Chapter 1
“We are gathered here today to give our final respects to the recently departed, Lucifer Vanson. Beloved son, brother and friend, we shall miss him.” The priest closed his book, and gestured to the open casket behind him. “Those who would wish to give their last good-byes, please come up.”
Most of the people that were attending the funeral rose from their seats and left the church. The few remaining mourners made a small line before the plain wooden coffin, and its lifeless occupant.
A middle-aged couple stood over the lifeless body of young Lucifer. The woman had long raven colored hair that fell into her kind blue eyes as they filled with sorrowful tears. She turned away from Lucifer’s corpse and cried into the arms of her husband. He was a tall man with stern green eyes and slicked brown hair. He glared down at the boy and then looked to his wife. “There’s another one, Amelia. Andrew will grow to live long and healthy.” With that, he led his wife out of the church and he looked back at the living young man that resembled his looks almost exactly. “Hurry Andrew,” he rushed the troubled boy.
Andrew placed his strong hand over the side of his little brother’s coffin. Biting his lip to keep himself from crying, he said, “One too many Lucifer. I told you that you had to be careful.” He reached into his pocket and looked to be sure his father was gone. Out of the inside pocket of his coat, Andrew revealed a photo of he and Lucifer from a recent celebration. “Remember me,” he said as he placed the picture by his brother’s lifeless hand. “Andrew!” his father beckoned from the church doors, “Let’s go home.” He made his way to his parents and gave a final look to Lucifer.
A young woman was left alone in the church corridor and she watched Andrew leave. “Stupid,” she said to Lucifer when Andrew was gone. She forced her voice to sound normal and a little angry as she covered her lips to choke back floods of tears. The effort was futile as water filled her crystal blue eyes and she sniffled. “What the hell Lucifer? Why did you leave me?” She fell to he knees in front of the casket, her hands still grabbing the edge. “Lucifer…Come back…Please… I don’t want to be alone!” She sniffled again and pushed locks of light brown hair from her gentle face. She forced herself to stand up and she looked back down at him.
She moved his black bangs away from his once lively and mischievous, yet caring green eyes. His skin was so pale compared to hers, which was a first. He normally made fun of how pale she was. She grazed his strong jawbone and lightly touched his bony cheeks. A tear fell upon his black coat and she patted the collar to hide the wet spot.
“We’ll meet again Lucifer. We have to,” she wiped away some tears from her cheek. As she walked out to where Andrew and his family left her, she turned back and whispered, “Good-bye, Prankster Prince.” Outside it was raining and she looked up to the cloudy sky. A hand set upon her shoulder and she looked to see Andrew. He had told his parents he was going to wait for her.
“I miss him too, Elizabeth,” he told her. Without thinking, Elizabeth threw her arms around Andrew and cried into his shoulder.
The year was 1873, and Lucifer Vanson had died at the young age of nineteen leaving behind a strict father, caring mother, devoted older brother, and lonely best friend.
When a person dies due to an accident or murder, their soul doesn’t rest. They continue to walk the Earth, trying to complete their unfinished business. Some choose to live in the cemetery where they were buried, whilst others prefer to haunt their homes, or their place of death. Lucifer chose to live in his cemetery, but he freely visited several places in his small town of Spiridon.
Ones that die of natural causes, like old age or illness, move on, and watch the world go on from wherever it is the go. Andrew died of pneumonia ten years after Lucifer. Their parents died in their older years, his father, and then his mother. As for Elizabeth, she grew up and watched everyone close to her die. On a clear spring day, she was seen over looking the rocky terrain of the water beneath a cliff over Foster Lake, when she stood up and embraced the last cool breeze she ever felt before walking gracefully off the overhang. When suicide is committed, the soul is resurrected into another person.
Over 100 years passed, and Winifred Bates brushed a lock of her blue bangs out of her crystal blue eyes as she gazed up to the clear October sky. Gusts of warm wind blew her light brown hair around making a tangled mess, but it didn’t bother her. Breathing deeply in, loving the smell of the autumn air, she looked back down to her sketchbook. Stroking her pencil on the rough piece of paper, it soon formed the faces of her closest friends.
To the farthest right was June. She darkened her best and oldest friend’s short reddish black hair, and dotted her freckles by her small nose. She rounded her cheeks, colored her blue eye, then her green, and drew her loving smirk. Hanging off of her was Cindy.
Winnie scraped her pencil to make her straight strawberry blonde hair, and made her nose ring shine like her deep blue eyes. Her eyes and mischievous grin met the shy smile of Cynthia.
Shading Cynthia’s glasses, Winnie remembered to amplify her kind, green eyes. She was much taller than the other three girls, and had honey colored, shoulder length hair, which Winnie drew held back by a scrunchie. At Cynthia’s shoulder, was the hand of Nikki.
Nikki’s hair wasn’t as long as Winnie’s, but she drew it to the appropriate length of her mid back. She sketched some waves of dark autumn brown hair falling into her chocolate colored eyes.
They all wore their school uniforms from Spiridon High. The uniforms consisted of either a white buttoned up shirt, or a black sweater with the school insignia, and a blue and green plaid skirt. Winnie giggled as she put the final touches on the insignia on Cynthia’s sweater.
She looked at her watch, seeing it was 6 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, she packed up her art supplies and headed out of the woods to her house. She held her sketchbook to her chest and sighed as she approached her home. It was quite large and old. It had been a church a few years before Winnie’s father bought it a turned it into he and his wife’s first home. The inside was beautiful, but the outside looked a little beaten up from vandalism and the weather, but the wear and tear made Winnie like it more. To her it made it seem less modern, like many other homes in town, and the way it was supposed to look.
She hummed while she skipped childishly amongst the stone walkway up to the large wooden double doors. Opening the door to the left, she spun and danced up to her room. A click of a remote turned on the radio to a song that Winnie enjoyed, “When we die,” by one of her favorite bands. As depressing as it sounded, it was a favorite of Winnie’s. She sang along to that and some songs after, but stopped when she heard a singing that she rather hated. She turned down the music, to hear her mother sing her name, again. “Wiii~nifreee~d!” The sound reminded Winnie of nails on a blackboard.
“Yes, Mother?” she asked as she walked to the top of the stairs where she could see her. Winnie’s mother had a dark tan from the summer that had just passed and bright blonde hair. She was tall and very thin. The only common trait between them was her mother’s crystal blue eyes, not even. Winnie’s were more kind and young, while her mother’s were stern and less caring.
“Winifred,” she said in a high-pitched voice, “your… ‘friends’ are here.”
Winnie shook her head. If her mother disapproved of anything, it was Winnie’s interests and the friends who shared them. With a smile, she slid down the stair railing to meet with her friends. When she approached the bottom, she brushed off her black pants. She fixed her black vest and pulled down her purple t-shirt.
“Winnie!” Nikki smiled excitedly and she hugged her friend. She stepped back and attended to her purple and green floral shirt and blue skirt. “We were bored, so we came to see what you were doing.”
“Correction,” June rose her right index finger and spoke up as she glared at Nikki, “I was bored, so I got everyone that was also bored, and you were next on the list.”
Nikki rolled her eyes and nodded. “Same thing,” she said, crossing her arms. Cynthia pitied her friend and she put her hand on Nikki’s shoulder. “What are you doing, Winnie?” She asked, pushing her large glasses up her nose.
“Nothing really, I just got home-Oh!” She remembered the picture she had drawn in the woods. She ran up stairs and back down with her sketchbook. “Look,” she told them as she opened the book to the correct page and passed it to June. Nikki, Cynthia, and June looked down at it, and laughed. “Good job, Win,” June supported.
“I like it,” Cynthia approved.
“Is my hair that poofy?” Nikki asked. Everyone kept quiet. Nikki’s hair was fluffy, but they knew better not to tell her in fear of getting hit, hard.
“We have to go get Cindy, do you wanna come, Win?” June asked her, as she elbowed her and glanced over to Winnie’s mother. “You can stay at my place tonight, if we stay out too late,” she whispered.
Winnie’s mom was the strict mom that no one really wanted to be with. Everyone feared her, including, though he wouldn’t admit it to her face, Winnie’s father. Winnie laughed and said, “Of course!” with a smile. She told her mother and she, not caring what her daughter did at the moment, let her go with a flick of the hand.
They climbed into June’s old red van that she borrowed from her dad, knowing she would have five girls in the car at most. June’s dad was very nice for being a single parent. June’s mother had died of cancer when she was four. It didn’t really bother her, because she was so young, and her father was always there. He took good care of her, and when the things that she needed to talk to a woman about came up, she asked Nikki or Cindy’s mom.
The van was big, giving the girls a good amount of room, but it wasn’t the most pleasant smelling vehicle. June’s father used it for work, and he was a mechanic, so one car smelled like a junkyard of cars. Oil and gas weren’t the best smell. However, the girls rode in it so much that they had become accustom to the mix of automobile odors.
Winnie sat in the front next to June, while Nikki and Cynthia shared a seat behind them. June put the car in drive after everyone was buckled in and they turned around to leave the house and go to Cindy’s. As the girls laughed and talked, Winnie looked out the window and squinted when she thought she saw a person. But as quickly as she thought she saw it, it was gone.
“Win, you okay?” June questioned as she glanced over to her day dreaming friend.
“Huh?” Winnie looked back to see everyone, except for June, looking at her curiously. “Yeah, I’m fine, I was just looking outside.”
The girls shrugged, and continued their previous conversation. “Halloween is in a couple weeks, what are we doing?” Nikki asked, mostly Winnie.
Halloween was Winnie’s favorite holiday. That didn’t surprise most people that knew her. Winnie loved the dead, dark, and disturbing. Skulls, bats, black, and scary things were all over her room. Her prized possession was a doll that looked dead, with white skin, pupil-less dark eyes, and a black dress. The only normal thing that she liked, were fairies and butterflies, and even the ones she drew or had in her room were black, or creepy.
“We should have a party,” June suggested. The other’s agreed, but Winnie shook her head. “We do that every year,” she said. “We should get together and do something new.”
“Like what, Winnie?” Cynthia asked leaning forward to look at her dark friend.
“Go see a monster movie?” Nikki recommended, but Winnie shook her head again. “Have you heard of a Ouija board?” She asked them. The car filled with questions, “No’s,” and shaking heads.
“It’s supposed to contact the dead.”
“You wouldn’t, Winnie.” Cynthia hoped.
“What are you talking about?” Nikki demanded, “Of course she would.”
“What’s your plan, Win?” June enquired with a smirk.
“All Hollow’s eve, we’ll go to the cemetery at the edge of town. Ten o’clock, I’ll bring the Ouija board. We’re going to try to summon the dead.”
June cheered, Cynthia shuddered, and Nikki smiled. They approached Cindy’s house and told her their plan for Halloween. Cindy wasn’t as thrilled as Winnie and June, but she was intrigued. An hour later, and couple of gallons of wasted gas, June dropped off Cindy, Winnie, and was leaving Winnie’s house to bring home Nikki and Cynthia. “See ya, Win!” June called out the driver’s window with a wave, and they pulled out.
It was 9 o’clock. She should be safe. Her mother wouldn’t be mad if she was home at nine, right? Still not convinced, she quietly made her way through the big left door and tip toed up to her room. She closed her door and took a deep breath. Now she was safe. She smiled and looked around her room.
Her doll stood on her bookshelf; next to many books about monsters, legends, and ghosts that she had bought over the years. Her room wasn’t all black. The walls were blue, but her carpet was black with blue swirls and stars. She opened her window and breathed in the cool, night, autumn air. Making her way to her desk she felt a very cold chill against her arm. She shuddered and rubbed the spot with her other hand. She glanced back to her window and then continued to her desk. She took out her sketchbook and looked at the skull that sat on the corner of her desk next to a couple candles and a crystal ball. A small glass butterfly dangled from an invisible string, near a purple vase of dead red roses, mixed with baby’s breath. It had been a bouquet from her last theatre performance, “Alice in Wonderland.” She played the Cheshire cat, and her creepy, riddle like voice had fit the role perfectly.
She sat down with her pencil at hand and she felt the cold chill on the back of her neck. She threw her hand over the spot again and looked behind her. She squinted in confusion. “What the hell?” she questioned and turned back to her work. It was times like this Winnie wished she wasn’t an only child. She couldn’t blame odd occurrences on a younger sibling, or check her sanity by asking if they felt it too.
Now distracted from her work, she gave up. She went into the bathroom, removed her clothes and took a warm shower. When she stepped out, she felt the cold on her shoulder. She turned to the shoulder, but nothing was there. Ignoring it, she went to her room, dressed in a pair of short, plaid shorts, and a long, baggy baseball t-shirt. She crawled into bed and found her stuffed cat, Psycho, a gray, fuzzy cat shaped pillow that Winnie had made out of sheer boredom some years back and found to be a very comfortable sleeping companion. She snuggled with the deformed pillow, pulled up her black cat comforter, and turned out the lights to go to sleep.
