Chapter One- The Secret Room

CHAPTER ONE

Through the Looking Glass

Here, in the darkness, something is waiting. It has cravings, desires, yet it is not alive. It is parasitic, desperate and ready to feed. It will stop at nothing to get what it needs.

* * *

With a crunch of tyres on gravel the old off-white fiesta pulled into the driveway, very obviously out of place in the shadow of the huge, looming black house. Raven sat in the back seat, still funeral clad, her hands clasped in her lap. She had not once spoken in the two weeks since the accident, much to the irritation of those who had made a haphazard attempt to take care of her. Raven suspected their fake cheerfulnes was somehow meant to jolly her along into forgetting what had happened, and this just made her purse her lips tighter. She was never going to forget.

Julie switched off the radio, which she had been playing to disguise the icy silence in the car. She had brought Raven here, to deposit the girl among her relatives, and secretly she was glad to be rid of her. She had been close to the child's mother, but had always found Raven herself a very strange and silent little girl. Clearly, the death of her parents had affected her in such a way that she had become even more withdrawn, and Julie couldn't cope with it.
She stepped out of the front seat and then opened the door for Raven, chauffeur style, a very strained smile spread across her face.

"Well, we're here," Julie said softly, holding out her hand for Raven to take. Raven kept on staring straight ahead for a moment, then slowly moved her little body out of the car, pushing past Julie.

"I'll get your case out of the trunk," Julie sighed. "Please just wait there."

Raven stood still, staring up at the house, trying to guess what hid behind those dark, musty curtained windows.

"Right, got it," Julie continued cheerfully, dragging the little mini suitcase over the gravel. "Well let's go meet your auntie, shall we?"
The odd pair walked together up to the door. Julie had changed her funeral clothes and was in a smart green dress with gold accessories. She had an engagement party later that evening and it was a long drive back so she had decided to get ready early. Her blonde hair was up, little strands falling across a heart shaped face. She contrasted sharply with Raven, who looked like something out of the Addam's family- she was small and skinny, even for a ten year old, with very pale skin, large dark eyes and long, straight dark hair to her waist. Someone had put a little black bow in her hair for her, to match her little knee length black funeral dress, black tights and patent black shoes. She looked utterly miserable. Julie rang the doorbell.

They had to wait a few minutes before it was opened with a long, creaking noise by a tall, slim, old and balding man, wearing a neatly ironed suit.

"Hello," he eyed them warily. "Welcome to the house of Miss Davison Pruette. How may I be of assistance?"

"Hello there, pleased to meet you," Julie smiled, holding her hand out for the butler to shake. "I'm Julie Foster, a friend of Raven's mother. I thought it was the least I could do to look after her over the past couple of weeks, until we found some of her real family to take care of her. I called up a couple of days ago, and Raven's great aunt said she'd be happy to take care of the child. I thought I said I'd be coming up to drop her off today?"

The butler did not take Julie's hand but instead looked at Raven and gave her a small smile. "Ah, I see. Well, we actually weren't expecting you for a few days, with the funeral being today, but it's no matter. Miss Pruette will no doubt be delighted to see you, Raven. Please, come in," he moved back to allow them entry.

"Thank you, but I really can't stay. I have an engagement later, but I'm sure Raven will settle in fine. Here's her case with her clothes in it, and I'll call in a few days or so and see how she's settling in," Julie replied, smiling sweetly and ushering Raven forward, passing the case to the butler. "I'm sure her aunt will take very good care of her and that she is in very safe hands."

The butler raised his eyebrow. "I see. Well, I shall tell Miss Davison Pruette of your kindness in bringing the child by. Thank you. Good day."

He waited while Julie retreated gratefully back to the car, and then shut the door, leaving Raven standing alone with him in the dark, drafty hall. She stood silent as always, staring around at her new surroundings, clearly not pleased with what she saw.

"Well, Raven, I shall take you up to see your aunt now. I shall carry your case for you. Then, when you have become better aquainted, I shall show you to your room." The butler began to walk slowly up the large staircase which stood in the hall, carefully carrying her case with him. Raven had no choice but to follow. While her face betrayed no emotions, inside she felt trapped, and afraid of how dreadful life would be with this old great aunt she could hardly remember, her last surviving relative willing or able to take her in. The aunt hadn't even been at the funeral, she had said it was too far to travel and that she would pay her respects in her own way. So Raven had been forced to travel hear with the dreadful Julie, far away from anything to remind her of her parents, nothing left but a photo of the three of them tucked into her pocket.

They reached the top of the stairs, and the butler gestured to a door down the corridor on her right. "Knock before entering," he added before walking off in the other direction, presumably to deposit her case in her new room.

Raven stood in front of the door for a moment, considering running away from the this place, leaving everything, just vanishing. But that knd of thing was always foolish, she'd end up lost or dead and her parents would be so disappointed that their brave, clever little girl had failed them. No, she would "take it like a man" as her father had always told her to, and face this.

She knocked and timidly entered.

The room was a shock. In an old house like this you would expect a four poster bed, not huge piles of cusions, drapes of colourful beads and silks, bright colours everywhere. Incense candles were burning, and soft music that could not be heard outside the door was playing. In the centre of the room, nestled among a huge pile of bright cusions and dressed in an orange silk robe lay her aunt. The woman was old, a great aunt, so at least sixty, white hair loose and straight, framing her smiling, slightly wrinkled face. She seemed to be queen of this little temple, and Raven half expected to see strong, tanned manservants standing either side of her feeding her grapes. In fact, the room contained only two people, Raven and the aunt. They looked at each other for a moment, the aunt's pale blue eyes meeting Raven's dark stare.

"Well, hello my dear," announced the aunt with a small smile.

Raven said nothing, simply held the stare. Her aunt smiled wider, as if in an attempt to incite Raven into speech. After several awkward moments of silence, the aunt continued.

"It must have been a very difficult, tiring day for you. I know that everything has changed, that it can never be the way it used to be, and that must be very frightening. But your parents were wonderful, brave people and we will carry the memory of them in our hearts and minds. I'm sure they would wish for you to find happiness and comfort here, and I sincerely hope you will."

Raven said nothing, though her face was hot with held-back tears at thoughts of her mother and father. She was angry at the aunt- who was she to talk of these things? She hadn't even come to the funeral. She didn't care.

"Harold, the butler, can attend to any needs you have. You may go into almost any room of the house, though we have set up the biggest room for your bedroom, and we have bought a few things to make it more... homely... for you. There is a large kitchen downstairs, and I have a cook named Mrs Maybell and she will make you whatever food you wish. After summer, you will return to school, but until then I hope you will find ways to entertain yourself in this old house. We can also spend time together, you and I, if you wish, after you have settled down. Well now, that seems to be everything .If you like, you can go now and Harold will show you to your room."

It was difficult to get used to the abrupt way the butler and the aunt said things- they simply seemed to lay down the facts in a manner that suggested they were beyond dispute. Raven felt as if she was being treated like a child, being told “you shall do this” and “you will do that”, and although she was still very young, her parents had always treated her in a much more open and adult way. They had included her in most decisions that concerned her, and as much as possible they had tried not to tell her what she must do, simply informing her of their opinions and trusting her to make the right choice. To go from that to her aunt’s method of dealing with her left Raven feeling suffocated, but there was nothing she could do. At her aunt’s last comment, she left the room as quietly as she had entered, and the waiting Harold led her along the corridor to a large oak pannelled door with an ornate bronze handle and a large sturdy looking lock.

“Your room, Miss. I have placed your bag inside and hope everything shall be to your liking. Should you require anything, a bell pull next to your bed shall summon me to your assistance,” Harold said gravely, opening the door for Raven. Raven had half expected another room full of cushions but what lay before her couldn’t have been more different. The floor was polished mahogany wood, mostly covered with a plush red patterned rug. The bed was a huge four postered affair, with thick cream coloured bed sheets, huge fluffy pillows and red velvet curtains which could be pulled around it. Besides the bed the only other pieces of furniture where a big bureau writing desk, a wooden chair and a huge ornately carved wardrobe. The room had three windows, all of which reached nearly the height of the room which was saying a lot considering that Raven could have stood on top of the wardrobe and still been unable to touch the ceiling. The middle window had a cushioned window seat upon which sat a few books and a teddy bear.

Raven glanced at it all and felt empty. It was nothing like her cosy little room at home where she had snuggled under the covers while her father read her a story, and waited for her mother to come and tuck her in and give her a kiss goodnight.

"Should you need anything, there is a bellpull on the wall which you can use to summon me," Harold told her, before backing out of the room and leaving Raven to have a little peace by herself. At first she just stood there, alone and silent in the room. Then she realised how very tired she felt. The whole day had been so overwhelming, and the child felt empty, exhausted and alone. She moved over to the bed and hauled herself up- it was very high- before kicking off her shoes. She didn't take off any of her other clothes, or even slide under the bedsheets. She just lay flat on her back on top of the bed, miserable thoughts swirling round in her head and soon she fell asleep.

***

Over the next few days, Raven discovered the boredom and loneliness of her existence in the house. After her first days heavy sleep, she found that though she was often tired, she could no longer get her eyes to shut, and she suffered from restlessness and insomnia. There was a large bookcase in the hall outside her room, so much of her time was passed reading, trying to escape into a world where she could be someone else, not an orphan alone in the creaky old house of her great aunt. The stories she read were mostly of fantastical adventures- "the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe", where children in a great house such as this one had escaped through a wardrobe to somewhere altogether different and magical. "The Hobbit", which was set in a whole other magical world in itself, and where a little man who believed he was of little consequence was taken on a great journey, aided by dwarves and wizards, to face a dragon. "Five Children and It", where a group of fortunate young children met a creature that could grant wishes and make the most amazing things happen. What these stories made her long for was not her own magical journey or adventure, but a much more simple thing- companionship. In all the stories the characters were backed up by brothers and sisters or friends, who remained true and faithful to them whatever they did. She had no such sibling or friend, and the loss of her parents weighed all the heavier because she had nobody to share it with.

After less than a week, she had nearly exhausted the supply of books, and had turned to drawing and writing her own little stories at the bureau instead. However in the quiet and austere environment of the house her creative impulses were stifled, and she soon grew tired of trying to bring out magic with her pen. This left very little to do. She had barely left her room in the time she had been here- Harold summoned her to her aunt's room once a day, where she was asked how she was feeling and what she had done that day, but besides this she was not required to leave. She was allowed to take her meals in her room, and she discovered she had a large ensuite bathroom also, so she didn't need to go out into the corridor to go to the bathroom to wash.

However now that she had nothing else to do, she felt inclined to leave the bedroom and perhaps do a little exploring. She had read a book called "The Secret Garden", and in it there was a little girl much like her, with no parents or friends, left alone in a grand house. That girl had had a happy ending- she had found a friend, and even a cousin, and a new family had grown around her. Raven supposed that if she was going to find happiness she had better go and look for it, although at the time she decided to go exploring the rain was pelting down outside, so she decided to do inside exploring instead of out.

It felt rather strange opening the door to her bedroom and stepping into the corridor, knowing that she was about to embark on an adventure. So far, living at her aunt's house had felt a bit like staying at a hotel or even a prison (with her bedroom as a very luxurious cell), so to be wandering around in her stockinged feet seemed wrong, and she felt a little guilty. Even so, she also felt the squirmings of excitement in her stomach as she crept along the hallway, glancing up at the austere portraits which lined the walls. She stopped outside the first door she saw, and stared at it for a few moments, her heart thudding loudly in her ears, her palms sweating as she reached slowly for the gold gilted doorknob, half drawing back as the door opened with a creak and... revealed a musty cupboard containing a vaccum cleaner and a few old dusters. She shut the door in disappointment, and continued on her search.

The next few doors she tried offered little more than the cupboard in terms of excitement. One door led to a poky bathroom with a ceiling light and no outside window. The next led to a large room entirely empty, with a thin line of dust covering the floor and thick velvet curtains over the window, but nothing else. The next door was locked, which intrigued Raven, but she supposed it might just be another cupboard or it might be the butler's room. When she reached the end of the corridor she came to a narrow set of stairs leading upwards, and so, allowing her excitement to mount again, she slowly walked up the stairs imagining all the exciting things she might see at the top of them.

However, when she reached the top, the corridor there looked just the same as the corridor she had just been in, except that the paintings on the wall were not portraits but rather hideous hunting pictures of men in red jackets on horses slaughtering foxes and deers with guns and dogs. Raven gaped at one of the paintings in disgust, then averted her eyes from them, and turned her mind to the task at hand- trying the doors to see if any of these rooms was any better.

To her surprise, all of the doors on this level were locked, and she was unable to get into any of them. She reached the end of the corridor and tried the last door, only to be disappointed when the handle didn't turn. For some reason, however, she didn't turn back straight away, but examined the door itself- it was a little different from the others in that instead of simple oak panelling, the dark wood had been carved into shapes- mostly little forest creatures, such as a rabbit, a sparrow, a frog and a fish- there was even a deer and a fox, making Raven think of the poor creatures in the pictures behind her. She traced the outlines of the creatures on the door with her fingertips, marvelling at the beauty of it, and glad that even if her house hunt had yielded nothing else, she had found this. She admired the door for a few moments, and was about to turn to go when she decided to give it one last push just in case, sure that whatever was inside would have to be interesting. She pulled the handle down sharply, and shoved all her weight against the door, and suddenly she felt a swoosh of air and she was stumbling into the room!

It was a shock to be inside, considering it had seemed very likely that the door would be locked just like the rest, but what she saw in the room was a little disappointing. Everything was covered by dust sheets, but she could see from the shapes of the objects that they were probably just bits of furniture. She pulled one white sheet off an oblong shaped object to reveal a single bed, still made up with sheets and cover as if it was about to be slept in, and the look of it made her think of the little bear's bed in the Goldilocks story- smaller and more child like than a normal bed. Next she tugged the sheet off of a large squarish item standing next to the door, to reveal a chest of drawers, made in the same wood as the door and again ornately carved, this time just with swirls and patterns. Raven tried the handle of one of the drawers, but no matter how hard she pulled it wouldn't open. Trying the other drawers had the same result. She supposed that over time they had somehow been stuck, for she could see no sign of a keyhole and couldn't see how they could have been locked.

Glancing around her, she saw that there was only one thing left to uncover, a tall, thin object that stood in the centre of the room. She approached it slowly, for some reason now feeling a sort of dark premonition, with the butterflies in her stomach now roused up in an explosion of flurrying. Gently, she pulled back the sheet, and when she saw the person standing before her she screamed.

Chapter Two Coming Soon