The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) (3 page)

But the room they were in seemed to be growing darker, like an ink stain seeping outward.

For just a moment, she thought she heard her sister’s voice, and it scared the hell out of her.

Lizzie? You okay?

Ronnie?
She felt as if she were talking to herself in her mind.

“Where’s the door?” Lizzie asked the darkness.

“Huh?” Alex said.

“Is it behind you? Is that where we came from?”

“Maybe.”

“Check.”

“Okay. Okay. Hold your horses. Okay... Nope, no door here.”

“Quiet. Shh. Just for a second,” she said. She wasn’t so scared that she trembled, but something in her mind had just begun thinking irrational thoughts about where they were and the stories about the house and about the kinds of people who had lived there in the past and what had happened to them. Within seconds, she had to swallow a sense of panic that seemed nearly natural to her—as if her body had decided that fear was its only response to this dark place.

And then she heard breathing.

Not Alex, not his wheezy breathing when he was trying to keep quiet. She held her breath to make sure it wasn’t from her own nostrils.

Someone else was in the darkness with them.

She felt someone’s breath on the back of her neck.

She froze, and was about to move toward Alex, but when she reached forward to touch him, he wasn’t there.

“Alex?” she whispered, and realized it came out as a whimper. She felt a cool sweat break out on her forehead.
“Alex?”

She reached around in the darkness, feeling as if she were completely blind. It was as if all light in existence had been doused, or as if she could not open her eyes at all, as if they’d been glued shut.

Her fingers touched something.

Just the tips—touched what felt like warm flesh.

Instinctively, she stepped forward, although part of her wanted to recoil from whomever this was.

Alex? Alex? Is it you? Please God, let it be Alex.

Her hands wrapped around arms. His arms. She was sure it was Alex.

“Alex,” she whispered, wanting to scold him for scaring her in the dark.

She felt him,
thank God,
she felt him and he never felt so good. She leaned into him to hug him close to her, but he was wet all over and smelled coppery and dirty. As she felt his wetness clinging to her, she began to realize that the thick liquid on him was blood. AH the horror movies he and the guy in the backseat had been talking about the whole damn trip suddenly came at her in a rush of images she wished she could forget. She let out a scream and would not stop screaming until somebody turned on the lights.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see.

4

The guy who had been sitting in the backseat of the car the whole way was seventeen years old and was named Sam Pratt. He was chunky, with thick black hair that barely concealed a scar across his forehead from an accident he’d had when he was about four. He had a tongue-piercing and three piercings in his left ear. He had dreamed since nearly his birth that he would one day get out of Watch Point and head for New York City. He had applied to NYU for college, and he was hoping that would get him out soon enough. He tended to wear black, and although he didn’t consider himself a “goth” by any stretch of the imagination, he knew that others at school thought he was. Many of them were sure he was into some mystical mumbo-jumbo and weirdo pursuits and that he might be one step away from going all Columbine. But in fact, he was just a fan of horror movies and rock music and couldn’t really help being who he was—any more than Lizzie could help being a cheerleader and Alex could help being a pseudo-jock who cheated on his history tests.

And despite his sometimes off-putting exterior, Sam had been thrilled to think that he’d finally end up at a party with kids from his school because he’d never been to one before.

As Sam found his way along the side path through the straggly wooded area, he thought he heard some of the others from school up ahead, although it sounded less and less like guys and girls his age than it did some old guy cackling over some joke.

He saw the campfire somebody had started. Since it was the first time in all his school years that he finally felt included in something the “cool” kids generally did—get drunk, go a little wild, and pretend to have fun for a few hours—he jogged most of the way up the path, through the woods, until he reached the entrance to the old graveyard.

5

Back inside the house, the lights up, Lizzie felt a shock go through her.

But not from fear.

It was just the beginning of anger mixed with surprise mixed with a little pissed-offedness.

They were all there:

Bari, Mac, Andy, Nancy, Terry, Zack—all her friends from school who lived in Watch Point, a couple of guys from Parham, a girl she didn’t know—and Alex, too. Of course Ronnie wasn’t there. Ronnie never went out anymore. Lizzie had given up on dragging her sister to the parties.

She reined in her anger a bit and began laughing with them as they passed around a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine. They were laughing too hard to hear the scream of the other guy, the guy Lizzie only knew as a friend of her older sister’s, and he needed a ride, and he’d show them the way to the house—the one who had gone up to the graveyard.

But when they stopped laughing, Lizzie heard it first and said, “What the hell is that?”

6

Sam’s mouth was open as wide as he’d ever opened it. The noise was all around him, and he couldn’t even tell that it was coming from his own throat.

He stood in the little graveyard, just beyond the small fire someone had started in a circle of old moss-covered stone markers. The feeble light of the flashlight pointed forward as he looked at the little boy who had been strung upside down and gutted like a deer. The small fire behind him cast flickering yellow shadows. The scream finally died in Sam’s throat, which went dry—he felt parched and wasn’t sure he could even speak after that scream.

He felt like a six-year-old again, stepping into a nightmare. The smell of cool summer rain filled the air, just seconds before the downpour began.

Sam dropped the flashlight, and it rolled until it came to a dead stop at one of the stone markers.

He heard the distant rumble of thunder. Heat lightning played along the darkness above the trees, then cracked open into a great split of light that illuminated all the graveyard—the hanging boy, and a dark figure that stood back behind several stone markers, more shadow than human being.

7

Seven miles away in the village of Watch Point, three streets up from the railroad tracks, above the rocky ledges that curled over the Hudson River, Lizzie’s twin sister, Veronica— or Ronnie, as she’d always been called—awoke from a deep sleep. The lightning beyond her bedroom window flashed white and made her mother’s garden look as if it were covered with snow for a moment.

Ronnie rose up from bed, and went to look out the window as the storm broke above the village. Rain tapped at the window, and she lifted it up to smell the fresh air.

The lightning seemed green and blue as it danced among the dark clouds before it crashed into a white streak beyond the trees and houses of the village.

For a split second, she thought she saw the vague features of a child’s face in the piercing light.

8

“Is that
Pratt?”
Alex asked, laughing. “Is that Pratt screaming like a bitch?”

The screaming beyond Harrow had stopped, replaced by the rumble of thunder and a
rickety-tickety
of rain on the house.

Alex kept laughing. “Oh frickin’ hell, I remember in seventh grade when he wet his pants in gym and just stood there pretending he hadn’t. Jesus, he’s a little baby. A little teeny-tiny baby geek.”

Zack joined. “Thou shalt not suffer a geek to live.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said. “That a joke?”

“It’s biblical.” Zack kept laughing at his own wit. “God said kill all the geeks.”

“Maybe God’s killing one right now up at that graveyard,” Alex grinned.

“We better see what’s happening up there,” Lizzie said, moving toward the door. Alex grabbed her hand and pulled her back to him. She didn’t resist much, and he wrapped his arms around her and planted a big wet sloppy kiss on her lips. He licked right up to her eyelid and kissed there, then slid his lips to her ear and whispered, “Come on. We can make out here. That’s why we’re here.”

“He might be hurt,” Lizzie said, and then realized the back of her head felt a little funny. Too
much wine.
The room had begun spinning a little bit.

“He’s fine,” Alex insisted. “He’s fine. He probably just got freaked by the lightning.”

Bari Love held up a nearly empty bottle of wine. She chugged the last of it down, giggling, and said, “I got the bottle. Who wants to play?”

9

“He’s out there in the rain,” Lizzie said, but even that came out a little slurred because she’d already had one beer.

They all sat in a circle, and it was Andy Harris’s turn to spin the bottle in the center.

The bottle seemed to spin and spin, and it made Lizzie a little light-headed as she watched it go around and around.

Then it stopped.

Pointed directly at her.

Andy wore a big shit-eating grin on his face and nearly smacked his lips. Lizzie felt as if she were betraying Ronnie because her sister had briefly dated Andy during sophomore year and then had been dumped unceremoniously by him before he took up with Bari.

But it’s the game. Stupid Spin the Bottle. We’ve been playing it since ninth grade, and for some reason the guys always like it just a little bit more than the girls do.

And still, we play it.

Andy crawled across the floor toward her. Lizzie glanced at Alex, who was so drunk it looked like he couldn’t recognize anything let alone feel jealous that another guy was going to kiss her. She looked at Bari, but Bari was practically hanging off Zack after their last bottle-induced kiss.

When Andy got close, his breath all cigarette ash and warm beer, she drew back from him. She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Sorry,” she whispered.

He pawed at her, but she managed to push him away.

“Bitch,” he whispered under his breath.

“Bastard,” Lizzie whispered back.

She stood up unsteadily. “I want to see what’s going on with Sam.”

“He screamed for his mommy,” Zack said, laughing.

“Maybe he got hit with lightning,” Nancy Withers said. “There must be a God after all!”

“I think someone’s in love with Sam,” Bari said. “Hey, Alex, Lizzie’s got the hots for the geek.”

Alex swung his head around slightly, his blond hair falling over his eyes. “What?” Then he swung around again to look at Lizzie. “Hey baby.
Bay-bay.”

“Hey,” she said.
What the hell am I doing with these jerks? Playing drinking games. Practically girlfriend-swapping. Ronnie’s right about all of them. They think they’re the winners of life, but they missed the boat completely.

She ignored all the jeers, and went toward the door leading to the narrow corridor.

As she opened the door, she felt as if her heart froze.

A middle-aged man, scrawny and tall, stood there before her.

Naked.

His body covered with red paint as if he’d been drawing on himself—circles and lines and pictures.

His teeth were smeared with some brown-red color, and he parted his lips as if he were in the middle of saying something. His hands were down between his legs, furiously stroking himself.

She opened her mouth to curse, but felt as if the breath had been sucked out of her.

Lightning flashed outside, and the tall windows along the corridor seemed to light up so white it made her think of a nuclear explosion.

The light in the room flickered.

Then the entire house was plunged into darkness.

10

Lizzie stood still for a few seconds, catching her breath.

In the dark, there didn’t seem to be a naked man at all.

Instead, she felt utterly alone, as if even those behind her in the room had vanished.

Someone struck a match.

She turned back around.

For just a second, she thought she saw her dead father’s face—his features twisted, but she knew it was him—in the brief glow of the match.

The match extinguished.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

But no one said a word.

Is this all a joke? Are they doing this to me? Are these people who are not my friends
—
not realty, not the way friends realty are
—
are they doing this?

Then, Alex near her. She felt his warmth. “It’s all right, babe,” he whispered. He struck another match, and it
was
Alex.
Thank God. Thank God.

“I was scared,” she whispered. “It got so quiet.”

“Heh,” he grinned. “I think they’re all just taking advantage of the dark.”

He blew the match out, and she felt his lips against hers. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to kiss him at all, but his mouth had a kind of suction that kept her there. She pushed him away, but his arms surrounded her.

She felt his arousal as he pressed against her, and she tried to draw back but could not. She felt his hands go around her back, stroking along her spinal column. It only made her shiver—she felt uncomfortable.
Even if they are all making out. Even if I only imagined seeing things. Even if that scream meant nothing. I want out. I want out now.

Then she felt other hands, smaller hands, along her ankles, as if a little child were pulling at her.

Instinctively, she kicked out, then brought her knee up to what she estimated in the dark to be Alex’s groin. As she drew back from him, she felt others touching her in the dark. She had to fight her way through them to move toward the one crack of light she saw in the doorway, the light from outside that came through the open window at the end of the corridor.