Can You Hear The Ticking? (House With A Clock In Its Walls Fanfiction)

One

A/N: I own nothing and nobody but Laura. Also, I skipped some scenes from the movie that I didn't think was necessary to this story, and I didn't copy the lines of speech word-for-word. As well as that, I didn't have the movie script and wasn't watching the movie while I wrote this first chapter. Anyway, read and review! Enjoy!

Laura groaned. She and her brother Lewis had been cramped in a hot, stuffy bus for five hours from their hometown to New Zebedee, and honestly, she felt a bit sick of staring at grey and brown buildings emitting toxic fumes into the air through chimneys- especially without her 'Book of Important Persons in History' that she was foolish enough to lock up in her suitcase.

Laura Barnavelt was adamantly blue. She wore blue every day apart from on Tuesdays when she wore her handmade brown skirt and white shirt with a red lining that her step-mother made for her when she was little more than ten years old. Of course, Laura was small for her age. She was 13 years old and barely taller than Lewis.

Apart from being short and wearing nothing but blue, Laura was a rather kind looking girl. She had a soft, slim face with large green eyes and long brown hair that rippled down her back and fell in ringlets just above her waist. The girl was thin and had a habit of wearing dresses that were rather tight on her, but looked lovely all the same. She had a pleasant smile that distracted anyone from her pale skin, and she loved to read. Laura was rather clever and loved to write, draw, and invent- she was quite good at it, as well.

The bus finally pulled to a halt, the bus driver announcing, "Last stop! Everybody out!"

Laura stood up, collected her suitcase, and then walked out of the aisle they were seated in. Her round-faced brother stumbled out behind her. Lewis grabbed his suitcase, pulling it down from the rack above his seat, and nearly crushing himself.

"Oh, come on! Don't kill yourself before I have the chance to me you!"

"Uncle Jonathan?" Laura asked. The last time she had seen him he was younger and slightly thinner, but her version of him might be slightly distorted, seeing as she was three years old the first -and last- time she saw him. She smiled.

"Is that a robe?" Lewis asked. Laura rolled her eyes.

"It's a Kimono," Jonathan answered, tugging on the rims. His blue eyes wandered from Lewis's squat frame over to his older sister's slightly taller, thinner build. "Laura! I haven't seen you in a good ten years. How are you?"

"I'm great, thank you. How have you been?"

"Good, good. Well, let's go."

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The old car rattled into a park in front of 100 High street.

"Mr Barnavelt, Mr Barnavelt!" a blonde woman from across the road called.

"Yes, Mrs Hanchett?"

Mrs Hanchett had steely grey eyes and olive skin, with short blonde curls and horrid pink glasses that had a sharp point in the outer corners. In her left arm, she carried a small dog named Marmalade.

"You play your saxophone at three o'clock in the morning! I refuse to put up with this any more! This is- who are they?"

"Oh," Uncle Jonathan grinned. "These are Lewis and Laura Barnavelt. They're staying with me."

"You're responsible for keeping a human child alive?"

"Um... yes." He opened the large steel gates leading to a large stone house. "And I'll try to keep it down around 3 o'clock, but thems my best jamming hours."

Laura and Lewis hurried in behind Jonathan before he slammed the gates in the horrified Mrs Hanchett's face. "So," Laura said, flicking a lock of her curly chocolate hair off her shoulder. "You play the saxophone?"

"More or less."

"And you do it at three a.m.?"

"As I said, I jam best in the early hours of the morning."

Jonathan swung the large oak doors wide open for the two young people two see the full extent of the houses largely oriented by clocks that ticked rather loudly together.

"Wow, you've got- that's a lot of clocks," Lewis said haltingly. The loud ticking that came from clocks both old and new, hung up around the walls.

"Well, was constitutes a lot is really a matter of personal taste. For me, it's a perfect amount of clocks."

A loud clunk came from inside of a large grandfather clock. "Oh, sorry, there's a deranged cuckoo in there," the children's uncle said.

As soon as he had said that a woman dress head to toe in purple- she wore a purple coat and shoes, with white and purple triangles on a scarf tied around her neck. She also wore peculiar brown-rimmed glasses with smaller lenses on the left that could be pulled down to examine things more closely. Her eyes were hazel, and her silver hair sat on top of her head.

"Your ratchet wheel's shot, and the click spring's not far behind," she said, closing the door leading into the large clock. "Hello. You're Laura and Lewis, I presume. How was your trip?" The woman said the final sentence with her eyes wide open, as though trying to communicate her question through her facial expressions, although all she managed to succeed in was looking rather scary.

"This old hag," Jonathan said, gesturing to the purple woman, "is my neighbour, Mrs Florence Zimmerman."

"I'm relieved to see you didn't inherit your uncle's freakishly oversized head," Mrs Zimmerman said playfully.

Laura was about to point out that she wasn't actually related to Uncle Jonathan, but she decided to let it pass. "Huh, say the woman who literally looks like a Q-Tip," Jonathan retorted, starting to walk up the stairs.

"Oh, look, the giant head is angry."

Lewis and Laura held back their laughter as they shook Mrs Zimmerman's hand, but their obvious pleasure at seeing the two adults bicker was evident, for grins had spread across their faces. They followed Jonathan up the staircase.

"My God, did that withered purple skeleton just speak?" he said to the children, before murmuring (very loudly) "She thinks she smarter than me because she's got more college degrees."

"No, I think I'm smarter than you because I'm smarter than you."

Laura could have sworn she heard a piano play, but that stopped rather fast, and she didn't know how.

A/N: First chapter, without author's notes, is 1002 words. Longest fanfiction chapter I've written so far! I hope you liked it! And I hope you had a Merry Christmas! R&R!