Women In Horror Month - Lily Luchesi

Too Young To Kill
 
A short story featured in Dark Delights by USA Today bestselling author Lily Luchesi
 
Ghosts were not real in Elisa’s world. She had a passing relationship with the Christian faith, but that was as far as her belief in anything supernatural went. She had known all about the legend of the house. Everybody killed, appearing to be eaten. Baby missing, presumed eaten whole somehow. Future murder victims placed inside the house.
Psychos like psychotic stories. Dead was dead. There was no murderous ghost in that house and anyone who thought there was, like Adrienne, was an idiot. She just didn’t want to sleep in that dusty old dump. Adrienne didn’t need to tell her she was trying to scare her. Elisa knew this was some silly payback scheme.
When she got home, her boyfriend was sitting on the couch, a legal pad in front of him and his guitar on the couch next to him. He had gotten a very cushy gig writing music for short films, but had writer’s block for weeks. Do musicians even get writer’s block? Now that he seemed to have broken the block, he probably wouldn’t even notice if she was gone for the night.
Elisa was determined to make him notice. In her mind, it was all his fault for being so damn irresistible. “This is all your fault!” she huffed, slamming her purse on the coffee table.
Her boyfriend jumped, startled. “What the fuck, ’Lissa?”
“Your psycho friend, ex, whatever she is, is making me stay in that house I sold. I can’t stay there! It’s a hellhole. She wouldn’t have such a vendetta against me if it weren’t for you!” When he stayed silent, she huffed again and went into her room. She wondered why he wasn’t even asking what was happening. Didn’t he care at all? She hoped she still had her sleeping bag from that time he’d taken her camping in the woodland. She kept complaining as she tried to find the outfit she could sleep in that would cover the most skin. “This is unethical. I could probably sue her sorry ass if I were so inclined.”
With a bag packed with a Kigurumi onesie from Japan to cover every inch of skin, her iPod, her sleeping bag, bug spray, isopropyl alcohol, and a Swiffer dusting rag, she debated, and then decided not to even bring a pillow. She didn’t have a replacement.
“I’m going,” she called to her boyfriend.
He looked up and smirked. “Good luck. Don’t get eaten by the demons in there. Hey, do you want my infrared camera in case you see a spirit?”
She rolled her eyes. He was always such a horror freak, and he actually believed in ghosts. No wonder he and Adrienne had gotten along so well.
“Don’t roll your eyes,” he said. “It might not be demons, but houses can store up evil energy. Do you know how many murders have taken place there? That place should be soaked in holy water and burned, if you ask me. After someone investigates it for ghosts, of course.”
“Well, no one asked you,” was all she could reply before she left, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t want to admit that what he’d said had rattled her. Her palms were sweating, and the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. This is stupid, she thought. It’s just a house, nothing more. And as long as you don’t get eaten by the roaches or rats, you’ll be fine. Houses can’t store evil energy. That’s horror movie shit.
She got into her car and drove across town. The city was split into four sections: the warehouse area, the wealthy section, the younger area where she lived, and the wilderness. The warehouse area was also home to some abandoned houses. No one wanted to live near the factories because of the smog, but they really didn’t want to live near that house. The Karayan house. The Karayan family had been reclusive, but they weren’t town pariahs or anything. Their son had been on the soccer team, their daughter was a ballet dancer, and the mother could be seen with the baby, Kieran, at the market. The husband was a banker. Nothing unusual.
So why had they been targeted for a murder so gruesome, it had made two police officers tender their resignation? No one could figure it out.
Now, for the first time in decades, the house was going to have a living resident. Elisa was surprised when Adrienne was waiting for her at the doorway. Her heart leapt, thinking that the whole thing had been called off. Maybe Adrienne saw that she was serious about staying overnight and had decided to give her a break.
“Glad you made it,” the tall brunette said. “I was getting cold out here.” She tossed the keys to Elisa, who missed them and had to fetch them from out of a mud puddle. Ugh. “Make sure you lock up tight after you leave tomorrow morning for work. Vandals are everywhere.” She walked down the steps, dressed for a night on the town while Elisa was dressed for a night sleeping in rat poop. She gave the blonde a wink. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the monsters bite.” She also placed a pack of candles and a lighter in Elisa’s hand. “So you don’t burn the place down by using the wonky wiring you said was just fucking peachy.”
Bitch, Elisa thought. She gets to go out while I get to stay here. She unlocked the door, hearing the grinding screech of the hinges, rusty from disuse. She couldn’t help an involuntary shudder at the sound, but she told herself it was the same way you’d shudder at nails on a chalkboard.
Immediately, she smelled the dust and sneezed, hoping that she had taken her allergy medicine that morning. She was glad these old houses had strong roofs. Their town was rainy, and she would never have stayed there with black mold. She wasn’t suicidal.
It was freezing in the house, so the boiler had been either turned off or removed completely. Good thing her sleeping bag was insulated. She already had goosebumps. She tried to flick on a light in the hallway, and when she heard a telltale clicking sound, she shut it off before a fire could be ignited. She figured she’d check it out upstairs, to see if there were different wires going to the fuse box. If the fuse box weren’t in the basement, she’d look at that, too, but while she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack, she was not stupid enough to go down into the basement of an abandoned, possibly haunted, house!
She went further in and decided that, in case there were vandals in the place, she’d go and check out all the rooms. In the papers the Clausens’ had signed with Adrienne, they said she needed to sleep in a bedroom like she’d told them they could, and she wanted to be positive that no one else was sleeping with her.
She left her bag in the foyer and only took her flashlight and cell phone with her upstairs. She first entered the living room, which had moth-eaten sheets over old furniture. She was pretty sure she saw a rat nesting in a corner of an easy chair but refused to look directly at it. Everything had a ghostly glow because the moon was shining through the boards on the windows and illuminating the dust that was generously coating everything.
She peeked into the room to her left and saw it was a grand dining room, furnished with what must’ve been the very best furniture in that era. Right then, it looked like Satan’s dining room, and she could easily envision skeletal corpses dining on plates of bugs and brains there, sipping blood from chalices.
What is wrong with me? she asked herself. I’m gonna give myself the creeps thinking like that.
She moved to the other side of the room, and the doorway led to a kitchen. She was definitely not going to look in the refrigerator. She walked to the sink and turned on the water. Obviously, it wouldn’t go hot, with no boiler, but the water was clear and strong. Good, in case her half a gallon of water didn’t last her the night.
She peeked in the pantry and quickly shut the door again when she heard the telltale squeaking of rodents. She was so close to crying; she couldn’t possibly stay there! Scooting out, checking the downstairs bathroom and thankfully finding nothing, she took a calming breath before grabbing her bag again and walking up the stairs that were once carpeted, but the carpet had been worn away from years of disuse and damage, not to mention the occasional carpet beetle eating at it.
She saw one of those disgusting, large black beetles on a step in front of her, chowing on the moldy carpet like it was a rare steak and she really did shriek, nearly throwing herself backward down the stairs by accident. She held the railing with a death-grip and thankfully it didn’t give out as she straightened herself up and saw that the beetle had gone away.
She reached the top of the stairs and went looking into bedrooms. She was thinking how nice this house must have been when it was new. Her feet were quiet in the thick, dust-covered carpet as she walked and checked a linen closet, which now held ragged towels and moth-eaten sheets.
Elisa remembered going antiquing with her mother and grandmother as a child. She always hated the smell of old clothes and furniture, and this house made those old shops seem like heaven. There’s no way to explain the thick, dusty, dry stench that comes off of old fabric. It reminded her of death, funeral parlors, and newly turned grave dirt.
She opened a small door to her left and found a study that was still filled with books and an antique desk that must have cost a fortune. It appeared empty, but as she exited, she left the door open, thinking she’d peek in there at the books.
The next door was a little girl’s room. There were portraits of ballerinas on the wall, and the bed was tiny, covered with frilly pink satin and white lace sheets and pillows. They were once lovely, but now they were dingy and discolored from damp and mold. One wall had a peculiar, large stain that she was not close enough to see properly in the darkness. Dolls and moldy stuffed animals lined a shelf above the bed, wood rotted and paint faded.
The blank stare of them all, particularly this one-eyed teddy bear with an ear torn off, gave her a chill that started at the top of her skull and slowly traveled through her body, making her hairs stand on end, and her knees shake.
She stepped closer, the curiosity of what had stained the wall winning over her fear. Looking closely, she realized that, beneath the dust, she smelled iron and ... salt? Was it the bed frame’s rust permeating? No, that was rotting wood; it wasn’t metal. Peering at the wall right above the headboard, she clicked on her flashlight. The stain was not brown; it was maroon and flaking. It was blood that had not been washed off of the rose-printed wallpaper, probably the blood of the little girl who had been murdered in her bed.
Choking back bile, she quickly left that room and shut the door firmly behind her. Turning, she went to the large door ahead of her and opened it to reveal a master bedroom, done in dark wood paneling, with a plush flowered carpet beneath her. The wallpaper had once been beige with sienna stripes, but now it was peeling and stained.
The bed was gorgeous, intricately carved with what looked like dark red sheets and pillows. The smell of copper was stronger here, as was that smell like rotten hamburger meat. It wasn’t until she walked to the bed and saw that the sheets were soaked in blood. This blood did not look as old as the blood in the kid’s room, and she again thought about how many murders had taken place until recently. That was what smelled so pungently. This was where the parents had been killed.
The smell was in her nostrils, permeating her very mind as she pictured the dead bodies, with chunks bitten out of them as if Hannibal Lecter had come to life and gone rabid. She could almost hear the ripping sound of flesh as teeth tore at their still-writing bodies. She could hear their screams, the gurgling of blood choking them as the bites tore into their stomachs and veins.
With trembling, shaking, stumbling steps, she made it to the ensuite bathroom and vomited her dinner and a good amount of bile into the toilet.
She started crying as she rinsed her mouth out in the sink. This wasn’t fair. She was never going to be the same after this night, of that she was sure.
Dashing out of the room like it was on fire, she finally took a blood-free breath of fresh air. Her eyes turned toward the baby’s room. Kieran. Funny how she remembered his name. The news had said there was no sign of the baby at all, and no evidence it had been murdered. She still hesitated to check the room. Picturing adults being chomped on was one thing, but a little baby, only six months old? Unthinkable.
She closed her eyes as she opened the nursery door, revealing a happy sight. Aside from the layers of dust and mouse poop, this was the antithesis of the other bedrooms. The moonlight was shining through the tattered curtains, making it easy to see the crib, playpen with toys still scattered around, as though a small child was still there, ready to play with them again that very night, and the colorful murals all over the walls. A decrepit mobile still hung above the crib, but what hung on it made her have to take a second look. Was that a hand? A fleshy, decayed hand? And a tongue? What else was that? Whatever it was, it was too disgusting and too decayed for her to tell.
She squeaked, too scared to even scream properly, and left that room, forgetting to shut the door behind her. At first, as she stood in the vestibule and caught her breath, she realized what those things must really be: Adrienne playing tricks on her. Of course! Addie had always hated her and had a flair for the dramatic. That was probably cow’s blood on the bed, and props on the mobile. That little, conniving bitch!
Glancing at the closed door to the son’s bedroom, she decided against opening it. Were a vagabond hiding in there, good for them. She could not handle seeing any more blood.
She was going to get it when Elisa got into the office the next morning.
Elisa walked back to the study, wiping her eyes from stray tears. Sure, she hadn’t been the nicest girl in school, but how on Earth did she deserve this? How could Adrienne be so cruel?
She dusted off the wooden chair that still looked sturdy enough to sit in and doused it with the alcohol she had brought with her. When it was suitably clean, she sat down in it and turned it to face the bookshelf. She needed to calm down before she gave herself an anxiety attack from the mingled fear, anger, and adrenaline rush.
Elisa had only seven more hours to go before she could clear out. She was supposed to sleep in a bedroom, but that was never going to happen. The study would be fine, and no one would be the wiser.
She began to peruse the books, many of which were in German or Latin. She only spoke English and remedial Spanish. Some of the books were downright creepy. A lot of Lovecraft. Poetry that, when she tried reading it, gave her the creeps so badly she put the book back. Books on mythology, theology, and dark magic. She had no idea what some of these books were referencing, but she got the idea that they were not exactly bedtime stories.
She touched one to get a better look at the title and saw it had something to do with summoning demons. She got so scared she dropped the book. There was no way Adrienne planted these. They were too old. She finally found a book she could read — Carmilla — and settled into the chair with a sigh. This would take up some time until she was too tired to hold her head up.
She trained her flashlight to the page and began to read. She got a few chapters in when her flashlight began to flicker. After slapping it against her palm a few times, it died completely, and she let out a string of curses that would rival the oldest sailors. That damn Adrienne. She had given her those candles, too, as if she knew this would happen.
Elisa dug blindly into her purse and finally found the package of candles. When she opened them, they scattered, and she could only barely get her hands on one of them. She lit the candle and sighed, as its feeble light was not good enough to read by, nor would it help her find the other candles she dropped. She reached into her bag again to find her iPod when she heard something that did not sound right. She heard tinkling music in the distance.
She cocked her head, listening harder. Maybe it was a car from the street. As she kept listening, she realized that no adult would be blasting “Rock-A-Bye Baby” in their car like it was Metallica loud enough for her to hear it fairly clearly in the house. That was more like something a parent would play for a fussy baby, or have a hanging mobile play for them.
She swallowed around a lump in her throat and decided to go and see what the Hell Adrienne had done to scare her now. How she must hate her to have planned something so elaborate. Taking her candle, she crept down the hall and, sure enough, the song was coming from the nursery.
How predictable, she thought.
She slowly opened the door wider and saw that the grotesque mobile was indeed turning by itself, playing that classic lullaby about a baby falling to its death. There was no one else in the room, so Elisa assumed it had been turned on by remote or something like that.
She reached over and touched the mobile, but was confused when she saw nothing but the music box inside of the center. No Wi-Fi adapter, no electronic light blinking, and no timer. Nothing. Now, as she was face-to-appendage with the mobile, she could smell the sweet-sour decay of the hand in front of her, and she quickly stepped back before she got sick again.
Sweat coated her skin and fear crept back down her spine. If this wasn’t automatic, who had started it up? She was staring at it, unable to tear her eyes away from the slowly turning body parts.
From behind, she heard the toys rustling and a Jack-in-the-box started playing. She moaned in fear, but still held out hope that it was Adrienne trying to get her back for stealing her boyfriend five years ago.
The toys were now still, but the Jack popped up; the clown was decrepit, with eyes missing and a smile so sinister it made her hate clowns even more than she already did. After the Jack stopped its side-to-side momentum, she heard the high-pitched giggle of a baby.
“Nice try, Adrienne,” she said, trying to make her voice sound clear and unafraid. “You can come out now. The game is over. Okay? You win. I was scared. I am scared. So give up and let me go home, please!” Her voice failed her as tears started to stream down her face. She had never been so scared in her life as she was in that house.
From the darkest corner of the playpen, she saw something move, and she walked closer with her candle held aloft to see better. Whatever it was, its eyes were glowing white, and it was slowly coming closer to her. There was another giggle.
Closer, closer, ’til it hit the moonlight. It was then the thing was fully revealed to Elisa. It was a baby. Or, it was once. It was wearing a tattered onesie, stained with blood. The baby’s skin was mottled white with a greenish cast. The whites of its eyes were pitch black, and only the irises were glowing an unearthly white. It was giggling through a mouth filled with tiny, razor-sharp teeth. A split tongue like a snake peeked out as it licked its lips.
Elisa tried to laugh. “Funny, Adrienne. Where did you get this? The movie prop shop they opened last month?”
Despite the fact that it was not moving like anything mechanical, Elisa knew it had to be. No way was this real. This had Adrienne’s stink all over it. She crept closer to the giggling thing. It had a wisp of hair on its head like a real baby would have. Its nails were stained with blood, and she could see blood on its fangs, too.
“Hungry ... ”
Did that thing just say it was hungry? Elisa felt pee run down her leg, but she had to show a brave face. She reached out with her left hand, the one not holding the candle, and went to touch it, to prove to herself that it was a toy. She had done something similar when her dad had found a dead snake in their backyard; he made her touch it to make her realize that it would not be able to hurt her.
She reached out achingly slowly with one finger and went to tap the toy’s nose. The head popped up, and the mouth widened. She felt a sharp pain as the teeth latched onto her finger and ripped it off with a grisly, wet crunch.
She screamed and reeled back in pain, her stump of a pointer finger spouting blood. She fell back against the wall beneath the window, dropping the candle. It died out, but the moonlight was strong, and it was enough to see the baby crawl to her, munching on her stolen finger. The stump throbbed and burned as the wound was wide open.
“Hungry,” it said, sounding like “hungwy.” Baby talk. It was eating her, and talking baby talk.
She screamed and tried to scramble away, but the baby was faster now that it had had a taste of her. It crawled up her leg like a giant slug in its onesie and sank its fangs into her thigh, tearing her jeans and breaking the skin. It felt like two dozen hot needles in her flesh. She tried to bat it away, but it bit her hand, tearing off a large part of the palm. It did so slowly, so that she could feel the tugging and tearing of her skin as it was ripped away to be devoured.
It crawled up to her stomach, digging its fangs into the soft flesh and muscle. All she knew for a few moments after that was the agony of a slow, painful torture. Afterward, she didn’t feel a damn thing ever again.
 
* * *
 
Adrienne stood outside the house the next morning, watching the coroner bring out a body bag filled with the mortal remains of Elisa Walker. She was holding her rosary and stroking it absently.
“Tell me the truth, did you know?”
She looked up at the sound of the voice. “I knew there was something. That couple had heard the mobile before they hightailed it outta there. I did some research on the family. They practiced dark arts. They called a demon, but it came in the form of their baby. Their spell backfired after the baby ate them all and took up residence in the house, preying on those who came into its domain.”
Drew Foley, Elisa’s high school sweetheart and the man she had stolen from Adrienne all those years ago, shook his head. “I can’t say I’m sorry. She was a terrible person.”
“Took you long enough to figure that out,” Adrienne pointed out. “So, did the production company you work for sign the papers?”
He nodded. “They’re gonna use this house as a prop for their next movie. They’ll burn it down like it should have been burnt long ago.”
Adrienne looked up at the window to the baby’s room. It was splattered with fresh blood. “I doubt even that will kill it.”
He shook his head. “It might. Evil can’t survive forever.”
“True,” Adrienne agreed. “Look at how young Elisa went. It’s just too bad you didn’t go with her.”

Lily Luchesi is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of the Paranormal Detectives Series.
Her young adult Coven Series has successfully topped Amazon's Hot New Releases list consecutively.
She is also the founder of Partners in Crime Book Services, where she offers a myriad of services, including editing.
They were born in Chicago, Illinois, where many of their stories are set. Ever since she was a toddler, her mother noticed her tendency for being interested in all things "dark". At two they became infatuated with vampires and ghosts, and that infatuation turned into a lifestyle. She is also an out member of the LGBT+ community.
When not writing, she's going to rock concerts, getting tattooed, watching the CW, or reading comics and manga. And drinking copious amounts of coffee.
Lily also writes contemporary books for adults as Samantha Calcott, and dark/taboo romance as S.L. Sinclair
http://facebook.com/lilyluchesi