Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology)

by Larsen, Christian A.

  He tore the earbuds out of her ears and startled her. “If you didn’t have these stupid things jammed into your ears, you’d hear me when I call you.” He picked up her iPod and threw it across the room, shattering it.

  Rayne stood up and got in her father’s face. “The whole point is not to hear you.”

  Her father struck her. The force was so hard that she fell backward onto her bed. “Don’t you ever fucking talk to me like that! Do I make myself clear?”

  “Go have another drink, Dad. Get the hell away from me. God, I wish you were dead.”

  She wiped the blood from her nose and stormed out of her room. Her father stumbled out the door after her. Just as she was about to reach the staircase, her father grabbed hold of her shoulder. She jerked away from him, ran down the stairs and out the door.

  * * *

  Lindsay was practicing her violin when Rayne walked into her room. She could tell by the look and the dried blood on her face that Rayne had another fight with her father. No words needed to be exchanged. Lindsay knew all too well what Rayne’s home life was like. Lindsay’s cell phone went off and when she looked, Molly was calling her. “What’s up, Molly?”

  “Bailey never went home. Her parents called. She hasn’t been home since she left for the sleepover. That was two days ago. She’s missing.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No! She’s been missing since the whole Ouija board thing. What do we do? Her parents called the police. They want to talk to us.”

  “We have nothing to say.”

  “Really? Because telling them we contacted an evil spirit after a ritual, and then all of a sudden Bailey goes missing won’t go over very well.”

  “Then shut the hell up about it.

  “We should have called the police.”

  “We assumed that she went home and just wasn’t talking to us.”

  “They want all of us to go down the police station and answer some questions. We’re going to get in trouble now, aren’t we?”

  “Listen, Molly. Keep your cool. We had a sleepover, and she left. It’s simple enough. Nothing else needs to be said.”

  Lindsay hung up the phone and turned to Rayne. “Bailey never went home.”

  “I hope you are not implying what I think you are.”

  “I’m not implying anything. I am simply stating that Bailey was last seen at your house. Now, she’s missing.”

  “We were all together. None of us saw anything.”

  “The police want to speak to us.”

  “We have nothing to hide. We were having a sleepover. That’s all!”

  * * *

  “So, let me get this straight. The four of you were having a slumber party, outside, and you didn’t notice your friend go missing?”

  The girls sat side-by-side in the small room. The bright florescent lights buzzed overhead. No one spoke.

  The detective shook his head in frustration. “It’s just a few simple questions, ladies. Don’t you want us to find your friend and bring her home safely?”

  “Of course we do!” Molly cried out.

  Lindsay and Rayne shot her a nasty look for talking.

  Molly shrugged her shoulders. “What? I am sorry.” She looked up at the detective. “We were using a Ouija board and it frightened her. We assumed she went home.”

  “Yet, she left behind her belongings. None of you found that a little strange? Is it possible that you were doing something that may have gotten out of hand and hurt her by accident?”

  “No!” all three girls cried out in unison.

  The door opened and Lindsay’s father stormed in the room. “Don’t say anything else, girls. You are through here.” He turned to the detective and grinned. “Your questioning is over. They are minors, and they are afraid. They are concerned for their friend’s whereabouts. Accusing them of harming their friend is completely unacceptable.”

  The girls stood up and walked out of the room with Lindsay’s father. They stood outside of the police station and huddled into a corner.

  Molly began to cry. “Do you think we had something to do with her disappearance?”

  “How?” Rayne asked.

  “We were messing around with things that should not be messed with. We called forward an unknown evil.”

  “Do you hear yourself? Do you know what you sound like?”

  “Well, what else could have happened? She wouldn’t run away.”

  Lindsay’s father approached them. “Girls, everything is taken care of. They are going to sweep the woods behind Rayne’s house. Before anyone can speculate what happened to her, they need to find her. I suggest that you girls go about your regular routines and don’t worry about the police. Come on, Lindsay. We need to get going.”

  Lindsay waved goodbye to her friends as she got into her father’s car.

  Rayne shrugged at Molly. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going home,” Molly responded as she walked down the sidewalk.

  Rayne wondered if there were a possibility that one of them hadn’t made the Ouija planchette move; maybe it had moved on its own. Maybe Molly was right all along and they brought something unspeakable into their world.

  Rayne hesitated about going home. She knew her father would be loaded by the time she got there. Things with him were getting worse each day and the alcohol turned him into a monster. He resented her for being born and always told her it should have been her to die, not her mother.

  She quietly opened the door and listened; he was snoring on the couch. Sneaking past him, she tiptoed to her bedroom and slid the door closed. She pushed her bureau in front of the door to keep her father from coming in her room, using her like a punching bag.

  She awoke to the sound of scratching. Opening her eyes, she looked around. In the corner, she spotted someone standing there. She pulled herself up in her bed and huddled behind a pillow. The figure stepped closer to her and Rayne gasped.

  Bailey stood before her, but her skin was gray in color and her hair was stringy. Her face was distorted and ashen. She took a step closer, but Rayne noticed that her feet never left the floor as she moved. Bailey opened her mouth and a putrid odor escaped. An ear-piercing screech nearly shattered Rayne’s ears. This wasn’t Bailey; this was something else.

  “B-B-Bailey,” she called out.

  Bailey’s head fell to the side, and that’s when Rayne noticed Bailey’s eyes were no longer blue. They were black orbs of darkness. In the blink of an eye, Bailey was in Rayne’s face, snarling at her as black excretion spewed from her mouth. Then, she was gone.

  Rayne fell out of bed and looked for her phone. Her hands trembled as she called Lindsay. No answer. She dialed again.

  Lindsay finally answered. “What, Rayne?”

  “Please, Lindsay…please…Bailey…”

  “What about her, Rayne?”

  “We did something to her. She’s not Bailey.”

  “You must have had a bad dream.”

  “No!” Rayne shouted. “She was just in my room, and she’s something else. Please Lindsay…please help?”

  Then, she heard her father scream. Rayne dropped the phone on the floor and walked to her door.

  “Rayne? Rayne, what was that scream? Rayne, I’m calling the police.”

  Rayne ignored the phone. She carefully slid the bureau out of the way and quietly opened the door. She clung to the wall as she made her way down the hall. The screaming stopped. She slipped on something on the stairs and fell down to the bottom.

  When she reached up and tried to flip on the light, it wouldn’t turn on. She placed her hand on the wall to find her way through the dark. Instead, she touched something wet. She wiped it on her pajama bottoms and walked farther into the room. Her bare feet slipped on something slimy and it sent her sliding across the wood floor. She fell to the ground and found herself surrounded by a thick sticky fluid.

  Blue flashes of lights illuminated the room. With each flashing strobe of light, Rayn
e was able to see. Bailey stood mere feet away from her. Blood dripped from her mouth and down her chin. Rayne noticed that her teeth were serrated like little daggers. Rayne looked in Bailey’s hand and saw something dangle. As she focused in on the object, she realized it was her father’s head. His eyes were open and staring at her in an accusatory expression. Rayne screamed.

  The front door was kicked open and light suddenly filled the room. Rayne was covered in blood. The liquid that she had slipped in was her father’s blood. Bailey hovered, sneering at her. A picture landed on Rayne’s chest. It was the same picture that Rayne threw in the fire. The ends were slightly scorched. It was the one where she wished she’d seek justice for what her father had done to her. This wasn’t what she meant by it. Her world began to turn fuzzy, and the room began to spin as she fell into darkness.

  When Rayne opened her eyes, she was handcuffed to a hospital bed, and there was a police officer in her room. When he noticed her stir awake, he called out to someone.

  The detective from earlier entered. “Well, you finally grace us with your presence.” He pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and grabbed a little black notebook.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened to you tonight? Why did you dismember your father?”

  Rayne opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “I will ask you again. What happened this evening? What happened to your friend Bailey? Did the two of you fight and you killed her?”

  “No!” Rayne cried out. “Didn’t you see her? She was in my house. Only, she wasn’t Bailey. She’s something else.”

  “You want me to believe that your friend, who vanished the other night, did something to your father?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but yes. You have to believe me.”

  Another officer entered the room. “Excuse me, Rick, but you’re going to want to hear this. One of the other girls was found dead.”

  “Really?” the detective answered as he looked back at Rayne. “Is there something else that you’d like to tell me?”

  “Wh-who is it?” Rayne stuttered.

  “Lindsay Randall,” the officer answered.

  * * *

  Lindsay paced her living room floor, and she couldn’t concentrate. She knew something horrible happened to Rayne, she just knew it. That scream would haunt her forever. She hoped she wasn’t too late getting the police there. Something horrible happened at their sleepover; they crossed lines that should never be crossed. She, too, had felt the strange shift that happened. She hoped it was Rayne who was pushing the planchette around the Ouija board, but she knew they connected with something otherworldly. There is no other excuse for what happened to Bailey.

  The sound of running water broke her concentration. She stopped pacing and listened to the bath running in the other room. Both of her parents were sound asleep. Then, she heard the soft sound of violins playing. She slowly made her way down the hall, following the sounds. She gently pushed open the bathroom door and reached her hand along the wall to find the switch. When she flipped the light on, the bulb exploded over her head. Lindsay yelped.

  She looked at the tub as it overflowed. “What the hell?” She hurried over and turned the water off. As she reached in to pull the stopper out of the drain, a hand reached up and pulled her underwater. The water surrounded her, and she could feel it entering her lungs. She fought to find the side of the tub, but she couldn’t reach.

  Finally, she grasped something. She tried to pull herself up, but felt an instant heat burn her wrist. Her grip let go, and she fell back under the water. It began to blur her eyesight. She felt an overwhelming pain run through her arm.

  Through the rose-colored water, she could see Bailey hovering over her. Only this wasn’t her Bailey. It wasn’t the Bailey she had grown up with and had countless sleepovers with: this Bailey was something else.

  Lindsay fought to get out of the water, but couldn’t grasp anything to pull herself up. She felt something tighten around her throat, and an intense pain took hold of her. Her body was being lifted from the tub, and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to reach up to fight to free her throat, but when she looked at her hand, there was nothing but a bloody stump. When she looked at the bathroom floor, she saw her hand. It was her violin playing hand. In that moment, she knew it was the end. Her last images were of her parents sleeping on the opposite side of the house, unaware of what was happening. As her world darkened, she mouthed to Bailey, “I’m sorry!”

  * * *

  The coroner took the body away while Rick leaned over the bathtub, deep in thought. “Do you think that a teenage girl could have possibly done this?”

  The detective stood up and took off his surgical gloves. “Honestly? No.” He walked out of the room and over to the grieving parents. “So, you heard nothing? No scuffle? No cries for help?”

  “No,” Lindsay’s father said. “Our room is on the opposite side of the house. I cannot believe this happened right under our noses.” He wrapped his arm around his wife and pulled her close.

  “We’ll see that everything is cleaned up for you. Are you sure that you saw your daughter this evening? You can account to the fact that she was here at 10:00p.m.

  “Yes! I went in and said goodnight to her. She told me that she was going to practice her violin for a while. She has an audition for Julliard coming up.”

  “I’m terribly sorry for your loss tonight, folks. We will do everything in our power to find who did this to her.”

  He turned to walk away when he noticed Lindsay’s violin resting against the wall. As he glanced closer, he noticed one of the strings was missing. Whoever did this, had to be strong enough to cut flesh with a single violin string. Things weren’t adding up. He thought back to Rayne and her crazy ramblings about her friend, Bailey.

  “Detective?” a fellow officer called out. “We just received another phone call, sir. You might want to brace yourself. It was the other young lady. Molly. Her remains were found in her parent’s backyard.”

  “Her remains…?” He shuddered. “Do I dare ask what that means?”

  “She was burned, sir.”

  “How is this even possible? How is it that these girls are being killed at approximately the same time?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Call it in. I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  Molly looked out her bedroom window, and hoped Bailey was all right. They were best friends and all of them had been since pre-school. No matter what happened in their lives or what other friends they made, they always found time for one another. Sure, lately, Lindsay and Rayne kind of went their own way. They were busy with guys and sports, but Bailey was always there. She knew that night at the sleepover tampering with dark magick was a bad thing. She knew better. They all did, but she let Rayne push her into doing it. It was their fault that Bailey was gone. She could be out there anywhere.

  She picked up her cell phone and checked it because she hadn’t heard from Rayne or Lindsay since the police station. After the day they had, she figured they were asleep. She tried sending them a text, but there was no response. “So be it. I guess you’re mad at me. Great! All I ever wanted was for us to stay as close as we were in seventh grade. Back before guys, work, sports, and parties. Is that too much to ask for?”

  She placed her phone back on her bed as a flicker of light from the window caught her eye. She hurried to the window and noticed her family’s fire-pit burning. The flames looked a little unsteady and out of control. Molly looked at her clock. It was 12:30a.m. There is no way her parents were having a bonfire at this hour. Besides, her father was always so careful about letting the flames get out of control. Then, she spotted someone standing on the opposite side of the fire. The flames obstructed her view, but she recognized the long blonde hair. “Bailey!”

  Molly ran out of her room and down the hall. She opened the back door and ran out into her backyard.

  “Bailey! Oh my God
! You are alive!” She ran up to the fire and stopped short. One look at Bailey and she instantly knew that it was not her best friend. “Bailey, what is wrong with you?”

  Bailey didn’t move. She stared straight through Molly. In her hands, Bailey held four woven bracelets. Molly gasped. They were the bracelets the girls made to represent their friendship. She also noticed that all of them were bloody, except for hers.

  “Bailey, where have you been?” She said anything to get Bailey to snap out of wherever she was. “How did you get our bracelets? How did you get mine? I burned…” She didn’t finish her sentence. Instantly, she knew what was happening. They did unleash something that night. They made an offering to a demon, and the demon was there to collect.

  Before Molly could react, Bailey flashed behind her. She stood inches from Molly’s face. When she opened her putrid mouth, flames spewed out and consumed Molly. Molly felt her skin burn, and she could smell the scent of charred flesh. The pain was far too intense for her to handle and she knew it was the end. She fell to her knees and prayed for the first time in her life. She didn’t pray for herself; she prayed for the soul of her best friend, Bailey.

  * * *

  Rick walked the perimeter of the back yard. “You are telling me that a teenage girl was burned here?” He pointed to a spot on the ground where the grass was charred. “Yet, the fire pit is over there, and there is absolutely no sign of a fire being burned.”

  The crime scene investigator nodded her head. “I have no explanation for it. I’ve read cases of spontaneous combustion, but I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years working for the lab. I have no explanation for you, Rick. It’s unheard of. There are no signs of an accelerant being used, and there is no evidence of anyone else being out here with her. The only footprints are the girl’s footprints.”

  The detective walked around the fire pit, examining it. Something inside caught his eye: a handmade bracelet with Molly’s name on it. He picked it up and ran his fingers over it. It felt warm to the touch. He looked back down and noticed a long metal string, a violin string, nestled inside the fire-pit. He reached in and retrieved it. Fresh blood stained it. When he looked one last time, he spotted the charred remains of a photograph. He held it in his hands and glanced at the image. It was Rayne and her father.