The Dead Game

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

The Dead Game

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2014 Susanne Leist

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Cover Photo © 2014 JupiterImages Corporation. All rights reserved - used with permission.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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This book is dedicated to

Those I Have Loved and Lost

Neil, Joseph, and Rose Leist

My Precious Family

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone who helped me with this book. Without Outskirts Press, my book would be still sitting dormant on my computer. Unsure of myself and my work, I replied to the friendly email from Brent Samson, the CEO and president, that I didn’t know if my book was good enough to be published. Immediately, he had it reviewed by Lisa Conner, a member of the Manuscript Review Team. From her very favorable review, I finally had the courage to continue with the publishing process.

Afterward the process became much simpler. I was advised by Jamie Belt, my Publishing Consultant and then the person who I bothered the most but always answered each and every one of my relentless questions: Sara Young, my Author Representative. Then there was the person who remained behind the scenes, but who fixed each one of my grammar mistakes and run-on sentences. This was Joan Rogers, my copy editor.

I must not forget to mention my great family. My two daughters, Stephanie and Ashley, who encouraged me to have my book published, and of course, my husband, Lee, who has always had my back.

T
he small town of Oasis appeared to be the ultimate vacation destination, offering tourists sparkling white-sand beaches, majestic views of the coastline, and legendary sunsets. Its quaint shops and charming country stores stood center stage between the sloping hills and the endless blues of the ocean.

Life in the remote town had been peaceful and quiet—that is, until people began disappearing, some even turning up dead on the beach. After the sun set and darkness fell on the picturesque streets, dark indistinct figures could be seen roaming through town. The chanting of spells could be heard in the whispering wind. The sleepy paradise had turned overnight from a dream vacation spot into an unsafe haven harboring dark secrets and murder.

It had all begun with the eerie unsigned invitation for a party at End House—the huge mansion that stood alone and deserted, perched at the edge of the steep cliff overlooking the raging waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

At first, Linda and her friends had been too terrified to attend the party. However, they did attend. It was a night none of them would ever forget.

From this night forward, they found themselves trapped as pawns in an evil game, caught in a deepening quagmire of deceit and horror. As clouds of suspicion and distrust swirled around them, slowly picking up momentum, they were led to suspect everyone around them—even each other.

As layer upon layer of the town’s buried secrets were peeled away, many unanswered questions still lingered. Were the menacing shadows stalking them real, or merely pranks in a deadly game? Why were the original residents hiding in their mansions during the day—only to appear at night? And if they continued in their pursuit of the truth, what unearthly powers were they going to uncover behind the stately closed doors of Oasis?

PROLOGUE

END HOUSE AT OASIS

Five Years Earlier

D
iane ran through the heavy darkness—darkness that she could feel pressed against her cold, sweaty skin. She raced for her life. Dodging flying chairs, tables, lamps…she dashed to the wide staircase looming before her, watching and waiting for her. The beautiful marble staircase had become her bitter enemy. As she stumbled up its red carpet runner, the staircase heaved its massive, slumbering weight against her to dislodge her unwanted presence and to thrust her into the never-ending darkness.

Why had she been so stubborn? Why had she turned a blind eye to the obvious evil that had been living in the house? Why had she remained so long in this malevolent house? In her heart, she’d always suspected the worst. The house had its own hidden agenda: After ridding itself of her and her family, the powerful evil lurking behind its walls, beneath its stairs and floors, and deep down below its earth-bound foundation would be finally free to be unleashed on the poor unsuspecting residents and tourists of Oasis.

But no one or nothing was going to stop her from saving her terrified children from the horror surrounding them all. Panting, she heard her husband’s footsteps pounding up the stairs behind her. They were going to make it in time…they had to.

At the top of the staircase, she stepped into an alternate reality as an unnatural and surreal scene opened up before her. With the hall lights flickering on and off, pictures and lights flew through the air to land crumpled at her feet. Loud moans filled the hallway—moans that seemed to be emanating from inside the walls. She shrieked as skinny arms pushed their way through the shuddering walls: long arms with long jagged nails jutting from the tips of their scrawny fingers.

She didn’t know where to turn or to run. The awful sounds didn’t even sound human, and those grabbing arms definitely didn’t belong to a human being. She was being hit by mangled pieces of furniture, so she had to keep moving. Taking a deep breath, she charged down the dark hallway.

Her head hit something hard. She looked up to come face to face with a gruesome creature that had managed to push its enormous face through the concrete wall. Startled, she stopped dead in her tracks. Then she realized that it wasn’t even looking at her. Its long mouth was open wide, roaring without sound; its oblong head thrashed back and forth, struggling to break free from its earthly confines. An anguished grimace seemed to be permanently frozen into its misshapen features. It turned to her. She gasped. It was facing her but not seeing her; its eye sockets were dark, empty holes staring sightlessly into the distance. Scrambling away from it, she felt cold hands in her hair and around her neck, grabbing at her from within the walls, touching her with their slimy fingers.

Freeing herself from the creatures, she ran into her son’s bedroom. Darkness was permeating the room, a dark shadow spreading toward Tim’s crib. A loud noise boomed from inside the room. Peering through the thick shadows, she watched as the crib lifted into the air—with Tim huddled inside—and then crashed down hard against the wood floor. A huge crack slowly traveled down the middle of the room, threatening to split the floor wide open. With Tim in her arms, she fled the crumbling room. Behind her, she heard the room rumble and quake. She turned to watch in horror as the bedroom folded into itself, crashing down to the floor below.

In the hall, she heard her husband’s shout and watched him emerge from the thick darkness with their seven-year-old daughter, Serena, clasped safely against his chest.

Fleeing for her life, Diane thought back to happier times at End House—at the beginning.

At first sight the house had seemed to be just another dark, run-down mansion left to decay slowly into the ocean. However, after her initial visit Diane had already known that this house was special.

Stepping inside End House was like visiting a page from the past: a joyous time of grand parties and luxurious lifestyles. An elegant staircase swept upward past marble pillars, cradling intricate statues of gargoyles.

The house was fit for a prince or a princess, which was how Diane had felt in her new home. The parlor was complete with elaborate moldings and marble fireplace. It wasn’t furnished—none of the rooms were—but its past elegance was boldly apparent. An enormous crystal chandelier hung in the grand ballroom, filling the room with sparkling rainbows of light. She’d immediately fallen in love with the white marble staircase in the main hall, complete with opulent red carpeting running down its center. Descending these stairs had made her feel like an actress in a classic movie.

After the massive construction that she and her husband had conducted on the mansion over the past year, End House appeared stately and beautiful once again. The spacious rooms had been repainted and modernized. Luscious red rose bushes and a thick forest of tall trees had been planted around the outdoor pool. The indoor pool had been updated with a sauna and Jacuzzi in a brilliantly lit, white-tiled room.

About two months ago, the mood of the house had turned malevolent. The stairs had flattened themselves, causing her to fly down their steep slope. Each day afterward brought with it another evil prank against her family.

In the middle of the night, she would often find herself roaming aimlessly through the heavily treed grounds—without any memory of how she’d gotten there. As she passed through a doorway, she didn’t know what type of room she would be entering. Once she’d walked into her daughter’s bedroom and had found herself in a flamboyant boudoir, furnished in red with ornate tables and brocade draperies from a long-gone era.

Yesterday her husband had entered their bedroom and had become lost in a field of daisies. It would have been a pleasant experience for him—if the daisies hadn’t transformed themselves into man-eating plants with long, sharp teeth. She’d found him running through the house, shrieking about killer daisies chasing after him. If she hadn’t been so afraid she would have found it funny, but nothing was ever funny about the house’s long list of deadly pranks.

After his heart-stopping experience, John had agreed that it was time for them to pack up their belongings and depart from their home.

That evening the house had been quiet.

Diane had been in the kitchen at the back of the house with her husband, washing dishes after a late dinner. Without warning, all hell broke loose around them. A cold wind had blown into the house, lifting the hanging pots and pans and throwing them through the kitchen window. The doors of their new cabinets had been ripped off their hinges and crushed to pieces against the kitchen’s walls.

To Diane, it felt like a tornado had entered their house and was destroying it from within. They’d watched as their white shutters flew off the windows to shatter to pieces across the back patio.

Then the house had turned quiet—too quiet. Knowing that this meant something bad, very bad for them, she’d prayed that she wasn’t right, but unfortunately, she had been.

As cries filled the house, her heart had jolted in fear. The sounds were coming from the rooms above, from where her children were sleeping. With Tim safely tucked into his crib and Serena sound asleep in her bed in the adjacent bedroom, they were innocent and alone—alone upstairs with whatever or whoever was after them.

They were now racing down the staircase. Diane was stopped dead in her tracks. A dark red substance was oozing into the house from under the door, creeping ominously across the floor, devouring everything in its wake. They watched as the huge circular rug and the large hall table disappeared into its thick slime. Extending its reach farther out, it made its way toward them.

Diane detected a high-pitched keening cry coming from within the slime. Backing herself into a corner, she screeched, “It’s going to swallow us!”

“Run out the back!” John shouted above the children’s frightened sobbing. He pushed her ahead of him. “Don’t think! Just make sure you get out of this house and down the stairs to the beach. Or else you might be living here forever!”

They climbed through the destroyed kitchen, through detached pieces of ceiling, through broken pieces of cabinets and sharp shards from shattered dishes.

Stepping outside, they were immediately struck by flying debris. The patio was engulfed in a strong wind, which lifted the furniture into the air. The white wicker pieces violently crashed against each other, the broken pieces falling into the empty pool.

The pool had been filled already twice that season. The house had a mind of its own: it wanted the pool empty of water and her family gone; and it was making sure that it remained that way.

Spotting the red liquid creeping out beneath the kitchen door, inching its way toward them, she screamed above the sound of the howling wind, “It’s getting closer! It’s followed us outside! WE ARE ALL DEAD!

“We must escape now! Don’t look back! Just run!”

She gazed down the steep staircase to the rocky shore below, to the jagged rocks that were being beaten by the raging waves of the ocean. In her heart, she knew that their fate was not going to be much better.

The sky rumbled viciously, turning a deep black color, filled with dark pulsing clouds. Fluorescent streaks of lightning flashed across the darkening sky, followed by loud claps of thunder. The house shook all the way down to its foundation. Windows exploded; pieces of roof lifted off in the wind; bricks crumbled to the ground.

The red liquid continued in its arduous path across the patio: flowing over fallen debris, never slowing its pace, following close on the heels of the fleeing family. The slime lifted itself up—like a person wakening in the morning, stretching out his arms—and wrapped its bloody red tentacles around the horror-stricken family members. Trapped in its tight grasp, they watched in silence as the thrashing wind destroyed everything around them, unable to move as they waited for the house to decide upon their final destiny.

A whirling mass of air rose from deep within the pool, drawing everything toward it like a giant magnet. Patio furniture, bushes, trees…and even the small family were pulled into the swirling vortex.

Everything was dragged down deep into the bowels of the house, where there was nothing—only absolute and complete darkness.

Once the intruders were taken care of, the house quieted down and the liquid slowly retreated. The house returned to its sullen and gloomy appearance. No sounds or voices were heard again.

End House remained empty until the party five years later that awoke the house to the possibility of new victims.