"Welcome to Moonlight Castle where all your nightmares come to life..." the tour guide spoke with wide eyes and a smirk, over exaggerating the supposed 'haunted' castle in which our school had somehow found to be for a good trip for our class.

Obviously, there were kids that simply refused to come due to the many rumours that whispered their way around our town, haunting people's thoughts and causing nothing but fear of this castle. Only the brave ones, like myself, ended up standing right here in the middle of the castle hallway, ready for an adventure and proof of how harmless this place really was.

Including myself, there was only eight of us and one teacher, who by now looked scared out of her wits as she bit her fingernails anxiously and jumped at even the slightest sound. Honestly, I questioned why they had actually organised a trip to this place if even the teachers were terrified, it just didn't make any sense; especially since most of the children are probably sat at home playing on their X-boxes or watching a movie with their friends.

If I'm being totally honest with myself, I didn't know why I was here either. I could have been sat comfortably at home, drinking coffee, catching up on my TV programmes, reading a book. Maybe it was a determination to prove people wrong about the rumours. Maybe I wanted to show people that I was brave. Or maybe it was because my annoying, blonde headed best friend had somehow dragged me into this mess along with herself.

"You okay Bella, not getting the creeps yet are we," My best friend, Anna, spoke, shaking her fingers playfully whilst making ghost noises in my direction.

"I'm good, just planning ways to calm you down when you get spooked," I spoke with a smirk and continued walking with the group.

Before she could protest, the tour guide spoke up once again, facing our group with a sense of nervousness adorning his features, "Feel free to roam the castle as you wish, but I would suggest splitting up into pairs, I'm sure everyone's heard about the rumours of this place..." he gulped once as everyone begun to shuffle into pairs, "just please try not to break anything, this castle is very old and valuable."

"Right then, everyone, if anyone needs me, I will be here. This can be our checkpoint for if anything goes wrong. Make sure to stay in your pairs and be back here for the latest of two o'clock," Our teacher spoke, clearly still spooked by the lingering tense atmosphere as her body shivered unwillingly.

"Right then, lets go explore!" Anna spoke with a mischievous smile as she dragged me into a random direction as I stumbled and tripped behind her.

I gazed behind us but nobody seemed to be there any more. We had all split off into our different directions.

As we explored all the different rooms, they mainly consisted of old paintings and canvases, dusty old cupboards, letters and coffee stained tables but the paintings stood out to me the most. They were so realistic and surprisingly morbid and gruesome.

They started off as paintings of a young girl, specifically a sad and beaten young girl, then they continued to the girl growing older, then finally, there was one last painting of the girl, dead, and blood splattered everywhere. It surprised me that they had these on display, or maybe, they were afraid to take them down due to the rumours.

The rest of the paintings after that consisted of different people, killed in different ways. I begun to wonder what kind of problems the artist had been through to paint so many gory pictures; it was truly disturbing.

"Hey Anna, what do you think these paintings are supposed to mean?" I questioned, curious to the hidden meaning behind them or some kind of backstory of the artist, "Anna?" I repeated when I gained no response as I turned around to find my blonde haired friend gone.

"Anna?" I shouted a bit louder. She can't have gone that far, she was only next to me a second ago.

Confused and concerned, I drifted towards the doorway of the next room in search of my best friend. This room was the same as all the others pretty much, just a little bigger and more paintings, "Anna? You in here?" I spoke, raising my voice as my eyes caught sight of something odd.

A canvas. There was no painting on it, no art on it at all in fact, it was just a plain canvas that had been ripped open leaving a hole open in the middle. It was strange. What had happened?

The name that rested beneath the canvas read The Girl In The Shadows and it left me pondering to what that actually meant.

My eyes then shifted to the other paintings that trailed along the wall after it. I couldn't put my finger on it but there was something about the many dead people that seemed almost too familiar. As if I felt I had seen them before somewhere.

Then I stopped.

My heart stopped.

My breathing stopped.

My movements stopped.

My eyes just stayed glued, wide eyed, to the last painting on the wall.

The girl in the painting had familiar blonde hair, but this time it was drenched in a thick, crimson liquid. The familiar face looked terrified and pale, splattered with blotches of blood. But the thing that stood out the most, was her once clean white dress was now drenched in her own blood as it stained the dress red and dripped down onto the floor and leaked out of the canvas.

I choked on my screams as my eyes followed the little droplets of blood falling off the canvas to the name that was underneath. Anna Dressed In Blood.

It was Anna.

My screams were smothered in my throat and my breath struggled to escape the confines of my lips. My eyes were dry and wide open, refusing to blink or move.

Then I heard a shuffling sound directly behind me.

And I did the worst thing you could possibly do at this point.

I turned around.

There before me was a girl, no older than seventeen, with thick black hair that abnormally floated behind her. Her skin was a pale white as blood splatters and dirt adorning the almost translucent surface.

A short black dress covered the rest of her body and flowed behind her, rips and cuts in the fabric.

She stared at me but not with her eyes.

Where her eyes should have been were now endless black holes of emptiness that stared you almost to death. Ironic right?

Before I could scream or shout for help, it was too late. She had already gotten me. She was already dragging me to my own gory fate. Into a blank nothingness.

But the last thing I saw before I fell into the never ending darkness was another blank canvas, this one not ripped, but what scared me the most was the name underneath...

Bloody Bella.

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I'm sorry that this is not the best but I really tried. I've not really been inspired lately and I'm so so sorry it took so long.

This is both for Vrail_Nightviper and leafywasnowhere but I've decided to do another joint oneshot for you both as I had an idea but it may take me some time to get round to writing it up.

Hope you like this anyway :)

~C xoxo