New life in Raynerbrook - 4. The Beginning - Part One

The day after Theo moved to Raynerbrook, everything started to change.

That morning he woke up feeling exhausted, he hadn't slept well the night before. He had only had the nightmare once, but it had been enough to keep him awake.

He could still see the images in his mind clearly, except the symbol at the end, it was hidden, as if by a dense fog in the back of his mind, he eventually gave up on trying to remember it and climbed out of bed.

Theo got dressed and headed downstairs, he found his mother, Karen Black in the kitchen, she was looking around with a half eaten piece of toast in her hand.

"What's up mum?" asked Theo walking into the kitchen
"Oh, good morning Theo, i'm looking for my car keys, i'm sure i left them in here last night"
"Didn't you hang them up by the door?"
"..OH! yes, of course, i'm not used to this house yet, and i'm still tired" She laughed, and then yawned deeply

"What do you need your keys for?" asked Theo
"I was going to drive over to where i'm going to be working and have a look around, do you want to come with me? We can go by the school and have a look around if you want"

He would be starting school at the start of next week, they had moved in on friday, and he would starting there on monday. he was quite nervous about it.

Theo thought about it for a moment, he was still exhausted, he couldn't be bothered going out today, besides, he needed a shower, they had done a lot of moving things around the day before.

"Nah, i think i'll stay. Is Meg still in bed?"
"Yeah, she's still pretty tired. Anyway, i'm going to go now" she said, finishing off her toast "Make sure to look after Megan while i'm gone"
"Ok mum, see you later" he said, giving her a hug

Theo had not hugged her for years, she was pleasantly surprised and hugged back, then with that, she walked out of the door and drove away in her car.

Theo made some breakfast and a watched some TV (there was nothing good on) after finishing up, he decided to go for a shower and look around the house.

After a long shower (He hadn't had time to do 'it' yesterday, after all) Theo dried himself off, got dressed into a change of clothes and started to explore the house, Megan had gotten up by that time, and was downstairs on her laptop, chatting away on Facebook.

He walked out of the bathroom and walked past his room, where he noticed the door he had not looked into the day before, the one straight across from the stairs, interested, Theo opened the door.

There were stairs, leading up into an attic.
Theo turned on the light and headed up there, brushing away the small amount of cobwebs which got in his way, when he reached the top of the stairs, he looked around, there were boxes and furniture up here, all arranged quite neatly, he had expected it be all over the place.

He spent around 20 minutes looking through the boxes and looking at things, when he moved a group of boxes and found a small square door in the wall, the lock lay on the floor, rusted and broken. Theo opened the door and looked in, there was a small window on the wall which was letting light into the small space, and in the center was a box. the box from his nightmare.

Despite being scared, Theo was very curious. The box he had seen in his nightmare had been wrapped in chains, but the one he saw in front of him had chains surrounding it on the ground, like they had been opened and fallen off.

Theo climbed into the space and stood before the box, it was made of a dark wood and had strange carvings on all of its sides, there was a small latch on the front. Holding back his fear, Theo undid the latch and opened the box.

Inside was a strange red puppet. It was made from wood and had dark, black eyes which stood out from inside the wood. it looked vaguely human, but had small pointed ears and it's mouth was curved in a large grin.

It's arms were longer than it's legs, which were very small. Theo thought it looked kinda like a demon... but not one of any kind he had seen in TV shows or read in books.

As Theo reached in to touch the lifeless puppet, he felt a sharp pain on index finger, and blood dripped from the end of it onto the puppet, Theo couldn't see what he had cut it on, but he looked at his finger, the cut wasn't too bad, but it was going to hurt.

With one last glance back at the puppet in the box, Theo climbed out of the small space and went back downstairs to the bathroom to clean his finger and dress it, leaving the attic door open behind him.

Dim autumn sunlight poured in to the space in the attic, lighting up the puppet which sat lying the box lifeless.

Theo's blooded soaked into the ancient wood, and it began to shake gently, the black eyes embedded in the wood remained dark for a moment, and then a dark red light appeared in their center, a small pinpoint of light, which any people watching wouldn't have been able to see.

The light began to expand, filling the eyes with a blood red light, as the wood of its body began to shake more violently, and it began to change.

The fingers of the puppet twitched as it came back to life.