“Come on!” Galloping down the staircase and spilling into the empty living room, Gavin came to a stop. It was cold and dark and he didn’t have a flashlight but that didn’t stop him from rushing through the dining room. His feet shook the kitchen floor and he was certain the backdoor would be locked before even reaching it, trapping them inside this abysmal house forever. Like Betty and Jeffrey. But the door wasn’t locked. Bursting outside, he startled when he saw Roger looping an electrical cord around his neck. Gavin stopped in the tall grass and turned back to the house with his head spinning. “Burn it down, Boone!”
Boone raced after Laney out the backdoor, tripping down the steps and vanishing into the weeds.
“Where’s Kelly?” Laney shouted, doing circles in the grass while Boone pushed to his feet. “Kelly!” Her voice echoed past the machine shed, fading into the silky darkness sleeping beyond.
Gavin’s hands tightened into fists. “Boone!”
“I’m trying!” Cupping the lighter, Boone flipped the small wheel on the Zippo, creating a lifeless spark.
Roger dangled from the clothesline and gasped for breath, the toes of his wingtips dragging back and forth across the ground. The wind blew harder and, if he really wanted to, he could just stand up and stop this madness. Instead, he relaxed into the pull and swayed with the breeze.
Betty watched from an upstairs window with her hands draped over Jeffrey’s shoulders like a cardigan sweater. Long, bony fingers drummed against her dead son’s chest as she nervously awaited their long overdue emancipation from this world of the flesh. Jeffrey stared down at them and Gavin was unsure if his face was so pale from the moonlight or from the loss of blood after Roger stabbed him twenty-two times with a kitchen knife. Betty gave Gavin a reassuring nod, a faint smile creeping back into the lines of her mouth, and he couldn’t help but smile back. Betty and Jeffrey would finally be free of Roger and the nightmare lingering in this house like a bad hangover. They deserved that much and damn Roger Campbell for hanging onto them like this. For dragging out their misery. Like they hadn’t suffered enough already. Choking, Roger flailed harder from the T-shaped clothesline, fingers wrestling with the cord cinched around his neck, feet kicking at the weeds.
Bending over, Boone struck the wheel again and again. “It won’t light!”
Gavin looked back up to see the hint of despair settle into Betty’s face. Her eyes jerked to Roger and filled with panic. Looking to his left, Gavin’s pulse jumped when he saw Roger standing on his feet and loosening the extension cord tied around his neck. His black eyes lowered from the upstairs window with his wife and son to Gavin, extreme prejudice twisting his face into something hideous. He wrestled harder with the cord around his neck, glaring at Gavin.
“Boone!” Gavin cried out, stepping back toward the trees. “Hurry!”
“Got it!” Boone raised the lighter into the air and tossed it, shooting a curtain of flames up the side of the house in a rolling whoosh.
“Noooo!” Roger darted forward and snapped backwards by the cord still attached to his neck.
Betty pulled Jeffrey tighter against her in the upstairs window. Flames licked at the side of the house, lighting up the relieved smile gracing her lips. She mouthed the words: thank you, filling Gavin’s heart with something he’d never felt before.
“Goodbye,” he whispered back, heart swelling as Betty pulled Jeffrey from the window and disappeared from view.
The house went up like a tinder box, popping and cracking and shooting embers into the night. An intense wave of heat washed over Gavin, making him stumble backwards. He shielded his face when something exploded in the kitchen. The backdoor burst open, exposing the angry blaze inside and catching Boone’s pants on fire like he was Nikki Sixx at a sold-out arena. Flames jumped up his spandex and it took him a few seconds to even notice. Dropping to the ground, he rolled through the weeds like he’d done this before, vanishing in a cloud of smoke.
“Why!”
Gavin turned to the distraught voice, finding Roger still tethered to the clothesline. Watching the fire consume his home, he pulled at his wet hair before turning to face Gavin. “Why?” he barked again, struggling with the exertion to stray from the cord.
Gavin pushed past Boone and Laney. “Because now they are free of you and your sinister grip! That’s why!”
Fuming, Roger turned to the clothesline and tried untying the cord from the pole instead. It came free with little effort, allowing him to stagger closer. Gavin’s blood raced. Roger clenched his teeth and dug his wingtips into the ground, screaming with each tiny step. It was like he was walking headlong into a jet airliner’s roaring engine, the extension cord blowing out wildly behind him. His hair and necktie flew back, suit coat excitedly flapping against him. Unable to muster another step, he stopped with an unmistakable fury shining in his eyes. Like a skydiver in freefall, his cheeks pulled back with some unseen gravitational force. Roger extended a hand to Gavin as if he were about to fall backwards off the edge of a cliff. The roar of the flames died way down in Gavin’s ears and he could hear each frantic breath storming his lungs.
Roger’s face softened and there was no hiding the terror in his voice. “You freed the wrong person,” he said, relaxing into the pull and getting sucked through the open backdoor in a bright arc of light. The door slammed shut behind him, sending sparks bursting around the frame. The roaring sound of burning wood filled Gavin’s ears once again and the house glowed brighter, as if Roger were made of driftwood, stoking the flames and heating the air around them. Stumbling backwards, Gavin’s brow folded in the blistering light.
Boone rolled to his feet with smoke rising from his pants and boots. “What’d he mean by that?” he yelled over the blaze, face bent with confusion. “What’d he mean by we freed the wrong person?”
Gavin opened his mouth to reply and the house exploded, sending them flying across the yard with burning debris. Tumbling through the overgrowth, he sat up and blocked his face from the house’s volcanic heat as Boone and Laney popped up next to him in the grass and shook their heads to clear the fog of the explosion.
“Are you okay?” Boone panted, brushing his hair back and smearing soot across his face.
Laney looked down and studied her Halloween costume, kicking a burning board away from her boots. “I think so.”
He turned to his brother, chasing his breath. “Gavin?”
Gavin stared into the weeds, insides wrenching as the Polaroid spit a picture out next to his cowboy hat. Getting up, he straightened his coat and inched closer to the camera. He couldn’t hear the tiny motor working hard over the gorging flames but he knew it was.
“Kelly!” Laney called out, spinning in the weeds.
The camera ejected another dark sheet of film into the grass, much quicker than ever before. And then another. And another. Bending, Gavin barely remembered his friends were mysteriously missing as he rounded up the photographs spilling from the camera’s mouth. Suddenly, the pictures stopped coming out. Squinting against the fire’s glow, he examined the small stack in his hands, beginning with the first picture the camera expelled. Boone and Laney peered over his shoulders to examine a dated shot of Betty writing a letter at a fancy desk in the spare bedroom. Flipping to the next pic, Gavin’s eyebrows drew together as Betty Campbell poured a small medicine bottle with a cork stopper into a glass of red wine. In the subsequent shot, she sat in a rocking chair, sipping from the wineglass with a morose look smoothing her face. A white nightgown ran to her bare feet and it was dark outside the window behind her. Heart pounding faster, he switched to a picture of Betty holding a butcher’s knife over her sleeping son. Laney inhaled sharply and Gavin quickly flipped to a closeup of unbridled rage and blood mixing on Betty’s twisted face. The house popped and he slipped that sinister shot to the back of the deck and stared at an image that curdled his blood. Roger stood screaming at Betty as she lay in their bed laughing, his face as red as the blood coating her nightgown. The last picture broke Gav
in’s heart. Weeping on the hallway floor, Roger cradled his little boy in his bloody arms, distress wrenching his features into something unrecognizable.
“What is this?” Boone panted, swatting at a patch of smoking spandex.
Gavin swallowed thickly, returning to the first picture of Betty writing a letter at the desk. His eyes narrowed. “This is what really happened,” he breathed, beginning to connect the dots.
“What do you mean?” Laney blurted, squinting against the smoke drifting between them.
“She wrote a letter to her mom,” Gavin muttered, blurring the picture into a square blob. “To frame her husband.”
“What!” Boone flinched with another loud crack of the house. “So…she killed the kid? Not the dad?”
Reminding himself to breathe, Gavin turned to the picture of Betty lacing her own drink, mental gear cogs clicking into place. “She poisoned herself and murdered Jeffrey before it took root.”
“But why?” Laney gasped, searching around them. “Why would she do that?”
Gavin flipped to the shot of Roger screaming at Betty as she lay dying in their bed. “Remember what Betty’s dad said at the cemetery? He said they started fighting all the time over nothing at all. That they were heading for an ugly divorce and Betty was afraid of losing custody of Jeffrey. That she’d never had a job before and...” His eyes rose from the picture, shadows jumping across his face. “He told us to stay away from the house. That the darkness was…”
“Contagious,” Boone finished for him in a weak voice.
“What?” Kelly gasped, stepping backwards. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
Gavin looked at her and faintly shook his head back and forth.
“Gavin!” she shrieked, backing away from him as if he were the Devil himself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He searched for words that didn’t exist. “I’m sorry.”
Tearing her pointed glare away, Laney scoured the property, the panic in her voice rising with the flames consuming the house. “Kelly, answer me!”
“Betty took everything from Roger,” Gavin said, meeting his brother’s wide eyes. He inhaled a deep breath of smoke, trying to fill the sinkhole growing in his stomach. “And we just set her free.”
Boone threw his hands up. “Set her free to do what?”
Gavin opened his mouth to reply and that’s when he heard it for the very first time.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Slowly pivoting on his heels, he found Betty standing at the edge of the tree line, her toes dangling just above a dead spot in the ground. She stared past him with a bloodstained nightgown worriedly fluttering around her, watching the house burn. Blinking a pitch-black tear down the rotting apple on her cheek, she draped her pale arms over Scotty’s shoulders like a doting mother and pulled him against her. Fear danced with the fire in his eyes and one side of his white beard had slipped a little, flapping loosely as his mouth quivered with frantic mumbling no one could hear. No one but Betty. Lazily, she drummed her long, bony fingers against his chest, a perverse grin brushing the corners of her mouth.
Laney staggered backwards through the weeds. “Who are you?” she yelled, eyes snapping to Pincher and Teddy when they emerged from the trees. “Where’s Kelly?”
“She’s safe,” Teddy answered, nodding at the tree line. “Kelly!”
At first, there was nothing. Then, Kelly hesitantly stepped from the dead branches and saw her big sister. Hope blossomed in her glassy eyes. She tried to run to her, drawing a heated hiss from Betty that warmed the air even more than the fire itself. Woefully, Kelly stepped back in line, swiping at the golden tears glistening in the yellow light.
“Kelly!” Laney screamed.
Teddy pulled Kelly and Pincher against him. “This has gone far enough, lady!” he said, staring defiantly up at her. “We’ve done nothing to you. Nothing you haven’t already done to yourself!”
Twisting his fingers in front of his white slacks, Scotty traded a fearful look with Gavin that was all too easy to read. “Let him go,” Gavin yelled, inconspicuously pulling the crucifix from a back pocket. “And I mean right now, Betty!”
Her eyes finally lowered from the house. Cocking her head to one side, she studied him through baleful eyes. Wafts of smoke drifted between them like spirits of settlers past, trudging across the backyard to discover new and rich lands. Cloaked in ambiguity, Betty’s face slipped between the past and the present. One second, she was the happy mom from the early pages of the photo album – the one with white frosting on the tip of her nose, laughing as she dodged Roger’s finger while Jeffrey smiled from the orange kitchen countertop. The next, she was a morose corpse, skin gray and wet, sprinkled with pockets of decay. A battled waged within her eyes, life and death trading hidden blows. The house popped and cracked and a smirk pulled back into one corner of her mouth, as if she were reading Gavin’s mind. As if she remembered that frosting on her nose like it was just yesterday. A day when things were different. When love still flowered in the sunshine streaming through the house’s clean windows. Then, like it was too heavy to lift a single second longer, the smirk crumbled to nothing. Her fingers drummed against Scotty’s white button down, producing an audible clicking sound that made Gavin’s skin crawl. His heartrate accelerated when he noticed two shiny dots excitedly jerking around on the back of each of her hands. Blinking against the stinging smoke, his mouth went bone dry when he realized…
“Gavin!” Scotty yelled, staring pleadingly at him through his fake Mr. Hammond glasses. “Do something.” He stepped forward and the hands pulled him against Betty, knocking his straw hat to the ground.
Teddy pushed Pincher aside and took a swing at the back of her floating head. His fist stuck in her skull with a menacing crunch, like he just punched into a birthday piñata. Despite the violent assault, her placid eyes remained locked on Gavin, lips pulling back into a sinister grin as Teddy began to scream. His body violently shook as he struggled to free his hand from the back of her skull. A small explosion went off in the house and, with one last cry, Teddy yanked free. Holding his hand up to the flickering light, he stared in horror at the tiny spiders biting into his flesh and scurrying up his coat sleeve. He shook them off like he was the one on fire, slapping his hand against a leg and hopping in circles. Betty’s subsequent laughter was cold and shrill, echoing across the lonely countryside. Wildlife fled the trees and bushes around them, howling into the night.
Gavin boldly stepped closer, the crucifix clutched behind his back. “What do you want, Betty?”
Her laughter faded into a heavy stare that weighed upon his shoulders. The fire cracked. Smoke rolled. And those fingers drummed. Then, just when he thought she would end him with a magical flick of a wrist, her eyes rose over his shoulder and, if only for a shining moment, she was the happy lady from the photo album again. The pretty one with a warm smile. The one hugging her family in front of this very house with a sold sign planted in the front yard. Pivoting on his heels, Gavin followed her forlorn gaze to where flames licked at Roger and Jeffrey in an upstairs window. Roger pulled his son closer against him and stared down at them with a grim look swimming in his eyes. He had tried to stop his wife and failed again and Gavin felt sorrier for him than anyone else in the whole wide world. The man just wanted a family to love. One that would love him back. In the end, he just wanted to be with his boy and what Gavin wouldn’t give for a dad like that. One that…
“Gavin!” Scotty screamed, jerking him from his thoughts.
Gavin spun back around to Betty with a scowl hardening his features. “What do you want, Betty!”
Her glassy-eyed gaze fell to him. Then, without moving a single limb, she floated closer, taking Scotty with her. Betty’s dirty toes dragged across the ground, leaving a scorched trail of earth behind. She passed by Teddy without paying him the slightest bit of concern. Still staring in horror at his red, swollen hand, Teddy swayed on his
feet before collapsing into the weeds. Stopping in front of Gavin, Betty towered over him with the smell of dirt and earthworms oozing from her sickly skin. Bending, her blond hair fell over him in terrible rivers, cutting him off from the outside world. Cold lips tickled his ear, whispering things that made him shudder and cry. He frowned. No, it wasn’t her lips tickling his ears, it was something else. Something pointy. Slowly straightening back up, she stared down at him with long spider legs gently receding into her mouth and an unreadable look haunting her hollow eyes.
Gavin backed away in horror, barely able to shake his head. “No,” he muttered, thrusting the crucifix out. “Never!”
Betty just stared down at him and smiled before stopping her abnormally long fingers from tapdancing on Scotty’s chest. Without warning, her pale hands reared back on their heels, raising two fingers into the air for an agonizing moment that lasted a lifetime. The two black dots on the back of each hand jerked from Betty to Gavin and back again. Silence swept in on the breeze pulling at Betty’s long hair out behind her, muffling the raging fire in Gavin’s ears. The hands stared at him with anticipation dancing in their beady little eyes before darting back to Betty. Then, like a slow-moving avalanche, Betty’s grin slid down her face and stopped up against a frown. Scotty threw his head back and screamed when the fingers jerked down into his chest.
“Scotty!” Gavin shot forward but Boone stopped him.
Dropping to his knees, Scotty’s skin immediately began to pale, like he’d been lost in a snowstorm overnight. His blue lips trembled and Gavin could’ve sworn he saw a white cloud of breath stream from his mouth. Scotty pitched forward into the grass and Gavin pushed Boone away and raced to his friend’s side. “Scotty,” he panted, dropping to his knees and rolling him onto his back.
Scotty stared at Gavin through terror filled eyes, face as white as a ghost. “I can’t move,” he said, barely moving his lips.
Scary House Page 18
