girl haunted

chapter one: the calm before the storm

anna

It was snowing, hard. I trudged through the thinning woodland as fast as my limbs would allow, but the wind strengthened, and so I propped up my hood, narrowing my eyes against the gale. A place I knew as home began to shadow over the white fields, the faded green porch just about visible through the sheet of snow.

The frost was sewn into miles, until the landscape matched the sky, and the entire world was white.

It wasn't the weather. It was the silence. This was a ghost town. Yet here we were, three years in after my mother's divorce and I was still as spooked as the first day I stepped foot in this godforsaken place.

The door handle was icy when I touched it, but I exhaled nonetheless, glad I'd made it without developing frostbite. After wiping the underside of my boots against the welcome mat, I shoved open the front door, slamming it shut with a kick once inside.

"Anna." my mother sighed. She glared in disapproval. I held my hands up in apology, and braced for the speech that would come anyway.

Her scolding didn't end until I began to yawn.

The clock read eight 'o' clock which meant my partially mute Aunt April would be down soon for breakfast.

We never spoke. We had nothing in common. April was reserved, kept her nose in books, her eyes downcast. We'd talk on occasion over dinner, and that was painful enough.

Although, I did pity her. Her timidity made her an outcast, and she had few friends in this lonely town.

And indeed, she did descend upon the hallway, gracing us with her air of mystery yet again. I rolled my eyes, slinking past her up the stairs.

I sat down on my bedroom floor, sketching out another angle of the woodlands. Pity, it looked more like a child's golden time masterpiece.

Twenty minutes and a cramped hand later, I set down the half finished sketch and stretched out on the bed. The house may have felt like foreign territory, but the bedroom was worse. White walled cube, white furniture, white curtains. The bed sheets were floral. The decor minimal.

Very cosy.

I peeled myself away from the crinkly duvet, and snatched my old leather journal from its resting place.

Tainted with the past, Anna Hightower stared back at me in engraved copper letters.

My grandmother's name was Anna. I didn't see her very often, you know, on account of her being dead.

I ripped out the sketch of the Woodlands and clipped it sloppily to a journal page, letting it bask in its half finished glory.

School had closed for the Winter. With frequent predictions of snow storms and flood warnings, apparently it was too much of a risk to let the wildlings out. So, gratefully, quietly, we all accepted closure.

It also meant I would be as dormant as an inactive volcano for a month. It would only be a while until sketching, reading and writing would bore me out of my mind. Harken Mountains wasn't exactly tourist destination number one, and for good reason.
It was dead. Deceased. It had lost its small town glamour a long while ago.

Especially after the string of unsolved murders.

My phone began to buzz madly on the duvet. I read the caller ID and half cringed, half smiled at the name. One of the very few people I could stand.