A Funny Spooky Tale

This was a story written by predominantly by myself a woman I knew only as Margo at the time (I shant reveal her real name) and some others on a website called "Herjourney" - This is our humorous spooky story - We took turns writing paragraphs, so we never kknew where the story would take us....

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A Funny Spooky Tale

The midnight hour chimed loudly on the lumbering and somehow sinister Grandfather clock in the sitting room. Reanna paced, a damp film of sweat trickled down her back as she waited...A door creaked somewhere in the old Victorian, nothing new, creaks and bumps were common place in a home this old...but this house had far more than old age going against it. This house had a violent and bleak past. A history etched in blood and chaos...another creak, Reanna felt the hairs on her nape rise--it was happening again, she was certain...she felt her heart swell and begin it's all too familiar pounding ritual, oxygen was hard to take in for the irregularity of her breathing. Another creak, this one closer, too close...She turned and it was looking at her.
The cat - that crazy old cat, with one eye missing, and a torn ear. It was feral, even though it always managed to make it's way back into the house. Reanna never fed it - It lived on the mice and occasional rat that always seemed to get in, no matter how many holes she plugged. The cat stared at her unwaveringly, and had, what Reanna felt, was an evil expression, as if it were biding its time, until she too became one of its victims, like a mouse it plays with before it devours it whole.
"My mind is playing tricks on me again", Reanna thought - Hadn't the doctors told her that her imagination was too strong? "Old houses always make noise, and this is just a mangy old cat that I shouldn't be afraid of"
She stamped her foot and cried "Scat!" and the creature darted out of the room. Just then, she saw something out of the corner of her eye - Something...gauzy, and the faint smell of moldering corpses and death filled the air - There - there it is - the horror she felt was always lying in wait for her. She turned towards the movement and the stench, but all was still. Chills raced between the vertebras of her spine. The cat hunched it's back and spat at her from it's new perch on the mantle of the old fireplace. I hate you.She hissed at the beast. Some fresh air would help get past these feelings of dread and thickening fear. She swept through the room and went to the French doors that opened onto the veranda. It overlooked the pounding waves of a violent sea. The light of the full moon embraced her, strengthened her, as she stood pulling her thin wrap more closely around her shoulders. She felt a presence. She stopped breathing to listen and then felt its touch...
Slowly turning her head, she saw him - the source of her dread and terror - It was her husband Harry - Or rather, her late husband Harry - as in she had knocked him off months ago! But he wasn't quite solid. She could look right through him. He looked as though he had been moldering in the grave for quite a while - Worms wriggled out of one of his eye sockets, he smelled horrible - even worse than when he was alive, and had a hideous grimace.
"Hello Reanna" he hissed.
Hearing his voice made her hair stand up on end. She usually paid hundreds of dollars for her hair dresser Valentino to give her that effect, and here she had it - for free!
"You're dead You're DEAD!" she shrieked. It was a most annoying sound.
"Oh baby, I KNOW I'm dead - You made very sure of that. The cyanide you fed me in the almond torte was a brilliant idea. It was quite a painful death - oh, but you knew that. YOU SAW ME WRITHING IN AGONY!!!"
She put her hands over her ears, for he had shouted at her so loudly, that she was afraid he would wake MORE of the dead!
"Oh Harry - what do you want from me?

"What do I want from you? " he bellowed, coming into sharper focus. Rage solidified his form and made the worms protruding from his eye sockets writher and weave in response to the ethereal outburst.
"All I ever wanted was to share your life..your world..your bed. All I got for my efforts was a dose of poison in a tasty little treat. That pretty much sums you up though, doesn't it?"
He hovered closer to her forcing her back, closer to the wall overlooking the violent waves pounding the jagged spears of rock below.
"I'll find my rest when you enter the gates of Hell!" he roared. "Till then I'll be your constant companion and consort. My journey cannot continue until yours ends." His arms reached for her...Her screams echoed across the vast sea.

"ELGYN!", Reanna snapped. "Who have you been nibbling on now?"
By my unsainted mother, he thought, this weirwoman is more trouble than she is worth. It was bad enough he had to put up with her unsightly and exceedingly hairy legs. And at "that time of the month" (in this case, he meant when the moon was full), well she was just impossible! They slept together in a coffin made for two, and what with the scratches on his back with her front claws when they screwed, and the scratching on his legs from her back claws, she drew almost as much blood as he did!
Still, it was the beastly, evil part of her that made her most appealing.
"Er-um darling", he whispered, "I was feeling a little peckish, and decided to have a taste of a little trollop I came upon in a dark alley. She meant nothing to me." He came towards her, and leaned in and started kissing her neck, and said in his most seductive voice:" You know you're my one and only fuzzy wuzzy."
He knew he had to be careful with her - After all, she'd knocked off her husband; she wouldn't think twice about putting a stake thru his heart.
A thunderous knocking filled the room and echoed to the pair locked in an embrace on the veranda.
"Who in Hell is that?" asked Elgyn pulling away in frustration.
"It's not yet even close to dawn. I know of only one person who'd have enough sheer audacity to come calling at this hour." whispered Reanna moving back into the old mansion and sailing for the huge double oaken door. Another crashing knock came as she neared.
"What in Hell's fine bells are you up to now Aunty Maude?' Reanna screeched with a mixture of exasperation and genuine fondness for the old crone standing just outside the door as it swung wide. Maudy Amelia Buckett, Reanna's aunt from her mother's side sauntered in. She was attired in her usual highly distinct and yet utterly audacious fashion of a flowing black gown of some non- descript gauzy fabric. On her feet were laced up leather boots small to the ankle, low to the calf and high on the heels, an entire jewelers collection hung from and about her wrists, neck and ears. Her white hair flowed long and loose in a wild disarray of curls and tangles enmeshed as one. Her time worn face acted as canvas for a deranged yet colorful artist's impression of beauty.
"I've come to warn you that that bloodsucking maggot you share a coffin with has done it this time!"
"Whatever do you mean." gasped Reanna in shock, her aunt was a notable character known to bewitch anyone who crossed her path in ill or bothersome way, but she was usually quite good natured. Oh Elgyn what have you done now? thought Reanna as she closed the door and stood facing her aunt...
"You want to know what the undead plasma collector did? I'll tell you! He bit Mavis's daughter that's what he did! Now Mavis and her crew are gonna come down on us like a bunch of overeaters at a damned pizza convention"
"Oh no!" shouted Reanna now coming to full awareness of her dear aunties anxiety. Mavis was a dark and powerful witch, a sworn enemy to her whole family. They'd worked for centuries to keep peace between their clans and now...
A howl broke the silence. Lucan returning from his hunt no doubt. What will we do? Pondered Reanna. A werewolf for a brother, who's secret's must be kept. A vampire for a lover who's bite could not harm her with her wereblood, a murdered husband who could not rest in peace and haunted her night and day because she'd needed to silence him and procure his wealth to keep this mansion and it's bloody past safe...Now a deadly witch was bearing down with thoughts of revenge...
As if reading her very mind Aunt Maudy piped up and said," Like the old saying goes toots,shit happens"....
At that an ear splitting scream shredded the silence.

Reanna cast her eyes heavenward - though in her case, they should have been looking downward, and exclaimed "Cripes! What is it now?"
She and Aunty Maude scurried towards the sound, and upon entering the kitchen, they found the housekeeper, a giant of a woman, writhing on the floor - bottle of gin in one hand, fork with half eaten almond torte on it in the other.
"Dammit Marie", Reanna cried "I told you not to touch any of that leftover dessert!"
Madame Marie Leveau was a powerful Voodoo priestess from the French Quarter of New Orleans. Her husband, Maurice, was a zombie. The handy man around the house, he did his work quietly, didn't complain, never talked back, and was always at her command - in other words, the perfect man.
"Oh Miss Reanna honey", Marie moaned. "I was hungry. You know I need to eat a lot, to keep up my strength, so I can deal with riff raff low class witches" - She looked at Maude when she said this, and was fixing to put the evil eye on her, when there came a loud rapping at the front door.
"Were you expecting company, my dear" Maude asked. She regarded Marie, and had her wand at the ready, just in case she tried to pull something.
"Hardly, Auntie. I was hoping to spend a quiet, romantic evening at home with Elgyn." She looked at the enormous woman on the floor, who continued to make quite a racket. "You come with me, Auntie. I can't leave you two alone together. And Marie, stop that infernal shrieking - and take some Pepto Bismol! I don't need another inquest on my hands!"
With Maude trailing behind her, Reanna crept towards the front window, and pulled the curtains gently aside, and peered out. There stood a tall figure, silhouetted by the light of the moon. It was a man in a trench coat, with his hat pulled down low over his eyes. But she knew who it was immediately.
"Why Inspector Jarvis, what a.... pleasant surprise"

Reanna dropped the filmy curtain and flung wide the massive double doors and with her most seductive and jubilant smile, greeted the detective.
"Detective Jarvis! What an unexpected but no less wonderful surprise." she said spreading her arms wide and welcoming the man into the mansion. A nervous quiver turned her stomach to a burning caldron filled with angry, writhring worms,
Perhaps she'd need to take some of Marie's Pepto Bismol a bit later. The last thing she needed with Lucan returning from a hunt and Aunty Maude here was this detective poking around. But nothing of these thoughts showed on her lovely features as she gathered the detective by the arm and lead him into parlor as far away from Marie and Elgyn as she could get. Now, If Maudy minded her manners they might be able to pull this visit off without someone dying...That would be a trick. she contemplated as she ushered detective Jarvis to her favorite King Louie divan and saw him seated.
"Aunty would you be a dear and fetch some coffee for us." Reanna asked from under heavy lowered lashes. The lashes only masked the burning red eyes that sent the message to Maude to behave and make herself scarce.
Maudy wasn't one for, "fetching" anything for some man. much less one with a badge and she was even less inclined to obey her upstart niece who bedded a walking transfusion so with a wave of her hand she replied
" Sorry toots the cafe's closed and besides doesn't he get enough coffee and donuts from all the businesses he strong arms around town?"
Reanna's mouth fell open in utter shock but her reaction was lost as Elgyn floated into the room followed closely by a returned Lucan, who appeared a tad disheveled but at least he didn't have entrails and blood dripping from the corners of his mouth.
The detective glanced from one person to the other and then settled into his business at hand.

"Well now - ain't this cosy." Inspector Jarvis smirked the smirk of someone who's sure he has it all figured out, and intends to let his audience know it.
"The whole gang is here - The beautiful and deadly Reanna Moore" (she gave a wicked smiled at this remark)..."her sucker fish boyfriend Elgyn Reynolds" (The vampire did not smile)..."her handsome hairy brother Lucan (the werewolf mused that perhaps the Inspector was a "friend of Dorothy's" like himself)..."the dotty, doting Auntie Maudy (the witch was itching for an excuse to use her wand)... and if my ears don't deceive me -that's Marie Leveau bellowing like a wounded moose!"
"Who yah calling a moose, yah nasty bumba clod!" Marie yelled, as she exited the kitchen, and deposited her quite ample body onto the couch.
Inconceivably, the inspector's smile broadened even more, and practically cracked his face in half. It was quite a macabre sight, and even Reanna felt her pulse quicken.
"Here puss puss", he called, and the cat - that mangy old cat - wandered into the room, and leapt upon the mantlepiece and eyed the crowd warily.
"But there should be one more person here, shouldn't there, Reanna?"
"Inspector", Reanna said, who was both glowing from the detective's compliment and paradoxically, also in anger at his intrusion, "I don't know who you can possibly mean. You still haven't told us what we owe the pleasure of your company to"
Before Reanna could finish her statement the spectre of her not so dear but utterly departed husband Harry floated into the middle of the mayhem with a grin drawn on his face wider than Marie's hips.
"He knows." Harry cooed to Reanna, obviously enjoying the moment of pure torture.
She could feel Jarvis's eyes on her as her expression went from glowing to glowering. She knew from past experience that Harry showed his spectral self to her alone. But she worried that he'd pulled some trick to get the information he now held before her like a viper ready to strike, into the hands of the inspector.
No--no one knows about Raoul...not even Elgyn...No one but that dastardly Harry, she fumed silently.
As if on cue the inspector turned and flashed a photo before Reanna's lovely face. The photo showed the smiling face of Raoul Defremzier...
Reanna felt the room darken and begin to shift as Harry's maniacal laughter tore at the fabric of her very sanity...
Elgyn rushed to her side to steady her. Maudy ambled over and stole a peek at the photo with Marie close on her heels. Lucan was studying the inspector with a carnivorous gleam in his feral eyes...
"Do you recognize this man?" the inspector enquired, still displaying the smirk and tone of the superior mind.
"Yes Inspector. I do recognize him. Just as my dear brother, the hairy handsome one recognizes you as a potential member of his very select Lycanthrope Brotherhood." With that and a well timed wink and nod the werewolf lunged and sunk his teeth into the unsuspecting Inspector.
The smirk vanished and his tone became a blood-curdling shriek of pure terror as the werewolf worried at his arm like a faithful hound would gnaw a favorite bone.
Harry's laughter became a banshee cry as he watched in horror the Inspector desperately trying to free himself of the weremanâ??s razor sharp teeth.
Now it was Reanna's turn to smile once more as the rest of the rooms occupants stared at the carnage and brutality of the moment. Elgyn held her tightly in excitement and fear. Maudy, wand at the ready appeared stunned. Marie, no less. Maurice even ambled in and gave his version of shock and awe by moaning a bit more loudly than was his particular zombie style.
"Let's see how well you serve this fair city once that wound has healed and you too are called by the moon to seek blood and violence with each of her fulling cycles." Reanna purred at the detective.
"My secrets have lead you to one of your own dear Inspector." she said as she separated her brotherâ??s teeth from the manâ??s shredded and bloody arm.
"What do you make of your question now Inspector?"
Lucan licked his lips over this latest conquest - and the inspector was a hottie to boot! Marie continued to munch on the Fritos she had brought in from the kitchen, and ordered her husband to go back out to the garden to do some weeding. "I never have any fun", he thought. "I heard that" Marie said.
Reanna smiled the smile of the cat who's eaten the canary sure that the Inspector would either pass out from shock, or immediately turn into a werewolf, or even better - die! While everyone else was distracted, she bent down to retrieve the photo of Raoul that had fallen to the floor. No need for Elgyn to know that she had been married before she'd wedded and bedded Harry, and that he too had been dispatched to an early grave. But before she could tear it to pieces, her ghostly ex swooped over and carried the picture right in front of Elgyn's line of vision and whispered in his ear "Her first husband" - The vampire turned and stared at her menacingly. "Oh, this is not going well at all", she thought woefully. "I'm in for it now..." Suddenly, a scream tore from her Auntie's throat, and Reanna and Elgyn turned to see that the Inspector's arm was healing right before everyone's eyes. Even Harry was stunned. Not only that, but Jarvis' face and hands were taking on a decidedly reddish hue - and...were those horns sprouting from the top of his head, and a pointy tail from his posterior?
A grin blended across Reanna's features like chocolate sauce merging with rich vanilla ice cream...
"Satan!!!" she chortled in a delighted tone.
Maurice, thinking 2:00am was a ghastly time to weed stumbled back into the room and delivered a high pitched wail of zombizoid glee as he watched the detective transform into the hellacious vision of ole, "Clovenfoot" himself...
Marie choked mid crunch and Maudy tumbled over in a dead faint.
Lucan howled and Elgyn, caught between the emotional flux of Reanna's kept secret about Raoul and her apparent adoration of this Satanic beast, let his eye's travel between the emerging devil and his beloved yet betrayer vixen...
Why is she so delighted? He pondered.
Jarvis's body had doubled in size and musculature. His head had contorted and swollen into a goatish form with red eyes glaring and razor sharp teeth forming a lear of pure evil. His shabby suit had simply melted away as the molten heat of his forms change continued. A long and spiked tail thrashed with passion and his horns, sprouted, in moments became the curling spears of an ancient entity.
Maudy came around and tried to stand on legs weakened with unspeakable fear and trepidation. She'd always thought herself to be if not a, "Good" witch then at the very least a, "Decent" witch...After all she'd only cursed and negatively impacted those who'd set out to do her harm or cause her grief or...ahhh...well, basically ticked her off in some small way. But never in all her years had she considered anything she'd done worthy of a visit from Beelzebub himself!
Reanna closed the gap between herself and the creature swiftly. She wrapped her arms around the girth of his massive body and purred warm words that the others couldn't hear into the holes on the sides of his head, that in a primitive way passed for ears.
Satan smiled and pushed her back slightly. "You still need to tell me about Raoul, my dear."
He murmured in a voice that dripped with animosity and venom.
For the first time since his unveiling, Reanna looked nervous...
Marie, finally able to swallow the Fritos and make some sense of the unfolding scene raised and rolled her eye's skyward as she headed to the kitchen, wadding the now empty bag of chips. "This scene calls for a bag of extra butter popcorn." she muttered
Reanna turned and watched her leave...she had some explaining to do or her plans would go up in smoke...literally if she wasn't careful.
Unbeknownst to Elgyn, Reanna already had set her sights on someone even more wicked than he. She wasn't content to be the consort of a mere corpuscle slurper! She wanted to be the queen of Hell itself. She'd plotted and made her plans over the years, knowing full well that all her evil deeds would bring her to the man who would make all her dreams come true.
"Well?" buzzed the foul and questioning tones from the Master of Evil and bad tidings. She could feel his red eyes narrowing and staring straight into her own seedy and contemptible depths. I need to come up with a good one to get out of this little bind., she mused, while trying to piece together some plausible reason for killing Satan's right hand protege...A smile flowed over her features once more as she decided that the truth was far more compelling and superbly more evil than any lie or hastily contrived bit of fiction she should manufacture and toss into the ring. She spun around, her own eyes narrowed with intensity.
"I killed Raoul." she announced in a purr laced with steel and the undertones of a hissing viper.
"I slaughtered him in the cold-blooded fashion that he deserved. Then I spat on his remains as I slung them in a waste filled pit and then I laughed...hard...long and loudy...I laughed. he was unworthy of you. He was weak. He lacked the commitment that YOU so richly deserve.
Elgyn gasped! He'd known for years the darkness that riddled her soul and fiber ran deep and inky but he'd never fathomed that she had it in her to murder one of Satan's chieftains to further a plan of her own. What plan could she possibly have that would involve the untimely and obviously messy demise of Raoul...Satan's first and most high lieutenant? What indeed?
Satan's glowering red eyes narrowed and fixed Reanna in their loathesome gaze. Then slowly...ever so slowly a smile undulated the corners of his mouth and the jagged, razor like tips of his fangs could be seen.
"I sent him to you, my Princess of pain and doom. I sent him to test you. I sent him with all the powers of Hades and the cunning of a chaos master and you KILLED HIM!"
Elgyn shuddered, even a vampire has his limits...Lucan howled once more and then fell to cowering in the shadows so fearful was he.
All the others took steps backward, away from the coming storm they all sensed was brewing and about to spill over into the room like poison from a ancient vial.
Reanna was the only one to step nearer,"I did." she stated simply. "and beyond that I enjoyed it"
With that a blinding flair of molten fire leapt from Satan's clawed hands and incinerated the entire gathering excluding only Reanna and the cat, hunched and spitting upon the mantle.
Satan eyed the woman poised before him and held out a taloned claw to her. "Join me my darling...Join me in the depths of Demonic revelry. Join me for all eternity in the fires of our love and the roiling frisson of our passion."
"Gladly" she said taking his hand and never glancing about or considering the loss of her only living relative, her lover...her brother or the loyal retainers who'd served her these many years. She took his hand and cocked an eyebrow in question as she asked, "Why'd you spare the cat?"
"Oh Geez, I'm a softy when it comes to animals...my ONE weakness." Satan murmured looking as coy as a master Demonic icon could.
"Eat your heart out Anne Rice, I AM the Queen of the Damned... For real" she said and flashed a wink at no one in particular as she and Old Cloven foot floated into the evil bliss of eternal damnation...
The cat was the only one left to wink back...
THE END...or is it?.....