Chapter One

A Chapter by Jordie

I peered over my shoulder, but my gaze spotted nothing. I tried to shake the feeling of being watched, but it didn't disappear. I sighed; I was feeling that more and more recently. I had always had a lingering feeling in the back of my mind that I was never alone, but in the past few weeks the pair of eyes that followed me everywhere was overpowering.

I threw a shirt on as well as comfortable jeans before heading downstairs. Mother and Father owned a large private corporation that involved the manufacturing and selling of expensive boats, so our house was large. It was designed like an old Victorian mansion, with white exterior and black shutters. I always told Mother and Father that the house had too many rooms for a family of four, but they never listened.

I tried not to think of how this family was decreasing in size, because the memories were still too painful. Demarco's death may have occurred four years ago, but it had been a long four years.

"Romi! There you are." One of the maids, a plump German woman who had been working for the family for many generations who went by the name of Ria, was coming out of one of the ballrooms and shaking a feather duster at me. "You're mother vants to see you! Ja ja!" She continued muttering in German and walked away without giving me any more information.

Several of the curtains were pulled back in the hallway as I made my way to the front of the house, where the couple staircase was. It was a very stereotypical house, straight out of a princess movie, but I called it home. I figured Mother would be in the library, as she loved reading and was always seen with her nose in a book if she could spare the time, so I trudged down the stairs and veered right, towards the library doors.

The back of my neck prickled, and I tossed my head over my left shoulder inconspicuously. I was alone. The feeling did not go away, so I rubbed the nape of my neck nervously and quickened my pace.

I was so frightened that I forgot to knock �" Mother hated it when I just barged in on her �" and the disapproving look that I got from her made my cheeks flush.

"Now darling you know when I don't like it when you interrupt without presenting yourself. It's rude." Mother was a small woman, but made up her size with her fiery temper and strong will. Her dark hair was almost always pulled back in a tight bun.

"Sorry Mother." I kept my voice steady and my gaze held to hers. My mother was all about good manners. "You called for me?" I asked innocently, my head tilted to the side slightly.

"Yes. Your Father will be returning from the States tomorrow. It shall be required of you to greet him at the door when he arrives." Mother was shuffling through some paper on her desk. The library was large, so large in fact that it had stairs curled around the edges of the room that led to a second story. In the middle, nestled between the two staircases, was a desk where Mother enjoyed working in peace. Our bookshelves were made with a deep oak and the walls were painted red and gold. A couple old pictures hung from the wall.

"Okay."

Mother's eyebrow rose up higher upon her forehead, and she said the pile of papers she had been handling aside. "How have your therapy sessions been treating you?" My heart sank. I absolutely hated talking to her about Him. Mr. Harrison had been my therapist ever since Demarco died, and he was a horrid man who never actually listened to what I had to say and kept trying to make me take new medications.

"I don't want to see him anymore. I think I'm doing fine." My fingernails suddenly became the most interesting thing in the world, but I could feel my mother's harsh gaze burning into my head.

"Are you quite sure? We don't want another incident." My anger snapped like a threatened cobra, and my head shot up. Mother opened her mouth, as if she was going to mutter an apology, but the words had already stuck home. I left the library before I did something I would regret.

I needed somewhere to think. I stormed out of the front doors, ignoring the looks I was getting from the maids. I was just glad that Mother and Father had gotten rid of the nanny when I was ten. She would have never allowed me to act in such a manner, and I would have been smacked for my actions.

I found my usual favorite spot near the edge of the woods. It was an enormous weeping willow. Its old elongated branches swayed gently in the wind, sometimes caressing my face with its soft leaves. I took a seat beneath its shelter, near the trunk, shielding me from the sun.

Memories were leaking from my subconscious like angry bees, stabbing at my emotions, which were threatening to pool over.

Eight years old. Demarco teaching me how to ride a horse. The old mare bucking a throwing me off, but Demarco caught me. I wouldn't get back on a horse for nearly a year. Demarco taught me to face my fear, and I had been riding horses ever since.

Ten years old. Demarco spinning me around and around on the old large tire hanging from one of the trees in the front yard. Our laughter like musical notes in the hot, summer air.

Eleven years old. Demarco becoming closed off, and would yell at me every time I'd come into his room to see if he would play.

Fourteen years old. Butler found Demarco in the bathroom, his wrists bleeding and a razor lying on the ground next to him. Butler saved his life, but Demarco had to go to a mental hospital after he got out of the regular hospital.

I pulled myself from the memories and shut them back inside the locked chest that resided deep in the back of my mind. Better to keep them locked away than to deal with them and grieve.

Mother and Father barely even blinked when Demarco took his life. They never even cried, but when they saw I was developing the same habits as Demarco, they called up a local therapist, and asked for home visits. They wanted to keep their children's personal issues a secret.

I wiped the lingering tears from my eyes and stood, brushing the dirt from my pants. It was barely dinnertime, and my day was already extremely exhausting. I could hear the head of the stables barking orders to her stable hands, and I wiped some perspiration off of my face. Today was rather hot, which was uncommon as we usually had mild summers.

As I walked back to the house, my gaze automatically traveled to my room, and I cringed. No. Nooo. I quickened my pace to a flat out run. My mind wasn't going to believe what I was seeing. I dodged Butler at the front of the house and ducked under some of the maid's outstretched hands, and, sweating and heaving, I pulled open the door to my room.

For a moment I saw a boy, not much older than I, standing by the window that I had just looked up at from outside. But before I had the chance to register what he looked like or who he was, I blinked and he was gone. For a moment I thought…but it couldn't be…

I shook my head and closed the door again, heading back down the hallway.

"Romi? Are you alright?" One of the younger boys of our staff, one of the cook's apprentices whose name I could not recall, placed a hand on my arm and stopped me. His kind spaniel eyes and devilish smile made him look both comforting and dangerous, but I didn't want to speak to anyone at the moment so I merely nodded and forced his hand away from me.

"But Romilia�"" his voice was cut off when I disappeared into the piano room.

The piano room wasn't just a piano room. The room was simple �" white walls and wood floor �" but it was complete with a large, old piano, a couple acoustic guitars, violins, violas, cellos, and many other instruments to make music with. My feet took me to the violins.

I picked one up carefully and tucked it under my chin. Music was the most beautiful that could be composed in this world. There were so many sounds, so many ways you could put things together and compose it. It was something I hadn't touched since Demarco died. I had always been on the violin, and he on the acoustic guitar.

One stroke across the strings and it all came back to me. I closed my eyes and let my fingers and the bow take over, and soon I could hear nothing but the music beneath my fingertips and the steady sound of my breathing.

As I made music, sounds, natural sounds, flowed around my head. The sound of water trickling over rocks on a creek; the great roar of a waterfall; the rustling of wind passing through the leaves of the trees; a clap of pure thunder during a raging thunderstorm. My hands moved faster and faster as the emotion built up behind the music, and I barely even noticed when I heard the cello start up in the background. I couldn't stop playing even if I wanted to, and the cello was a nice touch. It added the pitter patter of rain drops on the window sill and tumbleweed rolling across a dry desert.

I played until my arms went sore and my fingers went numb. As I started towards the ending to my composition, I opened my eyes, and a horrible sound filled the room as my bow slipped.

It was the same boy as before, the one in my room, and this time I managed to catch a smile fit for the Devil and a lock of midnight hair before he disappeared and I had to catch the cello before it hit the ground. My head felt dizzy and the room felt more threatening than ever as I put the instruments back in their place.

For the past couple weeks the feeling of being watched was overwhelming and I would wake up in the middle of the night, a drowning ball of sweat, and I swore that I was not alone in the room. I felt like if I had stared in the darkness long enough, a figure would unfold from it. But no such thing happened, and I hadn't seen the stranger that was haunting me. Not until today. I wasn't sure why I was having these hallucinations, but there was no way I could tell anyone about it. Mother would have me locked up for sure.

I needed to get out of this room.

My stomach was rumbling and I needed to be around others before I went crazy, so I went down to the kitchen. I spotted Ria putting some summer flowers in the vases that nestled the hallway's walls, and she nodded at me. "You talk to mother, ja?"

"Yep."

Ria smiled in approval and then went back to her work. I shuffled past her and down the stairs, but instead of turning right towards the library, I went left into the dining room. Our dining room was stereotypical. Long table that you had to shout across to hear anyone and seated about twenty people took up most of the room. Pictures of the family hung on the walls, but any of Demarco was absent. It was as if he had never existed.

"Ah! Romilia! You must try this!" The cook's thick Italian accent assaulted me as soon as I stepped into the kitchen, and a huge grin split across my face. The cook was my favorite person in the whole staff, except, perhaps, Butler, and I could never turn away his new food creations. To this day, I still didn't know the cooks real name, as he would always give me a new one every time I visited, so I just called him Ezio, after one of Demarco's old favorite video game characters. It sure got a laugh out of the cook, as his lack of exercise would prevent him from climbing across any buildings.

"Ezio, how many times much I tell you? I hate Romilia. It's Romi!" I chuckled and hoisted myself up onto one of the counters that weren't being used, and instead of answering Ezio shoved a spoonful of some sort of soup into my mouth. It was spicy and sweet at the same time, but deliciously so. I didn't know how Ezio managed it.

After I swallowed, I gave Ezio two thumbs up. "Exquisite, as usual!" I studied the kitchen occurrences. Several of Ezio's apprentices, including the one that stopped me in the hallway, were running around the kitchen in an organized chaos, most likely preparing food for the return of my father.

"Oh you flatter me Romi." It pleased me to hear him finally calling me by my nickname, and he stroked his goatee as he thought. "I believe you didn't just come down here to see my pretty face, eh?" He winked at me and then twirled around his kitchen, grabbing bits of food here and there.

"But of course Ezio! I can't go a day without seeing you!" I pretended to swoon with longing, and Ezio's barking laughter echoed throughout the kitchen.

"Let's not tell your parents. It'll be our little secret." I nodded my head, laughter gathering in my eyes. Ezio was way too old for me, but this is how our friendship had always worked out. Even the other cooks and apprentices knew we were joking, and had learned to ignore us.

"Here you go, love." He pressed an assortment of food �" chocolate, bread, and soup �" into my hand, lifted me off the counter, kissed the top of my head, and then pushed me lightly out of the kitchen with a "Lot's of work to do!" in my wake before all sound was cut off behind closed doors. I hurried up to my room before Mother could see me. If she saw that Ezio was giving me food other than the scheduled meal times, she would be furious and Ezio would lose his job.

I stored the chocolate in a secret space hidden in the floorboards and sat on the floor beside my bed to eat. I hoped that I wouldn't be disturbed. Ezio always added things to his food to make them more than average, and I enjoyed the meal very much. After I was finished eating, a sudden exhaustion took hold of my limbs, and I barely made it to the bed before I passed out.