A taste of poison

Chapter 1

Living in a house with 10 rooms and stables was not that bad I guess. I mean my friends were always around so we always had a laugh and if I ever needed piece and quiet then one of the 10 rooms fitted the bill. I was never the most popular of people but I had plenty of friends and a different boyfriend every month. My family were really posh and expected me to be a proper lady so when I did something wrong there was always a major argument but I know that they were only doing it because they loved me and wanted me to be a good wife when I grew up. My mum was just a bit taller than me with short black hair however she didn't like it but she couldn't help it she had some sort of hair growth problem which meant her hair never grew and it wasn't right for women to have short hair back then so she owned a really long blonde wig. My dad was a lot taller than me quite stocky and was very well respected in our community. My brother was taller than me as well even though he was only 14; he was really strong and was looking forward to taking over my dad's business and of course there was my twin sister, we looked the same but we were nothing alike. I was always out and about whereas she stayed indoors. Out of all of our family I was closest to her; I always knew what she was thinking at the same applied with her.

Anyway back to the story, my friends decided to come round again for the 7th time that week to ride the horses. We always went through the forest and then up the hills to the top where you can see the whole of Mystery Falls and when the sun sets on it its like nothing you've ever seen, but today Maria said she wanted to go a different way, she wanted to go through the fields over the hills and across the river through, what we called, the Dead forest. Our parents always told us never to go that way because people always go in there and never come out but we decided that because there were 3 of us and we were taking my dogs Jack and Jill that we would be ok so we saddled up and set out. I always had a different horse but today I went with Terry who I share a strong bond with and I had a feeling that something was going to happen so because Terry is strong and fast I chose him in case I had to make a quick getaway. I always had an extremely good intuition but I decided to keep quiet because I didn't want to scare the others. Elizabeth loved Jerry so she took him, Catherine took Barry and Victoria took Jonathan like they always did. My dad asked me to take the cart to his friend Mr. Giblet so I hooked up Terry to the cart and we set off. After we got out of site of the house we turned left instead of carrying straight on like we usually did out into the field. Jack and Jill went tearing through the field chasing a rabbit and pretty soon they were out of sight but we could still hear them barking then they both stopped barking at the exact same time which I thought was quite peculiar so I called them back as we kept walking. The grass started to get really long and soon I couldn't see the ground, the grass was touching my foot however I couldn't help but laugh because Barry and Jonathan were the smallest of the horses and the grass was the same height as them. Suddenly the grass a way in front of us started to shake violently and I could hear what sounded like sniffing so I assumed it was the dogs even though they weren't barking. How was I supposed to know it wasn't my dogs and whatever it was it was leading us to our death? We followed 'the dogs' until we came up to a rusty metal gate with a rusty padlock on it.

"Well ladies I don't think we are going to be able to get through here it looks it has not been used in a long time" Victoria exclaimed

"I think you are right Victoria but how are we going to get across as this is the only gate in the field?" pointed out Elizabeth

"We do what our fathers would do" I stated and when they looked confused I continued "we jump it"

"We cannot do that you know that the only one capable of jumping something that high is you and what about the cart?" Victoria said pointing to the cart attached to Terry

"Then you two dismount, climb the gate and I will jump each horse one at a time and the cart is not that heavy we should be able to lift it over by ourselves" I ordered as I looked around for the dogs but they were nowhere to be seen.

They did as they were told and tied each horse up to a pole by the gate and climbed over. I was still on Terry when I noticed a silhouette of a man at the top of the hill but as soon as I blinked it was gone so I thought id imagined it. Once the girls were clear I took Terry to the back of the field and stared galloping toward the fence but something spooked him and he came to sudden stop. I looked in the direction which Terry was looking in and the black shape from the top of the hill was standing in the corner of the field staring straight at us. I could see it better from here and it was defiantly a man but I couldn't see any of his face because it was covered by the shadow of the trees I looked toward Terry who was starting to back up and I looked back at the man but he had gone. I was starting to get a bit worried but nevertheless I took Terry back to the back of the field and tried again and this time we cleared it with no problems. I told Victoria to hold on to him and climbed back over to get the Jonathan and repeated it until every horse was over the fence I kept looking out for the man but I never saw him. I climbed over the fence one more time and pulled the cart to the gate.

"So how do you propose that we so this because it looks like it will be difficult" Elizabeth said looking disgusted

"It will be easy there is nothing in it so it is not at all heavy. Now Elizabeth if you stand here and Victoria stand on that part of the gate and I will pass it to you then you can pass it down to Elizabeth" I always took control of situations like this and it's a good job I did because without me I don't think Victoria or Elizabeth would have known what to do. Once we had got the cart over and got back on our horses we set off toward the river 'the dogs' were still nowhere in sight but I wasn't worried they knew how to look after themselves but I was concerned about the mysterious man that kept popping up and then disappearing I wonder who he is and what he wants with us? Once we'd crossed the river we were staring into the Dead forest it was magnificent and a little scary you could see the trees just in front of us then it was pitch black. My intuition was telling me that something bad was going to happen and that we should run screaming in the other direction but part of me was telling me that we should keep going and that whatever was going to happen was going to change our lives forever.