Book 1: Prologue
I stepped into the “haunted house,” and yelled out, “See! Not haunted! Y’all are just a bunch of superstitious nuts!”
No one replied though…
I stepped out of the haunted house, in order to see how they were reacting to my words, and they were not there…
I was also shocked to notice that the building around me was no longer in disrepair, but instead looked as if it had just been built and put onto the market!
“Still doesn’t mean it’s haunted…” I muttered, “Seems more like this means it’s blessed!”
Suddenly, I saw a woman who was very professionally dressed walk towards the house, and when she arrived she handed me some paperwork.
“Hello, Leif, I’m Lucero; and I brought by these final papers for you to sign in order for this house to officially be yours.”
“Y-yes,” I stammered, “of course… That’ll conclude everything that needs to be done, right? No payments, no fees, no nothing.”
“Of course!” Lucero said, with a grin, “This is the final piece of the puzzle, so to speak.”
I signed the paperwork, thanked her, and went back inside of the house to see that the inside now looked really nice too!
This was kinda cool, and all, but I did kind of have a life that I had to get back to; didn’t I?
How was I supposed to accomplish that, though?
Hmmm…
I opened the front door again, and suddenly saw all of my friends!, and saw that the building was run-down looking again!
As I waved to my wide-eyed friends, and gave them a thumbs-up, I suddenly! heard a voice behind me whisper, “This is your one chance to return to your original life. If you enter this house again, then the new life that you began several minutes ago will become permanent.”
“We’re glad that you’re brave, and all that, but perhaps you’ve tested fate enough for one day?” Shen said, worriedly, and I chuckled and agreed to rejoin the gang.
“What was it like in there?” asked Gunvor, curiously, as we walked down the road and away from the strange house.
“Some lady named Lucero told me that the house was mine now!” I said, jokingly, knowing that telling the truth wouldn’t cause any problems, seeing as nobody would believe it anyway.
“No fair!” my brother Marco complained, “I want my own house too!” and we all continued walking and talking until we reached the market, purchased some food and drinks, and sat down at a table to consume them.
After eating, drinking, and hanging out for a while longer; Marco and I said our farewells to Gunvor and Shen, and headed towards home.
When we got to about a hundred feet away from our house, we saw the front door open, and Mom and Dad were looking at us in a disapproving way that I didn’t think bode well for us.
Sure enough, they quickly informed us that we shouldn’t have been trespassing at the house that totally WASN’T haunted, and announced that the four of us were going to head over there immediately and apologize.
I tried to protest, but apparently the right to protest was only something that was written in government documents, and was NOT something that our tyrannical parents were going to allow.
Bleh.
As someone who saw the government as being pretty tyrannical, I was quite unhappy to have my own dear sweet parents being even more tyrannical!
We drove over to the house, our parents marched us up to the front door, and Dad knocked on it.
A voice soon said through a window that, “Y’all may come inside if you like, but just remember that some people like to say that this place is haunted and that people sometimes don’t leave once they enter.”
“Ha!” Dad laughed, “Good to know that you’re able to at least have a sense of humor about this! We’re so sorry that our kids were being immature earlier, and they’re coming in right now to apologize to you in person!”
Mom had looked a bit more reluctant at first, but the way that Dad had laughed off the warning as just a joke seemed to put her at ease, and (despite one last feeble attempt on my part at exercising my constitutionally guaranteed right to protest) Marco and I were promptly marched through the door…
