Excerpt: Jahdahdieh

I generally like rainy days. They’re long, lazy, and beautiful. I love to sit and watch the dreary grey sky with its stormy clouds and listen to the rain beat a steady pattern on the roof and windowsills. Today, however, I wanted nothing less than for the rain to stop. The usually calming pattern had me on edge today. The reason? I was visiting my great-aunt Millicent at her strange, old, stone house in the middle of nowhere. My mother had thought it would be good for me to spend some time with the crotchety old lady. Old. Old hardly describes my great-aunt. Ancient, would be more accurate. She must be over a hundred years old!

In any case, Aunt Millicent had left for the day, leaving me and my cat, Willow, quite alone in her strange old house. Where she went I didn’t know, after all, there was nothing around for miles and miles and miles. She had just stumped out of the house, saying nothing more than, “I’m going out,” and she was gone. I had expected to feel relieved that she was gone. Instead I was left with an ominous feeling of foreboding; and then, it had started to rain. After a while of wandering around the house, I fled to my room. The house creaked and groaned in the wind like a dying animal.