When I was younger, my favorite moments were always in the summer. Mom would get my sisters and me ready with light clothes for a couple of weeks and bring us to the countryside. We stayed in a small rural cabin where my maternal grandparents had lived before they passed away.
From the outside, it looked boring, but for a hyperactive kid like me, it was paradise on earth. I remember running barefoot through the mud, catching butterflies with the other kids, and coming home so exhausted that I'd fall asleep before my head hit the pillow.
It was my home away from home.
Unfortunately, as Geoffrey Chaucer once said, all good things must come to an end. A few months after my eighth birthday, my parents started fighting more and more. Back then, I was just a clueless kid who didn't understand anything. Later, I found out from a malicious newspaper article that my father had slept with a shareholder of his company.
The divorce was brutal. Mom wanted custody of everyone, but Dad used his money and his lawyers to blackmail her: either she took my sisters and left me behind, or he would fight for everything in court. Mom, who was wealthy by inheritance but not nearly as much as him, accepted the deal with a broken heart. She left me behind.
For years, I hated her. Later, I understood that Dad only wanted me as a successor. He locked me in a cold mansion, filled my life with tutors and responsibilities that no child should ever have to carry. Eleven years of absolute solitude. Until I decided I had finally had enough.
"It looks the same..." I murmured as the taxi pulled up to the edge of town.
The same tall trees, the same wooden and brick cabins scattered without order. The town center still looked like something out of a rural anime. I took a deep breath, and the scent of damp earth and wildflowers hit me like an old friend.
"Here you go, young man," the taxi driver said, taking my large suitcase out of the trunk.
I gave him an extra fifty dollars and looked him in the eye.
"If anyone asks, you didn't bring anyone today."
The man nodded quickly and drove off. Not even Dad, with all his resources, could track me now. I had emptied the account he controlled and moved everything to the secret account Mom had opened for me years ago. I left while he was on a business trip. A two-week head start. Enough.
I walked, dragging my suitcase down the main street. The midday heat made me sweat under my jeans and jacket, but I didn't care. The villagers' gazes followed me like magnets. Women in light dresses, men in straw hats... they all turned their heads.
I passed by the little shop where my sisters and I used to buy candy. The old library was still just as abandoned. And then I saw it again.
Right on the side wall of what was clearly a bar—there was a huge beer glass painted on it—someone had opened four perfect holes, each nearly two feet wide, lined up side by side. Clean. Round. At perfect waist height.
I stopped and tilted my head.
Ventilation? Or...?
The town had always been known for being "weird," but this was new. I felt a strange chill. I shook my head and kept walking. There would be time to investigate the town's madness later. Right now, I only wanted one thing.
I arrived in front of the two-story cabin. Well-kept flowers, a white fence, the same cracked porch I remembered. My heart raced so fast it almost hurt.
I climbed the steps. I raised my fist and knocked three times.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Silence.
I knocked again. Nothing.
Is no one home? I clicked my tongue, but I wasn't too surprised; it was midday.
I turned the knob by instinct. The door opened without resistance.
"She still doesn't lock it..." I smiled, remembering Mom's words.
I pushed slowly and stepped inside.
End of Chapter 1