Eliza Twitchel & The Haunted Forest

Eliza Twitchel & The Haunted Forest--Chapter 1

                                       Someone's Been In The Cupboards

Eliza Twitchel sat in a small, empty classroom, staring out a window at white clouds sailing past and tapping the end of her pen on a desktop that bore scratched-in names of students going back to the 1970s—evidenced by a carved heart with a declaration of love to David Cassidy.

At the front of the classroom, Ms. Grumwald sat in a squeaky padded chair at a heavy oak table, grading English papers and clucking her tongue in disgust. She was Rudolph Elementary School's oldest and meanest teacher—a distinction held by Thaddeus Crank until he suffered a brain aneurism during an ice cream-eating contest at last year's Paul Bunyan Day's fair.

Eliza sighed.  This wasn't how she wanted to spend the last hour of the last day of sixth grade.  She wanted to say good-bye to friends and scribble words of wisdom in her locker. Instead, she was in detention for fighting. What a laugh. It was hardly a fight.  Donnie Baker had said something stupid and being stronger and faster than Donnie, she chased him down and made him eat a June bug--a ritual they had shared since the third grade when she caught him trying to look up her dress. 

Since then, Donnie had consumed eight spiders, five beetles, half a dozen worms and one banana slug, which apparently tasted nothing like bananas. She thought about denying the charges but since half the kids in school carried smart phones, videos of the alleged bug-eating incident were no-doubt already going viral on every social media site on the web.

Eliza glanced at a round wall clock.  She held up her hand.  "Ms. Grumwald? It's almost three. I have to catch my bus."

Ms. Grumwald looked up from her papers. She slid black horn-rimmed glasses down to the tip of a narrow beaked nose and squinted at the clock. Her thin, cracked lips pursed.

"Very well. You may go."

Eliza jumped and ran for the door.

"Miss Twitchel." 

Eliza groaned as she slid to a stop. "Yes, Ms. Grumwald?"

Ms. Grumwald went back to grading her papers.  "Since this is the last time I shall have the privilege of your company, let me give you some advice." She glanced at Eliza over her glasses with pale blue eyes. "There will always be Donnie Bakers in the world. You cannot make them all eat bugs.  Watch that temper and stay out of trouble, at least for the summer."

"Yes ma'am. I will." Eliza threw open the door and ran out.

Ms. Grumwald returned to her English papers.  "I doubt it."

A mustard yellow school bus with Rudolph Public School District stenciled on the side cruised along a rural Oregon highway bordered on both sides by thick forests of spruce and cedar.  Brakes squealed as it slowed to a stop beside a gravel road.  The door opened and Eliza stepped down from the bus, her little sister Phoebe close on her heels.

"You girls have a great summer." The driver waved and closed the door.  The bus' air brakes made a loud whoosh as it rattled up the highway, belching black exhaust fumes.

Eliza headed up the gravel road bordered by sparse forest and fenced-in pastures.  Phoebe skipped ahead, looking for rocks and darting from one roadside flower to another like a bumblebee looking for pollen. 

At eight-years-old, Phoebe was a force of nature, a generator of perpetual energy that never seemed to run out.  Where Eliza had taken after their father, both in size and temperament, Phoebe favored their mother— small, shy, ethereal, with a smooth nut-brown face and big green eyes that saw wonder in the most mundane things.