Chapter 1

"Come on, Hope! We better get on the road; I want to stop at a few places on the way too." Frigg moaned and stomped her feet like a baby. We have finally graduated high school two days ago and have planned for a summer road trip to Frigg's grandmother, Gina.

She lived six hours from the busy New York in a little town called Fortbridge. The place is so tiny that it didn't even show up on Google Maps when I searched for it. Frigg said that it was a very remote place surrounded by a big park. The park was private with a lodge which brought in most of the money for the town. She also said that it only had a total of three thousand residents, who were weird as hell, thus the reason why they have moved.

"Don't worry I am done, let's just go greet my parents and then we can go, okay?" I asked her as I took my suitcase.

"Yeah, this is going to be so much fun! The whole summer without worries and parents look over our backs..." she said excited and walked down the stairs with a jump in her every step.

"Bye mamma, bye papa." I greeted my parents and hugged them both.

"Be safe my little Hope and if anything is wrong just call, okay?" my father said and hugged me again before rubbing my already messy hair even messier.

"I will." I laughed and climbed into Frigg's old BMW.

"And call us every day!" my mother shouted as we drove off.

"Life, here we come!" Frigg shouted and speeded off into the direction off her grandmother's.

Most of the ride was fun, I and Frigg sang some songs badly and played stupid games, we also stopped for some snacks or to take pictures of beautiful sceneries. It was the last hour of the drive and I must say my seat was starting to kill me.

"So, tell me more about this ghost town of yours?" I asked with a laugh and turned the radio softer.

"I don't know the place well; I was two when my parents moved to New York. They said that it was a strange place and didn't like me growing up there. My grandmother always came to us, we never went to her. I was once there to visit her when I was six or seven, but all I can remember was her house. It was like a cabin with the woods on the back, it is really beautiful." She explained her eyes never leaving the road.

"So, we will be staying at her house, right?" I asked.

"Yep, she said that we are lucky that we are going to see their festival. She said that it is a lot of fun and my mother agreed which is rare because she rarely agrees with my grandmother." Frigg laughed as if she remembered something. I remember her telling me stories of her grandmother. How she doesn't like being called grandmother and that she believes that she is a twenty-year-old stuck in fifty-year olds body.

"Your grandmother seems fun." I smiled and yawned.

"You haven't met her. She has the energy of a toddler, hell she is still one. I remember her snarky remarks that she always gave my dad, she doesn't like him very much. We even had to bail her out once, because she gave a police officer attitude and hit him over the head with her bag." She said, and both of us laughed at the last part. Go, Gina!

"She seems a hand full?"

"She is, but she's cool." She stated, and we both went silent, both of us listening to the songs on the radio playing.

"Welcome to Fortbridge." Frigg said excitedly after a half an hour of comfortable silence.

As we entered, I can see why she said that it was beautiful in a dark way. The sun was setting and that gave it an even more dangerous feeling, the tall trees of the woods casting big shadows over the road. It was a little town with a big board that said 'Welcome to Fortbridge' with woods and wolves painted on, at the entrance. On the main road, it had café's and shop of all sorts and a big town hall in the middle of it all with a big open grass space in front of it. The town had a mysterious feeling too, that I liked very much, and a strange thrill went up to my spine like it was warning me something big was going to happen.

"That is the town hall, the festival will be there." Frigg said and pointed to it, "The town is still the same as I remembered." She said with a laugh.

"Where is the lodge supposed to be?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Um... I don't know." She said confused, while I looked out of my window. We rode on for about five more minutes when we stopped in front of a cabin looking house at the edge of the woods.

"You weren't kidding when you said your grandmother had the woods as a backyard," I said in awe to Frigg, while she just laughed.

The cabin was two stories high and medium-sized with a beautiful and colourful garden in front of it, probably Gina's handiwork and speaking of her she was standing in the road awaiting us with a big smile.

Gina was nothing to my surprise. I thought she would look like a normal grandma, chubby and full of baking powder, but was I wrong. Gina looked like an older model; she was slender with a few wrinkles here and there. She was definitely on ageing's good side. She had the same tanned skin as Frigg and blue eyes with the only sign of age, her bob cut grey hair. She wore a white satin dress and sandals that looked amazing on her and as she stood there, she looked happy and excited. She lifted her dress and ran toward us, her playfulness showing.

"You're here, you're here!" she shouted and hugged us both. She smelt like cinnamon and something I can't put my finger on. I have smelt it before; it was some kind of flower?

"Hello, Gina." Frigg greeted and hugged her again.

"You must be Hope. Oh, you're a cute little girl, aren't you?" she said and squashed my cheeks, she was a tad taller than me which kind off creeps me out a little bit, "Common, I have prepared dinner so grab your bags so that I can show you, Lovies, to your rooms and we can eat." She exclaimed and me and Frigg laughed, going to the backseats of the car to retrieve our bags.

We walked through the flower-filled garden to the cabin. There was almost every type of flower and of ever colour, but the most were purple. More like a specific purple flower that was scattered all around in-between the other flowers.

The cabin inside was beautiful with lots of pictures of Frigg and her family. One of her mother when she was a teen, looking exactly like Frigg, another where her parents married, and she was little and a lot of old photos of Gina and I suppose her husband. The house was filled with sweet smells and flowers were everywhere, mostly the purple flowers again. There were old antique furniture, fur rugs and beautiful paintings hanging on the wall. Gina showed us around to where the living room was, the kitchen and then the stairs that led us to the bedrooms.

Upstairs it was almost the same as the rest of the house only it had three bedrooms. The furthest one to the stairs on the right side was Gina's room and next to it was Frigg's mother's old room which Frigg would occupy. Across her room was my room, the guest bedroom and next to me was the bathroom.

The rooms were normal size, mine had grey coloured walls and a grey double bed in the middle, with two-bed lamps next to it on either side. The floor was made from a soft carpet and a few paintings were hanging here and there. Next to the bed on the bedside table was a little flowerpot filled with the strange purple flowers that seemed to fill the house.

"You girls all settled in?" Gina asked as she stood at the bottom of the stairs.

"You ready?" asked Frigg as she walked into my room.

"Yep. I am starving!" I said and we both went downstairs.

Dinner was marvellous; Gina knew how to cook, and I saw where Frigg got her love for food. We chatted till late about school and the road-trip, Gina taking slow sips from her wine glass every few minutes. Our laughs filled the cosy cabin until we all grew sleepy and retreated to our bedrooms.

As I was lying on the bed, waiting for sleep to catch me, I could help but feel like something inside me was restless; it was warning me of something or someone. Screaming at me to leave this creepy, yet irresistible place behind, but I solely blamed it on the nerves of being away so long from my parents. What could go wrong, right? 

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Hello Elizabeth here,

Hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this book, it is still a little boring in the begging, but it has to start somewhere right? I have terrible news, I won't be able to upload more chapters for a week for I am camping with my family and there is no service for my phone nor laptop, but after that I'll make it up to you guys.

Love

Elizabeth_Helena