On the road again. It seemed to Lydia that ever since her father had married that psychotic spaz of a women who called herself an artist they couldn't stay put anywhere for longer than a year. Its not that she minded leaving Miss Shannon's School for Girls. Sure, there had been a couple of people there whom she may have considered friends, but not really. More like...acquaintances. It wasn't that she hated to leave that humungous house up on the hill, either. What really bothered her was leaving Adam and Barbara. They were the only true friends she'd ever had in her seventeen years of life, and now she was leaving them. And it's not like she would be able to call, write, or visit them; they were dead. They were ghosts trapped in their house, unable to leave for another century or so, and this concept really bothered Lydia. It bothered her so much she wished that she could just die, but she didn't. Adam and Barbara had convinced her that no matter how much she wanted to be with them, to exist on the same plane as them, suicide was not the answer. She stayed alive for them, so they wouldn't be angry with her, so she wouldn't disappoint them. Their opinion mattered more to her than anyone else's. They mattered more, but now she could never see them again.
"You're really gonna love this house, honey. Its right up your alley!" her father said, shifting his eyes from the road to his daughter's reflection in the rear-view mirror.
I highly doubt that, thought the raven-haired teenager pouting under her huge black thrift-store hat. Her dad was a good guy, but he was rather out of touch with his morbid, death-obsessed daughter, and though he often thought he knew what she fancied, he really had no idea. How could he?
"I know I love it," Delia piped up from the passenger seat where she sat filing her glossy red talons. "Very artistic. Very classical"
"I thought you were all about the modern crap, Delia," Lydia scoffed, her gaze never shifting from the window, out of which she could see nothing but a blur of dark shapes that presented themselves as pine trees when the pace of the vehicle slowed.
"Lydia, I know you're upset about leaving. I know you're upset with me for accepting this job, but there's no reason for you to take it out on your mother"
"Step-mother," Lydia near growled through clenched teeth.
Thus was the extent of Lydia's interaction with her family the entire rest of the way to their new house. Lydia had never seen it before, but if her father thought she would like it, and if Delia liked it, it was pretty much guaranteed that she herself would despise it. But there was nothing to be done but come along quietly and mope, her sullen face hidden beneath the wide brim of her black hat. She felt dead inside without her two friends, and she was in mourning for the life she left behind, with them, in that dusty old attic.
Edward gazed out a broken window facing the peaceful little pastel perfect neighbourhood below and sighed quietly. Every night he wondered if she would return, if he would catch a glimpse of her in her pretty white dress walking down the road toward the mansion on the hill, a glowing star in an otherwise dark sky. Every night he hoped it would be the last one he would have to spend alone. Every night said hope was crushed beneath a cold and uncompassionate black sky, and Edward would fall asleep with an ache in his heart and a dream in his head, always of her. Little did he know that today would be different. Today he would meet someone who also suffered from a terrible case of loneliness. Someone who would understand and not fear him. Someone who would put an end to the crushing of his hopes for companionship.
"Almost there," sang Charles from the driver's seat. Lydia looked up from under the wide brim of her hat and was horrified at what she saw. Houses. No, these things couldn't be classified as houses. Pink, blue, green, pastel monstrosities whizzed by in a nauseating blur of cheerful colour as the car drove deeper into the suburb. There is no way in Hell I am living here, Lydia thought, her harsh feelings toward her father and step-mother growing as hot as the afternoon sun that beat down on the pavement. First chance I get I am going to hang myself by the rope they're dragging me along with.
"Kill me now," Lydia sighed audibly, burying her face in her hands.
"Now, calm down honey. We're not living in any of these houses"
There -is- a God!
"We're not?" Lydia couldn't contain the pleasant surprise in her voice as she pleaded for it to be true.
"No," Charles chuckled. " No...look ahead of us. See that? Up on that big hill"
Lydia craned her neck between the two seats in front and squinted her black eyes. When she caught sight of her target, her eyes widened to twice their usual size.
"There?" She breathed hoarsely. Her throat was suddenly dry with anticipation. "That's...that's our new house"
"Yep! I told you you'd like it." Charles beamed and turned to Delia, who looked up from her magazine just long enough to flash her husband a sickly sweet smile clad in bright red lipstick.
Lydia stared ahead in awe. She brought her Polaroid camera up to her face and snapped a picture, suddenly feeling very glad that she'd brought so much film. Her neck ached, but as they got closer and closer to the patch of darkness bordering the happy little hellhole they were driving through, she could not bring herself to move a muscle. Their future abode looked like a castle from a fairy tale gone awry. The wooden shutters trimmed with black iron were swinging crookedly on their hinges. Many of the shingles covering the roof were missing, as if the house had at one time withstood the wrath of a mighty storm. Twisted figures of gargoyles, vultures and other foul creatures peaked out from behind towers and ledges as if on guard for trespassers.
The house itself was surrounded by a thick wood of thorns and bramble, through which a narrow, scarce-used path was carved. As the car wove its way up the path and nearer to the house, Lydia's excitement grew, and her negative feelings of a mere few minutes before vanished behind her with the bright Barbie-esque houses. She couldn't wait to explore this place.
Finally, they reached the front gate. Though rusty and bent at odd angles, Lydia thought it beautiful. She pressed the button and her camera flashed again.
"Here we are!" Charles exclaimed suddenly as he killed the engine, startling Lydia out of her new found heaven. "We'll have to cut away these vines so the car can get through. I'd like to add on a garage, maybe over on the right side next to that arch over there..."he rambled on about renovations as the three got out of the car and approached the house.
Pushing back the vines her father intended on cutting away, Lydia could see that the area in front of the house had the appearance of a courtyard, with flower gardens, topiaries, and a gravel circle surrounding a giant hand-shaped bush. Lydia smiled up at the hand and photographed it. It was almost as if it were raised in a greeting. She was in love with this place already.
As she continued to snap photos of the yard, of the bush shaped like a squirrel, a sea serpent, a moose, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She immediately moved her gaze and her camera up to a window on the third floor and pressed the button. But the window was empty, save a few broken shards of glass glinting in the sunlight, jutting out of the rotting windowpane like jagged teeth in the mouth of a monster. Still, she could have sworn she'd caught a glimpse of something white and a flash of metal, but these disappeared into the blackness just as her eyes had hit home.
Lydia removed the blank photo card from her camera and shook it to make it develop faster. When it was finished, it showed the window and the shining glass, just as she'd seen it, but also what looked like a white face. The face of a person wearing black with bits of sharp metal jutting out in various directions just under the face. It was blurry, but it definitely looked like there had been someone standing in the window.
What was up there, if anything at all? More ghosts? Lydia could only hope for another friendly attic ghost or two. Whatever, whoever it was, she was going to find out.
Edward was startled out of his inevitably failed staring contest with the wall by the sound of a car, just outside the window. A car? No one came up here, not ever. Not since...Edward didn't want to think about that night that had been the worst of his life, yet also the best.
Shaking the bothersome thoughts from his head, he shuffled toward the window overlooking the yard to investigate.
It definitely was a car, and it had stopped just in front of the gates. Three people emerged, a normal-looking man, a woman with vivid red hair, and a mass of black whom Edward wasn't sure what to make of, exactly. He couldn't see this person's face at all, as it was hidden beneath a grossly oversized black hat that seemed entirely too big for the person's small figure. It looked as if he or she would topple over at any second due to the illusion of the hat's tremendous weight, when in fact it weighed no more than your average straw hat.
What are they doing here? He thought to himself, befuddled by the notion of visitors. He had never before laid eyes on this trio, he was sure. Edward never forgot a face; these were complete strangers to him. Were they new in the neighbourhood? Had they heard about him? Maybe they were coming to bring him back down again to see Kim. Maybe they were here to tell him that it was finally safe.
Edward inched closer for a better look at these mysterious invaders. He could hear the man and the woman talking amongst themselves just inside the gate, but he paid little to no attention. He could scarce hear them, and the person in black was getting closer and closer to the house, too close for comfort. He would have to be ready to run and hide at any second.
Then the head wearing the hat turned upwards, and a pale face was revealed to him. A face partially obscured by a pair of hands with a black object in their grasp.
Blinking, Edward quickly shrank back into the shadows and let his eyes adjust to the dim light, once more. He was sure he had been spotted. Now he would have to hide.
Snipping anxiously with his scissorhands he thought of where to best conceal himself. What did these people want with him? Were they friendly? Did they know about what happened with Jim, how he didn't wake up? He knew what he'd done was wrong. Were they here to take him to the police again? Edward didn't want to go back there. He was suddenly very afraid, yet his curiosity overcame his fear, and he decided on simply standing in the shadows against the wall, snipping nervously at the air and waiting. For what, he had no idea. He all but held his breath as he kept a sharp eye and an even sharper ear, and tried to shake the cold shivers that were dancing up and down his spine.
Here we go, again, Lydia thought to herself as she pushed open the heavy front door and stepped inside. The place was huge, bigger even than it looked on the exterior, with high ceilings and vast marble floors. Cobwebs and dust covered everything like a thin gossamer veil. She'd half expected everything to be clean since the yard seemed to be well cared for. None of the flowers were dying, the topiaries were neatly trimmed and the grass seemed fairly tame. In here, however, it looked as if no one had taken a broom or vacuum to anything in decades.
"Hello?" she called out, not realising how dumb it was to be yelling into an empty house till she heard her own voice reverberating off the walls.
Her boots left prints in the dusty floor as she made her way toward an enormous stone stairwell, at the foot of which stood what she supposed could be called a statue, though it reminded her of one of Delia's creepy sculptures, also covered in dust and cobwebs.
Lydia turned and surveyed the nearly empty space around her. She could make out in the dim light what looked like some sort of machine at the far end of the room. There was a conveyor belt with various robots stationed behind and above it, all seeming to have been created to serve a different purpose. Lydia knew that Delia and her father would most likely want the thing removed, as it was very large and not exactly something that seemed too functional in a modern household. Continuing on up the stairs, she wondered if she'd ever get to find out what it did. But before she could go up so many as two more steps, her father's voice behind her halted her forward progression.
"Like it, pumpkin"
"Yeah, dad, it's really great. I'm dying of shock that you actually picked a house that both Delia and I can stand"
"I don't mind it so much, myself. It's a fixer-upper, for sure, but"
"Dad?" Lydia's echoing voice cut off that of her father's. She wanted to stop him before it was too late, before he got going and nothing in the world would be able to shut him up. Well, nothing except for his wife...maybe.
"Yes, sugar pie"
"How long has it been since someone lived here"
"Oh, they told me years. Years and years. Decades"
"Are you sure"
"Yeah, honey, why"
"Well..." Lydia was hesitant to tell Charles about what she'd seen in the window. After what happened last year with Adam and Barbara, she wasn't entirely sure her dad would believe her if she told him she'd seen something in the window. She was starting to feel like the girl who cried wolf, even if there had turned out to be ghosts in the attic...she still felt uneasy about the situation.
"The topiaries, the flowers...they're all so well kept, as if a gardener has been tending them. But if there's no one here, and if there hasn't been for years, then how is that possible"
For a few moments Charles looked just as puzzled about the inquiry as Lydia would be if she didn't know someone had to be there. She did see them, after all. Didn't she?
"Well," he began, not entirely sure of himself as he stood scratching his head of thinning blonde hair and leaning against the doorframe. "Maybe the town gardener comes here from time to time, for practise...you know? And from the looks of things he's doing rather well, don't you think?" Lydia feigned a smile and nodded her head.
Lame, dad. Very lame.
"Yeah, that could be. I was just going to go upstairs, if that's ok? To take a few pictures of this place before you guys have it completely torn apart"
"Sure, pumpkin," Charles said, not seeming to have heard the last part of his daughter's question. "I'll be down here with Delia, deciding on how best to fix this place up"
Lydia continued her ascent up the stone staircase and surveyed the space around and below her as she climbed. The place was rather inhospitable. She knew they wouldn't be able to move in, straight away, and that they would probably have to set up camp in one of those terrible little cotton candy and peppermint excuses for a house at the bottom of the hill, but just so long as this house was their final destination, she could suffer through a few months in one of those disgusting...whatevers.
Finally she reached the top of the stairs.
"An attic. I want this as my room." It was very big, very empty, and also falling apart. There was a hole in the roof the size of an elephant. It looked as if a cannon had blasted apart the rafters and boards. She moved closer to the gaping wound in the roof and looked out.
"Wow," she breathed. I wonder if I could persuade Delia and dad to let me keep this the way it is, she thought, knowing full well that they wouldn't. But if only they saw the view from up there, they may just let her have her way. She could see all the way to the ocean from up there. She reached for her camera but before she could raise it, she heard a quiet snip behind her and whirled around to see what had made the noise.
"Who's there?" she asked quietly, squinting her eyes and moving slowly toward the shadows from whence the noise had come. She could just barely make out a dark figure, stiff and flat against the wall. She could feel eyes on her before she could see them. "I can see you. I know you're there, so you might as well show yourself." The figure didn't move, but Lydia heard the snipping sound again. It sounded like a pair of scissor blades rubbing against each other.
Swallowing the growing lump in her throat, Lydia inched closer to the figure in the dark. If only she had a flashlight.
Telling her hands not to start shaking, she took hold of the camera around her neck and lifted it slowly to her face.
Click!
In the brief flash of light, Lydia could see that the figure was very pale, had a head of wild black hair and was clad entirely in black. She could also deduce that there were sharp blades of metal where his hands should have been.
Now, she wasn't one to lose her cool if something strange and even a little scary presented itself to her, but she was ashamed to admit that she was a little freaked out by this person, this...whatever he was.
"Okay, I know you're there, why don't you just come out so I can see you? I'm not scared of you. I'm not going to hurt you. Seriously, just come into the light."