January 1 2052

Something feels like it's missing. I've always been curious about my past ever since I woke up a year ago with no memory of it beyond the fact that I have a twin brother somewhere who's name I can't remember. And my name. I quite like my name...but even that feels not entirely full. I feel like maybe I have multiple names that I go by, not just the one I know now. I think I'm going to try out every letter of the alphabet tomorrow seeing if that sparks some memory of my other possible names, after work of course. But anyways back to what I was saying about something feeling like it's missing. It's the strangest thing but I keep having the desire to look at the back of my left hand. I'm not sure what it is my desire wants to find there but my stomach always feels a little sick when I find nothing there once more. I don't like feeling this way anymore! Maybe I should try getting a girlfriend again. That helped in the past. That should lift my spirits. I think. I hope...

Nope my stomach really felt sick at that idea for some reason.

So what's missing then?

What's missing...

~*IPS*~

From the new journal of Juliet Vargas

JANUARY

January 9 2052

I spent today with Peter and his nephews and niece. We spent the day lounging about on Peter's floating home. But half way through the day Peter got an idea. And when Peter gets ideas...it usually means trouble for someone. He told us that rumors were going around that Uncle Gill's abandoned house in Saxony has become haunted. People have seen the ghost walking past the windows, apparently it particularly likes the library, because it's often seen in those large windows, which I know house comfortable window-seats inside. So after he told us that, he said we should go check it out. So we spent the rest of the day making plans to go investigate the Mansion tomorrow.

Not much else happened today. I read to Ari and Michael and tried to get Michael to speak. Like usual, my attempts failed. Vater said he might really be mute, but I don't believe it. I was in the room when he said his first word as a baby. Mama, same as mine and Ari's. I think he's intentionally preventing himself from speaking now. Just like he's keeping himself at the appearance of a 7 year old. (His 11th Birthday is this year)

January 10 2052

My cousin Coen found out about our plan to investigate his abandoned family home and insisted we couldn't do it without his supervision. Then he informed us that he couldn't go with us until the 14th so we've had to postpone the trip. With this much time to muse over the mansion I'm starting to get a bit scared that the rumors might actually be true. What if the ghost isn't friendly? Or worse, what if it's not a ghost at all but a pale alien that's been hiding out waiting for a chance to kill unsuspecting trespassers? Now I really don't want to go!

Jauary 14 2052

I ended up getting talked into going. I'm glad I did because I prevented my cousin from getting hurt, and I'm not referring to Coen. Here's what happened:

We met at 10:00 this morning in the small copse of trees to the side of the abandoned mansion. Coen was the last to arrive, looking still half asleep with uncombed hair and bags under his violet-red eyes.

"Where are your glasses?" Aaron asked with concern.

"Don't need em." Coen yawned, "I'm awesome without them."

"Don't start with that so early in the morning." An unexpected annoyed voice spoke up from nearby.

I was shocked to find my cousin Roslyn and Pierre Bonnefoy step from the trees behind us.

"Coen did you invite more people?" Peter asked in a tone of annoyance, "This was supposed to be a small group ghost hunt."

"That's right, and you can't do a small group ghost hunt without my best buddies here!" Coen grinned and threw his arms over his best friends' shoulders. Roslyn huffed a bit and tried to shake the boy's hand off from around her neck.

"Believe me, I didn't want to come," Roslyn groaned and slipped out of Coen's grasp at last, "The only reason I'm here is for the pancakes afterwards."

You can imagine that I laughed a lot at that comment. I've said this in my other journals but there are four things that Roslyn likes to eat more than anything else in this world (I say eat because she likes many other things in this world, one of which is Pierre but she'll never admit that) are tomatoes, pizza, waffles, and pancakes. Crepes are up there too but not with the same enthusiasm as the other four. This is why it didn't surprise me that she had shown up for the ghost hunt. Now back to the story...

We had thought that we would have to break into the house in some way because the door was locked but Coen pulled the key out of his pocket and explained that he had snatched it that morning, from a drawer in his Vater's office, while Uncle Gil was still asleep.

The door creaked eerily when we pushed it open and our shoes kicked up such a tremendous amount of dust in the entryway that Roslyn and Pierre both had sneezing fits and had to go back outside till they got control again. This was the reason that they saw the ghost before we did. Or rather, what they thought was the ghost.

They came running back into the house stammering something about an eery transparent figure that had appeared in one of the upstairs rooms and headed towards the window.

"I don't think it saw us before we got back inside." Pierre coughed, still breathing heavily from the sneezing and shock, "At least I zertainly hope it didn't." the boy's blue eyes looked wild as they darted about, as if expecting the ghost to come flying out from anywhere.

"Awesome!" Coen exclaimed, "To the upstairs rooms we go then!"

"Mon ami, we already zaw the ghost." Pierre shook his head, "I personally do not want to see it up close."

But Coen must not have been listening to him because he grabbed both Pierre's and Roslyn's hands and dragged them farther into the house with them. The rest of us could hear their protesting and Roslyn calling him all kinds of colorful names (probably every language's version of bastard that she knew) all the way up the stairs.

The rest of us followed more cautiously, with Peter and I holding hands the entire time. And Andrew and Aaron flicking on every single light switch that we passed. We crept as silently as we could up the wooden stairs, hoping that none would creak. Why that mattered since Coen had practically thundered up them, I still don't know. Call it ingrained precaution for dealing with a ghost.

When we finally reached the upstairs we saw Coen standing just outside the doorway to the library with his hand clamped over Roslyn's mouth and just barely peering around the molding into the room. Pierre was passed out on the floor.

"Not one for ghosts up close my pal." Coen whispered with a grin nodding at the unconscious boy.

"There really is a ghost then?" Andrew breathed and he and Aaron instinctively reached for each other as support. They both inherited their father's fear of ghosts. I honestly don't know why they agreed to come in the first place. Maybe it was to try and act brave. It failed.

Peter and I crept closer to the room and put our backs on the other side of the doorway. We waited for a bit before we started to think that Coen was making it up. But then we heard a sigh...a really mournful sigh that we knew ghosts tended to make.

Coen was shaking now and Roslyn's eyes had gone wide. Peter was also trembling and I know that I was too. Coen pulled something from his pocket, a can of pepper spray, and nodded at the doorway mouthing "one".

"Two." Peter whispered beside me.

"Three!" I couldn't help but shout and jumped into the room before any of them, running wildly so I ended up knocking down the ghost before Coen could spray her. I say her because...it wasn't a ghost at all.

So remember at the beginning of this entry I said that I prevented my cousin from getting hurt? Well something about Coen's other parent, Canada, was that he was rather invisible half of the time. And this was a trait that had passed on to his younger daughter and capital city Ottawa, Courtney Beilschmidt Williams. And it was Courtney that I ran smack into and knocked to the floor with me landing heavily on top of her and therefore preventing the wild aimed pepper spray to fly harmlessly over us.

"The hell?!" Courtney coughed underneath, "Why was I tackled, was that pepper spray that just flew overhead, and why are you guys here in the first place?"

While Courtney may be like Canada in her ability to appear transparent, she does not have the same quiet, rather calm, way of talking that he did. She actually takes more after her Vater and Bruder in that regard. She used to be more like Canada when she was little.

(I feel the need to tell you all this since you are a new journal and therefore don't have any of this information yet, unlike my previous journals.)

One thing that Courtney fortunately has not picked up is her Vater and Bruder's incessant need to say awesome practically all the time.

"Schwester!" Coen exclaimed as Courtney and I got off the floor, "What are you doing here? Where'd the ghost go?"

"What are you talking about Dummkopf?" Courtney snapped, "There isn't a ghost in our old house. Not that I've seen at least and I've been coming here for weeks now."

Coen blinked and groaned.

"Oh so unawesome. My own sister is the reported ghost. That's such a letdown. What a wasted ghost hunt."

Courtney folded her arms and stared at her brother levelly.

"Are you telling me that people have been making up stories about our abandoned house?"

"Yep." Peter grinned coming up to me and making sure that I was ok, "Rumor was that it's haunted. Ghost sightings have been reported."

Courtney groaned.

"All I wanted to do was find someplace quiet and soothing to read" She gestured to the library and the book lying on the cushioned window seat, "And instead I get accused of being a ghost just because I tend go a little transparent when my emotions are higher."

Roslyn entered the room at that moment, hands on hips.

"So you're the reason I was so freaked out? It was you Pierre and I saw at the window?"

Courtney nodded.

"And it was you that made that noise just now?"

Courtney looked sadder at that moment.

"I made the mistake of reading a book that père and I read together, and that brought back memories. I'm glad you didn't catch me last week when I found a note written by him in the front of one. I was a mess."

Coen put an arm around his sister and Roslyn's expression turned from anger to guilt. But she didn't take her hands off her hips even as she looked at the floor.

"We all know the feeling believe me. There are some things that catch me hard as well."

I agreed with them but kept quiet. Maybe I shouldn't have, but talking about it seems to make it worse for me. It has been almost three years but...

"So you came here to get away from us," Coen began "but how did you get in? I have Vater's key."

"Did you steal it?" Courtney asked smugly.

Coen blushed a bit.

"Maybe."

"Just because you weren't trusted with your own key doesn't mean I wasn't." Courtney chuckled and pulled a copy of Coen's key out of her coat pocket.

Well I'm not going to relate verbatim what Coen's response to that was, but it involved a great deal of "unawesome" and sparked an argument between himself and Courtney. During which Pierre regained consciousness and was told the truth about the ghost, and I made the mistake of looking out the window when the actual ghost was standing just inside the trees and then started to walk away immediately. Yikes! When you can see trees and darkness through somebody then that makes them a ghost, with the exception of Courtney of course. Again...YIKES!

I didn't tell anyone but Courtney about my sighting because I knew that Coen and Peter would immediately want to strike out on another ghost hunt after it. One a day is my limit. Courtney is more level headed than her brother so she came up with a good plan and invited me out loud to a private reading day tomorrow at the house.

I'm both excited and nervous.

January 15 2052

So no ghost but the three of us did find a hat. Oh yeah...before I talk about the sweater I should explain the three thing. Something about my cousin Roslyn is that she hates to be left out of things, so even you say something is private, if you talk about it in front of her and she's interested, or frankly just wants to show that she can, she will show up.

So it was Courtney, Roslyn, and I that went to investigate the area where I had seen the ghost. Like I said, we didn't see any signs of a ghost, but we did find a hat with the initials MW scrawled on the tag. Since I was the one that supposedly saw the ghost, I get to keep the hat. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a lost hat. I'm not planning on wearing it. Who knows who this MW is and what his or her head is like?!

Anyways, I got called stupid and jumpy by Roslyn. She told me that I was clearly seeing things and that it must have just been an ordinary human in the trees, and because I had ghosts on the brain I had just imagined that they were transparent. Maybe she's right. But I don't really want to give up yet. I plan on going back sometime and continuing to search for the ghost. I don't know why, but something in my gut tells me that I can't give up on this search.

January 20 2052

I went back today and do you know what I found?

A scarf.

I spent practically all day searching in that entire area of forest and all I found was a lousy lost scarf. No ghost again...just a scarf.

But here is something interesting, the scarf had the same initials as the hat. MW. So either this MW person came back to the house and ended up losing another item by mistake, or else we overlooked the scarf the first time. If it's the first then I'm curious about why this person came back, or keeps coming back, to Uncle Gil's abandoned house. I think I have to go check the area again soon.

January 27 2052

So I have two things to report. The first, I didn't have a chance until today to go back to the abandoned house

And second...I heard somebody call papa's human name in Venice today. I know that it's probably a very common name in Italy but it still snapped me out of my thoughts and made me look back across the bridge we had just crossed towards the little bistro a ways down. There was a man at the door who I assumed had called out the name and a man shadowed by the fabric overhangings who went past him into the store.

I know it's silly but I plan to go back there and meet this man, who's probably a waiter. Can you blame me really? No you can't because you're just a book and can't talk back so there!

Anyways...after I went home with my siblings to drop off the fresh groceries we had gotten from the Venetian market, I went back out by myself to the abandoned house and you would not believe what I found! A sweater this time! MW left a sweater and water bottle this time! And this time it was just inside of the trees!

I'm starting to think that this person is really scatter brained and has a terrible habit of losing things. I also really wonder why the person keeps coming back. Could they be being drawn there in the hopes of seeing a ghost? If that's the case then I should warn Courtney to keep an eye out in the trees before she enters the house, and when she's inside, to stay away from windows in case MW is watching and has a camera. The last thing we need is people actually investigating the house for ghosts and instead capturing a capital city. Things got messy when normal people got involved with supernatural personifications.

I'm going to text Courtney right now and tell her to be careful. So bye for today!