Evil Walks Ch.5: Welcome Home

Evil Walks
Chapter Five: Welcome Home


"Welcome to where time stands still
No one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
Just labeled mentally deranged
Dream the same thing every night"
-- "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" by Metallica

She never truly understood why she had woken up that late night in August of 1996. Maybe she had heard something, or more likely, some thing had called her. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. The fact remains that five-year-old Deanna woke up late that night feeling terrified.

First she ran to Jared's room. The two-year-old was sitting in his crib crying a high-pitched siren of one long scream, for he was struck by the same fear that gripped Deanna's heart. They hurried to their parents' room, but Mommy and Daddy weren't there.

That was when the shouts from downstairs arose -- down from the scary, dark basement they weren't allowed to go in.

The basement door was just barely open, and a thin sliver of light shone into the hallway. They shrank away from it at first, with the memory of Daddy angrily yelling at them to stay away from the basement discouraging them, but the hallway was brimming, no, swarming with shadows. Shadows with claws. Shadows with teeth. Shadows with glowing eyes. Shadows of things that could get them. Jared clung tightly to D's arm as they stared wide-eyed at the surrounding darkness. They both swore for the rest of their lives that some shapeless black thing lunged toward them, and that spurred the children on to open the door and scramble down the basement stairs with a shriek.

There the kids founds Mommy and Daddy with two of Daddy's friends. On the floor lay something that reminded Deanna of when she squashed a worm on the sidewalk with her shoe, except this was much, much bigger than a worm, and it was covered in red and pink and black goo. Then there was an eyeball dangling from its socket, and it was looking right at her, and Deanna felt that stare penetrate through her skin. She felt it on her insides, and it was like a million bugs crawling on her and in her and all over her. Jared held D's hand tightly as he trembled, and she knew he felt it too.

It was the first dead body they ever laid eyes on. It certainly wouldn't be the last. Or the messiest.

Daddy and the others weren't even looking at the body. They were too busy watching Mommy, and something was very wrong with Mommy. Her eyes were all black, like the pupils had dilated until there were no whites or irises left, and she was bent over at a weird angle. The cracking of her spine filled Deanna's ears as Mommy bent backwards almost in half, far more than anything human should or could.

Deanna had been afraid of Daddy's temper from time to time, but never before had she been of afraid of Mommy. Until now. Now she would be afraid of Mommy until the day she died.

"Irene, no!" cried Daddy with a sob of despair. There was a glow, a blue-violet-white kind of aura emanating from him, which made the Mommy-thing hiss like a snake when it touched its skin.

Behind Deanna, Jared was sobbing.

One of Daddy's friends, Father Matt, a tall, skinny priest with dark blood staining his cassock and crimson stole, was holding aloft an iron crucifix and reading aloud from a book. "Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis," he struggled to read, his voice hoarse with terror as he stumbled over the words, et in noimine Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus Sancti..." He was so involved in his chanting that he couldn't dodge when the Mommy-thing sprang at him and twisted his head clean around.

The second dead body Deanna and Jared ever saw dropped to the ground, and their shrill voices let loose screams.

That drew the attention of the Mommy-thing and the others to them. The Mommy-thing's black eyes snapped towards them, and its bloody mouth opened to give an amused chuckle.

"No, get back!" yelled Daddy, and he tried moving toward the kids, but some invisible force knocked him back. The shiny aura around him flickered and dimmed for a moment.

The Mommy-thing bounded toward them spider-like on all four limbs and grabbed their little throats. It squeezed hard enough that Jared's scream was choked off, and Deanna struggled for breath. The Mommy-thing had talons, and their skin burned where the talons cut them. Its breath was hot against their faces, and darkness swirled before their eyes.

"Get the fuck away from them!"

Whipping its head in Daddy's direction, the Mommy-thing grinned toothily. There was blood and bile smeared on those teeth. "Are you still so adamantly against negotiation?" it asked pleasantly in a dry, masculine voice that sounded too human to match the horror of the creature who spoke.

"Fuck you!" Daddy snarled, though his dark green eyes were filled with anguish. "I'm not fucking surrendering to Hell, you son of a bitch!" 

Deanna's vision blurred and filled with black spots -- like tiny little versions of the Mommy-thing's eyes everywhere.

"Not even for their souls?" it taunted. It released its grip on the kids a breath away from strangling them, and with a taloned hand it yanked on one of Deanna's brown pigtails. White as a sheet, white as a ghost, Deanna could not find the courage to say anything or even to move away, like Jared was doing, crawling back toward the stairs while tears and snot ran down his face.

Daddy's other friend, Uncle Eric, dove toward Fr. Matt's corpse and was leafing through his book, trying to find the exorcism incantation. "Don't you do it!" Eric shouted, although Deanna never figured out if he meant that for Johnny or for the demon.

Daddy's fists were clenched so tightly that blood dripped from where his fingernails dug into his skin. "Fuck. You. Bitch," he repeated forcefully as the glow of blue-white light coming from him began to pulse.

"F-f-fuck y--" Deanna sputtered, trying to echo Daddy, but one look from those black eyes shut her up. (It was the first time she'd ever used one of Daddy's bad words, the first of many, many times. This night was night full of firsts.)

The Mommy-thing's sharp talons cupped Deanna's face while its bloody lips twisted into a smug smile. "Okey dokey, then," it chortled. "Their souls are mine. Both of them."

All color drained from Daddy's face. Beside him Uncle Eric was stumbling through the Latin incantation from the book and badly mispronouncing the words, but Deanna could barely hear him. The sound of the demon's voice filled her head until there was nothing else as it said, "I'll give you some more time with them. Let you get attached before I harvest. It will be nicer, by which I mean more painful for you and more fun for me."

"Bastard!" Daddy spat, though he made no move forward.

"Before the girl comes of age, Satan himself will take them," the thing that had possessed Mommy said. "We're going to have so much fun with them."

"Daddy!" Deanna screamed, but it became a cry of pain as the demon threw her to the floor unceremoniously. She crawled over to her sobbing brother.

The Mommy-thing swerved toward Daddy. "See you soon. In Hell," it laughed, and it continued laughing as its talons began slicing away at Mommy's face. The shimmering purple-white light that somehow came from Daddy surged toward the demon while Uncle Eric's chanting rose in volume, and suddenly there was an explosion of light and flesh.

When the glow faded, the entire basement was covered in pieces of Mommy.

 The thing's laughter was still echoing in Deanna and Johnny's heads as they kept on screaming.

August 16, 1996. For the Wesson family, that was the night the world broke into a million pieces, just like Irene Wesson had.

Evil Walks Ch. 4: Bad Reputation

Evil Walks

Chapter Four: Bad Reputation

“I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation

You're living in the past, it's a new generation

A girl can do what she wants to do

And that's what I'm gonna do

And I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation

Oh no, not me.”

• “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

The smoke burning her throat as Deanna inhaled on her cigarette felt so damn good. Deanna Wesson knew well that nothing in life came without pain, and hey, pain was a sign that she was still alive. Still alive and out of Hell – for now. Then again, dealing with Johnny certainly made her life a living Hell.

She used to idolize Johnny. No shit, it's the truth. He was her big hero, the one she swore would always protect her and her baby brother from the demons coming after them. For years she looked up to him, tried to do everything he said and live up to his expectations, and ignored the way he fell apart after losing her mother. She also overlooked the fact that he called her “son” and pretended that she wasn't a girl, since anything feminine would remind him of him of his late wife.

Then Deanna hit puberty; and it became a lot harder for Johnny to ignore her growing femininity (AKA boobs), and it was a hell of a lot harder for Deanna to continue putting up with Johnny's bullshit as she grew increasingly disillusioned with her hero.

At age twelve, she got her period, and Johnny refused to buy her tampons. That was the last fucking straw. Deanna finally realized that she could never be Johnny's perfect little soldier and that she shouldn't have to be.

Blaring the Mötley Crüe cover of “Anarchy In The U.K.” so loudly that the neighbors complained, twelve-year-old Deanna locked herself in the bathroom, haphazardly chopped off her hair, and bleached the remains with hydrogen peroxide. Then she went out and used all of her allowance to buy a trenchcoat and to bribe an older kid to steal his dad's cigarettes for her. Deanna had cast off one hero to become just like her replacement hero from her Hellblazer comic books, John Constantine. All the while disregarding that she herself was just using another method of hiding her femininity, of course. Johnny fucking hated it, and that was felt glorious and exciting and rebellious and free.

Coming to terms with her femininity and her sexual orientation was a whole other set of obstacles to face.

Deanna honestly felt that fighting ghosts and monsters and the undead was a hell of a lot easier than coming out of the closet a few years later. She and Johnny fell into a vicious screaming match when he refused to acknowledge her as a lesbian, and once word got around town that Deanna was sleeping around with girls, she had to put up with sexual harassment galore from guys at her former high school and even creepy middle-aged men at the cafe where she worked part time. It's not uncommon for lesbians to face propositions from guys who “want in on the action” or think she just needs to know “what a real man is like,” and with Deanna's reputation as a slut, things got bad fast. Deanna's already sour and prickly disposition hardened like a shell, except around her younger brother.

Deanna had always taken better care of Jared than Johnny had taken care of them both, and though the siblings argued and bickered constantly, they relied on each other a lot. Despite that, after Johnny's less-than-warm reception of her announcement, Deanna hesitated to come out to Jared. With a cherry pie she bought from the supermarket, she took a tube of squeezable frosting and wrote out “D is for Dyke. I like girls.” over the top crust, since D was Jared's nickname for her (Well, D and Jerk.). Jared had taken one look at the pie and shrugged. “So is this dinner or what?” he said, unfazed. Deanna felt her heart swell with love for her brother, not that she'd ever admit it out loud, and she poured them each a shot of Bombay Sapphire.

Yeah, Deanna was also Jared's enabler. That was yet another fucking series of issues.

And sure, Deanna was screwed up in all kinds of other ways too. Their sibling bond didn't stop her from stealing three of Jared's girlfriends – and then dumping them after she got what she wanted. And giving Johnny the finger both figuratively and literally didn't stop her from secretly craving his approval. And everything she did, all the booze girls and cigarettes and even the escapism of comic books and music, didn't serve as anything beyond a momentary distraction from the looming promise that the Devil was coming for her soul.

There were times at church when she felt so uncomfortable in her own skin – and not just because of all the glares she got for being an evil lesbian with a nasty attitude and devil music. No, Deanna couldn't help but wonder if the demon had put a mark on her soul as part of claiming her for Hell. On two occasions, spirits she was hunting remarked that she had been touched by Hell.

Between that and the nightmares she suffered every night, it was no wonder Deanna tried so damn hard to be John Constantine, to be someone else, to be someone smooth and confident who could always get out of a bad situation and away from demons, to be anyone but her, the girl who nobody really loved except brother. And even he sometimes hated her.

Jared certainly seemed to hate her that night at dinner from his scowling expression, at least. His eyes were bloodshot, and his nose and lips chapped. He grabbed the cigarette from her very hand and pulled a drag.

“Hey!” Deanna cried as she snatched it back. She gestured to the open pizza box on the table. They'd been eating the leftovers for two days now. Johnny's grocery runs only ever involved whiskey and gin, not food, and none of them could cook. “Shut up and eat up, bitch,” she ordered.

“Whatever, D,” Jared sighed. He and Deanna ate the cold pizza sliced straight out of the box so that they wouldn't have to wash any dishes. Johnny had already grabbed his slice and a bottle of Crown Royal and was eating in his office off the adjoining hallway.

Taking a sip of gin straight from the blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire, Jared wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Aren't you supposed to be at work?” he slurred, referring to her part-time gig at the cafe.

Deanna peeled a thin strip of chipped black nail polish off her thumbnail before casually responding, “I'm over that place.”

“No shit. You got fired again?” It wasn't really a question, and Jared didn't even blink an eye in surprise.

With a self-righteous scoff and a volume much louder than necessary for just the two of them, Deanna explained, “The manager grabbed my ass. Obviously I had to break his wrist!” Her green eyes flickered to the hallway, where she knew Johnny was in earshot. “He might even press assault charges!”

There was no response, not even a grunt, from Johnny's office/living room.

“Attention whore,” Jared mumbled under his breath at her patheticness before sipping more gin. Deanna scowled at him and seized the bottle out of his hand in order to add more Bombay Sapphire to her gin and tonic.

While capping the bottle, she gave her brother a cold look. “So what's this I heard earlier about you cutting school again?” she asked hypocritically disapprovingly.

“Piss off, D.” Jared rolled his eyes. “You used to ditch class all the freaking time.”

“Yeah, for cigarettes, not for drugs.”

“Cigarettes are drugs, stupid.”

Deanna glanced toward Johnny's office again. No sound or sign that he'd heard or even cared. “Just knock the fuck off with the drugs,” she hissed.

Jared gave her a contemptuous glare. “Why?” he said bluntly. “We're just gonna die anyway in how many months now?”

Deanna didn't have anything to say to that and just sipped her gin and tonic.

Johnny didn't have anything to say to that either. He didn't speak a single word to them at all that night.

Evil Walks Ch. 3: You Could Be Mine

Evil Walks

Chapter Three: You Could Be Mine

“I'm a cold heartbreaker

Fit ta burn and I'll rip

Your heart in two

And I'll leave you lyin' on the bed

I'll be out the door before ya wake

It's nuthin' new ta you

'Cause I think we've seen that movie too.”

• “You Could Be Mine” by Guns N Roses

“OK, so get this-- Wait, does the red light mean it's recording or not recording?”

“It's recording. You're good to talk.”

“Right. So here's the main thing,” said Deanna staring into the camera in what she apparently thought was a deep and pensive manner. “There are a lot of monsters out there: living, dead, and undead. Nasty buggers, the lot of them.”

Jared laughed and interrupted, “Drop the fake British slang, D. People will think you're crazier than you are.”

“Sod off, bitch!” retorted Deanna with a scoff.

Haley paused the screen. She was reviewing and editing the footage from her interviews with the Wesson family earlier that day. She wanted to open her video with Deanna's summarization of her work, so she was going over that bit first. After jotting down a few notes, she resumed playback.

On Haley's computer screen, Deanna was swiping on a coat of silvery-black Urban Decay lipstick in Oil Slick. “Alright, do I look OK?” she asked, pouting her lips sexily.

“Of course you don't, jerk,” said Jared, and she smacked him.

Haley's off-screen voice reassuringly replied, “You look great, Deanna.” In her room Haley grimaced. Despite her chosen career path, she still wasn't happy with the sound of her recorded voice.

Onscreen Deanna grinned. “Damn right I do,” she stated confidently. “So the things that go bump in the night – it's not easy to get rid of them. In fact, it's really fucking hard. Heh, that's what she said. Seriously, though, going up against ghosts or ghouls or vampires or, even worse, faeries, it'll most likely get you killed. However, there are ways to protect yourself.”

Off-camera Haley interrupted, incredulous, with, “Fairies? What, like Tinkerbell?”

Jared shook his head, while Deanna rolled her eyes. “Not like Disney,” Jared tried explaining. “More like the old folklore where the Fair Folk kidnap your children and drive people crazy for their own amusement.”

“Yeah, like that,” agreed Deanna. “Don't mess with faeries. They will fuck you up.”

“But they aren't all-powerful,” added Jared helpfully. “You don't have to live your life in fear of what's in the dark.”

“Right, like I've been trying to say is that there are four main things you can use for protection,” Deanna went on. She counted them on her fingers as she listed them. “Salt, silver, iron, and holy water. It might not kill everything, but it sure as hell will cause some damage.”

“The technical term is apotrope.”

“God, you're such a nerd!”

In her room Haley pressed the rewind button to go back to the beginning. She watched Deanna's flirty little wink onscreen and sighed. Deanna was freaking crazy, that's for sure. She'd given Haley her cell number, and Haley knew she should just throw it away, but...

Deanna was different, and Haley found herself wondering about the real Deanna, not the cocky, brash, I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude she put on. Haley had glimpsed more to her than that. There'd been a moment of real pain and loneliness. Perhaps it had something to do with her mother's suicide, Haley thought to herself. After all, Johnny Wesson hadn't reacted very well to Haley's mention of Irene Wesson's death. Still, being raised by an obviously crazy father who was clearly not a good role model for her had definitely messed up Deanna's behavioral skills, but that didn't mean there wasn't a genuinely interesting girl in need of a friend underneath all those layers of attitude.

The thing was: could Haley be that friend? Haley was still weirded out by everything that afternoon, and it was admittedly despicable of Deanna to have repeatedly gone after her brother's girlfriends like he'd described. And all the drinking and smoking and swearing and general bitchiness... Could Haley put up with all that crap enough to attempt to befriend her? She wasn't convinced.

And then there was the topic of Deanna's sexual advances...

Haley understood that sexuality was fluid. Though she didn't really know if she was bisexual or not, she wasn't convinced she was completely straight either. So there was that to figure out.

And obviously a relationship with Deanna would be even more complicated and messy than a mere friendship would be. However, Deanna hadn't mentioned a relationship. She'd wanted to hook up. On the other hand, Haley wasn't really into casual sex. She'd tried it once and hated it – and the guy who never called her afterward. She preferred something more meaningful, and could she actually have something meaningful with Deanna?

OK, yes, so she admitted Deanna was attractive despite the awful hair, bad punk-goth makeup and style, crudeness, and overall bitchiness; but the girl did have a kind of charm in her self-aware “yes, I am that over-the-top ridiculous” shtick. Maybe if she were nicer or at least a little less unpleasant, then they could have a good time together.

Haley didn't know. She just didn't know.

The footage was a little shaky in a few parts, and Haley blushed to remember that her heartbeat quickened in her chest and her hands trembled whenever Deanna gave her that hungry look, that “I want to have a good time with you right here and now” kind of look. Suddenly Haley noticed the video was shaking even more so than it had the last two times she'd reviewed it. An icy blast of cold shot through her veins. Shivering, she ran her fingers over the emergent goosebumps on her arms, and her breath materialized in a cloud before her face, reminding her of Deanna's cigarette smoke.

On the computer screen was a shot of that creepy basement door, but now its freaky symbols were splashed with blood.

Hazel eyes widened behind Haley's glasses. What? She hadn't filmed that...

Not had she filmed the pale woman with tangled brown hair matted with blood opening the door. The woman's eyelids flew up to reveal two black abysses – no whites, no irises, no pupils, just utter blackness. Her bloody mouth opened, and black goo dripped out with a gargled moan.

Unable to tear her eyes away, a scream ripped itself out of Haley's throat at the terrifying thought that this weird, freaky-ass woman was trying to talk through the screen to her right then.

The video on screen changed scenes, and Haley's chest tightened to see Deanna reapplying her sheer black lipstick, but this time the girl's eyes were that same empty black. Then the monitor flickered and turned off, plunging Haley into darkness.

Her mom was knocking on her door and asking if she was alright, but Haley barely registered that as she tried thinking over the pounding blood in her ears. What the hell just happened? That couldn't have been real. Things like that don't happen. That's not possible. Maybe Deanna played some kind of prank on her? Haley kept trying to rationalize everything, though her fingers were quivering so much that it took three tries to be able to press the power button to restart her computer.

A few deep breaths were needed in an attempt to calm herself after turning on every light in the room, and then, though her insides twisted in anticipation, Haley replayed the video. She sucked in a big breath, and--

None of that freaky shit appeared.

What the hell?

Haley rewatched her footage three more times, although her stomach churned each time the basement door appeared on screen, the (Blood. Ghost.) creepy stuff never popped up. As if it had never been there at all. Which it hadn't been. Of course not. Because weird shit like, like ghosts and whatever didn't exist. That was bullshit. She was imagining things thanks to all that ghost talk Deanna and her crazy family went on about. That was it. That was the reasonable explanation.

Even still, Haley went to bed with all her lights on, not wanting to be in the dark alone with thoughts of those black eyes...

Evil Walks Ch. 2: Youth Gone Wild

Evil Walks

Chapter Two: Youth Gone Wild

“Never played by the rules, I never really cared

My nasty reputation takes me everywhere

…

They call us problem child

We spend our lives on trial

We walk an endless mile

We are the youth gone wild

We stand and we won't fall

We're the one and one for all

The writing's on the wall

We are the youth gone wild.”

• “Youth Gone Wild” by Skid Row

After a half hour or so of interviewing – most of which Haley would have to edit or bleep out due to vulgar language – Johnny Wesson's cell phone rang. He pulled it out from the pocket of his leather jacket and grimaced at the screen. “Damn,” he grumbled. “I'm sorry; I have to take this.”

Haley pressed the off button on her camera. “No problem,” she replied in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner. “Do you mind if I get some footage of Deanna? I'd like to hear what her perspective is on all this.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Johnny waved her away as he was flipping open his cell phone, and immediately his voice reverted to the same agitated growl he had employed when talking to his daughter. “What the fuck went wrong this time?”

Haley took that as her cue to step away. Deanna had invited her up to her room. Should she just go up? Hesitant, she stood at the base of the stairs. Deanna was clearly not a normal girl, and that intrigued her more than the idea of why Johnny Wesson did what he did had. Haley had never been a normal girl either, after all. She was almost done with her second year of community college, but ever since middle school she'd had a difficult time fitting in. Between shyness at a young age and her eclectic style as she got older, Haley continually felt out of place, like an invisible ghost, like this wasn't where she was meant to be. Truthfully, she preferred to stay behind her camera and film the world around her than really to be a part of it, since the camera served as her shield and buffer. Somehow, Haley felt as though Deanna would understand what that felt like.

Then again, she could only be setting herself up to talk to another foul-mouthed, immature bitch exactly like the one Haley had just interviewed.

As she put one wedge sandal-clad foot on the bottom step, Haley got a weird prickly feeling on the back of her neck. She turned to the left and noticed a door that was, well, weird. No, weird wasn't the right word. Freaky and creepy as hell, yeah, that was a more accurate term. The door had seven different locks, including two deadbolts, a chain bolt, and three padlocks, and it was covered in crudely painted symbols. The only symbol she really recognized was a pentagram, but the other squiggles and arrows and lines and whatever the hell didn't look any less unsettling. Haley took her camera and recorded a few stills. Then, shuddering as she turned away from the creepy-ass door, she ascended the stairs.

At the top of the stairs on the second floor, there was a family portrait on the wall. A much younger and clean-shaven Johnny Wesson was actually smiling in the picture. He had his arms around a beautiful brunette woman, and with them were an adorable toddler and a little girl who looked like she was dying to get out of her frilly dress. Haley stared a moment at this glimpse into the past, and then she headed toward the room with the sound of Metallica's Black Album blaring out of it. She took a wild guess that that was Deanna's bedroom.

The door, which had a poster of the Union Jack on it, was slightly ajar, and Haley knocked on it. She had to knock a second time to be heard over the cranked-up volume of “Enter Sandman.”

“Come in already, bitch!” Deanna called out over the music.

Taking a deep breath, Haley entered, the hazel eyes behind her hipster glasses scanning across the room. Two bookshelves were crammed full of graphic novels and CDs, and more comic books – wrapped in mylar plastic with cardboard backing – were strewn across the floor. She glanced over a few titles: Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, Sandman, Lucifer, Fables, Preacher, Hellboy... Things with lots of artsy and horror-style covers. A few issues of Hellblazer, the most predominant title, were framed and hung on the wall beside a giant poster of John Constantine, a man with a cigarette in hand and a long, tan trenchcoat. Deanna's own trenchcoat was flung haphazardly on the floor beside her black Doc Martens, and Deanna herself was sitting cross-legged in bed, smoking a cigarette, and reading an issue of Hellblazer.

“Hey,” greeted Deanna. “Sorry about the bitch comment. I thought you were my brother.” She reached over to the speaker on her nightstand and turned down the volume as the next track, “Sad But True,” started to play. Beside the speaker stood a blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire, a lit black candle, a star-shaped bottle of Angel perfume, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.

Haley stood there awkwardly. “Hey,” she echoed. “Can I sit down somewhere?” She looked around for a chair but didn't see one among the chaos.

Deanna merely smiled and gestured to the bed. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said with a wink. An actual cheesy wink, along with a grin that showed she knew exactly how cheesy she was being.

Being careful not to step on any comic books, Haley made her way over to the bed and, after brushing aside a battered copy of American Gods, gingerly sat down on the edge of the bed. She started an attempt to be cool and casual by saying, “So, um...” Well, that was a failure.

Deanna leaned over to the open and curtainless window and blew out a puff of smoke. Haley took a good long look at Deanna – from her ripped black jeans, vintage Mötley Crüe concert tee, and leather motorcycle jacket, up to the three pairs of gunmetal hoops in her ears, and finally to her hair. Ugh, that hair. It was at that awkward, growing out almost to the shoulders length from a former pixie cut, and the ends were still blonde from a bad peroxide job. Despite her, um, taste of style, Deanna had a skinny but toned, athletic figure and a really pretty face under her hot mess of makeup. Prettier than she was, Haley thought self-consciously as she glanced down at her own chubby figure.

Deanna turned back to her, and the gleam in her green eyes said that she knew Haley was checking her out. “Want one?” she asked, offering Haley a cigarette.

Haley shook her head, causing her red ponytail to bounce. Then she recalled a detail from her pre-interview research on Johnny Wesson. “Wait,” she said. “Aren't you a minor? You're like seventeen, right?”

Green eyes blinked in confusion. “Yeah, so...?”

“So you shouldn't be smoking or drinking,” Haley responded in a voice that strongly implied the word “duh.”

Rolling her eyes, Deanna scoffed, “OK, Mom. As if I give a fuck.”

“It's just-- You're so young,” said Haley, trying not to sound like a prude or too judgmental, “yet you're smoking and drinking and working for your dad's company... How do you do that and high school? With that many cigarettes, wouldn't you get caught?” Silently Haley added that the smell alone ought to give her away.

Deanna took another drag before explaining that she'd dropped out and gotten her GED more than a year before.

“Why would you do that?” inquired Haley in confusion. Sure, high school sucked, but it was something everyone had to suffer through. She certainly had.

Deanna shrugged and flicked ash out the window. “Needed more time to work for Johnny and my side jobs,” she answered nonchalantly, like it were perfectly obvious. “Plus they wanted me the fuck out of there after all the damn fights I was getting in.”

“Oh.” Haley didn't know what to do with that. Deanna was less relatable than she'd hoped... “So, um.” Haley tried to ignore how awkward she sounded. “You do work for your dad?”

“Damn right I do.” Deanna grinned proudly. “I'm one of the best.”

“At hunting ghosts?” Haley didn't bother hiding her disbelief. “So you believe in-- in--”

“In ghosts?” finished Deanna. She nodded, her expression solemn. “I bloody well do. Nasty fuckers, ghosts. Not to mention the specters, poltergeists, apparitions, phantoms, phantasms, banshees, ghouls, wraiths, revenants, yadda yadda, all of them bastards pretty fucked up.”

Haley couldn't prevent herself from scoffing. “You can't be serious!” she exclaimed. “Those things don't exist!” She pointed a scarlet-painted fingernail at a rather graphically ugly monster on the page of Deanna's comic book. “You've been reading too much of this horror crap!” Immediately she regretted her words, since Deanna was obviously offended.

“And you have definitely proof that they don't exist?” Deanna retorted. “Because I have proof they fucking do. The monsters might not be under your bed, Haley, but they are out there.”

“You can't...”

“No, you can't understand,” Deanna insisted, her green eyes flashing. She was so serious, so passionate about this that Haley felt bad about saying anything.

“OK, I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I respect that you believe in that kind of stuff, even if I don't.” She shifted uncomfortably on the bed.

Deanna softened, and the left corner of her mouth curved upward into a half-smile. “Thanks,” she said. “So if you don't believe in this shit, then why interview Johnny for your little vlog?”

Haley mulled over her response before speaking. “I just thought it would be interesting to do a video on someone who spends so much of his life working with, well, that kind of thing... Do you really call your dad by his first name?”

“Hell, yeah.” Deanna had finished off her cigarette and was already lighting a second one. “I'll call him Dad the day he deserves it.”

OK, stay away from the daddy issues, Haley reminded herself. That's bound to be even messier than the freaky ghost crap. Oh, speaking of freaky... “By the way, what's the deal with the weird door downstairs?” inquired Haley, though she wasn't convinced she really wanted to know the answer.

“Ah, that.” Reluctantly Deanna admitted, “That would be the door to the basement. There's, well, there's dangerous stuff down there.”

“All those symbols on there...” Haley shuddered just thinking about how foreboding they looked. “They're not Satanic, are they?”

Taking her cigarette out of her mouth, Deanna let out a wry laugh. “No, no,” she replied with another roll of her eyes. “Those sigils are protection against evil. No devil-worship here. Fuck, no.”

“Oh, good,” Haley sighed in relief.

“But,” Deanna started to say, and her green eyes shone as the flirty little smirk from before made an appearance. “But if you want to see something magical...” She leaned over to her nightstand and opened up the drawer.

Haley snorted and echoed, “Magical? Really? Really?”

Deanna withdrew a deck of Rider-Waite Tarot cards and held them up. “Want to see our future?”

“Our future?” Haley parroted Deanna's words yet again and rolled her own hazel eyes.

“Yours and mine, together,” replied Deanna playfully as she shuffled the cards. Then she put five cards face down before Haley. “Pick one.”

Haley stared, trying to make sure the girl was serious. “Really?” she said again.

“Pick one,” Deanna insisted.

“OK, OK.” Haley gave in and grabbed a card at random. She flipped it over: The Lovers.

Deanna's grin broadened. She really was quite beautiful when she smiled – a genuine smile. “That's a sign,” she explained gleefully. “Lovers – you and me, together. We should hook up.”

Haley blushed bright red, red as her dyed hair, dropping the card. Before she could respond, a voice from behind her stated in an exasperated tone, “It's a trick, you know.” Haley whirled around to see a tall boy in jeans and a hoodie with brown hair in desperate need of a haircut standing in the doorway.

“It's a trick,” he repeated. “They're all The Lovers, every card in the deck.”

Haley flipped over the other cards and discovered that they were all indeed The Lovers. Deanna scowled at the boy as he strode over to them. He kicked Deanna's Doc Martens out of the way and stole one of her cigarettes.

“What the hell?” was all Haley could manage to say.

The boy, who towered over them, lit his cigarette with Deanna's lighter and explained, “It's my sister's version of a pick up line. It's how she got two of my girlfriends to make out with her.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jared,” hissed Deanna.

“And the third to sleep with her,” Jared continued, deadpan.

Haley's jaw dropped to the floor. She wasn't certain if she was more upset about the dumb con or that Deanna was the kind of person to steal her brother's girlfriends.

“Everyone in our family is pretty fucked up,” Jared said matter-of-factly. He brushed his too long bangs out of his eyes, revealing his prominent brow.

Deanna sighed. “It's true,” she conceded. “We're all fucked up.”

“Yep.”

The siblings took a drag of their cigarettes in unison. Haley was speechless.

“Anyway,” continued Deanna defensively, “it's not my fault you like to date older girls with a bicurious tendency, and Jane only used the both of us to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. I was taking a bullet for you, really.”

“Whatever, jerk.” Jared had the same green eyes Deanna did, and he rolled them in the same manner.

Haley finally spoke up, crying out, “Wait, wait, you're what, twelve? And you're smoking? You have to realize there's something wrong with that!”

“I'm actually fourteen.”

“Yeah, but he and I started smoking when I was twelve,” added Deanna, as if that improved things.

“Because of those comic books you're obsessed with, with the guy who fights demons and smokes a lot,” Jared commented, as if that explanation made everything justifiable.

Deanna glared at her younger brother and snapped, “They're graphic novels, bitch.”

“Whatever you say, nerd.”

“You're a nerd!”

“Your face is a nerd!”

“Oh my God, you two are going to die of lung cancer!” Haley shrieked, interrupting their banter. “Do you not see the problem with this?!”

The Wesson siblings gave her a look filled with pain and loss. “It's a lot better than the death we have coming to us,” Deanna admitted softly.

“I...” Haley didn't think she could deal with this craziness anymore, but something in Deanna's eyes made her want to stay. Something in Deanna's haunted expression made Haley want to save Deanna from herself, even though her better judgment was warning her, screaming at her to get the hell away now as fast as she could.

She took out her camera from her purse. “Um, hey, why don't I film interviews with the both of you for my vlog, and you two can explain why your life is so, um, different?”

“Heh, different is right,” remarked Jared as he sat down beside Deanna on the bed.

Deanna's smile started to return. “Damn, we brought the mood down, huh?” she said. “I'll tell you anything you want to know Haley.”

But Haley wasn't sure what exactly she wanted to know anymore.