"Where is he? He said he'd be here before the cops come ," one of the strangers said.
They seem ed to not notice me. It was like I was...invisible.
"Hey, he said kill the kids too! Come on ," one of them said , stepping toward Caleb's room.
Just then , the cops came in the house and shots went off...Everything then turned white .
***
I woke in the abandoned house with Jasper standing over me. "Jasper?" I whispered.
"Violet!" he explained, looking away from me. "She's okay!" Jasper helped me to my feet and patted me on my back. "We thought we lost you."
"What happened to me?" I asked.
Jasper looked over his shoulder. "It was Violet. She told me you were in trouble."
"What?" I said looking around, expecting to see Violet. "How could she know?"
He cleared his throat
I looked behind me and there Violet was.
I walked up to her. I had it up to here with what was going on. I just wanted Caleb and I wanted him now!
"What do you know?" I asked, pointing my finger at her while walking closer to her.
"Emily..." Violet said softly.
"My brother is... He's dead! I don't know what's going on!" I yelled. I started to cry.
Jasper took my hand. "Emily. She's going to tell you everything."
Violet nodded. "Jasper, please wait outside."
***
Violet and I walked upstairs to the fourth floor. She led me inside a room full of paintings. All of the paintings were of kids, families, soldiers, and of some old people. They were... the most beautiful paintings I had ever seen.
Violet walked away to an old desk. I continued looking. There was one photo in particular that caught my attention. It was a picture of some middle aged woman. She looked so much like... my mother.Violet was now standing beside me, holding some magnify glass in her hand.
"Did you draw these?" I asked Violet.
She started to breathe really heavy as she looked at the photo. "My dad drew these." She then turned to look at me. It was like she was scared and afraid.
Mr. Harmon's old house? Violet? I should have figured it out before. This was Mr. Harmon's daughter. She nodded her head as if she knew what I was thinking.
"What... happened?" I asked her.
She took a deep breath and looked back at the photo. I stared at it too. She placed the magnifying glass on the photo. "My dad had some sort of crazy obsession with art. He preferred his art to..." She then moved the magnifying glass back and forth which revealed two real eyes of the painting. The painting had real eyes! "To be alive," she whispered.
I stared at her horrified. "You recognized the painting didn't you, Emily?"
"Is it really her?" I asked.
"Yes. Your mom knew about my dad. That's why we stopped playing together," she said.
"You remembered me? Why didn't you say anything?" I yelled.
"You weren't ready for the truth!" she yelled back.
"I wasn't ready to know that your dad is a psycho?!" I replied.
"You weren't ready to know that I'm DEAD!" she yelled.
My breathing sped up. "Dead?"
"There's no time. You can help us, Emily. You have to," she said, grabbing my shirt.
"Us?" I asked, pushing her back.
The painting we looked at earlier started to rumble. A hand reached out of it, then a leg, then the entire body. It was my mother. Her face was blue. She was almost unrecognizable! She fell to the floor, face down first. The thump of her hitting the wooden floor scared me.
"What's going on?" I screamed.
Violet ran up to me. "Emily. Go back to the mansion, find the box. It's in there somewhere. Once you find the box, come back here. Jasper will go with you. If you come back here, I promise I'll get your brother back!" she said quickly.
Just then, my mother or whatever she was now, lifted up her head and faced me. Her eyes changed rapidly, her skin wrinkled, and her teeth turned into wood. She gave me a terrifying smile that changed her entire face.
"Run!" Violet said, pushing me toward the door. "Jasper can explain more. Just go!"
As I ran down the stairs onto the first floor, I noticed something crawling on the wall. It wasn't my mom, but another woman figure. Before she could catch me, Jasper pulled me out of the door.
And we ran.
Chapter 14: Back Home Again
As we ran back toward the mansion, Jasper stopped us at one point. He placed his hands on his knees, his breathing heavy and labored.
"Okay, I think we're not being chased. They can't leave the house anyway. I hope." He looked at me, sweating and sucking up air. "I've never seen the others. The other ghost. Why can you see them?"
I looked at him then shook my head. "I'm going insane aren't I?"
He shook his head and kept walking. I followed him. "Violet was killed by Mr. Harmon. Not only Violet, but Violet's mother too."
I stopped in my tracks. A chill ran down my side. "Violet's mother is dead? Mrs. Harmon is dead?"
"Mr. Harmon has a crazy obsession with, live art. He took his obsession too far when he turned twenty. He used animals at the time. Violet says when she was three, she saw her father kill his own parents. She said she never forgot. Mr. Harmon was living with his parents while Mrs. Harmon was still in college. It was sort of a long distance relationship thing at the time." He took a deep breath after talking so fast. "Violet says he's killed more people than just his own parents, but she didn't realize until she turned fourteen and asked him about it."
"Then he killed her?" I asked, looking back.
Jasper shook his head. "Not at first. Violet said she started waking up in the morning in so much pain. First it was just her stomach and the inside of her mouth. She even woke up with a missing tooth. Eventually body parts like her fingers, toes, and patches of hair went missing but were patched up. Mr. Harmon was drugging her at night and using her body parts for his sick creations of what he calls art. When she tried to escape, he set her room on fire and watched her burn."
I nearly wanted to puke. I was living with a psycho path. A psycho path that used my brother for art. I started to cry. "We have to hurry and find this...box," I said as I started running. Jasper ran along beside me. "What is this box?"
"Um, I'm not really sure. Violet said if she had this box, she could be free to wander off wherever she wanted to. That she'd be free. But, I don't think she's sure of that. Before her father moved out, as a ghost, she saw him putting bags inside of a box after every art piece he finished."
"We could get caught!" I exclaimed. "We need to just call the cops."
"And tell them what? We have no evidence of what Mr. Harmon is doing," he said.
"Not yet," I said.
We were about three minutes walking distance away from the house. It had been five minutes since we spoke. "If we get the box and return it, I just want you to know that you can always trust Violet."
I looked at him, confused. "Why do I need to trust her?" I asked.
He smirked. "She's your friend."
I made a face like, ehhh, she's dead.
"But she's also a friend," he said as if he read my mind.
***
We were in front of the house now, hiding behind the shrubs.
"He's not home. Mrs. Harmon is," Jasper said.
"Wait how do you know?" I asked while looking at him.
"Violet told me," he said.
"When?"
"Earlier today," he said.
I stared at him. "Did you guys know this would happen? That Caleb would be killed?"
"Not until we saw you." He looked at the ground. "We didn't know your brother would die. We wanted to tell you, but if you tried to leave Mr. Harmon would kill you right then and there. Violet had a plan to get you both out safe but..." He shrugged. "We tried... I'm sorry. But Violet says she can save him. Please, just trust her."
I realized I was crying again. Jasper noticed and hugged me, c
ausing me to cry even more. "First my parents, then Caleb, now me. Why us? We don't deserve this."
He rubbed my hair. "No one deserved it, Emily."
The door to the mansion opened. It was Mrs. Harmon. I ran to her quickly. She looked at me with a shocked expression on her face.
"I told you to leave!" she yelled.
"Please. I need your help. I've talked with Violet!" I said.
"My daughter? She's alive?!" she asked.
I looked at her. Her face went from hope to hopeless.
Jasper shook his head. "She's not."
"My husband said she ran away a long time ago," Mrs. Harmon told us. Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I should have known."
"Mrs. Harmon," I said reaching for her hand. "Violet says if we find...a box...?"
Mrs. Harmon's eyes widened. She started to shake her head rapidly. "No! No! Not the box." She started to hug herself. It was so dramatic.
Jasper waved his hands in front of her face. "Hey, calm down."
"The box can't be in the wrong hands!" she yelled.
"Mr. Harmon is the wrong hands!" Jasper yelled back. "Think of your daughter!"
"I do and I am!" she yelled back at Jasper. They stared each other down for a long time.
"Jasper," I said to get his attention. I then looked back at Mrs. Harmon. "Fine... let me just say one last goodbye to Caleb before I go."
She stared at me for the longest time before nodding. "He's in his room."
Jasper and I started to walk into the mansion but she stopped us. "But Jasper stays here with me. You have seven minutes before Mr. Harmon comes back."
"But..." Jasper started.
"That's the deal!" She looked at him, then to me. "Don't go looking for the box," she said. "You won't find it."
Before I walked inside, Jasper stopped me. He leaned in toward my ear. "The secret to hide and seek is never hide where a human hides. Hide where a ghost hides. In plain sight. The box will be in plain sight," he whispered and then ran back over next to Mrs. Harmon as I opened the door and walked back inside. I closed the door behind me. Time to find this box.
Chapter 15: Let the Game Begin
Sadly, I didn't head straight for Caleb's room like Mrs. Harmon told me to. I quickly made my way to the fourth floor and into the room, Mr. Harmon's so called art room. It wasn't locked, so I just walked in. What were inside were paintings, hundreds of them. Sculptures, clay pots, colorful rainbow manikins that were positioned into strange figures of something more monstrous than human.
The more I stared at each painting and manikins, the more I saw something I didn't want to. I saw the eyes. It was like each one was staring directly at me. Each painting was somehow alive to me. It sent shivers down my back.
I had to ignore everything in the room and focus on what I really came for. This box. I started looking in dressers, behind paintings and manikins. Touching one of the manikins felt so... uncomfortable. They were so soft. They were nowhere near light in weight. It was like picking up an actually human being.
"Emily?" Caleb asked, nearly scaring me to death.
I told him to close the door quickly, but he ignored me. Instead, he walked over to me and held my hand. He pulled me outside of the door then pointed to something on the floor. There were waxed fingers that completed a square. A box made of fingers.
It was in plain sight.
This was the box. Caleb picked it up and handed it to me.
Believe me when I say the last thing I wanted to do was touch this thing, it looked so disgusting and sickening. The wax that covered it was brown and sticky. It was a bit heavy and as much as I wanted to shake it or open it, I did not. Caleb couldn't seem to stop staring at the box.
"What is this?" I asked him.
Before I could get an answer, Jasper called from downstairs.
"Emily! Come on, he'll be here soon!" he yelled.
I looked back at Caleb. "I'll be back. I promise."
He looked at me and took my hand. Tears began streaming from his eyes. "He's getting ready."
"For what?" I asked him, feeling a bit confused.
"For your last hide and seek game..." Caleb said. "Go."
There were tears in my eyes now. I quickly ran down the stairs and met up with Jasper. He dragged me behind the house and we started running toward the trees farther ahead.
"We can get back to the house this way," he said then noticed the box. "That's the box?"
"Mr. Harmon could see us from here!" I exclaimed, ignoring his question.
Jasper looked behind him. "Well," said out of breath," he hasn't got here yet."
We ran until we were no longer visible from the mansion. After fifteen minutes of walking, we managed to make it back to the abandoned house where we saw Violet sitting on the porch with Tate and Caroline. Her face lit up when she noticed us.
Jasper and I rushed over to Violet and handed her the box.
"Is this it?" Jasper asked, catching his breath.
"Yes," Violet said with a smile. "Now I can be free... I hope."
All of us watched her as she pried open the box, breaking off fingers. Some cracked, turning to dusk.
Honestly, I was a bit scared. I didn't know what was going to happen.
When the box opened and all the top of the fingers were destroyed, what lay inside the box were many different bags of dirt or sand. When I got closer I realized it wasn't sand at all. It was all ashes.
After a long moment of silence, I finally spoke out.
"You don't know which one is yours?" I asked Violet.
She gave me a smile. A smile that said, "I don't care."
I reached out for her shoulder but she backed away from me.
"Violet," I said in a calm voice. "You don't know what can happen to you if you open the wrong one."
Violet held all the bags in her hand then reached behind her pants. She pulled out a box knife of the sort then, in one long cut, all of the ashes spilled onto the porch in front of her.
"Let's hope something good." Violet then fell to the ground. Jasper went to help her but deep and load echoed moans from inside of the house startled us. The moans grew louder and there were now screams from hundreds of voices. Screams of hatred, pain, and agony. I heard men, woman, and children. Some voices didn't sound human at all.
All four of us except Violet ran off the porch. We kept our eyes on Violet, who held her chest and breathed heavily.
Violet then pushed herself off of the porch and stood up to face us. Her head slowly tilted to the side. Veins began to appear on her face, her teeth were now sharp and she had an excessive amount of teeth that I haven't seen before. She looked at us in the most frightening way.
"What happened?" Jasper yelled.
"I don't know!" I yelled. "We need to run!"
Tate screamed. When we turned to face him, looking at us were three masked children. The masks were so distorted, so terrifying.
Everything then turned dark and my hands were pulled behind my back. There was something over my head. I then heard a familiar voice behind me. Let me tell you, I was beyond confused.
"Let the game begin," Mr. Harmon said.
Chapter 16: Sixteen
I opened my eyes to see nothing but darkness. I heard sounds of people talking quietly around me. They weren't really talking, more of a mumble or whisper.
A foot kicked mine. My hands seemed to be tied up and I was about to say something but I couldn't speak. My mouth wouldn't open. I tried so hard to say something.
"Now everyone's awake... good," Mr. Harmon said.
The bag was lifted from over my head only to reveal Mr. Harmon standing in front of me with a wide smile on his face. We were in entry room of the mansion. As my eyesight shifted away from him, I saw them. One...five...eight...ten...fifteen...sixteen.
There were sixteen people sitting around me, including Jasper, Tate, Caroline, and an angry Violet. The three kids that wore the mask were also sitting down with their hands together. I saw Caleb too. The
re was the girl who crawled on the wall when Jasper and I tried to leave. There was... my mom and dad, except they looked different. There was a bullet hole in my dad's forehead and the same for my mom. Their faces were pale with thick blue veins pumping underneath their skin. There was... the old man from the abandoned house! There was the distorted woman that chased me in the garden at night. The other two, girl and a boy, I couldn't exactly make out. They were young. The more I stared at the girl, the more I recognized her. She was the girl in my dream. However, I didn't know this boy. His eyes were gone, just black sockets. He looked around Caleb's age.
I guess that wasn't the worse part. The worse part was that I now knew why my lips weren't moving. Everyone's lips had been sewn together. I was surrounded by friends, enemies, dead people, ghosts, and a psycho, and the only thing we had in common right now, besides Mr. Harmon, was that we couldn't speak.
Mr. Harmon stood in front of us. He cleared his throat. "I just wanted to say thank you, to all of you." He started to clap. "You all have made my artwork, masterpieces! Because of most of you, I'm living the dream..." He then looked directly at the old ghost man that I saw in the abandoned house. "Living the dream, my parents never supported."
Mr. Harmon then shook his head. "But I did it," he said before clearing his throat once more.
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