The Woods Behind My Grandmother's House

        Growing up, our grandparents had three rules; no eating after you brush your teeth, always be respectful, and the third rule, which was also the most strictly enforced.

        Never go into the woods.

        Our grandparents' house was a two-story colonial in the northwest corner of Rhode Island. Their road was quite long and theirs was one of the only houses on it. The only house relatively nearby was about a mile and a half down the road, but it had been abandoned for nearly forty years. The wood was rotted and the remnants of once-white paint were dingy and peeling. We never approached it. There was nearly three acres of untamed forest behind the two houses.

         My twin sister Jade and I had lived with Grandpa Jake and Nana Jane almost since birth, because our dad wasn't fit to raise us. Apparently he went off the rails after mom died and had to be institutionalized, so Jake and Jane got custody of us. We had a pretty good life. After high school, Jade had been accepted to Stanford with a major in computer science. She got so many scholarships that she nearly had a full ride - my sister is nothing short of a genius.

          As for me, I stayed local and went to URI. I was majoring in film media, and minoring in business so I had something to fall back on. I had just finished my big project for the end of the year, a short film starring my friends Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope. It was a flick about an infamous pirate called Marquise Spinneret Mindfang (played by Vriska) and the officer of the law who brought her to justice, Neophyte Redglare (Terezi). My professor had been incredibly impressed, especially with the costumes, which my friend Kanaya Maryam had hand-stitched just for us. "You're going places, John," he'd told me, and man did it feel good to be going places.

         I'd headed back to my dorm for the trip to California I'd planned with some friends, thinking that nothing could puncture my bubble of perfection.

        That... was when the call from Jade came.

        I could barely understand her through her blubbering, but I got it eventually, and my heart plummeted.

        There had been a car accident on Bronco Highway. Grandpa was gone. Nana was going. She told me she would be on the next flight back from California and hung up. I leapt into my car and sped to Rhode Island Hospital, getting there just in time to hold my grandmother's hand as she died.

         The funeral the next week was packed with people - my friends, Jade's friends, Nana's old coworkers, Grandpa's distant cousins from New Zealand - but there were two people there that I didn't recognize.

         The blonde man and woman approached my sister first. The man wore a suit, but looked like he wasn't accustomed to it. The woman's hair was styled to perfection, and she wore a pink scarf. They talked to Jade for a moment; she hugged the woman before pointing the two of them towards me.

        "Hello," the woman said. She was stunning for sixty or so. The man stood behind her, looking even more sad and brooding than the other attendees.

        "I know you don't know us," the woman said, "But let us introduce ourselves. I'm Roxy Lalonde," she said, shaking my hand. "Dirk Strider," said the man. He didn't put his hand forward; he seemed incredibly on edge.

        "We used to be quite close with your grandparents. Jane was one of my best friends," said Ms. Lalonde. "We lived up the street from you."

         "Oh, in the crumbling-house?" I asked, accidentally referring to the ramshackle building by the name Jade and I had given it as kids. Ms. Lalonde seemed to understand, though, and she nodded. "It wasn't crumbling then," she laughed. "It was gorgeous. I loved that house."