Beyond the Broken Angel

CHAPTER THREE

— the disappearing house —

"DAD?" GISELLE SLOWLY came to a stand, leaning heavily on the tree trunk next to her. Black dots ate at her vision for a brief moment, but soon cleared after a several blinks.

"Dad?" she tried calling out again, spinning around in a circle. "Dad, this really isn't funny!"

She racked her brain, trying to piece together what happened. Had she fallen asleep? Did her Dad go back to Hester's? Was he pranking her?

There were other theories waking up and taking flight in her pool of thoughts, but she only grasped for the simple, ordinary ones.

She spotted a house off to her right. Dare Manor it was called, if her memory served her correctly. Her eyes lingered on the stone house for a few moments before she turned around and started back towards Hester's, thinking that her father must've went home.

She followed the path to her great aunt's house, ending up in a small clearing with tall grass and no manmade structures in sight. Right in the spot where the house should be.

"Okay," she drew out, looking across the patch of tall grass for any sign of her father. "I think I made a wrong turn or something." Except she knew she didn't. She only put the words out there to comfort herself.

Something churned in her stomach, the feeling that something was wrong chewing at her gut.

She was quick to push the feeling aside and turn around to head back to the tree. Once she was there, she turned around and walked back to Hester's, her heart beginning to beat faster than it should when the quaint cottage house and the birdbath and the freshly-mulched flowerbeds didn't magically appear when she came to the clearing again.

Panic enveloped her. Did I hit my head? Am I hallucinating? Is this a dream?

She was almost out of reasonable explanations, and didn't want to dip into the pool of unreasonable ones slowly growing in her head.

No, she was too afraid that she might find something there that made everything make sense.

For the meantime, she settled on the idea that she probably took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost. That the house still existed and everything was as it should be.

She went back to the tree, the inanimate object slowly becoming her only source of familiarity.

Once she got back to the odd tree, she paused when she spotted a body moving along the other side of the forest, over by Dare Manor.

He might be able to help me, she realized.

The boy noticed her the second she broke out of the woods, his face screwed up as he assessed her for a few moments, and then looked behind her to see where she came from.

"Hello," he said, drawing closer. "May I help you?" He had an awfully serious expression on his face, marring his childish features.

Giselle could place him at being around ten or so, and based on his height, she could also tell that'd he'd grow to be very tall one day. He was nearly eye-to-eye with her.

"Um, I'm Giselle Saunders," she told him, extending a hand. Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite understand what it was.

He frowned slightly as if thinking, but took her hand anyways. "Nice to meet you, I'm Frank Elias Dare."