This first part of the chapter is just to give you a feel for the character.

This is the first story in a series of 5 (so far) called the Perished Chronicles, because in each story people who have somehow already "died" in a sense are involved. The rest will be written and posted once this story is complete. However, the characters are different in each story, they don't really follow except for the one that will be posted right after this story, where the same characters will return briefly. Essentially they all take place in the same universe and have the same set of rules, but they involve different people. But who cares about that right? You're here to read this story!

Enjoy!

The Perished Chronicles: Book 1

The Crypt Under Shadow Avenue

Chapter 1:

Shadow Avenue

The street that I live on tends to give most people the creeps. It’s aptly named. Who names a street Shadow Avenue anyway?

I mean it’s always dark just over our houses, and I think it’s because of the big twisted trees all over the place, but it’s as if the clouds always gather there, and the sun always sets there first. I never see any cars drive by, or even hear the sounds of sirens or the distant hum of the highway. I hear them the moment I step off the curb onto the next street, but on mine the sound just seems to die off within seconds.

I think my street just may be cursed. Great.

It doesn’t bother me though. I’ve lived here for the past four years and nothing bad has happened to me. Though I’ve never actually seen any of my neighbors… Their lawns are unkempt and overgrown, but the mail seems to vanish and I sometimes see movement through the windows, like people peering through the curtains and pulling them shut quickly.

A lot of people at my school tell me that my street scares them and that they avoid it on their way home. I actually find it pretty cool, the sinister atmosphere; it really makes me feel comfortable. I guess I’ve just gotten used to it.

Mom’s never been around. Dad died when I was five, and ever since then Mom’s been trying to find ways to distract herself. Now she’s never home, because of that job of hers. I don’t even know what she does. She just moved us here because it was closer to the airport so that she could make her flights all the time. But she stays abroad anyway, so it ended up being a waste.

She wasn’t even here the day the movers came. I had to show them where to put everything, sign the papers, and assure them that I would be fine. I was fourteen then. I’ve only seen Mom about two times since then, during the first Christmas for two days and once for a few hours in between her flights last year. She sends me letters and postcards, and money gets deposited in my bank account every month for me to live off of, but she always sends way too much so I’ve been saving it.

I don’t see “the family” very often either. It’s pretty much just me and my cousin Warren that bother keeping in contact. He comes to visit me about once or twice a year since he lives in the next city, and we email each other about once every few weeks. Sometimes he calls, but not often. It’s not because he doesn’t want to, it’s because he has to call me from either a friend’s house or from a phone booth. His mom has this weird phobia of phones. Yeah. Aunt Jill has always confused me.

It’s not as lonely as it sounds, you know. I like my privacy. It was weird the first year, but Mom was already traveling a lot then too, so I got used to it pretty fast. I know how to cook and everything, and I get good marks so the teachers don’t ask to see my Mom, and that makes life a whole lot easier.

I guess you could say that my life is pretty boring. I have friends at school and some days I hang out with them at the mall and stuff, but nothing really exciting. I’m told my personality’s pretty dull and I’m only 5”6 and not very good at sports. I bleached my hair and dyed it bright green just to make life interesting, it used to dark brown… It’s getting a bit long but I can’t be bothered to cut it. My eyes are really pale brown, but I still don’t like them. Got my ears pierced too, one per ear, just to humor my friends at school. Nothing fancy, just a couple of golden studs.

I try to buy interesting clothes too, hoping it’ll make my life a bit more motivated, but no luck so far. I have a lot of shirts with bright colors and horizontal stripes, to bring a bit of color into my empty monochromatic life, and mostly black jeans and cargos. My friends have been telling me that it’s really cool that I have my own style and that I seem so “composed” all the time. They say it makes me seem like I’m a bad-boy, but without the crappy marks. I never know how to take that.

A lot of girls seem to like me. I think they may be getting the wrong idea. I’ve turned into this popular school icon. They really think I’m the strong silent type, but with an artistic twist. They say I’m deep, and that there’s more to me than meets the eye. They think I’m fearless because of where I live, and they say I’m cool too, because I don’t seem to care about stuff in general. What’s so great about not caring about stuff?

I’m no artist, unless you like stick figures. I mean, I guess I’m pretty okay on the piano, but it’s all self-taught, I couldn’t read music if my life depended on it. I’m really not deep, more of an empty shell really. What you see is what you get. I like listening to my iPod, does that make any difference?

These girls and my friends just wouldn’t understand. I’m not really anything at all. I’m just searching for something to give meaning to my life.

God. Maybe I should just buy a dog or something.

---

I think it was past eleven when I first caught a glimpse of him. The strange guy from the house across from me, that is. I remember it was almost pitch black that night, as usual. Our streetlamps are always out, only the one if front of my house works, but it always flickers like something out of a horror movie.

I’d gotten home late because our school had a “Fall Concert”. Hell if I knew what it was about, I’m just in charge of the tech team. I tell all the new kids what to do, have them set up the mikes and the music, and then I head up the ladder on the side of the stage into my little control panel hiding place and do the lighting myself. Another responsibility I took on to try and spice up my life. It didn’t work. At least when I graduate at the end of this year I won’t have to do it anymore.

So here I was in my black T-shirt that had “Tech” written in big white letters on the back, my black sweats, and no jacket in the middle of October, hauling my bright green side bag strapped over my left shoulder, almost at my house, and I just happen to look over right at that moment.

He was across the street from me, just beyond the short gate that surrounded his old, towering house. Thirteen Shadow Avenue. My house was Fourteen. He was standing there as if lost in thought, but he looked up abruptly when I stopped walking.

He wasn’t especially strange looking, at least for someone who seemed to have spawned right out of thin air. He looked to be about the same age as me too. He really caught me off guard though, since I’d never seen another actual living person on my street before. He seemed just as surprised to see me.

“Hi!” I called over, raising a hand and waggling my fingers. I wasn’t sure what else to do. Like I said, I don’t talk to people much. That didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to try.

The guy blinked at me at first, and then he looked me over as if he wasn’t sure he was seeing straight. I looked him over too.

His most striking feature was probably the fact that he was incredibly pale. I might have thought he was an albino, except for his long jet black hair tied in a low ponytail that was tossed over his left shoulder. He was dressed completely in black, or maybe it was dark green, I couldn’t tell with the light flickering the way it was. In fact, he even had some sort of cloak hanging over his shoulders.

But his eyes kind of gave me goose bumps, because every time the light flickered out his eyes shone brightly in the dark, much like a cat’s, in a bright purple hue.

“…Hello.” He said finally in a surprisingly natural voice, hesitant but friendly, “…Who are you?”

“I’m Lionel,” I replied, offering him a small smile, “I think we’re neighbors. I’ve lived here for the past four years.”

The streetlamp stopped flickering. It did that sometimes. Only the almighty lamp could decide if you were worthy to get into the house without tripping on that stupid first step all the time. I could now distinctly see my neighbor raise his eyebrows in surprise.

“Really? Four years you say?” he said as he approached the gate and pushed it open a bit. I walked over to him.

At this proximity I could clearly make out his face, and I was surprised to discover that his eyes actually were a bright purple color. Contacts maybe? He was much taller than I was, almost a foot above me. His face was slim and handsome, despite his sickly skin tone, but he had deep bags under his eyes. I tried not to look surprised.

“Yep, it’s almost been five years actually, and I’ve never seen anyone else on this street.” I reported, still smiling cheerfully, “I was starting to think I might be the only one here.”

“Oh, it must be because you’re not out after dark very often.” My neighbor told me, offering a small smile of his own, “I don’t go out during the day.”

“Oh?” I raised a single eyebrow, one of my many useless talents, “Why is that?”

“Oh… well,” he hesitated, shifting his feet, “I...I have a skin condition, you see…the sun’s rays burn my eyes and it make my skin blister. So…I only come out after dark.”

I whistled. I couldn’t imagine a life without sunlight. I’d heard of those kinds of diseases before though. Readers Digest. Very useful.

“That’s tough.” I said in awe, “It must be pretty hard to make friends.”

“Yes…” he smiled quietly, “…It would be quite a feat.”

He looked away and then snapped his attention back to me as he suddenly thought of something.

“Oh I apologize!” he said quickly, “My name is Morden, and I’m very pleased to meet you.”

He then bowed very low, so I just nodded and smiled awkwardly. He didn’t have an accent or anything, but his speech and actions sure were refined. Then again, it’s not like the guy seemed like he got to talk to the general populace very often. Maybe he was imitating the kind of vocabulary he’d seen in movies or read in books.

“It’s nice to meet you Morden!” I replied pleasantly, offering him my hand, “I’m glad to have finally met you!”

Morden looked at my hand for a moment, as if he wasn’t quite sure what I was doing.
Then, slowly, he brought his ghostly white hand forward, a few long slender fingers extended, complete with manicured nails. It looked like he was going to try to poke me.

Instead of waiting, I grabbed his hesitant hand in mine and shook it fiercely, just to show him how. I seem to have surprised him at first, but his face soon broke out into a wide and sincere smile. He even laughed a little and he shook back just as hard, as if it were a game. He was really delighted just by experiencing a little handshake.

It surprised me even more that I was actually enjoying myself. I had just met a very strange person, and now things were more interesting.

This was a very good thing.

“So, how was your…day?” Morden inquired as he tucked his hands behind him, genuinely interested, almost childlike in his curiosity. I chuckled and grinned.

Something new. Something different. This is what I’d been waiting for.

---

I visited Morden almost every night for the next few weeks. We never seemed to run out of things to talk about. I’d tell him about school and homework, and he’d talk to me about constellations and books he’d read recently that his mother had brought home for him.

“Mama keeps me safe.” He told me once, “She’s very protective of me, since Father’s long gone.” He hadn’t seemed very upset, more like he was being reminded of something pleasant. I hadn’t been sure how to react, so I just smiled and nodded.

He asked me to do something weird though. He told me not to visit him every third night. No explanation, nothing. I had just nodded at the time, not thinking much of it.

But one night I started noticing strange things happening at Thirteen Shadow Avenue.

I guess it was because I used to always go to bed early most nights when I had nothing better to do, and I never used to open the blinds. But since I started visiting Morden, I was noticing all of the peculiar behavior on my street.

The first thing I’d noticed was a man passing by my house around midnight. He was wearing a brown trench coat and a hat. My lights were out, so I stared freely. He stopped to get a pebble out of his shoe, and that’s when I noticed that he had no legs. And as I squinted, it was clear that he had no face either.

There was an invisible man in a trench coat and a hat passing by my house. And he was wearing bowling shoes.

The next thing I saw around twelve-thirty was a boy playing with a red ball. He was dressed in white and even had snow-white hair. He was just bouncing the brightly colored ball in the street alone. Then he looked up at my dark window, and I was shocked to realize that he had no eyes. Just big, empty sockets.

But the thing that made my hair stand on end was around one in the morning… when a thin, dark-haired woman emerged from behind Morden’s house. She was clearly his mother, but it wasn’t her that scared me. It was the fact that she was hauling a large form out of the house and into the backyard. Then she bent down to pick up a shovel, and she started digging.

The next morning I went into their yard to check. The ground had been disturbed in multiple places. And I saw a rotting human finger poking out of a particularly fresh patch of soil.

There were bodies buried beneath Thirteen Shadow Avenue.

I felt my body grow cold in shock.

---

End of Chapter 1.

Okay guys, I really need your input here. Though chapter two will probably give you a better idea of how this story will go, I really want to know what you think of this first chapter! So please, if you have ANY thoughts on it AT ALL, just let me know in a review!

Thanks so much for reading!