Rona Vaselaar

It took me several long moments to open eyes that I didn’t remember closing and turn them towards the direction of the voice. It was still dark in the room – much darker than should have been possible, given that it was still the middle of the afternoon – and very little was visible. And yet there, in the corner of the room, I saw a shadow, just a touch blacker than the rest of the darkness around it, reaching for my mother.

Of course, what person in their right mind would let her put them through such pain year after year after year? My idea was interesting, but totally impractical, given that tiny little problem. So I let it go, for the time being, and life continued on as usual.

The beast was huge, looming. I couldn’t see Mr. Wilson beyond it, but I certainly heard him scream. I heard the gun fire as he tried to kill it.

Not only are there more creatures like Pip and Jo, but those creatures are living in our hometown. Outside. Completely free.

And they might not be as kind as our guardians.

To the untrained eye, she didn’t look dead. She looked very much alive, in fact, but even the most oblivious of persons would be able to tell that she was… different. I could feel it as she stared at me, her eyes unblinking.

On impulse, I threw the notebook in the trash bag and began to drag it out of the shed. That journal was a joke gone wrong and I felt that nobody really needed to see it. Spencer would probably prefer it if I threw it out, anyway.

So, in the dark of the night, I chose a fate for both Alessandra and myself, and prayed to whatever could hear me that I would escape this ordeal alive.

Mom and I were so excited to begin renovations that we didn’t even stop to think about how our library guardian would feel. We just assumed that it wouldn’t even notice, what with being stuck in the basement all the time.

After about three weeks, I’d decided that, yes, there was a ghost, and I was beginning to understand its preferences.

Witch? Honey, that doesn’t even begin to cover what I’m capable of.

Her hand was shaking around the dry martini that she’d ordered, she whispered to herself at odd intervals, and, most worrying, the left side of her face was graced by a dark purple bruise.

My heart began to pound in my chest as my stomach burned with the stress of the situation. Oh, God. We were going to have to get through those rusted blades, shimmy out of the crawlspace… all before the creature saw us.

Molly didn’t much care for ink or piercings, but she did have one tattoo. A small one, and it was almost never visible. It was on her back, just a few inches below her neck. A tiny keyhole, no embellishments, no nothing.

Growing up, it hung as a shadow over my head. Mostly because my parents were always afraid that it was going to happen to me, or my little brother, Max. Of course, with my morose disposition and general introversion, I suppose I was the greater concern.

If you had three wishes, what would you choose? What wishes would be worth the price of your soul?

“What happened. At Lilac House?” I repeated, a bit of anger beginning to creep into my words.

She sighed as she settled in the chair across from me.

“Do you really want to know?” She asked.

I wasn’t sure, but I nodded anyway.

For years, I slept on bloody sheets once every month, with ghostly white one covering the single window in my room every night. At first, I thought of it as something I had to do, simply because my mother said it was best for me.

See, I wanted to see which party’s members were the best. Most honorable, most compassionate, most intelligent… the whole shebang. And I could think of only one way to determine the moral fiber of each.