“Do we really have to live in the middle of nowhere?” my little brother Zach whined.I glanced at the driver, my sister Hannah, whose eyes were fixed on the road. “Yes, Zach. This is the best place for us to live. It’s dad’s hometown.”“Mom’s hometown is better,” my twin brother Emmett chipped in.My mother had recently killed by Jonathan Smith, the man who replaced my father at work. She had bitten his jugular, making him bleed to death. The police said she killed him first and released that information to the public. That marked the beginning of our suffering.People had kept leaving trashy notes and letters in our mailbox, writing mean words on our walls, shouting them to us whenever we left home. These included biters, zombies, dogs, wolves, and vampires, among others.It was as if they had forgotten that Jonathan had kidnapped my mother for a month. The same people who had sympathized and helped us look for her were now shunning us. But in all honesty, sometimes I thought it was

That night, I slept better than the previous one. Hannah, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have had a good night as she was grumpy. I noticed she was disturbed.“What’s wrong?” I asked as I slipped a white blouse over my head.“Mr. Morgenstern does not want me to renovate the resort. He thinks it’s not a good idea.”“Why?” I was one of those who did not approve of her idea but seeing her so down made me feel concerned. I would have been the happiest if she, on her own, abandoned the idea. But, being forced to abandon by some other people was not fair.“There are things I have not yet told you about the resort.”“Yeah, I suspected so. Let me guess, they’re not good things.”Hannah shook her head. “That’s right, but I need this. This is the only thing that connects us to our father.”I sighed. “What’s wrong with that resort? Why was it closed all those years ago? Were people killed in it? Those bones, were they human?”“I will tell you,” she said, standing up. “I will narrate everythin

The doctors found nothing wrong with Zach. As for me, I had to have a minor surgery to remove part of a thorn that had lodged itself in my leg. I ended up limping on my third day in town. If I had a choice in the matter, I would have left the town immediately. But first, I needed to figure out what was going on. I wanted to leave but not without answers. There was something mysterious about the town and I knew that if I left without finding out, I would always wonder what it was.We settled in well at home. Hannah liked what we had done with the little space provided to us. We had managed to find a place for everything we had carried with us and made sure to organize them neatly. I knew that sooner or later, the organization would crumble and everything would go back to being a mess. When my siblings started looking around for their stuff, they would put everything in disarray.On the third day of arrival, a letter arrived. It was addressed the Colman children. At any other time, I wo

By the time we reached outside, some of the other residents had gathered near the protestors who were chanting, “Do not reopen”. As we walked towards them, Emmett and Zach decided to go and stand near the residents while Hannah and I went to face the protesting group.Even as we approached, they continued to chant, their lips moving in sync. The chanting grew louder when we stood right in front of them. There was a woman with huge dreadlocks wearing a black t-shirt with a huge drawing of a skull and crossbones at the front. She seemed to be the leader.Hannah and I remained silent, waiting for them to stop so that we could have a decent conversation. But they never stopped. When I had heard enough, I yelled. “STOP.”Suddenly, the group became silent and stared at us in anticipation. The woman with dreadlocks stepped forward. She was very tall and big boned. Those characteristics made her very much intimidating but I knew she would not dare to try anything in front of so many people.

We returned to the resort and found Emmett and Zach lounging on a bench on the balcony of the ground floor. Zach was playing a game on Emmett’s phone while the latter was looking through some house plans.We passed them without a word and made our way to the flower garden where Hannah started to sort through the soil she had dug up the previous day.“We have to get rid of anything that is not soil,” she told me as she collected grass stems and put them in a growing pile. “We get rid of all the rubbish and grass residue. Once everything is gone, we shall begin planting.After watching her for a few seconds, I grabbed a pair of black gloves, squatted down and started removing everything that was not soil. Hannah was doing it without the gloves but I thought gardening barehanded was not healthy. In science class, I had learnt of several microorganisms and germs. I was sure the soil contained most of those.The work was going fairly well until I saw an earth worm. I screamed out loud befo