Nightshade Manor

Chapter 64

The ballroom was utterly packed. So many masks, so many gruesome faces, it was like nightmare surrealism. Or from Angel's point of view, it was like one of those scenes from a horror film that would draw you in and mess with your head. Which was why he was bound and determined to keep his brain sensible. He only hoped that Charlie and Vaggie wouldn't get sucked in. Charlie was an innocent and Vaggie was a skeptic, and If horror movies and books taught him anything it was that the most common victims were innocents and skeptics. Well also sluts and assholes. But neither women qualified as either of those.

"Damn it's like looking for two needles in a haystack." Angel cursed out of his breath. "Vaggie! Charlie! Where are you?!"

"What do they look like?" Toby asked.

"No point is answering that question in a place like this." He responded. "There are blonde and brunette broads everywhere and they're all wearing masks."

"The costumes then, maybe they can give us a clue."

"I don't know what costumes they were wearing."

"But maybe they picked something influenced by something they like. For example, how many kids do you know dress as a favorite character of theirs for Halloween?"

"Okay. That might work."

"So tell me, what do these girls like?"

"Well Charlie is a bookworm and a writer, maybe she's wearing something inspired by a favorite book of hers and her favorite colors are red and pink. As for Vaggie, she always liked the mythology behind the Day of the Dead, she always preferred colors like blue and purple, and she like butterflies. She once told me that she and her mother liked to chase them when she was a little girl."

"Alright, let' look at guests wearing costumes with those details."

Angel and Toby approached every woman wearing something similar to what Angel had named, but none of them were Charlie or Vaggie. Angel started to get worried, if someone was missing from a great big party like this, it was never a good thing.

Suddenly he felt something jerk him up and throw him to the floor with an unceremonious thud. He landed in a corner in the far back of the room, a place where anything here was barely noticeable by the other guests. Something moved to his left. He turned to find a woman curled in a fetal position and shivering. He knew who she was before he saw her face.

"Vaggie?" He called out softly.

Her blue gown was torn and bloodied, she looked feverish.

"Vaggie? Vaggie what's wrong?"

She didn't answer. He took off his mask, crawled toward her and carefully lifted her upper body.

"Vaggie."

But when he turned her over, the words died on his lips. Vaggie was comatose, deep in the midst of a supernatural transformation. Her body shook with tiny, fitful tremors. Streaks of white had appeared in her brown hair and his skin was lacked any color at all, she was as pale as death. Her eyelids fluttered, revealing shiny white orbs. Her mouth worked spastically and her hands clawed reflexively.

"Oh my God! Vaggie! No!"

His anguished cry was loud and brutal that caused the whole party to come to a complete stop and attention turned toward him. Like Angel they were mortified at the sight of the young woman, some even pulled out their phones to call the police, but a sudden bolt of lighting stuck the house and there sparks that startled them. The floor shook and glass in the windows shattered, the chandelier fell.

Then there was screaming all around. A hurricane of people plowing toward the doors in panic, desperate to flee the scene. Rosie, Husk, and Mr, Pentious tried to calm the crowd and diffuse the situation but no one could hear them over the panicked screaming. However poor Angel couldn't hear anything. The intense horror he felt in that moment had made him deaf to almost everything.