Chapter Three

(Quin)

Two weeks. Gerard and I had had two weeks to arrange and attend our parents funeral, pack up all of our belongings, and get on a plane to a place that’s now supposed to be our new home; Ireland, a whole other country.

It’s been a very emotional ride overall, and sometimes I even think I can’t handle it, but then I try to tell myself that I’m strong enough. Life isn’t worth throwing away just for emotional turmoil, I pound into my brain, but sometimes I wonder if even I still believe it. Sometimes, you just want to give up.

Our parents had been so lively. It wasn’t fair that they should be taken away like that, without warning. But I guess I had seen it coming. Being the oldest, I knew a lot more than Gerard ever did, and I eventually figured out what Dad had been doing with some of his “special” savings. He didn’t seemed bothered with it at all until that one night. It was just a couple of years ago, really, but I remember it so clearly – it was the night I heard him tell my mother we had to move. From that day on, he was so different – anxiety and fear became a big part of his life, though he never showed that to us kids, but I saw it. He was strong towards us, and so was my mother, protecting us from the dangers of life and bringing us joy whenever they could, but secretly, they were afraid. They had kept up that false sense of protection for us all the way up until their deaths, but I was proud of them for it anyways. But now they were gone.

I shook those depressing thoughts out of my head and tried to focus on unpacking what I had brought up. Grandma said she had hired a service that would be helping with bringing up boxes from the truck, but so far, I hadn’t seen anyone at all. For all I knew, it could be imaginary friends of hers. Wouldn’t surprise me if it actually was; like fairies or something. That was one thing about Grandma – she had a way of making you question her mental stability. One day, she would seem perfectly fine, another day, she would go on a rant about how much “things” were changing and how “things” weren’t good. When we were little and would ask her what those things were, she’d always just “tsk” and not reply, only to keep muttering worriedly under her breath. Although it was mostly amusing, I did worry about her sometimes.

Suddenly, there was the pound of a boot on my door.

Guess Grandma did hire someone after all, I thought, surprised, and went to answer it. I was greeted with a large box filling the frame of my door, two hands barely hanging on to the sides and a tuff hair sticking out from the top.

“Coming in!” came a grunt, “Get outta my way!”

I quickly stepped to the side, allowing the person behind the box entrance to my room. Setting the cardboard box down, Gerard cracked his back with his fist, then shot me an irritated glance.

“She forgot,” was all he said, then disappeared out of the door, yelling behind him, “and I’m not doing this by myself!”

Frowning, I followed after him, not really relishing the thought of traveling up and down the long, spiraling staircases.

I guess we were lucky, in a way, that we got to move in with a grandmother who was rich, though maybe slightly eccentric, because we didn’t have to wait over a long period of time for all of our things to come from America. She had just paid for it all to come with us on the plane. How she did it, I have no idea since our plane wasn’t a cargo plane, but I wasn’t going to question it. I just headed down the stairs and was thankful that at least I didn’t have to wait a month for clean clothes.

About three hours later, Gerard and I finished with the unpacking. My room was a total mess, boxes lying everywhere on the floor and bed, making it impossible to move around. I just stared at it all for a few minutes, shaking my head. There was no way I was going to deal with all of those boxes at that moment and decided to leave it be for a while. I was always good at procrastinating when I wanted to, and right now I really didn’t have the motivation to put everything away after bringing all of it up. So, I decided instead to explore the house. I had always wanted to that when I was a kid, but was never allowed, and it would probably help get my mind off of things. Grandma didn’t seem to be anywhere close anyways, so now was a good time. I ventured out onto the second floor, my curiosity growing the more I traveled down the hall.

Grandma had a huge house. It was in some need of repair and cleaning, but still, you could tell it was incredibly beautiful at one time with all the antique, Victorian furniture she had everywhere. Down the hallway walls were set such luxurious chairs and sofa’s with black wood and red fabric, you did your best to try to avoid sitting in them because of how expensive they looked. I couldn’t help but feel the urge to want fix the place up back to the perfection of what it used to be.

The second floor was pretty large; I’d say at least twenty rooms, each meant to be master bedrooms. There were two wide hallways, one that made the back spine of the building and another that jutted out of it’s middle to make a sort of stem of a capital “t.” At the opposite end of the “stem” hall were the huge spiraling staircases we used to get up and down from the main floor. They twisted in and out of each other in a rich, wooden grace, their trails eventually intersecting at the end so that people who started at the top on the different staircases would end up on the same one before they reached the bottom. Gerard’s room and my room were right across from each other in this hall, but almost all the way to the end.

I scratched my head and wondered what could be in all the rooms before me. When I was little, I fantasized that different animals were kept locked inside them and even imagined the noises they made in the night. I decided to figure it out for myself and started at the very first room to the right of the staircase. Opening the dark wooden door, I stuck my head in carefully, looking around.

“Hey!” came a startled voice. I jerked back with surprise and shut the door quickly, removing the iron handle from my grasp and taking a step back, not sure what just happened.

Soon, the door reopened and the same girl from the kitchen, Corrie, stood there, an irritated expression on her smooth face.

Not quite the animal I expected… I thought to myself.

“You know,” she said with her arms crossed, “when a door is closed, you usually knock first.”

I blinked. I had totally forgotten Grandma had an exchange student. An American one too.

I hooked my thumbs in my jean’s belt loops, tilting my head. “Sorry,” was all I said. Now that I looked closer, I noticed what I hadn’t noticed in the kitchen: her eyes were a startling silver, not a very common color for eyes at all. She had a very unique, spunky style about her as well, like she usually found most of her things at thrift stores but seemed to have a knack of turning them into something that looked good on her.

She still looked slightly irritated, but with a sigh, she brought a pleasant expression to her face, causing those silver eyes to sparkle.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked.

I shook my shaggy head, looking down the hall and scratching the back of my neck. “No, I was just going looking around for a bit, seeing what were in the different rooms.” I looked back to her. “I forgot that Gram is taking you in for a while.”

She nodded. “Yea, it’s been quite the… experience so far.” A small smile lit her face and I could only guess at how tripped out she was by Gram’s whimsical personality already.

I chuckled a little bit. “If I know anything about Gram, you’re probably royally creeped out by now.”

“Heh, it’s just the house that gives me the creeps, Nana’s not that bad, just maybe a little odd...”

“Yea, she’s alright sometimes,” was all I said. There was a slight pause for a little while as we stood there awkwardly, but then Corrie broke the silence.

“So you’re exploring then?” she asked thoughtfully.

“Something like that,” I replied, shrugging. “Haven’t got very far though.”

She seemed to ponder for a little while, then finally said, “Do you mind if I come with? I really haven’t been out of my room all day and I’ve kind of been dying for a chance to explore since the day I got here.”

I smiled. Why not? “Sure.”

“I’m so curious about what’s in the different rooms,” she said as she closed her door behind her, “though I think they might just all be bedrooms.”

I shrugged again and we started down the hall. “You might be right.”

The first room we came to, which was the one next to Corrie’s, held nothing but an old wooden bed with dark purple drapery on it and a sparse amount of furniture. It wasn’t very interesting at all, but we walked in anyways, looking around with just a bit of curiosity, the floor creaking in protest to our entry.

“Doesn’t look like there’s much in here…” Corrie thought out loud. We rummaged through the drawers for a while, and when we came up with nothing, decided to move on.

The next room was a bit more furnished, blue-gray’s being the primary theme. There was one of those large princess-like beds with a dusky blue draping around it’s top, the tons of fluffy pillows and comforter an inviting warm. A fireplace was on the wall across from the bed and there was a large area rug between them. There was also a lavish dresser with a large mirror in the room, dust on the top of it marking how long the room really had been out of use.

“Hey, look at this!” exclaimed Corrie.

She was standing over by the dresser and in her hand was a small bone bird, a piece of black leather running through it’s top to make a necklace.

“I found it in the top drawer,” she said, bringing it close to her face to examine it. Her nose scrunched up as she focused on the bird, and her fingers rubbed along the smooth bone.

“Huh,” I mused. “Try it on.”

Pulling back her wavy ebony hair that almost reached past her waist, Corrie clasped the bone necklace around her neck.

“Hey, I like this!” she said, looking at her reflection in the mirror. “Nana wouldn’t mind if I kept it, would she?”

“I doubt she even knows it exists,” I replied. “Besides, half of the stuff in this house isn’t even being used, so I don’t think she’d mind anyways that you’ve found it.”

“Sweet. I’m so keeping it.”

I smiled a little and turned to the dresser. It was definitely old; the wood was cracked and faded and the sides had water stains that had crawled up them some time in the past, just like most of the other objects in the room.

“Find anything else in it?” I asked, prying open one of the drawers and looking curiously in.

She shook her head. “Just this.”

“Hm.” I shut the drawer. “Well, should we move on to another room then?”

“Let’s.”

Just as we left and were about to open the next door, Gerard’s voice stopped us. He was standing at the top of the staircase, leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

“Well now, what were you two up to?” he asked, green eyes sparkling mischievously. I could have punched him.

One of Corrie’s silver eyes squinted as she displayed a confused look and she just stood there for a second, not quite sure what to say.

“We’re exploring,” I stated simply. “You can join if you’d like.”

He chuckled a little, and I gave him a warning glance, telling him silently to be careful with his words. I wanted to beat him up, just for being so immature.

“Maybe sometime later,” he replied with a smirk, “Gram wants us down for lunch.” Then he promptly disappeared back down the stairs.

“Bummer.” Corrie looked disappointed that their expedition had ceased, but then shrugged. “Well, I guess we’ll have to continue this adventure later then.”

I nodded, heading down the stairs after my brother. “Definitely. But hey, at least you found something.”

“True.” She smiled brightly, rubbing the bone bird around her neck, then followed after me. “That I did.”

Authors Note:

Well now! Finally a chapter from yours truly! :P I know it doesn't seem to be significant at the moment, but it pretty much is, as you can probably guess.. ;)

Questions for You:

Does the pace seem alright?

Was the description visualizable?

Was anything about it too long/boring?