Party House Murders: The Bloody Shack [IC] CONCLUDED!!!

[Infected Mushroom]

5:00 PM
Simon Creek, Maine, USA
Halloween
1998

The forest looks very beautiful. The leaves are a mix of yellow, orange, and red. The gusty wind blows here and there, sending the beautiful leaves flying about. The afternoon sky is a beautiful orange and violet.

School is out and everyone is excited about Halloween.

However, for this year, a group of students from Simon High have a better idea. Instead of doing the traditional costumed trick-or-treat, they’re going to have their own party as adults…

In a mansion house in the middle of the forest, “the Bloody Shack.”

It started as a silly school dare but then detailed plans were made. And now the high schoolers are trekking across the forest towards the mansion. It’s not yet in sight.

[Infected Mushroom]

Near the very front of the group was 14 year old Anna Winchester. The girl with the short blonde hair and bright green eyes was many years younger than the rest of the party and shorter… but she seemed to have a lot of energy.

“This is going to be AWESOME!” she cried out cheerfully as she trekked ahead at a brisk pace, a few of the leaves blowing past her. “I can’t believe we’re going to do it in the Bloody Shack.”

“Hey wait up for me!” her brother Fred called out from behind rather crossly. “Make sure you don’t get too far ahead!”

Fred was a tall and handsome blonde senior. He was the oldest of the group and he wasn’t exactly pleased to be here.

“I tell you she’s out of control,” he said to a girl named Lily. “What was she thinking taking this silly dare? I thought we’d all grow up by now.”

“It all seems cool to me,” Lily replied listlessly.

[White Bluff]

Following close behind the front group, listening to them was Evanora Bishop, she smirked and laughed, "lighten up Fred, the house is safe....architecturally that is. Who knows who or what else is in there, with all that violent death in its history, it's sure to have stirred something dark."

Evanora was a pretty senior of average height, with light blue-green eyes and long wavy auburn hair, known for her sarcastic and flirty nature.

She grinned at Fred, "what's the worst that could happen? Satan rising from the ground? Our parents finding out we came out here?" She laughs again, she knew that most of their parents would kill them if they found out where they were.

[Infected Mushroom]

“Well it’s not legal,” Fred replies. “We could get in trouble...”

“Don’t be such a fucking killjoy Freddy,” Gerry declared. “We’re here to have a real good time. You don’t have to be here at all brother.”

Gerry was a very tall and muscular kid dressed in a black t shirt with a skull logo. He wore a pair of sunglasses and he sported a crewcut hair.

Fred frowned a bit as he kept walking. He didn’t like the Freddy nickname (it made no sense, his full name was Fred and this “nickname” made his name longer, not shorter). However he said nothing, choosing instead to continue eyeballing his reckless younger sister.

Lily turned to a person next to him.

“What’s your name? I don’t think we’ve met before?”

[Nagakawa]

“Oh, hi Lily, I’m Ashley.”

For the most part, Ashley Takizawa didn’t really talk to others preemptively or accept party invitations. He had always been more of a lone wolf himself, preferring to wander around in nature, alone with the birds and the flowers, or if he was in a more adventurous mood, to free-solo rock faces barefoot. This time, however, the thought of breaking into a supposedly haunted mansion and having a hangout there had certainly caught his attention, and though he wasn’t much of a party animal, the thrill of doing something so sacrilegious was irresistible.

“I... actually don’t think I know any of you here”, he added to Lily sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. “Not that well, at least. I don’t exactly have a lot of friends in school.”

He knew Lily’s name, having heard it attached to her face once, but other than that, that was pretty much it. Indeed, for the most part of his life, Ashley’s circle had been minimal, the number of close friends he had in each phase never exceeding into the double digits; somehow, hardly any of them (if at all) ever maintained contact with him, though that was perhaps just his tendency to forget people and stop keeping in touch, more out of general lack of interest than anything really malicious.

The only person he’d regularly stayed in touch with despite the lack of proximity was his grandfather on his mother’s side, who lived in a sleepy little town in Gifu Prefecture and who had since passed away, a few years back. They had only met in person once, when he was 8, but ever since that encounter, every time Ashley lay in bed and felt the creeping loneliness coming to the threshold of his mind, he’d remember that one month when he’d stayed over with his grandfather while both his parents were busy with something, and how they’d walked in the fields together every evening, and he’d feel calmed again.

Come to think of it, Ashley posited to himself, it was perhaps thanks to his grandfather, an enigmatic figure who’d enjoyed both the mind-rotting freedom of doing nothing all day as well as the excitement of being out and about and seeking thrills that had led to his happy-go-lucky search for adrenaline of any sort.

Yukiya, his grandfather wrote to him in 1996 (Ashley’s Japanese name was Yukiya), I’ve just been diagnosed with stage IV brain cancer. We will most likely never meet again. Now, I will be setting off on my Ducati; to where, I don’t know. Just remember that though our encounter was short, you’ve always been my beloved Yukiya, and do not cry for me, for I have lived my life with no regrets.

You should do the same.

“So what are you doing here?” he asked Lily after a brief awkward silence, clearly not very good at sustaining conversations in an engaging manner.

[Main Nation Ministry]

April Oberlin

"Why are we even here? I thought all of the old kids just give candy to the kids, now?" April said, as the group of students were probably bought here by peer pressure or because seeing how this is Gerry, who she knows of, are being offered free weed. Of course, even though they technically trespassing, April figures the cops don't really care that the building is condemned. As she was walking through the streets, some early birds were getting ready with the trick-or-treaters. She heard that South Park was supposed to be a popular costume choice, though her parents were Catholic and wanted her to go to a hell house where reading Chamber of Secrets means you were being brainwashed into liking witchcraft. History class was a fun time to learn about the Salem witch trials for that day.

She lied that she was heading there by herself, though she can always have her parents drag her to church to confess her sins, since several other kids were going to head to the Bloody Shack and she decided to tag along. Did her own parents even care that she was in some abandoned murder house? When she left through the front door, they were watching The 700 Club, like there was a whole marathon playing. "The whole middle of nowhere is a bit of a cliche. Saw this in several horror movies." she added.

[Infected Mushroom]

"Well I think it'd be cool to come along," Lily replied in answer to Ashley.

Lily had dark hair and wore a pair of glasses which magnified the size of her dark eyes just slightly.

"Haunted houses are simply awesome," she continued, excited to have a chance to go on about one of her long-time niche interests. "Did you know that the Bloody Shack has been around since the days of the Puritans? It used to be a summer holiday home for well-to-do merchants. But then in 1889 there was a double murder inside the house and since then its been vacated for a few decades. The house has a very very long history of murders. The most recent one takes place in 1967 with Mr. John Vanderbilt went cuckoos, shot his wife, and drowned his kids: Max and Jane. Did you know that the house has since been vacated for over close to three decades?"

Seemingly realising she had said a mouthful, Lily blushed slightly as she stepped back slightly. "Oops... am I talking too much? Sorry, it's just that I'm really really excited about haunted houses. Who knows what we will find in there!"

[Infected Mushroom]

"Oh do shut your mouth Lilly you're such a nerd!" Gerry called out rudely from the front. "We're all here for one reason and one reason only... free weed and to show how brave we are! Am I rite?"

"Don't count me as part of that," Fred replied tersely as he stepped over a large rock. "I'm only here to watch over my sister."

"Yeah yeah yeah," Gerry drawled rudely. "You're such a killjoy Freddy boy."

Gerry then made a very bold proclamation.

"Besides, if any ghosts or spirits or goblins or what not were to show up? I'd kick their asses myself!"

Lilly rolled her eyes.

"How long until we get there?" Anna called out from the very front.

"I'd say based on the maps we're almost there," Gerry replied. "I can't wait."

[Nagakawa]

“I don’t believe in ghosts”, Ashley replied tersely, “but damn. That’s dark.”

Gerry’s loud blaring cut off the conversation, and Ashley, casting a quick glance at the oafish 16-year-old, rolled his eyes discreetly.

“I don’t smoke either”, he murmured under his breath, somewhat inaudibly.

Word had it that they were soon reaching the house, and from the atmosphere, Ashley could definitely feel it. The foreboding atmosphere, that is; he’d been numbed to adrenaline after years of fooling around, so with a broken amygdala like his, one would probably not feel the pounding of entering the unknown. What there was, however, was an intestinal rumbling, a darkly prophetic hunch that this was an evil place.

All the more, it would be exciting to bash through it. For sure, his parents would object, but that was just part of the whole package. He’d been grounded so many times that they’d run out of ways to ground him.

“I brought a bag of almonds”, he said, reaching into his small sling bag and attempting to dispel the slightly foreboding mood. “Anybody want some?”

[Recuecn]

Ava was a couple minutes late, as usual. By the time she showed up to the agreed meeting spot, there was nobody there. Oh, what is this, she thought. What kind of hurry are they in? It's hardly five o'clock! But as she looked around, wondering where the party had headed off to so quickly, she glimpsed the tail end of the group of kids trudging into the woods. She hurried after them.

The sun, already near the horizon at this time of day this late in the year, filtered horizontally between the tree trunks. The woods were mostly younger maple saplings, which had already lost many of their leaves, and threw strange, narrow shadows across Ava's face as she passed between them. It was eerily beautiful in the way that only fall in the northeast can be. Golden hour! thought Ava. This lighting is perfect! If I had my camera, I could take a new photo for my AIM profile. Her thoughts were cut off as she caught up to the rest of the group.

A bunch of the other kids were talking to each other as they walked, anticipating what lay ahead. But a couple looked over their shoulders as the noticed the new arrival.

"Hey guys, I made it," said Ava. "How's it going?" she asked nobody in particular. "I can't believe we're doing this! This crazy!" She laughed to show she meant it in a good way. A couple of the other kids flashed grins back at her.

It was sort of true though--she couldn't believe it. It seemed like a normal thing for the other kids to be doing, but not somewhere she expected to find herself--heck, she'd gotten the cutest Halloween costume and until last week, she'd still been planning on trick-or-treating at dark and then stealing a couple drinks from her parents and chilling in her friend Clara's basement. But here she was. She would have thought it was unlike here, but stuff like this kept happening. Why was that?

She knew why. Walking ahead of her, she saw Fred Winchester. There was the reason, right there. Ever since she'd noticed him in school at the beginning of the semester, she'd had a growing crush on him, and for the last month or so it had become almost an infatuation. She hadn't told anyone but Clara (although Clara had definitely told a couple of their mutual friends), but she'd started going to more and more events, in order to "happen to be there" at the same time as Fred. He was a year above her in school (despite being two years older), so she had to find other places to hang out with him. The fact that she was now on her way to a party in a literal abandoned, haunted mansion in the woods, showed how desperate she was getting.

Ava, however, had perfected the art of appearing to be anything but desperate. Near the front of the group, she saw Gerry Elliot. He was a bit of a jerk, but it took someone with his personality to make a party like this happen, and when she'd needed an invite, he'd been the one Ava had hit up. She walked up to him now.

"Hey Gerry, what's up? I can't believe you actually convinced these guys to all actually do this."

[Infected Mushroom]

"I'm glad you could make it Ava," Gerry replied, smirking somewhat. "Geez you run kind of fast. How d'you manage it? Your parents held you up?"

[Main Nation Ministry]

April Oberlin

She knew it. Gerry had people come over for the free weed. A bit obvious, though why does it still surprise her? "I know of stories much darker. Lots of random stuff happens from time and time, though people will say it's more fiction than reality." April said, talking about the story of the Bloody Shack. "There's crap in Ohio about some place called Hawthrone, some widow's walk in Louisiana, and the woods in West Virginia. This is nothing."

[Infected Mushroom]

"OOOOO tell me tell me!" Lily said excitedly. She loved haunted story lore. "I might have heard of that one but do tell!"

[White Bluff]

Evanora rolled her eyes at Gerry, "Gerry, I think your the only one who wants to get high, most of us don't smoke," she mummbles under her breath, "pathetic Scrub."

She walks over to Ashley as he offers almonds, "I take some, hot stuff,"she smirks and takes a small handful and gives him a wink. That was when Ava ran up, announced her presence, and began a conversation with Gerry, to which she slightly arched an eyebrow.

[Main Nation Ministry]

"OOOOO tell me tell me!" Lily said excitedly. She loved haunted story lore. "I might have heard of that one but do tell!"

April Oberlin

"Hm. Alright." April said, as they were walking towards where the house was supposed to be. "I heard that there is the so-called Castle rock of Ohio called Hawthrone. Lots of tales come out of it, but everyone say it's horseshit. Everything about zombies that can talk is something that people immediately forget about. It has it's own haunted house, but I heard that the stories that most people tend to talk about is the woods there. Some guy went in there and people assumed that he was doing LSD. The woods being alive or something. Ha.. Any story that I can try to tell, none of you would believe a single thing." April explained to Lily.

[Recuecn]

"I'm glad you could make it Ava," Gerry replied, smirking somewhat. "Geez you run kind of fast. How d'you manage it? Your parents held you up?"

"Oh, you know how it is. I'm always a little late. Fashionably late, I guess." Ava laughed. "But I don't wanna miss this, that's for sure!"

Their conversation paused as a tree passed between them. Ava wondered if she should just let the conversation die. She had a feeling that Gerry wouldn't think most of the stuff she did in her free time was 'cool,' or particularly interesting for that matter--if he'd known she was only late because she'd been hanging out with Clara, he probably would've thought her excuse was pretty bogus. Well, whatever. She was here now, and she was pretty excited.

"Don't you think the shack will be locked? How are we gonna get in?"

[Nagakawa]

Ashley was slightly taken aback by Evanora’s sudden and unabashed hitting on him, but nevertheless returned something of an awkward smile, holding the bag of almonds out for her as she took a handful.

“Evanora, right?” He asked, just to confirm. “I’ve heard about you before, but I think this is the first time I’m talking to you.”

Putting a few almonds into his mouth and chewing reflectively, Ashley glanced at Lily and Evanora, and then at Fred. Fred was an intriguing fellow, the mature one of the group, yet somehow still gutsy enough to follow his sister on her haunted quest rather than hold her back. Ashley liked Fred.

[Infected Mushroom]

"Oh, you know how it is. I'm always a little late. Fashionably late, I guess." Ava laughed. "But I don't wanna miss this, that's for sure!"

Their conversation paused as a tree passed between them. Ava wondered if she should just let the conversation die. She had a feeling that Gerry wouldn't think most of the stuff she did in her free time was 'cool,' or particularly interesting for that matter--if he'd known she was only late because she'd been hanging out with Clara, he probably would've thought her excuse was pretty bogus. Well, whatever. She was here now, and she was pretty excited.

"Don't you think the shack will be locked? How are we gonna get in?"

"If the shack is locked," Gerry said. "Then I think we'll just have to break the windows and get in. That should do the trick. I hope the ghosts don't mind hehehe!"

Fred sighed and shook his head in disbelief.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Kier

Kier was late, and by late he meant 'I don't think I'm going to make this' late. The giant teenager, carrying an enormous shoulder rig containing the gods only knew what caught a glimpse of movement and began to sprint, his legs pumping as he caught up to his friends, the contendor for worlds largest backpack swinging behind him. He grinned a devilish smile at the group as he joined them.
"Were you really going to leave me behind?" he asked in a gentle, mature-sounding voice; "With me bringing the weed and the alcohol? You have very peculiar priorities; but anyway I am here now. Catch."
With that he chucked a plastic bottle containing a very large measure of vodka and far too little coke than was adviseable at Gerry, his aim pretty much perfect.

[Infected Mushroom]

"Wow Kier buddy! Glad to see you could make it!" Gerry cried out as he caught the bottle.

"What would we do without you eh?"

And with that, the sunglasses-wearing teen uncapped the bottle and took a very aggressive swig of the strong drink.

"DAAAAAAAAAAM good stuff," he said as he swiped some of the liquid off his lip. "You got other goodies in there?"

He also turned to face the rest of the kids.

"Are we all here? Or did anyone else invite some friends I don't know about?"

[The Frozen Forest]

The colors of fall shaded the soft path to The Bloody Shack. Leon Clark hiked along it's ruddy surface, trailing far behind the others for most of the beginning of his walk. It wasn't his fault that the orphanage adjacent to his Church wanted to put on a party of it's own for it's kids. While Leon had declined to stay and volunteer, he did agree to run to the local grocery store for the candy they would serve. The priest had tried to thank him but Leon felt the need to get going. He was already late and it was best not to be the last person to the party.

Leon enjoyed hiking more than anyone else in his family. His nightly escapades around town had helped to build up his cardio and when his friends finally came into sight down the path a sense of relief washed over him. How close were they to the Mansion? They had already marched some distance into the trees, so they had to be farther in than what it felt like. Jogging along his thoughts wandered to something that normally never crossed Leon's mind. There were more than a few girls on the trip and most of them, he knew, were single. Maybe tonight is the night. I wonder what it's like to kiss someone.

Reaching them and not having broke a sweat yet, Leon noticed that he wasn't the only one arriving late. Without a beat he smiled and spoke to the group "Sorry! I didn't mean to be late, i was helping some orphans. Kier, you too?" They would probably take it as a joke-his tone of voice suggested it was one, even though it really wasn't. Leon looked from Kier around at the others. There was Fred and Anna Winchester, peers from school. Fred wasn't someone he would have expected to come along, but Anna was. At least he knew them though, whereas he didn't recognize one tall boy with the numbers 13 stitched on a ragged-looking leather jacket. Apart from him, he recognized the rest of the others-more so for a few, like Evanora and April.

[Infected Mushroom]

"HI THERE!" Lily cried out as she noticed that Leon had arrived too.

Fred was about to greet Leon too but he was interrupted by the leather-jacket-wearing Gerry.

"What's your name kiddo?" Gerry called out rather rudely. "Where did you pop out from? Don't tell me... I think I might a recognise you from a Church or something would that be right? ... This party is for cool kids only. No Churchies."

As he approached Leon, he took another aggressive swig from his vodka bottle.

[White Bluff]

As Evanora munched on the almonds in her palm, two newcomers showed up, Kier and Leon. She watched as Kier threw a bottle of vodka-coke at Gerry, she shook her head and rolled her eyes. But as Leon strolled up Gerry took a turn, and almost threateningly approached him. Evanora walked up beside Gerry and snatched the bottle from his hand and walked to Leon, "Gerry if you can't handle your liquor you shouldn't drink, plus I invited Leon, he wanted to find out what the dark side was like ," with that she turns to Leon with a smile and offers him a drink with a wink.

[Infected Mushroom]

"EH..."

Gerry shrugged and walked away. "I was only kidding around."

[Main Nation Ministry]

April Oberlin

Sooner or later, Kier arrived where he happened to act as a supplier for, well... more drugs and alcohol. The party hasn't started yet and Gerry was already getting drunk. She spied on Leon catching up to the group, where she took some notice in him. He knew about Leon from attending church, since she saw him a couple of pews over with his parents. But she didn't wan Gerry started to shoo Leon away, but Evanora appeared to tell him that she invited Leon, which calmed Gerry down. April couldn't help, but show a playful smirk at Leon, knowing that both of them were stuck in this mess of a party together.