House of Anubis: House of Homecoming.
Chapter One: House of Homecoming.
It had been ten years since she last stepped foot in these grounds. Ten years since meeting Amber, Patricia and Mara. Jerome, Mick and Alfie. Ten years since the creepy caretaker, Victor, and his weird immortality cult kidnapped Joy, a fellow student. Ten years since her magical amulet of Horus, which opened up strange passageways underneath Anubis House, her halls of residence.
Ten years since Sibuna. Ten years since Fabian.
She cleared her throat, fighting back watery eyes. The school had closed a few years previously, the official story being a fatal mixture of Government budget cuts and the headteacher, Mr Sweet, retiring. Little did they know, though...
So there it stood, boarded up windows, scrawled graffiti and overgrown lawns. She was standing, she realised, in the very same spot all those years ago, where she had first laid her eyes on that once majestic building.
She pulled her hands out of her jacket, straightening her arms.
That moment, all those years ago. She remembered paying that lovely taxi driver, and turning to see her new home.
Her fingers wiggled in the air. That... that tingle, in the air. That staticky, goosebumps, hairs-standing-on-end feeling. Was it there when she first visited? She had an inkling it had been, and anyone else would have said, at the time, it was just nerves. But now? It was nothing.
She reaised, just as she had once before, realised the way she stood resembled a waddling penguin. She would've laughed at the thought, if she wasn't currently so stressed and depressed.
She shook her head slightly, and tried to say something, just as she tried to before. A "hello", maybe? But once again, she simply swallowed again, and stepped inside.
She managed all of two steps. Again, just like the first time she was here. In her head, she cursed herself.
Eventually, she managed to get to the door. She half expected it to open itself, but it didn't.
For some reason, she tried the doorbell. But the mechanism had rusted, and the button was hard to press. Even when she managed it, though, there was nothing. Not like she expected something, anyway.
The door was a little resistive. Eventually she forced it open, finding a rotted beam laid across the floor. Neglect, or vandalism? It didn't matter.
She stepped into the porch, then into the main hallway of Anubis House.
With all the windows boarded up, and the electricity being disconnected, it was very dark inside, darker than she'd ever seen it. She pulled out her phone from an inside pocket, and turned on the torch.
There was dust everywhere. Dust, and broken glass, and smashed up bits of wood and brick.
She kicked at a large chunk of timber, which laid in her way. It blew a load of dust into the air, sending her into a fit. She gathered a stretch of sleeve, balling it up and coughing into it.
Her torchlight reflected against something. It wasn't glass, though, it was...
"IT'S TEN... OH... CLOCK! YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES... THEN I WANT TO HEAR A PIN..."
Victor's pin. He must have left it here. She remembered now, she had been told he had resigned his position a year or so after she had left. Something to do with her erstwhile classmates' graduation, some possessed girl named Sophia, and a big shiny rock. She hoped that he had done good at the end, paying reparations for his sins, the manipulations and the scheming.
She laughed, almost out loud, at the thought that maybe, just maybe, he might have even become an honorary member of Sibuna. She could imagine his irriation at the eye covering salute.
BANG!
She yelped, and shone the light into the living room. There was something in there...
Someone...
"HEY!"
She shone the torch in the thing's direction. If it was a person, she figured she'd be aiming close enough to their eyes to spook them.
"Ummm... ow?" It was a person! "Could you make, like, move the torch? I don't wanna be blind for the rest of my life."
"WHO ARE YOU?" She barked at the figure.
"Move the torch!" The figure begged.
After what seemed like an eternity, the two found themselves on the front steps of Anubis House. The person who sat a few feet away from her, had turned out to be a young man, with some strange regional British accent.
"So my uncle worked here, taught a couple of different subjects. You'd think with a big old boarding school, they wouldn't need to have teachers doubling up? Maybe it's a budget thing, but it's really inefficient and weird."
"Weird is certainly a word I'd use." He was kinda cute, she thought. Nice smile. Adorably messy chestnut hair. but there was something off about him.
"So what were you doing here?" he asked. She wondered how honest she should be. She paused for a few moments.
"I was an old student here. Had to move away before I could graduate, though. Missed this old place though, so much." None of that was a lie. And it wasn't exactly the school itself she 'missed', but he didn't need to know that.
"That's unfortunate, that you never got to graduate, but it's great otherwise, you being a student." he turned to her. "I'm a journalist, planning to do a historical retrospective on the whole place, its history as both a school and a stately home."
She nodded. Boy, the stories she could tell would probably drive this guy insane.
"If you're willing to share anything, I'd love to hear it." He shoved a business card in her direction. She took it.
"You'd be paid handsomely, of course. Even more so if you could get into contact with any of your old school chums."
She thought about it for a second. Would it be selling out? Or would it be finally be exposing the truth? Desecrating Sarah's legacy, or honouring it? She would have to think about it.
"What was your name?" she asked. She hadn't looked a the business card, yet.
"Jack Winkler." he smiled, offering a hand.
"I'm Nina, Nina Martin." She took it, and shook it.