Chapter 2: An unexpected inheritance

2nd chapter WOO FINALLY! hehe

The car rode past beautiful mountains and luscious forests stained with the scarlet colors of the setting sun. 11 year old, Simone Revielle stared out of the backseat window, her eyes trained, not on the landscape but something far beyond that, a world only she could see. Simone was a rather peculiar child: inky black-blue chin length hair, a rather pale complexion, and eyes that could only be described as odd: they were several different colors that moved like fog trapped in a glass sphere, and if that weren't odd enough they were unnaturally intelligent for someone her age. She was in fact a genius.

 

Simone sighed in the magnified silence of the GTI and broke it like a bullet to glass. Small spaces didn't bother her but she felt slightly suffocated by the lack of room. The car jolted slightly as they pulled onto an old, worn stretch of road. The forest seemed to grow darker the farther and deeper they drove into the trees. To Simone it felt as if the trees were watching them and were closing in, determined to never let them escape from the darkness.

 

"This place is evil", she whispered, but in the cramped confines the whisper might as well have been spoken aloud.

 

"Oh, Honey! This place isn't evil! Now, where did you get an idea like that?" Eliza said with a giggle.

 

Simone shivered, "I can tell, the trees are closing in and something is watching us just beyond the safety of the sunlight."

 

She watched her parents exchange a worried look that they thought she was too young to understand. But she did, and she wondered why she even bothered saying anything. They just never listened.

 

"Oh, sweetie it's just your imagination taking over again." Eliza said with a big smile that didn't reach her jade-green eyes. "There's nothing but animals in the woods."

 

Simone replied with a big, fake smile of her own, "You're probably right! Hehe, I probably read too many mystery and horror novels."

 

Eliza smiled, visibly relieved that her daughter wasn't crazy. Simone looked out the window again and was shocked to see that in the middle of this forest there was a small collection of buildings that could have been either a neighborhood or a small town. A big sign with worn and chipped paint said "Welcome to HAUNTED TERRACE, the scariest town in Romania!" Hmm, so it was a town.

 

"Funny place for your dad to live" Francis said, as they drove by the sign.

 

Eliza giggled again, "I always thought it fit him so well, he was always talking about the 'ghost of the Revielle Manor' and how ghosts and supernatural things lived in the woods and the backyard hedgemaze, even in the manor itself. But when i was scared he'd always go, 'oh, don't worry little 'liza, these spirits are here to protect me and you from harm,' and that would always make me feel better." She sighed in resigned way.

 

"Do you miss Grandpa, mom?" Simone asked.

 

"Of course, I do. When i got the phone call i was shocked and sad. The reason the will was only just read is because they had a difficult time finding it. I was overjoyed when i heard that the estate was left in my name, you should have seen my aunt's face! I never liked her, so that was a victory in its own right." Eliza was silent for a moment probably reliving the memory.

 

"How come I never met him before he died? It sounds like he was nice!" Simone asked. This question had burned in her mind from the moment she heard she even HAD a grandfather.

 

"He was nice, there's no doubt about that. The reason is that for some strange reason he died right around the time you were born, on that same day even! I never even heard about it until 2 weeks after! I always wondered why he died, his cause of death was inconclusive, they thought he died in an explosion at his personal laboratory but they never found his body..." She trailed off into an akward silence and started playing with her light brown hair. Simone didn't press her to continue, she didn't need to.

 

'He died the day I was born? How is that a coincedence? And they didn't even find his body, he could have survived!' She thought about this as the car made it's way through the streets of the so-called "town." She realized that it couldn't be true, they would have found him somewhere, in the woods or something. She looked at the forest and shivered again, that's not the first place she would go after being in an explosion. Well, anyway coincedence or not being born on the same day your grandfather dies is just too creepy.

 

She was jolted out of her thoughts when the car stopped suddenly in front of a very tall, very menacing gate made of rusted black iron. The words "Revielle Manor" stood out in a faded silver. Thorny vines were wrapped around almost the entire gate, similar to chains and just as effective. Francis gave an exasperated gasp of disbelief.

 

"So, these bushes really are here! And I thought the dude that read the will was just exagerating!" He groaned and got out of the car, a few seconds later Simone and Eliza saw he had produced a pair of hedge clippers from the trunk. "It's always good to be prepared!" He said with a wink at the pair of them. He then walked to the gate and started chopping vines like mad. Within minutes he had cleared away most of the thorns. He grabbed the gate and pulled it open with a resonating screech of rusty hinges.

 

He waltzed back to the car and grinned, "Not bad for a guy in his late 30's eh?" He called as he threw the clippers back into the trunk. He climbed back into the car and they started moving. They rode past the gate, up a long decaying road and they pulled up to a large manor that looked like a ghost of it's former glory.

 

"Well guys," Eliza said with barely contained excitement, "welcome to The Revielle Manor!"

 

 

Author's Note

SEcond Chapter! And it only took 3 months -_- Hope you enjoy! Chapter 3 is on its way! ^.^
BTW for those of you who have trouble, you pronounce her last name Rev-E-ell, i know i just wanted it to be unique!