Chapter 2

When I reached the living room window, I was drenched in cold rain, and the rain had got through to the bone. I was shivering without being able to control it which was way over the limit. I left puddles as I tried to tiptoe through quietly up to my room. My night was not going to be idle. I changed out of my clothes, and into a bathrobe, and let the warm water spurt out into the bathtub. Over the sink, I tried to wring out as much water as I could. And it came out all blood and dirt. I stared out at my hands, the one that had earlier touched the earth, the dry, crumbling ground, has squeezed it with some strange, thick liquid coming out of it. And the blood in the house, the woman so strange...I shivered.

' What a night,' I whispered to myself, and even the sound of my voice sounded foreign. Times like these always happened. These moments when you don't really know what is happening, but you know it's not something good and only something ill can come out of it ; like a child. A child doesn't really know what's happening in the world around him, doesn't understand the danger, not until it's too late, not until there's no going back. One day, the child opens his eyes and realizes that all he thought was beautiful, well it isn't so much ; it's more hideous than anything else. When he finally comes to the understanding that what people do is wrong, the day's grown dark and there's no rewinding what he's done"he's been pulled into it, he's been sucked away by the evil side of things. And that's the last time ever a child is a child, when he doesn't understand ; when he does, he can look back and say : ' I was a child, then.' That was this sort of moment. I didn't really know what was happening, or really what had happened. I must have busted a blood vessel, or a nerve, I thought, though I was sceptical about it. Sceptical because my strength, first of all, was unlike anyone else's. People claimed fourteen years old girl couldn't help themselves, and that's why men assaulted young girls. That did not explain why I had such strength as to leave dents in walls and break bones, that did not explain the geniosity of my brain ; my brain was indeed like a computer, except so much better and so much more able and less damageable"it had even left our doctor a bit baffled by how my brain looked and worked. A specimen worth analyzing and observing. A new object of study which would intrigue most scientist researchers. Like I was an object, and I could be subject to these sorts of things. Curtis hadn't seemed surprised that I was so brilliant and so strong. He mostly joked about it, ' Must have this intelligence from your old man, Grim. And look at my muscles' and he'd make the skin on his arm tremble and he'd laugh at himself and I'd smile, turning bright pink, slightly embarrassed by him. Now I looked down at my hands, they were all bloodied, and my clothes had big red spots.

' Gosh no. What was it out there ?' I scrubbed my hands as clean as I could and caught sight of my face in the mirror. Blood and mud smeared over it. I was going to enjoy my bath, for sure. I'd clean out the water afterwards.

It didn't take long to wash and get dressed. I hung my clothes up to dry and I tied my damp hair into a bun. I took one glance in the mirror before I left the bathroom and my breathing stopped. There was the face with yellow eyes and pallid hair and stone frozen skin ; the strange twisted grin, there was the woman from the Dead House. I spun as quick as I could to face her and banged my head hard ... against the wall. She wasn't there. I stared about the bathroom, which wasn't so big, and could not see a sign of her. Where was she ? I had not dreamed her face, or I did not believe that I dreamed. Just out of curiosity, I turned back to the mirror and there she was. Oh, she hadn't moved, and was staring me down, without staring me down. She was laughing, without laughing. Her arms hung limply at her side, and she almost seemed hunched forward. I felt pulled in, attracted.

' Who are you ?' I whispered taking one cautious step towards the mirror. I felt ridiculous, talking to a figure in a mirror. What frustrated me the most is that she laughed without laughing and wiped herself out of the air. No trace of her, on the mirror or in the room. When I think about it now, there was actually one. There was as though a teardrop of blood which gushed through the mirror and trailed down along the side of it, starting where my eyes were reflected. I wiped away the blood quickly and went to clean out the water puddles. Water puddles that were mixed with blood. I didn't take notice to much, or tried not to take any and soon I was hoping off to bed, that is, four hours after midnight, and still I didn't sleep, the green leather bound book with blood mudges on my desk taking up too much of my mind. I didn't touch it though, I was too tired, and as Curtis had said, I had school at eight thirty, and had to be gone by seven fifteen from the house. If I could just get one hour of good sleep before having to get ready for school, that would be perfectly fine. It would keep me through the day. But I had to close my eyes and stop thinking, which was very hard to do : stop thinking. When there was so much to think, so much to review over my time lived and the one yet to live, how could I sleep ? Why did I need to sleep ? I found it a waste of time, it just slowed your life cycle down, that was all. If only the brain could have a greater power capacity, how useful it would be. I tried to close my eyes, and the images of the night came flooding in. The party, the empty house, the earth and the oozing liquid, and the woman's face, pure evil, in one of its simplest forms. Before I knew it, my alarm rang. I had indeed slept and had what might be called nightmares, but I did not feel as though I had slept at all. No, I felt more weary that if I had not slept at all, it was a horrible feeling.

I was eating cereals when Curtis came in. His eyes still looked puffed from sleep.

' Heck, you'd think knews would travel a lot slower than that. Wonder how they get so much info in just a couple of hours, expecially in the morning. Are they on-duty all the time ?'

' Wha' abou' ?' I wondered my mouth full.

' Radio. Been a murder just down the road. You'd think I'd hear when there is someone screaming their head off while they're dying. Gives me the creeps...' and he indeed shivered. ' You wouldn't have heard anything, or have you ? You sleep pretty light,' he said, cocking his head at me.

' 'Course I heard nothing, I'd have woken you up"though that's quite hard. A murder down the road, you say ? Nothing lives down there. Pardon me, no one lives down there (he had narrowed his eyes at me). It's just the Dead House, you know, the one that gives a good scare to little kids.' And to me, I thought.

' You're very funny Grim, but I hate to tell you like this, you sense of humor is very lame. As if the Pangor house could have been a Dead House. They're more living than anyone else in the neighborhood. Thinking anyone would want to kill them is absolutely...' he just shook his head, bowing it low.

' Whoa whoa whoa. Who are the Pangors and which house are we talking about ? You're not talking about the old broken down place just a couple paces from us ?'

' First of all, it's not an old broken down place. It's the Pangors' house. It's like the most modern one round here, and second of all, you know the Pangors very well, so stop pulling my leg. They came a couple of weeks ago to eat dinner. You even like their boy. Well liked anyway, because now, they're all dead. A killing during the night.'

' Curtis, you gotta be kidding me !'

' I wish I were, little girl.'

' No, I mean about the house. It's not the one I see from my window, is it ?'

' You mean to say you don't know which house they lived in ?'

' Oh boy, Curtis, can't you see ? It's fake. That house is all broken down, come with me and we'll go take a look.'

' Now you stop that Grim. I'm out the whole day, I'm working today. You go take a look round if you want when you get here after school. Off you go, and you ought to feel sorry for those people instead of thinking about their house,' his voice was sharp, very sharp. ' And I thought you liked their boy,' he muttered as he walked away. I gaped after him, mouth open. What was all this about, what was going on ? The Dead House, I'd been there a couple of hours ago, but then, nothing had seemed very right, then. I went back to my room and hit the green book in my closet, for if ever Curtis came to check my room before he left. Then I hoisted my backpack over my shoulder and pulled my shoes on.

' I'll check now and will still be to school on time. See ya later Curtis.'

' Get to school on time and don't stick around those guys, Grim !'

' What guys ?' he had startled me there.

' You know what I'm talking about. Stay out of trouble.' I laughed at him, but not so that he could hear me. Me, out of trouble ? Nuhuh, not possible. Smart as I was, I always had the perfect idea to do something bad, it's like my mind enjoyed the challenge, finding something completely new to hurt people, emotionally or physically. I enjoyed more the 'mental' torture. But it was hard to find way to make it happen without being accused. The talk of the boys was well...girls didn't do that sort of thing, trying out traps, or at least, not this way. They were more...well, really more girlish. Whereas the boys accepted me better because of my maniac brain, and my out of ordinary strengh, and indeed, my will to trick others. What I hated, however, was being cheated, so I rarely had any problems with my co-workers. Now as I stepped out I wondered how Curtis had gotten by such information. He seemed to be spying on me more than before, but that was hardly possible ; he worked, was never home except in the evenings around eight or nine, and even then, he didn't speak most of the time to me. Last night was one of the rare exceptions when we'd atually put on a sort of decent conversation. I closed the door gently as I could behind me and didn't notice the dried up red liquid on the rose bushes as I passed by, going down to the road. I wasn't going to miss my bus, that was for sure, I was early. I had enough time to hop by the house just to take a glance, just to see if it was Curtis or me who had gone mad. I rounded up, civilized, the bend of the road, that ended at the Dead House, unlike during the night, when I'd crossed straight across lawns, slightly overlooked to end up behind it. Now I stood facing the big thing, and it wasn't as morbid as before. In fact, it looked quite nice, with white washed walls and green shutters, looking so new and so real. And beneath the balconies and the windows was the big brown varnished door, wide open and become a restricted section because of the murder, and sure enough, there were the cars, the policemen, the FBI, like in the darn old movies. I blinked, once, twice. It was all going to disappear, because, the Pangors didn't exist, this house was an old rundown thing, it was supposed to be one of the mansions that gives you the creeps when you look at it, that reminds you of horror movies. But no, it was well there, in place of the Dead House, and supposedly, people had lived here, and were now there. I caught the eye of one staring policeman, who tapped his friend's shoulder and nodded at me. Was it my face ? Did it look out of place on this scene ? Did I look like a curious girl ? Or was it some sort of puzzlement, as though I knew the people that had lived here ? Whatever it was that made them watch me, it made me feel uneasy. It was the feeling that there was something working, and not in my favor. I quickly lowered my eyes and walked away, to catch my bus. One of the men was going to call out to me but the other stopped him. They didn't follow me.

On my way to school, I sat at the back with the boys. I was in the corner, next to the window and ignored them. It was the only our of the day, perhaps, when I never interacted. It was my time for me to spend alone on my thoughts, the only time I could think very clearly about all that happened in the hours and minutes, the day preceding that moment. Today, I had loads to think about, and most of which did not make any sense no matter which way round I turned it. I tried to look at it from sideways up ; it didn't work. It tried to stare at it right in the eye, face to face, that hardly worked. It was like staring at the nose in the middle of a face that has no mouth and no eyes, or at least, you can't see them. Or as though one eye is where the nose should be, the other where an ear is. The mouth is where the other ear should be, then you have one ear where the mouth is and one to replace an eye as well as the nose, and there is no symmetry, there is no sense to this design. There would perhaps be, if everyone were born this way, and the fact studied, but staring it full in the face, it didn't make any sense. Neither did it looking up at it, or sideways, or down. Nothing worked, and my genius brain was stuck dead : mostly disappointment, and there was also my ego, so hurt by this kerfuffle. I rolled my eyes at myself.

' And there you go again,' I whispered, breathing against the cold glass window.

' I though you never spoke in the morning,' Bryan smiled at me through brilliant white teeth. He'd spoken quietly, and I thought he was making fun, so I ignored him. Bryan was a year older than me, which made him fifteen, and one of the worse in the gang. He could be a real pain, but I could get along with him just fine most of the time.

' Hey Grim. Why you look so...say grim ?' that was Arthur, the lamest of the group, wore glasses and was genius number two...not a genius in cracking jokes though. I didn't bother even looking over, there was no point. He'd get his butt kicked anyway.

' You are so funny, Arthur. Why don't you leave our genius planner alone ? She's trying to figure out something new, aren't you, Grim ?' I didn't answer, they expected me not to answer anyway. That was Nigel, big boy that looked much older than he really was. He was usually thought to be around seventeen or eighteen, but really, he was fifteen and a half, which was not so far off the base but still made tremendous difference. Nigel, in a way, respected me. It was hard to tell though his intentions, because he never seemed truly sincere any way. He just liked hurting people. Sometime, I let the troubles stop and run like cold water between my fingers before balling my fist, because he went very far in his 'jokes'. I followed the edge of the road with my eye, thinking, thinking and thinking, my mind completely blank. I was more pretending to think, because I couldn't. My tiny neurons would not allow me to. I banged, with a sharp exhale the bottom of the window. It whined shortly and when I removed my hand, there was the dent. The boys held their breath, probably hoping they hadn't unnerved me and got me mad with their comments. But I wasn't mad at them, more at myself and I clenched my fists until the knuckles were white, let them fall onto my lap. I could almost hear their thoughts:

She's gonna cook us live.

Have I said something wrong ? Maybe I should be more careful.

How can she have so much str...

What the hell gets to her all the time ?

Short tempered...

Wonder if she can hear thoughts...

Weird...

Could I actually hear them. I looked up at them and saw Arthur's mouth wide open, and Nigel's clamped shut, his eyes had blank blinds. I mumbled something, I just needed to say some syllables, no matter how little sense they made. They didn't look any more surprised. Except Arthur who looked like a complete moron. The trip to school didn't involve anything else much more interesting.

Author's Note

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Reviews

[PurpleQuartz]

I loved lots of your descriptions in here, and the chapter was very intriguing.
You seem to be revealing little bits of whats happening one at a time, and that's a very clever method.
The mystery gets bigger and bigger...