Sacrifices Tainted Red
Smirking towards his best friends and the two girls with them, "Now that we're all here", Trispen gestured towards the two girls. "Ladies' first." He laughed, motioning in the moonlight for them to walk through the doorway.
"Nice of you to volunteer to go first, Tris." Dameon sassed back, throwing a smirk right back at him from where he lazily leaned against one of the cracked and painted faded front porch posts. Diana and Genevieve smiled, giving each other silent knowing looks about their boyfriends' antics.
"Come on! You're the one who wanted to catch a glimpse of the inn ghost of legend!" Genevieve scoffed, already wanting to be back at her safe family home in her warm plush bed. Trispen pouted from embarrassment but easily forgot the incident and went back to his childish behaviour.
Venturing only a few steps into the gloomy void inside, the threshold was crossed over. Peering through the dimness around them; seeing little but dusty old furniture littering the room with cobwebs hanging like curtains from the wooden ceiling to cover the faded tapestry walls. Continuing on through the hovering darkness; their wary gazes met with painted portraits covered in years of dust, toppled tables turned to worn pieces scattered over the floor, knocked over sitting chairs with their blood red cushions now riddled with holes and a fireplace waiting patiently in the furthest corner. Waiting – Waiting –
Waiting to be given life again.
A smokeless flame, red and bright, flickered to life from nothing within its prison of stone.
"What the-?" Genevieve questioned, however cut short, when a new voice swept throughout the ancient home. No – not a voice: crying, somewhere deep in the old structure a woman wept in the dark. Wailing to the night and anyone else that could possibly hear her, but then silence returned with an unchallenged vengeance: an icy silence that drowns you, until it is broken. A scream that crawled up your spine and curdled your blood echoed through the entire building. The teens scrambled wildly around the room for any kind of exit; tripping and leaping over furniture to reach dirty windows only to feel their veins fill with helplessness when they find them barred, ramming their entire body against doors and walls in futile attempts of desperation to escape a nightmare.
In the eerie stillness, within the lapse of a single passing moment of time, Diana noticed something very wrong in the glow of the firelight. Those once battered and shattered tables and chairs were no longer scattered and ruined on the floor. They were put back together; arranged nicely as if it were a normal family sitting room. After minutes of further desperate searching, her once oblivious friends finally took notice of how she remained rooted to the floor, then they too realised what was happening around them.
"Find me in the dark." The dry, laboured, croaking voice of an angry and broken man groaned out to the frightened teenagers. 'How can this be real!? How can this be happening!?' Dameon thought in fear, keeping Genevieve within his grip as much as possible. After a few passing seconds clicking by on the aging grandfather clock, it dawned in the back of Genevieve's mind that while the voice could have been heard from anywhere in the house, it had come from behind them.
All whipping around to eye the way they had entered only for it not to be seen anymore, not even the blur of a shadow could be seen by any of them.
"Find me in the night." He growled. With every word the voice and its master crept closer and closer. Step by silent step they four crept for the only other door on the opposite corner of the room, but the padding of a fifth set of steps sounded not too distantly behind them from the origin of the voice.
"Or it is you that will be found", quickly escaping through the squeaky chipping door, the couples found themselves in a long narrow hallway - the only light coming from a cracked window stretching from floor to ceiling. Their frightened faces paled when thy discovered who stood at the other end of the hallway that painted by moonlight. "to pain the starry sky blood red." Motionless at the other end of the hall, stood a man grinning like the Cheshire cat though every inch of his torso was littered with bloody gunshot wounds. Instantly twirling around to rush back through the door, the young lovers found no door but a solid wall splattered with dark red. Spinning back around to face the deathly figure, he was closer than before and glinting in his grasp was an old hand gun.
"The Murdered Lover." Trispen whispered in disbelief at who stood before him, but Trispen and Diana eyed him too closely to take notice of the red clad arms reaching out for them from the wall behind.
Feeling stone cold hands touching around them away, Diana screamed as she was pulled into the wall like it had turned to a veil of water, Trispen shouted to their friends that could do nothing as they were pulled into the depths of the hell house. Genevieve and Dameon heard only screams before looking behind them for their friends and finding no one, except a new door having taken their place in their absence. Not thinking twice, Dameon grabbed Genevieve and bolted through the door – not caring what was waiting for them on the other side. Waiting – Waiting –
Waiting for the on the other side.
Slamming the door closed behind them, the resounding click of the lock made their spines go rigid. Taking in their surroundings, they quickly noted by the four-poster bed that it was a bedroom that contained them; a woman's bedroom judging by the young lady sitting on the window sill plaiting her hair as she looked out into the surrounding night.
"Tilly, the lord's daughter." murmured Dameon in astonishment.
"The ghost of the lord's daughter." corrected Genevieve in an almost silent whisper.
"Why do you get to love when I couldn't have mine!?" Tilly screamed, though her lips didn't move; Genevieve and Dameon wouldn't have known it was her voice at all if it weren't for her colourless white eyes staring at them unblinkingly. That was the only part of her body that moved at all. Then, in the time it took the couple to blink, she had vanished like she had evaporated into the air around them. Suddenly Genevieve was sent flying across the room by something unnatural and onto the bed, she tried getting up from the mattress but was being held down by some invisible force. Dameon, going to help his girlfriend, was thrown up against the opposite wall and held there - like a hand was melding him with the wall.
Genevieve gazed at Dameon, for what she was thinking to be the last time, silent tears cascaded down her face like small streams as she looked into the eyes of the one she loved.
"I love you. I love you, Dameon." She whispered through the sobs loud enough for him to hear. Dameon stared at her wide eyed; his heart burned seeing her like this. He wouldn't let her go like this. He wouldn't – He wouldn't –
He wouldn't let it end like this. But he was wrong.
Ear piercing gunshot after gunshot rang out. Dameon shook violently when his gaze returned to his love – bathed in red.
"No. No! Genevieve! Genevieve! Genevieve, I love you! Genevieve, please!" He sobbed and begged to the corpse across the room.
"Is this what you call love?", Tilly asked, appearing before him and raising a bloodied musket to his heart. "Are you willing to pay for it with more than just your life!?" She screamed into his face. Dameon's body thrashed with each sob that escaped him.
He lifted his sea-green eyes to look her in the face when he answered, "I loved her." Bess smiled at him and came beside his head, close enough to touch, and whispered her final words to him with that twisted grin. "Then prove that your love for her is blood red." She pulled the trigger as the midnight chime rang out from the grandfather clock.