"Does she really know about all this?" Jimmy asked nervously.
"Yeah, she knows. Relax, man! Everything will be O.K. promise!" Ben said, with a careless shrug.
Celina walked into the crowded bar and looked around for Ben and Jimmy. She was supposed to have been here 20 minutes ago, but, being female, she decided to make them wait a bit. You know, make them sweat...wondering if she would show or not. Smiling, she noticed them over in the corner, looking a bit anxious.
"Hi guys." Celina said as she walked up to the table.
"Hey Celina!" Jimmy said with a big smile of relief. "Where have you been? We've been waiting for you."
Ben looked at Celina and noticed how blue her eyes seemed tonight. "Celina, you are definitely worth the wait...it doesn't matter where you've been." He said with a charming smile. Celina hid a smile. These guys were so obvious. Not that it, or anything for that matter, would help them to get past first base with her, but she was amused at their attempts to impress and flirt with her.
Celina was a tall and shapely, with dark honey blond hair and large, expressive gray blue eyes. Strikingly attractive, she carried herself with the confidence of a beautiful woman who is aware of her beauty and isn't out looking for anyone to "take care of her". She had moved to Pendleton, Kansas only a couple of months before. Wandering around this small, two light town, she had discovered "Lucky's", a small bar in the basement of a store right off Main Street. In Lucky's, a few weeks ago, she had met Ben Wentworth and Jimmy Griffin.
Ben was from a very influential and wealthy family. Tall and good-looking, his vivid green eyes, dark ebony hair and fat wallet, all contributed to dazzle most any girl he met. There was the occasional exception though. Ben had been in trouble for some pretty serious offenses. Not used to a girl saying no, he didn't take no for an answer when one occasionally did. Ben had always walked away without any reports filed, much less any jail time, thanks to his dad. The elder Wentworth laughed and dismissed it as "teenage hi-jinks".
Jimmy Griffin, however, was different. While he was cute, charming and had an engaging personality, his looks did tend to fade beside Ben's brilliant good looks, much like a blue bird put next to a peacock. His family wasn't wealthy and influential like the class of people that Ben's parents hung around with but, Jimmy and Ben were inseparable, regardless. Of course, that was helped by the fact that Jimmy was the only one, since he and Ben had met in the third grade, to be able to stand being around Ben for any length of time.
"Are you ready to go?" Celina asked.
Jimmy looked at Ben and they stood up. "Yep" Ben said, smiling, "We're ready."
The three of them walked out into the cool night air. It was the last day of March, but still felt like winter here in the South. They went to Ben's car, a 2003 Mustang convertible, and got in. Celina sat in the front, next to Ben, and Jimmy got in the back. He was seated in the middle so he could chat with both of them. The radio was playing an old '80's tune and Celina smiled as the lyrics came to mind easily.
Silently singing the song to herself as they rode, she noticed that they were turning into the driveway of an old mansion that was just outside of town. It had been a swinging place in the `20's. During the Prohibition era, it had been a haven for those wanting to "wet their whistle". However, there had been a terrible incident at one of the wild parties and someone had been murdered. After that, several spooky events happened, and eventually, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Pendleton sold the house and left the county. After a few years, an out of town couple had bought the house and lived there for almost a year. One night, after one of several calls to the police about what they thought was an intruder, the couple decided that they had had enough of the really strange things that happened there on a nightly basis and they packed up, put up a "For Sale" sign and left. The house had been occupied briefly from time to time since that time...until about 15 years ago. A young man had drowned mysteriously in the large private lake behind the house and the owners (his parents) had locked up the place, moved away and refused to sell, rent or otherwise dispose of the place. The residents of this otherwise sleepy little town whispered that "The Pendleton Place" was cursed.
Celina looked at Ben, "Why are we here?"
Ben smiled his most charming smile, "Well, Jimmy and I thought that since it's April Fools Eve, we would have a little party here tonight and see if the story this town has been giving all of us about this house is for real or not."
Jimmy spoke up, "Ben, you told me she knew about this!"
Ben snapped, "Oh shut up Jimmy. You know that there is no such thing as a `curse'...grow up! Celina is cool with this, aren't you Celina?"
Celina considered Ben for a minute or two, until Ben squirmed a bit, and shrugged, "Why not? Let's party."
Ben got a cooler of beer out of the trunk and they walked up the broken flagstone walkway to the house and stepped onto the sagging porch.
The house was huge! Three stories tall, not including the attic and basement, it loomed over them like a vulture waiting in the night. Jimmy looked around with growing apprehension. Ben even looked a bit uneasy. Celina hummed the song that had been on the radio, as she stepped towards the immense front door.
The front entrance was one of those old fashioned entrances that had two doors instead of one, a stained glassed panel on each side of the doors and another lovely stained glass panel arched over the entry way. Two tarnished knockers were situated in the middle of each of the massive door panels. Each of them was the image of a large Lion's head with a ring in its mouth. Following Celina's nonchalance, Ben used one of the knockers on one of the doors. The knock reverberated and was more than a little bit spooky in the still night air. Jimmy was getting more nervous by the moment. Ben tried the door handle and the door opened with the hinges giving a loud whining protest.
Jimmy balked. "B-B-B-B-Ben? Do you think this is something we should be doing?"
Ben laughed," Jimmy, my man, it's going to be great!" "Come on Celina, let's party!" Ben said with a smirk.
Celina, still humming the song, walked into the house first.
They walked down the cavernous entrance hall and into a huge room. It had ceilings eighteen feet high and the room was 30 feet long. Obviously once a fine dining hall, it contained a large dusty table with twenty shrouded chairs around it, a few more lining the walls of each side, plus a few more extremely large pieces of furniture. All of the furniture was draped with the sheets and, in addition, cobwebs and layers of thick dust. Ben whipped off a few of the sheets, sending swirling clouds of dust and cobwebs into the air. Jimmy sneezed and protested his action. Ben laughed. He plunked the cooler of beer in the center of the table. Opening it, he handed a beer to Jimmy.
"Calm down and relax, man. Here, have a beer." Smiling, he turned to Celina and handed her one with a flourish. "Here you go 'My Lady', your refreshment awaits."
Celina smiled, took the beer, and sat down on one of the chairs. She hummed absentmindedly as she sipped the cold brew. Looking around, she noticed a lot of the details in the room that were almost completely hidden by dust, time, cobwebs and the lack of proper maintenance. It really was sad to see a house like this being so neglected.
Her attention turned to Ben as she heard him laugh again at Jimmy's nervousness. Ben really was an ass. It was obvious that Jimmy wasn't happy about being here, that he was concerned about them being in a house that was "off limits" and was upset that Ben had lied to him about Celina's knowing about this expedition ahead of time. Celina hummed as she continued to sip the beer.
Midnight came....it was now April Fools Day.
A low moan rippled through the house.
Ben looked up. "What was that!?!?"
Jimmy almost jumped out of his skin. "Ben, why don't we leave?" He whispered in the following silence after the sound of the moan had faded away.
Ben looked unsure for a moment, and then laughed. "It was just the wind, Jimmy boy! Don't sweat it!"
Celina looked around. She put the beer can on the table and turned to Jimmy. "Jimmy, could you go out to the car and get my purse for me?"
Jimmy looked scared, but nodded and quickly ran out of the room. she then turned to Ben. "I have a story for you." She said, smiling. "About 70 years ago, a young girl was murdered by her boyfriend here. He thought she was cheating on him and killed her in a moment of fury." She paused, looking thoughtful, "Although she insisted that she had been faithful, he didn't believe her, and she paid for his stupidity with her life." Celina looked at Ben, "He forced her to go with him in this house and in this very room, he stabbed her several times, until the floor around her was covered in blood and she was, of course, lifeless."
Ben stared at Celina, "Why are you telling me this?"
Celina hummed the tune she had been humming all night, "Because you are the same kind of man as he was. No one will ever be safe around you. I intend to teach you a lesson."
Ben laughed nervously, "But this was just an April fool's joke, Celina."
Jimmy, looking for Celina's purse in the floor of the front seat, hit his head on the dash of the car when he heard Ben scream. He ran to the house. Celina stood at the front door, blocking his way.
"Celina, what is going on?" He asked urgently. Celina looked at him and the last thing he heard was her humming a song.
The following week, after the twin funerals, the house was bulldozed down and the property fenced in with a high barbed wire security fence.
Meanwhile, Celina was traveling down the highway in Ben's Mustang convertible singing the song she had hummed that night, "Abra-abracadabra, I want to reach out and grab ya".
"Does she really know about all this?" Jimmy asked nervously.
