The Complete Crimson Forest series

Bryxx: Chapter 1

Walking into the vastly treed area for the first time in eight years fills my heart with joy, regret, hate, and a plethora of other intense emotions. Returning to the small farm I grew up on, for the first time since I was fifteen, is bitter sweet. In some ways, I've missed the place. Things like the fresh air, scent of wild flowers, the peace and quiet. In other ways, I completely loathe this place. Most of my memories here aren't good ones, but instead painful ones, ones that over the last eight years, I've worked my very hardest to forget or push aside so that I can live a relatively normal life. In truth, I never thought I'd return here. Ever. I never even thought I'd return to the state of Montana in general. Yeah, that's how bad it is.

As the trees part and give way to the old farmhouse my great grandpa built on the family homestead over one hundred fifty years ago, a pang of distress hits me square in the chest as a flashback takes over my mind. The last time I was in the house, the last time I was anywhere near this worn farmhouse at all, was the day my mother attempted to kill me.

The memory of that day isn't the only bad one that I have, not by a long shot. My grandma passed away in her sleep here when I was seven. My brother and his friend went missing when they were nine while playing ball hockey in the backyard, I was only eight at the time. To top it off, my father died of a heart attack here four years later when I was barely twelve. That's just family, I could go on and on sharing the numerous tragedies of Sunnybrooke, Montana, but I won't bore you.

Some would say that the tragedies that have occurred around here are just plain, rotten luck. Others would say that there's something seriously wrong with this place, something peculiar about it. Me? If I'm being honest, I'm not too entirely sure what I think, the entirety of my childhood feels like it was some sort of dream. Well, it did for the last eight years up until I arrived here today as a twenty-three-year-old adult.

Today, big surprise, I return here because of another dreadful event. I debated even coming back here at all, not wanting to have to experience the flood of old memories, but I eventually jumped in my car and made the eleven-hour drive to Sunnybrooke.

The reason I return began when yesterday I received a phone call from my great aunt regarding my mother's demise. She wasn't living here when it happened, but her last will and testament stated the house, the entire homestead in fact, would go all to me, her only remaining child upon her death. I don't want the house or the farm, so I've come to assess what needs renovated to get my money's worth out of it when I sell it. I want this property out of my family's life once and for all.

I walk up the steps towards the front door and pull the key out from under the ragged, ancient welcome mat which has been severely aged by time and weather, before slipping it into the rusty lock and twisting. The antique, wooden door squeals as it slowly moves open.

I remain standing in the doorway for a moment while I take in how unchanged the interior appears. No one has been here in eight years. After my mother attempted to kill me, she pleaded guilty, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and deemed mentally unstable. She was then placed in a 24-hour care facility and my great aunt became my legal guardian. Whatever caused her to snap all those years ago, messed her up badly, to the point where the caring mother I knew my entire life, was completely gone. Before the day she tried to kill me, she was generally a normal mom. I don't recall her doing anything out of the ordinary or anything, just normal mom stuff. Could it have been my brother's disappearance and my father's death that sent her over the edge? Genetics? I've heard that some bloodlines are more prone to mental illness. I have no idea what the cause was and doubt I ever will.