The lights flicker and I release the arrow. In slow motion, I watch it zip through the air and stick into the doorframe next to Betty’s left eye. Staring at the arrow in what almost looks like wild wonder, she turns to me with a malicious grin splitting her wretched face. Then, as fast as it came, the grin dies a horrible death on her cracked lips and she starts floating inside the house. Kelly screams and then there’s the sound of something puncturing a watermelon. Betty jerks to an abrupt halt. Face folding, she looks down at the curved sickle protruding from her stomach. Looking up to meet my glassy eyes, her mouth opens up wide and spiders rush out in an endless drove like rats on a sinking ship. This time when she explodes, an oil-like material splatters us and the furniture, turning us into charred looking cuts of meat.
When the flying debris clears, Richie starts crying again and Teddy is standing in the doorway with a big smile painted across his clean-shaven face. Even covered in black goo, I can tell his gray hair is neatly trimmed and someone has fixed the whole in his fence-like teeth. He must be in his eighties by now but looks younger than I can remember. His black jeans and leather coat help him to blend with the night stretching behind him. Gesturing with the gory sickle in his hands, he lifts his bushy brow. “Silver sickle,” he says, giving me a cocky wink. “And lucky for you, I quit smoking. Doc says I’d a died ten years ago if I hadn’t.”
Butterflies launch in my stomach, tickling my insides with fragile wingtips. “Teddy!” I cry, dropping to my knees and falling forward onto the floor.
Thank you for reading Scary House!
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Thank you again and whatever you do…let sleeping pennies lie.
Hidden Chapter
Es El Diablo
Saturday, November 12th, Back Then
A bell rings and the store’s heat feels all wrong against Gavin’s slick skin. After riding his bike three and a half miles under the early afternoon sun, he was hot and wished he’d worn a lighter jacket. At this rate, it was looking to be a warm winter. A portly man with thinning dark hair stared dully at him from the other end of the long, narrow shop. Watching Gavin unbutton a blue flannel coat, he chewed on a toothpick jutting from the corner of his mouth, already acting unimpressed with whatever Gavin had to sell. Passing a row of dusty TVs and radios, Gavin studied the camcorders, cameras and watches locked in the glass cabinets lighting his steps. Rings, necklaces and handguns lined the brightly lit shelves inside, laid out in perfect order. Electric guitars, rifles, and JVC receivers and CD players adorned the wood paneled walls on both sides, every square inch of shelf space occupied by Super Nintendos, Sega Genesis consoles and old Dell PCs.
Gavin couldn’t believe he was here. One week after Scotty’s funeral, this was the last place he wanted to be. He wanted to be locked in his room with his head buried in a pillow like the other days but he had to know the truth. At least a piece of it. The police didn’t believe a word they had to say about ghosts and pennies, and – despite Gavin’s protests – arrested Teddy for arson and vagrancy. In two days, Teddy would be transported from the hospital to the city jail where he would await trial. At least he would get warm meals and medical treatment for his injured hand. In the end, the coroner wrote Scotty’s death off to a rare, and highly poisonous, spider bite. The kind that don’t happen around here. But for dark reasons known only to Gavin and his friends, the house’s property was teeming with the crawling critters and the investigation was officially closed.
But Gavin’s wasn’t.
His was just beginning.
Stopping at a glass counter filled with Oakley sunglasses and Swatch watches, sweat trickled down his temples, glistening in the sunlight pouring through a southern window. His heart pounded against the camera inside his coat and he didn’t know if that was from the long bike ride or the fact that he was actually here. Gavin looked up from the case and the big man raised his bushy eyebrows at him. Dark chest hair curled out from the collar of the man’s blue button down, matching the thick mustache that almost made his bulbous nose look smaller. Swallowing dryly, Gavin was suddenly thirstier than he’d ever been in his entire life. The man followed his eyes to a sweaty cup of pop leaving wet rings on the glass cabinet between them. Picking up the Slusho! cup, he sucked on the straw and stared blankly at Gavin. Water droplets fell from the cup to the glass and a gurgling sound filled the quiet store as he vacuumed up the remaining contents. Swallowing with a satisfied sigh, he tossed the cup into a garbage can against the wall without looking.
“Help you?” he said, clearing his throat.
Gavin stared past him to the swords and double-headed axes hanging on the wall, wondering if any of them were made of pure silver. Wondering if that would even matter. Reaching inside his coat, he pulled out the Polaroid Spectra AF and set it on a thin black mat covering a portion of the glass counter. The man’s eyes widened and a high-pitched sound began coming from his nose when he breathed in and out.
His eyes jerked up to Gavin and the toothpick stopped wiggling in his mouth. “You’re that kid from the news,” he said, leaning against the glass.
Sharpening his gaze, Gavin forced his voice to come out sounding strong. “Where’d you get this camera?”
“Where did you?” he countered, holding his ground.
“From my mom on my birthday,” Gavin replied, noting a far-off glimmer in the man’s dark eyes when they returned to the camera. “Now, where’d you get it?”
The glimmer brightened. “From a regular.”
“A regular?”
The big man looked up, the edge of the glass counter digging into his belly. “I’ll give you double what she paid for it.”
“Who’s the regular?”
“Who do you think?”
Gavin looked around the shop, eyes catching on a shelf of used car stereos ripped from their dashboards. “A thief.”
Snorting, the man dug a fist into his light gray slacks and pulled out a wad of cash. “Here,” he said, undoing a rubber band and peeling off two twenties. “How’s this look?”
Gavin watched him slap the cash down, blinking against the disbelief swimming in his eyes. Dropping a fist onto the glass, he rattled a stack of china somebody recently dropped off for ten or twenty bucks. “What is it?” he yelled, looking up from the money. “You tell me!”
Leaning forward, the man spoke in a chilled whisper that reminded Gavin all too much of Betty’s soft-spoken contract. “Es el diablo. And trust me, kid, you don’t need that.” His next words squeezed through clenched teeth. “This is as high as I go,” he said, slapping down three more twenties and then a fifty.
Gavin stared hard at the cash, imagining himself snatching it up and darting outside to his bike. He wanted to leave the dreadful Polaroid here but something told him he would need it again. Something told him it would go off when Betty was near.
Seeing the indecision wavering in Gavin’s eyes, the man sighed through his bulbous nose and laid down another fifty.
Gavin looked up from the money and, for the first of many more times to come, saw Scotty standing in the doorway to the office behind the portly shop owner. A morose look pulled on his friend’s ashen face and Gavin could tell he missed his life. His family and friends. Missed being Scotty.
“You’re starting to tick me off, kid.” The man threw down another fifty and pocketed the wad of cash. “That’s it,” he said, defiantly tapping the pile of bills. “Take it or leave it.”
Gavin’s eyes drifted back to Scotty, who could only stare back in a waxy-eyed wonder. Then, like he was moving in quicksand, Scotty barely lifted a heavy arm a
nd pointed a crooked finger at the front door. That was all Gavin needed to see. Snatching the camera from the counter, the man grabbed Gavin’s wrist and pinned it to the glass.
His eyebrows rose into an expansive forehead. “Take the money because you can’t have the camera.”
Gavin’s heart jackhammered against his ribcage, turning his face a crimson shade of red. “It’s mine,” he grunted, struggling to free his hand. “Let me go!”
Refusing to budge, the man bent closer. The toothpick wiggled in the corner of his mouth like a single spider leg, the smell of cigarettes floating on his warm breath. “Not anymore,” he whispered, squeezing harder on Gavin’s wrist. A loud bang made them both jump as a double headed axe fell from the wall and stuck in the tiled flooring. Startling, the man spun around and stared down at the axe. Gavin didn’t know if the pawn shop owner could see Scotty almost smile or not and didn’t care. Taking advantage of the distraction, he pulled the camera into his coat and backed away.
Whirling, the man’s jaw dropped and the toothpick fell to the ground. “Kid!”
The bell rang over the glass front door and Gavin bumped into a guy with a mullet and a Pioneer cassette deck cradled in his arms. Shoving him aside, Gavin burst through the door and jumped on his Torker, pedaling hard for home and realizing the only thing he learned he already knew: ghosts were real and the camera was part of it. With the wind blowing his hair back, he couldn’t help but wonder how many Bettys were out there and if they all used pennies to suck the life from their prey. Or was there something else? A lost wallet or locket perhaps? Maybe a shiny lighter with a special inscription engraved into its side. Something people would go out of their way to pick up. Something they would pocket.
By the time he got back to his apartment, Gavin had all but convinced himself that the gray apparition of Scotty was nothing more than a byproduct of PTSD. After all, not only had he witnessed a murder but it could’ve just as easily been him lying in Founders Cemetery right now. Sighing, he was about to stick a key into the lock when the door barely cracked open behind him. The brass door chain stretched to its limit and Mrs. Templer’s cloudy blue eye peered out from beneath a rat’s nest of tangled white hair twisting about her face like restless snakes. The smell of chicken soup spilled from her apartment on a warm wave as she eyeballed him up and down. “Hello, Gavin,” she said, peeking out the door.
“Hi, Mrs. Templer,” he mumbled, lowering the key and trying on a smile that didn’t fit.
Something clinked inside a dryer running downstairs, sounding louder than normal in the quiet ballooning around them. “I was sorry to hear about your friend, Scotty. He was a nice boy.”
Pressing his lips into a thin line, Gavin’s solemn gaze lowered to the cat curling around her arthritic-twisted feet, remorse throttling any response.
“You and your brother have done a very brave thing for this town. Dangerous, but very brave.”
His eyes climbed the same dingy nightgown she always wore until he found her sunken eye. “Yeah, I guess.”
Glancing down the empty hallway behind him, her voice came out in a soft whisper. “Your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff.” Her only visible eye thinned into an icy slit. “Suddenly, in an instant, the Lord Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire!”
Gavin cocked his head to one side and Isaiah meowed at her feet.
Her grave features softened into a grandmotherly smile that made her look ten years younger. “Isaiah twenty-nine: five and six.”
Eyebrows lifting, Gavin nodded his indifference. “Okay.”
“You were meant for great things, Gavin Lewis,” she said gravely. “You always were.” Peering at him through tangled locks, her eye was like a blue glacier, stunning and deep, and Gavin could not look away. “But your journey has only just begun.” Tipping her chin down, she lowered her voice to an unfriendly whisper. “More will come.”
His face folded in the hallway light. “What do you mean?” he asked faintly.
Footsteps began trotting up the staircase at the other end of the hall.
Fear flashed in Mrs. Templer’s eye as if she’d said too much.
Gavin’s head swirled like the mystery coin clanking around a dryer in the laundry room downstairs. “What do you mean more will come?”
The galloping footsteps grew louder and alarm flared in Mrs. Templer’s eye, widening it to an unnatural proportion. Floating backwards into her apartment, she slammed the door shut hard enough to rattle the hallway sconces.
Gavin stepped onto her doormat – Bless This Home And All Who Enter written under his black Converse. “When will they come, Mrs. Templer?” he yelled through the closed door, hammering a fist on it. “When?”
The peephole above him soundlessly darkened. Blood pounded thickly in his temples. He banged on the door again. “Hello?” Light suddenly slipped through the peephole and Gavin listened for shuffling footsteps but heard nothing.
“What’re you doing?”
He turned to find Kelly standing right behind him. Morbid thoughts churned inside his head like a witch’s stew with pieces of this and bits of that briefly surfacing before sinking back into the bubbling muck once again. “Nothing,” he replied, stuffing his hands into his jeans. “What’re you doing?”
“I was coming to see if you and Boone wanted to go a movie with Laney and I tonight.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, the smell of cherry Kool-Aid on her red-stained lips. “You won’t regret it; I promise.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “What movie?”
“Interview with the Vampire,” she smiled, clasping her hands behind her back and twisting back and forth.
“Maybe next time,” he murmured, inserting a key into his door.
“Oh, come on, Gavin, it will help take your mind off things. Whenever I’m stressed about a test, I always watch a movie the night before and everything looks better in the morning.” She took his hand in hers. “Trust me.”
Lifting a heavy shoulder to an ear, he took his hand back and unlocked the door. “I’ll ask Boone and let you know.”
“Hey Gavin?”
Turning, he met her troubled eyes.
“Are you going to have to move?”
His shoulders sank with his chest. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe.”
Kelly stepped closer in a blur and kissed him softly on the lips, tasting of cherry and stirring a swarm of butterflies in his stomach. Drawing apart, a warm smile brightened her green eyes. “I hope not.”
He smiled back. “Me neither,” he said, opening his apartment door and going inside. Kelly’s happy skipping faded down the hallway and Gavin found his mom sitting next to a box of Kleenex on the couch in the living room.
Staring vacantly out the balcony door through watery eyes, she didn’t look his way when he entered the room.
“Mom?”
Blinking a tear out, she finally turned to him, clearly surprised by his presence.
“What’s wrong?”
Cindy sniffled and dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue. “Oh Gavin,” she said, struggling to continue.
Gavin crept closer, scanning the room for clues while gruesome scenarios bombarded his thoughts. “What happened, Mom?”
Blowing out a longwinded breath, Cindy sat up straighter and looked her son right in the eye. “Mrs. Templer died in her sleep last night, honey.”
The floor dropped out beneath him and he was free falling through a cold dark well. Scorched earth rushed past him with nothing to grab onto. “What?” he shouted.
“I went over to check on her after you left.” She shook her head, shaking more tears loose. “The ambulance just took her away a few minutes ago and Isiah won’t come out from under her bed.” Inhaling a steadying breath, she wiped at her stubborn tears and let her eyes drift out the sliding glass door again. “She was such a sweet lady. I am really going to mi
ss her.” Her glassy eyed gaze floated back to Gavin, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I know this is the last thing you want to hear after…everything that’s happened.”
Gasping, he pulled in just enough oxygen to get his message across. “But she’s not dead; I just saw her.”
“Wrong,” Boone said, strolling down the hallway with his brown hair thrown back in a ponytail and a pretty blond on his arm. “Brenna saw her too.”
“It was so horrible.” Brenna slapped a hand over a stonewashed denim jacket. “Outside of my grandpa, I’ve never seen a dead body before.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Cindy said, yanking another tissue from the box. “Both of you.”
Gavin’s eyes bounced between them “But…”
Boone stared down at his brother and pulled Brenna tighter against him. “But what?”
Sighing, Gavin shook his head. “Never mind.”
Swapping a quick look with Brenna, Boone tried to smile. “Well, I’m off to do an interview at The Rock. Be back soon.”
Gavin wrinkled his forehead. “The radio station? Why?”
“Because they’re the only ones who believe us.” He paused. “And they’re giving me front row tickets to Metallica.”
Brenna smiled. “It’s going to be so amazing!” Turning to Boone, her smile faded into a grave look. “I can’t believe you’re almost famous now.”
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