Chapter 1
She leaned her head against the window. The seat-belt kept digging into her neck and shoulder but she didn’t mind it. It wasn’t that painful. It was just irritating. With the backpack on her lap, she fiddled with the badges and the sewed, weird stuffed creatures she had made for it. Gretel had earphones on, listening to her favorite music. She hated the radio. She kept thinking how her life is going to be like now. Part of her was thrilled about moving to her dad’s hometown and happy that her father was so overprotective of her.
After what happened to her, on the city she used to live, she was happy to get out of it. Alive, too. She looked on the review mirror. Something catching her attention. She smiled. It was none other than Richard. Richard was one of her friends. He had a specific dress code that made him unique and beautiful. He was older than her, around the age of twenty five. She assumed.
He was dressed simply, but elegantly. She had realized that Richard wasn’t from her own time. He wore a simple, beige, worned-out tunic that ended between the hip and the knee and had long, oversized sleeves. On top of the tunic, he wore a velvet, woolen jacket, the color of dark blue. The tunic was folded neatly into his leather trousers. The belt held everything in place. His pointer finger was ringed with the emblem of his house and his leather boots completed the outfit beautifully. Richard was a tall man, with blonde wavy, long hair and blue eyes. His face was rather hollow and pale. Richard was fit and masculine but he was also dead.
Richard smiled at her and made a gesture of tipping his hat. A hat he wasn’t wearing. She chuckled and rolled her eyes at him. His eyes glistened with playfulness. He leaned closer to her, his elbows resting on his knees. She turned her body towards him as much as she could, because she was restricted from the seatbelt. She didn’t remove her earphones, she just looked at him. He smirked and extended his arm toward her. She placed her palm on top of his rough one and a cold shiver run through her body. She parted her lips and Richard gasped audibly.
At contact everything around her blurred and faded away. All that mattered was her and Richard. The energy that he was using from her made her forget about where she was and where she was going. ″Gretel, my darling.″ Richard spoke first. His English accent was thick and his voice although smooth, was also raspy. Not too high pitched, just perfectly low. He brought the back of her hand to his lips, a ghost of a kiss being planted just barely on her hand. ″Richard, polite as always.″ He chuckled at her compliment. ″How do you feel about moving to Graveville?″ He asked, cutting right to the chase.
Richard knew everything, including her turmoil about the trip. Before she could manage to reply to him, a hand touched her shoulder, bringing her back from the state she was in. Her mind returned to her body sharply, making it throb painfully. She closed her eyes tightly, bringing her hands to her temples and massaging them with her fingers. ″Sorry, munchkin. Had to pull you out of it.″ Dad apologized. She smiled weakly at him before something caught her attention.
Outside of the window from the driver’s seat, she saw four figures standing next to a grave. It was a graveyard and phantoms, souls of spirits seemed to be roaming and wandering about. Some making contact with one another, while others just passing them by expressionless. She turned around to Richard but he was no longer there. He’d disappeared like the vaporous spirits who were alongside the grave.
Gretel glanced at the graveyard once more and all the eyes stared at her back this time, creating goosebumps and a cold shiver to run down her spine. She also noticed that one of the four figures was also starring at her. She snapped her head away, catching a glimpse of the sign ″Welcome to Graveville″ before passing it by.
