Hello all! A few weeks ago, I wrote two Halloween Contest pieces. This is one of them for the Twilight Tricks and Treats Contest, and I took home two awards: 2nd Place Judge's Vote and The Pumpkin Pie Award. Enjoy!
The car door slams loudly in the parking lot of the real estate attorney's office, though the loud howls of wind and rain almost drown the sound completely. Overwhelmed and waterlogged, Isabella Cullen rests her head against the headrest in the passenger seat of the car, looking over at her husband in disbelief. "Did we really just do this?"
"We did it." Edward laughs, raising his hand to rest on the back of her head. "Signed and sealed."
"We're, like, grown-ups now," she laughs, the feel of her husband's fingers through her hair one of her favorite things in the world. It's calming, reassuring, and it's exactly what she needs after signing the deed to their brand new home.
Well, new to them.
The house itself is in utter disrepair and in desperate need of a facelift.
Which, as of ten minutes ago, is now officially Edward and Isabella's responsibility.
The excitement is palpable in the car as they merge onto the highway, the early September rain slowing them down considerably, but they're in no rush.
The old-but-new-to-them-house isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so they turn the volume up in the car, holding hands and singing as they drive headfirst into what they hope to be a bright and happy future.
They have every reason to believe it will be; their relationship is strong and solid – strong enough to survive the inevitable arguments of renovation, and in some cases, rebuilding from scratch. They've been together for seven years, married for less than one, and both have a hard time believing how the next day can top the last.
They are constant smiles and heart-shaped eyes, hands entangled and arms around each other; they are a walking PDA and always have been since the minute they met.
This is why they jump headfirst into creating their perfect home.
They plan on living in a house worthy of the love they share between them. Once all the furniture from their small apartment has been moved into their new and spacious Victorian dwelling, they look at each other in the middle of the foyer—the foyer with the hole in the wall and the leaking ceiling above – and laugh at each other through the chaos of boxes and dilapidated fixtures.
"I don't even know where to begin!" Bella laughs, circling the open space and adding things to her mental to-do list at a speed so rapid she struggles to keep up with her racing mind.
"Right here is a good place!" Edward calls from the kitchen. Bella coughs as she returns a dusty curtain to its hanging place in the living room, following Edward's voice.
"Why this first?" she asks once she's joined him in the kitchen, sliding up next to him as he inspects the sturdiness of the counter. They had already discussed plans to replace the counters and cabinets anyway, but she didn't think they were planning on tackling this huge of a task first thing. She presses down on the Formica countertop. "They're strong enough for now."
"Let's find out," Edward replies, swiftly lifting his wife into the air and down onto the counter. He slides between her legs with ease; it's his favorite place to be. She laughs at his forwardness but pulls him against her when she wraps one of her legs around his waist.
It doesn't take long for them to discover that while the counters could be older than both of them, they're still strong enough to withstand heavy forces, which is exactly what Edward does as he slips inside his wife quick and fast, both of them soon at a pace that leaves them panting inside their tall, broken house.
"No one can hear you," Edward reminds her between thrusts, slamming inside of Bella again so he, and only he, can hear her scream. His wife's undoing has always been his own, and as always, she obliges with his request, crying out his name over and over while she unravels.
"One room down," he breathes a little while later after they've slipped onto their floor with their backs against the cabinets. "How many to go?"
She looks over at her husband, glistening with late afternoon sweat and a smile, and she wonders how she's gotten so lucky. "Forever."
Later that weekend after all the boxes have been unpacked and furniture placed where they want it, for now, Edward and Bella take a walk on their property. Hands clasped as always, they stroll across grass, fading with the changing weather, with leaves falling by the minute from the large tree on the edge of their lawn. Edward, mumbling about how often he's going to have to rake the leaves from this thing, misses Bella's eye as it catches on to what looks like a faded green rope in the grass.
"What's this?" she asks, dropping Edward's hand to walk over and inspect the twists in the grass.
"Vines," Edward murmurs, bending down to pick up the bending pieces of nature. "They start back here."
He holds the vines in his hands as they follow them to the edge of their property line, disappearing into the large and vacant field behind their house. Full of twists and turns and full, green leaves, they follow the vines until they see the source of it all.
"Pumpkins!" Bella squeals excitedly. "We can take one home and make a jack-o'-lantern!"
"It would look perfect on the front porch," Edward agrees with a smile, wrapping an arm around his wife's shoulder. "Let them grow a little longer, and then we can take some back home."
Bella claps excitedly before bending down to inspect the growing pumpkins of all sizes in the undiscovered patch while Edward walks along the edge of the field, his feet tangling in vines that seem endless with all their twists and turns. Each curl and turn of the stems brings forth new and vibrant orange pumpkins of different sizes, covering the grass with neon polka dots.
He thinks it's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen.
The way the earth grows and protects and brings even the deadest things back to life.
He casts one last glance at the field behind their house as they disappear inside, excitement for the upcoming fall season brewing in his blood as he throws a loving arm around Bella's shoulders.
He's always loved this time of year, and now their discovery of the pumpkin patch has made this season even more exciting.
As the weeks go on and the renovations continue, they end September and welcome October with open arms and heavy mallets to knock down walls and hammers to create new ones. More and more parts of the house are taken apart, disassembled, rearranged, or discarded completely. Without a doubt in either of their minds, the most perfect part of the house is their jack-o'-lantern, picked from their growing patch in the backyard. It smiles proudly on the front porch, decorating the bottom step with a toothy grin and a bright glow.
When they first place their jack-o'-lantern on the porch, Bella fears the animals on their property—squirrels, and chipmunks, and other fun little critters—will chip away at their pumpkin at mealtime, but Edward blows her off with a kiss on her cheek, telling her the animals won't go near their jack-o'-lantern. And as always, she believes him.
A week before Halloween, the house still in chaos but showing tremendous progress, Bella sighs to herself and stretches her arms above her head, ready to start the day's work on a previously untouched space of the house.
The hall closet.
She knows there are other more important things to do in the house, but she likes the idea of having a place to hang up her jacket at the end of a cold day. She wants a place to store folded blankets for whenever they're ready for a houseguest. She wants shelving to store their odds and ends that haven't found a permanent place in the house yet.
Determined to start and finish what she thinks is a small project for the day, she opens the door to the closet and stares at the sight in front of her one last time before she gets to work. Strips of old wallpaper line the walls of the small space, and Bella rolls her eyes at why the previous owners had wanted to use wallpaper in a closet anyway. She had heard the last owners were old and quirky, so she doesn't question it for too long and gets started on removing the offending remains off the walls first.
Using a small scraper and a warm solution of hot water and fabric softener, she rolls her sleeves up and finds a separation of the wall and the horrid paper, antiquated pastel florals spilling onto the floor as her scraper moves upward. It's not hard work, more annoying, really, but she stays at it with music filling her ears from her earbuds; Edward being at work during the day while she stays home has proven to be helpful. Having had to quit her job due to the move, she has the time to put her energy into the house while she searches for a new one. She is able to tackle the small projects, like this one in the hall closet, while Edward is at work, saving the big jobs for them to work on together on the weekends.
Two hours later, her body stiff and uncomfortable from bending inside of the small closet space, Bella exhales loudly in relief as she sees her finish line. She has one final piece left on the wall to remove before the next step in the process, and she decides to get it over with once and for all despite the sound of her rumbling stomach. With determination, she peels the final layer off the wall, but unlike the rest of the closet, it reveals something beneath the ancient wallpaper.
Handwriting.
She can barely make out what it says, with leftover chunks of wallpaper blocking some of the letters, but she knows someone had written something on the interior wall of the closet before covering it up with the ugliest wallpaper known to mankind.
"What in the world …" Bella trails off, biting her lip in determination as she uses her scraper to remove those smaller chunks so she can see it better. It takes a couple of tries, but she removes it all, peeling larger sections off to reveal even more hidden beneath the wallpaper.
"Angela Weber," she reads off the wall. She's never heard of that name and assumes it's the name of someone who used to live here before them. She peels away some more.
Jessica Stanley.
Tanya Denali.
Her brow furrowed in concentration, she lets her eyes reveal the rest of the scrawled handwriting.
Heidi Volturi.
Leah Clearwater.
She looks at the names with piqued curiosity, smiling at what she imagines to be lifelong memories in this house associated with each of the names. Maybe one of the girls spent a cold winter here, using the fireplace and other candles around the house to keep herself and the rest of her family warm. Maybe she grew up and had children of her own, adding another name to the wall with each addition to the family.
That wouldn't explain the different last names, Bella thinks to herself as she hears the front door open, Edward dropping his keys onto the end table in the living room before shutting the door behind him. She pops her head out of the closet, laughing at the way Edward jumps a foot in the air when he sees her.
"Do I want to know what you're up to in there?" he asks wearily, used to his wife's impulsiveness by now. He knows to expect the unexpected when it comes to Isabella Cullen.
It's one of the things he loves most about her.
"Probably not." She laughs in response, motioning with a hand toward her mess. "I wanted to put some shelves up but had to peel off the old wallpaper first."
Edward looks at her strangely. "Wallpaper in a hall closet? Weird," he notes.
"I thought so, too. But look." Bella pauses to grab him by the hand. "I found these under the wallpaper."
She pulls him into the closet with her, pointing toward the names that line the wall in black ink. Edward's eyes squint as he reads them all, his hand sliding up and down the wall slowly as he takes it all in.
"Names?"
"Yeah," Bella replies. "But that's all. No years written next to them or anything, so I don't know what the names mean."
"Probably just people who lived here at some point." Edward shrugs.
"Maybe we should write our names then," she suggests, knowing Edward's theory is probably right.
"You're not covering them back up?"
"I wasn't planning on putting more wallpaper back up." Bella laughs. "When we get around to painting, I'll cover it then."
Edward nods in acceptance. "Sounds good. You hungry? I'm going to work from home for the rest of the afternoon after I eat something."
"Starving," Bella answers, following Edward into the kitchen, though her eyes cast one final glance toward the names in the closet.
There's a feeling in her gut, sinister, and it begins to burn inside of her stomach.
She won't rest until she has more definitive answers about the names.
"Maybe there's more to it than what we think," Bella says later that night as they're settling into bed. The feeling inside of her as the hours pass makes her anxious and jumpy in her skin.
"Why do you think so?" Edward asks, sinking against his pillow with a sigh of tremendous comfort. The rest of the house may be in disarray, but their bed is absolute perfection after a long day of work.
"Just a feeling, I guess." Bella shrugs against his side. "Woman's intuition."
"That's a thing?" Edward asks with closed eyes.
"A very real thing." Bella laughs softly. Edward turns to her, pleased with himself that he was able to make her laugh and take her focus off the names in the closet.
He doesn't want her thinking of those names right now.
"I guess there's more I need to learn about you after all." He smirks, disappearing under the covers. He decides to use his tongue as the tool to lead him to her new discoveries, and she has no objections to his investigative tactics.
Edward's job is complete. When he, and his tongue, are done with her, his wife is too sated, too content, to worry about anything.
She sleeps peacefully, and he settles back against her, a smile on his face as he drifts off for the night as well.
The peace over them, they find out, is short-lived.
Because when Bella wakes up the next morning, the bed empty and Edward already at work, that feeling is there again, unable to leave her alone.
She yawns, heads downstairs to brew a fresh pot of coffee, her phone in her hand as she sits at the table in the kitchen and waits for her first sip.
It's an urge she can't ignore, and she finds herself typing in one of the names from the wall into a Google search on her phone faster than she can stop herself.
Angela Weber is the name she types first, and it's not long before she wishes she never did.
Missing.
Without a trace.
… As is Jessica Stanley and all the other girls on the wall in their hall closet.
Panic fills her blood, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she thinks the worst.
Why would those names be written on the wall in an obscure hall closet, hidden beneath wallpaper?
The fact that she's standing in the same closet, alone and essentially in the middle of nowhere, doesn't help her calm down. With shaking hands, she texts Edward and tells him to come home as soon as he can, unable to trust her voice just yet.
Looking around what was slowly turning into their dream house, she suddenly feels smothered. The white walls abruptly begin to whisper the nightmares they had seen. The curtains sway to the sounds of terror clinging to the fabric. And when she runs her fingers up the names on the wall, she closes her eyes and somehow knows.
She feels it now, too.
The fear. The horror. The devastation.
The acceptance.
The end.
"Bella?"
She's not sure how long it's been since she sank to the floor of the closet, but that is where Edward finds her. He scoops her up in his arms, shuffling them to the couch in the living room. "What's wrong, baby?"
He's never seen her like this before. He runs his hand over her face, through her hair, down her arms to bring her back to him.
She's here with him, physically, but mentally, she has already gone to a place meant to protect her from all evils.
Even from her husband.
"They're all missing, Edward." She hands him her phone. "All of them on the wall."
Hesitating at first, he eventually takes the phone from her hands and scans over what she's been reading all day.
Her phone is open to hundreds of tabs of each of the girls on the wall, each article stating how they disappeared one day from their towns to never be seen again.
Oh, but they're wrong. Each and every article, so very wrong.
They were seen again.
By one last person.
… The same person each time.
"You couldn't leave it alone, could you?" he asks his wife, his voice changing from that of her beloved husband to someone else she has never heard before.
But she's not scared.
Somehow, she knew it was him. Somehow, she knew Edward's love for this house had stemmed from a deeper meaning than she would ever understand.
"I just wanted to be close to them," he sighs, standing from the couch to stare out the window. "Never thought you'd peel off my wallpaper."
"Why?"
"Why not?" He challenges her with a calculated chuckle. "They left of their own free will."
She shakes her head at his words, too exhausted to allow the dread in her heart to take over her body. "How?"
"I knew them all—dated them for a while. Convinced them to go away with me for a weekend."
"And you took them here?"
"Never inside," he says. "It was abandoned anyway. Owners took off long before I found this place."
"And no one suspected you? How?"
"I knew who to pick. None of them had jobs. No bosses trying to track them down. And no fam —"
"Family," she finishes for him.
She thinks of how her parents abandoned her when she was a kid, spending her childhood in foster homes until she aged out of the system.
She thinks of how it never bothered him that she had to quit her job.
She thinks of how many times he's told her he loves how isolated they are from the confines of neighbors as they build their life far, far away from others.
She knows.
She knows she has been his greatest victory of them all.
She knows she'll join the rest of them soon as he drags her by her hair into the field of pumpkins behind their house. Her eyes fixate on the glowing jack-o'-lantern on their porch, and her last thought before her own light is snuffed out by her loving husband is how much she loved the man he pretended to be.
For him, the tears sliding soundlessly down his cheeks are new. He loved her most of all. She'll be the prettiest jack-o'-lantern of them all next year.
Sighing to himself, he watches the earth as her blood, rich and red and absolutely perfect, seeps silently over the leaves and vines.
He thinks it's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen.
The way the earth grows and protects and brings even the deadest things back to life.