Prologue

The setting: Portiston, Massachusetts. The date: January 3, 1818. The place: Mostin Manor. It was 11:54 at night. Two men and a woman were conducting a highly confidential meeting in the living room of the before-mentioned house.

"Is she dead?" The woman's question was a blade cutting through the thick and heavy silence. "I think so; let's check." The first man answered his wife's question.

Quietly the trio slunk upstairs to the room in the back left corner of the mansion. It was a girl's bedroom. The two men pulled a dust-coated vanity away from the wall. Behind the mirror was a small locked door. The woman grabbed the necklace she wore constantly and pulled an old, black key engraved with the Mostin family crest and motto on it (a black spider with fangs bared surrounded by the words "All Enemies Beware") off the heavy chain. Hands shaking, she reached up and unlocked the door.

It swung open to reveal a room as big as a chicken coop. It had a small desk, an even smaller table, a cot, and a skeleton. Or rather a girl who resembled a skeleton. She wore a threadbare dress so thin you could see every one of her ribs. She had dark shadows under her eyes and the cheekbones on her pale face protruded farther than on a normal person's face. The thing that really stood out though was not the fact that she was starving or the fact that she'd obviously been in that room a long time, the thing that stood out were her eyes.

They were a cross between that of wild animal and the eyes of person who knows they will soon meet their maker- wild yet dignified. You wouldn't want to be the one those eyes looked at with anger and hate, and right now they were focused on the woman.

Using her last remaining strength, the girl tried to walk over to the trio but collapsed after the second step. She managed to pull herself up so she was leaning against the desk. What she said haunted the men and woman for the rest of their lives. "I curse you! I curse the Mostin Family! Your descendents shall suffer as I did! And I curse the Caldwell Family as well! (Caldwell and Mostin were the last names of the men and woman. The couple's last name was Mostin and the man's was Caldwell.) My spirit will never rest until it has been avenged! Until the truth is revealed! Until then I will torment you until you beg to die! You and your descendents will rue this day for the rest of miserable lives!" With that said the girl fell to ground. And then, on a cold winters night in 1818, the girl died.