Shadows of the Past by Kayla Stiles (buy e reader txt) 📕

House on Rainbow Hill

Friday, October 13, 2014

The renowned poets and horror authors Hayden Gilchrist and Dana Stoner pull up to their luxurious new mansion, strategically placed in the middle of a lush green meadow on Rainbow Hill. Dana hops out of the white van, her long oil-black hair framing her pale face and bright green eyes. Dark-blonde-haired, midnight-black-eyed, Hayden climbs out of her bright, forest green Jeep. Following Dana and Hayden are the rest of the group. Dana’s handsome boyfriend, Aiden Pepper, with his electric blue eyes and spiky black hair with the bangs in his eyes, is shortly followed by Dana’s gorgeous girlfriend Jane Brooks, with long dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes. Twin sisters Penny Jean and Crystalline Lacy also clamber out of the van. Both have long black hair. The only difference is that Penny has milk chocolate brown eyes and Crystalline has dark brown eyes, almost black. The only other person besides Hayden to climb out of the Jeep is her boyfriend, Jason Peddington. Jason is tall and muscular with gorgeous hazel green eyes and jet black hair that goes into his eyes.

“Wow!” Dana breathes in awe as Aiden comes to stand beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders.

“So. How do you guys like it?” Hayden asks, a great big grin lighting up her face.

“I love it!” Penny cheers exuberantly.

There are four buildings on the 10-acre property: the main house, a quaint little guest house, and two animal stables with multiple stalls and a roaming pen on both stables. The main house is a large 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom, red brick structure built in the 1950s. It has a den, game room, kitchen, living room, 3 fireplaces, and a laundry room. The guest house is also of red brick, but it was added onto the property in the late 1980s by a young British family of 7. It has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a den, a living room, a kitchen, a fireplace, and a laundry room.

The owners before these 7 newcomers had been a young couple who had just gotten married just a few months prior to moving in the Fall of 1983. She was 21. He was 27. The 3 oldest children; 5 year old Brandi, 7 year old Salina, and 10 year old Cody; all belonged to the husband, Levi Leon, who had been married previously. His wife had died of leukemia shortly after Brandi’s birth. The wife, Cherideth Cortez-Leon, had the other 2 children; 2 year old Kevin and 3 year old Joanne. Cherideth had not been previously married. Instead, she had taken on a 4-year long relationship with a man who left her as soon as she had her second child. She had been heartbroken. But then she had met Levi on a church retreat England. They’d fallen deeply and instantly in love. 2 months later, they’d gotten engaged. 5 months after that, they were wed.

One day, only about a year after moving into the large house, the family suddenly stopped all contact with every one of their friends and family, whom they usually contacted everyday. No one heard from them at all. About a week after the contact stopped, the worried friends and family of the young couple contacted the authorities. When the 2 investigating officers checked the house, they both rushed out of the house and fell to the front lawn, vomiting up their guts. Inside, there told a story of a gruesome murder of an innocent and happy family. The kids were all in their beds still, their throats slashed and arterial blood spattering the walls. In the kitchen, the young married couple sat at the redwood table, their bodies slouched over their breakfast, eyes wide open and mouths gaping in a silenced scream. They had been viciously attacked while eating a nice breakfast together and their stomachs had been slashed open, guts spilling everywhere. From Cherideth’s stomach, sadly, spilled the still carcass of her unborn child. She had been 8 months pregnant. Only another month or so and Levi would have been the proud father of his first child with his new wife. The scene was devastating and the murder never solved.

31 years later, Hayden found the house and discovered it was a pretty good price so she bought it and invited her friends to move in with her. Crystalline and Penny chose to live in the guest house with its gorgeous crystal stained-glass windows and solid oak door with a lighter finish than the main house’s door. Hayden and Dana chose the two master bedrooms in the main house on the 3rd floor, while Jason and Jane chose 2 of the 3 smaller bedrooms on the 2nd floor. Aiden bunked with Dana in her room with its attached balcony.

Dana and Hayden started work on a new book they were writing together, which meant that in the coming days, these two were more often than not found in the den or in one of their bedrooms, hammering out page after page of gloriously morbid and horror-filled thoughts.

On day 3 of living in the house, the group comes to a collective decision: they decide they want some pets. But no ordinary house pets would do for such a big house and such a mixed group. No. They wanted something extravagant. Each person wants a different pet. Jason wants a lion, Aiden wants a tiger, Penny wants a unicorn, Dana of course wants a bat, Crystalline wants a Kevin, and dear Jane wants a liger. Hayden is undecided. She isn’t quite sure what exactly she wants.

Together, the group goes out to the stables out back of the house, near the edge of the property. Grabbing mops and soapy water and brooms and buckets and all sorts of cleaning supplies, the 7 young adults get together and begin to clean the stables up. They sweep hay and dead grass out of the stalls and pull up all the overgrown weeds. Suddenly, as Hayden is scrubbing the ground-on dirt off of the high windows of one of the stables, she hears a small noise behind her. The others are all having a short lunch break. Hayden is the only one still out cleaning because she is very hardworking and stubborn.

Turning around slowly, she turns and finds herself face-to-face with a most wondrous creature: a 6 foot tall Rainbow Monkey Reindeer (RMR)!! In her excitement, Hayden cries out and raises her arms high. The poor creature becomes frightened and runs to hide back in one of the 5 stalls in the small building. Hayden takes a deep breath to get her bearings back in order and then calls out softly to the creature.

“Hello? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You just startled me is all. Please come out.” Hayden walks down the aisle to the stall farthest from her. There, she finds the wondrous creature, crouched in a corner, making odd whimpering noises.

“It’s ok,” Hayden murmurs, holding out a hand to the RMR. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Cautiously, the creature sniffs the air and then slowly but surely makes its way over to Hayden. Sniffing her hand lightly, the critter sticks out its tongue and licks Hayden’s hand. Hayden moves in to sit beside the creature and gently puts an arm around him. He instantly warms up to her and nuzzles her neck welcomingly.

A few minutes later, after comforting the creature, Hayden walks out of the stable she is currently in, the Rainbow Monkey Reindeer trotting by her side. When the others see her, they all exclaim in wonder.

“What is it?” Penny cries out excitedly, bringing her hands to her cheeks. “It’s so cute!”

“It’s my new companion. My Rainbow Monkey Reindeer!” Hayden says proudly.

And so it becomes. Hayden plays with her new pet everyday after she finishes working on hers and Dana’s book. After just a couple days, the new addition to the family even begins to curl up at the end of Hayden’s bed every night. It’s as though she has her own personal guardian angel.

About a week into living in the house, Hayden finds an old diary in the den, on the top shelf of one of the many dusty bookshelves. Inside, it details all of Salina Cortez-Leon’s days in the house. Flipping to the last entry, dated as the day before the family stopped contact with everyone and presumably died, Hayden’s eyes widen as she reads the pages detailing Salina’s horror and despair in the house. She reads how Salina had been seeing and hearing things that scared her and she couldn’t convince her parents of her fear. The maturity of this 7-year-old’s writing is awing and frightening at the same time.

Hayden tries to show the others, but none but Dana believes her. Dana, having had experience with haunting, being a horror author herself, believes Hayden’s every word.

Later that day, however, these two best friends forget about Salina’s haunting diary entry. The animals arrive and the whole house is busy figuring out where the animals should each go. They decide that the carnivores will go in one stable and the herbivores in the other. And so it is. The lion, tiger, and liger are placed in the “Carnivore Stables” and the unicorn and Kevin are placed in the “Herbivore Stables”. Dana’s bat, of course, stays with her in her room.

Over the next two months, each member of the house is confronted by some form of haunting or paranormal phenomenon.

Aiden is confronted by a glowing purple orb in his room with Dana. Hayden is attacked by books in the 2nd floor den. Crystalline is hit by a semi as she is driving to the store one day and comes out disoriented but surprisingly not harmed. Jane wakes up several times with claw marks on her legs, arms, and back.

One day, the 7 young adults decide to go out to a party for the weekend, in celebration of the completion of another one of Dana and Hayden’s unique books. They decide to go barhopping.

3 days later, they come back to a most gruesome sight: the desecrated skeletons of the previous owners rest in the exact positions they were first found in after they were murdered, 31 years ago.

Crystalline starts to freak out and Jane suddenly shakes her vigorously.

“Crystalline!” Jane shouts. “How about this? You go outside to the carnivore pen and grab my phone. I accidentally left it there when I was playing with my Liger before we left. Go play with the cats for a bit and in a couple hours we should be done cleaning things up.”

Crystalline takes a deep breath, tears in her dark brown eyes, and nods her head. “Ok,” she murmurs.

The rest of the group gets to work on cleaning up the skeletons. A few hours later, Crystalline still hasn’t returned and she isn’t answering her phone. Worried, the group of young adults head out to the carnivore stables. Inside the roaming area lies what is left of Crystalline’s body. The lower half of her body is missing and half of her skull is gone. It definitely looks as though she had been mauled by a giant cat. The only problem with this theory is that all the carnivores are cowering in the far corner of the stables, terror and horror in their big brown eyes.

Penny is shattered. The group takes Crystalline’s body back inside the house and lays her on a sheet on the blue