Chapter 2: Who I am (Charlie)

The cool wind of the night blew past my ear as I sat staring at the fish in the pond as they swam lazily by, some of them occasionally bumping into my feet. Mindless creatures they were, and because of that, I envied them. Whoever said ignorance was bliss was right. They knew nothing beyond the tiny pond they lived in, they didn't have to deal with the curse that I was forced to bear. They could live in their blissful bubble of unknowingness forever. I could only wish I had so good a fate.

This was my favorite place around the house, that is if you could call what I live in a house. It's more of a manor or a mansion; the grounds themselves are several acres, but Father had given me permission to design a spot just for me, and so here I am now, mulling over my thoughts in silence. It was my own little quiet place. I had a pond filled with fish and a Sakura tree next to it; this gave me a great sense of peace. The only things I could hear were the soft chirping of the crickets.

I had just had a fall out with Father a few hours earlier; we were arguing about who would take over the company next and continue on the Winchester family legacy. That's right you heard me. I am Charles Winchester, son of Edward Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Yes, I am the great- great grandson of the William Wirt Winchester who invented most of the modern day rifles and handguns we see today. So, unsurprisingly, my family is incredibly powerful and rich. Father wants me to take over the company when the time comes, however, I downright refused. You may be wondering why I would refuse such an offer to become the next head of a several billion dollar industry, a position many people would kill for. The reason why? The answer is too simple…there is a curse.

As I sat there pondering my fate I heard footsteps behind me and a voice sounded. "I thought I would find you here."

I needn't turn around to know who that voice belonged to. "Oh hey Athena." I replied in a monotone voice. Athena was none other than my close but annoying twin sister.

"Jeez what's got your panties in a wad?" she sat down next to me and waited for me to answer, knowing that I had no other choice but to spill.

I only had to say one word for her to get the gist of what was going on. "Father."

"Oh yeah… I know man. But you're the only candidate left for the job besides me…" she hesitated knowing this subject was quite touchy for the both of us. "There was Tripp…" at that her voice trailed off all together.

I knew what she was talking about. Tripp, our older brother, and the perfect child in the Winchester household. Since the day he was born, he was raised to become the next CEO of Winchester Arms just as I was. The only difference was that Tripp looked forward to the day he would take over; he wanted to be the boss. The curse wasn't enough to stop him from wanting the power. He went to the best boarding schools New York had to offer and finally graduated high school and he was accepted into West Point Academy, and from there he went and joined the military. He came back from Iraq with his chest all decked out in different medals he had won from killing people. Seeing him like that became Father's proudest moment in life.

Things started going back to way they used to with Tripp back again he became the new Head of the Winchester Company and everything was quote on quote normal. Not five months later he became infatuated with a girl named Mary and the two of them were married. Nine months after, she bore him a son. Tripp, however had no interest in the baby nor did Father, and Mary whom despite her lovely appearance only had eyes for her husband… and his position. So when it came time to name the child, they left that decision to Athena and me. We called him Jason.

Since neither Mary, Tripp, nor Father wanted anything to do with baby Jason, a nanny was hired to care for him twenty-four-seven. The Irish nanny, Maria, was a widow, her husband and her three children died in a car accident, leaving her as the sole survivor. She at that point had nothing left except for painful memories and a scar on her forehead as a souvenir from that incident. Maria was like the mother figure the three of us never had, and we were pretty much raised by her hand. Tripp, Athena and I shared the same mother, but she died giving birth to Athena and me. According to doctors, we were lucky enough to have survived ourselves. Even though at the time we were still children, we did our best to help Maria raise Jason. She loved us as her own, and we loved her in return.

This way of life continued for another eight years when suddenly things turned for the worst. Tripp was called back into battle, this time to Afghanistan, and a month later we received word that he had perished he was only thirty years old. Father was distraught and almost went mad from grief, and Mary committed suicide by downing a cyanide pill. Father drank himself into a stupor and became violent he took his rage out upon all of us. His pride and joy gone, and now all he had left to choose from were a bunch of rejects to fill in the job. Athena and I were only fifteen at the time and Jason was almost nine. None of us were old enough to take on the responsibility.

That's when I found out about the curse. The curse that our family had to bear for generation after generation, and it wouldn't be broken until it saw this company laid to waste. Athena and I were cleaning out the attic one day with the help of Jason when we happened across an old trunk coated in years of dust an inch thick. Jason thinking that there would be treasure inside hastily opened it, only to become fairly disappointed at his findings. He hefted out an old rifle. I could tell from the looks of it, it was beyond any of our time, this gun was even older than Father. It most likely dated back to the late 1800's.

Quickly plucking the rifle out of Jason's arms before he could get himself into trouble, I noticed something inscribed on the butt of the gun. Taking my shirt sleeve I rubbed off the dust and grime. In the wood Winchester Repeating Arms was clearly etched, there was something else too. A blood stain? I promptly put that thought out of my mind. It must've been a careless paint splatter from somewhere else.

Putting the firearm aside for the moment, I dug deeper inside the trunk. What I found were newspaper clippings, obituaries, a list of serial numbers and their owners, and a website article on the Winchester house with a colored photograph. It wasn't long after I had begun skimming the papers before I got a nasty chill down my spine. Most of the documents were yellowed with age and crumbled at my touch, but some were fresh. In fact the website article showed that it was printed not a year ago.

After reading through the majority of the articles thoroughly, I quickly discovered that during the time of the Wild West, the original William Wirt Winchester, invented the rifle. The cowboys used them to drive out the Indians, slaughtering tribe after tribe. All were killed by a Winchester rifle or firearm. Finally, an Indian chief of one of the tribes stood up to the men and begged to speak with them using reason. The men laughed ruthlessly and gunned him and his whole tribe down without another word. Legend tells that the Indian Chief upon his dying breath cursed the maker of this weapon and his family to come. That as long as the Winchester Company existed, the family would never know peace, and for every soul killed by the Winchester rifle, they would come back to haunt the members of the Winchester family.

By this time, I was ready to curl up in a ball and cry. I was so scared my heart was thumping in my throat, glancing around; I could tell that my siblings felt no different. Jason had tears streaming down his face as he reached out for Athena who took him up in her arms and calmed him down. I did my best to convince everyone, including myself, that there was no such thing as a curse, and that this was just some stupid story that someone made up like the stuff you saw on . That's when I continued to read on. BIG MISTAKE.

What originally was a legend became somewhat of a reality within the next five minutes. The next article I read confirmed my fears. Not two years after the death of the Indian Chief. The wife of Mr. Winchester, Sarah, had begun experiencing things from "beyond our plane". She first had shrugged off these incidences, but soon it became inevitable to avoid. She eventually suffered a stroke. Doctors had pronounced her as mad, but over the next twenty five years her husband died, then her two of her children, and then friends, all died at unreasonable ages. She was now convinced of the curse. She then sought out a Medium, desperate for help. The Medium had told her of the only solution possible other than to destroy the company. She was to build a house, filled with hundreds of rooms. These rooms would confuse the spirits so they didn't know which one she stayed in, therefore, not being able to kill her. The medium had also instructed her to build random trap doors, mirrors, and dead ends to further confound the spirits.

So Ms. Sarah Winchester began the construction. She made sure that there was always someone working on it day and night, and from the first day of construction to the last day of her life she had people working on the Winchester house. Every day she slept in a different room so the spirits wouldn't learn of her sleeping location. Finally after she died word quickly spread that construction on the Winchester house was no longer necessary, and the workers swiftly abandoned their posts and construction on the house finally ceased. By then, the house had already covered several acres of land and was almost impossible to navigate. Sarah Winchester's surviving son had fled Northern California, with the fear of the vengeful Indian spirits rooted deep in his heart. He found refuge in New York and brought his company with him.

He started anew here in New York, his sorrows seemingly put behind… but not for long. He later found a wife and had my father Edward. As soon as Edward took his father's place as the head, both his father and his father's wife mysteriously died of tuberculosis, leaving the whole company in Edward's care. Then came our generation, and you already know the story.

"Do you really believe in that curse?" I was jolted back to present day by the sound of my sister's voice.

"I'm not entirely sure to be honest. But mostly, yeah. But even if it weren't real, it wouldn't hurt to be aware… you know just to be on the safe side. Better safe than sorry I always say."

She nodded her reply, not saying anything for a moment just to gather her thoughts together, she then continued. "Well if that curse is real, then why hasn't anything happened to us yet? Why aren't we dead? Why didn't Father die?"

I scowled at her. "Don't say such things, don't push our luck. Not that we have much to begin with anyway. I don't know why. Why don't you ask Father?"

The look she gave me told me that asking Father anything was out of the question. Father wouldn't care, he never cared about us, only Tripp. We practically raised ourselves. "Do you think he even knows about the curse? Grandpa did."

I snorted my answer. "Yeah, and look how wonderfully he turned out."

"Come to think of it, do you think Tripp knew anything about the curse?"

"I dunno. Probably." I muttered back.

We then sat there in silence, not saying a single word for the longest period of time, just listening to the chirping of crickets and watching the fish swim around our feet, with the full moon reflected against the surface of the pond. All was quiet, and there was an eerie sort of peace.

The serenity of my life never seemed to last long enough, it wasn't long before something happened. It's almost as if I could never be happy, not even for a moment. It was this stupid curse!

Speaking of the devil… I heard the sound of his panting before I even saw him. Jason came sprinting up the walk; tears were streaming down the sides of his face, and his chest was heaving with sobs. At first I thought Father had just yelled at him again or something, but then I realized that there was more to it than what met my eye. I got an ominous chill down my spine at that very moment; I could tell something was seriously wrong.

Athena was the first to react; she quickly scooped up Jason into her arms and tried to shush him, but this time it wasn't working, he continued to bawl.

"Jason. Jason, look at me!" I crouched down next to him and forced him to look me in the eye. I continued to speak using my stern voice "What happened? What's wrong? Jason answer me!"

"Stop! Charlie don't you see this is making it worse?! Right now he needs to be comforted not scolded!" I ignored her.

But Jason shook his head at Athena and looked at me. After taking a few big gulps of air to calm himself, he delivered his message. "It's Maria… s-she's d-dead…"

Just then my heart stopped. Time itself seemed to freeze as I processed those words. No matter how many times I repeated them to myself, they were just as unbelievable as the first time I'd heard it. "J-Jason, come on now, this isn't funny." My voice shook with disbelief.

"No Charlie, i-it's true… I-I saw i-it m-myself. A ch-chandelier fell on top of her as she was w-walking by. T-there was nothing I c-could do!" snot dribbled down his nose as he began to cry once more.

No, no, no! I thought to myself. This can't be true! There has to be some mistake! No, we all loved Maria, she was the only family we had left, and we had already lost so much. How could we lose anymore? We'd lost so much to a point where I felt that we just couldn't lose anything else. Wasn't there a limit to how much bad luck one should have?!

I jumped to my feet; I refused to believe what was happening. I began running back towards the house as fast as my legs could carry me, the other two following close behind. No, this isn't real not until I see the proof! I flew into the building and flung open the doors leading out to the entryway. There I was met with a scene that rent my heart in two.

There upon the floor lay the broken form of our nanny… Maria. The chandelier had been pulled aside, its glass shattered into a thousand pieces, all decorated with the red of her blood. Cops were all over the place, the house was roped off as a crime scene. I stumbled towards Maria's corpse my throat dry and my eyes spilling over.

I knelt down next to her lifeless form moaning "No, no, no! You can't be gone, you can't be!" my moans soon turned to shrieks as I violently shook Maria's body screaming for her to come back. A chasm had opened up in my chest, and my heart was weeping blood. The pain was unlike any that I had ever felt; I just wished that this was all a nightmare and that someone would just wake me up. But no such thing happened. I was vaguely aware of Athena trying to reason with me telling me that it was too late and there was nothing that I could do for her, and Jason screaming along with me in the background.

I heard an indistinct voice in the background say "Esposito, get the kids outta here." I then felt a pair of very large hands wrap around my waist like iron bars.

I remembered kicking and screaming in protest "No! She's the only family I have left! You can't take me away from her! Noooo!" The hands dragged me out of entryway and out into the front yard, but not before I caught a glimpse of the young redheaded Medical Examiner bend down to look at the body. She glanced back at me and we made eye contact for just one moment before she turned back to the corpse and continued her examination with the help another ME.

Jason was hauled out after me screaming, by a sandy haired Homicide Detective. Athena though ashen faced, was the only one who kept her cool (besides Father), and she walked out onto the lawn by herself refusing to make eye contact with me.

I continued on struggling against my captor, trying to get back inside the house. I kept this up until I felt a needle sink into my neck and then my whole body just went limp. A sedative, I thought. My whole world was collapsing in on me once again, and my thoughts became foggy. The last thing that I remembered was realizing that the young redheaded ME was none other than Alexis. From that point on I knew no more and was submerged in darkness.