"Jessica..." Roy rasped. His footsteps loitered just behind the couch, slowing down. And then in the next moment, he lunged forward.
Jess raised herself up and flung her arm at him, releasing the ashes toward his face. Then she pushed off the sofa and ran for the hallway.
The ashes expanded and flecked into Roy's face, and he yelled in pain. He brought his free hand up and rubbed at his burning eyes as he wildly fired off shots from the revolver in Jess's general direction.
Jess saw the hallway in front of her and the dim, reddish light coming in through the windows lining its outward wall. Her whole body clenched as she heard each gunshot go off, the sounds of them incredibly loud and hurting her ears. But she ran, and she was almost at the doorway and in the clear.
Then a bullet ripped through her calf and a thin ribbon of blood spiked through the air and splattered on the floor.
Jess's leg gave out from under her and she fell onto her knee. She cried in agony, and she forced herself back up to her feet as she entered the hallway and fled for safety.
But suddenly pain shot through her leg very badly with each step, and it felt like someone had taken a knife and was flaying the flesh from her bones. She limped on it for as long as she could, not making it very far down the long hallway before she collapsed onto the floor.
Jess rolled over onto her back just in time to see Roy enter the hallway and approach her. He put the gun away in his cloak and pulled something else out. A match was struck, and he hovered over her like a falling shadow. He grabbed her by the throat with an angry hand and he held the flame between them as he drew his face up to hers. His countenance was locked into a mad scowl, and she could see his eyes were bloodshot. His face was caked in a pale layer of gray, and pasty saliva dribbled out the corner of his mouth. He spit on the floor next to her.
"You didn't think you were gonna get away that easy, did you?" he said menacingly. He shoved his hand against her throat, constricting her airway, and he tilted her body from one side to the other. When he spotted the rolled up book that she'd stolen from him in her back pocket, he grabbed it from her and placed it in his cloak.
He held up his watch under the light of the tiny flame and inspected it.
"If this charade had gone on any longer," he said, "we might have missed the whole blood moon."
Jess looked up at him and whimpered. His leering and insane face cascaded fear onto her body. "Please," she pleaded, "don't..." Her calf burned and throbbed, and she winced at the horrible pain.
"The séance won't take long, my dear niece. After your blood is spilled, you'll have nothing more to worry about. Except your eternal torment!"
His teeth bared in a wide grimace, and he let go of her throat and returned to his feet. He circled around her head and grabbed her by the hair. Dragging her along the tarnished and littered hardwood, he pulled her down the long hallway toward the back of the house.
Jess screamed in terror as her body disappeared into the dark bowels of Bloodmoon House.
House Guest
The darkness was unending. Tyler ran through it, trying to follow the screams that had just blared through the house. He knew they belonged to Jess, and his heart twisted into a knot at the thought that something had or would happen to her.
"Jess!" Tyler yelled out. He ran forward and suddenly slammed into a wall, bouncing back and grunting. His shoulder took the brunt of the impact, and he shook it off, holding a hand out in front of him as he cradled the rifle under his other arm. "Jess!"
Her screams continued somewhere in the distance, but it felt like there was an entire house between them. It was already enough of a maze, but in the darkness, it seemed impossible to find her. But he had to, and he had to do it before it was too late.
"Jess! Where are you?" he yelled. He paused for a moment and listened. But the screams stopped. He heard a final scream, but it was muffled, like someone had put his hand over her mouth.
And now he was left in the sea of blackness, alone.
He swiveled his head around uselessly, trying to discern his location. The dull moonlight coming through an occasional window produced a small bit of visibility, but it was like swimming from one buoy to the next in an endless sea.
"Ashley?" he called.
"Tyler?" Her voice was far away and it was difficult to determine where it came from.
"Where are you?" he asked.
There was a pause. "I... I don't know," she said. "Come to my voice!"
Tyler tried to remember the last direction he'd heard Jess scream from, but he quickly became lost in the dark. He continued forward, taking his best guess as he tried to entertain both Jess's and Ashley's locations. He tripped over debris on the floor, ran into walls and furniture, and clipped doorways with the ends of the rifle, but he soldiered on.
He had a sense that he was near the front of the house, but he couldn't tell exactly where. He reached his hand out, walking more cautiously, and he tried to listen for any noises in the house. There was movement somewhere on the ground floor with him, but he assumed it was Ashley.
"Where are you?" he yelled.
"Over here!" she answered, seeming farther in the distance than before.
Tyler lurched forward and suddenly hit his shoulder hard on something. A dull, throbbing pain rippled through it, coursing into his ribs and extending to his fingertips. He grunted and muttered under his breath, taking a moment to compose himself before continuing on. He walked through a large archway and lurched forward again, seeing the dull red moonlight filtering through a window ahead. The area looked familiar, but it wasn't until his crotch ran right into the corner of the sofa that he realized he was in the living room.
He sank to the ground like a stone in water, and he rolled around on his back, cradling himself with his hand. He squeaked out a pained noise and Ashley called out from somewhere in the distance, worried. But he was in no shape to answer her back at the moment.
Tyler squeezed his eyes shut, cursing in the relative silence. Hot, pulsating agony gripped his crotch, and he lay there for a long time before he felt well enough to move.
His head rolled back on the floor and he stared up toward the ceiling. The moonlight coming through the window nearby was just bright enough to highlight the back of the sofa in front of him. As his eyes adjusted, he could see the back of someone's head peeking over the top of it, silky auburn hair flowing over the upholstery.
"Jess?" he asked cautiously, his eyes still adjusting. "Jess!" Tyler got up to his feet, ignoring the pain, then he quickly circled around to the front of the sofa, worried that she was hurt or killed.
A skeletal corpse sat on the sofa in front of him, draped in filthy rags, with long, flowing auburn hair coming out of its decayed skull.
Tyler gasped.
The corpse's head snapped up and stared at him with its black eye sockets. It reached a bony arm out for him, extending its fingers and trying to grab him.
Tyler was taken by surprise and he stumbled backward. His calf caught on the coffee table and he tumbled over top of it, landing hard on the floor on the other side. He whacked his head on the hardwood, rattling his vision as stars swirled around the edges of it. He groaned.
As he writhed on the floor, the sound of water droplets splashing against a hard surface came from somewhere nearby.
Drip, drip, drip.
It sounded like a foot stepped in a puddle right near his head, and Tyler could feel the splash of water on his cheek.
He groaned again and turned his head to the side to look. A bare foot walked by in front of him, heading for the long hallway leading toward the back of the house.
Tyler craned his neck up and he saw that the foot was flesh and blood, not that of the skeletal corpse. It was connected to a smooth and bare human leg. Tyler beheld the figure that walked by in front of him, and he saw that same auburn hair flowing down over the back of a white nightgown. The water seemed to be produced from the girl herself, running down her legs and splashing onto the
floor with each step. She turned her head slightly in his direction just like she'd done in the bathroom before, and a disembodied laugh echoed throughout the living room, soft and feminine, like it wasn't actually being emitted from her mouth.
Then the girl faded into a wispy and swirling blue light, shrinking in size as it passed into the hallway.
The ghost out of sight, Tyler surrendered to the screaming muscles in his neck and he dropped his cheek to the cold floor.
Footsteps hurried over to him. "Tyler!" Ashley ran over to him and crouched down. "Are you okay? What happened? Where's Jess?"
He rolled over and got to his hands and knees, then he pushed himself up to his feet with Ashley's help. "I don't know," he said. "But I just saw a ghost sitting on the couch."
Ashley's head flicked over to the sofa, but all that she saw was an urn sitting on its side with ashes spilling out of it.
Tyler started for the hallway. "It disappeared over there." He took off into a run after regaining his balance.
"Hey! Where are you going?" Ashley cried.
Tyler ignored her. He was focused on the spirit that had just scared him. "What did you do to Jess?" he demanded. "Tell me where she is!"
He crossed into the hallway and stopped. It was long and stretched straight to the rear of the mansion. There were several rooms lining the left side of the hall, with small, ornate tables or other pieces interspersed between them. A large number of windows decorated the right side, stretching to the back and letting in the dull red moonlight. The light spilled onto the floor in small pockets of illumination, providing more visibility than anywhere else they'd seen in the house.
Ashley shored up behind Tyler and looked past his shoulder.
Tyler glanced around the hallway, then he looked down and spotted the blood on the floor. He crouched down. "Look," he said.
Ashley bent over. "Is that... Jess's?"
I hope not, he wanted to say, but he simply nodded. "Come on," he said.
He stood up and followed the trail of blood down the hallway. Some of it was in droplets and some was in smears. Tyler moved slowly past each room on the left, checking to see if the trail curved off into any one of them, but so far it just traveled straight. When he got to the middle of the hall, it stopped completely and seemed to go nowhere.
"Damn," he muttered.
A squeaking sound filled the hall.
The two of them perked up, searching around wildly. They saw a window ahead of them in the distance slide open followed by a beam of light piercing the darkness.
The flashlight swiveled around on the far wall from the window, then a dark shape climbed through.
"Who's that?" Ashley whispered through her teeth. "Is that him?"
"I don't know!" Tyler said. He aimed the rifle, waiting to get a target.
The figure stood up, shrouded in darkness, in the middle of the hallway.
As the beam of light swept around toward Tyler and Ashley, Tyler opened fire. He shot three times, but he was blinded by the light and couldn't see what he was hitting.
The figure moved immediately, sweeping behind a table sitting against the wall and crouching down, the flashlight limply pointing along the floor next to him.
"Who's there?" Tyler shouted nervously. "Answer me!"
There was a pause, then the figure from behind the table said, "Are you Tyler?"
Tyler faltered. "I... Um, I can't tell you that!"
There was another long pause, then the mysterious man crouching behind the table said, "I can wait here all night, but I don't think that's such a good idea."
Ashley perked up suddenly. "Hey," she whispered to Tyler. "I recognize his voice. He's the guy from the diner!"
This fact dawned on Tyler, and he lowered the rifle, realizing the terrible mistake he'd made.
The man gave a sarcastic "uh huh" from the darkness.
Tyler rushed down the hallway toward the man as he straightened up, pointing the flashlight at his feet and giving the three of them enough illumination to see each other.
"I'm sorry, mister, I didn't know it was you," Tyler offered as a mea culpa. "I thought you were someone else."
"Yeah, I'm never quite the guy people are hoping for," the man said. "I'm Simon, by the way, in case you didn't remember that either."
Tyler swallowed, feeling very foolish.
"What's going on here?" Simon asked, sweeping the flashlight around each end of the hallway. "Front door doesn't work, by the way," he added.
Now that he'd asked the question, the floodgates opened, and both Tyler and Ashley shouted a furious stream of words over each other, trying to explain the situation to him.
He held his hand up. "One at a time."
Tyler tried again. "There's a guy here! He took our friend Jess, but we don't know where. They're somewhere in the house, and I think he's going to kill her!"
"And why would he want to do that?" Simon asked calmly. His breath smelled of cheap tequila.
"I don't know," Tyler said. "Something about summoning the ghosts in the house." Tension strained his eyes, and he hoped this was enough information for the man to be able to help them somehow.
Simon wiped a hand across his stubble-filled mouth. "Ah jeez, why's it always gotta be one of those freaks?"
"What?" Ashley asked.
He shook his head. "Never mind." He looked around, then he turned his attention back to the two teenagers. "So he wants to summon the ghosts? On the blood moon? In one of the most haunted houses in the country?"
"How do you know so much about it?" Tyler asked.
"We've been over this before; I do this for a living."
"Yeah, but... I didn't think you were actually serious," Tyler said.
Simon disregarded him and looked at his watch. "We don't have much time. The main portion of the eclipse will be over in twenty minutes. We've got to find your friend before then."
Tyler nodded. "I'll do anything to save her," he said.
"It's not her I'm worried about," Simon replied. "If this guy completes his séance, assuming he knows what he's doing—and I assume he does—things are going to be a lot worse than just your friend dying."
Ashley gulped. "What's going to happen?"
Simon looked at her. "I won't tell you, because then you'd be too distracted to go on."
Blood Sacrifice
The rain clouds outside cleared and the light of the blood moon came in through the wide span of windows on the wall, flooding the room with a palpable energy.
Jess lay on the floor in the middle of the chalk circle, propped up on one arm. Her uncle stood in front of her. He'd lit all the candles around the circle and she could feel the flames warming her, but she still felt cold. And scared.
The bleeding in her leg slowed, and Roy had bandaged it up, not wanting to spill any of her blood quite yet.
Jess looked over her shoulder at the door to the room which her uncle had shut and padlocked. There was no way out.
Roy faced the moon, staring at the large object hanging in the night sky. He held the book with one hand and he would occasionally raise his other arm and check his watch nervously. He stood in silence, waiting for the appropriate time.
There was a small, short table just beyond her uncle inside the circle, and on top sat a strange knife. Its blade was both curved and jagged on the edge, and it seemed like a prop Jess had seen in a corny horror movie Tyler had brought over before. But seeing something like that now right in front of her was terrifying.
Jess cried the whole time while she was in the room. She stole glances at her uncle occasionally, staring at the back of him, then she would look at the blood moon and the door behind her, but all she felt was misery and defeat. Coming to this house was the worst mistake she'd ever made, and she hadn't understood the full gravity of her decision. But now it was too late.
She felt herself retreating inside, like her whole life and all her experiences regressed twelve years, back to when she was that little six-year-old girl. The fe
ar Jess met that night rose up to the surface and she broke down. She rested her forehead against the cold hardwood, and her tears dripped and washed against the dust. She found it hard to breathe, like someone was squeezing her lungs with two icy hands. She had already gone far past the point of panic, now relegating herself to complete surrender. She knew she would be dead soon, and there would be no way for anyone to save her.
Jess languidly lifted her head and glanced at her uncle again. He raised his arm once more and checked his watch, then he dragged the back of his hand up to his forehead and wiped the sweat off of it.
Jess cocked an eyebrow.
She'd seen this before in her uncle—when he chased her through the darkness, terrified at the prospect of losing his book—but at the time she was too distracted to really notice. And now he was nervous, like he was frightened of something... maybe frightened to get this whole thing right. But if he didn't? What would happen?
Suddenly all the pain and torture and fear in Jess quieted down. It was like a stillness in the center of the storm. And coming from somewhere in the wellspring of her heart, courage trickled out. She gazed at Roy silently for a moment, choosing her words. And then she spoke.
"Why are you nervous?"
Roy ignored her at first, not even noticing she had said anything; he was too wrapped up in his business, carefully making sure everything was in order as he nervously glanced from the moon, to his watch, to his book.
She repeated the question.
Roy snapped his head toward her suddenly, being pulled out of his trance. "What?" he said in a bewildered voice.
"Are you scared?" Jess asked.
The absurdity of the question struck him and he laughed. He wasn't supposed to be scared; she was. But yet he couldn't deny the feeling creeping through him. He ignored her and turned his attention back to the moon hanging outside the window, feeling its energies increase more and more by the minute.
"What happens if you fail?" Jess asked. She fully propped herself up on her arm, sitting upright. She was now more curious than scared, genuinely wanting to know how this man had descended so far.
The Haunting of Bloodmoon House Page 20
