Morpheus Tales #13 Preview

The townspeople didn’t like the house at the back of the cemetery’s property. The ghosts who lived inside it held grudges of their own.

Something clicked. Laughter beat against the broken windows. Donovan flitted about the room, anxious. He smelled fate drawing near. It rose on the wind and slid through the drafty house.

His hands longed to touch flesh. It’d been so long.

Moonlight spilled through a hole in the ceiling and reflected off a dusty mirror in the hall.

The whole house moaned with the pressure of the past and its sins. ### Jacob laughed. Keri had her hand down his pants and her lips against his neck. He pushed her away and leaned on a gravestone. She touched his chest and said, “Doesn’t this place turn you on? Or is it me?”

“Oh yeah,” he teased. “It’s you.” She was the hottest girl in his class. It’d taken him ten years to ask her out, and she surprised him when she said that she’d always thought he was cute. It wasn’t like he had the prowess or confidence of the jocks, or the bright, promising future of the average nerd. You’re not boring, she’d said. And he wondered if that was enough to start a relationship on, if it was enough to sustain it.

“Come on,” Keri said. “I want it.”

There was a look in her eye. He wanted to make her beg for it. It reminded him of his dad, before he’d disappeared. How he used to draw everything out to the breaking point. Always testing people. He hated his old man and here he was turning into him.

Keri tugged at the button of his pants, her breath like the wind against his throat. “Please.”

“No.” She met his eyes. Her hand stilled. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I don’t know.

“Nothing. I’m just not in the mood.”

Look around. We’re in a cemetery with that fucking creepy house behind us.

He started wondering how well he knew her if this is what got her excited, and got her off.

“Give me a little space, will you?”

She punched him in the chest and he grunted. “I’ll give you tons of space.” She ran towards the house and he wanted to call out to her, tell her to wait a goddamn second because if there was a place not to run, that was it. The house had always scared him. His uncle told him that it ate his brother, though Jacob’s mom told him he didn’t have a brother. Never had a brother. His dad grinning, that drunk wound of a face before he disappeared saying, “We had one kid too many, know what I’m saying? What we really needed was a cute little girl.”

Keri kept her eyes on the house as she ran. He wanted her to look back, stop at the door, so he could call her back and tell her, “I really don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve wanted you forever and all I’m good at is fucking shit up.” She opened the door, its hinges screaming, high and shrill, the sound like a car’s brakes squealing.

“Wait up.” He meant to yell it. It came out a whisper.

She looked back and flashed her middle finger at him, the house looming above her, branches scraping against its roof. Jacob sighed and started walking. He wasn’t aware of when he started to run. His side ached. Dead leaves blew across the porch. He stopped at the foot of the steps. The house was quiet. “Keri?”

No answer. The boards on the steps moaned under his weight. Sweat ran down his face. He was supposed to have her home by midnight. He looked at his watch. They only had a half hour.

Something stirred inside the doorway. A form darker than the black that surrounded it squirmed in the murk.

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