The Twelve Chimes of Maligna Manor

The Big School Rules

"Are you sure?" asked Ben.

Tia Maggie looked at her laptop with a sheepish smile.

"Yeah, I'm sure," said Tia Maggie. "I was just...."

She met Ben's gaze and seemed to take a moment to weigh him up.

"I was actually just doing some writing," she said, "Some stories."

"You're a writer," said Ben.

His sudden enthusiasm must have been clearly visible as he saw it briefly reflected in the face of his Tia before it once again fell to embarrassment.

"No, I wish," she said. "I actually work for a bank handling fraud cases. It's not even the exciting criminal stuff just reading and responding to customer complaints before sending them off to the people who actually do something. It's boring enough for me so I won't make you suffer with the details. Writing's just sort of a hobby."

Ben was aware that Tia Maggie was desperately trying to move away from the subject, but he just couldn't let go. Books meant a lot to Ben. They were one of the few things that let him be with himself but not himself. He had never really thought much about writing himself; he struggled to come up with things that hadn't or couldn't really happen, but it was probably one of the things he thought most highly of. For his own Tia to be a secret writer was possibly the greatest discovery he had ever made.

"What sort of stuff do you write?" asked Ben.

Tia Maggie reddened.

"You know just stories," she said, "sort of horror stories."

Well, that was the ticket. It would surprise most people, if they ever bothered to ask, that there was nothing Ben loved more than horror stories. Well, love might be the wrong word. Ben couldn't come close to counting the sleepless nights spent in vigilance against some imagined terror he had read about in one of his books. He always hated that feeling of anxious dread he would get as he stared into the pages of some truly twisted tale, but it never stopped him. He would tell himself that he should never pick up one of those books again or research them online when he was on the computers at school. No, he should leave well enough alone and be happier for it. He could never listen to himself though. It would only take a day if that, before the siren's call of scary stories would lull him back to some horror.

"What kind of horror stories?" asked Ben.

It was Ben's turn to go crimson as Tia Maggie eyed him curiously. Ben's immediate thought was that she was annoyed at his constant questioning, but as the look settled, Ben began to suspect that there was a little excitement mixed in with it.

"Ghost stories," said Tia Maggie, "mostly anyway. I did do a couple of vampire ones, and there was this one werewolf one, but that didn't quite work out."

"Cool," said Ben.

Tia Maggie smiled.

"Like I said it's just a hobby," she said. "It's probably a little weird, but I just find it... relaxing. I don't know. I guess I just always have all this horrible stuff in my head. It just feels good to get it out."

Tia Maggie suddenly glanced back at her nephew and shifted in her seat.

"Sorry Ben," she said. "That might have been a bit of oversharing. I don't talk to many people about... well I don't talk to many people, so I guess I've become a little weird."

"I don't think you're weird," said Ben.

Tia Maggie laughed at that, but the smile that followed was at least sincere.

"Gracias, Mi Amor," she said.

There was a moment of silence as Ben watched Maggie look back to her screen and begin typing out a few more sentences.