1 Strange Beginnings

Chapter One

In the half-light of morning, the street was eerie. It wasn't just that it was a still day; the air simply didn't move. The leafy avenue was bereft of noise, as if every murmur and rustle was stolen away in the night.

The sky was empty, not just of birds, but of clouds also. There was no weather at all; even the sunlight felt cold.

It was odd. The street should have thronged with commuters but it stood as empty as a desert. The leaves blew like tumbleweed in the sharp November wind.

The silence pressed in on Grace Rahm, all she could hear was the beating of her own heart, and the scuffing noise her own sneakers made as she stumbled down the walkway toward the new house.

It was the kind of silence that fell right before you got knifed in the back. Which, of course, sent a shiver down her spine.

Time had performed irreversible deeds upon the once proud and mighty house belonging to Grace's grandmother. The steeple that once could be seen from anywhere in the small neighborhood owing to its polished glean no longer shined, a rusty relic of ages gone by. Bricks and cement had slowly eroded away, washing the colours from the once beautiful building. But from within old memories, Grace's admiration for it lived on.

Every summer since Grace was seven, she had gone to visit the house. She loved the drive. Seeing the city again, Greg's diner, the flower shops, all the boutiques. It was like coming home after you'd been gone a long, long time. It held a thousand promises of summer, her grandmother, and of what just might be.

She always had wondered what her grandmother, Juliet, looked like in winter. Jealousy of everyone who did know always appeared deep within her heart.

She'd sit next to the radiator and wondered if the old woman was doing the same, somewhere reading. The cold almost didn't count. Life was measured in summers. Like she didn't really belong until May, until she was near her, near that house.

Time had performed irreversible deeds upon Juliet and the summer before senior year, Grace had discovered how bad things had begun to get.

The old woman had stopped wearing her overalls, instead, a cotton house dress and Grace realized she'd been wearing them all summer long. Not because they were pretty and modern, but because they appeared loose. They hid how thin her arms were, the way her collarbone jutted.

That following winter, Juliet passed away in the morning.

In her will, she had left a few things.

College money, jewelry. An opal ring Grace couldn't picture herself ever wearing and the will to her house.

Living was hard, time harder but pass it does, and pass it did, even for a girl who once only stood at those crooked steps in the heat.

It was the day. The day of moving. The day everything, Grace knew would be gone. Familiarity would be a memory locked away in an old dusty wooden box, to be reopened later, simply to reminisce. Her grandmother's house never looked more vast.

"Was it always this sad?" Grace padded onto the porch, holding a cardboard box tucked with curtains and frames.

She looked upon her withered father, Andrew. Mr Nahm grew more wrinkled with each day; looking as though he had too much skin to cover his wilting frame.

His face had lost its healthy tanned colour, fading to an ashy grey. Grace remembered when her father looked a powerful man, when he had hair and a beard so long that he could not tell where one ended and the next began.

Now though, the man had lost simple youth. He was clean shaven and his hair was trimmed short, revealing a decrepit mask where every wrinkled, blemish and imperfection could be seen. Still, she held love for him.

"It just needs some dusting and some Hydrange outside." Andrew smiled, bittersweet.

"What?" Grace raised an eyebrow. "You mean, Hydrangea?"

"That's what I said. Sorta." Andrew blinked, leading the way and opening the front door.

The house was a living museum. Juliet had never bought anything more modern than the 1980's. Everything was original or refurbished retro, like the house itself. Although the tangerine and fuchsia walls were right out of her favourite era, it held itself somewhat together.

The floral prints were bold, furniture sparse and simple. In the living room, sat an orange telephone with its large dialling disk and curled cable dangling from the receiver. It struck Grace that this was the first time the little house had looked dusty and the first time she had walked in to no Beetles music.

It was as if the spirit of the house had gone with Juliet and these objects left behind were only empty shells of their former selves. Still, out of every inch poured the memories of her childhood summers.

Andrew placed his daughter's box from her arms to the carpet. "Are you still interested?"

Grace marveled at the house she still beloved with age. "Yep! I told you I wouldn't change my mind."

He pursed his lips. "I just thought you might've liked a studio apartment or a rental house better,"

Grace didn't know if any other place would even slightly be as beautiful as Juliet's house and who could ever measure that? Sometimes it's like places and people were more special in your head, but maybe if it's how you see them, that's how they really are.

"You are your mother's child." Andrew closed the front door, and opened an old curtain near the television.

A moment of silence fell. To Grace, her mother wasn't that mysterious. She was her mother. Always logical, always sure of her own decisions. She wasn't sure if her mom had just fell out of love in the marriage or if it was that she just never was.

Once the divorce came, her Mother would go to far-off places like Quebec or Italy and always alone. She would take pictures, but Grace never asked to look at them, and her mother never asked if she wanted to.

Grace pretended to be dense, looking down at the coffee table. "I think I'll go check out the rest of the house. Can you get the remaining boxes or?" She dragged the word "or" out like a melody.

"You know, this house is a huge responsibility," He hesitated, scrutinizing the reaction to his next words. "Are you sure you're sure?"

Grace sighed, trying to put some extra animation into her response. "Yes, yes. I'm fine. I'm cool. I'm going now." She rushed, causing her father to chuckle in his usual way.

"Go ahead, then." Andrew smiled at her obstinate expression, before she made her exit into the rest of the house.

The rest of the house was small, decorated in the same old, faded oranges and floral. It took only one trip to get all Grace's stuff upstairs. The house had two bedrooms: one room upstairs by itself like an attic and the other was Juliet's old room. The first option seemed more lighthearted.

The upstairs room was familiar; it had been belonged to Grace since she was born. The wooden floor, the light yellow walls, the peaked ceiling, the white laced curtains around the window -these were all a part of her childhood.

The only changes Juliet had ever made were taking the dollhouse outside in the backyard and getting a bigger bed. The rocking chair from her baby days was still in the corner.

There was only one small bathroom in the entire house, which Grace would have to share one day if she ever decided to have her own family. That thought seemed silly and she tried not to dwell too much on that fact.

One of the best things about Andrew was that he didn't hover. He left Grace alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether impossible if she hadn't already turned eighteen.

It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare and let just a few tears escape. Those sucked up as soon as they came. It wasn't like she wasn't happy to be in such a place but being alone soon in such a place seemed kinda despairing.

Belliger City had a frightening total of only a few decent places to work; there were more than hundreds alone back home with Andrew. All of the kids here had grown up together - their grandparents had been toddlers together.

Grace would be the new, constant girl from the big city, a curiosity, a mystery to learn. Maybe, if she had looked like a girl from normal populationville, she would work that ultimate advantage. But physically, she'd never fit in anywhere without an ocean.

Instead, Grace was soft somehow, obviously not your retail worker or best neighborhood pal. She looked at her face in the bedroom mirror. Maybe it was the light, but already she looked sallower. Her light skin and recently dyed bubblegum hair could be pretty but it all depended on the clothing.

Facing her unamused reflection in the mirror, she was forced to admit that she was lying to herself. After all, when would she actually decide to wear anything but sweatpants and striped shirts?

Grace didn't relate well to people her age. Maybe the truth was that she didn't relate well to people, in general. Sometimes she wondered if she was seeing the same things through her eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs.

Returning back to Andrew was a silent event. He wished her luck with the place, knowing that clumsiness usually tended to not avoid his daughter and left, off to complete life elsewhere without his little bird in the same nest.

After he had left, Grace sat at the square oak table in one of the three unmatching chairs and examined the small kitchen, with its dark paneled walls. Nothing had changed. She never realized how boring being alone could be.

Through the hours until evening, Grace room hopped.

The first thing she found herself doing was unloading all the extra groceries she had taken from her father's house, stuffing them in wherever she could find an open space.

When she grew too unsatisfied with her own arrangement, she wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them inside the oven to bake, balancing them with the only stick of butter she'd managed to swipe.

When Grace grew bored of that, she took her bag upstairs and checked her e-mail for the first time in hours. Not a single message.

Instead of bugging her father with countless messages of newfound loneliness, she decided to read yet again, not the first time that day, for the fun of it.

The silence never bothered Grace except around people and only then did it seem uncomfortable. In some ways, she was more well suited to live alone than others. She could feel a tradition in the making.

The latter the day got, the more the quiet appeared deafening. The television helped with that, mostly. Sorta. The news chattered excitedly about rain tomorrow; apparently it was the first storm that they'd had in weeks.

The news was never "the news." It was population control made easy. Something in every home, carefully designed to be addictive and keep the sheeple in their place. Fear and confusion all presented by pretty people the audience would trust. And why not?

Time flowed like cement. Grace checked the living room clock for the time. A minute had passed since she last checked an hour ago, or so it seemed. Sitting there with nothing to do was excruciatingly dull and she decided that tomorrow she would pick up something entertaining at the store.

She begun to drift into an easy daydream or was it an actual slumber? So hard to tell. As her consciousness ebbed, her mind went into free fall, swirling with the beautiful chaos of completely drifting.

Later that night a crack pulled Grace out of sleep. With her face mashed into a couch cushion, she held still, all senses on high alert. She wasn't even sure the time nor hour.

Before she turned eighteen, her mom stayed out of town at least once a month for work, so she was beyond used to sleeping alone, and it had been months since she'd imagined the sound of footsteps creeping down the hall toward the place she'd slept.

The truth was, Grace never felt completely alone. Right after the passing of her grandmother, a strange presence entered her life. Like someone was orbiting her world, watching from a distance.

At first the phantom presence had creeped Grace out, but when nothing bad came of it, the anxiety lost its edge. She started wondering if there was a fate purpose for the way she was feeling. Maybe the spirit was close by. Maybe she had just gained sadness that weighed upon her. The thought was usually comforting, but that first night in the house seemed different. The presence felt like a sheet of ice on the skin.

Turning her head a fraction to glance at the television which had lost service, Grace saw a shadowy form stretching across the floor.

She glared around to face the window, the crystallized shaft of moonlight was the only light in the room capable of casting a shadow. But nothing was there. She breathed harshly, ripping a throw pillow against herself, forcing her mind to believe that it was a tree limb. Or a piece of trash blowing. The next several minutes was used to calm down her rapid pulse.

By the time Grace found the courage to get out off the couch, the yard outside her window was silent and still. The only noise came from tree branches scraping against the house, and her own heart thrumming underneath skin.