Corey jumped on her bed, giggling incessantly. As she laughed, her long scarlet pigtails flailed about wildly. As she laughed harder, her dolls and stuffed animals began to rise off the ground. When they were as high as her bed, they began to circle her as if they were dancing. She waved her arms and they danced higher and lower, in a line and in circles, all about the room. Suddenly, the bed disappeared and Corey and her toys fell onto the hard floor. She folded her arms over her jumper and cried.

"Here we are!" Dwayne exclaimed as he turned off the highway, passing a sign that read:

WELCOME TO NEW CHAMBERLAIN

Founded May 28, 1980

In Memoriam

Corey yawned, jolted away by Dwayne's yell. A confused look fell over her face when she read the sign. "I thought we were moving to Chamberlain, but that sign says New Chamberlain," she stated quizzically.

Dwayne looked in the rearview mirror to see his stepdaughter. "Well, about twenty-five years ago there was a big fire. A lot of buildings burnt down." He turned his attention back to the road.

"Oh." Corey leaned against the window, staring out at the houses and stores, wondering what had stood there twenty-five years earlier.

"Honey, do you see the sign for Back Chamberlain Road?" Dwayne asked, his eyes scanning the various streets ahead.

"There it is!" Loren cried out, pointing to a turn ahead on the left.

"I married a smart one." Dwayne laughed as he turned sharply, knocking Jasper onto the floor. Looking at the numbers on the sidewalk, he turned into the driveway of a two-story house. "Home sweet home!"

Cradling her tiny dog, Corey climbed out of the forest-green station wagon. She'd only seen the house once before, and that was on the realty website where Dwayne had found it. "It was built in 1959," Dwayne had told her. Corey assumed that the fire twenty-five years before hadn't reached her new home.

She groaned. It looked a lot better on the website. The perfect white paint was peeling. The blue shudders were barely hanging on their hinges. A few shingles were missing from the roof. The 9 on the door was upside-down, making it look like a 16. The hedges in front of the house were dead or dying. Large trees cast the front lawn in shade and brown leaves covered much of the green grass.

Suspicious, Loren got the web page printout out of the glove compartment and gave it to her new husband.

Dwayne looked over the printout. "Oh, shit!" Corey gasped; it was the first time she'd heard Dwayne swear. He pointed to a caption below the picture of the house: ***Photo taken August 1995***. "Damn it!" The normally cheerful man banged his fist on the hood of the car.

Loren placed her hands half-comforting and half-restraining on Dwayne's shoulders. "Honey, think of it this way. It's something we can work on together, to bring us closer as a family."

Dwayne turned around, wrapping his left arm around Loren. "I love you," he said while planting a kiss on her forehead. "Come here, Sport," he motioned to Corey. She dragged herself up to him and put his other arm around her. "The first Carney family project," he proclaimed with pride while gazing up at the fixer-upper. The teenager stifled a groan. She pulled away from the adoring couple to get a closer look at the house. The bedroom windows were shrouded in darkness, as though haunted by something miserable. An ominous chill rose from the base of her spine, and she shivered, from the cold as well as fright. Something's not right here. She turned to tell her mother, but the older woman was kissing her husband as though she was her daughter's age. Corey groaned again, this time in disgust.

She swung open the car door and it hit her mother, breaking the passionate embrace. Dwayne glared at her, and Corey put on her best obedient-daughter smile to appease, stifling the laughter inside herself. She grabbed a box of her stuff and started up the walk. "Can I pick my own room?" She asked as she climbed onto the porch.

"Uh, yeah, Sport, but the one on the end of the hallway is your mom's and mine but take your pick of any of the others," he said, his usual smile back on his face.

As she opened the front door, she gazed around the dank, dark house. What surprised her was that all the old furniture was still in the living room as well as the kitchen. Whoever lived here wanted to get the hell out. Can't say I blame them, this place is fucking depressing.

She started up the stairs. Setting her box at the top, she started examining the bedrooms. The room Dwayne had picked for he and Loren was the biggest, which didn't shock Corey at all.

But she found the perfect room three doors down. It was sky blue and one of the few rooms to be completely empty. She fetched her box and placed it in the doorway of her new bedroom. There were two windows facing the front yard and Corey could see her mother piling boxes on the lawn while Dwayne went and got a can of white paint. She went and sat down in one of the corners, her knees up against her chin. Her left arm fell from her lap and hit the wooden paneling that covered the bottom of the bedroom walls. She heard a strange thump. The board was loose.

She was about to pull it back when she heard her mother. "Corey, we got lots of boxes to unload!"

She stuck her head out the window and saw Dwayne painting the white mailbox blue. "Coming, Mom!" As Corey headed for the stairs, her stepfather painted over the S in SNELL.

TBC

Read and Review! ~ SS