Just a little while ago it was put out there by Young Adult author Krystal McLaughlin that she was looking to put together an anthology of YA Horror stories. I thought, what the heck. I have been writing a mystery thriller called, The Cistern (which you can read about on this blog) so I thought about using the same characters as The Cistern only 10 years earlier.
I had a story idea many years ago about a horror story centered around a red couch in a dark barn. So, I started there. I asked on Facebook for things people found in old barns and was more than happy with the response. Some of those I used in the story.
Bellow is the story that came out. It is going to be available soon as a free ebook titled Pleasant Dreams coming out soon.
You Never Know What You’ll Find
Lorne Oliver
“I dare you.”
“I double dog dare you.”
“Seriously, dude? Are we in some Stephen King novel now? Are you going to say, you bet your fern?” Spencer snorted. “You can dare me all you want I’m not
sleeping in that barn.”
It was a long building that had probably
once held cows and horses, maybe some chickens at one time, but for as long as
anyone alive could remember the family that had owned the property had always
just used it for storage. From the
doorway Spencer Alcrest and his friends could see furniture that had been
forgotten, boxes of paperwork, there was a crate of old license plates
too. A lot of the items were covered in
old sheets. At the very far end was an
old tractor – the kind with a metal seat – that had one of its large tires flat
to the floor, with pieces sticking out of the engine like people had probably come
and scavenged what they needed. There
were old stalls down at that end that animals had been in. From what the boys could see old ropes and
tools hung over the wood sides. Forgotten leather tack, dark and cracked was
left there too. They hadn’t even gone up
to the second floor. It was like one of
those barns you saw on those TV shows where people went looking for forgotten
treasures.
Spencer wasn’t going to be picking for
hidden finds, however, he had to clean out everything. His father liked to buy rural properties for
the summer, fix them up, and sell it at a profit, but wanted the entire barn
cleaned out first. The deal was that
Spencer was allowed to sell everything and got to keep the money. It was going to help with going to college in
September.
“I thought you said the haunted stories
were bull?”
Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “They’re just stories. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“You haven’t lived here long, man. We’ve seen lights in here in the middle of
the night.”
“Noises too. We came here last Halloween and I swear I
heard a girl laughing in there.”
“Maybe it was your friends laughing at you. We’ve been in the house three weeks and I
haven’t seen or heard anything.” Spencer
looked away from the other two boys back to the barn. The outside walls were black from years of
being untreated in the elements. You
could see where some of the boards had rotted away leaving holes and lines that
sunlight went through. The wind picked
up and made the tin roof call out where it had broken free of the nails. He ran a hand back through his short spiky
hair to try and hold the sudden chill that made his body shiver. He hadn’t seen anything because he stayed
away from this side of the house the moment the sun went down.
“If you don’t think there’s anything in
there then why don’t you prove it?”
“Yeah, man, prove it.”
Spencer only met the two boys three
weeks earlier. Jimmy and Cam lived just
down the road. The three of them had
gone fishing and swimming by the Pine River falls and rode their dirt bikes
around the gravel roads looking for whatever trouble they could get into.
“I’ll stay in there.”
All three turned at the soft voice
behind them. Spencer’s foster sister
stood there with her hands on her hips. Her pouty, Angelina Jolie, lips were in a
wicked smirk. She wore blue jeans with a hole on each knee and a pink tank top
with the name of the dance school she went to across her small boobs. She had the tanned skin of Aboriginal
roots. Chrys waited a second then
crossed her arms in front of her.
“See, she’s not afraid. I bet you, you can’t spend the whole night in
there.”
“Bet?”
Spencer smiled showing his dimples.
~
* ~
Spencer threw his rolled sleeping bag on
the crimson couch. It was what his
mother would have called a chesterfield.
It had just one long cushion on it instead of three separate ones. He and Chrys had cleared it off plus some
extra space around. On top of the couch
had been a few boxes of books and a hard shelled lime green suitcase. They had a battery operated lantern sitting
on a tall bedroom dresser and a handful of stubby candles sitting on dinner
plates around their small cleaned up area.
“Mom’s not coming back until tomorrow,
right?” Chrys had been part of the
family since she was three so Mr. and Mrs. Alcrest were Dad and Mom to her. “She’ll kill us if she sees we used her
plates as candle holders.”
“Probably not until after lunch.” The Alcrest’s owned a pub in the city. Their parents spent most nights at their
regular home expecting their eighteen year old son to watch his twelve year old
sister. Spencer was just happy they
weren’t fostering any other kids at the moment.
There were times when they had four extra kids in the house. “Let’s just set up and go to sleep.”
“But it’s so fucking early.”
“It’s ten o’clock. And you shouldn’t swear like that.” He slid a board into the slots on the inside
of the barn doors to lock it. His black
sweatpants already had dust smeared across them. He wore a shirt with The Alcrest Pub on it.
“I just want to get tonight over with.”
Chrys dropped onto the couch. She slipped off her flip-flops and pulled
both bare feet up under her as she tugged some of the boxes closer. “You’re scared.” In the first box she found old copies of
Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Pooh, and Alice in Wonderland.
“I’m not scared.”
Spencer looked around the room. They had a small circle lit up, but there
were a lot of creepy shadows and the further you got down the building the
blacker and thicker those shadows seemed to get. It was still light outside, but it was fading
and only a little of that came through the cracks. The property was down a long driveway, far
enough from the road that they only heard faint noises when a loud truck went by.
Anything
could be standing in the dark, he said to
himself. His imagination liked to put
things into his head.
Chrys screamed. She pushed the box away sending hard covered
novels scattering across the dirt floor.
“What?”
“A spider. There was a spider.”
“Oh big tough girl can stand up to
ghosts, but a little spider makes her scream.”
“Shut up.”
“This place is probably full of spiders
and snakes and who knows what else.
There could be raccoons living somewhere in here.” Spencer flipped the lid of the cooler he had
packed for the night. The bet with the
other boys had been for fifty dollars.
They couldn’t leave the barn for any reason during the night. He threw a bunch of things into the cooler so
that they would have something to eat and drink through the night. He took out a bottle of Pepsi and cracked
open the top. He still hadn’t thought
about the bathroom problem.
“We should explore.” Chrys slipped her feet back into her
flip-flops and pulled a pen flashlight from her pocket. She climbed over the arm of the couch and
carefully maneuvered around some boxes.
She couldn’t see much away from the circle of candles. The sun was going behind the forest line so
natural light was quickly being lost.
“What are you, Chrys -” Spencer growled
as he snatched the lantern up and headed into the depths of what had been
collected over years and years. His
father told him it could be like that guy who bought a farm and found a barn
full of antique automobiles. He doubted
that. The place had been empty for five
years so anything good had probably been liberated. “Be careful.
We don’t know all that’s in here.”
He watched his foster sister climb over
things, picked something up turned it around in her hands, and then dropped it
and continued on.
Chrys didn’t know what she was looking for. Some of the boxes were warped from
moisture. “Oh don’t be a chicken
shit.” She picked up a teddy bear and
flipped it around in her hands. One
button eye was missing and one paw had been chewed open. Creepy.
The bear dropped. It hit the dust on a box sending a little
cloud in the air. Chrys turned to her
left. Her breath caught in her
throat. Something had been there. She saw it move. “Did you see that?”
Spencer scraped the bottom of his shoe
on a pile of boards. “What?” What the hell did he step in?
When he realised Chrys hadn’t answered
he looked up. His foster sister stared
at the side wall. A sheet covered something
big. The air was still.
“I saw someone move.” Not
something, some ONE.
Her skin had paled. Spencer watched her staring at the mountain
of sheet. There was no wind inside the
barn moving things around. Maybe it was
the light from the lantern that cast a shadow.
She must have seen it out of the corner of her eye.
“Cut it out, Chrys.” The hair on the back of his neck was standing
up.
“I’m not kidding, Spence. Someone walked past me. I saw like a dress moving as they walked.”
His head cocked to the side. There was no way. “Someone?
You saw someone?”
“Well, like out of the corner of my eye,
yeah.”
“Oh please. Your minds playing tricks on you. I moved the lantern and you thought you saw
something.”
“Whatever, Spence.” She turned back the way she had been
going. Maybe it was her mind playing
tricks on her. Either way the skin on
her arms felt like it was crawling.
Just past a stack of wood framed windows
leaning against a wall, Spencer was afraid the weight would topple the whole
building, he found a work bench. It had
wood drawers and cubby holes. There were
cut marks and paint stains on the top.
Lined up against the back, under a dirt covered window, were plastic
margarine containers, tobacco bins, and Folgers coffee tins. They held nails, screws, and bolts – some
rusted. Leaning against the side was an
old broom – the straw warn down almost to the handle. He pictured a sad rodeo clown sweeping the
whole entire barn floor and then starting over again. He wouldn’t put his aqua eyes on the window
pain. Why did he have to picture a
clown?
He gave each drawer a tug. The only one to open had chewed up paper,
feathers, and wood chips. A mouse must
have called it home. What was going to
be in the other ones? There could be
money or jewels or anything that could fill his wallet. Or the clown’s collection of fingers he bit
off with his own teeth.
Why
did he have to think things like that?
Chrys studied the ground with her pen
light. Part of her hoped to see footprints
in the dust, there were none. As she
came around a tall dresser her brown eyes fell on an bike leaning against a
tarp. It was one of those old bikes with
a metal basket attached to the handlebars.
It had a large fender over the back flat tire. The tarp it was on covered something big and
long, about car length, longer even. She
put her hand on the bike seat, her palm smeared the dust off the old
leather. She carefully leaned it the
other way until it was against a pile of boxes marked X-mas.
Something tugged her hair. She ran a hand through her long dark
locks. She touched something. She stopped.
Was she touching it or it touching her?
Chrys spun quickly flashing her light along as she did. Pitch forks, boxes, an old saddle, snow
shovel, a face, a yellow raincoat, antlers, a hula-hoop, her brother. He was at least thirty feet away along the
side wall. He couldn’t have tugged her
hair.
A
face.
She ran the pen light back the way it
had come seeing everything in reverse.
The yellow raincoat was there. It
looked as if it was so old and dry that it would crack and fall if anyone
touched it. Next was a snow shovel, the
wood handle held to the wall by two nails beneath the metal scoop.
“What are you doing?”
“I saw,” a face. “I felt,” my hair get
tugged. Chrys blinked quickly and
looked at her foster brother. “I think
this place is getting to me.”
Spencer suddenly held his breath. “Did you hear that?”
Chrys ran her hand through her hair
again and shook it out. “What?”
Spencer held the lantern as high as he
could. His eyes stared up at the boards
four feet above his head.
He turned and looked back at the circle
of candlelight by the red couch. It
seemed so far away.
For a moment his eyes lost focus as if
he was looking through the dirty window or a sheet of plastic. He imagined a woman on the crimson
chesterfield, stretched out – facing him.
Her flowing white dress cascaded over her legs and draped the side of
the cushion. Her hand waved through the
air. She had black hair which fell on her
shoulders. Her face seemed too white,
almost like a mask.
“Spencer.”
The lantern fumbled in his hands. He looked at his sister. He turned back to the couch and saw the
candlelight flicker on the empty cushion.
“What the fuck are you staring at? You’re practically drooling.”
“I – I don’t know. My imagination I guess. I thought I heard footsteps.” He looked back up at the floor above
him. What did he expect to have happen? Dirt to fall from between the boards? “Must have been echoes or something.”
Chrys followed his eyes to the floor
above them. She was seeing things and he
was hearing things, great. It must have
all been in their heads. Something
created from what everyone else told them went on in the barn.
“Come see what I found.”
Spencer had to stretch his legs over
some boxes and an old lawnmower. He
didn’t really want to go back to the couch any more. His skin was tingling like every nerve was
pulled tight. “What did you find?”
“A car.”
Chrys pulled the fabric tarp up onto the long lump in front of her. At first they saw the bubble fender over a
thin tire. The old car had clean
straight lines. It was long in the front
with a small cab. The paint was a dull
black and the windows of the cab were dirty.
“This is awesome.” Spencer switched the lantern to his other
hand and ran his left along the body of the car. “Probably early thirties.”
“Yeah, it’s like an Al Capone car. Are those bullet holes?”
Spencer’s fingers touched the only
default in the body. Four holes in the
door pushed inward scraping away paint and going right through. “I think so.
This is so weird. I’m going to
make some money on this though.”
“How long do you think this car’s been
here?”
“I don’t know. Why is it here?” Spencer looked around. They were close to the old tractor and behind
that was a set of double doors held closed with a thick chain and locks. Beside the door was a makeshift ladder made
with boards nailed to the wall. Above it
was the dark hole leading to the second floor.
He hoped his sister didn’t want to go up there. That’s where the footsteps came from.
Chrys pointed her flashlight at the
black square in the ceiling, the light barely reaching it. “Do you think we should go up there?”
Hell
no. Spencer said, “We haven’t even checked
everything down here. Maybe we should
look in some of the boxes.” He put his
hand on the car door handle. What were
the chances it would open? It did.
“Spencer.”
They both turned to the couch. The moment their eyes fell on it all of the
candles snuffed out dropping a blanket of black on the area. How much time had passed since they started
to explore? The sun was gone. There was no light coming through the cracks
in the walls or the window by the work table.
There was a noise. Both of their eyes went up. Spencer held the lantern up high. Chrys pointed her pen light at the boards
right above their heads. There was
another noise. And another. She pointed her light back at the opening in
the floor.
“What is that?”
“Footsteps. Something’s up there.” If it was the other boys Spencer was going to
kill them. “Cam,” he called out. His voice seemed to quake. “Jimmy?”
The noises stopped.
A scream seemed to build inside their
own bodies before their ears heard it. A
howling scream that made their bones ache.
Both turned. Spencer saw it far
across the barn in the darkness. What
was it? It was white, a white that
glowed, and trailed off to the sides and back like tentacles floating
behind. The scream stopped. There seemed to be eyes staring back at
them. It was a woman. It was a woman from the couch, only she was a
spectre – a banshee.
Chrys put her light on it. The image hung in the air just outside the
power of the small flashlight. Both of
them held their breath.
It opened its mouth. A wailing built inside and shot out in a
fierce scream. The sound made the walls
shake. Their skin burned. It was coming at them. The white entity soared closer and closer. Its eyes were blacker than the night around
it. Fear ran through the two
sibblings. Fear that would paralize
most.
“In the car.” Spencer grabbed his sister’s arm.
She couldn’t move. “What?
What is that?”
“Get in the car.”
“Why?”
She couldn’t move.
“I don’t know. Get in.”
Spencer shoved her into action.
She jumped onto the seat and crawled across
the small cab. He jumped in after her
squeezing his legs beneath the large steering wheel. He slammed the door hard. The tarp fell back down blocking the
windows. The screaming circled the
automobile. The car began to shake. Chrys let out a series of curses. Spencer kept his hand on the door handle. The car thumped side to side. They were sure the tires were lifting off the
floor then dropping down. It was going
to flip.
The car stopped shaking. The lantern had fallen on the girls lap. Her flashlight was on the floor of the
car. The noise had stopped
instantly. Their ears still seemed to
ring with the sound. They both held
their breath waiting for something to happen.
Spencer expected the tarp to suddenly fly off the car and the face, or
whatever it was, to be right there on the other side of the window his face was
next to. He suddenly remembered to
breathe again.
“Spencer?” Chrys’s voice trembled. She had one hand on the other door and
another on the dashboard. “Did that
happen?”
“I-” He couldn’t believe it
himself. It had been a woman, the woman
that he saw on the couch. How could a
woman do that? The two boys couldn’t
have done that.
“What are we going to do?” She turned her head around constantly to be
looking at every window. The whole
inside was lit up with the lantern. She
didn’t want to think about what might be on the other side of that tarp. She put a hand to her chest. “My heart’s racing.”
“Let’s just sit here for a while.”
“What do you think was upstairs?”
Whatever it was could be down already
and outside the car. “I don’t know.”
“Well what should we do?”
“I don’t know, Chrys. If you want to go out there, you go out
there. I don’t know what any of this
is? I don’t know what to do.” He wanted to throw in, and this is all your damn fault, but kept it to himself.
“There’s no door locks.” Chrys handed over the lantern and reached
down to get her penlight. She was the
one that liked horror movies. It was
different when it was real life. There
was a back seat to the car, but it was small.
This wasn’t like a modern car with comfortable seats and all the bells
and whistles. And door locks.
Spencer fondled the door. She was right. Would a lock do any good against whatever was
outside?
“There’s a book on the floor.” Chrys pulled the book out from halfway under
the seat. It too had a bullet hole
cutting through the edge and the leather cover was stained with something
brown. “You think this is blood?”
Spencer let out a breath. “I don’t know.”
She opened the cover and flipped in a
couple of pages. It was a journal. There were dates in there from 1935. The penmanship was clean. The ink had faded over time, but it must have
been sealed well inside the car. After a
few minutes of reading she asked her brother if she could read something.
“Helen has almost completed her research
into what we are calling the Crimson Chesterfield. It has been passed on from household to
household, owner to new owner with the same mysterious stories following it
each time. Reports are that the color
never fades. Stains disappear. Most stories are about a woman seen relaxing
on the chesterfield.”
“Are you serious?”
“Shut up.” Chrys had to read a little to find her spot. “Witnesses say they see her on the
chesterfield after the sun has set. They
say there is a woman screaming and flying through the air. Seven deaths have surrounded this
chesterfield.” She read a little in
silence. “Okay, one guy apparently just
got up from a nap on the couch and walked straight into a river and drown. A man and woman killed each other with their
bare hands. This is crazy.” She flipped a couple of pages and read some
more. “The old bike, this says it made
someone go insane.”
Spencer shook his head. “That’s impossible. So the barn is a storage place for things
that people killed around or went nuts?”
“Cursed items. That’s what it says here. The only thing that seems to keep us safe
from the cursed articles is the Phantom.”
“Yeah, the Phantom two. This is a Rolls Royce Phantom ii. I knew I recognised it. It was mentioned in the third Indiana Jones
movie so I looked it up and had a poster of it.”
Chrys flipped through the journal and
absently said, “Maybe its fate that we’re here then.”
Spencer drummed the steering wheel with
his thumbs. Sweat ran down his temple. Maybe it was fate. It was fate that his little foster sister
wanted to explore the barn instead of sleeping on the couch. Would they have ended up killing each
other? Was it going to be fate that they
get stuck in the car all night? His ears
strained to hear what was happening beyond the tarp. Things like this didn’t really happen.
Chrys continued reading the
journal. She didn’t notice as time went
by or the heat rising inside the car.
She read about all of the items that had been found and the evil things
that circled around them.
~
* ~
“Chrys, wake up.”
Chrys opened her eyes. The journal she had read had fallen on the
floor again and she must have kicked it half under the seat. The lantern was still on lighting the whole
car cab. Her brother’s face was covered
in sweat.
“It’s morning.” Spencer pointed at his watch. It was eight-thirty in the morning. They had slept half the night. “I haven’t heard anything.”
Chrys ran a hand across her face wiping
away her own perspiration. “You think
it’s safe?”
Spencer slowly pushed the door
open. It was still dark beyond the
tarp. The smell of dust touched their
noses. He pushed the tarp up as high as
he could with one hand and held the lantern out in front of him. His foot scraped on the floor. He didn’t know what to expect. Was the ghostly woman going to be waiting for
him? Was there a finger eating rodeo
clown? What had been upstairs?
Nothing.
Some sun rays streamed in through the cracks in the walls and a
distorted light came through the dirty window.
Everything was still.
Chrys climbed from the car behind
him. She flashed her light at the ladder
and the hole to the second floor.
“Let’s go.” Spencer grabbed his sister’s hand. They quickly walked back toward the
couch. His eyes never left what he could
see of it in the grey light. They climbed
over and around all of the boxes and items.
He left his sleeping bag and the cooler.
His hand threw the board away from the door and gave it a hard shove.
Clean fresh air filled their lungs. The sunlight blinded them for a moment.
“What the hell did you two do?”
Spencer blinked quickly. Cam and Jimmy sat on the grass next to their
bikes. “What are you guys doing here?”
“What was that scream last night?”
“And the bright light? We were supposed to scare you two.”
“You two were upstairs.” Chrys called them a colorful name.
Spencer turned the lantern off and
dropped it into the grass. “What did you
guys see?”
“We climbed in through an open window in
the loft and walked across it listening to you guys talking downstairs. When we got close to the trap door there was
that loud scream and light that you did.
We booked it.”
Spencer didn’t know what to tell
him. He didn’t know what they had
seen. He couldn’t explain it. The journal told of cursed items, but that
was ridiculous. Still, it was his job to
get rid of everything in the barn so that his dad could sell the property. What if everything in there was cursed by
some evil power? He couldn’t let those
things go out into the world and start all over.
“Breakfast?” Chrys said with a smile on her pouty lips.
