His to Haunt

By K.J. Devoir

He’s larger than life. He’s also a deeply dangerous, twisted soul, a textbook psychopath.

But, somehow... She makes him feel.

"You can run, Leena. But I will find you."

Leena: When I arrived to the City of Souls, the tiny cemetery town wrapping the Bay Area foothills where Moonvine Manor is located, I had no idea what to expect or how insane my life would become after moving into the former, Queen Anne, funeral home that belonged to my missing sister. I should have known that being greeted by a tombstone-shaped granite welcome sign was either a sick joke or a bad omen. But I could never have predicted that I would fall in love with the darkness.

Zand: I don’t want to ever stop making her cry. Her tears are full of human feelings, and I love the taste. She makes me feel, but part of me wants to end the human in her that brings out the human in me. In a heartbeat, I could make her nightmares infinitely darker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gothika Books LLC
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224214341

K.J. Devoir

KJ DEVOIR pens twisted, dark romance spanning a range of sub-genres exploring morally grey underworld characters. She studied English and Criminology at the University of Maryland and British Lit at the University of London. Subscribe to her REAM for access to WIPS, Swag, etc!https://reamstories.com/kjdevoir

Book preview

Inheritance

Leena

MORE DEAD THAN LIVING.

The unseen ocean is beyond a big highway, across a stretch of fields, over cliffs. The scent of it on the fog brings back happier memories. I haven’t visited the beach since I was a kid. My sister Rachel was still with us then. We’d jump the smaller waves and ride the big ones, pretending we were mermaids.

Today, the only thing I’m swimming in is a sea of tombstones that wind the base of the mountain chain to my right. They call it a cemetery town—a fucking cemetery town! There are more graveyards than houses, with the occasional little brick floral shop offering condolences in the rolling sea fog.

Even the welcome sign looks like a gravestone, a round-topped slab of rough granite sticking up from the ground in mulch with plain, bold font: Welcome to Moonvine.

Being welcomed here feels like a bad omen, just like it was for Rachel, but I must stay positive. Stop thinking; just drive.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, the fake diamonds wrapping it cut into my palms, probably leaving red, scaley marks. Kimmie got me the cover for my twenty-second birthday this summer. It’s cute in a flashy, Kimmie sort of way.

I consciously loosen my grip a tad. Navigating this steeply narrow road after driving five hours through the California desert with nothing but four-forty air conditioning and Mom’s random staccato gasping when I hit the brakes, I’m about ready to pull over, and rip the thing off, give my hands a break. I’m sure Kimmie would understand.

We’ve always been the type of besties who balance each other with our differences. She is the energetic fire sign; I am the moody water sign. She went to beauty college and is working on opening a spa. I went into psychology. She’s the classic extrovert: creative, messy, and open to new experiences. An introvert, I’m classified as a conscientious personality. I’m organized, thoughtful, and reticent about change.

But now we’ve done a one-eighty. I’m changing the script by moving away. This relocation is about a hundred miles between us, which isn’t changing soon.

The cemetery ends, followed by another floral shop and another graveyard. Does it ever end?

When I first heard about my surprise inheritance, I looked up Moonvine online. The little historical town borders Colma, which was never supposed to be a civilization but a literal necropolis where all of San Francisco buried its dead—the Gold Rush dead, the plague dead, the earthquake dead, millions of dead with very few above-ground inhabitants. The Silent City. The City of Souls.

Even the original San Francisco graves were relocated here, which accounts for the abandoned tombstones being repurposed in strange places, used as gutters and sea walls, and otherwise scattered about. The tombs of those who couldn’t afford to have their bit of stone moved with the remains of their deceased destined for a mass, unmarked grave.

This is a disturbing thought, especially considering the local legends about the walking dead and vampires mentioned as a side note in the article I read. The article included a disclaimer claiming the journalist couldn’t resist making a dig, and no pun intended.

A wind gust sways my car around a sharp turn, and the pockets of fog rearrange into a disorienting patchwork. I swerve to miss a branch but fail with a miserable thunk. Damn! Eyes clinging to the strip of road visible through the low clouds, I resist glancing to my right. If Mom were awake, I’d know. I couldn’t drive slow enough to please her the whole way here.

When she finally dozed off, it was pedal-to-the-metal time. If only I could have listened to my music, the trip would have flown by.

After slowing the vehicle around a sharp turn, the fog begins to break, the evening sunlight cutting through. Trees appear, redwood phantoms quivering around a decorative fountain pond, apartments behind it. I slow down and get a better look at the street sign. Moonvine Lane. That’s our road.

San Bruno mountains, rasps Mom, startling me with her sudden wakefulness. I glance over. She’s squinting at the map with her light on, her black eyeliner smudged along the corner of her eye.

She’s been wearing it thicker since she began randomly time-shifting—even with a degree in clinical psychology, I had to look that one up. Sometimes, people with dementia revert to an earlier time when things make more sense. Mom’s go-to is the early ‘90s—her college years when she was into Goth culture. Never mind the fact that I wouldn’t have been born yet. Time is conflated as she fluidly moves between then and now.

We pass the apartments, where a tall, black-haired man, ghostly pale in dark clothes, stands in the small parking lot. He turns toward my car, and the cloud-filtered sunset glints off his eyes. I lift my hand at him, neighborly. His sunset eyes burn into mine. He doesn’t smile or wave back. He turns, looking up beyond the apartments toward a sloping yard.

I follow his line of vision, my gut fluttering at the sight of the big, grey structure streaked in purple sunlight.

That the place, Leena?

I…think so. It is the only building on this road that seems worthy of the name Moonvine Manor, and it resembles the picture I have, though a different color. Besides, there are no other houses on this dead-end road unless they are buried in the adjoining woods, which is hard to believe. So, this must be it.

The house grows exponentially as we approach.

Stacy, the estate handler, referred to it as a Gothic Queen Anne, which I guess means a Victorian on steroids, multidimensional and ornate, with a spire spiking from a tower, imposing over the anachronism of modern, flat-roofed apartments downslope.

Wow. Pretty rad, says Mom—her new favorite word. I smile at her. Every day is a new glimpse into college-aged Annie Sperling. Even though it’s weird, I’m glad she’s having a good time with it. It’s her way of coping with what life has thrown at her.

It’s huge, I mutter, shaking my head.

Almost too big, she adds, spinning positive by adding a qualifier. I know what she’s thinking. It will be impossible to keep clean. Unless we hire an army of maids, it must be tackled in stages, not all at once.

But really, a lot of that will fall to me. Her stage-three dementia can sometimes make it hard for her to focus to the point of completion.

When she was diagnosed, she threatened that if I put her in an old folk’s home, her ghost would haunt me posthumously. She has no husband, siblings, or other children to help her. I said I wouldn’t abandon her, that she cared for me when I was little, and I’ll care for her when she’s old. Adding that, it’s cheaper than outsourcing. We both laughed.

But it hasn’t been easy. At least in this oversized house, there will be plenty of much-needed space apart, which makes dating or having a boyfriend a better prospect. But I can’t think about guys right now, not with this sinking realization that my first time coming here is…after Rachel’s gone.

Suspicious death.

The phrase stalks me, jumping out at random intervals, nipping at my nerve endings, making my extremities tingle with quietly controlled panic as my thoughts twist into a pit of unanswerable questions.

My sister, an unsolved murder. Alleged. I hate that word. It’s nothing more than a giant, noncommittal What the fuck?

Her body is missing, but there is enough proof surrounding her disappearance—mainly in the form of blood—that she is assumed dead. Her phone pinged once at a location not far from here, and at that very spot, more blood was found—too much blood loss for a five-foot-six female weighing one hundred forty pounds.

It’s the most horrible thing I have ever known. But no matter how traumatized we may feel, it’s nothing compared to what Rachel went through. She is the real victim here.

I press my lips between my teeth, holding back tears. I wish it could be different. I wish for a lot of things.

That woman’s meeting us, right? asks Mom, sifting through her fringed, black leather purse.

Stacy, yeah.

After stumbling with the security code box and feeling surprised that the rusty iron gate opens, I slowly pull through, heading up the sloping drive.

As I pull to a stop, there is this still moment of pause, like we’ve come to meet our master. The Goliath house looms like a primordial God.

I turn off the engine.

Curvy trim wraps the base of each level, and shingles cover the upper half, but not the brightly colored mermaid kind of cute storybook Victorians. This hulking giant is painted in shades of grey, the scales mimicking reptilian. A weathervane with a turquoise sphinx oscillates in the breeze atop a high-peaked roof, the clouds forming a dark halo above.

A few more seconds of God-fearing observation pass before Mom clears her throat.

Alright then, she sighs with finality.

Yep, I agree, sucking in air then roughly exhaling. Hand on the door handle, I pause in fear of the unknown. Alleged.

Bullshit.

Somebody hurt my sister. Whoever it was is still out there.

Still. Out there.

Chills tingle my spine, creeping over my shoulders. I should calm down. There is another car here, and at any moment, Stacy, the estate handler, will appear like a beacon of light to guide us through the foreign shadows.

I get out, scanning the driveway. The gusty air smells like the end of summer, like fallen, withering petals, leaves, and vines, and with a hint of rotting trash. It never gets or stays cold enough in California to freeze out the smell of rot.

But it feels chillier here than I’m used to inland. The proximity to the ocean creates a different atmosphere. The air is thicker, and the sky is moodier. The old house hulks, creaking in the wind.

Other than legal stuff, Stacy only told me a bit about the place. It was repainted a year ago—a lot of grey paint with black trim. Kudos to whoever tackled that beast. She said it has a new front door. Yay, I guess. Other than that, the house is ancient. It was built in 1890-something and served as a funeral home for over a hundred years.

But the picture attached to the legal papers didn’t capture the asymmetrical enormity of it, with wings and bays in every direction—I mean, holy shit, Batman.

There is a countless array of windows spanning one, two, three, or four stories, forming a glass mosaic—half-circle sunbursts over rectangles, spandril-topped squares, oval peek-a-boos, and a tiny pyramidal window at the base of the tower. There are too many windows, like dark and murky undead eyes within the recesses of a great, leaden skull.

Hauntophobia comes to mind. But that unofficial term is usually applied to children who fear haunted houses. I am not a child, and the house isn’t the real reason this place gives me the creeps. My reasons are much worse.

I’ve had three months to prepare mentally and physically for this relocation. But I’m still baffled that Rachel gave this monstrosity to me and that she had already planned a will at such a young age. We’d barely seen each other in years.

She was sixteen, eight years older than me when she left home and didn’t look back. Then, one day, the cops showed up, asking my dad questions. He was livid. Punched a hole through the wall after the cops left. Mom and I knew to stay away from him when he was in a violent mood.

He’d been accused of abuse. A couple of weeks later, the charges had been dropped. Mom wouldn’t tell me more than that, and I didn’t ask again. I didn’t want to know, I guess. Even today, it’s too disturbing to let my mind explore the possibilities. Who did he abuse? Rachel? In what way? These questions comprise a small, guiltily-avoided dark corner in my mind.

What good will knowing Dad’s secrets do me? I barely talk to him. He hasn’t been a real father; he is more of a sperm donor type.

Deep down, it’s not hard to imagine him