by Rachel Renee
Copyright © 2019 Rachel Renee/Rachel Morgenthal
All Rights Reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design by: Alora Kate with Color Kraze
Formatted by: Kiersten Modglin
Editing and Proofreading by: Audrey Bobak and Tiffany Lynne with Gray Publishing Services
Contents
ABOUT CRIMSON FALLS
1950
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
THE CRIMSON FALLS NOVELLA SERIES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY RACHEL RENEE
To my readers who have stuck with me thus far—thank you!
To those just joining us—buckle up and enjoy the ride!
ABOUT CRIMSON FALLS
The worst place to be in early October is the town of Crimson Falls.
In the late 1800’s, two brothers stumbled upon an unnamed village, surrounded by thick forest and fresh water to keep them protected and alive. The brothers were cruel men who wanted a home to call their own. In their darkest hour, the brothers slaughtered the villagers, dumping their bodies over the waterfall at the edge of town. People say the water ran red for weeks, giving the town its terrible name.
Ever since that horrible anniversary, Crimson Falls is haunted by its past with a present filled with violence and danger. Every October is filled with fear...and for good reason. On October 13th, the dreaded Founders Day, all the town’s crime comes to a head. And by the 14th, fewer will be alive than before.
Crimson Falls is a fictional town, created and shared by 8 mystery, suspense, and thriller authors. Each novella paints a picture about life in Crimson Falls and the insanity that takes place leading up to Founders Day.
Do you dare to read them all?
1950
PROLOGUE
Ella awoke, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Unsure of what stirred her, other than the chill in the air, she snuggled back into her blanket a little more. The only noise at the moment was her sister Samantha’s ragged breathing from the other bed. Ella stared into the night, her eyes closing to the sight of the moonlight that shone through the crack in the curtains. The girl was drifting back into slumber when a strange grunt from somewhere in the room broke the stillness. Ella was too scared to do anything other than pull her blanket tighter to her neck, roll over facing the wall, and keep her eyes shut.
A slight breeze passed over Ella reminding her of earlier in the day when she waited outside for her sister so they could walk into town to see their mother at the general store she worked in. The girls’ breath was evident the second they walked through the large wooden front door of the house Grandpa had built for his one true love, Granny. Samantha decided to go back in to get a sweater for Ella, who started shivering the moment her foot hit the pavement.
“Just wait right here, I’ll run back inside.”
Ella watched as her sister climbed the five stairs, walked the five steps to the front door, her hand out waiting for the polished golden handle to reach it. She caught a flicker of something out of the corner of her eye and she turned before Samantha entered the home. This October had cooled down so quickly. September ended and so did the warm weather. The trees were already completely turned to the oranges and reds of later in the month. The dew of the morning was glistening off of them in the sunlight.
“I told you to get out of here,” Ella heard Granny shout, bringing her back into the moment. Samantha must have said something but Ella couldn’t decipher the words. Granny had a retort, as she did anytime Samantha made a peep. “You don’t need a sweater. What you need is your momma and she’s at that damn store. Get on out of here.”
Granny insisted that the girls go see their mother every day; even in the rain and snow, and especially if Samantha had homework. Granny wouldn’t help Samantha, would not even look at her school work. It would be too late by the time Momma got home, since the girls were supposed to be in bed, so if Samantha needed help, she had no other choice. Plus, during the school year it was really the only time they got to spend with her. Most mommas didn’t work, but Ella’s momma didn’t have a choice. The year she was born, Ella’s daddy died and it left her momma with a family to support.
Grandpa wasn’t around either, in fact, Ella never got to meet him. Samantha did once, but she wasn’t even one yet, so she didn’t remember him at all. Granny showed the girls pictures of him from when he was in the service. He was handsome, or at least, that was what Ella believed because that was what her grandmother had always told her. “All the girls in town wanted to date him, but he only had eyes for me.” That’s the only time Ella’s grandmother smiled. The fondness of times past brought her happiness, but as quickly as the moment came, it would pass and the sullen, angry Granny would return, shouting at the girls to get outside.
“Why are you always under foot? Get out of here!” She would shout at Samantha and Ella, who hadn’t been making a peep while they looked over the black and whites. They would stand and march as quickly as they could, over the creaky floors, and right through the always open front door.
Granny, as Ella and Samantha called her, which she hated, wasn’t fond of taking care of the girls and cared even less of the moniker they insisted on donning her with. Still, her son had died, his wife widowed with a five-year-old and newborn and nowhere else to go. Since a single woman could not afford a house on a cashier’s salary, their home was sold, forcing Elizabeth, Samantha, and Ella to move in permanently with their grandmother. Granny invited them to stay thinking they would leave soon after and travel south where Elizabeth was from, but here it was, almost five years later, and the crew of little women still slept in her home.
Ella’s breath was white in the darkness as she dared to open her eyes to the loud coughing noise that had startled her back into consciousness. “Sam, are you alright?”
The noise she made was more like a grunt than anything else and then the coughing that jolted her moments ago forced Ella to turn in her bed and peer over at her sister. “Want me to get Momma?”
The noise was choked, her words coming out like something was catching them in her throat and only letting pieces escape. “Was that a yes?” Ella began to sit up in bed, looking out over the room toward the grunts and groans coming from the other bed. Is she just dreaming? Ella pondered to herself.
Granny refused to keep the fire burning all night and the heat was set low because the winter months had not yet set in and she didn’t want to waste the firewood or electricity. So, when Ella sneaked her foot from under the covers, the frosty air almost caused it to go right back in its warm home. If there hadn’t been a squeal from her sister at that moment, she would have burrowed back in tight, assuming that the noises she heard were from her dreaming sister.
In the darkness of night, Ella watched as Samantha sat bolt upright in bed. It looked as though her hands were grasping her throat but in the blackened room, it was really hard to tell what was what. Pulling the quilt up over her shoulders, Ella moved from the spot in her bed, her feet hitting the frigid wood floor, one right af
ter the other.
“Sam, you want me to get Momma?” She asked once more.
The garbled noises weren’t registering in Ella’s tired brain, so she walked over to her sister, careful not to trip on the blanket that was shielding her body from the cold. Reaching the bed, Ella’s right hand shot out of the covers, going straight for her sister. “Wake up! Why are you making all those noises?” The moment her hand felt the heat radiating off her sister’s skin, she realized something was definitely wrong.
“Sam. I’m going to get Mom.”
“Hooooehehllllp,” Samantha coughed out.
Ella turned on her heels, heading toward the shadow of the bedroom door. “Momma,” she yelled out as her foot slipped on the hanging blanket, her hand grasping for the handle but missing as her knees collided with the hard surface below. She whimpered, standing and rubbing the spot that now throbbed under the surface of her skin. “Momma,” she yelled once again, turning the knob and opening the door.
“What’s all that yelling about?” Granny was the first to respond to the girl shouting in the hallway. “Get back to bed.”
“What’s going on?” The door at the end of the hall opened wide, and a figure clad in white appeared through the blackness. “Ella, what’s wrong?”
“Momma,” she said once more. “Samantha,” she managed to get out as her grandmother grabbed ahold of the quilt. “Samantha needs you,” she finished.
“Now, you just go on back to bed, Elizabeth. I’ll make sure Ella gets back to sleep. You need your rest.”
“Mother, I…”
“No, go back to your room.” Ella always thought it was weird that Granny treated her momma like she was still a child herself. As much as Granny didn’t want to be around Ella and Samantha, she doted on Elizabeth. Well, on the occasions she was home and the girls could witness it. It was almost as if Granny wanted them to see how good life could be if they would just behave.
Momma was not behaving tonight though. “It’s okay, Mother. I want to settle them in. I miss the moment so often.” Even in the moonlight, Ella could see her mother’s lips turn up as she placed a gentle hand on Granny’s clenched fist. The hold Granny had on Ella’s quilt was loosened and her words became gentle.
“Well, then, I’ll let you…”
The roar from the bedroom stopped the three in their tracks. Only momentarily because the next noise, the thud on the floor, reverberated through the hall. Momma and Granny both let go of Ella and raced in the direction of the girls’ open bedroom door.
Light flooded the hallway where Ella was still standing, staring into the emptiness. Samantha must have fallen out of bed. Ella’s feet moved slowly toward the shouts from the room. Whatever was going on in there, it had her momma and granny in a tizzy.
“Samantha, let me help you. Gladys, she’s got a fever.”
“That’s more than a fever. We’ve got to cool her down.”
Many feet were scurrying across the floor, squeaks and clops barely covering the rumbled noises coming from Samantha’s throat.
“Look at her lips, she can’t breathe.” Ella heard those words as her eyes opened wide to the sight of her sister sitting atop the yellow quilt thrown haphazardly across the twin bed. Her lips were blue, or purple, it was hard to make out the exact shade from the distance. Ella, even at five, knew that wasn’t the color her lips were supposed to be.
“Ella, call Dr. Phillips. Hurry,” her momma screamed. The little girls eyes were transfixed on her older sister, watching as the area around her mouth turned a gray color and began spreading out toward the remainder of the pink, mottled skin of her sister’s face. “Ella!” The name shouted again. This time awakening the girl to her sister’s plight.
Ella turned, dropped the quilt, and ran to the stairs, down to the first floor and the black device used for making phone calls. Ella didn’t get to use the phone, but her grandmother had taught both her and her sister the numbers to call if there was an emergency. If they were telling her to call Dr. Phillips then this must be an emergency.
Ella’s fingers slid around the circle of numbers seven times before there was another sound across the line. As she stood there waiting for the call to go through, her hand began moving toward her opposite arm, her fingers scratching at the exposed skin her nightgown no longer covered. A red bump had appeared out of nowhere and Ella’s head had bent down to examine it when Dr. Phillips finally answered. Within seconds, the line was silent once more, Ella placing the device in its cradle before running to the front door to remove the chain that kept the family locked safely inside. When Ella turned to race back toward the stairs, the paper calendar that hung above the phone flipped up in the gust of wind that had come from her hurried motion. October thirteenth. The date that Granny was always so focused on every year was peering out from under the giant twelve on the paper before it. Ella reached out to rip the top white paper from its glued surrounding, revealing that the new day had begun. It was the one job Granny allowed Ella to do in the home. Tear the calendar days each morning so that the new date was visible for everyone to see.
As the white paper dropped to the wastebasket below the small desk, Ella noticed more red dots covering the backside of her hand. She paused, looking to the other, the one not so noticeable in the shadows but itching just the same. Both hands, up her wrists and probably under her nightgown were covered in the spots that were beginning to itch, her fingers instinctively scratching at the sensation, trying to appease it as she trudged back up the stairs toward the ungodly noises arising from her bedroom.
“Samantha. Samantha, no!” Momma was crying, bent over Samantha who was sprawled out over the floor now. Her blonde hair laying this way and that, the only thing Ella could see because her momma was blocking the view of her sister’s face.
Granny peered up, her eyes glassy. “Is he on his way?”
“Yes, Granny. He said he would be here as soon as possible.”
“Go wait downstairs for him,” she answered with a tilt of her head back toward the way Ella had just come from.
“Is Samantha okay?”
“Go, now,” Granny shouted, nearly standing to her feet to swat at the girl, her hand flailing in her direction.
Ella couldn’t move, her feet firmly planted just inside the door. Her mother’s sobs drew her in and held her captive in the room. Granny was so focused on Elizabeth that she didn’t realize Ella was still standing in the doorway, her fingers moving frantically over the marked-up skin on her hands and arms. She stood there listening to her mother cry and her grandmother whisper inaudible words over hushed breaths while stroking the hair of her daughter-in-law.
“I told you not to stay,” Ella heard.
“I don’t believe in that curse.”
“Well, you should. Especially now.”
“She’s just caught a cold. There’s something going around.”
“She hasn’t caught a cold. She’s dead, Elizabeth.”
“No, you’re wrong,” her mother shouted. “She’s sick. Dr. Phillips will give her some medicine and she’ll be as good as new.”
“Her heart is no longer beating, her breathing has stopped. I don’t think even old Doc Phillips is going to be able to do anything about that.”
Ella’s momma grabbed ahold of her grandmother’s wrinkled hand, pulling it toward her sister’s still chest. “You’re wrong, it’s still beating.”
Ella’s feet glided slowly over the floor until she was standing just above her mother and grandmother’s hunched bodies. The two women were so focused they never realized she had come up behind them.
Ella watched as her grandmother moved her hand slowly over Samantha’s chest, her blue nightgown stretching as the fingers and palm pressed harder, trying to find what Ella’s mother had told her was there. “I’m sorry, Lizzy, I’m sorry,” she whispered, kissing Ella’s mother sweetly on the temple.
“Why? Why are you sorry? Is this your fault? Did you do something to make Samantha sick?”
&
nbsp; “It’s what I didn’t do. I should have made you leave when Daniel died. I should have forced the issue. Sent you back to Georgia, where you came from.”
Momma sobbed, laying her head upon Samantha’s chest. There was no pink left among the gray and purple splotches covering Ella’s sister’s once unblemished face. The girl thought Samantha kind of looked like her dolly, lying there so still, her eyes unblinking, her mouth stretched wide as if stuck in that moment right before you scream out. Ella’s dolly was that way. She used to have a pacifier, but it was lost somewhere and now the doll just had an open gap where the object was supposed to go.
Her sister, the one who walked with her to school and to visit her momma at the store, who played games with her and read her stories before bed, was not moving. Ella thought that if she bent over and grabbed her hand, she’d be able to pull her up and Samantha would turn her head, the red-lipped smile she always had for her baby sister would be upon her lips once more, and this terrible dream would be over.
Fingers outstretched, barely brushing the knuckles of her sister’s mottled skin when she was pushed backward, jerked out of the grasp of Samantha. “I said go downstairs. You don’t want this to be your fate too.” Her grandmother’s eyes widened as she took in the sight of the blemished skin her youngest granddaughter had protruding from her night clothes, covering her face and hands. “It might already be too late.” Granny’s shoulder nudged Ella’s momma, who turned, her jaw dropping immediately and eyes bugged out at the little girl fervently scratching at the pox growing rapidly over her body.
“NOOOOOOOO,” Elizabeth screeched, reaching out for the girl. Only her hand never made it to her daughter before it was jerked away and Ella was pushed out of reach and sight of her mother and sister. A pain shot through Ella’s head, so sharp that she was blinded, her feet fumbling to find hold to the ground as blackness took over once more and the night had come once again to little Ella Dupont.