As our U-haul truck pulled up in front of the 700 year old mansion, my sister and I had to find the strength just to pull ourselves out of our aunt’s camper. We weren’t used to staying in one place for too long, but it looked like this was where Victoria and I would be staying until we got married.

“Mary, Victoria, come look at your new home,” our aunt called to us, obviously eager to show us where we would be living until we found suitable husbands. Realizing we had no choice, the two of us walked up to the doorway with what little possessions we had and looked. And what we saw was absolutely beautiful. The ivory floors, the crystal chandeliers, the breathtaking alabaster pillars. It was like walking into a fairy tale.

The two of us were about to go up the bronze stairs to our bedroom and discover the grandeur in there when our aunt looked out the door and said, “Oh look. They might be some of your classmates. Why don’t you go on out and see if you can make some friends? I’ll call you two back at dinner.” Once again realizing we had no choice, Victoria and I walked out of the gorgeous mansion and tried talking to the group of people our aunt had shown us.

“Hi. I’m Mary Madeleine Bagley and this is my twin sister Victoria. We just moved here. You are?”

One of them, a girl with blonde hair, brown eyes, and white skin, spoke up and said, “Cool names. Where are you two from anyways? Russia?”

After she asked and everyone else in the group proceeded to laugh, Victoria turned to them and said, “Actually, no. We were born in Texas, but we’ve moved a bunch up until a little while ago. Let’s just say we’re from all over.”

Seeming to be satisfied with my sister’s answer, the girl looked up at us and said, “Elizabeth Lewis, but everyone calls me Ellie. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of everybody calling me YC-Ellie. So, where do you two live? There aren’t really that many nice places in this community up for sale at a decent price. You must have gotten a smokin’ deal.”

Very much so appalled by her language, but not really at liberty to say at the moment, the two of us stopped playing with our long dirty blonde hair and said, “We moved into that mansion across the street with our aunt. It used to be our grandma’s, and then we inherited it after she died. I think it was built in the year 1520. See? It’s that mansion right over there.” When Ellie looked and saw where my finger was pointing, her eyes suddenly filled with terror and we could tell something about the house was giving her a Matterhorn-sized case of the heebie-jeebies.

“Ellie, are you alright? You look like you’ve seen the end of the world.” Then, thinking she maybe hadn’t heard me, I waved my hand in front of her face to try and get her attention. Alarmingly enough, with no notice at all, Elizabeth slowly looked up while saying, “The wind is now howling; the spirits arise. Take care where you step or someone will cry. If you stay where you are, you will have quite a scare. The deathbird has risen; red herrings beware.”

The next day was a Tuesday, and that meant one thing: our first day of school. As Victoria and I walked into the dark and dreary halls of our new school, we could tell without even looking up that all eyes were on us. Then, all of a sudden, everything lit up and the students were movin’ like the cupid shuffle. Classes were about to start. But in this huge ocean of High school, Victoria and I were the Titanic and everyone else was the iceberg. No matter which way we turned ourselves, we couldn’t move without getting sunk. But then, almost in an instant, Victoria saw someone that actually could make it through. But by the time we caught her attention, it was already too late. She was too far away to see what we wanted.

Then, almost in an instant, we heard a voice behind us, frightening us to our very center.“Hello. My name is Elizabeth Lewis. I have been assigned to be your student guide for this term. You are?”

I whipped around and pretty much almost screamed, “Ellie? It’s us, Mary and Victoria. We met in front of our house yesterday.”

After we finished our explanation of events (minus the cryptic warning of course), a burst of recognition shone through her eyes and she exclaimed, “OH! Now I remember you two. You and your aunt moved into Firebird house.”

We nodded in feigned agreement, not even wanting to try and figure out why it was called Firebird house. We just smiled, nodded, and said to Ellie, “YEP! I guess we do. You said you were our student guide? Where to first? And how do we get through this crowd?”

By the time Ellie, Victoria and I finally made it through the titanic-sized crowd; we were ready to face the challenges of 11th grade. Or, at least, we were ready to face the challenges of our first class. History of Crime. A literal 11th Grade house of Horrors.

“Hey Ellie, why are they even teaching History of Crime to 11th graders anyway? Seems kind of morbid to me,” Victoria asked her with a hint of disgust in her voice.

After a couple minutes, Ellie nodded and said, “Yeah, it is kind of morbid. But the school says it’s an essential part of the curriculum.” Now with a semi-clearer understanding as to why this school was creating criminals, but still grossed out at how morbid the class was, Ellie, Victoria and I walked into the class that was both painful and grotesque.

After the last class of the day, Victoria and I decided if we were going to stay around here, we had better try to find people to associate with.. So, gathering together every ounce of courage that we could congeal(though that wasn’t very much), we walked up to Ellie and asked if she would care to join us for afternoon tea in our home.. “Sure!” Ellie exclaimed with fanatical enthusiasm, “I would love to see where you guys live. Let me grab my coat and keys and I’ll give you two a ride.” The two of us nodded our heads, beginning to walk outside. As we were, though, we remembered what keys meant. Keys, most of the time, meant a car. Victoria and I backed away from Ellie and quickly ran out of the school building and towards our home. It was someplace we knew we would be safe. But from that day on, the two of us would forever wonder if the people we knew we would have to meet would ever be.

“Ellie, come down for dinner!”

Finally, I can stop doing my homework and come downstairs. “Alright! I’ll be down in a minute.” After a few moments of standing and willing my legs to walk, I was finally able to make it to my bedroom door. But then, nearly immediately after  I touched my doorknob, I began to hear small footsteps making their way up to my room. “I don’t need help coming down for dinner, Mom. I can do it myself,” I said as I flung open the door. But when I did, I couldn’t see anyone there. Instead, immediately after, all the lights in the house started flickering and I had a strange sense that something horrible was about to happen. After the lights stopped flickering, I could hear our gas detector beeping like a blackbox. “Mom, is everything alright down there? You’re not my mom. You get that ring out of here right now! Out!”

Mary, Victoria; turn on the news! Something’s happened!”  Aunt Kimberly yelled up at Victoria and I through walls thin as black ice right as I was dreaming about dancing with Derek Hough on “Dancing with the Stars”. We had just gone to bed. What could have possibly been so important that our aunt was waking us up at 10 p.m.? But just because we loved her and wanted to know what had our guardian all worked up, the two of us decided to turn on the 10:00 news.

After incessantly watching for about 5 minutes, it finally dawned on us what we were watching. “Oh my gosh. Ellie!” Ellie had been killed by gas poisoning earlier that night. Her mother had found her in their kitchen with all-too-pale looking skin, but it took her about 10 minutes to figure out her daughter was dead. As the entire town mourned the death of a dear daughter, granddaughter, cousin, and friend, none of us could even begin to fathom the events which would follow.

The next day at school when Victoria and I walked into our dance class, we were devastated to say the least. As much as we hated to admit it, our best friend was gone and we would never see her again in this life. And, as much as we regretted to admit it at the time, Victoria and I actually missed the girl who had tried to scare us away. We didn’t even know her and yet, we felt that somehow we had known her forever. After dance class was over, Victoria and I quickly threw our street clothes back on and ran out of school and towards the comfort of our home. Though in a few short days, we would be wondering if we even belonged in this town.

The next day, we were too depressed to go to school. So instead, we stayed home to try and figure out why the heck someone would want to kill Ellie. Then, after a couple hours of getting nothing, Victoria and I decided to go out to the City of Boremick Historical Society and find out if there had been any incidents like this in the past. Upon arriving at the library, we could tell this would take a while. Mainly because the building wouldn’t open for another hour! While we sat on the sidewalk for the next hour, our minds were racing with question. Who did this? Why would someone want  to do this? While we tried to find answers to all these questions and questions like them, the two of us realized we were blocking the way of the woman who was trying to open it up. But as the woman walked past us, there was something about her that struck me as incredibly odd, possibly even other-worldly. I just didn’t know what it was yet.

For our first twenty minutes there, we were fairly unsuccessful to say the least. Nothing was turning up and we were really starting to get frustrated. Then, after another ten minutes, Victoria finally saw something. It was the local town legend, but it was still something. She clicked on the link and we were shocked with what we saw. Six people murdered by gas poisoning in our house. This was what Ellie was trying to warn us about!

The two of us kept reading, with Victoria reading it out loud while I read to myself. “After the gas cleared, one person escaped out of the house alive and the ring that had been carrying the gas capsule had disappeared. Legend has it once the last living blood relative (or relatives) of the killer enters the house, one person will be killed every year for six years by the spirit of one of the original victims if the heir (or heirs) to the house comes in contact with the victim.”

After we finished reading the article, we finally knew. If this legend was true, we knew why someone had killed Ellie. We also knew who. Now, the next thing we had to figure out was when the next killer was gonna strike.

A couple days later, while our aunt was out at work, Victoria and I decided we had better go outside and get some exercise. So, she and I quickly threw on the closest exercise clothes we could find, laced on our running shoes, and started on a 20 mile run from our house all the way to the cemetery where two people who Victoria and I knew and loved very dearly were buried. But on our way there, the two of us stopped at the flower shop and each bought three bouquets of flowers.  One was a bouquet of tiger lilies, another; a bouquet of lilies of the valley, and the third was a bouquet of poinsettias. We then ran all the way to the cemetery and to the graves of two people: Morgan Elizabeth Bagley, Charles Samuel Lewis, and Savanna Marie Lewis. I took the three bouquets of flowers and laid them on each of the tombs. I laid the tiger lillies on Charles’ grave, the poinsettias on Morgan’s grave, and the lilies of the valley on Savanna’s grave. After we laid all of our bouquets on the three graves, we kneeled in front of them and started to cry.

We then turned our heads to Savanna’s grave and I said, “Our dear sweet sister, we miss you so much. But we know you, mommy and dad are happier now. And we know we will see each other again someday. We love you, sister.” After I finished with my little speech to our sister and best friend, the two of us grabbed the afghan our mother had crocheted for us and fell asleep on our family’s graves.

When I finally woke up, I knew that our aunt would be waiting for us. I looked at my watch and, sure enough, it was almost 12:00 at night. Our aunt was about to leave for work. I woke up Victoria and the two of us grabbed our Afghans and said goodbye to our parents and sister. Unfortunately, even if we ran at the speed of light, it would still take us all day to get home. And by then, our aunt will have probably filed two missing persons’ reports or something. Or even worse, she would have gotten Interpol involved. So, we did what any sensible person would do and started running as fast as we could back towards the house. But we had only made it a couple blocks when I could see my aunt’s grey 2014 Sonata pulling up around the corner. Our aunt had long-term memory loss, so she couldn’t remember our parent’s car crash, and she certainly couldn’t remember that Victoria and I were afraid of cars. So, we did the only thing that did the only thing we felt we could do in this situation. We ran for our lives. Victoria and I ran faster than we ever had before. We ran so fast, if we had gone any faster we most likely would have been flying. Which, considering the circumstances, wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. Victoria and I ran and we did not stop running until we made it to the mansion. When we finally did stop, it was 2:45 in the morning. The two of us dragged ourselves inside, locked the doors,  bolted the windows, and fell asleep on the nearest sofa.

The next day was Saturday, a good thing for our aunt’s mental health. So, instead of going out again and incurring the wrath of our paranoid aunt, Victoria and I decided to look around the house to look for clues that might help to stop the full spectrum of the curse from occurring. First, the place where the legend was put in motion. The ballroom. The most exquisite room in the house. At first glance, it would look as if nothing had ever happened. But look closer and you wouldn’t be able to tell the ballroom from a war zone. It was frightening. Dust everywhere, chairs toppled over and broken, shattered mirrors, and broken stools. Victoria and I figured that while the ballroom was like this, we better look around for something that would help us to break the curse.

“Alright, if I were a clue, where would I be?” Victoria kept asking herself over and over again, as if by her doing so it would help speed things along.  After looking around for a few hours and finding nothing, we were about ready to give up and look in another room. But right as we were about to leave the ballroom, there was something that stood out to me that hadn’t before. A silver and turquoise ring in the shape of a Firebird. It was almost a whole bird, but the beak had been broken off somehow. Perhaps this was the same ring from the legend and the gas capsule had been somehow shoved inside the beak. But if it had been, wouldn’t the whole ring have exploded and that’s why it was never found? And even if the ring hadn’t exploded, how would the person who did it have escaped since gas masks hadn’t been invented yet? They wouldn’t have made it 5 feet out the door, much less through the whole mansion. As Victoria and I tried to make sense of this confusing predicament, all we were doing was creating more seemingly unanswerable questions. The two of us had just assumed we would figure it out quickly and that all the pieces would fall where they may. Little did we know how wrong we were.

After our experiences in the ballroom, Victoria and I headed off to the attic, the place where the first victim was allegedly found. When we made it up into the dusty, cobwebby attic, it looked a lot like the mausoleum from the 2003 Haunted Mansion movie starring Eddie Murphy. We looked around for a few minutes and all we found were six caskets, a bunch of life stories and candles. “Caskets, life stories, and candles? Someone sure has a twisted sense of humor.” That’s when it finally hit us. This wasn’t an attic. It looked like a mausoleum because it was a mausoleum. This was the final resting place for the original six victims. And they were, for lack of a better word, just dying for some company.

Two days later, we had finally worked up the courage to go back to school. As much as the two of us hated the idea of going back, the school year was almost over. Missing was not an option, especially not this late in the school year. When Victoria and I arrived, it seemed as if the fact that we lived in the house that had the nickname “the deathbird” didn’t seem to bother anyone anymore. No one even gave a hint of remembering what had happened. Also fairly courageous that Victoria and I could make another friend without her getting gas poisoning, we walked over to one of the girls standing next to the wall and introduced ourselves.

“Hi, I’m Mary. This is my twin sister Victoria. We just moved here. You are?”