PROLOGUE

“Hey kids, what do you know about this house?”

The five startled kids stopped their game of catch and turned to look at the woman in the car as their baseball rolled away. Her head and left arm was hanging out of her window as she leaned against it, waiting for an answer from the children. The kids noticed two other faces looking at them in the car as well as the head of another one turned away from them. So the lady had three kids of her own.

“It’s a pretty nice house,” Janine shouted from her position down the street, turning to look at the house behind her.

The other four rolled their eyes. They knew exactly what she was going to tell the lady, judging from that sentence. Janine liked to exaggerate stories, but what she told were pretty good ones. Especially when the stories included that house on the hill…

The girl sitting in the passenger seat leaned across her mother’s lap. “It’s for sale right?”

The kids sniggered as Tommy called back, “It’s always been for sale.”

The lady began to get impatient, but she tried to hide it. “Well, what else can you tell me about this house? I’ve asked my real estate agent but she doesn’t say anything else except that it’s affordable.”

The kids shuffled their feet as they processed this new information. So someone was actually going to move into that place. Janine shuddered.

“Well, it really is affordable. The thing’s huge! Anyways, I’ll tell you what I know.

She slowly walked over to the iron gate, a smile on her face. “There’s a rumour going around that this place is haunted.”

Stephenie snorted.

Everyone turned to look at the manor perched a top the hill, separated from the world by an eight foot tall iron fence at the bottom of the hill. It was a beautiful piece of architecture, built in grey stone with ivy climbing up one side of the building. There were four marble columns that embellished the façade of the manor and continued through the balcony on the second floor until it reached the roof on the third floor. From their position at the bottom of the hill, everyone could see the many windows that seemed as though they were staring back at them. The girl in the passenger seat fell out of her seat when she tried to get an even closer look. Everyone turned their attention away from the house to look at her except for Janine.

“That’s the house!” she exclaimed.

Janine flicked an annoyed glance at her before continuing. “The house is very old. It’s older than this city, which is at least three centuries old. The people who built it were also cousins of the founders of the city. They had kids and those kids grew up and had their own kids and so on. But this piece of real estate remained within the family until recently—nearly a century ago--the oldest son of the current family grew up and died.”

She paused for breath and looked straight at the girl in the passenger seat. She found an attentive pair of eyes staring back at her and felt appeased.

“Leila’s great-grandfather was the mortician who handled the son’s body. He told her once that the son fell from the third floor onto the first floor where he was found with a broken neck and leg. After that accident though, the family who lived there forever quietly moved out. The day after their son’s funeral there wasn’t a sign of them anywhere around the town.”

Leila nodded, looking bored. “Poor guy.”

“A few months later someone else moved into that mansion. They moved out, saying that they didn’t like the mansion after all, and then after that came a whole string of people for ninety years. Every single family who moved in moved out a short while after, not saying why they wanted out.

“Eventually the price of the house went down, since no one was interested in buying it. But hey! We’re just kids. You’ve seen those movies where the kids try to scare away the adults by telling scary stories. You don’t have to trust us.” Janine stopped and smiled sweetly at the lady. “Thanks for asking. That’ll be five dollars for taking up my time.”

The girl in the passenger seat frowned as her mother reached into her bag and pulled out a bill. “Yeah. That’s good storytelling. Maybe you’ll grow up to be a writer. Thanks for telling us that story.”

The kids around Janine sniggered as the woman rolled up her windows and drove away.

Janine gave the house a last look before she turned to the others. “Shut up.”

Ryan looked at her. “So you gave them a new story, huh?”

Everyone turned to look at her. It wasn’t like Janine to tell a story about the house without mentioning the murder that happened there.

“I didn’t like that girl sitting next to the lady. I just wanted to do them a favour. Let’s play ball!” Janine ran off to look for the ball as Leila, Ryan, Tommy, and Stephenie got back into position at the bottom of the hill in front of the manor.

I sat and watched all of this from the safety of the branch of the maple tree next to the iron gate. I heard everything and it was entertaining to hear what they said. Janine’s brash behaviour has grown on me, and I’m glad. I don’t like how she treated that girl in the car though. Though the way she acted frightens me a little.