The witching house, p.1
The Witching House, page 1
The Witching House
Title Page
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Three
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
About the Author
The Witching House
Brian Moreland
More books by Brian Moreland:
Shadows in the Mist
Dead of Winter
The Witching House
The Devil’s Woods
The Vagrants
Short Story Collections:
Dark Needs: Three Twisted Tales of Horror
Some houses should be left alone.
In 1972, twenty-five people were brutally murdered in one of the bloodiest massacres in Texas history. The mystery of who committed the killings remains unsolved.
Over forty years later, Sarah Donovan is dating an exciting man, Dean Stratton. Sarah’s scared of just about everything—heights, tight places, the dark—but today she must confront all her fears, as she joins Dean and another couple on an exploring adventure. The old abandoned Blevins House, the scene of the gruesome massacre, is rumored to be haunted.
The two couples are about to discover the mysterious house has been waiting all these years, craving fresh prey. And down in the cellar they will encounter a monstrous creature that hungers for more than just human flesh.
The Witching House
2nd Edition, eBook edition
Copyright © 2013 by Brian Moreland
Published February 2017 by Rising Horse Books
Dallas, Texas
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever, including photography, xerography, broadcast, transmission, translation into any language, or recording, without permission in writing from the publisher. Reviewers may quote brief passages in critical articles or reviews.
Originally published as an eBook by Samhain Publishing July 2013. Also included in a collection of novellas: Blood Sacrifices: Four Tales of Terror, published by Samhain Publishing April 2016.
Republished by Rising Horse Books February 2017.
Cover design: Brian Moreland
stone house image © chiakto - Fotolia.com
ISBN: 978-0-9986846-4-2
To my wonderful nieces, Saxon and Ally.
Follow your dreams.
Acknowledgments
A wonderful team of people helped me make this book the best that I could write. Special thanks to my agent Betty Anne Crawford, my editor Don D’Auria, and all the staff at Samhain Publishing.
A big Texas thank you goes to my friends in my writer’s group for their invaluable feedback: Bridget Boland, Lisa Glasgow, Max Wright, Erin Burdette, Paul Black and Pat O’Connell. Pat, thank you so much for letting me stay at your cabin in the East Texas woods, where I wrote most of this book.
Thank you to Athena Schaffer for her knowledge on Wicca and witchcraft.
To my mom for reading early versions of the manuscript and being my sounding board. Last and not least, my family for all your support—Laura, Raymond, Saxon, Ally, Mom and Dad.
“White Ceremonial Magic is, by the terms of its definition, an attempt to communicate with Good Spirits for a good, or at least an innocent, purpose. Black Magic is the attempt to communicate with Evil Spirits for evil purposes.”
—Arthur Edward Waite, The Book of Black Magic, originally published in 1898
Prologue
Present day
The house that ate people stood within a coven of pine trees like an ancient god being worshipped. The high branches touched its shingled roof with reverence. Towering three stories, the rock house was far from being a flawless god. The moss-covered stones that cobbled its walls were pocked from years of rot and abandon. Fungus and creeper vines had spread across its facade, leafy tentacles invading cracks where boards covered the windows. The glass within their frames had long ago shattered.
The Old Blevins House, as it came to be called, was set miles deep within the East Texas forest and rumored to be haunted. The stone dwelling became a backwoods legend spoken over campfires and around beers at the roadhouse in Buck Horn, referring to it as “that house in the woods”. If anyone foolishly talked about ghosts or witchery, they were sure to spit the ground and cross themselves. Deer hunters wouldn’t dare hunt these parts. The deer wouldn’t come here either.
Otis Blevins, the caretaker of the property, knew all the house’s secrets because he had witnessed his family’s bloody massacre as a child. Now, decades later, the house often spoke to him in whispers and played violent memories inside his head. Some folk called Otis Blevins crazy, but he wasn’t. He just had a special bond with this house that ran deep as blood.
At age forty-seven, Otis now lived on a pig farm ten miles away but still looked after the stone house. On this dewy morning, he checked the front door to make sure it was still locked. The padlock was badly rusted. He made a mental note to stop by the hardware store and buy a new one. As the caretaker walked the perimeter, he noticed that some of the symbols painted on the clapboards had smeared after last night’s storm. He shook his head. East Texas got too much rain this time of year.
Otis pulled a paintbrush out of a mason jar of hog’s blood and repainted a symbol of a triangle with stick-figure arms and legs. He heard scratching from the opposite side of the clapboards—something angry clawed at him from within the house. Whistling, Otis walked around the corner. The scraping nails followed him as he painted the same symbol on every boarded window. The scrapes turned to pounding. The house was in a foul mood this morning. Or maybe just hungry. The caretaker ignored the incessant knocks against the wood and performed the tasks that the house had given him.
When he was done, Otis returned to his truck. In the back, a large hog was pacing in a cage, making all sorts of grunting noises.
“Easy there, girl.” Otis opened the cage and snapped a leash on Bessie’s collar. The sow hopped off the truck and snorted against Otis’s leg. He patted her pink head and then walked her to the back of the house where a long chain lay coiled on the ground. He was mighty upset that it was Bessie’s turn. Otis loved this pig. The house reminded him that he had alternatives, if he was willing.
The caretaker hooked the chain to the sow’s collar and backed away. Tearing up, Otis sat in an old rocker and chewed a wad of tobacco as he waited. Not long after, the chain began to uncoil and went taut. The pig squealed and struggled to run as she was dragged into a dark hole near the house.
Otis left after that. He hated the sounds the house made when it fed.
Part One
The Ghost Squad
Chapter 1
“Dead roads are bad omens,” Sarah Donovan’s grandmother used to say when Sarah was a little girl and her family traveled down a road littered with road kill. “You’ll find nothing good at the end of a dead road.”
Today, while riding through the backwoods of East Texas with her new boyfriend, Dean, and another couple, Sarah had counted a dead coyote, two mutilated armadillos, what might have been a possum, and buzzards feasting on a deer carcass. The carrion eaters took flight as the white Range Rover passed them and wound its way through the cloying pines.
Sarah’s nana, who was in to everything New Age, had preached that the universe always gives you signs if you watch for them.
Is this road trying to warn me? Sarah wondered. She looked at her boyfriend. Does this mean our relationship is doomed?
Dean seemed oblivious to the signs all around them. As he and his friends, Casey and Meg Ackerman, passed around a thermos of coffee and talked over strategy, Sarah remained quiet in the front passenger seat. Since they had left Dallas at dawn, she had seen a few truck stops and small towns along the way, as well as the occasional farm, but now mostly her view was empty road and endless trees. Civilization had dropped off since they turned off I-20 into what Dean called “redneck country”. In the backseat, Casey tried to be funny, mimicking the dueling-banjos tune from Deliverance, as if “redneck” meant inbreds. Dean was quick to correct Casey that inbreeding hillbillies were in Tennessee and West Virginia, not Texas. But rednecks were territorial and carried shotguns, and they lived by the creed “Don’t mess with Texas”.
It wasn’t the thought of encountering inbred hillbillies or gun-toting rednecks that had Sarah spooked. It was the legions of spiky pines, spruce and cedars pressing so close to the road. These weren’t the benign oak and pecan trees that stood in small clusters around White Rock
Dean offered Sarah the thermos. “Hot coffee?”
She shook her head. “No thanks.”
“Not a morning person, are you?” he observed.
After three lust-filled months of dating, she was afraid he was beginning to see her flaws. Nothing like their first road trip together to bring them out. Sarah didn’t care. She was putting her life in this man’s hands. “Are you sure we aren’t lost?”
Dean looked offended. “I know how to follow a map.” Okay, not the type to stop and ask for directions.
“I’m not saying you don’t, sweetie.” She touched his leg to let him know she wasn’t challenging his masculinity. “It’s just…every road looks the same.” In the city, Sarah always had her bearings, but out here in the sticks she couldn’t tell east from west.
“We’re right on course.” He patted her leg. “Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
“Sorry, I’m being a worry wart.” Sarah felt like a child now. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Dean gave her the confident smile that always melted her. “Trust me. It will be fun.”
The thrill of adventure, Sarah mused. That was what had initially attracted her to Mr. Rugged Outdoors, whom she’d met while kayaking with her girlfriends. After ending a dull ten-year marriage to never-gets-his-butt-off-the-couch Barry, Sarah had craved adventure. And she found that in spades with Dean Stratton. In three glorious months, he had already taken her rock climbing, hiking, dancing, rollerblading, and they had run a 5K race together to raise money for a children’s hospital. Dean was big into volunteering for Dallas charities, which scored him double bonus points. Sarah often wondered if this man was too good to be true.
They weren’t a full-on couple yet. Neither brought up the R-word, but they were more than just casual lovers. She was dating Dean exclusively; hopefully he didn’t have another woman or two on the side. She couldn’t know for sure, but at least they spent every weekend together. That was a good sign, right?
If she allowed herself, Sarah could easily fall for Dean, but the scars from a bitter divorce were still fresh. She knew the perils of moving too fast and tapped the brakes every time she came close to losing self-control. For now, she focused on living in the moment.
“Where are we going exactly?” It was Meg who asked the question. The pixie-cute blonde sat in the backseat with her newlywed husband, Casey, their fingers intertwined.
“It’s a surprise,” Dean said to his friends from California.
“It’s a haunted house, isn’t it?” Casey said.
“Could be.” Dean winked at Sarah.
Meg raised her coffee cup. “Here’s to another wild Ghost Squad exploration.”
“Hell yeah to that,” said Casey, tapping his wife’s cup with his bottle of Mountain Dew. “High adventure, here we come!”
Sarah looked out her side window and held her breath.
Two nights ago, Sarah had nearly choked on her dinner when she learned what Dean, Casey and Meg liked to do for kicks. They were Urban Explorers, meaning they snuck into rundown, abandoned buildings as a hobby. They actually belonged to an underground organization that mapped out sites you could explore in different cities—boarded-up warehouses, condemned churches and office buildings, usually in sections of the city that had gone to the grave. Urban exploring was illegal, and Sarah couldn’t believe she was dating a man who sometimes broke the law. “We’re just trespassing,” Dean had said like it was no big deal. “The buildings are completely vacant. We explore for a few hours, shoot some video, take a few photos and then go home. No harm done.”
“We don’t leave any trash behind,” Meg added, as if that was a selling point.
“We always leave the place the way we found it,” Casey piped in, finishing her thought. He finished a lot of Meg’s thoughts—and her beers, and the leftover food on her plate. The guy had an insatiable appetite. In contrast, Meg barely nibbled the lettuce off her burger.
Despite their little hang-ups, Sarah liked Dean’s friends. They treated her with kindness and had accepted her into the fold.
The three had given themselves a nickname—the Ghost Squad. It wasn’t enough to comb through empty buildings. That was kid’s stuff. Dean, Casey and Meg searched for abandoned dwellings claimed to be haunted.
Sarah was afraid of the dark, heights, tight spaces—and, as general rule, always played it safe. Over several rounds of beers, the three of them had seduced Sarah into believing urban exploring was the most-fun thing to do on earth.
When they had Sarah good and tipsy, Dean sprang the news that he had found the perfect building to explore this weekend. It wasn’t in Dallas, but three hours away in the East Texas woods. Casey and Meg had flown here from LA, specifically for this UE adventure, even though Dean wasn’t divulging the details. The three had begged Sarah to join them until she finally caved.
Now, as Sarah watched the pines roll by and imagined what exploring an old house would be like, she wondered if she could handle the Ghost Squad’s idea of adventure. She had almost backed out this morning but knew how much this trip meant to Dean.
He put his hand on her leg, reassuring her. Sarah put her hand on his and forced herself to smile. Needing to distract her mind from her nervousness, she looked back at Meg and Casey. All Sarah knew about the couple was that Casey managed a surfboard shop in Venice Beach and Meg worked as a nurse in the cancer ward at a children’s hospital.
“So how long have you two been married?” Sarah asked.
Meg beamed and squeezed Casey’s hand. “Six fabulous months.”
Sarah, still feeling the pain from her own failed marriage, wondered if Meg would still be this in love ten years from now. Sarah hoped finding true love was not just a myth.
Casey grinned. “We had a totally kick-ass wedding and honeymoon down in Cabo. Dean was there. Remember that, buddy?”
“How could I forget?”
“Let me warn you, Sarah,” Meg said. “You’re boyfriend can be a lunatic.”
“Yeah,” said Casey. “The way we got married was his crazy idea.”
Meg dug into her backpack. “I’ve got the wedding video on my iPad.”
“Guys, don’t pull that thing out,” Dean said, a look of worry on his face.
