"Bloody Mary"
by Scott Wydra
"You know I’m missing a date with a cheerleader for this silliness," Peter Dent told his younger sister
while standing outside the "Spooky Sconsdale".
The Spooky Sconsdale mansion loomed before the siblings like some kind of monster monolith of
anti-life. Paint that was once white, had transformed to a lifeless gray, peeled; the wind continued
shucking the old strips from the house. Most of the windows were boarded over as countless rocks
(and pumpkins on Mischief Night before Halloween) from local kids had punched holes in the glass. The
rest were just rectangular sockets. Annabelle could almost see squirms of maggots flailing about the
empty windows like the house was an ancient skull.
It was October 13th and a spray of rain fell, soaking through clothes.
Annabelle, being sixteen and thus more computer savvy than an IBM exec, entertained her older
brother with all she had dug up on the Internet about their town and the Sconsdale Estate. Twelve
missing teens since 1954. Most were sighted somewhere near Bloody Mary’s mansion.
Anna had found Mary Sconsdale’s story on an urban legend web site. In 1954, it reported, Mary
Lived in the house which she inherited from her parents. On that January night, she had been raped,
tortured, and then murdered by two college freshman.
She was forty-six.
The legend of Bloody Mary was, was that in the bathroom downstairs, there is a mirror. A special
mirror. The mirror should to be a doorway between the world of General Motors, Burger King, and
Miller High Life, and that of the purgatory where Mary is said to be imprisoned. It is said that if one
stands in front of the mirror and says "Bloody Mary, I believe in you" nine times and on the tenth
change it to "Bloody Mary, I don’t believe in you" the gateway opens.
Anna thinks that’s where the kids went, into Bloody Mary’s one-of-a-kind hell.
And Pete thinks she’s lost it.
"Well, you picked a helluva night to come to this place," Peter said as the two walked up the broken
cobblestone path towards the splintering stairs. The famous Pennsylvanian fall scent permeated the
air: soggy, dead leaves that carpeted the ground. Not only deceased leaves swirled around their ankles
in miniature cyclones, but good old urban tumbleweeds, as well: newspapers, fast-food wrappers,
shreds of old cloth.
A late-night bird chirped low, brooding, from a skeletal maple on their right.
Anna looked at her brother, her protector, the only one she had left now that their father had died
of a heart attack three years earlier. Peter was a tall, well-formed wide receiver for the football team
with corn-colored hair like Anna’s (although hers was longer and silkier, Thank you, Pantene).
Her hands and arms shook, and goose pimples sprouted from her skin like sand dunes across a
barren desert as they climbed the steps; Peter seemed completely composed.
The wind seemed to whisper conspiratorial murder secrets through the tree boughs as Anna turned
the doorknob. As the door opened with that horror movie squealing, they smelled rot, decay, and
something even older. Eternity.
Various pieces of dilapidated--but once rich and exotic--furniture were tumbled, busted, and thrown
about the grand entrance hall. Anna could imagine people, all clothed in nothing but the finest
garments, dancing around black-tuxedoed waiters; wives and mistresses spinning and spiraling around
their men.
Anna tasted the dust and wetness on her tongue. All is silent in the halls of the dead, she thought.
She couldn’t quite remember where she had read that line, but it fit pretty neat. The only sound was
the wind choking and coughing outside and small ticking sounds that could’ve been rain pelting the
house, or rats skittering across the floors. Or both.
Some kid, most likely, tacked up one of those cardboard skeletons on the far wall between the dual
spiral staircases. A penis was drawn on the pelvic bone (how original); an arrow was staked through
the wildly grinning skull. A used condom hung from the feathery end.
In fact, used condoms--along with beer cans and bottles--seemed to be the principle decor of the
room.
Anna shrugged her shoulders to help peel the damp t-shirt from her skin and then screamed. Peter
jumped and turned to her, expecting Freddy K. or Jason V.
Anna pawed at her right shoulder. She slung a plump, hairy spider to the floor where it exploded
into chunky bits. The color of the ooze that spewed out of its deflated carapace almost made Anna
puke.
"It’s okay, Anna." Peter looked a little sketchy now. A street or two over from comfortable.
"Let’s just get this crap over with, huh?" Anna surveyed the place. She felt her long braid of hair
flopping around against her back as she looked. "They had a blueprint on that site..." Then she saw it.
"Come on, the bathroom’s that way," she nodded to their left.
They walked through the once-grand room, their feet crunching carcasses of long-dead insects.
They both shivered in their damp clothes.
They passed under the archway leading into the billiards room. The windows on the left were blown
out. Everything had a bedding of lifeless leaves. A pool cue rack on the wall had six cues stacked up; all
broke in half and sharpened to points. WATCH OUT 4 VAMPYRES, a sign above it read. It looked like it
was painted with cherry-colored lipstick.
While Peter--with a crooked smile spread on his face--studied the vampire stakes, Anna walked
around the pool table.
Her footsteps, creak, thump, creak, thump on the uncarpeted floor. Then she stopped, staring
down at the leaf-littered pool table. The green felt looked like moss on a gravestone.
Creak, creak... Creak, creak.
Anna turned to see if it was Peter walking. He started to get back up from kneeling. She followed
the noise to a corner near the busted window.
Creak, creak... Creak, creak...
She actually saw the floorboards depressing and bulging. Anna suddenly thought for sure her
bladder would cause an unsightly accident. Her spine felt like it had been replaced by a stack of Sno-
Cones.
"Peter, let’s go." Her voice tiny and tinny. "Let’s just see what we came to see and get the hell out
of here." She reached Peter and pulled him along, passing through a twisted set of French doors.
"You were the one that was so damn fired up about comin here," Peter said, taking his hand out of
her soft one. "Right about now, you realize, I could be--"
"Right through this room is the bathroom," Anna said. She knew how Peter would finish. He was
sweet, but he could be a straight-up pig sometimes.
Thunder growled outside like a timber wolf guarding its young. Anna pulled out a cigarette from her
front jeans pocket. A Bic from the other. The Marlboro and the lighter met in an enflaming embrace.
She inhaled deep, feeling calmer already, and coughed once.
"Shit, Anna!" Peter backed away. "I told you not to do that around me." He covered his mouth and
nose in a cartoonish gesture.
"I only do it when I’m nervous," Anna replied, her voice as shaky as the coffin nail between her
manicured fingers.
The aroma of the mansion changed while they walked into the hallway that led to their destination.
Now, if possible, the scent grew dankier, mustier...
Along the hallway, pictures were hung of family activities. All showed old stories under a film of dust.
More creaking came from the walls. Wind like a ghost’s sigh blew from under the closed bathroom
door; Anna smelled the old-wet odor and coughed again. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it
under her Nike running shoe.
"I told you, you shouldn’t be smoking," Peter said, a thankful look on his face.
"I didn’t cough from the cigarette, numb nuts. Can’t you smell that rot from the bathroom?"
Annabelle grabbed the doorknob.
"All’s I smell is that damn cancer stick." He coughed, theatrically. "Maybe something else..."
A speedy clip-show of fragmented slasher flicks spun through her mind as she turned the knob.
What will we see behind this door, she thought. Despite the chill, sweat bubbled under her arms, at
her temples, and in other more uncomfortable places. She suddenly wished that she was out with her
girlfriends at the movies, watching the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie instead of feeling like she
was in it.
The door opened and stopped against the outside wall. First thing Anna noticed was there were no
windows. She didn’t think she ever saw a bathroom without windows before. She could barely make
anything out because of the deep darkness. Just a line or edge or curve of something. She pulled her
lighter out and flicked it on.
Within the hazy halo of firelight, Anna saw a deep cast iron tub on the right. The floor’s alternating
black and smoky gray tiles were almost obliterated; shards crunched under her footsteps. A mouse or
rat bolted out of the room. Anna heard Peter shriek. She blurted a nervous laugh.
"I’m, uh, gonna wait out here," Peter said.
She turned to see how he was fairing. A spark of lightning emblazoned a jagged bright scar across
the side of his beardless face, and she saw fear there, as brilliant as the flash.
"It shouldn’t take too long," Anna assured him.
She turned again, and walked, moving that fuzzy orangish light in farther. The toilet, busted in half
and crawling with all colors of algae and moss, lay to her right. The sink, directly in front of her, was
filled with water the shade of devil’s blood.
Above it sat the mirror. The sink area was recessed, and a shelf lined each side. On each shelf was a
chromatic mountain range of clumped together candles.
She raised the lighter up to her face, the flame casting shadows that resembled dancing bats across
everything. There seemed to be a minute breeze tickling her face.
Her face.
In the reflection she could see her comely, gray-eyed face. Her hair and ears were lost in the
darkness, but she could see the rest clearly. It still looked pretty, but weathered...yellowed. Probably
because the mirror’s filthy, she figured.
She lit all the candles and stuffed the lighter back into her pocket.
She assumed the candlelight would vanquish most of those spectral shadows, but they seemed to
gather more closely, like a blanket of hate and frigidity. She also thought the light would brighten her
heart a bit. She went O for two.
Anna started to flick her thumbnail against the bottom of her two front teeth, a habit that drove
people around her bonkers.
"Do it already, Anna. Please!" Peter made her jump and squeak; her nail snicked a tiny piece of flesh
from the roof of her mouth.
"Okay, okay," Anna replied, shaking her legs and arms like she might do before a high-dive.
She focused on the mirror. A breath of cold wind stung her cheeks. She inhaled, blew out.
"Bloody Mary, I believe in you." She heard her voice weak and hesitant.
"Bloody Mary, I believe in you."
Creak, creak.
She turned; saw Peter still in the same place. Back to the mirror. To her it looked like a cataracted
alien eye.
"Bloody Mary, I believe in you." The sentence echoed around the room and her mind, swirling,
fragmented, as she spoke the litany six more times.
believe in you
Bloody Mary
Mary
I beleeeeeeve
in you
you Mary Bluuuuuud
She filled her lungs one more time and spoke: "Bloody Mary, I don’t believe in you."
Everything seemed to happen simultaneously.
The door thunder cracked behind her.
Malevolent gray light flooded the room.
Peter yelled "What the fuck?"
Anna’s entire body felt as cold as grave dirt.
Fog smeared the mirror as if hot water had been running. Anna’s jaw fell open, her eyes grew to
terrified Os.
"This can’t be happening," she whispered, as she heard Peter twisting the doorknob frantically and
yelling.
The wind blowing from
(the mirror-world her world)
Somewhere carried an atrocious scent. There was only one word for that stench, and that was
death. And she didn’t have to smell it with her nose; she smelled it with her mind.
The fog began to sift and sway and split apart. Anna stood like a toy robot with dead batteries. She
came to expose an urban legend. Now, the urban legend had apparently exposed her. She tried to
scream--her throat, a tight pinhole. She tried to run--her legs felt muscle less.
She could only look into the mirror.
She could only look at Bloody Mary.
Mary sat in a rocking chair of beaten wood (Anna heard that creaking again). Thick-soled shoes
tapped on the ground--ground? what ground? Her support hose piled up above her ankles. A brief
look at her calves showed near-bursting purple veins. The hem of her faded black dress lay against her
shins. Bloody Mary’s axe rested across her lap; the handle settled on the arms of the chair. The
bulbous head of her weapon poured blood. There was no floor for it to puddle on, and the waterfall of
garnet blood never stopped running. Mary’s hands that petted the handle bulged with those same
dusk-colored veins. She wore a cameo around her membranous neck. The face set in ivory appeared to
be a four horned devil smiling maliciously.
Then Anna saw Mary’s face. It was crackled like a piece of reopened crumpled paper. Her eyes were
empty wells where who knew what might slither out. Her hair was plastered to her skull. It was old-age
gray with vines of prehistoric green shooting through it like serpents.
Creak-thump. Creak-thump.
"Why do you look at me so, child?" Her voice like a concerned grandmother.
Creak-thump.
"I--I--I..." Anna felt unreality cover her like a quilt stitched with madness.
"Come closer"
(said the spider to the fly)
"to Mary." Her words were alluring. She lifted her left hand from her axe and beckoned. "I have
many secrets to share with you. Want to know what really hides in the shadows? Want to find out
what reigns in the coldest regions of lightless space? Come to me, child. I’ll show you wonders."
And Anna suddenly realized she did want to know. All of that and more.
She took a step and heard Peter yelling for her.
"For God’s sake, Anna, don’t! They’re lies!"
"I do not lie to pretty girls who come calling for me, Annaaaah..."
Creak-thump. Creak-thump!
Mary began to stand. She held her ever-flowing axe horizontally across her thighs. The blood didn’t
leave any kind of trail; it drooled into nothingness.
Anna was mesmerized. She felt her arms raise toward the mirror. The fight was seeping out of her
like so much sweat. She heard the doorknob being twisted psychotically behind her along with slaps
that could’ve been Peter slamming his palms against the door.
"Anna!"
The hypnotized teenager wasn’t sure if Mary was walking closer to her, or the mirror alone was
bringing the worlds closer. She heard a kind of slick sucking sound in her mind, along with Mary’s
words:
"Sometimes lost children are never found. And sometimes found children remain lost."
Anna nodded her head slowly, stepping again, her fingertips wavering in front of the mirror.
Mary cocked her axe back like a lumberjack. Clotless blood flowed. Her solemn grin still on her face.
Peter’s hammering ceased.
The tips of Anna’s fingers were three inches from purgatory.
Please no I don’t wanna go please no Mary no! Anna screamed inside her head while her body
quivered.
Another blast of rancid meat stench punched her in the face.
"Time for your paddlin, child." Mary’s voice--sweet and old-ladyish at first--changed. Now it grew
guttural and growling. Devilish.
It was like everything happened under water with time slowing down.
The bleeding axe head arched towards Anna’s neck.
A loud, wood-crunching explosion came from behind Anna.
The axe exited the mirror, and the glass bent with it like it was Saran-Wrap.
Anna heard a metallic clunk off to her left, maybe from the radiator. Her eyes were bloodless ovals
of terror as the dripping blade crept closer.
Out of the corner of her eye, Anna witnessed the doorknob stream across her vision and shatter
Mary, her axe, and the mirror into starry red fragments.
The pieces sprayed every which way, bounced off walls, clinked from the tub, turned into brittle by
the radiator. She felt pinpricks of pain splash across her face.
Anna screamed for help, for Peter, for God, for Jesus and all His apostles. Her hands covered her
ears and she yelled I won’t go! I won’t go! repeatedly.
Peter rushed to her, gripped her shoulders, and hugged her to his chest. "It’s all right, Anna. She’s
gone now." He hitched a heavy sigh. "I don’t know what she was, but she’s gone." He rubbed her
shoulders, petted her soft hair. "It’s over."
"I’m so sorry, Peter, for all this," Anna whined through her sobs. Her voice sounded weak and nasal.
"If I woulda...known...I--"
"It’s okay. Let’s just go the hell home and forget it ever happened." Peter laughed dryly. "Like
anyone would believe us, anyway."
He was turning her around.
Cackling, witch-like laughter filled the room. It seemed to permeate from the very walls. They both
jumped and held each other like Hansel and Gretel. They heard a barbaric sound like blades sliding
across bare bone. Their eyes were drawn down to the floor.
All of the broken pieces of the mirror slid back together, fitting perfectly where they once connected.
Mary’s reflection shown murderously in each mangled shard. Her grin displayed teeth like splintered
glass. Her eyes glowed like burning furnaces in hell’s basement. She was once more in her chair, axe
across her lap, rocking to a lunatic beat.
"Home?" she howled. "You are home, my children." She cackled again.
But her laughter could not compare to the utter horrific screams from the siblings as the busted
chunks of wood from the door that Peter kicked apart flew back into place, sealing their exit.
Somewhere, inside or outside the Sconsdale Estate, a wolf’s braying mingled with their cries.
by Scott Wydra
"You know I’m missing a date with a cheerleader for this silliness," Peter Dent told his younger sister
while standing outside the "Spooky Sconsdale".
The Spooky Sconsdale mansion loomed before the siblings like some kind of monster monolith of
anti-life. Paint that was once white, had transformed to a lifeless gray, peeled; the wind continued
shucking the old strips from the house. Most of the windows were boarded over as countless rocks
(and pumpkins on Mischief Night before Halloween) from local kids had punched holes in the glass. The
rest were just rectangular sockets. Annabelle could almost see squirms of maggots flailing about the
empty windows like the house was an ancient skull.
It was October 13th and a spray of rain fell, soaking through clothes.
Annabelle, being sixteen and thus more computer savvy than an IBM exec, entertained her older
brother with all she had dug up on the Internet about their town and the Sconsdale Estate. Twelve
missing teens since 1954. Most were sighted somewhere near Bloody Mary’s mansion.
Anna had found Mary Sconsdale’s story on an urban legend web site. In 1954, it reported, Mary
Lived in the house which she inherited from her parents. On that January night, she had been raped,
tortured, and then murdered by two college freshman.
She was forty-six.
The legend of Bloody Mary was, was that in the bathroom downstairs, there is a mirror. A special
mirror. The mirror should to be a doorway between the world of General Motors, Burger King, and
Miller High Life, and that of the purgatory where Mary is said to be imprisoned. It is said that if one
stands in front of the mirror and says "Bloody Mary, I believe in you" nine times and on the tenth
change it to "Bloody Mary, I don’t believe in you" the gateway opens.
Anna thinks that’s where the kids went, into Bloody Mary’s one-of-a-kind hell.
And Pete thinks she’s lost it.
"Well, you picked a helluva night to come to this place," Peter said as the two walked up the broken
cobblestone path towards the splintering stairs. The famous Pennsylvanian fall scent permeated the
air: soggy, dead leaves that carpeted the ground. Not only deceased leaves swirled around their ankles
in miniature cyclones, but good old urban tumbleweeds, as well: newspapers, fast-food wrappers,
shreds of old cloth.
A late-night bird chirped low, brooding, from a skeletal maple on their right.
Anna looked at her brother, her protector, the only one she had left now that their father had died
of a heart attack three years earlier. Peter was a tall, well-formed wide receiver for the football team
with corn-colored hair like Anna’s (although hers was longer and silkier, Thank you, Pantene).
Her hands and arms shook, and goose pimples sprouted from her skin like sand dunes across a
barren desert as they climbed the steps; Peter seemed completely composed.
The wind seemed to whisper conspiratorial murder secrets through the tree boughs as Anna turned
the doorknob. As the door opened with that horror movie squealing, they smelled rot, decay, and
something even older. Eternity.
Various pieces of dilapidated--but once rich and exotic--furniture were tumbled, busted, and thrown
about the grand entrance hall. Anna could imagine people, all clothed in nothing but the finest
garments, dancing around black-tuxedoed waiters; wives and mistresses spinning and spiraling around
their men.
Anna tasted the dust and wetness on her tongue. All is silent in the halls of the dead, she thought.
She couldn’t quite remember where she had read that line, but it fit pretty neat. The only sound was
the wind choking and coughing outside and small ticking sounds that could’ve been rain pelting the
house, or rats skittering across the floors. Or both.
Some kid, most likely, tacked up one of those cardboard skeletons on the far wall between the dual
spiral staircases. A penis was drawn on the pelvic bone (how original); an arrow was staked through
the wildly grinning skull. A used condom hung from the feathery end.
In fact, used condoms--along with beer cans and bottles--seemed to be the principle decor of the
room.
Anna shrugged her shoulders to help peel the damp t-shirt from her skin and then screamed. Peter
jumped and turned to her, expecting Freddy K. or Jason V.
Anna pawed at her right shoulder. She slung a plump, hairy spider to the floor where it exploded
into chunky bits. The color of the ooze that spewed out of its deflated carapace almost made Anna
puke.
"It’s okay, Anna." Peter looked a little sketchy now. A street or two over from comfortable.
"Let’s just get this crap over with, huh?" Anna surveyed the place. She felt her long braid of hair
flopping around against her back as she looked. "They had a blueprint on that site..." Then she saw it.
"Come on, the bathroom’s that way," she nodded to their left.
They walked through the once-grand room, their feet crunching carcasses of long-dead insects.
They both shivered in their damp clothes.
They passed under the archway leading into the billiards room. The windows on the left were blown
out. Everything had a bedding of lifeless leaves. A pool cue rack on the wall had six cues stacked up; all
broke in half and sharpened to points. WATCH OUT 4 VAMPYRES, a sign above it read. It looked like it
was painted with cherry-colored lipstick.
While Peter--with a crooked smile spread on his face--studied the vampire stakes, Anna walked
around the pool table.
Her footsteps, creak, thump, creak, thump on the uncarpeted floor. Then she stopped, staring
down at the leaf-littered pool table. The green felt looked like moss on a gravestone.
Creak, creak... Creak, creak.
Anna turned to see if it was Peter walking. He started to get back up from kneeling. She followed
the noise to a corner near the busted window.
Creak, creak... Creak, creak...
She actually saw the floorboards depressing and bulging. Anna suddenly thought for sure her
bladder would cause an unsightly accident. Her spine felt like it had been replaced by a stack of Sno-
Cones.
"Peter, let’s go." Her voice tiny and tinny. "Let’s just see what we came to see and get the hell out
of here." She reached Peter and pulled him along, passing through a twisted set of French doors.
"You were the one that was so damn fired up about comin here," Peter said, taking his hand out of
her soft one. "Right about now, you realize, I could be--"
"Right through this room is the bathroom," Anna said. She knew how Peter would finish. He was
sweet, but he could be a straight-up pig sometimes.
Thunder growled outside like a timber wolf guarding its young. Anna pulled out a cigarette from her
front jeans pocket. A Bic from the other. The Marlboro and the lighter met in an enflaming embrace.
She inhaled deep, feeling calmer already, and coughed once.
"Shit, Anna!" Peter backed away. "I told you not to do that around me." He covered his mouth and
nose in a cartoonish gesture.
"I only do it when I’m nervous," Anna replied, her voice as shaky as the coffin nail between her
manicured fingers.
The aroma of the mansion changed while they walked into the hallway that led to their destination.
Now, if possible, the scent grew dankier, mustier...
Along the hallway, pictures were hung of family activities. All showed old stories under a film of dust.
More creaking came from the walls. Wind like a ghost’s sigh blew from under the closed bathroom
door; Anna smelled the old-wet odor and coughed again. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it
under her Nike running shoe.
"I told you, you shouldn’t be smoking," Peter said, a thankful look on his face.
"I didn’t cough from the cigarette, numb nuts. Can’t you smell that rot from the bathroom?"
Annabelle grabbed the doorknob.
"All’s I smell is that damn cancer stick." He coughed, theatrically. "Maybe something else..."
A speedy clip-show of fragmented slasher flicks spun through her mind as she turned the knob.
What will we see behind this door, she thought. Despite the chill, sweat bubbled under her arms, at
her temples, and in other more uncomfortable places. She suddenly wished that she was out with her
girlfriends at the movies, watching the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie instead of feeling like she
was in it.
The door opened and stopped against the outside wall. First thing Anna noticed was there were no
windows. She didn’t think she ever saw a bathroom without windows before. She could barely make
anything out because of the deep darkness. Just a line or edge or curve of something. She pulled her
lighter out and flicked it on.
Within the hazy halo of firelight, Anna saw a deep cast iron tub on the right. The floor’s alternating
black and smoky gray tiles were almost obliterated; shards crunched under her footsteps. A mouse or
rat bolted out of the room. Anna heard Peter shriek. She blurted a nervous laugh.
"I’m, uh, gonna wait out here," Peter said.
She turned to see how he was fairing. A spark of lightning emblazoned a jagged bright scar across
the side of his beardless face, and she saw fear there, as brilliant as the flash.
"It shouldn’t take too long," Anna assured him.
She turned again, and walked, moving that fuzzy orangish light in farther. The toilet, busted in half
and crawling with all colors of algae and moss, lay to her right. The sink, directly in front of her, was
filled with water the shade of devil’s blood.
Above it sat the mirror. The sink area was recessed, and a shelf lined each side. On each shelf was a
chromatic mountain range of clumped together candles.
She raised the lighter up to her face, the flame casting shadows that resembled dancing bats across
everything. There seemed to be a minute breeze tickling her face.
Her face.
In the reflection she could see her comely, gray-eyed face. Her hair and ears were lost in the
darkness, but she could see the rest clearly. It still looked pretty, but weathered...yellowed. Probably
because the mirror’s filthy, she figured.
She lit all the candles and stuffed the lighter back into her pocket.
She assumed the candlelight would vanquish most of those spectral shadows, but they seemed to
gather more closely, like a blanket of hate and frigidity. She also thought the light would brighten her
heart a bit. She went O for two.
Anna started to flick her thumbnail against the bottom of her two front teeth, a habit that drove
people around her bonkers.
"Do it already, Anna. Please!" Peter made her jump and squeak; her nail snicked a tiny piece of flesh
from the roof of her mouth.
"Okay, okay," Anna replied, shaking her legs and arms like she might do before a high-dive.
She focused on the mirror. A breath of cold wind stung her cheeks. She inhaled, blew out.
"Bloody Mary, I believe in you." She heard her voice weak and hesitant.
"Bloody Mary, I believe in you."
Creak, creak.
She turned; saw Peter still in the same place. Back to the mirror. To her it looked like a cataracted
alien eye.
"Bloody Mary, I believe in you." The sentence echoed around the room and her mind, swirling,
fragmented, as she spoke the litany six more times.
believe in you
Bloody Mary
Mary
I beleeeeeeve
in you
you Mary Bluuuuuud
She filled her lungs one more time and spoke: "Bloody Mary, I don’t believe in you."
Everything seemed to happen simultaneously.
The door thunder cracked behind her.
Malevolent gray light flooded the room.
Peter yelled "What the fuck?"
Anna’s entire body felt as cold as grave dirt.
Fog smeared the mirror as if hot water had been running. Anna’s jaw fell open, her eyes grew to
terrified Os.
"This can’t be happening," she whispered, as she heard Peter twisting the doorknob frantically and
yelling.
The wind blowing from
(the mirror-world her world)
Somewhere carried an atrocious scent. There was only one word for that stench, and that was
death. And she didn’t have to smell it with her nose; she smelled it with her mind.
The fog began to sift and sway and split apart. Anna stood like a toy robot with dead batteries. She
came to expose an urban legend. Now, the urban legend had apparently exposed her. She tried to
scream--her throat, a tight pinhole. She tried to run--her legs felt muscle less.
She could only look into the mirror.
She could only look at Bloody Mary.
Mary sat in a rocking chair of beaten wood (Anna heard that creaking again). Thick-soled shoes
tapped on the ground--ground? what ground? Her support hose piled up above her ankles. A brief
look at her calves showed near-bursting purple veins. The hem of her faded black dress lay against her
shins. Bloody Mary’s axe rested across her lap; the handle settled on the arms of the chair. The
bulbous head of her weapon poured blood. There was no floor for it to puddle on, and the waterfall of
garnet blood never stopped running. Mary’s hands that petted the handle bulged with those same
dusk-colored veins. She wore a cameo around her membranous neck. The face set in ivory appeared to
be a four horned devil smiling maliciously.
Then Anna saw Mary’s face. It was crackled like a piece of reopened crumpled paper. Her eyes were
empty wells where who knew what might slither out. Her hair was plastered to her skull. It was old-age
gray with vines of prehistoric green shooting through it like serpents.
Creak-thump. Creak-thump.
"Why do you look at me so, child?" Her voice like a concerned grandmother.
Creak-thump.
"I--I--I..." Anna felt unreality cover her like a quilt stitched with madness.
"Come closer"
(said the spider to the fly)
"to Mary." Her words were alluring. She lifted her left hand from her axe and beckoned. "I have
many secrets to share with you. Want to know what really hides in the shadows? Want to find out
what reigns in the coldest regions of lightless space? Come to me, child. I’ll show you wonders."
And Anna suddenly realized she did want to know. All of that and more.
She took a step and heard Peter yelling for her.
"For God’s sake, Anna, don’t! They’re lies!"
"I do not lie to pretty girls who come calling for me, Annaaaah..."
Creak-thump. Creak-thump!
Mary began to stand. She held her ever-flowing axe horizontally across her thighs. The blood didn’t
leave any kind of trail; it drooled into nothingness.
Anna was mesmerized. She felt her arms raise toward the mirror. The fight was seeping out of her
like so much sweat. She heard the doorknob being twisted psychotically behind her along with slaps
that could’ve been Peter slamming his palms against the door.
"Anna!"
The hypnotized teenager wasn’t sure if Mary was walking closer to her, or the mirror alone was
bringing the worlds closer. She heard a kind of slick sucking sound in her mind, along with Mary’s
words:
"Sometimes lost children are never found. And sometimes found children remain lost."
Anna nodded her head slowly, stepping again, her fingertips wavering in front of the mirror.
Mary cocked her axe back like a lumberjack. Clotless blood flowed. Her solemn grin still on her face.
Peter’s hammering ceased.
The tips of Anna’s fingers were three inches from purgatory.
Please no I don’t wanna go please no Mary no! Anna screamed inside her head while her body
quivered.
Another blast of rancid meat stench punched her in the face.
"Time for your paddlin, child." Mary’s voice--sweet and old-ladyish at first--changed. Now it grew
guttural and growling. Devilish.
It was like everything happened under water with time slowing down.
The bleeding axe head arched towards Anna’s neck.
A loud, wood-crunching explosion came from behind Anna.
The axe exited the mirror, and the glass bent with it like it was Saran-Wrap.
Anna heard a metallic clunk off to her left, maybe from the radiator. Her eyes were bloodless ovals
of terror as the dripping blade crept closer.
Out of the corner of her eye, Anna witnessed the doorknob stream across her vision and shatter
Mary, her axe, and the mirror into starry red fragments.
The pieces sprayed every which way, bounced off walls, clinked from the tub, turned into brittle by
the radiator. She felt pinpricks of pain splash across her face.
Anna screamed for help, for Peter, for God, for Jesus and all His apostles. Her hands covered her
ears and she yelled I won’t go! I won’t go! repeatedly.
Peter rushed to her, gripped her shoulders, and hugged her to his chest. "It’s all right, Anna. She’s
gone now." He hitched a heavy sigh. "I don’t know what she was, but she’s gone." He rubbed her
shoulders, petted her soft hair. "It’s over."
"I’m so sorry, Peter, for all this," Anna whined through her sobs. Her voice sounded weak and nasal.
"If I woulda...known...I--"
"It’s okay. Let’s just go the hell home and forget it ever happened." Peter laughed dryly. "Like
anyone would believe us, anyway."
He was turning her around.
Cackling, witch-like laughter filled the room. It seemed to permeate from the very walls. They both
jumped and held each other like Hansel and Gretel. They heard a barbaric sound like blades sliding
across bare bone. Their eyes were drawn down to the floor.
All of the broken pieces of the mirror slid back together, fitting perfectly where they once connected.
Mary’s reflection shown murderously in each mangled shard. Her grin displayed teeth like splintered
glass. Her eyes glowed like burning furnaces in hell’s basement. She was once more in her chair, axe
across her lap, rocking to a lunatic beat.
"Home?" she howled. "You are home, my children." She cackled again.
But her laughter could not compare to the utter horrific screams from the siblings as the busted
chunks of wood from the door that Peter kicked apart flew back into place, sealing their exit.
Somewhere, inside or outside the Sconsdale Estate, a wolf’s braying mingled with their cries.
