Ebony Falls

Chapter 1: The Move

The menacing silence of Ebony Falls felt peaceful whenever I first arrived, a nice contrast to the city landscape I was used to. Moving to the country where very few lived seemed like a desirable, cozy lifestyle until I realized that nobody was around to hear you when you cried out for help. The urban legends that sprouted among children seemed like campfire stories you told to keep your friends awake at night until I had a supernatural occurrence myself.

It all used to be so simple...

Excuse me, I must seem rude. I haven't properly introduced myself, have I? Salutations. My name is Scarlet, Scarlet Penrose the second to be exact. As you can already see, I don't find living in the swampy ruins of Ohio exactly...desirable.

The people here are strange. I wouldn't call myself the most normal person on the planet, but I'm not even close to measuring up to the oddity of the residents of Ebony Falls. The old women below my apartment have dubbed themselves witches and the quiet couple above us have a pyromaniac of a son who is out to make everyone's lives miserable. He's a fat, messy little boy with a high pitched pig-like laugh with loud snorts thrown in. When I walked down the stairs of my apartment and saw him in the playground outside, his grubby little hands wrapped around a magnifying glass or lighter, I knew some girl's Barbie doll or a little boy's toy car was in for a fiery demise.

My first day of school was even worse than my new neighbors.

For the initial couple of hours on my first day of school, it seemed like a drab place. There were grey, bare walls. Grey floors, covered with dust. And the skies matched my new school that day; grey. It was like I was in a Charlie Chaplin movie. The only hints of colour in the whole school were the lockers, which were a depressing dark blue.

Of course, out of the four school districts in the county, I had to end up in the only school that required uniforms. And, in honour of our school spirit, guess what colour they are? 

Yeah. Grey seems to be in this year.

Fortunately, I'm allowed to wear accessories as long as long as they aren't distracting. It's a good thing too, since the only two things I always wear are my button barrette and my gloves. The gloves aren't that special...I don't wear them for sentimental value. The reason I wear gloves... is a story for another time. The barrette is really what's important to me and my family history. My nana left it to me in her will, noting that it was her most prized possession since she was a girl. She got it from her mother, who got it from her mother, and so on. God only knows how old it is, and I've made it my duty to take care of it until I have someone to pass it down to. It meant the world to Nana, and now it means the world to me. Plus, it compliments my outfit rather well. It's black, yet another shade of grey if you think about it.

My first couple of classes was like any other school. I had English and math. A whole new year of reading some boring book the teacher assigned and wondering who in the world thought adding letters to math was a good idea. It was just as it's always been. But after those two classes...I had science. No, science never was my strong point, but that has nothing to do with why I disliked this particular science class.

It was because of Miss Kernel. A superstitious science teacher, the definition of irony, decided she was in the mood to embarrass me in front of the whole class on my first day.

I remember it clearly.

I sat down in my seat and sunk low, hoping and praying she wouldn't notice me. The moment I walked in the classroom, I knew she was trouble; the door to her room wasn't a door at all, but strands of beads. She had a crystal ball in the middle of the mess of papers on her desk along with a zodiac calendar and palm-reading chart on her wall. And apparently, she was treated like an omniscient goddess by my peers. From the way I heard people talking about her, she was highly respected and always had the ears of her young, impressionable students. If I didn't know any better, I would say she was nothing more than a rotten-toothed crazy cat lady.