In Vendetta House (The Vendetta Series #1)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Since it is Sunday, everyone is either sleeping in or already off. The roads are dead quiet as I stroll down the road to the convenience store. I've told Mom and Dad time and time again that I am old enough to get a license and start driving. But nope. They're afraid I'll somehow get in a car accident doing 30 mph on the small streets of our suburb.

The wind is slowly picking up, I can feel it creeping into my unzipped jacket, winding itself around my torso. For a second there, I am convinced I have not gusts of wind entwined around me, but snakes. Vicious, scaly, human-strangling snakes. But when I look down, there is nothing. What is wrong with me today? I scold at myself.

Needing a distraction, I glance around the neighborhood I am walking through. It's the middle of Autumn so the brown leaves that had fallen has a satisfying crunch as I step on each one. I hop from one foot to the other stepping on a leaf each time, giving an occasional twirl. And that's when it happens again. I fall with a thud, palms getting grazed by the concrete attempting to hold my suddenly very heavy head up. Then the rest comes. The pinpricks up my spine, the pressure inside my skill, the air sucked away from my lungs, and then lastly, the images.

____

It was the Autumn when I was three, turning four, before Sebastian was even born. I'm not even sure how I remember, but I somehow do. It was only me, Mom and Dad. We had gathered fallen leaves in our backyard into large mountains and jumped into them, getting buried under the pile.

But that wasn't what my memory was focused on. In the background, is my swing set, right outside our old house back door. It had rust gathered on the four pole edges holding the swing up, the shiny blue paint chipped away for orange-brown splotches, though the rest of swing set still looked brand new. I loved that swing like a mother loved a child.

On the swing, sits a little girl, maybe seven or a little older. She wears a nightgown matted with freshly dried blood and mud that reached her ankles. I definitely don't remember her being in my backyard. She had such a sad expression, I had half a mind to reach out and comfort her. Then I realize, the little girl is transparent, her skin tinged with with a faint pale blue, and I can quite clearly see my old picket fence through her skin.

Three year-old dream-me lets out a shrill laugh while dream-Dad tickles me senseless. Dream-Mom laughs along half buried in the leaf piles, but she stops abruptly. Dream-me and Dad are oblivious to Mom, as she stands up and circles the place, eyes swiveling to every corner. It's as if she can sense the spirit on the swing but cannot quite see her; she can sense her presence but cannot focus on the center essence. She gives up searching and shuts her eyes, as if in pain from a headache. But then almost as quickly as she closed them, they are open again, free of the tormented emption and she joins dream-Dad in tickling me. The spirit suddenly wails silently, as if in pain of an anguished cry but making no noise. She stands, then fizzes like a TV switched off. Disappearing.

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"Oh for the love of-" I gasp, suddenly snapped back to reality, lying on the pavement with gravel studded into my cheeks. I pick myself up, dusting dirt and loose stones of my clothing and glancing around, grateful no one witnessed the 'episode' I just had.

If this happens one more time, I'm seeing a doctor. I'm a little scared for my mental health.

Surprisingly, I do know where that little head-movie came from this time. That was back at our first house, an old antique built all the way back in the 18th century. It had been renovated but still contained a creepy basement.

But now, I am not even sure I remember correctly. When Sebastian came along, we needed a bigger house, and much to my little 3-year-old self's delight, we bought a newly-built house in the rich estates of Connecticut and I quickly forgot about the old one. Until it was shoved back in my head unwillingly.