Ghastly Deux by Carolyn J. Tody (year 7 reading list .txt) 📖

Plunge into the surreal twilight world of Ginger's derelict WitherWorm Villa. Will unthinkable happenings in a crumbling house, an abandoned village, disorienting encounters with mythological beings, and a stunning discovery add up to earning an angel crown for the impressionable youngster? …mwahaha!

This is the story that started it all: When Ginger of Witherworm Villa on Brambleberry Lane needs a writing retreat, she leaves her parents' villa during school break and visits a derelict villa with the same name ~ but quickly discovers she is not alone in the house on the hill. Ages 8 ~ Adult

 Carolyn J. Tody

GHASTLY DEUX

Part One ~ Photo Finish for the Ghouls

“Return to us, Gin… ger!”

These words come from nowhere. Am I only imagining them? Even at twilight, with darkness descending and the path barely illuminated, I am aware of a need to keep walking. This is my last chance.

It is already too late to continue my journey by the time my thoughts turn to the rising moon. I sigh, turn back, and pick my way through rocks and ruts to retrace my steps. Bare treetops brush the sky with an eerie glow of distant candlelight. My pace quickens. Jagged bands of moonlight fall across my path, cascading the patchwork field into plunging patterns of darkness.

Frightened by what lies hidden in those shadows, I sprint across a yard blanketed with long-dead leaves and onto a deserted path. Overgrown vines strangle the ground here. Suddenly I twist to avoid stumbling over badly rotting pumpkins. Then I fall. Swollen weed pods poke through my thin nightgown.

“Ghastly old vines!” I curse, brushing debris from a badly scratched knee.

The front steps of a ramshackle house loom before me, and I race upward without noticing their precarious sag into the hillside.  Risking a backward glance, I observe Witherworm Village sprawled far below. Buses line the sidewalks. Everyone is leaving town for a weekend at the riverfront. Even as I watch, the last person boards. That bus departs. One last streetlight flickers, plunging the creepy hillside into mortal blackness. I am alone.

Terrified, gasping for breath and half mad, I fling myself into a spider web spun across a gaping door hanging from a single hinge.

From this vantage point I can see the moon. A shadow crosses its face. First one silhouette moves against this satellite of Earth, then another. I shiver in my slippers, knowing evil watches me from its hiding place. Where can I shelter? What choices do I have? Surely, I will find no safety in the deserted village. I sweep aside the broken door to the derelict mansion and enter.

After propping the broken door shut and erecting a barricade, I run upstairs. Chilly air follows me. For the next hour I maintain my vigil near a cracked bedroom window. Its rusty hardware rattles, but I am so tired that I finally fall asleep despite the noise.

***

It is close to midnight when I awake. Raising the window carefully so I don’t lose the cracked glass, a strange scene confronts my gaze. Sleep-tousled hair falls in my face. I figure this is the least disturbing of my problems right now.

Moonlight shining much higher in the sky reveals a beastly sight! In the village below, Witherworm Mall is really hopping. I mean, ghastly ghouls are walking abroad masquerading. Night creatures are crawling out from every tomb in the cemetery next door.

Reaching for a dusty blanket I shiver inside it, still looking out the window and wondering what to do next. My keen senses tell me something evil is near. Then a cold hand with jagged, dirty fingernails grasps my own and pulls me toward the windowsill. I resist, hoping this is merely my imagination playing another trick. But no, my hand is turning numb from struggling. The dirty fingers keep yanking at me. They are pulling me outside the second floor window. I want to cry for help, but my mouth freezes.

“Out of time!” my mind screams. Is the end near? Are demons closing in to seal my doom? My sanity is in jeopardy. I’m paralyzed with terror but unable to call out. I am going over the edge…”

A sudden realization helps me recover my senses. Unlike whoever is out there, I am mortal. Madly, I fight to stay alive. Then in a moment of epiphany I notice that the dirty, bloody hand does not look real. Then what is my attacker? Is it a cold-blooded soul, a fiery fiend, or the shell of some enigmatic corpse? Aha, oho! I decide it is a lesser evil. This is a masked phantom in disguise.

Inspiration flashes through my mind like ancient light bulbs popping on a vintage camera. I rip the front of my nightshirt and secure it to the window handle with my free hand, flaunting my rosy navel like some kind of third eye with which I hope to distract the monster. Then I yank my captured hand away, slam the casement down with all my strength. Glass shards fly everywhere. Bloody fluids from that sinister smashed hand should be gushing down the wall by now. But I am too afraid to look.

Instead, I run to the closet and turn the lock, cringing into a little ball. With any luck at all, the ghastly villa will not lean too far away from the top of the hill and collapse with me still inside. A knothole in the door allows me to look outside. Nothing is visible out there.  Suddenly the closet feels like a safer place than the bedroom for catching a few winks.

Falling half in and out of a troublesome nap on a hard closet floor is good for something. It reveals formerly well-kept secrets of mine, like how impulsive and spoiled I am. This comes from being a very impatient creature. And when I make up my mind about something, that’s it. I am impulsive, impatient, bull headed and spoiled. There’s never a need to make any fuss, because things almost always go my way. I get what I want. Until now, that is. Who’d ever guess, right? I came to this ghost-infested old dwelling to spend my school break writing. True, I no longer want to stay here. But I will, during the daylight.  Last evening I gave up trying to convince myself to handle the dark, and my attempted escape to Brambleberry Lane led me right back here again.

Problem is, this old Villa is free. Poppa’s uncle Dan bequeathed it to his brother when he died last year. A short time afterward, uncle Dan’s brother also died here. That alone should be enough to scare me off. People thought I was grieving when I let out this funny little wail at the reading of the will leaving the villa to me. No, I was flipping out. Because I know trouble lay ahead in a strange little village named ‘Witherworm.’ On the other hand, the decrepit old mansion is just what I need to devote full time to my creativity after classes, so I'm staying in the villa during school vacation. All I have to do is write…fast… with an open mind.

Or so I think.

My throat tightens and I wake. Soon, I can barely breathe. It is time to come out of the closet and investigate what carnage decorates my windowsill. Surely the bloody, blighted hand still lies there. In fact, there is an old Polaroid camera in the closet. This will document whatever I find to show our housekeeper. Will I ever return home?

Brandishing the camera like a shield against any evil lurking outside, I snap a picture. It develops right in front of my eyes. Someone in the photo background resembles Raven, uncle Dan’s ghastly groundskeeper. He is gleefully waving goodbye to me wearing a glove with dirty fingertips.

Behind him the mall is also visible. My eyes open wide in surprise. Storekeepers are offering midnight treats to masked children haunting their shops. But how can this be, when Witherworm Village emptied for the weekend a few hours earlier?

I am absolutely positive this is not the same picture I took!

Part Deux ~ If You Can’t Lick ‘Em…

My new camera has to have evil powers. I am convinced it takes pictures on its own regardless of what is there, and I don’t appreciate it a single bit. I toss it back in the closet. Turn the knob. Walk away. Smile.

Then I peek outside. Even though I am frightened I am also full of questions, because I’ve never stayed up this late before. Where do ghouls go when they rise from the graveyard at midnight? What does one do about a grisly hand caught in a window jam oozing monster blood down the outside of a house?

 “Eeeuwww!” What about pumpkin guts strewn across the yard? There are so many I can bake a pie if I only know how.

No answers are coming to me, so I catch a few more winks inside the closet. At night it is the warmest place in Witherworm Villa because there were no windows.

Something wakes me. I leap from my blanket and listen at the door. There it is again, a noise downstairs. I mean, WAY down in the cellar. If you're ever alone in the house and hear a noise downstairs, DON'T investigate!! Save it for your horror script. Or call the police.

It is around 3am when the first noise wakes me. I jump back under the dusty duvet and wait for my fate. Safely under wraps, I wrack my brain for possible safety maneuvers. Halloween is near. Will a demon devour me with its fiery dragon breath, or is this just a bunch of pesky fox squirrels? My crash helmet isn’t handy, but anyway it is rabid animals that make the most sense to me.

If it is an intruder, I'll be half tempted to point the slime toward a few things..."Take this broken door so I can replace it." Or, “Take the instamatic, I want a new digital that takes the photograph I want, not a camera with a mind of its own.” But they'll probably leave after realizing there's nothing valuable for them to take. Or if they don't I’ll sneak outside, puncture their getaway tires, and call police.

Police? There are no police left in Witherworm Village. I am on my own with nothing but the villa between myself and creatures of the night.

Now, if I have my wits about me, I will stay out of sight. Instead, I fly downstairs with a flashlight poised for defense. My nerves betray me in mid-flight when I realize there is an eerie glow lighting the lower reaches of the stairway. Green mist bearing the suspicious smell of moldy Gouda leaks out from under the pantry door and snakes its way upward.

When I hear the first yowl, my quaking legs betray me. I collapse, paralyzed with fright but afraid to call out. Then the stairs begin to quake. So I crawl back upstairs hand over fist, shoot out the basement door, and take up residence under the kitchen cupboard.

Later, much later when it is quiet again, I creep out with my shirt soaking from the leaky faucet and try the cellar door. No use. It is fastened tight and the mist is still rising.

After checking all window locks, I retrieve the camera and walk to the outer wall of the living room, where a narrow slot allows me to see the yard without being observed myself.

A cloud must be obscuring the moon, because it is now blacker outside than the darkest night. I must squint to see. The mist rising from the cellar doesn’t help, either.

Flashes of silver shine through the trees at the base of the hill. Gradually, they grow brighter and closer. Crunching sounds explode up the