My life after death all started on one cool fall night. I had been walking home with my best friend Jake. He and I had lived near each other for years, ever since I moved to Gladesville in first grade. He was my age and seemed to be my second half, though we were never more than friends and that was fine with both of us. We were walking down the street to the park since the weather had finally cooled down into a subtle breeze.
"So, are you sure you want to come down here? It is after all the night before Halloween, and we wouldn't want you to get too scared." He said with a teasing wink and elbowing me lightly in the side.
"Me? Afraid? Haha, nothing can scare me. I love Halloween, seeing all the decorations and costumes seem to take you into a whole new world." I said laughing and shoving his shoulder barely hard enough to make him stagger off the sidewalk.
"Well, how bout we go check out the old lighthouse down by the shore and see if the ghosts haunting it can scare a scream outta you." Jake replied as he stepped back onto the sidewalk.
"Well, it's a bit cold down by the water and I'd have to change clothes and-"
"I think you're just trying to cop out of this."
"Fine. I'll go with you. But no fooling around Jake, there's creepers down there around this time of night" I said defeated.
"Oh, and I'm not creepy?" he asked while going cross-eyed and sticking his tongue out of an odd grin.
"You aren't a creeper, just a dork." I said, trying to hold back the bubbling laughter escaping from my throat and stopping on the sidewalk to pull my phone out of my bag. "Let me send my mom a text so she knows where I am."
He grabbed my phone from my grasp and pressed the power button down until the screen shut off. "Do you really want to worry her like that? Come on, don't always be a suck up Cathy." he said with a slight edge to his voice.
I reached for my phone but he just pulled away. "Come on, Jake. Give it back."
"Only if you promise not to call and just cause useless drama with your parents, they probably wouldn't like you going around there this late with some boy." A smile crept across his face as he stepped closer but still held my phone too high to reach.
"Fine. But it's not like we're doing anything, just going to get spooked a bit. Plus I've known you for a long time and know I can trust you." As soon as I said the words, I realized my parents had never actually met Jake. Come to think of it, I couldn't remember how I met him.
He gave me my phone back and I put it in my bag as we continued to walk down the sidewalk in the direction of the shoreline that bordered our town.
We soon arrived to the grassy edge stretching out into little tufts as it thinned out into sand then the deep blue water. I had never been here this time of night, and it was breathtakingly beautiful with the soft moonlight reflecting off of the pearly white grains of sand. The lighthouse was to the far right nestled into a cliff of rocks as dark as night itself. The white tower seemed to be the same pale white as the moon with light shining from the top like a midnight sun.
"Well, Cat, ready to get spooked?" Jake asked gesturing a sweeping arm towards the lighthouse. I suddenly had an odd foreshadowing that something bad would happen, but I pushed it aside. I was just coming to the beach with my best friend to a "haunted" lighthouse in the middle of the night without anybody else knowing where I am. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
We made it down to the doorway and stopped to check if it was locked. At first the lock seemed solid, but with a flick of his wrist Jake was able to snap it open as the door creaked ajar to welcome us into a dark, dank, and slightly dirty room with a spiral staircase leading up around the walls.
"It's a bit dark for a lighthouse." I said as I tentatively walked into the room, staying close to the doorway.
"You aren't scared, are you?" Jake said with a smile creeping onto his face.
"Of course not, just making an observation. It's kind of ironic since it's supposed to give light into the darkness." I said as my hand brushed against the cool railing and looked up into his eyes.
"I see your point," he met my gaze and stepped closer to me until my back pressed against the chilled wall and both hands gripped the rail. "Sometimes I see you as my lighthouse; giving me something to look forward to as guidance through this dark life." he closed the distance between us and rested either hand over mine while his head tilted downward.
"I don't see what I could have done to make you say something so sweet, but life isn't so dark. There are other highlights, right?" my voice seemed to quiver slightly along with my now shaking hands. I clenched my fists tighter onto the rail to calm my nerves and stop the shaking of my limbs.
"None are as bright as the light from you." and with that he leaned closer till his lips brushed against mine softly and pulled back an inch.
"But I'm nothing special, I mean we've been friends for longer than I can remember." by then the trembling in my voice was unable to be hidden any longer. "Or is this more than friendship, Jake?" I looked directly into his sapphire and icy gaze.
"I guess we'll see, won't we?" he pressed his lips back to mine without pulling away. A hand traced up from my hand to the crook of my neck under my jaw. My brain felt frozen and sluggish with ice tracing through my veins. I tried to pull my lips open to take a breath, but his lips held mine in place as his hand clasped my neck even tighter. I began to feel lightheaded as the ice spread to our lips with stinging pain. I tried to scream into the darkness with no avail. Right before I slipped away into the icy darkness, I saw him lean back and look at me with a dark smile, and then there was no light at all.
When I opened my eyes, I was strapped into what seemed an upright surgeon table with leather straps holding me in place. Though my outfit when I arrived had been jeans, winter boots, and a dark sweater; I was now clothed in a long flowing white dress that seemed to be made of silk or satin with no shoes at all. As soon as I straightened up to check my surroundings, I felt a searing pain spreading from the left side of my neck, and also on my abdomen all down to my legs. I looked back down and noticed blood was seeping through the white fabric, my neck was probably bruised as well.
"The bleeding will stop after a while; he'll probably add a few more cuts first though." said a raspy voice from across the darkened room.
"Who's there?!" I yelled into the shadows as my voice echoed off the curved walls. I squinted my eyes and was barely able to make out the image of a girl about my size only five feet from me wearing the same type of dress and injuries. "What's happened?"
"Oh, it's just the Midnight Murderer that haunts this place taking his next victims." she gestured to me with a hollow expression and sarcastic smile illuminating her face.
"Who are you and what are you talking about? I was in here with-"
"With your best guy friend that you've known forever, even though you have no memory of how you met him or that he's ever met your family or other friends?" she asked while I was in mid-sentence about to say the same exact thing.
"How do you know that?" I asked as true fear settled into my bones.
"How do you think I got here?" she asked, turning her face to the wall just enough for me to see the dark purple bruises on the side of her neck in the shape of fingers. We heard the creaking of a lock and made an agreement through eye contact to become allies. She closed her eyes and tilted her head down, and I did the same.
"Well, this is good. You haven't died yet so we still can get a bit more fun out of you." I heard Jake say as the door creaked open with moonlight spilling into the musty room. "You can open your eyes, I know you're awake."
I figured I might as well, so when I did open my eyes my gaze was immediately drawn to his beautiful blue stare. "Why are you doing this?" my voice cracked at the end of the sentence as tears threatened to spill over from my lids.
"Oh, Catherine don't waste your tears just yet, save them for when I slice you up into pieces. It won't be too much longer, and it only hurts for a minute." He smiled as if he actually did care, and when he reached out a hand to caress my face, I made a snatch to bite him; unfortunately I failed. His smile vanished as his hand came back across my face with a shattering smack! "You really want to fight back? Try biting me when you have no mouth!"
Out of nowhere he pulled out a blade, and with blindingly fast speed, cut a gash across my bottom and top lips. I screamed at the top of my lungs as the tears came flowing like a river from my eyes, the salt burning my lips like acid and blood dripping down onto the fine fabric.
"Jake, please! I loved you, why are you doing this? I'll do whatever you want, just let me go!" I looked back into his eyes, hoping to find some of the compassion they had held when he tried to kiss me, but all of the warmth they had held was now washed away by icy darkness. A matching cold smile spread across his face.
Without saying a word, he stepped closer and covered the leather straps binding my hands with his own. "I love how all of you say the same thing. It makes this bet a bit more fun to pay off, though I thought at least you would be a bit more creative." By the end of the sentence he was so close that his breath was blowing against my shoulder and ear. He laid a frozen kiss over my bruised neck, as well as another quick slash of his dagger down my arm before running back out the door.
"Why is this happening?!" I screamed to the darkness and girl across from me. She looked up at me with a solemn expression yet said nothing. It was still too dark for me to see anything except her body shape and attire. I was able to make out the fact that we had the same hair color and length, as well as size in general. I guess Jake liked a certain type of girl he tortured.
"He takes us in order to refill a debt of immortality." She mumbled softly as blood drenched her dress as well, the same exact wounds he had inflicted onto me were apparent on her pale complexion. "Crimson Maidens, that's what we're called. Every Halloween, and the twelve nights prior, he has to bring in a maiden per night dressed in all white; but the he hast to kill them slowly and let their last drop of blood fall at exactly midnight. The white dresses become stained with crimson before the end comes, which is why we're called Crimson Maidens." Her voice caught a few times as the cuts I hadn't noticed on her lips earlier caused blood to splatter as she spoke.
"This sounds crazy, but I don't care. All I care about is getting out, and if you and I work together we might be able to both escape." I could already see my dress getting darker and darker, and a clock on the wall that I hadn't noticed before read 11:27, so we had barely over half an hour before he killed us. It was odd that she knew so much about the predicament we were in, but I decided not to question too much at the moment. The blood from my arm was making my palm feel wet and sticky, and that's when it hit me: I could try to use my own blood to slip from the leather bindings. I slowly tried to pull my wrist free, and had it almost halfway through when the door creaked back open.
"Don't even try it, Cat. You'll never escape from here until you die and I dump your lifeless body off of the top of the lighthouse and into the ocean." He chuckled a dark and menacing laugh into the air as he reached out towards my face. Pulling out his dagger again, he traced it across my shoulder and down over my chest where a stinging line of scarlet arose through the soft fabric like a red inky quill leaving its mark. He made a few more slashes across my abdomen and smiled even wider as I screamed out in pain and tried to fight against him with no success of freeing myself. "Come on, keep fighting!" he grinned and wiped his dagger over the neck of my dress to clean it somewhat and leaving larger red splotches on the now crimson gown. "It's almost the end." He said, gesturing towards the clock that now read as 11:48. He made one final cut down from the base of my throat to my waist and ran back into the darkness of night.
"Why isn't he cutting you too?!" I screeched at the girl across from me, whose dress was now completely red from lacerations lacing over every inch of skin showing, and in swirling patterns in her dress. She looked up with blood covering her face and just shook her head, and my eyes finally adjusted to see the truth of it all: She was me. I was finally able to see that we had the same eyes, face shape, and entire body. I opened my mouth to scream in shock, and she did the same, though only one of us could form a voice. I closed my mouth and she did the same. When I turned my head to the side, hers copied me. I couldn't take it any longer; I allowed the burning icy darkness to pull me under into the shadows until I awoke to the chiming of a bell.
"Come on, Catherine, it's time to go." I opened my eyes to find myself in Jakes arms being led to the doorway into the suddenly warm night. I tried fighting against him, but my hands wouldn't move like I was telling them to. I turned around and saw a bloody table still standing upright with a mirror standing in front of it. How could that be true? Then again, nothing about this night was sane in any way.
We made it to the spiraling steps going up the ladder, and all I could manage to do was nod as he ordered me to climb. Once we reached the top, I saw him clean his dagger one last time in the folds of his jacket that had somehow stayed clean throughout our bloody night. I walked over to the railing as blood continued to flow from my open wounds, as dried parts cracked against each move. Standing with my back to the rail and hands gripping the cold steel, I looked into his cold blue eyes of sapphire.
"We need to hurry up with this, I still have to go clean up your mess and find a new maiden for tonight. It's the final sacrifice of the year, so I should find a really good candidate, maybe a blonde. Oh, you'd be surprised how hard it is in this town to find maidens though; most of them have long lost their innocence or are too old to have any fun with." He said as he hid the blade in his breast pocket.
He leaned out and held my shoulders, and just as he started to shove me over the ledge, I grabbed his arms and pulled him over the side with me and felt our bodies hit the icy waves like pebbles throw against the pavement. He had a horrified look upon his face, which was then replaced by pure hatred and rage. The last memory I have left of my life is his fingers closing around my throat once again; the water dyed red from my own blood swirling around us and turning my dress white again. Right before my eyelids shut for the last time, his grip loosened and fell away as the last bit of life he had stolen left from his face and sunk down to the bottom of the ocean with his own lifeless corpse. I died with a smile upon my face, knowing he would never do to anyone else what he had done to me and so many other girls before. My only dying worry was, since he was granted immortality for all the deaths he had caused, was the Midnight Murderer truly defeated?