Chapter one

The house

A lot of this isn't going to make sense to you, I'm sorry about that. I'm just going to start at the beginning. With the house.

Someone had had put up a change link fence, but it look like I wasn't the first person to hop it. My brother Milton dissapered when I was 4, it was like the house just sowload him up. I lived here until I was 11 but I wasn't allowed inside half the rooms. Inside the mailbox were bills from 7 years ago, marked "urgent, open immediately". I hadn't been back since my brother Lewis's funeral. In her will my mother left me a key, but didn't tell me what it unlocked, maybe she throught Id know or she throught the mystery would be enough to bring me back. No one had driven this way in a long time, but I saw a few hoof prints. The truth is even I after I interned the house I never throught Id come back to it, but now I had questions about my family that only the house knew the answers to. The woods around the house have always been uncomfortably silent, as if they were about to say something but never do. The house was exactly how I rememberended it, the way I've been dreaming about it. As a child I the house made me uncomfortable in a way I couldnt put into words. Now, as a 17-year-old I knew what exactly what those words were, I was afraid of the house.

I hoped the key would unlock the front door. It didn't. Looking in I felt like the house it's self had been waiting for me. The house felt like it had always been here even the swing set was older than my mother. Crawling throw the doggie door used to be a lot easier when I was 11. The power had been turned off the night we left. For the first time in years. I felt like I was home, but instead of a family there was just memories of one. Like how after Lewis started working at the canary we all got sick of eating solam, ecpitep our cat, Molly. Or how only 1 resunte would deliver to our house, so we had Chinese a lot.

The table was still a week from the night we left, it was like a bomb went off killing everyone but sparing the furniture. My mum was the only one of us who could inmage Edie living a nursing home. Nothing in the house looked abnorbol, there was just too much of it. Like a smile with too may teeth. Even the fire place had a story, Edie told me the bricks Came from the original house, after it sank. Mum always told me to stay out of the basement so I wasn't too surprised when the key didn't fit. Steven built a music box for Barbara, along with the rest of the house. A lot of things got left behind in the whrilwind of the last night.

Chapter two

Each room has its own story

My mum wasn't much of an optimist, but she never stopped believing that my brother Milton was still alive. Edie told me once that every finch who ever lived was buried somewhere in the library. After Milton dissapered mum sealed up all the bedrooms. Then Edie retaliated drilled peepholes.

My grandma Sam spend 7 years sharing a room with his dead brother, Calvin.

As a kid I just assumed every house had peepholes sealed rooms you went allowed inside of.

The last time I was in Edith SRs room I was 10 she was painting my portrait.

Whenever people ask me about my family the first thing they ways want to know about is Barbra. Edie's father, Odin, built the original house.

Barbra Was a child star for 2 years until America grew out of it.

Mum must of locked the third floor stairs before we left.

Molly always seamed like a girl I could imagine being friends with if she hadn't deid in 1947.

I spent a lot of time on great uncle Walters room.

I think my mum sometimes regret not sealing it up.

Lewis's told me that there were sercet passages. But I never believed him.

Turns out my mum was really good at keeping secrets.

Chapter three

Molly's

Now it was time to find out what my mum had been afraid of. From the paintings on the wall it was clear sky brother Milton had been here before me. Reading this maybe it's sound like I have a plan, but to be honest I feel as lost as you probably do right now. I had no idea what was behind that door, just like I had no idea where all this was going to lead. I grew up looking at Molly's room through the peephole, being inside for the first time felt like I had stepped behind a painting. Molly's garble had a tiny bedroom with a tinyer cage.

"December 13th, 1947

Dear dairy,

I'll be go e soon but I wanted to tell somebody about what's going to happen.it started when my mum sent me to bed without dinner, I woke up I was starving so I looked around for something to eat. My Halloween candy was all gone. The Grable food was dry but I didn't mind it.

"mum can I come out now?"

"sweetheart, it's late go to sleep!"

I thought about eating chrisptor, but I held back. I keep't eating eating. I ate a lot of things that night. Then I heard chirping outside my window, it was a bean sowwal going back to its nest.