Can I Tell You A Ghost Story: The Collection

Hallowe'en

Part 1: The Scarlet Bed

  Autumn hung in the brisk evening air lit by a backdrop of foggy pinks, oranges and blues that blanketed the death lined streets below. Sneakers crashed down on dancing leaves breathed only momentarily back to life by a cacophony of youthful laughter that echoed between houses. Heavy eyes glared down on the morbidity of the joy the arises in the frightful activities of the night, longing with the patience of a spider sitting by it own web, waiting for its next meal. Wind creaked, echoed, and howled through the aged paneling, unkempt floorboards, and heirlooms lost in another time. The walls breathed with a heavy ache and a hunger. Then a sound cut through the silence as though a knife piercing the softest skin. A soft voice muttered to another that responded with gruff aggression only to be met by a patient third tone. They were planning something, something still uncertain but certainly frightful and urgent. The soft one paced in a circle by the door, her shadow looming through the above window like an omen. It was taunting. Taunting the patience, taunting the hunger, taunting the silence that had sat and grown for yet another three hundred and sixty-five days and nights. The silence was starving yet still this shadow taunted it mercilessly. 'Turn the knob' it thought. 'Unleash my yearly hunger. Feed to me your fears.' Then, just as the streets ran as quite as the lonely rooms and the halls grew further shrouded in darkness in the changing skies, the rusted doorknob turned, and the door cracked letting in the smallest sliver of light before fulling revealing the shadowy figures now embraced by the open doorway.

The first figure through the door was the gruff voice, tall and dazzled by a stark white costume adorned with pom poms, frills, and a small pointed black and white hat. His face slender and pale with a wide black smile and a black line down the center of either eye. He stepped to the side, his oversized shoes flopping against the weathered rug, to reveal the soft voice. Tight blonde curls draped against the sides of her rosy face and down a pair of large dark wings attached to her back and wrists. Behind her was the patient voice, shorter than the others, with a dark and warm complexion. Long black and red fabric dragged across the floor from his shoulders and pointed teeth stuck out over his lips. As he stepped inside the gruff one sharply asked about another two. The patient one peered around the door framed and turned back to say they were coming up the street now. In moments two more shadows walked into the web. Identical in face but not in presentation. One was dressed all in blue with a pair of silver bracelets attached to his hip and darkened glasses hung from his wide collared shirt. The other wore pointed brown boots and a wide brimmed hat and a long-braided rope attached to his own hip. As they all congregated into the foyer the wind pulled the door closed behind them causing each of them to let out their own personal scream. The screams quickly subdued to laughter and the laughter slowly blended back into silence.

"So, who here already knows the story?" The gruff voice asked this with a wide smirk further expanding his painted smile. The others swiftly raised their hands in response prompting him to ask, "But do you know the full story?"

The soft voice spoke up at that. "Do we really need to do this here? Can't we just do this at a graveyard or something?" Her face twisted and looking away from her listener. Who quickly responded with a harsh laugh.

"Absolutely not." An aggression rattled in the back of his throat once more as he spoke, yet he continued to wear the wide mocking grin as he stared at her. "Do you know how many others are going to be at the graveyard? It's a cliché. Besides, in order to properly understand the story, you need to experience it as well. And what better way than in the very house it happened in. The very rooms that gave birth to a different death." He turned, facing the sitting room, raising both hands into the air disrupting its slumber like a reckless child.

"Okay man we get the picture. But 'gave birth to'? That's a really gross way the say someone died." The patient one pushed passed him and towards the fireplace with a heavy bag that he promptly dropped to the floor. "We can at least get some light in here." He reached into the bag and pulled out small logs of wood and a box of matches. The rest of them gathered around as the fire began to crackle and spit and begin to illuminate their youthful chubby faces. As the surroundings began to creep out from the shadows, they all looked around in awe, the flames dancing around in the white of their widened eyes. Each one paced around a different corner of the room before swapping position in an elegantly choreographed dance.