PROLOGUE
The night sky was like blue ink, the color seeping into the quiet world beneath it. Palm trees lined the sides of the pavement as the white Acura sped down it, coming to a stop at a brightly lit four-way intersection. It seemed odd that a place with palm trees and Spanish style homes that had acre lots and swimming pools could seem so deeply depressing.
But depressing was exactly what it was.
The light turned, and the same white car surged forward, not so fast that it seemed in a hurry, but fast enough to bode unease, or a slight notion of impatience.
But in those days, in that place, even that was suspicious.
The orange glow from the streetlights faded, returning every so often as the car passed another, so that the light seemed to come in waves. It seemed appropriate for the driver; intensity was coming off of her in waves too.
She was quiet, not singing along to the blaring music that came from her car's old speakers, not talking on the cell phone that sat in her back pocket, not even breathing loudly. She seemed focused, determined, and slightly dangerous, as if she had a job to do and it was suicide to get in her way.
She pulled her foot up off of the accelerator, and eased on the brake as she neared her destination. The house was unremarkable, much like the others that lined the street called 'Bradley'. The mailbox on the curb was gaudily decorative, white paint peeling from the more extreme points of the curling metal around it. On the side of it was engraved the address; 4114. In view of the street was a wrought iron gate, also painted white in the past and also in need of touching up. The gate was unlocked and open, which might have seemed strange to passerby, but she didn't appear to be surprised. She pulled her car into the driveway, which was long and circular, curving around a dry fountain that was surrounded by the kind of smooth rocks you buy to make your garden look too perfect. They seemed out of place.
The house looked old. Its white paint was browning at the bottom, as if the dirt from the overgrown front garden had grown tired of obeying gravity and decided to try climbing up the wall. Half of the flowers were dead, and the ones that were living were wildly out of control, so that the front of the house was grubby-looking instead of pleasant. Even in the darkness, the dirt on the windows begged for a hose's stream, and the sectioned wasp's nests under the eaves competed with mud-made bird's nests for territory. At the far side of the large house was another white gate, this one with a garish 'M' in the center of it, and behind that gate the end of a swimming pool connected to a small Jacuzzi could barely be seen in the night while crabgrass land stretched behind it until it met a guest house beside a rusted swing set and a dog run. It was odd, because though the house was clearly in need of renovation and general taste, it didn't seem that it hadn't been lived in recently. In fact, the white house with its tiled roof and round-top chimney looked as if it was merely waiting for its owner, who might have left on a weekend vacation, to return. It was as if the state of it was so because said owner desired it to be so.
The almost unnoticed sound of the white Acura's engine came to an end as the key left the ignition. She had come to a stop, rounding the fountain so that her passenger door was closest to the house's front door. Her face was still impassive, and she sat only momentarily before opening her door with a squeak and exiting the car. She went to the trunk, and opened it, pulling a stuffed duffel from it and hefting the strap over her shoulder. She still made no sound, though the load must have been heavy, and she slammed the trunk shut, still expressionless as she made her way beneath the California stars to the front door of the house. Ignoring the spider webs above the door, ignoring her slight reflection in the glass set in the white wood, she grasped the gold colored doorknob and shoved the unlocked door open to the dark and eerily quite entryway of the dwelling.
Something changed. It was as if an electric charge had suddenly filled the air, and the night was no longer quiet and depressing, but interestingly tense, and even she seemed to straighten and crouch simultaneously, her suddenly careful stance as she stepped slowly and purposefully into the house, her movement suggesting her absolute certainty that she knew well what she was doing. She let the door close softly behind her, and though the light switch was within easy reach of her arm, she simply swept the space around her with alert and cautious eyes, while her hands searched inside her duffel for something. Finding what she had been looking for, she set the duffel bag on the floor, taking slow and quiet steps on the white tile, going further into the house, past the formal room that branched from the entryway and coming to what must have been the living room. A large tv and French doors were within her sight when she began to straighten to her full height, her dark hair hiding one side of her face as she clung to the end of the entryway wall, inching further down to peak into the living room.
It was then that she began to sing, softly and sweetly, but clearly so that it carried into the entire house for all of the furniture to hear.
"Happy birthday to you…" the familiar tune was sung slowly but perfectly, and she edged into the living room, scanning it once before turning to another white hallway with doors along it on both sides.
"Happy birthday to you…" the second phrase of the melody spread through the house, and with her arms down in front of her, grasping something that the shadows kept hidden, she searched all of the rooms that the hallway lead to very quickly.
"Happy birth-" some sound that only she heard caught her attention, and her head whipped around to the hallway's entrance. She began to backtrack, suddenly certain that whatever it was she was meaning to find was back the way she came.
"Birthday…" she finished the word she'd been singing, and slowed her voice down with her step as she came to cling against the wall once more before entering the living room again.
"Dear Gr-" she was cut off, having just peaked around the corner and come immediately face to face with a hideously decayed woman's visage, her mouth wide and dry, eyes gray and unseeing, her skin pale and drawn.
She was thrown as if by a huge invisible hand across the room, slamming into the fireplace mantel in the living room, inwardly cursing the fact that it had to be a brick fireplace. Groaning angrily, she pushed herself up surprisingly fast, and raised her hand which had not let go of the sawed off shotgun she'd been holding, a weapon that had been hidden before by the darkness, but was now clearly seen in the moonlight that shone through the glass of the French doors. She fired at the pale figure in the light-colored dress.
The resulting anguished cry seemed to echo around her, and it was a phrase screamed in Spanish. The deathly woman disappeared, and the other woman that was clearly a hunter whirled around, gun held steady, waiting. She blinked blood out of her left eye, annoyed at the small drip stemming from the cut on her head. She gritted her teeth, obviously frustrated, but her eyes were no less determined than before as she began to sing once more through her clenched teeth.
"Happy birthday to you…" a chair flew at her from across the room, and she jumped out of its way just in time, not bother to look as it shattered on the opposite wall.
"Happy birthday to you…" she ducked as a vase was sent flying in her direction, and the shrill scream of the spirit's Spanish words sounded around her again.
"Mi princessa! Donde esta mi princessa! No se! Ay Dios, no se!"
"Happy birthday-"
"Callate! Donde esta mi princessa! Solo mi princessa canta por mi! Solo ella!"
"-to-"
"AHORA, DEMONIO, CALLATE!" it was obvious that the huntress knew how to anger the spirit, knew that the song meant something, that the spirit would react to it. It appeared that she had done her research well, for as soon as the spirit appeared, cursing in Spanish and reaching to kill her, the hunter pulled from her pocket the simplest thing; a small stuffed bird. With a screech the spirit pulled away, terrified by the little stuffed robin, her dead eyes bulging and her rotting face twisting into a horrified mask of terror as she back away, screaming.
It gave the huntress all the time she needed.
With a nearly unreal speed, the she snatched at the ghostly woman's neck, grasping the gold chain that hung there and wrenching it away. The woman screamed again, cursing in her language, but unable to get at her attacker, somehow hindered by the fake bird. The huntress threw the bird at her and had her gun up while the woman was screaming, firing twice before running across the room and through the entryway to her duffel by the door. She grabbed a small package with a string attached and bolted back to the living room, tossing it into the open fireplace that she had earlier been thrown against.
She was slammed into by the woman, and her body crashed into the tv, shattering the screen. She yelped, but wasted no time before attempting to pull herself up, groaning again at her new cuts and bruises. The spirit charged at her a second time, and she dodged, launching herself toward the brick fireplace, reaching to pull the string from the small package and tossing the chain she had pulled from the deathly woman's neck. She launched herself again, away this time, and the next second stretched in a suddenly very still, very expectant silence.
The pale woman's decayed mouth opened wide to scream, and if anyone had been there to see, they would have noticed that the locket that hung from the gold chain, now laying in the fireplace, had opened when it fell, and inside was a picture of two smiling faces; a young girl with dark curls and an older woman with shorter, straighter, reddish-brown hair that fell around her wrinkling face as she hugged the dark-haired girl with obvious love.
The extended second ended, and the ghostly woman never had time to sound her scream. The small package exploded, spitting flame out of the fireplace four feet in all directions with a burst of light and heat. The huntress shielded herself, huddling while the sound died away and the flames receded somewhat. She looked up afterwards to see the fireplace burning greatly, the glint of the gold chain and locket leaving at it melted and the picture within burned.
She sat there a moment, panting, before pushing herself painfully to her feet.
She stood ridiculously still for about a minute before she started to tremble.
Her alert stance changed, her legs shaking and her shoulders sagging, her façade of determined impassiveness gone as emotion began to cloud her face. Something seemed to crash over her as she half-limped through the thrashed living room, dirtying the white tile of the entryway as she came to the front door once more. It seemed that once she had completed her purpose here, her job, an immense amount of feeling and meaning had swept over her with that explosion. She pulled the door open with her left hand, her right wrapped around her bruised body, and she turned back to look once more at the all white house in a way that was longing, reminiscent, almost loving. She gazed at the large portrait that hung in the formal room that branched from the entryway, seeing the same girl and woman from the locket. Underneath the portrait were several other frames, all with the same two people, all with the same love and smiles and happiness.
The frame on the end showed the young girl and the older woman singing together while cutting a birthday cake.
Tears formed in her eyes, and she struggled to force down a sob as she whispered in a broken and distinctly sorrowful voice.
"Happy birthday, Grandma."
She left, and the door closed behind her. The flames in the fireplace burned themselves slowly out, crackling as the pink light of dawn made its way slowly into the sky and through the windows into the white house.
The sun's early glow shone onto that portrait in the formal room. It glinted off of a plaque on the bottom of the portrait's frame. The gold was engraved in a beautiful font, and it read two simple lines.
Elena and Anna
Abuela y su Princessa
Twenty minutes away, in a tan house on Norwich Dr., Anna Walker was sobbing in the arms of a man in a leather jacket.