Chapter 1: Freaks
They came out of nowhere, those crazy boys.
          “Aaah!” Sophia let out a small squeal of surprise as two young boys; one older and the other about her age, sprang up from behind a tombstone wearing kabuki-like masks. The older one let out a crazy series of laughter but the little one emitted no sound.
The eleven-year-old spoiled brat, Sophia, fell backwards into the gray snow, almost hitting her head on another headstone right behind her. She quickly glanced up at the tall boy laughing down at her rudely. She yelled up at him in embarrassment and annoyance, “Are you crazy!? What was that for!?”
The older boy joyously responded, “1: I do happen to be crazy, thank you very much. And 2: That just so happened to be my welcome to you, sweet thing. Then again, I bet that’s why nobody stays around here long. Hehehehee. Pretty cool, eh?”
Sophia glared at the masked boy. The little one just stood there.
          There was a dumb moment of silence until the tall boy slowly brought the mask off his face. His wide, goggle-like eyes looked down at her with curiosity and his thin smile crippled a little.
   “Hey,” he extended his hand towards her. “You hurt?”
Sophia slapped his hand away from her face.
   “Go away, weirdo! I don’t even know you and your first impression stinks! It stinks bad!”
   “Oooh. Touchy little pixie, are ya’?”
“What did you just call me?” Sophia scrambled off the snow-covered ground, ready to pick a fight. She just wanted to explore around her grandparents’ estate, not die from a heart attack at a young age because some random kids felt like scaring her out of her mind just to welcome her to the boring old Canzingsvale Wood. “Did you just call me a pixie, you jerk?”
   “Yup. You know what a pixie is, right? They’re small, puny, tiny, miniature—“
   “Stop it with the synonyms! I know what a pixie is! I read Harry Potter!”
   “Syno-what? Is that what they’re called? Hmph. Ya learn something every day.”
The boy completely removed the mask to reveal a gray-skinned, buck-toothed, pointy-nosed teen with dark, thin, squiggly hair that fell down behind his pointed ears. A strand of green hair streamed down the right side of his face. He wore a dark burgundy trench-coat and he was thin. He seemed slouched forward in a way that resembled a crow.
          Sophia was just small, plain young girl with creamy peach flesh and large blue eyes. Her hair was only inches above her shoulders and shined a whitish blonde. She wore a pink winter jacket.
She spoke up as the boy turned around, “Who are you anyways? I’ve never seen you here before.”
   “Oh, yeah. The name’s Slawamir Darktrend. Stupid name, right? So call me Darkslaw.”
Sophia winced.
   “Darkslaw? That’s weird. It sounds like coleslaw.”
   “What’s so wrong with coleslaw? I think it’s pretty zesty. Who are you, pixie? Never seen you around here before. Come from Decembersville?”
   “I’m not a pixie! I’m Sophia Lilbette from Washington.”
Sophia saw the younger boy far from where she stood. He looked nothing like Darkslaw besides his large front teeth and dark-rimmed eyes. The boy was laying down flowers; roses, on every grave he walked by.  He got the little girl curious.
   “And who’s he?”
   “Who? Him?” Darkslaw looked over at the small boy who completely ignored them both. “That’s my stepbrother Lynus.”
Darkslaw came in closer to Sophia and whispered, “He’s autistic.”
The little girl didn’t know how to respond to that. The boy in front of her made a gesture with his hand that slid from the top of his head to the bottom of his face and he said, “He’s got a brain scar. Makes him see and feel things. I bet he has his own little world to play around in….as do I.”
   “What?” Sophia immediately asked. “Look, who are you? Some cousin I haven’t been told about for a good reason?”
Darkslaw laughed cutely.
   “Sorry to break your heart, but my dad and I were renting the room the owners of this estate put up. We leave tomorrow for LA to make another film; this time on Sin City. Y’know the owners?”
   “They are my grandparents. So yeah.”
Lynus was like in a totally different dimension.
          The woods surrounding the small cemetary gave out a small, cracking noise….as if something was out there. Sophia’s heart skipped a beat and she spun around to look behind her, almost slipping on the ice under her feet. She instantly let out a small cry, “What was that?”
Darkslaw was unimpressed by the small girl’s un-mild cowardice but responded in a light manner, “Chimabell.”
        “Chima--?” Sophia couldn’t finish her question for Darkslaw pushed her down into the fluffy snow, trying to hide behind a tall tombstone. They both cowered there but Sophia yelled loudly, “Hey! Get off of me you psycho!”
          The teen silenced her in a harsh shush. Two vultures left the woods and sailed out of sight.
   “Aw, they are just dumb birds! Get off!” Sophia budged away from the strange boy in extreme annoyance. She came up out of the snow, rubbed the flakes off her coat, and glared down at Darkslaw who was still dumbfounded, on his stomach, and staring into nothingness on the ground with an expression saying “where am I”.
   “I thought it was a wolf or something scary!”
   “Wolf? WOLF? Hah! Its freaks you gotta watch out for, cuz those are the ones that get you!”
   “Yeah,” she responded sarcastically; too sarcastic for her age. “I noticed.”
She turned around and began to walk towards the exit of the cemetary, on her way to the mansion down the snowy cliff. She had better things to do than hang around with the village idiot; like watch paint dry. She heard the crunching of snow from behind her, so she span around with an air of supreme irritation. Lynus was far away and facing the woods dumbly. His brother was not where he was but his footprints were right behind Sophia. A ghost? Yeah, right. Right?
Sophia shook her head and turned back towards the exit only to find Darkslaw in her face. She flinched violently and shoved him aside, “Get away from me, Slawamir!”
   “It’s Darkslaw. And hey! Wait! Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!”
   “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!? JEEZ!”
   “You don’t know about the freaks?”
   “The only freak around here is you! Now go away! I’m going home! Goodbye!”
Sophia marched down the hillside out of sight.
Lightning covered the sky and a small vibration of thunder sounded.
Darkslaw smiled wide and thin.
“Oh, you are quite wrong about that, pixie.”
   
        
          Sophia didn’t really like Canzingsvale Wood because it was so lonesome what with the dark, scary woods, the grimy weather and loss of contact with the outer world. Her parents just had to leave her alone with her stick-in-the-mud grandparents for the entire summer. The mansion was huge but it was always so dim and old; nearly everything she touches get’s a dent on the surface. Her grandfather even calls her “Supergirl” just for the heck of it all.
          Indeed her grandparents had hearts of gold but they were a bit too boring for her. They did nothing but pay the bills, set up boring parties where a bunch of old people come around to pinch your cheek and say “Remember me?” over a thousand times, and drink their tea. There was no internet or television in their estate. How Sophia was going to stay alive, I can’t really say right now.
As the storm began to brew, Sophia finally made it into the home.
The second the door closed her grandmother looked down at her from the stairway. She had a kind-yet-curious look upon her.
   “How is the weather outside? I thought I heard thunder.” She asked.
   “Yeah,” Sophia simply answered. “It’s going to rain or whatever.”
The girl unzipped her puffy pink jacket and placed it at the bottom of the coat hangar for she couldn’t reach the top. She ran up the stairs to where her grandmother stood. They had a small embrace and then Sophia ran past her to her room.
   “How are you feeling, Sophie?” her grandma tried to spark conversation at the last minute.
   “Freaked out.”
She closed the door behind her.
          It felt a little cold to shut the door on her grandmother like that, but she didn’t like the numbness in her head, so it was too late to turn around and say “Love you.”
          She threw herself on her bed and sighed exhaustingly. Rain began to pitter-patter on her large pane. She brought her head up to look upon the window. Thunder sounded.
Sophia let out an inside whimper. God, everything scared her. Everything.
Bugs, dolls, thunder, monsters, the dark; everything scared her. She hated it but it was one of those things you just couldn’t control.
There was silence in her room; all silence besides the rain on the windowpane.
Then she sighed even louder.
“There’s nothing here,” she closed her eyes. “There never will be.”