Take the Secret to your Grave

Serena was walking in a graveyard under a full moon which illuminated some selected graves around her. Those graves belonged to women she had never even heard about. Agatha Mary Abram, Beatrice Scarbrough, Drusilla Farley, Gwyneth Anne Barton. There were other names that she couldn't read properly because her attention had been attracted by the biggest and brightly illuminated grave. She walked towards it to read the name of the person it belonged to. She already knew it was a woman since every grave she looked at displayed a female name on the gravestone.

She stopped just close enough that she could read the name off the gravestone. When she saw the name, at first she frowned but then her confusion turned into something else and she gasped. The name was Evelyn Grace Alby, her great grandmother.

Her grave was in the graveyard in her hometown but this place didn't even remotely resemble the place Serena had visited every so often to spend time with her grandmother. The names she had read were entirely new to her but the condition of their graves told her that they were at least a hundred years old. The newest among them was her great grandmother's grave.

She couldn't understand why she was here and why the moonlight only illuminated the graves of these certain people but she knew one thing, there was a secret buried here with the bodies and she needed to unveil it.

Serena woke up with a start. She checked the time, it was already 6 am. She needed to hurry or she would get late for dinner at her "home". Home, it was such a strange word. She had left that house a few years ago but it was still her home while the apartment she lived in never made it to the level of being called anything close to a home. Home was a place where you could feel utterly comfortable and at ease. It was a place where you could forget all your worries and be happy. At least that's what it meant for her. Her home, her hometown... which suddenly reminded her of her weird dream. Those graves, those names... Who were those other women? And why did her great grandmother's name suddenly pop up in her dream?

This was not a normal dream, she knew that. But why did she have it? What was this dream trying to tell her? Then there was the feeling that she needed to unveil a secret. All of it was very strange. It almost felt like her hometown was calling to her and she needed to reach there as soon as possible.

It was time to pay a visit to her grandma.

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The roads were empty and the weather was eerie, much different from the night before. Dark clouds hid the sun and chilly winds blew, making Serena's teeth chatter. It was not the season for such weather but she didn't care, all she cared about was getting home early so that she could find the root cause of this restless feeling that she was having ever since she woke up.

When she crossed the border of her town, she found the surroundings unusually quite. The feeling that she used to have when she returned to town was gone. Something had changed.

She drove up to her block and saw her house. The windows were shuttered and the blinds were drawn. The grass in the front yard was so long that it looked like the house was abandoned.

She parked her car in the driveway and got out of it to ring the doorbell when the front door opened and her mother came out to hug her.

"I heard the sound of a car engine and I knew it had to be you." She said, smiling.

Serena noticed there were dark circles under her mother's eyes and she looked much older for her age. What exactly had happened while she was gone?

"Mum, are you worried about something?" She asked as her mother took her inside the house.

"Worried? No, not at all." Her mother said. "Just sit here, let me make some tea for you." She ushered Serena towards the couch in the living room and went off to the kitchen.

Looking around, Serena observed certain things about the house. Most of the furniture was covered in dust, the family pictures had disappeared from the wall and the electricity was definitely not working. In short, the house was a mess and there was something hugely wrong here which her mother was trying to hide from her.

"Mum, where's dad?" She asked, walking into the kitchen. Her mother panicked on hearing her voice. She had been taking out some ingredients from a box when Serena entered. She turned around suddenly, trying to hide the box behind her.

"Your dad's out, he'll come back in an hour or so." She said, trying to maintain her composure.

"What are you hiding?" Serena asked, her mind full of suspicion. "I knew there was something wrong. Why are all the cabinets here empty? Why are you taking out ingredients from a box? What's going on here?" She wanted to ask more questions but her mother stopped her.

"Serena dear, please stop and listen to me." She said. "Your father and I were planning to move out of this house since we can no lomger afford it, that's why we were packing all of our stuff. When your father invited you home, we didn't want you to know that we were leaving so we hid all the boxes."

"You're leaving? Why can't you afford the house? It's ours, right?"

"It is but maintaining such a big house is not easy." She told Serena. "If you want to take any of your stuff with you then it's in your room. Go, take a look."

Serena was devastated. This was her home or this used to be. Now they were leaving it. Her room, all those memories that she had here, all of it would be gone. She climbed the stairs to her room and opened the door. Everything was just as she had left it. Her parents hadn't packed any of her stuff, maybe they were waiting for her to take away some of it. She was looking through her old books, remembering how she used to binge read, when she heard a hushed argument downstairs. She tiptoed to the hallway outside her room to listen more clearly what was happening.

"It is her right to know this!" This was her mom's voice.

"I won't let you feed that nonsense story to her!" This one was her dad's.

Serena couldn't understand what they were arguing about so she moved a little closer to the landing. After some muffled exchanges, she heard her mother shout.

"She's the prophecy child!"