Well, I must apologize to one and all - my new job has left me little to no time for writing. I haven't touched my latest novel since July, nor have I attempted a single piece of short fiction - until now! In keeping with my Halloween tradition of writing creepy stories, I started this one the first week of October, and didn't finish it until tonight. But here it is, just in time for Spooky Day, the story of a rather eccentric piece of ancient jewelry that bears an unusual curse. I call it:
THE BLOOD STONE
A Short Story by
Lewis B. Smith
I can still see their faces anytime I go online. They are posted on the National Register for Missing and Exploited Children. It’s been ten years now since Cathy Richards and her cousin CeeCee Douglas vanished, and the tip lines occasionally get calls saying that one or the other of them has been sighted somewhere. Cathy’s parents don’t talk to me anymore, but I know they are still holding out hope that their daughter will return home. CeeCee’s folks are more prosaic – last year they held a memorial service for her, and her dad told me that they had abandoned hope of ever seeing her again. Smart man.
How do I know that he’s right? First off, let me dispel one notion I may have inadvertently created by the way I began this story. I did NOT kill Cathy or CeeCee. I did not hand them over to someone who killed them. I did not abduct, assault, or harm them in any way. Truth be told, I am not even 100% sure that they are dead. But this much I do know - they are no longer in this world. I watched them leave it, and over the last decade that horrific scene has replayed itself in my brain over and over again. I dreamed of it every night at first, for almost a year after they were taken, and lost 25 pounds from my already slim frame due to stress and lack of sleep. I had to drop out of my first semester of college because I kept falling asleep in class. That alone would have been bad enough, but on several occasions, I jerked awake screaming while the professor was in mid-lecture. They tried to send me to a therapist, but I knew if I told anyone what I saw that night, I’d wind up in a mental institution.
So instead, I dropped out and left town. I went down to Texas and got a job working for a roofer in the middle of summer, cooking my stupid Yankee brains in heat that would have given Satan a sunburn, and dropping into my cheap motel bed every night too exhausted to dream – I hoped. I took melatonin and sleeping pills just to be on the safe side. Sometimes the scenes from that night would still push their way into my subconscious, but over time the edge faded from the dreams.
But not from the actual memory. I think of all the stupid stuff I did in high school, things that we laughed at then, and I have forgotten so many details. I mean, I remember that they happened, but I can’t see them anymore. I can’t replay them in my head. Some of them were things I would like to have remembered, like the first dance I took Cathy to, and the hour we spent talking over a late dinner at the DQ afterward - but they have all faded. Why then, I ask myself every time I think back to that horrible night a week after my senior prom – why is it the one thing I would love above all else to forget is the one thing that is etched into my brain with a diamond scribe?
I met Cathy my freshman year; we were in biology together and got picked as lab partners when it came time to dissect a pickled bullfrog. I fully expected to do all the work while listening to her whine about how gross this assignment was and how the poor frog never hurt anyone. I caught echoes of that girly sentiment from other tables, but not from Cathy. She grabbed the scalpel like an experienced surgeon and split that frog from stem to stern - “from booper to pooper” was how she put it later – as I watched in shock and admiration. We removed the heart, lung, and liver, taking turns labeling the amphibian’s entrails, and she chatted merrily the whole time about how her mom had almost gone to med school before meeting her dad and deciding to become a real estate broker instead. I think I was halfway in love with her before that lab ended.
Ours was an on-again, off-again high school romance. We had our share of dumb fights and breakups, but we always missed each other more than we wanted to stay mad or to date other people. By our senior year we were getting very close, and I was beginning to think that we might be one of those rare high school couples that wound up staying together for life.
That was the year I first saw the Bloodstone. I didn’t know that was its name at the time; Cathy and I were talking about going to the winter formal, and I mentioned I was going to buy a custom suit instead of renting a dumb tux. My Dad had just gotten a big bonus at work for landing some contract or other and had given me $1000 to spend any way I wanted. Dad’s cousin Tim ran a fancy clothing store downtown, so I decided to go all out. I’d topped out at six-foot one inch at the end of my sophomore year and hadn’t grown any since, so I figured at 17 I was about as tall as I would ever be. Why not buy a suit that was uniquely mine, that I could wear on formal occasions for the next decade or two?
“That sounds so awesome!” Cathy said, her eyes lighting up when I told her my plans. “Can I help you design it?”
“That depends,” I said. “Are you cool with a shoulder cape?”
“You rock, Jimmy!” she said. “It’s going to look amazing!”
Ever since watching GLORY together for history class, we both agreed that shoulder length capes were the coolest wardrobe accessory ever and mutually mourned that they had ever gone out of style. We mentioned on several occasions that we ought to be fashion pioneers and bring them back. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought of adding one to my suit till this instance, but the more I considered the idea, the better I liked it.
We spent the evening looking up pictures of old coats from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that featured shoulder capes. After an hour or so on Google Images, we found one that I really liked – it was a photograph of a dinner party held when Teddy Roosevelt was President. One of the guests, posing in front of the White House steps, was wearing a topcoat with the exact look I wanted. Cathy printed the photo out for me, and after we kissed each other goodnight (several times), she said something that haunts me to this day.
“I’m going to have to come up with a really unique look to compete with that outfit,” she said.
“Whatever you wear will be gorgeous, because it’ll be you wearing it,” I replied.
The next day I went down to Tim’s shop and showed him the photograph, and he got out his sketchbook and drew a slightly updated version of the suit that looked absolutely perfect. After debating over various colors, I decided on charcoal grey, with a bright blue tie. He said it would be ready in one week, and I went ahead and paid him in advance.
Later that day, I showed Cathy the design we’d come up with and told her about the color scheme, and she leaned over and kissed me.
“I’m ordering my dress tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll make sure the colors will go with yours. We’re gonna be the best-looking couple there!”
We agreed that neither of us would see the other’s outfit until the evening of the dance, so when I picked up my suit a few days later, I tried it on in Tim’s shop to make sure it fit, and then I zipped it up in the black garment bag that came with it and took it home, hung it up in my closet, and began counting the hours until we would rock the winter formal together.
The days passed very quickly, and on the evening of the dance I slid the suit out, pulled it on, and carefully bushed my hair before spraying just a hint of body wash (a little of that stuff goes a long way!) on my neck. Then I drove my borrowed car – a sweet two-door Porsche that my Uncle Steve had VERY grudgingly allowed me to use for the evening – and went to pick up Cathy.
Of course, I had to wait in the front hallway for her mom to go up and fetch her, and when she came down the steps I was bowled over. Her dress matched the blue of my tie perfectly, and it fit her like a glove – neatly catching the swell of her bust and hips before flowing smoothly down to just above her ankles. The dress left her shoulders bare, but she a white ermine wrap with charcoal trim draped neatly over them, evoking the color scheme of a raincloud in a clear blue sky. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
But, as lovely as the dress and wrap were together, it was the choker she wore around her neck that drew my gaze and would not let me go. It was black velvet and looked classically antique, like something Anne Boleyn might have worn, but the gem at its center was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
The stone was red – a bright, pulsating scarlet that shifted and changed every time Cathy moved. I’ve studied rubies and garnets and sapphires ever since that year, but no gem I’ve ever seen or heard of had a similar shade. This thing wasn’t like any variety of red I’d ever seen, not crimson or carnelian – it looked like blood backlit by a sunset. It didn’t even look like a gemstone. There were no facets; it looked more like a hole in reality, peering into the arteries of the universe.
“Are you going to speak or has my beauty stolen your voice entirely?” Cathy asked me with a teasing smile, and I snapped out of the trance the gem had put upon me.
“I’m not sure if I should take you to the dance or not,” I said. “Every guy there will try to steal you away from me!”
“And every guy there will fail in the effort,” she said. “I’m your date tonight, hotshot – and every night from now on, unless you screw it up!”
I couldn’t help but grin at that, and we posed for pictures as Cathy’s mom fussed over her daughter and her dad gave me that half proud, half menacing look that fathers of teen daughters have perfected over the centuries. You know, the one that says: ‘I’m glad you love her, but don’t you dare love her too much tonight!’ It was thirty minutes before we finally broke free and got into the Porsche.
“Fancy ride!” Cathy said. “Who’d you steal this from?”
“It’s on loan from my very particular uncle,” I said. “So kindly refrain from breathing, sweating, or expelling any bodily fluids or odors while inside it!”
“Darn, there went my plans for after the dance!” she said – mostly kidding. We were very much in love but playing the physical end of our relationship slowly. Trudy, one of her best friends, had gotten pregnant the year before and agonized for three weeks over becoming a teen mom or going to a clinic – only to suffer a miscarriage before she could decide. She was still dealing with a lot of emotional fallout and guilt from the whole thing, and Cathy had told me in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t ready for those kind of consequences yet. Part of me was disappointed, of course – but I loved her enough that I was willing to wait till she was ready, whenever that was.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Spill it, girl – how'd you know the exact shade of my tie? And what is the story with that gem? I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“The tie was easy enough,” she said. “Your uncle Tim sent me a picture when I asked him nicely. As for the stone – my great-grandmother let me borrow it. She’s had it forever, I think it came from Romania with her grandmother sometime in the 1800’s. She’s let me look at it a time or two, but this is the first time I have ever worn it. I have to return it tomorrow, though. She said something kind of weird when she lent it to me.”
“What was that?” I asked, forcing my eyes back on the road. I had the odd feeling that if I looked away from that crimson stone for too long, it might change into something else.
“She said ‘It’s safe enough now, with the new moon in the sky. But you must get it back to me, lest it be worn outside when the moon door is open.’ What the heck is that supposed to mean, anyway?”
“That your great-grandma is bat-spit crazy?” I suggested, and she smacked me lightly on the arm.
“She’s old, and has funny beliefs,” she said. “But I have never seen her spit on a bat!”
That night was magical; we danced and laughed and wound up being voted as King and Queen of Winter at the ball, meaningless titles now, but at the time it was a huge deal for us both. There was a big disco ball suspended over the dance floor with several lights focused on it, and it sent glittering rays all over the dance floor as three hundred teenagers grooved to the tunes.
All through the evening, that gem kept drawing my eyes. There were depths to it that shone whenever one of the light beams caught it; something inside the stone seemed to sworl and pulsate to the music. I wasn’t alone in noticing it, either. Nearly every girl there, and many guys, commented on the unique gem, and our geology teacher, Mr. Harkin, there as a chaperon, was quite taken with it.
“It’s not a ruby or garnet,” he said after complimenting Cathy on it. “I’ve never seen any gem quite like it! Do you know where it’s from?”
“My great-grandmother's family brought it over from Europe,” she replied. “It’s been in the family for many years.”
“I’d love to put it under a scope sometime,” he said, staring into its depths. “It has some very unique reflective properties.”
“I have to return it tomorrow,” Cathy said. “Great-grandma Katerina was very specific about that.”
Her cousin CeeCee was hanging out with us by this point, since her date had ditched her in pursuit of a buxom cheerleader named Dana.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “G-G would never let me borrow it, and I have asked her more than once!”
“Probably because she hates being called G-G!” Cathy replied. She liked her cousin, but theirs was a testy relationship at times – CeeCee was neither as pretty or as clever as Cathy, and the whole family knew it.
After what was, up to that point, the greatest date we’d ever had, I took Cathy home around midnight and walked her to the door. Even in the darkness of my car, that strange gem seemed to glow with its own inner radiance. I thanked her for being my date, and we shared a long kiss before the porchlight came on and she slipped inside.
To this day, I tear up when I think of just how magical that night was. It would be several months before the final horror took Cathy and CeeCee from this world, but that night, in my mind, marked the last time everything went absolutely right . . . and the beginning of everything going horribly, fatally wrong.
About a week after the winter formal, Cathy came running up to me after our last class of the day.
“Can you drive me to Cumberland Regional?” she asked, her face streaked with tears.
“Sure, babe,” I said. “What’s wrong? Are your folks OK?”
“It’s my great-grandmother Katerina,” she said. “She’s fallen and broken her hip. Mom says she’s not doing so good. ‘Fading fast,’ was how she put it.”
We headed across town to the hospital and made excellent time; Cathy’s folks were already there, but the nurse said we could go on in. I hung back and let Cathy go first, not wanting to intrude on the family’s pain, but close enough to be there if she needed me. I could hear raspy breathing coming from the bed, and after a few moments, my curiosity got the better of me and I sidled past Cathy’s Dad to get a peek at her great-grandmother.
I’d seen Katerina Rozelsky once, at a family dinner Cathy invited me to, about a year earlier. Even then, I noticed what a scrawny old thing she was. But the figure on the bed looked like a skeleton with a thin coat of flesh-colored paint. A few strands of white hair straggled from her scalp, and her arms were like sticks. But as I watched, she opened one eye and saw her family standing there. She stirred slightly, trying to sit up.
“We’re here, Grandma,” Cathy’s mom said.
“I’m not blind, child, just hurt,” the old woman rasped back. “I see you, Lizbet, and I see that silly American husband of yours. And I see little Caterina – my namesake! Come here, child.”
Cathy stepped forward and took her great-grandmother's withered hand in her own. The old woman leaned forward slightly, groaning in pain as she did so. But her rheumy old eyes locked on to Cathy’s, blazing with intensity.
“Go to my house, girl, and look on the top shelf of my armoire. There is a locked jewelry box there. The key is hanging on a hook in the kitchen. The other baubles your mother can share with her sister – but the Bloodstone is yours alone. I want you to fetch it back here for me, before nightfall. Can you do that, Caterina? Bring the gem to me; I want to hold it one last time - and then I need to tell you its story.”
“I don’t want to leave you, Grandma,” said Cat’s mom. “I can take her to get it tomorrow.”
“I can take her,” I said.
“Who is that? Are you my Caterina’s hairy-legged boyfriend?” the old woman asked crossly.
“He’s the best man I know,” Cathy said. “He has a good heart and a kind soul – and I like his hairy legs!”
The old woman rasped and sucked in air with such an alarming sound that it took me a minute to realize she was actually laughing.
“Oh, my little Caterina!” she said. “You have more sense than your mother and grandmother combined! I suppose, if you vouch for this young man, he can’t be too bad. And you sir -” she addressed me directly - “Get her over to my house and bring her back here safely before dark, please, with the Bloodstone.”
So we left Cat’s folks there with the poor old woman, and I let her direct me across town to the small, one-bedroom house where her great-grandmother had lived alone until this week.
“Mom’s begged her for years to come and live with us,” she said, “but Caterina always insisted she could care for herself. Mom finally talked her into getting a housekeeper-companion who would come in and check on her every day, cook meals and help her clean. That was who found her this morning. She’d slipped on the way to the bathroom, they think.”
“How long had she been on the ground?” I asked.
“They think at least a couple of hours,” Cat replied. “She’d dragged herself back into the bedroom but couldn’t reach the phone. Oh, Jimmy, I don’t know if I can handle this! My grandparents died when I was very little, in a car wreck, but Great-grandma has been there for our family as far back as I can remember. She’s wise, and clever, and tells me funny stories and old folk remedies . . . I know she’s in her nineties, but I don’t want to lose her.”
“Maybe she’ll pull through,” I said. “They built them pretty tough back in the day. Do you want me to go inside with you?”
She looked at the tiny grey house with rose bushes lining the front porch and stifled a sob.
“Please,” she said. “This will be easier if I am not alone.”
So I walked her to the door and waited as she retrieved the spare key from under a ceramic planter. She let us in and led me down the narrow hall, lined with black and white photographs that looked like they were taken in the Victorian era, back to her great-grandma's cramped bedroom. There was a huge wooden armoire, like something out of an old movie, standing against one wall, and she retrieved the wooden jewelry box from its top shelf and then led me to the kitchen, where she found the key just as the old woman had described it.
Cat lay the box down on the kitchen counter and opened it. The black choker with the red gem lay across the top of a small pile of rings and necklaces, which glinted gold in the afternoon sun. While Cat picked up the choker and studied the scarlet gemstone, I picked up a golden necklace with several green stones mounted in it.
“This thing is heavy for its size,” I said. “You don’t think it’s really gold, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I wouldn’t bet against it. Here, put it back in the box and I’ll put the gem in there and we’ll just take the whole thing back to the hospital with us.”
We got back to the hospital room about an hour and a half after we left it. Cat’s mom was sitting in the recliner next to the bed, holding her grandmother’s hand; her husband was downstairs grabbing a sandwich in the cafeteria. The old woman’s eyes were closed, but they opened almost as soon as Cathy and I walked in the door.
“There’s my good girl,” she said. “Did you bring it?”
“I brought the whole jewelry box,” Cathy said. “I opened it to make sure the red stone was in there, and it is.”
“Good, good,” Mrs. Rozelsky said. “Hand it here, dearie.”
She opened the box with her gnarled old hands and lifted out the black choker. The red gem flashed and sparkled in the fluorescent lights, and again I was struck by how the light inside the gem seemed to be constantly moving – flowing, almost. She sat the choker down on top of her blanket and then lifted the other items in the box one by one, studying each ring and necklace for a moment. Then she placed them back in the box and looked at Cathy’s mother.
“Lizbet,” she said, “you and Natasha can go through these and decide which pieces each of you want. Some are very old, and all are real – no costume jewelry in the mix! They may be worth a pretty penny should you decided to sell them, but I’d rather you kept them in the family. There’s a lot of history in that box, some going back for centuries. But right now, I want you to leave me and little Caterina alone for a bit. This gem is her inheritance, and I want to tell her its history. Later, if you like, I will tell you about the rest of these baubles, and how our family came into them.”
“I’ll leave you with Cathy, Grandma,” Mrs. Richards said. “But I’ll check back in after you two are done talking.”
“I’ll give you two your privacy,” I said, starting to follow her out.
“Wait just a minute, Mister Hairy Legs!” the old woman snapped. “What is your proper name, anyway?”
“Jimmy Duncan, ma’am,” I said, coming back to Cathy’s side.
“Do you love my little Caterina?” she asked me.
I grinned awkwardly, and the old woman’s eyes lit up a bit.
“I guess I do,” I said. “We’ve been dating now, off and on, for three years. I don’t have any interest in anyone else. But we haven’t made any long-term plans yet. We are both just enjoying being young and going out.”
“Your eyes when you look at her tell me more than your mouth is ready to confess,” she said. “My little Caterina is no fool – I think she knows a good thing when she has it. That’s why I want you to stay in here with her while we talk. She’ll need looking after, you see, if she’s going to take this gem. The Bloodstone is a big responsibility.”
Cathy looked at me, and I looked at her, and then we nodded at more or less the same time. Her great-grandmother cackled softly, then coughed a couple of times, and finally spoke.
“Nearly five centuries ago, my many-times-over grandfather was a jeweler of great renown,” she said. “Even though the Romany were not welcome in England then, Fat Henry sent for him. The old King had fallen in love with a teenage girl named Katherine, and wanted a magnificent, jeweled necklace made for her. He gave my ancestor, Thaddeus, some diamonds and emeralds that had been set in a crown once worn by the king’s mother, Elizabeth of York, and old Thaddeus began working them into a beautiful golden necklace with an obsidian amulet at the center. But then the King found out his new Queen was unfaithful, and she was arrested. Thaddeus and his family were told to return to the old country; their services no longer were required.
As our wagon train made its way from London to Dover, they camped in the open country, after the manner of our people. That night a blazing, fiery stone smashed into the earth not far from the camp, and Thaddeus and his sons went to investigate at first light. There in a crater that was nearly as big as a house they found a burnt black rock that had split open when it struck the earth. Imbedded inside it was a huge gem, as big as a small melon, that glowed with a liquid red fire that was almost impossible to look at in the light of the sun. It was still too hot to touch, but Thaddeus wrapped it in a horse blanket and took it with him – since old Henry never paid him for the necklace he had labored on so long, he said this bloody gem would be his wage.
At that time our village was in the southeast of France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. When we got there, Thaddeus unwrapped the gem to find that it had shrunk somewhat – it seemed to be only half the size it was when he first retrieved it from the crater. He took it into his shop, though, and set to work with a jeweler’s patience. It was hard, he said, harder than rubies or emeralds, but not quite as hard as a diamond. He cut it into twelve equal stones, and many smaller ones, and set each into a different housing. The first he made a gorgeous golden chain for, and gave it to his wife as a gift. Some of the others were sold, and this one was kept as a gift for his baby daughter when she was old enough to have it.
Thaddeus’ wife Maria was a beautiful woman, by all accounts, and they said when she wore her Bloodstone that she put princesses to shame! Of course, being Romany, there were not many fancy occasions to call for such a bauble. She kept it put away most of the time – smart woman! But Thaddeus gave one of the other necklaces to his older sister, and it was through her fate that the curse of the bloodstone was discovered. She wore the gem to her daughter’s wedding the next year, and the feasting and dancing went on far after the end of the day. They say it was an hour or two before midnight when the full moon rose that night, and Rosalita – that was his sister’s name – was dancing with her husband when the moon’s beams struck the gem. What happened next was unclear, but she and her husband and the gem all disappeared without a trace. One of the guests later said that the gem opened its mouth and swallowed them both!”
“That sounds crazy!” Cathy said.
“It does sound like an old wives’ tale,” Mrs. Rozelsky said. “But Thaddeus forbade his wife to wear her gem thereafter, except during broad daylight or the dark of the moon. By then, all the other Bloodstones had been sold or given away, and were scattered across Europe. Thaddeus, and his son Jonathan, and his grandson Ricard all tried to track them down. One by one, every Bloodstone’s trail ended with the same story – the gem was harmless until someone wore it under the light of the full moon. Then, the wearer, whoever was near them, and the gems themselves all disappeared under such horrific circumstances that those who witnessed the event were often driven mad. This stone is the last, passed down in our family from generation to generation across five centuries. It’s a harmless bauble under the light of the sun, and it glows beautifully at night. But the fuller the moon gets, the more powerful the gem becomes. And if it is ever exposed to the light of the full moon, I do not doubt that it will consume its wearer as all of the other Bloodstones did. So now I bequeath it to you, my sweet great-granddaughter and namesake, with the most solemn warning – never wear it outside if the moon is anywhere near full! At all other times it is safe, and it is uncommonly beautiful. Wear it proudly, but sparingly, and guard its secret, Caterina! And above all else, in the name of all gods old and new, never let it see the light of the full moon! Can you do that, my little Cathy? Will you accept this responsibility I am giving you?”
Cathy lifted the gem and held it up, studying the swirling crimson depths for a moment, and then took her great-grandmother's hand.
“All you have told me I will do,” she said. “And I will pass it on to one of my children when the time comes. And I will warn them of the gem and its power, as you have warned me.”
“Such a good girl!” the old woman said, closing her eyes. “Now please, Caterina, fetch the nurse and tell her my hip is hurting like the blazes again.”
Cathy slipped the black choker and the scarlet gem into her coat pocket, and I followed her out to the nurse’s station, where she told the attending nurse that her great-grandmother needed some pain meds. Then she went down to the waiting room and told her mother that she wanted to go home. I agreed to take her, and waited till we were in the car before commenting on what we had been told.
“You don’t believe any of that, do you?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” she said. “But my great-grandmother obviously believes it, and I will respect and honor her beliefs. I have no idea what this thing is worth, but I will always treasure it because it came from her. And I will keep it out of the moonlight, just in case!”
“The old lady is right about one thing,” I said. “You’re a smart girl!”
“Is that the only thing she was right about?” asked Cathy.
“Well, that bit about me being in love with you wasn’t too far off the mark, either,” I said. She leaned across the front seat and kissed me on the cheek.
“Thanks for being there for me today,” she said. “It hurts to see her like that.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “It was the least I could do.”
I dropped her off at her house and walked her to the door, and asked if she wanted company.
“I think I honestly just need to go to my room and cry for awhile, and then take a nap,” she said. “But it’s sweet of you to offer.”
Two nights later, Katerina Rozelsky died in her sleep at the age of ninety-eight. Later on, I reflected that it was a good thing she did not live to see the price Cathy paid for accepting her gift.
If this were a fictional story by a master of horror, like H.P. Lovecraft or Stephen King, there would have been all kinds of portents in the next few weeks, a grim foreshadowing of the terror lying ahead. But real-life horror isn’t like that; it comes out of nowhere and takes some lives and ruins others without announcing its arrival or waving goodbye when it leaves. It just happens; it comes and goes and leaves shattered souls in its wake. Like mine.
Winter was turning to spring, and we were getting excited for the last big social event of the school year, the Junior-Senior prom. Oh, Cathy had grieved for her great-grandmother, and her mom had split the jewelry from the box with her sister – it turned out that some of them were worth a small fortune. And Ceecee was obsessed with the Bloodstone choker, wanting to see it every time she was over at Cathy’s house, barely disguising her resentment that it had been gifted to her cousin and not to her. But Cathy and I, we were moving on.
Our senior year was ending, and Cathy and I had decided that we would both go to the same college. Kentucky University had a solid architecture program, and Cathy was looking at a biology major, thinking about becoming a teacher. I was mulling over the idea of proposing to her after we graduated; I’d made up my mind that there was no one else I was remotely interested in spending my life with. Without saying anything to anyone, I began looking at engagement rings online.
Prom night rolled around, and Cathy and Ceecee spent the previous night together, putting the finishing touches on their dresses. Rocky, Ceecee’s date, went in with me on a limo, and we were ready for a grand evening. Cathy checked the calendar well in advance and saw that the moon would be full on prom night, so the Bloodstone would stay locked up in its jewelry box.
Or so she thought.
We picked the girls up at six-thirty and stopped at a UDF to get some milk shakes beforehand. The girls were so super-careful with the drinks it set me and Rocky laughing our butts off. But once we finished them, we headed on out to the rented country club ballroom where the prom was being held.
The first part of the evening was as wonderful as the winter formal had been. I was wearing my custom suit, with new leather shoes polished to a mirror shine, and Cathy wore a dress similar to the one she’d had at the winter formal. We did a couple of turns around the dance floor, then stood in line for punch. Cathy saw one of her friends hanging out by the refreshment table, and excused herself for a moment to go say hello. I went to the doors to get a breath of fresh air – it was a muggy, cloudy evening, with a cool front in the forecast. I felt the first stir of a north breeze and breathed it in deeply, then turned to retrieve my date.
That’s when I saw CeeCee out on the dance floor, grooving to the music with Rocky trying to keep up. But as she turned towards me, I saw the unmistakable, pulsating flash of crimson at her throat. She was wearing the Bloodstone!
I went over and grabbed Cathy.
“Did you see what your cousin is wearing?” I said.
She stared across the dance floor and let out a gasp of shock.
“That stupid, jealous little bitch!” she snapped. “She told me that she was running back up to my room to get her lipstick right before we left! She’s been begging me for a week to let her wear it. Geez, Jimmy, what if that story of Great-grandma's is really true?”
“I think you need to get that gem and wrap it up in something before she wears it outside!” I said. I didn’t really believe the crazy story the old lady had told us, but something about the way that stone pulsated and flashed in the swirling lights of the dance floor was very unsettling.
Cathy ran out to the dance floor and cut in, telling Rocky she had to speak to her cousin urgently. I was too far away to hear what she said to Ceecee, but I saw her cousin shaking her head vehemently. Cathy spoke again, and Ceecee tried to back away. Cath grabbed for the choker around her neck, and Ceecee turned and bolted – through the club doors and out into the gathering dark. Cathy ran after her, and I followed close behind.
There was a golf course behind the club, and Ceecee was running down the fairway, with Cathy close behind.
“Take it off!” Cathy shouted at her cousin. “You can’t have it out here!”
“You’re just jealous because it looks better on me than it did on you,” Ceecee snapped. “It should have been mine anyway!”
“Stop talking crazy,” Cathy said. “Let me take it and put it in my handbag; you can wear it any other time, just not tonight!”
I was racing to catch up with them when my foot went into a gopher hole and I fell, hard, painfully twisting my ankle. I grunted with the pain and tried to rise. The girls were maybe fifty feet in front of me now, and Cathy had grabbed the choker and yanked it from Ceecee’s neck.
“GIVE THAT BACK!” Ceecee screamed, drawing her hand back to slap her cousin. That was when the clouds parted and the light of the full moon struck the gem as it dangled between them, each cousin trying to grab it from the other.
The world turned crimson. A flash of unearthly red light, like nothing I had ever seen before, pulsed out from the stone, and both girls froze in shock. I lurched to my feet, trying to get to them, even though my ankle was severely sprained. Too far away to help, all I could do was watch what happened next.
The gem began to grow – from the size of a marble to that of a basketball in a matter of seconds. I had noted before how the Bloodstone looked less like a gem and more like a window onto a world of scarlet, crimson, carnelian, and every other shade of red I have ever seen or heard of; all blended into one flowing, pulsating river of red. As the gem kept growing, I felt a shift in the air, not so much like a gust of wind pushing me as a vortex pulling me forward, towards the girls and the Bloodstone. It had grown bigger than a basketball, and I could see the grass bending towards what was now, unquestionably, a doorway to another world.
Cathy and Ceecee were so much closer than I was, and the pull of the gem was irresistible. I have seen many movies with special gore effects, and even some that have shown human bodies being twisted and warped into some sort of ray or beam – but nothing ever captured on film has ever come close to what I saw.
This is the part that wakes me up screaming ten years later. I saw Cathy’s face, that young, beautiful face that I had kissed more times than I could count, stretched and twisted, eyes writhing as her skull was warped into a shape out of nightmares, and then her whole head disappeared into that scarlet void. The light flashed even brighter as it devoured them, pulling her and Ceecee in headfirst, stretching their frames to impossible lengths, pulling their arms and legs and torsos like taffy as earth’s gravity reluctantly let them go. The Bloodstone was gone now; there was nothing but this pulsating crimson hole in reality, with the blood of the stars themselves flowing and swirling on the other side. I could still hear their screams, although they were coming from far away now, and seemed distorted into sounds no human throat could make. Finally, with an audible ‘pop!’, their feet left the ground and all trace of both girls was gone.
Then came the worst part – the thing began pulling at me. I was still about forty feet away, frozen in place now, trying to process the disappearance of my girlfriend and her cousin, when some cold, distant voice began whispering to me from the base of my brain, and I felt my body being stretched and pulled towards that floating maelstrom.
‘Come and join them,’ it said. ‘Walk in rivers of scarlet, bathe in oceans of blood, let your mind live forever with theirs, our essence be pumped through the universe. . .’
I was screaming then, incoherently at first, then shouting “NO!” over and over, but unable to resist the pull as I found my whole body being irresistibly drawn forward, towards that scarlet void which would take me to a place I could only liken to hell itself.
But then there was an incredibly loud snapping sound, and the floating portal disappeared. I found myself falling headlong to the ground, having been pulled half the distance from where I’d fallen in a matter of a second or two. I had a gruesome thought before the pain of my dislocated ankle drove all coherence from my mind, but later that thought kept returning – that if the portal had closed a second or so later, they might have found my legs and feet lying on the golf course, while my head and heart would have been wherever that accursed gem took the girls.
And that’s my story. There’s no reason to it, no “why?” - only two beautiful young people snatched from this world before their time, taken somewhere else, leaving behind their grieving parents and me – an eighteen-year-old husk of a boy with a shattered mind and broken heart. Never again will I look at the night sky the same way, nor have I ever set foot in any jewelry store. There are things in this world that don’t belong here, and I cannot help but think that somewhere out there, buried in a vault or tucked away in some jeweler’s drawer, another fragment of the Bloodstone lies waiting for its next victim.
