd seen twelve years ago when she waited in the car for her uncle to return.

  Then another candle. It was pressed up against a window in the living room. It highlighted a figure that didn't seem entirely human. It stood by the window, staring out directly at her. She felt the evil emanating from it, and then in her next raspy breath, the figure swirled and dissipated and the disincorporated light glided out of sight of the window as more flickering candle lights swirled around the interior of the house.

  The blood moon had started, and the spirits and energies of the unseen world haunting the house were growing in power. Soon, something unknowable and terrifying would happen.

  Jess's face sank into the ground and she inadvertently gulped watery mud down before raising her head and gasping.

  She felt the shadow close in behind her, and for the first time she could hear it. Sopping footsteps walked through the muck, getting closer to her. Every cell in her body screamed in terror, and Jess rolled over onto her back to face the presence.

  The woods were dark and it was difficult for her eyes to adjust to what she was seeing, but then she saw as a cloaked figure approached her. It looked like it was the size and shape of a human, but in that moment it was just as shrouded and vague as it was before she had laid eyes on it.

  The figure raised its arm into the air, holding something small but horrifying. When Jess's eyes sharpened on it, she realized it was a rock. The figure hung it precariously in place over her head, staring down at her from under the hood of the cloak.

  Jess stretched her hand out to protect herself. "No..." she uttered weakly.

  Then the figure swung the rock down and her head split apart.

  Unmasked

  Jess's eyelids opened like the slow drawing of blinds to let in the morning sun. She was greeted by a harsh white light that stung her irises and constricted her pupils. She groaned and her throat ached. She cleared it and shifted her head, and realized that her whole body ached in a very strange way.

  Her eyes adjusting to the harsh light, she looked up and saw that her arms were suspended above her head. A length of black chain was hung from the ceiling above her with a shackle constricting her wrists. She was stretched out like a POW in Vietnam, and as she looked around she found herself in a dank and musty room with cement floors and walls. Dusty furniture, some of it covered in white cloth and some exposed, was pushed around the edges of the room. There was a workbench and a tool cabinet in front of her, and a moth-eaten couch peeking out from under a white cloth and an office chair on wheels behind her. The furniture was definitely old, but it was a lot more modern than everything that furnished Bloodmoon House.

  Where am I? she thought.

  Jess's clothes were wet, tattered, muddy and bloody from the crash and the pounding rain outside. Every muscle in her body was numb and sore, and she was frightened to move too much in case she worsened an already broken or overly-strained part of her body. But as the coldness of the room she was in set into her bones, an even greater fear came over her. It looked like she was in a basement somewhere, but she, Tyler and Ashley had searched the whole house and she didn't remember finding a basement of any kind.

  The harsh light bulb overhead buzzed and the sound echoed off the barren walls. It set her on edge and made her teeth chatter, and then the sound of footsteps coming down a long and creaking staircase echoed from somewhere she couldn't see.

  Jess looked up and tugged at her chains. She tried to stretch up on her toes and do anything she could to get her wrists free, but it was no use. As she walked around her small spot on the floor in the middle of the room, pulling the chain in every direction and trying to get free, the footsteps clapped onto cement.

  Jess froze. She noticed a break in the wall in the corner of the room to her left and saw there was a hallway there. And it must not have been long, because in the next moment a cloaked figure in black—that same creeping shadow that had pursued her in the woods after the crash—strode into the room.

  In the darkness of the night and the chaos after the crash, everything had been surreal and Jess couldn't tell if the thing that had stalked her was man or something else. But there was no mistaking it now in the stark white glare. Whoever it was, was every bit as flesh and blood as she was.

  The figure's hood cloaked their face, and they walked in front of Jess, seeming to ignore her as they pulled open a book sitting on the workbench and flipped through the pages.

  Jess could almost feel the blood constricting in her veins, like everything in her body had slowed to a crawl. "P-please don't hurt me," Jess croaked.

  The cloaked figure ignored her.

  "W-what do you want with m-me? Who are you?"

  And then the realization hit her. Whoever this was, was the person who sabotaged the truck and didn't want them to leave. Whoever this was, was likely the same person almost twelve years ago who killed her uncle and started her down this miserable spiral of fear for most of her life.

  But then the figure turned and their hands reached up, grabbing hold of each side of their hood, then they slowly pulled it back to reveal their face.

  A flash of gray hair shined in the bright light, and the man underneath the hood had a big, bulbous nose and bushy eyebrows that were unmistakable.

  Jess's eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

  It was her uncle, Roy.

  "W-what..." Jess started. "How..."

  Roy smirked and turned back to the book on the workbench. He carefully drew his finger along the page, stopping it on something and squinting his eyes. He flipped to the next page.

  Jess stared at the back of his head, still in complete shock. "How are you alive?" she asked, suddenly finding coherence to her words. "You died!"

  "Did I?" he said sardonically. He didn't turn around.

  A flurry of emotions threw Jess around like a vicious storm at sea battering a ship. Every cell in her body was engulfed in a bitter turmoil as twelve years of pain and torment crept up to the surface. And then she realized it had been her uncle—not someone else, but just him—all along that had caused her torment for all these years.

  "You..." she said. "You..." Pressure built in her chest and she felt venom dripping off each word. Her numb hands squeezed into fists and she gritted her teeth, boring her gaze into the back of his skull. "You did this?"

  Jess shook her arms and the chain rattled and snapped. She moved her legs and shifted her weight on the spot, standing around restlessly like an agitated bull.

  "This was all because of you!" Jess screamed, red-hot tears dripping out of her eyes.

  She launched herself at him, wanting to reach out and rip his head off, claw his eyes out. She wanted to do anything to hurt him like he hurt her. She kicked her legs, swinging off the chai
n as she tried to get at him.

  The chain was just long enough for her foot to reach him, and she kicked him in the small of the back.

  Roy grunted as Jess's body swung backward from the force, then he slowly turned around and stepped out of the way as she continued to thrash at him.

  She screamed at him until her accusations devolved into deep and terrible sobs. Her knees gave out and her body hung limply from her arms. She was too weak to fight anymore, expending all of her energy with that outburst. She'd never felt a deep hatred like she had just now, but it soon dissipated into misery and fear.

  Roy looked at her with what could only be taken as contempt, then he turned back to the book.

  Jess sobbed and her tears dripped on the dusty floor. She felt like that little girl again, completely helpless and tormented by her uncle's actions. This whole revelation was too much for her to process, and suddenly she just couldn't find the energy anymore to be anything other than calm.

  "How are you still alive?" Jess asked quietly.

  Roy continued poring over the pages. Silence hung in the air of the small room. Then he said "October twenty-seventh was a very special night." Reverie filled his gravelly voice, and he turned around. "It was the night I became free."

  He was very different from her last impression of him. Though she'd been too young to remember anything before that night, she remembered the night of the last blood moon vividly. And now, though he evoked the same sense of fear and wonderment in her, he didn't appear to be the out-of-control, drunk uncle up for a thrill; he seemed very in control.

  "And now that the blood moon is here again," he continued, "this whole chapter is almost done."

  "What are you talking about?" Jess asked. "What have you done?"

  "This house calls to me," Roy said, lifting his arms in the air and gesturing above them. "It always has. The spirits called to me, and I answered."

  "You're talking about the Dovers," Jess supplemented.

  Roy nodded.

  Jess shifted her weight, and she felt a dull throb run through her arms and into her shoulders. Her mind strained, trying to process everything that was happening and put all the pieces together. She thought about all the clues she'd found since entering the house, and each new discovery was horrific.

  "Was that... you?" she asked. "In the woods... all those bodies..."

  Her uncle said nothing, but the stone look on his face confirmed her fears.

  She suddenly felt like she had to vomit, because she couldn't believe that she was related to someone who could do that. She bowed her head and turned it away from him, not able to look into his eyes anymore. "Why?" she asked.

  He didn't answer at first, and when Jess found the courage to glance at him again, she saw a very peculiar look on his face. It looked like fear.

  "I had no choice," he said. "They told me to."

  "The Dovers?" Jess asked. "Why? What happened in this house?"

  "With each sacrifice, their power grows. But they couldn't cross over. Not until tonight."

  "Cross over? What happens tonight?" Her voice shook.

  Roy glanced up at the ceiling. "Tonight the energies grow under the blood moon. And they get stronger. I've made them as strong as possible over the years. I've done good," he said, looking around like he was searching for someone's approval. His face fell back on Jess. "Now all that's left is one final act..." His eyes widened and he stared at her in dead silence. It was so unnerving that it made her skin crawl. His lips parted and his mouth hung open slightly, like a junkie gazing upon a mountain of drugs. In that moment, she was the object of his obsession, but she didn't know why, and the long, hanging pause terrified her.

  "...What's tonight?" she croaked.

  Roy broke his gaze at last and turned to the tool cabinet standing next to the workbench. He pulled open a drawer and fished inside for something, then Jess cried out in fear as he withdrew a long knife and turned back to her.

  As he stared at her, Jess saw that this was certainly not the man from all those years ago. Even despite what happened on the last blood moon, he couldn't have been anyone his parents would ever let around their child; this was a completely deranged and obsessed man, too far gone for any hope of rehabilitation.

  "Tonight they need one final sacrifice, and it has to be a family member."

  Jess looked down at the blade as fresh tears ran down her face. Her body shook. "W-why does it n-need to be your family?" she said, her voice dripping with fear.

  Roy shook his head. "Not my family, their family."

  "What?"

  "Jessica, you're a Dover. We both are."

  Search Party

  Tyler and Ashley walked through the woods. They'd been going for so long that they started to believe they were walking around in circles. Tyler had salvaged a cracked flashlight from the wreckage of the truck that now cast an uneven beam of light. But it worked. The rain still hammered down on the woods, and their body temperatures slowly dropped. Tyler told Ashley not to stop; if they stopped, they would freeze.

  Ashley began crying. "This is awful," she said. She looked down at herself and saw the ruinous state of her clothing. She twisted her arm and looked at a shallow cut running along the back of it. Then, worst of all, she noticed one of her nails had chipped. "This was supposed to be a fun night," she moaned. "Now we're lost in the woods, cold and wet, and we don't know where Jess is. And there's someone chasing us!"

  "I didn't say that," Tyler said, keeping his eyes forward.

  "Someone slashed your tires!" Ashley cried in frustration.

  "Let's not talk about it," he said quietly. His gaze slipped around as he maneuvered through the trees and led them across the woods. He held the rifle, having mindlessly grabbed it from the wreckage when he was still delirious from the crash. It seemed like it got a little banged up, but it appeared functional. His heart beat madly, and he worried sick about Jess.

  Then, as his mind was distracted by a thousand thoughts, they stepped out onto the long and winding path leading from the road below up to the house.

  Tyler stopped. "This is the driveway!" he said, looking in each direction.

  "What should we do?" Ashley asked.

  Tyler looked downhill as the path stretched and wound around a corner. "If we go down, that will lead back to town." He looked the other way. "Up leads back to the house."

  "Let's run to town!" Ashley said. "We can get some help and call the police!"

  Tyler considered it for only a second, then he shook his head. "No. It would probably take at least half an hour to find anyone, maybe an hour by the time we make it back to civilization. And I'm not leaving Jess alone. We have to find her."

  "How?" Ashley asked, exasperated.

  Tyler squinted up the path. Then he spotted it in the distance: a mangled hunk of metal just visible past a bush.

  "There's the truck," he said, pointing. "Let's take a look!" He broke off into a run for it.

  After the truck collided into the tree, both Tyler and Ashley had woken up and crawled out of the mangled cab. They were too disoriented to understand where they were or what they were doing at first, each wandering into the woods in a random direction. But then, as they slowly regained their cognizance, they stumbled into each other and joined up. But they had lost track of where the truck had crashed, or where Jess was.

  They reached the wreckage and Tyler waved the flashlight around it, a horrible fear in the pit of his stomach that he would find Jess's lifeless body inside. He didn't remember seeing her, but he wasn't in a right state of mind when he crawled from the truck. He repeated a prayer under his breath, then he shone the flashlight inside and saw that it was empty.

  "Where did she go?" Ashley asked, nervously looking around.

  "I don't know," Tyler admitted. He wanted to be calm, cool and collected, but he was scared real bad.

  He stepped back into the woods, shining the flashlight around and trying to determine Jess's trajectory in case she was hurled from the t
ruck upon impact. But he didn't see anything. He swept the flashlight in every direction, then he saw something glint in the light when he pointed it uphill.

  Tyler trekked over to it and bent down, finding a small metal object washed into the mud. He picked it up and worked his fingers over it.

  It was the friendship bracelet that he had given Jess as a birthday present. The ends of it looked like they had snapped apart. He figured it might have snagged on something and broken off of her wrist as Jess was crawling around.

  Tyler slipped the bracelet in his pocket and shone the light around, looking for more clues to her whereabouts. He moved the light across a steep bank and saw a flash of red.

  There was a rock sitting next to a tree with a red smear on it, slowly being washed away by the raindrops trickling off the fronds of a fern.

  "Is that..." Ashley said, looking down at it.

  "Yeah..." Tyler said, his throat burning. He gazed up the steep bank.

  "You don't think she..." Ashley started.

  "I don't know," Tyler said, "but I'm going to look."

  Ashley suddenly clung to his arm. "No, don't go back in there! I don't want to go back in there!"

  Tyler didn't want to either, but he had to, just in case the worst had come to pass. He handed Ashley the flashlight. "You don't have to. Take this and search the woods around the house for Jess. I'm going to look for her inside. I won't be long."

  Ashley gulped. "Are you sure?"

  Tyler nodded.

  She sighed and wiped rainwater out of her eyes. She couldn't believe she was saying this, still angry at how stupid and annoying Tyler had been before they came to the house, but she squeezed his arm and said "Be careful."

  "I will." He found the path again and ran up toward the house, leaving Ashley to search the woods. He had nothing on him but the rifle, and with all the rain that had fallen on it, he didn't even know if it would work anymore. But he pressed on until he reached the mouth of the driveway as it opened up to the house.