I realised pretty recently that I spend a lot of my time worrying about things. On that day in particular, I had another appointment with Officer Fauker about the whole Solstice family situation. I decided to drive to the police station and it wasn't long before the ride started feeling a little rougher than usual. Were my tires flat? Was something wrong with the engine? Was that spare tire I attached last week too loose? I must've pulled over and anxiously inspected my car about five times before I got to the station.
Then came the overwhelming sense of fear and worry about something completely unrelated. That's usually how it goes. Why do I have to get involved with this police investigation? I could get hurt doing their dirty work. I thought to myself, Fauker is overstepping. I can't even deal with the thought that I might need to see some mechanic who'll try to squeeze as much money out of me as possible because I don't know anything about cars, let alone a murder investigation. I don't want to go back to that weird suburban castle. I'm done. Finished.
The only thing I needed to do was say it.
"Fauker," I said to myself as I drove down main street. "I won't be going back."
I started sitting up straighter in my seat. My brow was furrowed in complete determination for the rest of the drive. When I finally made it to the police station I stomped on the parking brake like it was a small cockroach. That's how much I meant business. However, I was still silently going insane about the wobblyness that my car was suddenly afflicted by.
"When are you going back?" was the first thing he asked me when I took a seat at his desk.
He looked very busy. Everyone did. Cops were rushing around much faster than I thought possible. Something had to be going on, something real serious. Oh no, he's busy, I thought. I'm wasting their time. I'm being a selfish prune. He's going to think I'm selfish.
"Mrs. Zavai?" he pressed.
I defiantly pushed to my feet and puffed my chest up. My eyes burned with intense fury.
"This. Afternoon," I said, previous confidence crumbling around me.
I wanted to strangle myself with the table lamp's power cord, but even that would have required courage that I didn't have.
Fauker's face flipped from focused to extremely jovial. "I love your enthusiasm! Now excuse me and the rest of the precinct for a moment, I believe the ice cream truck just pulled up out front."
He slipped into the powerful stream of police officers as they swept out the door, wallets clasped in their sweaty hands.
So, yes, that is how I found myself standing at the doorway of Castle Solstice for the second time. Well...I don't know if 'doorway' is the right word if it's a castle? It didn't feel right at the time because, well, a doorway is a doorway. This was not a doorway. It towered over me and was wide enough for four people to walk through at the same time.
I sighed and anxiously knocked on the heavy wooden door. A few minutes later I realised that the door had one of those metal knocker things. It was shaped like two demons holding a kid (who was tied onto a long stick) above a fire. Yeah, I know. I don't think I really saw it at first, otherwise I probably would've been a lot more freaked out than I actually was.
I lifted it, then slammed it down. I could hear the sound echoing through the empty and totally creepy house. I listened for footsteps, but nothing came. I did, through the tiny gap under the door, see a shadow smoothly slide into place without a single sound though.
Then the door was pulled open. "Sabra!"
There she was. Elvira did this...weird thing when she said my name. She lengthened the 'a' sound, rolled the 'r' like she was some kind of super rich European aristocrat, and sounded more like she breathed the word than spoke it. It made me want to shiver.
"H-Hey. How's it going?" I stammered.
"Absolutely terribly," she exclaimed with a smile. "Please, do come in!"
Elvira drifted to one side to let me in. And I did my best to keep myself from collapsing into a little ball and crying myself to sleep in front of her doorway. Or not-doorway. "Okay, s-sure."
Dust. There was dust everywhere. I thought the floor was panelled with some nice grey floorboards, but no. It was just caked with dust. I watched as Elvira firmly shut the door behind us. Her gaze latched onto my face like it was some kind of face-latching parasite.
I felt cold. Refreshing...tingling. Like a winter morning's breeze.
But of course, my heart basically shot straight through my sternum when I saw a figure in the corner of my eye. Aurora was standing there next to an iron bird cage that contained her raven, Edgar. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
I wasn't exactly eager to answer that question. 'Hello there, I'm just going to check your fridge for decapitated heads, entrails, and other suspicious frozen produce'. Urp, just thinking about that stuff made me want to vomit. I started to retch, but thankfully, I was saved.
"Please, sister. Dear Sabra is a friend, and friends need no reason for visitation," sung Elvira.
Aurora cocked her head in a surprisingly chilling way. Like she was one inch away from snapping her own neck. "Friend? Since when did you engage in the dreadful pastime of having friends?"
Okay, I had to talk. I had to say something. "I-I came over to say hi, but also to see if you guys were maybe interested in coming over to my place for dinner tomorrow."
I forced myself to smile. I was glad I couldn't see what I looked like, but quite frankly, I think because the Solstices were, well...the Solstices...the horrendous expression actually fit right in. Don't make me explain why I invited them over to my house. My thought process wasn't reasonable given my paralysing anxiety about the whole situation. I don't know, maybe I thought being chummy would lower their defenses and get them to trust me? Ugh...I just didn't know what I was doing. Officer Fauker could be here himself doing this like a trained professional instead of buying orange ice blocks in bulk.
Elvira drifted over to the stairs and rested an arm on the handrail, relaxing her posture. "Oh how exciting! Tell me, Sabra, what do you plan on cooking for us?"
"U-Uh, I think I can make a good schnitzel. Bill thinks it's okay."
"Schnitzel? What in the Nine Circles of Hell is a schnitzel?" Aurora asked.
Elvira scrunched up her nose like she was mildly disgusted. "A schnitzel, my little sister, is a tenderised cut of chicken flesh covered in hardened bread crumbs and cooked in a pan."
Chicken flesh? That was a great way to make it sound revolting. Aurora seemed to agree, but probably for a different reason. Maybe because it was normal.
"I would rather some Flagellated Vestigials in the style of Arkesh The Defiler. I have a good recipe if you need it," Aurora replied.
My eyelids were fluttering like a pair of little wings fixed to my face at this point. "M-May I ask what that is exactly?"
Aurora closed her eyes, face softening in anticipation of the lavish meal she was about to describe to me. "Duck brains boiled in slug entrails with rolled-up pig intestine as garnish."
Of course. Of course that's what it was. Why wouldn't it be that? I threw up in my mouth a tiny bit. I'm glad it was only a tiny bit.
Elvira shook her head. "Now, now, sister. Sabra will be our host, so she will be deciding on the evening's food and drink."
Aurora sighed, "Bah. You've been awfully polite lately. It doesn't suit you." She then began to trail up the staircase. "I shall be in my room. Please do not let me know if you need anything."
Because Aurora wasn't exactly athletic and the stairs were almost infinite, it took her a pretty long time to vanish. All the while, Elvira's shimmering grey eyes didn't glance away from me even for a second.
"U-Uh...hi..." I whispered.
Elvira slightly, ever so slightly, raised her right eyebrow. "'Hi', indeed."
I felt myself slipping a bit. All of sudden, I started forgetting things. Why was I there? Who was this scary woman? What's my birthday? Why do the plastic cup lids at fast food places have those little buttons on them?
I knew that I needed to get myself back on track. I was there to investigate. So goshdarnit, I was going to so some goshdarn investigating.
"Could I have some water?" I asked her as she kept staring at me.
She flashed me a weak smile. "Of course, darling. Grey or black?"
"Uh...normal? Drinking water? What colour is that?"
Elvira laughed as she hovered over to the window. "I'll be back in a moment. Please, make yourself at home."
I watched as she lifted the window open...threw her leg out of it, then climbed through it. She dropped out of sight as I kind of just...stared. I wanted to run after her and ask why, especially when the goshdarn door was right there, but really, I was a little too shocked to follow through.
Okay, the point was that I was alone. The perfect time to go snooping around these people's home after they graciously accepted me in. It was horrible. I started to think maybe this was a bad idea.
Not exactly knowing where to start, I drifted through the foyer and fluttered into the first room I was drawn to. I think it was the kitchen? Well...jars of really weird looking stuff lined the shelves.
There was a table in the centre of the room and scattered across it were a whole heap of opened letters. I grabbed the first one I saw, and I kid you not, this is what it said:
'Of all the wonders that I have heard or seen, from the crystalline oceans to the forests green,
None can compare to such beauty unrivalled, your eyes like the moss on a lake unstifled.
If ever you doubt my love for thee, look no further than my giddy reverie,
The chime of your voice fixes me yonder, stealing my breathe and insisting I not wander.
My heart be a dark and ugly thing, but one thought of your eyes and suddenly it can sing,
My love for you is eternal, pure, strong, and true, so you need not speak for me to know that your heart sings to mine too.
Until next we meet, my love.
Yours truly, Satan.'
I blinked. Then I blinked again. I blinked a third time because blinking was something that I had gotten very good at over the years. I would have blinked a fourth time, but suddenly I couldn't close my eyes. They were stuck on the letter, hovering over the name at the very end. 'Satan'...what a weird name to choose for someone... His parents must have been hipsters or something. That's what hipsters do, right? Call their kid's things like 'Apple' and 'Satan'?
Shivering, I placed the letter back down where I had found it on the messy table. Though that might've been evidence enough for a church to convict them, Officer Fauker probably needed more to go on than 'they know someone called Satan'.
The next logical step was to check their fridge, because it was a well-known fact that murderers kept souvenirs from their victims, and where better to store that than in a freezer?
The fridge was a big, bulky thing and covered in scratches which sliced through the black paint and exposed a few slivers of silver beneath. It looked like it had been ravaged by a werewolf or something.
Half expecting something to jump out at me, I grabbed the groove on top of the freezer and pulled it open with enough force to make the entire unit slightly tremble.
By this stage, you'd think that I'd be used to the Solstice's weird antics, but no. I wasn't used to it at all. In fact, I felt like halfway between laughing and running away at what I saw inside that freezer. Two pillows stuffed into the back and covered in ice, small mugs of various murky liquids (that had, of course, solidified), and a pair of shoes. They were red high heels, scuffed beyond repair and covered in spots of a strange purple muck that I really didn't want to know about.
"Curious little thing, aren't you?" A voice tore through my chest and pushed my heart right out of my body. I'm pretty sure I died. Even though I was still standing, hearing and seeing, I was dead. The voice had killed me.
Dead as I was, I still managed to turn and spot Aurora standing in the doorway (and yes, this time it was a doorway because it was ten times smaller than the front entrance). "S-Sorry, I was just looking for a drink..."
"In the freezer?"
I gulped down the urge to confess everything. Honestly, I was still surprised that I'd managed to speak since I'd been dead for a full thirty seconds now.
Okay, maybe I was overreacting a little bit. I hadn't really died, but she'd scared the life out of me which is technically the same thing.
"Oh, uh yeah."
"Strange place to keep your beverages." She stalked towards me and reached out her hand. I flinched, waiting for her to put some horrible curse on me, but instead she dove into the freezer and pulled out the frozen shoes. "Mortals are so very confusing."
I felt like asking her why she called us 'mortals', because that implied that she was immortal, and if Larry was anything to go by, they definitely weren't. Instead I nodded towards the shoes and said in a voice much bolder than intended. "It's a stranger place to put your shoes."
Aurora gave me that scary look again, head cocked to the side and eyes wide with implications. "How else, pray tell, am I to keep my feet cold?"
I stared at her in quiet uncertainty. Who would ever want freezing cold feet? That's just not something anyone should want...ever. Saying that, though, would have required a backbone. One that I had mysteriously misplaced years ago. "I don't really know."
Aurora hummed disapprovingly at me, and with the icicle shoes hanging from her index and middle finger, she returned up the stairs and vanished into her room.
That was the moment that a terrifying truth hit me. If I was truly going to find anything, I'd have to check their rooms.