Moonchild

CHAPTER THREE

There was no time to speak, no time to breathe, or for any possible time there was left for all three of us, to think. The sky turned dark by the second. The knot was clenching on my chest like a massive claw. With every step I took, and in a split second Marie and the shaking-George took after me, up the terrace's front wooden steps, the clouds thickened and covered every ounce of happiness from the sky.

I started breathing as soft and slow as possible, for I realised, by the second, that Marie was trying to act as a grown up so that the other two of us could count on her bravery. She breathed in slowly but firmly, and that calmed her, I was guessing...for the time. George was shaking like a naked tree in a strong wind, holding the half empty bottle of water in his one hand, and his other hand was forming a fist ready to attack whatever forced to turn his stomach upside down, and then released; the fist was formed again in a split second and then released again. I, on the other hand, was climbing those stairs like I was certain that nothing could lower my bravery and expectations for this building.

Boy, how wrong I was!

The half-moon symbol!

'It was my parent's' I whispered, but no one paid any attention.

It was as if the temperature of the area dropped instantly, and we each stopped shortly to observe the surroundings of the terrace. Marie gave us some exploring ideas while we were on our walk towards the mysterious place, one of them being to have in mind that everything paranormal is not easy to be spotted, but only on the undersurface of the naked eye. That's the final thing she pointed out to us before we arrived. Little did she know that soon all the happiness we felt to explore, would disappear.

We never should have brought her here.

We never should have come here.

The floor looked like an old wooden patio with thick layers of cobwebs in its corners around us, and with every step we took, it creaked just like in the many films that I saw with nana; creepy, and while the high pitched sound echoed it made my heart to pause, or stop, for an endless second. The colour of the walls of the exterior of the building looked as if it was melting towards the ground, and when I narrowed my eyes, almost closing them, I could see that there were off-white patches that looked like a pattern of a destroyed map of the planet Earth. Now, in the left and right side of the massive doors there were rubbish on the floor that smelt nothing like the wonderful flowers I wished to be blooming among the dried grass in front of the building. Such a pity, I thought to myself, that there are no colours anywhere near this place.

When I glanced towards Marie, she was tracing the top of the dried grass with her palm as she walked by them, starting to express her sorrow for lack of colour verbally, but stopped as if words could not describe her thoughts.

Then I glanced at George, and he was browsing, with a long stick he found on our way, the abandoned cans of soft drinks that rotted from what looked like many years of abandonment, and then moved towards the side of the porch, not specifically close enough for Marie to notice him, but in a safe amount of distance away to catch her lovely strawberry perfume; I forgot where we were for a second and smiled, because the air was coming towards him from heaven. I believed that it gave him a small boost to his spirit.

The moment was over, though, as the vibration of the off-key glitching noise buzzed.

'Urghh!'

There it was again! The moment I neared the entrance of the building, and as soon as I glanced again at the half-moon shape that was carved above the doors, the glitching noise pierced my ears.

'WHAT?' Marie shouted instantly.

'What happened?' George said in a shock. His arm tight around Marie.