Graveyard Whistling _ KLAUS HARGREEVES

0. prologue

On October 1st 1989, Evalina Humphries gave birth to a beautiful little girl she decided to name Magnolia Lou. There was nothing ordinary about her pregnancy, due to the fact that she wasn't pregnant when her day started. Sure, it was sudden and unexpected, but she fell in love with the little girl in the moment she first saw her and decided to keep her. Her husband Richard was as confused as her, but immediately accepted with enthusiasm the fact that he was going to be a father.
A few days later, a rather strange man came to their house in New York and asked the couple if he could adopt the little girl: they refused.
Magnolia soon showed there was something peculiar about her, when at the age of six months she threw a tantrum at Evalina and her body temperature turned to 200 degrees. No need to say she burned her baby's bottle.

But this story isn't about Magnolia Lou Humphries.

In fact, two years later, on March 3rd 1991, Evalina gave birth to triplets. Each of Richard's hopes of finally having a boy vanished,when he saw that his wife had given birth to three wonderful girls. The first one to be born was called Cassidy Anne, the second Elowen Daisy and the last one was called Coraline Eve.

Coraline was a tiny girl who liked the smell of books and paint and who had her hands covered in colour most of the time. She liked freshly baked croissants and enjoyed heights, for this she always climbed in the most peculiar places.Instead of facing Evalina's rage whenever she did something bad, Coraline would run to the attic, sneak out of the dormer window and up to the roof.

It was hard for her having to grow up in a house where most of the people were unique. First with Magnolia who was gifted with the ability of setting stuff on fire with her body temperature, then with Winnie, who was a piano prodigy and was destined to join a prestigious music school and one of the best orchestras in the world and then with Cassidy, who was three years ahead of her classmates and would certainly win a Nobel one day.
When people asked Coraline what she wanted to do when she was older, she simply raised her shoulders and said she wasn't sure yet, to which Evalina would add: "Your time will come, dear."
The fact was that she had no idea. Coraline just wanted to draw and read, then occasionally run away from her responsibilities and up to the attic of her imagination.

Magnolia could have joined the misterious Umbrella Academy if she had wanted to, and that made Coraline furious: if only she had been special, she wouldn't have hesitated to be trained along with the six kids of the Academy.
That wasn't fair. Nothing was fair.

The Humphries sisters were smart and pretty, with dark auburn hair and amber coloured eyes, they had all of the brains and beauty one could ask for. Too bad that, of the three, fate was always hell-bent on Coraline...

The apocalypse was coming.
But, oh, she didn't need to know that...