Chapter Three

The minute I walked in the door I knew something was terribly wrong. There were sounds of tearing paper and frantic footsteps upstairs and the house was chaos. Furniture was overturned, random objects were scattered everywhere and many things like pictures, calendars and other little personal items had been removed completely. I dropped my stuff to the ground and ran up the stairs to where the noises were coming from, the upstairs den. When I got there the sight completely stopped my heart and put a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball. My forever dainty, sophisticated Aunt was leaned over the little fireplace we never use and was maniacally throwing things into the fire.

Documents, pictures, sticky notes, something that looked like a deed to our house and several contracts. Then came Cora's little contact book. It was midnight blue and what was odder now that I came to think of it, I had never seen inside it. "Cora?" It took me several tries to get her attention. When she finally looked at me, she pushed back some of her hair that had fallen into her face and looked at me as if she had never seen me before. Then while she was staring at my face she began mouthing things. She looked seriously deranged and I was very much contemplating whether or not to call her an ambulance. "Eva, Evangeline. You're here finally." Cora finally managed to say these things out loud and as she did she staggered towards me clutching the arm of our couch for support. Was she drunk? "Go get anything you cannot leave behind and meet me downstairs in five minutes. FIVE MINUTES!"

She practically threw me into my bedroom as she said this and went back to what she had been doing earlier. Nope, I thought to myself, not drunk, just crazy, that was great. I pulled my old bag out of my closet and threw things in. The things I put in were probably not what Cora had in mind but I was a seventeen year old girl, so I brought them anyways. IPod, cellphone, few pictures, wallet and on the way down the stairs, some tampons as an afterthought. Cora was waiting. She roughly seized my arm and pulled me face to face and said "Do exactly as I tell you tonight." Then she pulled me to our black BMW and got inside. As we drove away, I caught a flicker of light from behind me, I turned around slowly and saw the red hot and orange flames licking the sides of my house as the roof gave way and fell to the ground and rapidly became ashes.

I turned towards Cora but her face was set into a tight concentration and not once had she glanced back. Feeling alone and terrified I turned my face to look at my hands which were folded in my lap. Not that I could really see them because my eyes were in the process of being blinded by hot tears. Nice, I was going to cry like a five year old and I wasn’t even sure why. Something about that thought made me beyond angry. First Demi was acting weird, with no explanation, now Cora. What was going on? Did I not deserve to know although both of their actions so far had involved me directly? "Where are we going?' I asked. Cora did not answer. This only enraged me further, past the point of being rational or thinking clearly. Fine, she wants to do it like this, so can I? I unlocked my car door, and with one swift motion threw it open as we sped eighty miles per hour down the dark crowded interstate. Cora screamed and let go of the steering wheel and reached across my lap to close my door. Afterwards she quickly straightened up and got hold of the car again before she turned to me and cried "What is wrong with you, are you insane Evangeline?! I'm doing everything I can right now to protect you and get you somewhere safe and..." She stopped talking. I could feel my mouth open and my eyes unblinking but I did nothing about it. What she had just said had sounded like some line out of a horror flick. She looked out the front windshield again and said "Great! Oh my god, this is just great!!" She smashed the steering wheel a couple times with her fists as she said this and tears began to drip from her face and puddle onto her light brown leather pants. "Cora, please explain, something, anything, at least tell me where we're going." I pleaded. She looked up at me and said "I can't tell you everything but we're going back to where all this started, so please just trust me until we get there, and you will get the full story." I relaxed for a moment, though still perplexed about what she had said. "What about Demetria?" I asked the worry creeping back as I had thought about what she had said earlier. "Eva there is no need to worry about Demi; she'll arrive there a little while after we get there." I stopped asking questions, immediately thinking that I probably didn't want to know anymore at the moment.

Cora and I practically flew through the airport itself. And every time something threatened to hold us up Cora would speak to the person in charge in a low urgent voice and we would be on our way again. I could feel that I was exhausted, it was at least one in the morning when we were finally on our flight and taking off, but at the same time I felt a part of me, keeping me wide awake and prepared for what lay ahead. What frightened me most was what our destination I saw when we were boarding the plane. "Transylvania?" I asked. Cora just gravely nodded her head. I was in and out of consciousness on the flight there. It took us about twenty eight hours to get to Transylvania. As we boarded off the plane and out the airport I noticed there were no buildings. Just dark forest as far as the eye could see. I looked for a sign of transportation anywhere up the pitch black dirt road that led to this tiny little airport. I noticed then that it was really not that much of an airport even. I had always kind of hoped that if anything had ever happened to me, I would be taken to one of those huge mansions like in the Mafia movies, with the snack bars and hot pool boys. No dice. I had to be dragged out to the middle of some foreign boonies. "Eva, we have no time to waste, now move!" Cora hissed giving me a rough shove from behind. I looked around wildly trying to distinguish exactly where I was supposed to be moving to. Cora simply turned and headed towards the dark forest beckoning me to follow her.

About an hour later after hiking on some hidden forest trail, well Cora was hiking, I was stumbling and falling a lot, we finally reached what looked like the shore of the ocean or a humungous lake. We had just started taking the first steps towards it when a monstrous black animal charged at me, slashing at my face and cutting my the side of my face from the chin to my temple. "Ahhhhh!" My face went cold for a second before giving way to a hot, wet feeling and I knew I must have been bleeding a lot. I moved my hair out of the congealing blood on my face and looked back for the attacker. It stood about twenty feet from me and I could sort of make out that it was a horse with a rider. Cora!! My brain reeled at the thought of her. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing, I would never survive without her. The horse and rider turned towards me and charged again with what looked like a blade held towards me. I closed my eyes and got ready for death, when a gunshot sounded from somewhere nearby and the horse took off to the forest without a trace. I looked to where the gunshot had come from and saw a small brown boat gliding across the water silently with a short man with a completely hollowed cheek, and my Aunt. He held up a three fingered hand and waved me on. Through the dead of night I heard him say to me with a faint smile, "All aboard...."