The car bounced and jittered as I flew down the highway toward their house, which laid on the outskirts of the city in a remote patch of woods. It was a huge house, and when I say huge I meant huge. The outside was a cream in color with grey shutters. Two marble pillars held up the entrance while the porch stretched out to wrap around the whole base of the mansion. It was easily three stories high though I’d only ever been to the basement, which was the game room, the main floor, and the second floor. The third floor was off limits to me as well as certain areas of the other floors.

My jaw clenched as I tightly gripped the steering wheel, rapidly blinking my eyes as I felt a bit of mist forming at the edges. I would not cry over her, not again and not ever. I refused to; she didn’t deserve my tears or anything else of mine. Ever.

Memories from the cursed house flittered across my thoughts. One was of my birthday a few years ago, when I’d gone out to the roof to read. I’d heard banging coming from my room, as if my belongings were being flung everywhere. A cold dread seeped into my heart as I thought about someone having broken into my room, riffling through my stuff like some creeper. Shivering I clutched my father’s journal securely to my chest for courage as I slowly made my way down from the roof.

Carefully I swung my legs onto my window sill, feeling with the tips of my shoes for a good hold. I was about to roll into the room as I usually did, when suddenly I was grabbed harshly by the ankles. My stomach gave a lurch as the person jerked me feet first into the room, causing me to fall backwards back first. My head crashed into the side of the house and little black dots danced in my vision. I desperately grasped for my father’s journal, which had managed to slip from my grip, but it was already plummeting to the yard below.

Now that I think back on it, it was for the best that this happened. For when I was tugged fully inside it turned to be my mother who’d done the deed of yanking me and causing me to fall. She’d been the one searching desperately through my room, and I knew it was for the journal. She’d somehow known that it had not truly been my father’s journal that I had burned to a crisp, probably knowing that I could never willingly do such a thing.

I could taste the metallic blood tingling on my tongue and I could feel the sticky substance dripping down the back of my head, matting my hair down. A massive headache throbbed in the spot where my skull had made contact with the siding.

“Where is it?” My mother yelled. Grasping the front of my jacket she hoisted me up onto my feet, spitting acid in my face.

“I burned it,” I slurred, blinking away more of the curious black dots.

“I know you didn’t burn it! You would never burn it, tell me where it is!” She’d hissed, grasping the back of my hair near the spot where I’d been hurt.

Clenching my lips into a thin white line to keep a gasp escaped my jaws as a new wave of pain flew through my body, I locked my knees. It took everything I had not to crumple to the ground at that moment.

“Stupid girl!” My mother screeched, throwing me onto the floor as she tore out of my room in a rage.

Wiping the back of my mouth with a shaky hand I glanced down at it to see blood smeared across the back. I slowly crawled to my window lifting myself on uncertain legs as I peered over the edge of my window to the ground below.

The journal was gone.

My pale green eyes widened with horror as a bubbling sob racked my body. Finally I collapsed onto my side, curling up into the fetal position. Tears streamed down my face, not from my broken body but from my broken heart. The one thing that I cherished most in the world was now gone in an instant.