CHAPTER ONE - JADE
The house rocks back and forth from the monstrous wind. Rain crashes down on the roof making it impossible to hear anything else. The lights flickers until the room goes black. The only light in the room is the glow from the red eyes shining through the black mask on the pale little girl dressed in black who's coming closer and closer.
"AHHHHHHHH!" I scream, throwing a pillow that flies right through her.
Her feet leave the floor and she hovers over me. She opens her mouth revealing a circle of red-stained teeth that look like daggers.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" I kick and thrash trying to escape from the girl once again.
Lightening strikes right outside my window, lighting up the room making it possible for me to see the girl in full detail for only a second. She jerks down towards me with blood dripping from her mouth onto my face. Just as she grabs my shoulders and starts shaking me I hear, "Jade! Wake up!"
I open my eyes to find my best friend, Willow, shaking me. "It was just another nightmare Jade." I sit up and she sits back down on the blow up mattress.
I feel something dripping down my face. "BLOOD!" I wipe my face off so quickly it feels like a slap. I look at my hand but there is no blood, just sweat.
"How many nights does this make it?" asks Willow.
"16." I sigh and let myself fall back onto my bed, expecting a soft landing on my pillow but getting a hard one on my bare mattress. I sit straight up looking for my pillow.
"Here, you threw it at me in the middle of the night." Willow gets up and hands me my pillow.
"Thanks."
For 16 nights now I have had a nightmare with the same girl. She is always dressed in all black with black hair and a black mask covering the top half of her face. The only things about her that aren't black are her eyes and her skin. Her eyes are like fire, bright red and her skin is as white as paper maybe even whiter. I have always considered myself really pale but this girl is literally as pale as a ghost.
"So today is your birthday! Are you excited?" Willow says, breaking my thought. "You are lucky that the school lets us have a day off for Halloween."
"Yes I am excited! I have always wondered why they give us Halloween off since no other school does. I guess our town is just creepy like that" Halloween is the most important holiday to the mayor of Epping. He always has everyone make heir houses haunted and their yards like graveyards. Why couldn't he pick Christmas like everyone else?
Anyway I have never been one to be excited about my birthday because I never got a real celebration since I have to share it with Halloween. But this year I am excited because it is my 16th birthday so I am having a Halloween Sweet 16. Also it is the only thing that takes my mind off of my nightmares. "Speaking of which, we have some decoration shopping to do!" I smile and hop off my bed to find clothes in my walk-in closet.
Something I should mention, I was adopted from Greece when I was 12, into a seriously rich family. I am spoiled way more than I should be but unlike some people I don't let it get to my head. In fact most of the time I tell myself that I don't deserve it. I used to write in my journal when I was upset so it would tell you a lot of what I have told myself. But lots of people judge me before they know me, and they assume that I am just like the rest of the spoiled brats that live in my neighborhood.
Willow moved here at the beginning of the school year and we met because I started bullying her because she seemed weak. After about a week we become inseparable despite the fact that we are polar opposites, but that's a long story.
I wear black, red, and purple, buy my clothes from hot topic and other places like that and I have navy streaks in my dirty blonde hair. I'm short, I wear bright make-up, I'm a band geek (I play the piano and the saxophone) and I date boys with motorcycles (so I never have had a good relationship that lasts for a while). I am very eco-friendly, I get great grades and I'm a sucker for romance. My room walls are a dark plum color and everything else in my room is dark as well. But I have a lot of windows to keep my room from becoming dungeon like and so my cacti don't die.
Willow is a tall, tan, blonde who wears soft colored preppy clothes and has an orange room. She's good at school, she's a cheerleader and she is so shy that she has never had a boyfriend before. She has liked the same boy since 3rd grade. From most of the details I just described to you, you would probably think she would be the popular girl at school, but she is the person that people knock books out of their hands because she is so poor; she lives in a trailer park on the other side of town.
"Jade hurry up! We are buying the decorations to decorate you house not just for the fun of it; and in order to do that we need time to set things up."
"Coming!" I rush out of my closet, grab my car keys off of my bedside table and race Willow out to my car.
"Watch out!" Willow scream as she points to a black cat crossing the street in front of the car.
I slam on my breaks. "You would think that cats would use their nine lives wisely."
"That's bad luck especially because it is Halloween. I hate black cats."
"You don't seriously believe in that stuff right?"
"You can never be to careful."
"If you want to live, then you can be." I start driving again.
"The cat is following us."
I look into my rearview mirror and sure enough the cat is running on the sidewalk next to the car. "Umm, just forget about it. It will go away eventually."
"What if it runs in front of the car again?"
"Then we will stop again." Just as I say that the cat does a sharp turn into the road so quickly I have to swerve into a parking lot to avoid hitting it.
"That was so close," Willow says gasping.
"Where is it now?"
"I have no idea."
I look around and see it run into a store at the other end of the parking lot. "There it is!" I point to the store. "Hey it's a Halloween store! Want to go in and see what they have since we are here?"
"Why not! But if that cat comes anywhere near me I am leaving."
"Fine," I laugh.
I park the car and we walk in. Behind the door there are a bunch of plastic spiders hanging from the door and Willow screams then looks at the ground embarrassed. Fog comes from the floor and haunting music starts to play. The cat is nowhere to be seen, but if it was in the store we wouldn't be able to see it anyway.
"It looks like we are the only costumers, Willow."
"Maybe people don't come here for a reason."
I shush her and walk farther into the store. It's dark and there are rows of different Halloween themed items.
"Can I help you?" Willow and I turn, startled by the voice and there's a boy behind the checkout counter. His employee I.D. is hanging from his neck and his name is Alvar. That's a unique name.
From what I can tell he is very pale and dressed in all black. Just like the girl in the black mask, which is kind of creepy; but it's Halloween so people are allowed to dress in all black. His hair is a very dark navy blue and his eyes are a dark purple, it's amazing how many colors you can get contacts in. Besides the fact that he is reminding me of the girl in the black mask he is extremely attractive and he seems like the kind of guy I would have a relationship with.
So I walk over and say, "Actually you can. I am throwing a Halloween party tomorrow for my sweet 16 and I was wondering if you had any suggestion for good decorations?"
"It's your party. I assume you have an idea about how you want it so don't ask me. Everything in this store is Halloween themed go pick something" He smirks and walks into the back room of the store that's for employees only. "Call me when you want to pay," he calls.
I am shocked. "How rude!" No one has ever talked to me like that. "Come on Willow we are going somewhere else!" I grab her arm and pull her out into the parking lot.
"Jade we don't have time to go anywhere else. Your party starts in two hours."
"Then we are going home and finding old Halloween stuff that mom and dad didn't use for the rest of the house in the garage." I dramatically swing my door open, start the car, slam the door, and start moving right as Willow hops in.
As we are stopped waiting for a break in traffic to get back on the main road I look back through the only window of the building and the boy was staring out of it, watching us drive away. But he wasn't alone. There was a girl with him. She looked exactly like him, but with red eyes. Those crazy people are going a little overboard with the whole Halloween thing. I have never seen them before so guess they are new in town and just don't want to upset the mayor.
The drive home is black cat and creep free. Once we get home we go straight to the garage to get the extra decorations. We find a bunch of spider webs that we hang all over the walls of the basement (which is where we are having the party), bats that we hang from the ceiling, and a fake, dead, person with a rope around its neck and that hang on the entrance.
"Which movies should we play?" I ask as I file through all of my movies.
"I still find it hard that you have a home theatre in your basement!" Willow comes next to me. Sometimes I forget that I have only known her for two months. "Well for starters how many movies do you want to play?"
"I think three because I don't want the party to go past 1:00 A.M. and it is starting at 8:00."
"Okay well then I think we should watch the new Paranormal Activity, The Human Centipede, and Halloween."
"Sounds like a plan." I take out all of the movies and put them ion top of my PlayStation 3."
It's already 7:50 and the doorbell rings. "Pizza's here!" Willow and I run upstairs. She pays and I grab the 5 boxes.
By the time we have set up the tables for the pizza people start to arrive. I start the first movie, some people watch others just eat and talk. Everyone in the 11th grade at Stonewell High was invited so it's a huge party full of people and I don't all of them.