National Novel Writing Month: Do You Want to Be My #NovMadFan and Win SBI?

Happy National Novel Writing Month!

Yes, this is the month that we all sit down and write a novel. 50,000 words. 1,667 a day.

17 other writers at the @freewritehouse are taking on this madness as well:

@amelin, @botefarm, @felt.buzz, @grow23, @improv, @kaelci, @kaerpediem, @linnyplant, @mariannewest, @ntowl, @stinawog, @carolkean, @byn, @bennettitalia, @aislingcronin, and, of course, myself: @kipswolfe

For a chance to WIN SteemBasicIncome, just read and comment on my #freewritemadness posts! For more information, click on the image below and it will take you to the post about the contest.
For more information visit the @freewritehouse

I had said that I was not going to post my NaNo results here, but I figured, "What the hell?" This is the first post--I'll probably also post the very last one as well. I came in short today (1420 words), but this is the end of the prologue and I can start the story tomorrow.

Oh! This also counts as my freewrite of the day as I used the prompt "cross-eyed" in it.

Enjoy!

--

Prologue

The house had sat on the hill for many years, lonely and forgotten. The trees and brush had grown up around it, hiding and disguising it from the world because if the world knew what it was, it would be disgusted and humiliated that such a sore was on its surface that the earth itself would open up and swallow the entire gated five acres that the house stood on.

It wasn't that the house wanted to be the way it was -- well, not necessarily. What the house wanted -- as much as you could imagine what a house wants -- wasn't what mattered. What mattered was what lived inside the house and what it wanted.

An old-fashioned swing set sat near the house on an old slab of concrete, weeds growing through the cracks. Bushes and ivy grew around the legs of the swing set, holding it down as though it was expected to fly away. An overturned red trike was on one side of the two gate entrance, rusted, it's front white-rimmed wheel spinning slowly in the wind. When the wheel moved, it made a harsh, high-pitched sound. The heavy iron-wrought fence was exactly like you'd expect it to be, sharp and pointy at the top, drilled into a brick foundation about a foot off the ground. The entrance was bound by two gates, locked together for what was supposed to be eternity by a heavy rusted chain and an old padlock whose key everyone thought had been lost to the ages. A huge sugar maple tree stood on the other side of the gates as if stationed to keep watch on the entrance.

Most of the elderly of the small town of Gothenberg remembered vaguely a girl and a small cross-eyed boy who would play right behind the fence underneath the tree. They just appeared one day -- no one had even known that the house on the hill was occupied. Both of them had hair colored like a blazing sunset and their eyes were ice blue, the color eyes that only red-haired people had.

In those days, the grass wasn't as high as your knees and the bushes were always kept trimmed, the dark green ivy tamed yet starting to grow up one side of the house. Every now and then, a passerby would be kind enough to stop and ask the kids how they were. They would stop what they were doing, turn and look at whoever was speaking, then go back to what they were doing.

​The children were the only humans that the townspeople saw behind the gate.

​Door-to-door salesmen, especially, stopped, being that the gates were closed and would ask the children if their mother or father was home. The children would look at them and the salesmen would typically scurry away as quickly as they arrived.

One passerby, Mabel Crump, was able to make somewhat friends with the children over a period of time. Mabel was a strong, church-going lady and believed that everyone should have a chance to hear the Word of God. She would bring the kids hard cinnamon candies to suck on and, without their parents' knowing, the children would greedily snatch them up like they'd never seen or eaten candies before. If you were to ask Mabel, she'd probably tell you that you were right. Sunday mornings, after church, Mabel would walk to the gates and when the children came out, she would try her hardest to teach them Bible stories, stories of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, to try and teach them the difference between good and evil. What else as an upstanding young Christian woman do but pass on the gospel as she had been told?

Mabel visited those children on a regular basis and talked with them. Surprisingly enough, they talked back occasionally in quiet dulcet tones that Mabel would have to move closer to hear and understand. She never told anyone what they said, for fear it would get back to them that she was talking about them, but her family and friends knew when she had visited for her face would be a pale white for about an hour or two afterwards.

When they disappeared, Mabel's heart broke and she swore that the house did something with them or caused them to disappear. At this time, no one had still ever actually seen the parents nor were they aware if there were any. After the children's disappearance, Mabel started to go to the town speakeasy more often, a place she had spent most of her adult life avoiding, not necessarily to drink at first, but slowly she began to drink, rye whiskey being her favorite, not that she would tell that to anyone. Not that she had to tell anyone -- anyone who frequented the bar knew it.

It was while Mabel was tipsy -- drunk was more like it -- that she would start telling stories about the children. Imagined or real, the patrons of the bar never really knew, but she would go on and on about how the kids lived in a Satanic household, their parents abusing them sexually in rituals that even the children didn't know what they were for. When asked why she didn't call the authorities, Mabel shrugged and said she didn't think they would be able to do anything for the children as no one could really get close to them. She'd ask the bartender for a shot of Templeton Rye, down it with her eyes closed, and then ask for another.

Mabel wasn't the only one who tried to reach out to the children. Young Robbie Stamford did as well, with somewhat better results. Although he never heard of any abuse that the children may have endured, Robbie was able to play jacks with them, him sitting right outside the fence on the brick foundation. He had suggested marbles, but the kids said they didn't have any.

The next week, Robbie brought them each about twenty marbles, purchased at the local five-and dime using his newspaper route savings for the past month. The only time he touched them was when, carefully, he passed the colorful marbles through the bars of the fence into the childrens' hands. Each child had cold -- almost chillingly cold -- hands, he would later, one the children disappeared and he felt he could talk. A month later, Robbie's house caught on fire. While his parents and younger siblings were able to escape, he was trapped in his bedroom. After the fire was out, bystanders would say that they could hear Robbie screaming from inside the house.

Once the children disappeared, the town folk noticed that the lawn was changing. Weeds began to take over, the grass growing longer. The tricycle appeared, upside down next to the gate, and whispers of occult or Satanic activity or even perhaps that they were kidnapped. The swing set -- something no one had ever seen the children actually use -- began to be covered with a reddish-brown covering. Mabel had turned into the town's lush, no longer going to her Sunday school and church where she had been a constant presence until she began drinking.

A heavy shiny chain was placed around the two gates to the house along with a new padlock. No sale sign was placed in the yard.

They were just... gone.

--

Ninety years later, a rusty old bolt cutter was used to cut that same chain, now colored orangish-brown because of time and weather, and it clanked as it fell and landed on the stone walkway. At the end of the bolt cutter was a strange man with yellowing hair as red hair tends to do when you smoke a great deal, but you couldn't see much of it because of the black top hat he wore. Dressed to the nines including a dress coat with tails and shiny black dress shoes, he was. However it was his walking stick that was probably the most unusual thing about him though. Made of some sort of strong black metal, it resembled a caduceus, two snakes entwined around the center of the stick, the handle at the top bearing spread wings.

The gates creaked as he opened them, although there was no one about to hear them except for himself. He smiled and quietly walked in, closing the gates behind him, listening to the same creak.

The chain and padlock was not replaced.

(1420/1667)