1.4 Bloody Mary: A Supernatural Fan Fiction

Prologue: Toledo, Ohio

NOW

The giggling of three teenage girls filled the dark living room, illuminated only by the several candles they had scattered on any surface they could find. Such as sleepovers typically went, they wanted to make it as scary as they could. So, naturally, candlelight was creepier than normal light from the kitchen.

"Okay, your turn," said one of the girls. "Truth or Dare?"

Another girl, named Lily Shoemaker, was the one who lived in the house. "Truth," she said, not brave enough to do a dare.

Her friend quirked an eyebrow, her mouth stretching in a mischievous smile. "Do you want to make out with Benji Swartz?"

Another girl laughed excitedly, to which Lily abruptly changed her decision. "Dare," she said quickly, pursing her lips with a warning glare at her friend.

"Okay, lame." The other girl sighed in disappointment, shaking her head. "You have to..." She considered it for a moment, then a keen light came into her eyes. "...say Bloody Mary in the bathroom."

Lily narrowed her eyes cynically. "Is that the best you can do?" she said, but she did have to admit that at the words "bloody Mary", she felt the tiniest twinge of fear.

"Who's Bloody Mary?" The other girl asked, glancing between her friends for an explanation.

"She's this witch," the first girl said, raising her chin importantly.

"I heard she was a lady killed in a car crash." Lily replied loftily.

"It doesn't matter who she is," the girl said dismissively, turning her eyes back to the other friend. "The point is, if you say her name three times in the bathroom mirror, she appears... AND SCRATCHES YOUR EYES OUT!"

The other two girls flinched away when she shouted the end, then they all giggled excitedly over the 'creepiness' of it.

"So why would anyone say it?" the innocent girl asked, dubious.

"Because it isn't real." Lily told her maturely, taking the candlestick that was sitting on the coffee table. She started towards the stairs, where the bathroom was down the hall.

"No turning on the lights," her friend reminded her. "And remember, three times." She grinned triumphantly, and Lily rolled her eyes. But whatever haughty façade she was able to put up was quickly disintegrating the closer she came to that bathroom mirror.

The door creaked open as she pushed it. Lily glanced around. It looked the same, and yet under the veil of darkness, it seemed that anything could happen. The candle's light threw jagged shadows upon the walls, and the last thing Lily wanted to do was close the door behind her. But she knew she had to. It clicked shut.

Placing candlestick on the counter beside the sink, Lily observed her face in the mirror. This was ridiculous. Then why was she so afraid?

"Bloody Mary." She said in a small voice, then shook her head. "This is so stupid."

But she couldn't stop now. It was a dare, after all. She glanced at the door, half expecting to hear the shuffling of her friends right outside it.

"Bloody Mary." Lily repeated, then a chill stole over her as the wind outside began to blow. Though there wasn't a breeze inside, the candle flickered. I should stop, Lily thought to herself. There's no point in finishing this.

She looked made eye contact with herself again. Do it, Lily urged herself, pursing her lips.

"Bloody Mary." She said, then there was the most miraculous and terrifying thing. Nothing happened. But the more nothing happened, the more Lily was waiting for something to happen, and the more the tension grew, the more Lily grew afraid.

Suddenly Lily screamed as the bathroom was filled with the sound of pounding on the door. Heart racing, Lily jerked the door open to see her friends standing, laughing.

"Scared'ya." Said her friend, poking her shoulder playfully. Lily frowned, but she couldn't help the smile that managed its way onto her face.

"You guys are jerks," she said determinedly.

"Lily?" Came her father's voice. Lily looked up to the staircase above, where he stood with an annoyed expression on his face. Darn, they must have woken him up. "You mind keeping it down?"

"Sorry, Daddy." She grimaced apologetically.

"Sorry, Mr. Shoemaker," the other girls chorused. He nodded forgivingly, returning to his room. Walking down the half-lit hallway, he shook his head. Pre-teens, he thought to himself with a sigh.

But as he passed by one of the several mirrors that lined the hallway, he didn't notice the figure standing behind him, her reflection ever-staring through curtains of dark hair. With each mirror he passed, she drew closer, always just outside the corner of his eye.

Steven Shoemaker was just getting ready to get into bed when the girls' noisiness alerted him to how much he needed to intervene. He sighed to himself as he turned to go into the bathroom to finish his nightly routine.

Taking from the medicine cabinet one of several prescription bottles, Steven closed the small door. On the back of the door was a mirror. He stared for a moment at his reflection and sighed as he popped back a few pills from the bottle. Pausing with them still disintegrating slowly on his tongue, Steven had to look again at his face.

There was a strange motion across his cheek, a sudden prevalence of his red veins beneath the skin. As he watched, they vanished again. Confused and frankly concerned, Steven leaned closer, pulling gently on the skin beneath his eye to see if anything had changed.

Downstairs, the girls had resumed their fun, forgetting the stupid, harmless dare that they'd made Lily do. They went back to their lighthearted giggling and discussing of each other's theoretical lovelives.

"You so like him!" One of the girls cried in delight. It was just then that Lily's older sister, Donna, came striding into the room.

"Hey, geek," she said playfully, beginning to climb the stairs. She stopped, leaning on the railing to smile fondly down at the younger girls. "You guys having fun?"

"You're out past curfew," Lily told her sister haughtily, but she would never tell on her over it.

"Thanks, Dad," Donna replied in the same lofty tone, then, giving her sister a look of annoyance, continued up the stairs. What she wasn't expecting to see the moment she reached the landing was the large puddle of blood expanding slowly across the hardwood floor from underneath the bathroom door. She froze, not trusting the evidence of her eyes.

That was a lot of blood. Too much blood for anyone to have survived losing.

The breath leaving her body in a long, silence gasp of terror, Donna stepped slowly forward. She hesitated at the door, arrested with fear of what she'd see. Finally she worked up the courage to push open the door.

Her trembling fingers barely had enough strength to give adequate pressure to the white wood. The bottom of the door scraped wetly through the massive pool of red fluid. The door opened wider, revealing the inside of the bathroom and what horrors lay within.

Donna screamed.