Human names used in this chapter

Hong Kong – Leon
Canada – Matthew
USA – Alfred
Seychelles – Shelly
Australia – Kyle
England – Arthur /Artie
France – Fran / Francis

Thank you so much for the reviews, favourites and follows! 3
I just hope i could keep the standard as it is in the first chapter ^^"

It is a mild and somewhat cloudy spring day as the car drives along the long road up to the villa, followed by a big truck. Children are singing in the car until it stops right in front of the house.
"There we are!" exclaims the father of the kids as he turns off the engine.

He steps out and a little breeze blows through his messy blond hair and his emerald green eyes look immediately around to take in the surroundings. He leans on the door of his car and turns to his husband who is just stepping out:
"Wow… Do you hear that?" he asks him.
"I don't hear anything…" he frowns some and looks questioning at the slightly smaller man with bushy eyebrows.
"Exactly" and so he steps to the back door to let the kids out.
The other, blond as well but with wavy hair reaching to his shoulders just laughs some and opens the door on the other side:
"Okay… guys, we are here…"

The kids jump out, all four of them and a teenager follows in his own pace and slams the door of the car passive aggressive shut:
"Oh, God. We're in the middle of nowhere." The teen looks annoyed around with his dark eyes, his short cut, dark brown hair flows in the wind.

The other kids are speaking and yelling around as they walk with one of their fathers to the house who turns to them as he walks:
"Are you excited?" He smiles and waits for the messy-haired one to unlock the door. As soon as it opens, the bundle of kids rushes in, eager to find their rooms. The only girl of all the kids turns around and calls for the dog of the family but gets automatically pushed in by her brothers.

The man just makes place and waits for the blue eyed man with a stubbly beard and their oldest adopted son who just walks up the stairs towards the entrance:
"Do I get to pick my own room or do I have no choice in that either?" he asks bluntly as he stares at his fathers and walks in, leaving them at the door.

The long haired just raises his hands at his lover:
"Well, first cute girl he'll meet, he'll forget about Paris." And he walks in.
"Oh, great. Can't wait." Answers his husband slightly sarcastic and earns a chuckle.

Left behind alone, he turns to their dog, standing on the porch. He makes a lazy sign for it to enter:
"Come on, Pierre." But the dog does not budge. He tries it again, this time with a more clear sign:
"Come on Pierre, let's go!" But Pierre, a white shepherd dog only whimpers. The man steps to him making a last attempt:
"Hey, come. Whats the matter with you?" and grabs him at his collar.

He tries to pull him over the threshold but Pierre only makes himself small and pushes against it, still whimpering.
"Hey, come on boy. " But as he says that he straightens himself again and lets go from him.
"Alright, suit yourself". And with this he walks now in too and closes the screen door, leaving the dog on its own.

It is a beautiful day, even if white clouds are floating far up in the sky. First thing the family does, after calming down the fights over the rooms, is to install the radio to motivate everybody to unpack their things. The men who drove the truck help in bringing in all the furniture and are carrying in just this moment a sofa towards the house. One of the kids, rather a preteen, looks for his personal things in the back of the car. He wears a flannel shirt and he has got the hair and eyes of his father, long and wavy and his eyes blue with a touch of violet. A long curl seems to not obey and sticks out. He has got a pair of glasses which makes him look a bit nerdy. As he finds the box he takes it and jumps up the stairs to the porch:
"Coming through!" And fortunately the men notice him, react and lift the sofa just enough that he can walk underneath it and into the house. He rushes through the door, turns left and almost bumps into his father who is carrying an armchair whilst coordinating the entering men.
"Woah, sorry dad..." And he disappears into the living room.

A little boy around 10 years old runs down the stairs, having wild hazel hair and a band aid on his nose. He looks into the main hallway besides the stairs and sees the dark haired teenager looking through some boxes.

"Hey, Leon! Where's my wind chimes?" he asks his brother whilst jumping down the last steps.
Leon just points into the direction of the living room:
"Uh...I think Matthew's got it in the other room." And he turns again to his boxes.
"Oh, thanks." The boy runs into the pointed direction and sees Matthew standing there, just having it in his hands. But the boy just has to ask to be sure:
"Hey Matthew, have you seen my wind chime?"

Matthew looks at Alfred and holds the desired object up:
"This?"

The boy nods and reaches for it. He snatches it away from his brother and runs with it to the kitchen where one of his fathers is working.
"Hey, Fran. Can I hang the wind chime?" Fran is the alternative to Mom or Dad and his husband's nickname is Arthie. It was invented by the married couple to not always get confused of who their kids mean when calling them "father". The nicknames are short terms for Francis and Arthur.

"Of course! There is a line outside you can hang it on," answers the man, straightening up und looking outside of the kitchen window, looking for their youngest and only girl. He adds:
"Honey, have Shelly come in, okay? It's gonna be dark soon," just before the energetic boy rushes out of the back door, he answers with a half shouted "ok" and is outside.

The country mansion is surrounded by a very big garden, seemingly to blend without any fence into the wild. The open place the house stands on is encircled by big trees and the circle is only interrupted by the road leading to the house and a lake opposite of it 50 meters away from the house. A large and half dead tree is standing in a few meters distance to the lake.

The boy stops at the back porch and finds the rope. He hangs up his wind chime by climbing up a little footstool and looks then for his sister. He spots her sitting underneath the dead tree, nestled in between the roots. Her dark skin is even darker now in the shadow and her long dark brown hair, bound in two tails, is falling over both shoulders. She looks up from whatever she had in her hands as the boy calls her:
"Come on, Shelly! Mom wants us inside!"
"Look what I found, Kyle!" she shouts back. She looks again at what she is holding in her hands.

It is a little music box, formed like a circus tent with red and white stripes. Since she found it lying beside the tree it is dirty and worn out by the weather and time. But as she turns the little wind up key it still plays its little melody to which she listens too. A little breeze blows through her hair and she looks up. She shrugs, closes the little box again and stands up. She jumps over a big root and runs to the house, Kyle is already inside.

"One, two, three…." Matthew and Kyle are standing in a storeroom, giggling and turning their blindfolded brother around. As they see how he turns now on himself they leave him, almost stumbling over themselves. Matthew reminds his brother quickly:
"No peeking!" and Kyle continues to count for him:
"Four!"
As both stumble backwards out of the room they bump into their dad, holding a pizza box in his hands. "Are you guys done with the pizza?"
But Kyle just continues counting.
"Five"
„I don't want it to go to waste."
He only gets silenced by a „shh" from Mathew. "Let's go." And he walks down the hallway with Kyle. Arthur continues talking to them, lightly annoyed.
"It's expensive feeding you guys." But neither of them is listening to him, too occupied finding a hiding place.

The young boy, around 12 years old with sand colored hair and a little, bold strand of hair sticking out at his parting of hair, is still turning around counting to 10. His glasses are tucked in his pants pockets and when he has them on he looks rather intelligent in opposite to his nerdy looking brother. Through all the turning he already begins to lose his balance and waves some with his hands to regain it.

In the meantime his brothers have found their place to hide.
"Ready or not, here I come!" Shouts the boy and walks out of the small room. He looks around without seeing anything.
"Okay, clap!" he demands, as a part of the game. He hears two times somebody clapping twice and he begins to feel his way down the hallway. Instantly he walks into some boxes, remains from today's unpacking.
"Ow!" Francis, just walking up the stairs scolds the boys:
"Guys, you don't know the house well enough. Someone's gonna get hurt." But the blindfolded one just waves with its hands and continues:
"I'm okay, I'm okay!"

He stops again and demands another clap:
"Second clap!" He does not move, deterring from where the next claps are stemming. As he heard again a pair of claps he quickly turns around and walks into their direction, not noticing his younger brother sitting in the hallway, cramped between a little table and a dresser. He clapped very slowly and his hands barely touched each other. Kyle looks up as he feels the judging eyes of his father on him but smiles. Francis whispers to him:
"That's cheating" but continues then his way upwards chuckling.

In the meantime, the elder brother has found his way to a door. He opens it. It creaks and the room is pitch black.
"Clap" he demands for the last time.

One clear clap comes out from the dark and he jumps on the source of the noise. Matthew yelps as he gets jumped on.
"Gotcha!" his brother shouts just before they hit the wall. A loud clamour emerges out of the small room they are in and something breaking was heard through the whole house.
"Are you okay?" asks Matthew again as he stands up feeling for his brother.
"Oh. Yeah, uhm…" he mumbles as he gets pulled up by Matthew.

Of course did their father hear the noise and he arrives frowning:
"Alright! What did we break now?" He tries to step in but his sons are blocking him.
„Will you get out of there, please?" Instantly the brothers begin now to give each other the fault as they walk out to make place for Arthur.
Matthew points towards the smaller one: "I didn't mean to. It was Alfred's fault!"
"My fault?!" answers Alfred indignant, waiting outside the room.

"Jeez…" mutters Arthur as he kneels down to the wooden wall. He hears how they continue to quarrel but does not let himself distract by that. There is a big crack in front of him in the rugged, wooden boards that make out one side of the wall. They seemed to be built in after everything else, as the other three sides of the room are made of clean polished boards, neatly nailed together as they should be. He turns around to his sons; the others standing now in the doorframe too, attracted by the entire ruckus.
"Hey Matthew, can you go get me the matches, please?"

As Matthew gets them, Francis comes down again.
"What's going on?" he asks and looks over the heads of the still waiting children.
Immediately Alfred shouts:
"Matthew broke something!"
"Shut up" tries the returning Matthew to silence his annoying brother and hands the matches but Alfred insists:
"It was you!"

Francis does not get bothered, used to the constant fighting, and steps to his husband who peeks through the crack.
"I think we have a cellar or something…" he tells him and loosens one of the boards. It reveals nothing yet, as it is jet black and not even the light coming from the old lightbulp at the ceiling could enlighten what is hidden behind.

The boys are trying to get in too, telling each other that they have to see what is inside there. Arthur turns to them after having removed all the planks.
"Okay, matches?" he asks and Matthew squeezes himself in a bit and hands him them.
"Thank you".
He lights one fire match and steps into the dark. Provided with the little light, it shows him a light switch on the wall but after trying it, Arthur has to admit that the matches will be his only light source. He rises his arm to see better and finds a staircase leading down. Everything is full of spider webs and he has to wipe them away with his hand to continue his way down.
"Oh man…" he murmurs as he arrives at the end of the staircase.

"Arthur?" asks Francis, almost unsure, the boys all gathered around him, looking down.
"What do you see down there?"

Arthur speaks loudly, so they can hear him:
"It's uh...hard to tell, you know? It's an old piano and a whole bunch of garbage." He looks around, the flame growing slightly bigger as it took in almost the whole match.
Suddenly it goes out and Arthur flinches. "Ah! Son of a…" He bites his tongue to not swear when his kids are listening and is fast in enlightening a new match. He continues.
"Wow…"

"Arthie?" Asks Francis again. Everybody slightly concerned and wondering what there could be so interesting to take that long in investigating that place. "Come on, up" Francis bids, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

Arthur obliges and as he reaches the top of the staircase he leaves the fire matches on the first step, in case somebody has to go down again.
"I don't want any of you girls going down there. The place is loaded of spiders".
Hearing that, Alfred makes gagging noises and as Matthew wiggles his fingers over his neck he cringes. "Stop it Matthew! Its' not funny." And together they leave the room to go upstairs to their respective rooms.

Arthur and Francis are still standing in the storage room.
"Got extra square footage down there, I'll check it out in the morning."
Francis leans around the door and glances back at the hole in the wall.
"I wonder why it was boarded up?"
Arthur shrugs before turning the lights off.
"I don't know."

Together they shoo their kids into bed and don't think much about what they just found.

So many names and kids ;-; I hope it was not too confusing ^^

Things are getting interesting in the next chapter, so stay tuned~