Page 62 of My Road Trip with a Vampire: Season One
“Yeah. I guess everyone else had something better to do.”
“Screw them, then. Let’s go have fun.”
Courtney grabs my hand and pulls me along as she skips across campus. I learn that she's twenty-two and graduating in the spring. Her excitement is so contagious that I feel like a jerk for being so vague about my own backstory and why I’m here. But she’s happy to tell me ghost stories, and I listen out for any detail that might lead me to an actual haunting.
“Here they are,” she says, weaving through a crowd of people holding beers and wearing similar garish makeup. There are three girls gathered together, waving when they see Courtney. Pink liquid sloshes out of one of their cups, and they all break out into giggles.
“Who is this?”
The blonde who asked the question takes another sip of her drink, her red lipstick smudging around the edges.
“I'm Beatrice,” I tell her.
“Beatrice is joining us for the red lady run,” Courtney says. Her cotton candy scent wafts above the sweat and booze. “Beatrice, these are Martha’s angels: Kayleigh, Sarah, and Grace.”
“Martha’s angels?” I look between them.
The blonde one, Kayleigh, pulls a makeup case from the fanny pack slung low on her waist.
“Tonight we’re all Martha’s angels, so we’ve got to get you made up,” she says.
Before I can respond, she’s pressing a sponge coated in a deep shade of gray on my eyes and cheeks, then she smears some red lipstick around my mouth.
“There, now you look like one of us,” Courtney says.
“And why are we doing this again?”
They all stare at me like I asked them if you can get pregnant from doing it in a swimming pool.
“You know about Martha but not the red lady run?” Courtney asks, one perfect eyebrow arched.
I shake my head.
“It’s your first time!” Kayleigh claps her hands together. “We pay homage to Martha once a year. We all dress up in black or red to celebrate our favorite ghost who went completely bonkers years ago.”
Courtney rolls her eyes at her friend’s dramatic explanation.
“I’m guessing you know the story since you were trying to creep around Pratt Hall, but everyone did think she was a little…” she spins her finger in a circle over her ear. “They say the dorms were converted into an education building because of spacing issues, but I have to wonder if the school was just tired of fielding complaints about glowing red lights and slamming doors in the middle of the night.”
My ears prick up at the reports of lights. Orbs are one of the most solid leads to follow for a real haunting.
“Did the red lights appear as balls, or did they flash?”
The four of them exchange another look.
“Holy shit,” Kayleigh bursts out laughing. “You sound so serious. Are you on some ghost-hunting show or something?Balls.The complaints were coming from drunk students at three in the morning. They were imagining things. ”
Courtney elbows her.
“I think it’s cute. Beatrice enjoys a good ghost story.”
“Sorry, I can get a little carried away.” I grab a cup from the stack at their feet and fill it up with one of their bottles. “To Martha!”
The run is more of a slow jog with plenty of walking breaks. People stumble over each other, doing their best impressions of a mad corpse. I have to look twice at a couple of them wearing full-length gowns of deep scarlet silk.
It’s all in good fun, but the scene makes my stomach queasy as I keep my legs moving in time with the rest of the group. This is the sort of thing that gives ghosts energy and makes a haunting grow out of control.
If Martha was tormented by how everyone saw her in real life, then there’s a good chance that this annual event pisses her off even more. That’s if she’s a real apparition—I have my doubts when I don’t sense any drops in temperature or see any visual disturbances.
