Before the Clock Strikes Twelve [Book I of the Anti-Tales]

Chapter 2: An Unexpected Visitor

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LYNX'S eyes snapped open and she started with fright. On the opposite sofa, sitting cross legged and watching her intently, were two sets of eyes belonging to a set of twins. Identical, bright and blue.

The girl giggled, her matching blonde braids swishing as she cocked her head at Lynx. "Hello."

"Jake and Jane." She groaned. "Who let you in?"

The twins grinned in unison back at her. "We did. Through the back lane." They replied together, creeping her out. It gave her the heebie-jeebies when they did that, playing on the creepy twin stereotype. She hated it, and they knew it.

"Shoulda known. What's your mum be needing this time?" She held a palm out expectantly for the list. The old woman had an uncanny habit for sensing when her neighbour was awake, no matter what time of the day or situation. Even satanic goats hadn't deterred her today. Sending the kids no less! Honestly, she'd have to have a sharp word with the woman.

Jane frowned, slipping a roll of parchment out of her coat pocket. "Well it wasn't exactly our mummy-" Jake nudged her with his elbow, silencing her.

But Lynx was already not listening, she took the rolled up note in her hand and frowned, there was a red wax seal on it, unusual, she never seals something trivial like a list. Her eyes observed the design and pattern of the stamped wax, when they widened with realisation, a gasp stuck in her throat. A rams head.

Jane was still rambling on when Lynx's eyes fell to Jake. He was somber. Normally he was busy causing some form of havoc, or testing her patience, but not today. He sat quiet and thoughtful, his blue eyes trained to the note in her hands. Clearly, he knew something about it, or something was making him uncomfortable. Jake lifted his eyes to find the mage staring at him. She quirked a brow and he shifted uncomfortably, touching a bump beneath a lock of his blonde hair.

"Well?" She prodded. "Out with it."

He sighed, his chubby little face smudged with earth and dirt, he had clearly taken another tumble coming up the lane. Especially if the bruising purple lump beneath his hairline was anything to go by.

Leaving the note on the table, she went over to the glass cabinet, next to the beaded curtains, and unlocked it with her master key, to grab the clay pot and gauze that she always kept there. She might as well have labelled it 'Jake's' for it was him she used it on predominantly.

Bringing it back to the sofa, she patted her thigh and Jake obliged. He hopped off from the opposite one, and crawled onto her lap. He sat patiently as she lifted the clay lid to reveal a smelly, green sludge beneath. Salve, she called it. Whatever the gunk was, it always worked on his bruises and bumps. So he sat still and bared the stench as she smeared it onto his most recent injury. Then she wrapped the gauze around his head twice, and tied it off.

"Now, you let that soak in for a couple of hours, as usual, then clean it off okay?" She wiped her fingers onto a spare bit of gauze, and put the clay pot on the table.

Jane was watching with a pout. She hated it when Jake got uneven amounts of attention from her. It's why she was always baiting him into races, and pushing him down in petty, childish revenge. Her brother was a few minutes older, and always worried about the her, and never complained. "Spoilt little brat." Lynx muttered beneath her breath with a warm smile. Jake went back to sit beside his twin.

What she had been expecting was the usual list and familiar scrawl of writing from their mother, dictating an array of medication and herbal supplements. Honestly, if she hadn't mastered the art of deciphering codes, she would never have been able to understand the inky mess the woman insisted was legible handwriting. But as she brushed her thumb over the waxy red seal, an ominous feeling washed through her. She hesitated a second more, then broke the seal, unfurling it, she saw quickly that it wasn't their mums writing, and it wasn't ink.

It was blood.

Barely browning and still tinged red. It was fresh.

The second the seal broke, the twins snapped up straight, side by side, and stared strangely at Lynx. The abrupt movement drew her eyes, and she watched as they both tilted their heads to the same angle whilst staring at her. The note trembled in her palms as she watched, frozen by the glazed look in their eyes. They opened their mouths and began to speak in unison, in an eerie, singsong way. Stretching the words out in low, groaning tones to the original tune:

"You are invited to go into the woods tonight,
But you better go in disguise,
When you go into the woods tonight,
You'll be in for a big surprise
For all the dead there ever there was,
Are gathering there for a picnic."

Lynx gripped the edge of the paper taut enough to tear it, as she held her breath. The second the last note was sung, the twins collapsed backwards onto the sofa. Both of their little bodies going limp. She jumped up and went over to them, checking to see if they were okay. Jake's hand shot out to grab her wrist in a knuckle white grip. His eyes snapped open, blank white.

"RSVP, BY MIDNIGHT!" His voice warped low and demonic, then his head went limp.

Lynx stifled the shriek building in her chest. It was the most bizarre and disturbing thing, besides the wretched goat, that she'd seen this morning. Both little ones were snoring away now, their mouths parted in innocent slumber. She sighed with relief, checking thoroughly to make sure no enchantments or evil trinkets were on their persons. Nothing.

Lynx stared at the note a second longer. She grimaced, that's not how she remembered the teddy bears picnic. RSVP. Her eyes zoomed in on the abbreviation, and she grumbled a foul curse as her eyes went from the note to the twins. Somebody had a sick sense of humour to send kids.

"Well that wasn't creepy at all," she muttered.

"Speak for yourself," a smooth, male voice interrupted, and the metallic tang of blood seeped into the room. "Because I was terrified, especially by the unison talking thing."

The curtains shuddered as a hand moved the beads aside, and a shadow shifted behind it.

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