Chapter 1 - Uninviting Nibelheim
The very first memory I have of the mansion is stepping up it's dirty stone steps and upon the first step into the house I heard a sharp crack as my foot hit the threshold. Rotting grey wood splintered away from under my black patent leather boot. I turned to glare at my father. I would have said something spiteful but I'd stopped speaking to him since he warned me that we were moving. That was a week and a half ago. He'd made me leave our beautiful apartment in New Midgar, from the top floor that overlooked the shining mirrored buildings of the big city, and planted me out on another less developed continent in the tiny mountain town of Nibelheim. My anger was quickly moved to the back burner as I was pushed through the door by my father's strong hand. He glanced about the dark and empty foyer under his shock of red hair. The dank smell of mildew was overpowering and I covered my nose and mouth while looking around. Dark, gaunt shadows clung to the painted wooden walls, and sunlight filtered through the grimy windows.
"Can we get some light?" My mother's timid voice came from the doorway where she clung to my father's arm and stepped daintily over the splintered threshold. My father literally hit the light switch with a smack from the flat of his hand. The eerie chandelier style lights hung from the beams of the great 20-foot ceiling. Pale light flickered into the room and slid the shadows to the floor under and behind the old grandfather clock and circular array of chairs and couches- all donned with about an inch of dust. The newest thing in the room seemed to be the lamps themselves. I guessed that candles were probably used originally. The dust reminded me of how much I hated the place and I turned to my father.
"Why did we even come here!?" I shouted.
He opened his mouth, his eyes not changing from the ever sarcastic expression. I started running across the foyer. "Well I don't even want to hear it!"
Now that I look back on it, there was no sense in me asking if I wasn't going to listen to what he had to say. I jumped up on the first stair on the right side of the double staircase. The threadbare crimson carpet tore under my feet. "Myranda."
I turned to the source of my father's icy voice. His strained blue eyes looked deathly serious, as usual. "Be careful, this place is old. Don't go running around."
I sighed, smirked, and stomped deliberately up the stairs. The top of the stairs led to a hall flooded with greenish light from the tall grimy windows that lined it. Rod iron adorned the rounded tops of the windows and on the opposite side of the hall, matching raining was present. I walked to peer over the rail at my parents, who were arguing now. I went up another small flight of stairs and explored the third story rooms. After little exploration I found the room I liked best. It smelled the least stuffy of all of them and it was round with windows all the way around the room and a little bay window But there was no bed, so it would have to become my study instead. I would take the bedroom beside it. Dusty pillows were stuffed in the bay window that looked out over a huge backyard full of dark tree skeletons. I examined the backyard for a while, and after I'd grown bored with the view I walked back downstairs to find my parents.
"I'm not sleeping in that old bed, you know." I stated bluntly to the empty foyer. I hadn't even seen the bedroom yet, but I figured that it would be old and gross.
"It's a new matress and sheets." My father called from the stairs. I turned around as he was leading my mother out of a second floor room. He looked at me impatiently when they hit the bottom step. "It's a little fixed up, you know. To living standards anyway. No more bugs or rats." I wrinkled my nose as he walked away and my mother approached me. A slightly despaired look in her Caribbean blue eyes was masked behind the calmness of her smooth southern voice.
"Myranda, hun, we're only going to live here for about a year at most. Can't you see we can't help it? It's for your father's job, and you know that Shinra is focused on the good of the world."
I exhaled and looked skeptical.
"Well I'm paid to say things like that! Just don't ask questions. Not now."
"Can we at least go shopping today? My room looks like something out of a bad black and white movie."
"You've chosen a room?"
She didn't argue because she didn't want me to throw another temper tantrum, and before I knew it we were driving down Nibelheim's cobblestone roads. The jerking of the car was annoying as it attempted to slam my head into the window, and I wondered if it would be easier to just walk.
"This town isn't very big, is it?" I commented as I watched the townhouses and shops meander by.
"It's nearly tripled in size since 18 years ago."
"When did you come here?"
"About three years before I met your father."
I raised an eyebrow as I did math in my head and things weren't adding up. "So you're saying you met my father fifteen years ago and I'm seventeen now?"
"I work in Shinra's demographic department, you know."
"Sorry, I guess I just figured that was only for New Midgar.."
"You need to start learning that the world doesn't revolve around New Midgar. And it certainly doesn't revolve around you!"
I rolled my eyes. How many times had I heard it? Seriously..
People looked at us strangely in the shops we went to. I guess they could tell we were from out of town. One woman asked a lot of annoying questions as I was looking for some pillows for the bay window. She wanted to know who we were, where we were from, if we were the ones living in Shinra Mansion (It's haunted, she says),and my favorite question of all: how were we related?
I hadn't inherited a single one of my mother's beautiful facial features. Her hair was a shimmering honey color and mine was brown. Her eyes were Caribbean blue while mine were rusty colored. I'd inherited my father's face shape and lean stature. He said I was a spitting image of my grandmother on my mother's side... before she was killed in a horrible train wreck in North Corel. As twilight began to dance on the rooftops of the town, things started closing. Unlike New Midgar where everything was open 24 hours. We had to return to the mansion with our purchases. I bought a lamp, small bookcase, and a ton of pillows for the bay window. I spent the early evening throwing away those rotting pillows and stuffing the window seat with the fresh new ones. I tried cleaning the dirty glass windows of my round room, but the greenish grime stayed put. It must have been on the outside. As I left the window and laid down that first night to go to sleep, I hadn't paid much attention to my bedroom. When I closed my eyes I had the creepiest feeling that someone was watching me. I guess the old lady at the shop got me paranoid about the old mansion being haunted. I snickered and commented to myself, "Yeah.. Haunted by the Mold Monster maybe."
But I got out of bed anyway and flicked the light on. Nights in Nibelheim were cold, even in August, because the draft from the cracks of the window cut through my white satin night gown.
Shivering, I made my way back to the bed when I noticed something peculiar about the carpet. By the window a perfect square was impressed into the threadbare patterned carpet. It was much cleaner than the other areas of the room. Something heavy must have sat there for a long time. But what would be so big? A refrigerator? A bookshelf? Now that I was looking so closely at the carpet I looked around for anything else suspicious. The carpet was a dark red with gold patterns, but I noticed some dark stains in front of the square in an awkward, random pattern. I hastily stood and ran back to my bed, pulling the covers up around my neck. I didn't want to know or ask what those stains were.
The light of the overhead lamp bounced dully off the dirty yellowed window. Maybe I didn't just not want to be here, maybe no one else wanted me here either. Maybe the mansion hated me as much as I hated it. At the time I wasn't sure why but everything about this town seemed suddenly uninviting.
The very first memory I have of the mansion is stepping up it's dirty stone steps and upon the first step into the house I heard a sharp crack as my foot hit the threshold. Rotting grey wood splintered away from under my black patent leather boot. I turned to glare at my father. I would have said something spiteful but I'd stopped speaking to him since he warned me that we were moving. That was a week and a half ago. He'd made me leave our beautiful apartment in New Midgar, from the top floor that overlooked the shining mirrored buildings of the big city, and planted me out on another less developed continent in the tiny mountain town of Nibelheim. My anger was quickly moved to the back burner as I was pushed through the door by my father's strong hand. He glanced about the dark and empty foyer under his shock of red hair. The dank smell of mildew was overpowering and I covered my nose and mouth while looking around. Dark, gaunt shadows clung to the painted wooden walls, and sunlight filtered through the grimy windows.
"Can we get some light?" My mother's timid voice came from the doorway where she clung to my father's arm and stepped daintily over the splintered threshold. My father literally hit the light switch with a smack from the flat of his hand. The eerie chandelier style lights hung from the beams of the great 20-foot ceiling. Pale light flickered into the room and slid the shadows to the floor under and behind the old grandfather clock and circular array of chairs and couches- all donned with about an inch of dust. The newest thing in the room seemed to be the lamps themselves. I guessed that candles were probably used originally. The dust reminded me of how much I hated the place and I turned to my father.
"Why did we even come here!?" I shouted.
He opened his mouth, his eyes not changing from the ever sarcastic expression. I started running across the foyer. "Well I don't even want to hear it!"
Now that I look back on it, there was no sense in me asking if I wasn't going to listen to what he had to say. I jumped up on the first stair on the right side of the double staircase. The threadbare crimson carpet tore under my feet. "Myranda."
I turned to the source of my father's icy voice. His strained blue eyes looked deathly serious, as usual. "Be careful, this place is old. Don't go running around."
I sighed, smirked, and stomped deliberately up the stairs. The top of the stairs led to a hall flooded with greenish light from the tall grimy windows that lined it. Rod iron adorned the rounded tops of the windows and on the opposite side of the hall, matching raining was present. I walked to peer over the rail at my parents, who were arguing now. I went up another small flight of stairs and explored the third story rooms. After little exploration I found the room I liked best. It smelled the least stuffy of all of them and it was round with windows all the way around the room and a little bay window But there was no bed, so it would have to become my study instead. I would take the bedroom beside it. Dusty pillows were stuffed in the bay window that looked out over a huge backyard full of dark tree skeletons. I examined the backyard for a while, and after I'd grown bored with the view I walked back downstairs to find my parents.
"I'm not sleeping in that old bed, you know." I stated bluntly to the empty foyer. I hadn't even seen the bedroom yet, but I figured that it would be old and gross.
"It's a new matress and sheets." My father called from the stairs. I turned around as he was leading my mother out of a second floor room. He looked at me impatiently when they hit the bottom step. "It's a little fixed up, you know. To living standards anyway. No more bugs or rats." I wrinkled my nose as he walked away and my mother approached me. A slightly despaired look in her Caribbean blue eyes was masked behind the calmness of her smooth southern voice.
"Myranda, hun, we're only going to live here for about a year at most. Can't you see we can't help it? It's for your father's job, and you know that Shinra is focused on the good of the world."
I exhaled and looked skeptical.
"Well I'm paid to say things like that! Just don't ask questions. Not now."
"Can we at least go shopping today? My room looks like something out of a bad black and white movie."
"You've chosen a room?"
She didn't argue because she didn't want me to throw another temper tantrum, and before I knew it we were driving down Nibelheim's cobblestone roads. The jerking of the car was annoying as it attempted to slam my head into the window, and I wondered if it would be easier to just walk.
"This town isn't very big, is it?" I commented as I watched the townhouses and shops meander by.
"It's nearly tripled in size since 18 years ago."
"When did you come here?"
"About three years before I met your father."
I raised an eyebrow as I did math in my head and things weren't adding up. "So you're saying you met my father fifteen years ago and I'm seventeen now?"
"I work in Shinra's demographic department, you know."
"Sorry, I guess I just figured that was only for New Midgar.."
"You need to start learning that the world doesn't revolve around New Midgar. And it certainly doesn't revolve around you!"
I rolled my eyes. How many times had I heard it? Seriously..
People looked at us strangely in the shops we went to. I guess they could tell we were from out of town. One woman asked a lot of annoying questions as I was looking for some pillows for the bay window. She wanted to know who we were, where we were from, if we were the ones living in Shinra Mansion (It's haunted, she says),and my favorite question of all: how were we related?
I hadn't inherited a single one of my mother's beautiful facial features. Her hair was a shimmering honey color and mine was brown. Her eyes were Caribbean blue while mine were rusty colored. I'd inherited my father's face shape and lean stature. He said I was a spitting image of my grandmother on my mother's side... before she was killed in a horrible train wreck in North Corel. As twilight began to dance on the rooftops of the town, things started closing. Unlike New Midgar where everything was open 24 hours. We had to return to the mansion with our purchases. I bought a lamp, small bookcase, and a ton of pillows for the bay window. I spent the early evening throwing away those rotting pillows and stuffing the window seat with the fresh new ones. I tried cleaning the dirty glass windows of my round room, but the greenish grime stayed put. It must have been on the outside. As I left the window and laid down that first night to go to sleep, I hadn't paid much attention to my bedroom. When I closed my eyes I had the creepiest feeling that someone was watching me. I guess the old lady at the shop got me paranoid about the old mansion being haunted. I snickered and commented to myself, "Yeah.. Haunted by the Mold Monster maybe."
But I got out of bed anyway and flicked the light on. Nights in Nibelheim were cold, even in August, because the draft from the cracks of the window cut through my white satin night gown.
Shivering, I made my way back to the bed when I noticed something peculiar about the carpet. By the window a perfect square was impressed into the threadbare patterned carpet. It was much cleaner than the other areas of the room. Something heavy must have sat there for a long time. But what would be so big? A refrigerator? A bookshelf? Now that I was looking so closely at the carpet I looked around for anything else suspicious. The carpet was a dark red with gold patterns, but I noticed some dark stains in front of the square in an awkward, random pattern. I hastily stood and ran back to my bed, pulling the covers up around my neck. I didn't want to know or ask what those stains were.
The light of the overhead lamp bounced dully off the dirty yellowed window. Maybe I didn't just not want to be here, maybe no one else wanted me here either. Maybe the mansion hated me as much as I hated it. At the time I wasn't sure why but everything about this town seemed suddenly uninviting.