Chapter One

We started building our new house about a month after the funeral. Mom called an architect and a group of two or three of them came out here a few times to help her draw up the plans. Mary and I got to help design our rooms. Mary made hers relatively large (I noticed some erased pencil marks after the architects left. They trimmed off about thirty square feet from the original fifty-five square foot room). I kept my new room roughly the same. Even I couldn’t adjust to change that well.

One year later, and the entire house was ready to move into. So we packed up our things in our car and the moving van and started the drive to the new house that lay one hundred miles away. It was sort of a surreal experience because I was leaving my home only to go home to the new house.

Mary cried all the way until we got to the half-way mark. I expected nothing less. After that, she texted her boyfriend until she fell asleep. That’s when I took her phone and told her boyfriend that she’d text him in a couple hours when she woke up.

We finally got to the new house. Mary was still asleep, so we took everything out of the car and put it into the house. I took a good look. It was even better than the computer animations that the architects showed us and all of the pictures they drew. There were high ceilings and the banisters look like they had been varnished recently. Someone had thought to put flowers in the vase in the middle of the dining room table. The shades on the widows facing the sun were put down half-way and the candles on the mantle were lit casting a glow against the family picture that mom had put up upon her first visit.

“That’s really nice that someone put flowers in here,” said mom.

“That wasn’t you?” I asked.

We heard a creak and we jumped, only to realize that Mary had woken up and was just coming in the house just now.

“What’s your deal?” she asked.

I shook my head, dismissing the matter.

“Why don’t you go find your rooms?” asked mom.

We nodded and headed up the stairs. We knew exactly where our rooms were. They were on either side of mom’s room, which was the biggest room upstairs. I opened the door to my room and the first thing I saw was the setting sun. It was beautiful.

“Hugo?” called mom.

“Yeah?”

“The moving truck came across some mechanical complications and they won’t be here until tomorrow. So you can sleep in your room, but we’ll have to use sleeping bags for a night,” explained mom.

“Okay. That’s fine.”

She nodded and left the room.

I looked around the empty room.

It was a little strange, knowing that I wasn’t going to have to share a room this time. I could only imagine what Mary was doing in her room. The walls were sound-proof now. Nothing went through them. But I figured she was probably texting her boyfriend; typing a million miles a minute.

I got up and went to look around the rest of the house. I started in the basement. It was a finished basement, covered in carpet and just waiting for our furniture to be moved in. There was a sun room off the side of the house. That’s where we would put the piano that dad used to play. Mom claimed that she would take lessons so that at least one person would play it. It’s a beautiful, black grand piano and it would be a shame to just see it sit there standing idle. The kitchen was a dream with its perfectly clean granite counters and wood floors. I was a little scared to walk on or touch everything for fear of smudging anything. I left the kitchen and went back to my room.

Mom had put the sleeping bag in my room, so I unrolled it in the middle of the floor and lay down on it. I closed my eyes with the intention of getting a minute of rest.

I was awakened a few moments later by my sister’s high-pitched shrieking.

“Mary! Shut up!”

She didn’t shut up, so I got up and went two rooms over to her room. I opened the door to her empty room, but she wasn’t there.

“Mary, this isn’t funny. Where are you and what are you screaming about?” I asked her.

I held my breath because I was breathing so hard that I couldn’t hear anything. I heard tiny sobs. They were coming from the direction of the closet.

“Mary?” I called to her.

I could hear her breathing again. It was almost like she was getting ready to scream.

“Mary, Mary! It’s okay, I’m right here!”

With that, I threw open the closet door. There she was, just lying there, curled up in the fetal position. She tilted her head up towards me. She had dark bruises all over her face and her hair was tangled. She looked like an animal. I had never seen her this way before. My fears were confirmed: girls really were demons.

“Mary, what is your problem? Why did you scream?” I asked her.

She just stared at me. She had given me freaky looks before, but none were as sinister as this one that she was shooting at me now.

Finally, she broke her gaze and closed her eyes. She was motionless, and then suddenly, she gave a huge breath, like she had been choking and now her air ways were clear again.

Mary looked peaceful in her sleep now; there was nothing wrong in her world. I took the blanket that was around her ankles and brought it over her shoulders, taking care not to wake her. I stopped short when I noticed something on her ankles: there were gruesome, red rings around them and scratches up her calves.

With a pounding heart, I left the room and barricaded my door with my body so no one could come in.

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So here is Chapter One. Again, this is pure fiction. I'm kind of excited about this. I don't really know where it's going exactly, but if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. It takes me a couple days to write a chapter (because I want it perfect for you guys). Of course, I might read this and I'll end up making a few changes. I'll let you know if this happens.

Originally, the narrator was a ten year old girl named Elizabeth (she went by 'Eliza' even though her mother really liked 'Lizzy') but now it's a sixteen year old boy named Hugo. Of course, you wouldn't know that just from reading the story. I'll try to make it more apparent.

The reason I changed the gender was purely because I wanted to have the narrator make a comment about how girls were demons. If Elizabeth were narrating, it wouldn't make a lot of sense because she herself is a girl. I changed the age because as I scanned through the piece, I was trying to think of one ten year old I knew that talked like that. I couldn't think of any.

Any way, I hope you enjoyed this chapter of The Novel Which Still Doesn't Have a Name.

I'm sorry for throwing blog entry after blog entry your way. I really don't like to see the same post for a long time. Since it's summer, I can change it very often. This will probably change once school starts again though.

--Jude