All Hallows Eve Read online

  All Hallows Eve

  A Krewe of Hunters Novella

  By Heather Graham

  1001 Dark Nights

  Copyright 2015 Heather Graham Pozzessere

  ISBN: 978-1-940887-77-7

  Foreword: Copyright 2014 M. J. Rose

  Published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Book Description

  All Hallows Eve

  A Krewe of Hunters Novella

  By Heather Graham

  Salem was a place near and dear to Jenna Duffy and Samuel Hall -- it was where they’d met on a strange and sinister case.

  They never dreamed that they’d be called back. That history could repeat itself in a most macabre and terrifying fashion.

  But, then again, it was Salem at Halloween. Seasoned Krewe members, they still find themselves facing the unspeakable horrors in a desperate race to save each other-and perhaps even their very souls.

  About Heather Graham

  Heather Graham has been writing for many years and actually has published nearly 200 titles. So, for this page, we’ll concentrate on the Krewe of Hunters.

  They include:

  Phantom Evil

  Heart of Evil

  Sacred Evil

  The Evil Inside

  The Unseen

  The Unholy

  The Unspoken

  The Uninvited

  The Night is Watching

  The Night is Alive

  The Night is Forever

  The Cursed

  The Hexed

  The Betrayed

  The Silenced

  The Forgotten

  The Hidden

  Actually, though, Adam Harrison—responsible for putting the Krewe together, first appeared in a book called Haunted. He also appeared in Nightwalker and has walk-ons in a few other books. For more ghostly novels, readers might enjoy the Flynn Brothers Trilogy—Deadly Night, Deadly Harvest, and Deadly Gift, or the Key West Trilogy—Ghost Moon, Ghost Shadow, and Ghost Night.

  The Vampire Series (now under Heather Graham/ previously Shannon Drake) Beneath a Blood Red Moon, When Darkness Falls, Deep Midnight, Realm of Shadows, The Awakening, Dead by Dusk, Blood Red, Kiss of Darkness, and From Dust to Dust.

  For more info, please visit her web page, http://www.theoriginalheathergraham.com or stop by on Facebook.

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  1001 Dark Nights story

  The First Night

  by Lexi Blake & M.J. Rose

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  About Heather Graham

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Also From 1001 Dark Nights

  An excerpt from When Irish Eyes Are Haunting by Heather Graham

  Rising Storm

  Special Thanks

  One Thousand and One Dark Nights

  Once upon a time, in the future…

  I was a student fascinated with stories and learning.

  I studied philosophy, poetry, history, the occult, and

  the art and science of love and magic. I had a vast

  library at my father’s home and collected thousands

  of volumes of fantastic tales.

  I learned all about ancient races and bygone

  times. About myths and legends and dreams of all

  people through the millennium. And the more I read

  the stronger my imagination grew until I discovered

  that I was able to travel into the stories... to actually

  become part of them.

  I wish I could say that I listened to my teacher

  and respected my gift, as I ought to have. If I had, I

  would not be telling you this tale now.

  But I was foolhardy and confused, showing off

  with bravery.

  One afternoon, curious about the myth of the

  Arabian Nights, I traveled back to ancient Persia to

  see for myself if it was true that every day Shahryar

  (Persian: شهریار, “king”) married a new virgin, and then

  sent yesterday’s wife to be beheaded. It was written

  and I had read, that by the time he met Scheherazade,

  the vizier’s daughter, he’d killed one thousand

  women.

  Something went wrong with my efforts. I arrived

  in the midst of the story and somehow exchanged

  places with Scheherazade – a phenomena that had

  never occurred before and that still to this day, I

  cannot explain.

  Now I am trapped in that ancient past. I have

  taken on Scheherazade’s life and the only way I can

  protect myself and stay alive is to do what she did to

  protect herself and stay alive.

  Every night the King calls for me and listens as I spin tales.

  And when the evening ends and dawn breaks, I stop at a

  point that leaves him breathless and yearning for more.

  And so the King spares my life for one more day, so that

  he might hear the rest of my dark tale.

  As soon as I finish a story... I begin a new

  one... like the one that you, dear reader, have before

  you now.

  Prologue

  Come to me. Please, come to me.

  The words seemed real to Elyssa Adair, like a whisper in her mind, as she looked up at the old mansion.

  The Mayberry Mortuary was decked out in a fantastic Halloween décor, customary each year starting October 1. It sat high on a jagged bluff near the waterfront in Salem, Massachusetts. Just driving toward it, at night, was like being in a horror movie. Dense trees lined the paved drive and it was surrounded by a graveyard. The old Colonial building, when captured beneath the moonlight, seemed to rise from the earth in true Gothic splendor.

  She shivered and looked around at her friends, wondering if the words had been spoken by one of them. Vickie Thornton and Barry Tyler sat in the backseat, laughing with one another and making scary faces. Nate Fox was driving, his dark eyes intent on the road.

  No one in the car had spoken to her.

  She gave herself a silent mental shake. She could have sworn she’d actually heard a whisper. Clear as day. Come to me. Strangely, she wasn’t afraid. She loved the artistry of Halloween—the fun of it—and few places in the world embraced the day like Salem.

  This was home and she loved Salem, despite the sad history of witch trials and executions. A lot of that was steeped in lure and myth, but the local Peabody Essex museum and other historic venues seemed to go out of their way to remind visitors of the horror that came from petty jealousy and irrational fear.

  “Boo,” Nate said, leaning toward her.

  She jumped with a start.

  She’d been deeply involved in her
thoughts and the view of the old mansion. Nate, Vickie, and Barry all giggled at her surprise.

  “Do you have to do that,” she murmured.

  He frowned, his eyes back on the road. “Elyssa, we’ve done this every year since we were kids. So are you really scared now?”

  “Of course not,” she said, and tried to smile.

  She loved Nate. They were both just eighteen, but they’d been seeing one another since their freshman year. She was young, as everyone kept reminding her, but she knew that she would love him all of her life. Despite them being opposites. She was a bookworm, born and raised in the East, red hair and green eyes. He was from South Dakota, a Western boy, whose mom had been from nearby Marblehead but whose dad had been a half Lakota Sioux. He was tall and dark with fabulous cheekbones and a keen sense of ethics and justice. He was their high school’s quarterback, and she was debate team captain.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Last year, I played a zombie, remember?”

  And what a role. She’d arose from the embalming table and attacked one of her classmates who’d played the mortician, terrifying the audience.

  Nate grinned. “That you did. And what a lovely zombie you were.”

  Please.

  She heard the single word and realized no one in the car had spoken it. Instead, it had vocalized only in her mind. Incredibly, she managed not to react. Instead, she pointed out the windshield and said, “Looks like someone has decided to toilet-paper the gates.”

  White streamers decorated the old wrought iron, which seemed original. Time had taken its toll on both the gates and the stone wall that had once surrounded the property. She’d never minded that such an historic property was transformed each year into one of the best haunted houses in New England. And despite the decorations, the house remained open daily until 3:00 P.M. for tours. It had been built soon after Roger Conant—the founder of Salem—moved to the area, around 1626, starting out as a one-room building. Nearly four hundred years of additions had blossomed it into a spacious mansion, the last editions coming way back in the Victorian era. In the early 1800s it had been consecrated as a Catholic church, deconsecrated by the 1830s when a new church had been built closer to town. Some said the site had then been used for satanic worship, taken over by a coven of black magic witches, but she’d never found any real support for those rumors. During the Civil War it served as a mortuary—drastically needed as the torn bodies of Union soldiers returned home. That continued until the 1950s when the VA made it a hospital for a decade. Finally, the Salem Society for Paranormal Studies bought the property. Along with historical tours, it offered tarot card and palm readings and ESP testing of anyone willing to pay the fee. The society had repaired and restored the old place, eventually garnering an historic designation, ensuring its continued preservation.

  In the 1970s, Laurie Cabot came and created a place for dozens of modern-day Wiccans, and the area soon become a mecca for everyone and everything occult. Overall, though, the society people were barely noticed, except by fundamentalists who just didn’t like anything period. Actually, the Wiccans had brought a great deal of commerce to town, and that was something to be appreciated.

  Please, please, come. I need you.

  Elyssa didn’t move, not even a blink. Now she knew. Those words were only in her head. Maybe she needed sleep. Definitely, she shouldn’t drink any more of the cheap wine Nate’s brother found at the convenience store.

  Last night’s overindulgence had been plenty enough.

  They drove through the gates and past the graves. Like every other New England cemetery, this one came with elaborate funerary art and plenty of stone symbolism. One angel in particular had always been her favorite. She occupied a pedestal near the drive, commissioned for a Lieutenant Colonel Robert Walker in 1863, there to guard his grave, on one knee, head bowed, weeping, her great wings at rest behind her back.

  They drove by and the angel seemed to look up—straight at Elyssa. Again, she heard the words in her head.

  Please, help me. Find me.

  “Look at the people,” Vickie said.

  The lines to get inside the haunted house stretched down the main walk to the porch, then around the corner of the house. The mansion was huge—seven thousand square feet over three stories, with a basement and an attic. Creepy windows filled the gables and projected inside dormers from the slate roof, like glowing eyes in the night.

  “It’s three days before Halloween. What were we expecting?” Nate asked. “This place is popular. But it looks like there are vendors walking by with hot chocolate. We’ll have fun in line.”

  “Elyssa, can’t you get us into the VIP line?” Barry asked. “Don’t you still have friends here? Didn’t they ask you back to work inside the haunted house this year?”

  She nodded. “I just couldn’t make it happen, not with getting the whole college thing going for next year. But, I’ll see what I can do. John Bradbury still manages the place. He’s a good guy to work for.”

  “Don’t you know Micah Aldridge too?” Vickie asked. “Isn’t he one of the main guys in the paranormal society?”

  “He’s never around at night. He and that weird, skinny lady from Savannah—Jeannette Mackey—have their noses up in the air at this kind of thing. They think they’re a little above all this fun.”

  They parked far away, almost in the graveyard, and walked back to the line.

  “Work your magic,” Vickie told her.

  Elyssa headed toward the makeshift desk and plywood shelter in the front where Naomi Hardy was working ticket sales. She was surprised to see that she’d been wrong. Micah Aldridge was there, helping with the sales.

  Elyssa smiled at Naomi, then leaned down to talk to Micah. “I thought you hated this silliness.”

  He was a good-looking man who worked his dark hair and lean, bronzed features to add an aura of mystery to his appearance. His usual attire was some kind of a hat and long coat, reminiscent of a vampire, regardless of the season, and tonight was no exception.

  “I don’t hate what pays the bills,” he told her, adding a smile. “Wish you would have worked this year. It’s always great to see you.”

  “I just couldn’t, not with college coming up.” She drew in a breath. “Micah, I have some friends with me, and we’re happy to buy tickets, but we can’t afford VIP entrance and the line—”

  Her words trailed off and she grimaced.

  “Say no more, little one,” he said.

  To her surprise, he didn’t let her pay. Instead, he set a BE BACK IN A MINUTE sign before his seat. He then whispered to Naomi Hardy, a pretty young woman of about twenty-five, who was selling the tickets to each person in line. Naomi was John Bradbury’s assistant. She knew Naomi took a room in Salem for the month of October, but lived down in Boston.

  Naomi smiled and nodded an understanding, then said, “Enjoy.”

  Micah led them up to the porch to wait for the next group to enter. She thanked him profusely, but he brought a finger up to his lips, signaling for quiet.

  “Not even time for hot chocolate,” Vickie noted, smiling.

  “We’ll get some after,” Nate said.

  In the mansion foyer they were greeted by a hunchback Igor-like actor who told them a tale about black masses in the house, mad scientists, and more. They then began the walk-through, starting with the dining room where skeletons had gathered together for a feast. One was a live actor who rose to scare each group as they entered. Next came the kitchen—where a cook was busy chopping up human bodies for a stew and offering the visitors a bloody heart.

  Staged gore had never bothered Elyssa. She didn’t mind the mad experiments in one of the bedrooms, or the Satanists sacrificing a young woman in the tarot card room. She didn’t even mind the demented baby or the usual scare-factor pranks typical for haunted houses.

  In an upstairs bedroom, they came to the mad scientist’s lair where an actor was busy dissecting a woman on the bed, vials, wires, tubes, and beeping machine
s all around him. The woman—despite the fake gore—looked familiar.

  Then she realized.

  It was Jeannette Mackey.

  Elyssa smiled and kept quiet, but when the rest of her group had filed out, she paused and hurried to the bed.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Jeannette grinned at her and replied with her sweet accent. “Darlin’, when you can’t beat’em, you’ve got to join’em.”

  Elyssa laughed, found Jeannette’s hand, and squeezed it. “You and Micah working the show and Naomi Hardy on the ticket booth. Did they not get enough kid volunteers this year?”

  “Gotta get back to work,” Jeannette said. “New group is coming in. But, no, we’re doing this just because we love the place.”

  Elyssa grinned and hurried out.

  The other bedrooms on the second floor offered a Satanist mass, a headless tarot card reader, and two displays of movie monsters with ice picks, electric saws, and more scary weapons.

  Then it was time to head down—way down.

  Elyssa had always been oddly uneasy in the basement. That’s where the embalming had once been done, and it hadn’t changed much since the days when the house had served as an actual mortuary. The trestle tables were still there. The nooks and crannies where shelves with instruments had been kept remained too. Hoses above stone beds still hung, where real blood and guts had been washed away, the bodies readied for embalming. There was something sad and eerie about the place.

  Vickie screamed and gasped delightedly. Barry kept an arm around her—except when he was jumping himself. There were motion-activated creatures in the arched nooks along the way. One, some kind of an alien creature, took Nate by surprise and he leapt back, causing them all to laugh.