Deerborn (BOOK ONE) | ✓

Chapter One: A Life Lost

Bon Resi was the type of town most folks tried to avoid, we didn't have the best history of being welcoming either. A quiet community, Bon Resi only had approximately 1,200 people (counting the rural houses as well) with just barely enough work to keep people around.

The best place to work was an ice cream manufacturer called Copmin's, most of the towns people were either directly related to someone who worked at Copmin's or they worked there themselves.

We had one school that served as both the middle-school and high school, which often caused a lot of fights between students.

There was no other towns around Bon Resi, as we were secluded by the mountainside. The nearest town was 52 miles exactly, so the town was designed to support the needs of it's citizens in the case of an emergency. We were stocked with a grocery store, liquor store, two restaurants (although the second was more of a breakfast bar), nursing home, hospital, two gas stations, a convenience store called Jake's, and even a Subway fast food restaurant that was attached to Jake's.

We had a few little boutiques, post-office, hardware store, flower shop, pharmacy, a radio station, and even a little coffee shop named Susan's Deli. I have been working at Susan's for over three years now and had yet to discover why the owner, Malcolm, named it as such. Malcolm was a sullen old man with a drawn out face, his eyes pooled with wrinkles, his nose scooped at the tip, and he always smelled of Irish Spring soap. He wasn't the best boss in the entire world, but I couldn't complain because he gave me a pay check every other week.

Bon Resi is not overly friendly with tourists or new folks, mostly because we are "mountain people", as some say, and we like our privacy. We also have a bad history from the 1930s of unsolved murders, a string of which killed eighteen residents of Bon Resi and three tourists. The murders remain unsolved to this day, but also remain a strong part of our history.

Unfortunately, some of the skeptic citizens of Bon Resi believe that some sort of mystical creature came through and slaughtered a good majority of our folks, and that whatever creature it is still resides on the mountain. They even have a festival dedicated solely to offering a sacrifice to the Kilarney (the name they gave to the mythical creature), which now a days has been dulled down to something a little more child friendly that involves lighting candles at the mountainside and leaving candy for the Kilarney, as well as a street dance that sort of resembles Moonlight Madness (a festival where stores stay open later and the streets are closed down for different carnival games and even a performance).

Despite Bon Resi being a little odd, to say the least, I was raised in this sleepy village and so were many generations of the Deerborn's.

My name is Sybil Alexandra Deerborn, daughter of the late mayor Richard Deerborn the Third, who was sadly taken from us two years ago this coming September due to colon cancer. The only family I had left in the area was my mother Lillian, my sister Patricia, my uncle Jess and my twin cousins Michaela and Capri. Jess' ex-wife had a nephew named Aaron who would come to visit Jess once and awhile, despite them having no direct relation. He wasn't visiting to see Jess' girls either, because Aaron was quite a few years older than I, and Michaela and Capri were six years younger than me.

Once and awhile I would see Aaron, not in recent years though. I remember asking Jess why Aaron didn't come up for the summer, and he never quite gave me a straight answer. More or less, he just said that Aaron was going through a "phase".

I wasn't fond of Aaron, mostly due to his harsh demeanour towards me. He seemed to be judging me quietly behind his dark blue eyes, constantly questioning my ethics even though I can assure you I am no different than any other twenty-one year old.

He'd often stop by Susan's to buy some local grape juice, as we do have a variety of local items that we sell in the shop side of the store, with the coffee shop in the den. Whenever he'd come into the store, he was determined to call me out on everything I hadn't done. Such as why I wasn't like the other people my age who had left Bon Resi to relocate to post-secondary education, why I refused to work at Copmin's and rather stay with Susan's, whether I got enough money to pay room and board to my mom, things like that. I always tried my best to be patient with Aaron, as he seemed to be merely curious, but he came off rather arrogant. I didn't enjoy our talks, and I was actually glad that he hadn't come up for a few years. I should have knocked on wood, because as I sat at the cash register going over inventory, in walked Aaron for his grape juice.