Criers Mansion

Oliver McRenolds

Everything I had in my bag just poured out over the blacktop like a clogged waterfall. But something was wrong. All the round items in my bag pencils, pop cans, lip balm and Chapstick all rolled down into this crevice on the driveway. I walked over baffled at what I saw and stared at the ground for about five minutes speechless... A key hole, four of them all synced to a rusty pad. I reached down and balled my hand into a fist and with the tips of my knuckles I knocked on the ground.

Metal. It was a metal plate. Something was definitely down there.

I hovered my ear over the door and listened.

"They're going to find us definitely," it was a high pitched voice, almost like a woman.

"Wait Ssshhh... I think they can hear us," then a silence.

"Let's move," the voices faded but I could still hear them murmur about something.

I take my ear away from the metal and brush my hair out of my face with my thumb. I start grabbing everything that rolled down here to this place of mystery. I wish I never had found it cause now I'm curious, I want to know more about that door.

Footsteps. I look down the hill that I came up and I see the silhouette of a man. I scramble to my feet and run to my stuff over by my bike and shove everything into the good half of my bag. Using only my legs for some odd reason to stand up I try to decipher the figure making its way up my driveway. I hear the front doors of The Mansion open and hit one of the marble columns with a loud Thunk. I turn back to the shape of a boy but this time he is standing two feet away from me. He wasn't a man he was... a boy, about my age. He was looking down showing the shaggy ness of his raven black hair.

"Um hello," I asked kind of annoyed with his mysterious appearance. Then he finally looks up at me, he has these beautiful pale blue eyes and his skin looks like he just stepped inside from a cold day in Alaska.

" Are you Avalon Criers," the boy said. His British accent melted me from the inside out which made my face turn as red as the setting sun. I cleared my throat and spoke with the fake confidence I was holding in.

"That's what it says on my birth certificate," could I said anything more stupid. He sucks in a breath of fresh air and claps his hands together once making my heart skip a beat or two.

"Well my name is Oliver McRenolds, and I watched something fly out of your bag while I was walking home from school today." He holds out a brown paper package tied up with a dusty yellow coiled string.

"This isn't mine," but before I could finish my sentence he flipped the package over and there was a tag with my name on it. It looked like it had been crumpled and then flattened over hundreds of times and it was ripped and stained In some places. My first instinct is to look at the front doors of The Mansion hoping to see someone standing there. Clive our butler nodded his head motioning me inside. I turn back to Oliver and say something I thought I would never say.

"Would you wanna come in." I say with complete confidence this time. He nods and walks toward the front door handing me the package.