Corpses, Hellhounds, and Mortgages--Oh My!

By Andrea Miccaver

Written for the OWG's '06 Halloween challenge. The prompt was a picture of a haunted house. I want to contact the artist and get his/her permission before I post the picture here. As for the story, it takes place in the same world as one of my Work-In-Progress novels.

I had bought a house! The thought kept racing through my mind, each word a Nascar. I, Trish Hallowbeck, the woman who had once owned nothing but a bad reputation, had bought a house. And I hadn't needed to go to my parents for money to do it. Hell, the house was so cheap, I'd barely had to get a loan. My heart sped up as I drove toward a pretty yellow cottage type house with white trim.

“Is that our house?” a tired voice asked. I looked over to the passenger seat. In the dark, all I could see was the faint shine of his eyes reflecting starlight. My son, Jacob. I had a son. Even though he'd been in the world for six years now, it still surprised me. I'd been going about my business, getting drunk and partying like usual, then BAM! I got hit with the news that my weight gain was not a case of really bad water retention.

I slowed the car a bit and strained to see the numbers on the mailbox as the headlights passed over them. “No.” My heart lurched a bit. “The number's different.” But not by much.“It'll be only a little bit further.” I heard Jacob yawn. Grinning I said, ”Staying up until midnight isn't all you'd thought it'd be, huh?”

“I can do it,” he swore. Maybe. When he got his head set on something, a bar full of Hell's Angels couldn't chase him away.

I drove another five minutes before I began to worry. All of the houses stopped at that fairy tale cottage. Where was the house I'd bought? After another five minutes, the asphalt made an abrupt shift to a pit holed dirt road with periodic pockets of gravel and broken tar. Obviously it had once been a proper road, but something destroyed it many years ago. A flood maybe? I shrugged the thought away and kept on driving. It couldn't be much further.

Lights lit up the sky, burning behind the clouds like a rippling cloak of fire. Green fire with only the merest hint of orange.

“What the hell?” I muttered, before remembering that this far north you could see the Aurora Borealis. “Look Jacob! A free show.”

“Whoa! Is it every day?”

“Yup,” I said, feeling like for once I had done right. “That's what happens at midnight.” At least, I suppose that's what happens. I couldn't really recall how frequently the northern lights showed. Oh well, it'd give the kid something to tell his friends. When he made friends—which I'm sure would be really quick. As soon as I signed him up for school, anyway.

Then finally I saw my house. My heart did an abrupt nose dive and hid in my toes. A memory of my mother criticizing me for even making an offer before I had seen the place bit me painfully in the ass. She had told me they would sell me a dump and I had told her she was a spiteful hag. Guess which one of us was right?

The beautiful mansion that I had imagined all the way here was really a giant shack. I had convinced myself it would only need a bit of sprucing up, but it looked like bulldozing and re-zoning would be more appropriate. What had I done?

“Is that our house?” Jacob asked doubtfully.

“Er . . .” I looked for some numbers. Under the dark overhang I could just see the address that had been on the paperwork I had signed. “Yes.” I shut off the car's engine.

“Oh.” He sounded about as thrilled as I was. “Then why is someone else already in it?”

“What?!” I yelped. Sure enough, when I ducked my head and looked up so that I could see from his level, I saw lights in one of the upstairs rooms. Driving up, I'd been so distracted by the Aurora Borealis, that I hadn't even noticed it.

Despite the really horrible opinions some people had about me, I was not so stupid that I'd walk blithely into a creepy house with a stranger in it. Even if the creepy house was my own. Eyes still on the light, I held my hand out. Without me having to tell him, Jacob pulled my cell phone out of my purse and silently handed it to me. Still not looking, I flipped it open and speed dialed the police. Yes, my life was the kind that required 911 only a button away.

“911, please state your emergency.”

“There's an intruder in my house.” I then gave her the address and my cell number. I knew the drill.

“One moment,” I heard her click my information into the computer. “I'm transferring your call.”

“Why?” I asked, but it was too late.

“Ms Hallowbeck?” A man said in the irritated tone of a high school teacher to a very slow student. “I'm Reail Greandirrt.” He pronounced it ree-ALE gree-AN-dirrr. That last part rolling off in a growl. “Also known as your intruder.” A man on a cell phone looked out of the lit window and waved. “I'll come down and explain.” Before I could say anything, he hung up. The jerk-wad.

“Stay here,” I ordered Jacob. He nodded a bit too eagerly. I got out and closed the door. The following slam echoed back in piercing shards. Right. Don't do that again.

Things crunched under my heels as I walked toward the porch. I kept reminding myself that it wasn't bones underfoot, but twigs. It became even harder when I realized that a pile of stones I had dismissed were actually grave markers. But they were too close together to be a graveyard. Right? Hell, maybe the previous owner had been a collector.

My front door opened and a beast from the pit of Hell glared at me from inside. Steam trailed up from his nostrils and I knew that if he fed on the dead flesh he craved, his eyes would glow with flames. A hellhound. In my yard. Which meant . . .

“I have the undead?”

“Ms. Hallowbeck,” the man said, still wrapped in darkness. “I'm afraid you bought a battleground full of them.”

“Who would build on a battleground?” I wished I could say I asked it calmly, but I can't. I was two seconds away from hunting the real estate agent down and strangling him.

“The same people who would buy one, I expect.” Reail pushed the hound aside with his leg and joined me one the porch.

Since I had seen the hound, I wasn't surprised Reail was an elf. The man's huge ears were too disproportionate to his head to be anything but strange. Elves and bats were the same on that regard. Whoever had started the rumor that all elves were pretty must have been on drugs.

Elves scarred easily too, and it was nearly impossible to find an elf with all of his body parts. They worked in a field that didn't encourage happily ever afters and had an obsession with flying that their lack of wings wasn't enough to cure. I looked Reail over, from scarred face to limping left leg, trying to find his missing parts. If he had any, they weren't the kind normally shown in public.

“Which battle?” I asked, as if it really mattered.

“A small one during the war of 1812. As you know, the last body buried guards the rest of the graveyard. But for this battle, they were in too much of a hurry to have individual graves.”

“Mass grave.” I spit it out like the curse it was. “How many?”

“A battle that size, I would say no more than a dozen or two.” Shit. Up to twenty-four dead men would surge out of the ground at any sign of danger to their land. “Think of them as really ugly watch dogs.” And that was better?

“Mummy?” Jacob asked uncertainly.

I looked at him crossly. ”Didn't I tell you to stay where you were?” Silently he pointed. Just behind the car was a man in a tattered red uniform with half of his face shattered to bits.

“Just a zombie,” Reail said. “Nothing to really worry about.” The hellhound watched the zombie curiously, but didn't make a move toward it.

“Don't hellhounds eat zombies?”

Reail grimaced. “No. They eat ghouls. We've checked, but there aren't any here.” He grabbed a branch and began to herd the zombie away from the house and towards the surrounding bare forest. I huffed out a breath.

“Jacob,” I said as we watched the hellhound dance around the zombie. “This is going to be our little secret, okay?” He looked up at me and nodded.

Reail paused his zombie herding to raise a hand and shout, “Oh, and before I forget; welcome home!”

I snorted. Sure, welcome home.