Annabelle's Last Stand

        Everyone in town was getting ready for the big Halloween party up on Crawford Hill where the old Crawford mansion sat, isolated.  The small town hadn’t seen such a party since the last one hosted there, twenty years ago, and it was all they could talk about.  Some said the place was haunted ever since a young girl named Annabelle had gone missing during the treasure hunt, said to have been last seen with one of the other party goers, a young boy about her age.  And though her body had never been found, a few weeks after the party, her devastated parents received a package that held nothing but Annabelle’s two hands wrapped in blood-soaked paper.  All parties had been canceled after that.
         And now, twenty years later, the town officials had decided that enough time had lapsed.  Life, and apparently Halloween parties, could go on.  A few people who were old enough to remember what had happened weren’t so sure that the Crawford mansion was the place to have the first town party in two decades, but the mystery of what had happened to Annabelle had long since been much of a conversation topic among the townsfolk.  In fact, most had forgotten all about it being an actual event and just assumed someone had made up a particularly scary ghost story for all to enjoy. 
         
         The night of the party was cold and rainy.  The party-goers were seen running up the mansion’s sloping lawns with jackets over their heads, protecting their costumes from the natural elements.  All but one.  A lone guest stood, illuminated by an occasional burst of lightening, just in front of the maze of trees where the treasure hunt had taken place that fateful night twenty years ago.  A man of about thirty with dull black eyes and thinning hair, he was simply staring into the trees, not moving a muscle. 
         Not even when a girl, perhaps twenty years younger than himself, stepped up beside him, seemingly as unbothered by the storm as her companion.  “Rotten weather” he commented.  She tilted her head and said nothing, wide vacant eyes watching his every move.  “What are you doing down here” he wanted to know without looking at her.
         “The party was getting a little boring.  And no one seemed at all interested in that poor little girl’s death from twenty years ago.  They all seemed to think it was funny.”  Her voice was soft and musical, yet with a hint of darkness overlapping it.
         “It happened a long time ago” he reminded her without the slightest trace of emotion on his face or in his words.
         Her eyes were no longer vacant, but as dark as the surrounding thunderclouds.  “That shouldn’t change the fact that someone died and NO ONE cared about what happened.”  Golden curls whipped around her face at high speeds.  “The police called it a cold case and gave up after six months.”
         The man shrugged and took a few steps forward, letting the trees block him from any further rain assault.  “What did you want them to do?  There wasn’t a body.”
         The girl opened her mouth in fury, then closed it again and, in an apparently painful manner, said something different from her original planned outburst.  “What do you think happened to her, then?  You were at that party weren’t you?”  Her tone had taken a complete 360 degree turn from that first warm and melodic sound.
         The man turned to face her for the first time.
         And fainted.

         Inside the Crawford house, a tall blonde woman was making inquiries.  “My husband came here early.  He said he would wait for me by the fountain in the entrance hall but I can’t find him.  Have you seen him?”  As it was a relatively small town, many knew her husband, but none could confirm even seeing him enter the house that evening. 
         After a solid fifteen minutes of getting nowhere, she finally came across a young couple who mentioned seeing a man fitting his description out by the trees earlier.  “Thank you.”  The woman smiled in relief.  “Was anyone with him?”
         Both shook their heads.  “No.  He was alone.”

         “Annabelle?”  The now-revived man put a shaky hand to his mouth.  “You…you can’t…you’re dead!”
         Annabelle moved forward, her steps fast and confident.  “Oh yes, I’m quite dead.  You made sure of that when you took me back here twenty years ago.”  She laughed; a chilling un-human sound escaped her lips.  “You murdered me, cut off my hands and sent them to my parents and yet you’re still allowed to walk around free.  This house is still allowed to host grand parties.  No one in this town cared about me when I was alive and no one cares now that I’m dead.”
         “Annabelle”-
         “You do not get to win.”  She shook back the sleeves of her dress, which had been hanging long past where her hands should be, revealing two bloody stumps.  Growing out of each was a long, thin, razor sharp knife.  The man began shaking so much that he fell to the ground well before she reached him.  “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure your wife is taken care of and given all the help and support she’ll need.”  She put a heeled foot on his chest to pin him in place, lifting the glinting knife high in the air.  “I can even give her a hand with that.”