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this is for her, in case she loses it. Or I do, or we both do. Plus it's one of her best works, and I'm really proud of it and wanna show it off. x] Enjoy~



Eulalie arrived home later than usual. Or, perhaps it just felt late. It was late December, but the snow felt more like rain than snow. The coat her stepfather had gotten her was completely soaked by the time she got home; her waterproof boots, likewise.

"I'm hooome!" Eulalie shouted, peeling off her coat and over-shirt.

No answer.

As she walked through the large house, she continued to peel off her wet clothes and kept calling out for her mother, stepfather, and stepbrother. It was only when she had given up and went to her room that she found a pair of notes on her door.

The first one she looked at was in her mother's nearly unreadable neat handwriting.

Dear Eul,
Your father and I were going to take you and Allan out to dinner. Unfortunately, Allan didn't want to go and you were taking too long. The restaurant we were going to take you to is that Greek one with the name that we can't pronounce and you need a reservation for. We were running late and John didn't want to lose our reservation. Normally I'd tell you to come here as soon as you got home, but ooooh! I know how you hate this weather!
Allan will make dinner, you do dishes. If you have any problems call Sarah Whitman next door.
Love, Frances (mom)

Eulalie sighed and looked at the other note.

It was from Allan...

Eulaly,
Went out. Be back soon. Make yourself tuna hotdish, and do dishes. Don't tell your mom or my dad. I'll give you my allowance for a month and my pay check for this week.
-Allan.

Eulalie restrained herself from tearing the note in half. The nerve! Did he really think he could abandon her and then buy her off?! She had a right mind to rat him out!

Eulalie crumpled up the paper and threw it in her desk. As much as her stepbrother ticked her off, she never could get back at him. He was really good at bargaining and dousing her fury. Her strategy now was to make him indebted to her.

After an hour of homework Eulalie went downstairs to fix dinner and do dishes. When she had finished, it was almost ten.

Eulalie sighed. How long were they going to be gone?

On her way back upstairs, Eulalie suddenly remembered something. It was something that had completely slipped her mind. She rushed up to her room and dug through her bag. Not finding what she feared wasn't there, she fell back and groaned.

"Read these two poems in the book, then answer the following questions." Eulalie repeated the teacher's words by memory.

Eulalie bolted up. She had assigned that at the end of class not a minute before the bell rang! Thank goodness Allan was in her English class!

Grabbing her notebook and a pencil, she sprinted out of her bedroom, down the hall to where Allan's room was. When she reached it, she hesitated.

Allan's room... this was Allan's room. She had never seen it, much less gone inside it before. He never locked it, there was no "Stay out!' or "Do not disturb" sign, and he wasn't a very secretive person. So why was she so afraid of barging in?

Eulalie scolded herself. He wasn't home when he should be, what could he do about it?

She reached for the handle and jumped back when it turned and the door opened by itself.

She blinked. "Allan? Are you home? This isn't funny you know! If you're in there say so or something!"

She waited. No response.

Cautiously stepping inside, Eulalie glanced around the room. It was too dark to see anything. She reached on the wall for a switch. Nothing. Same with the other side of the door.

"It's an old, old house," she told herself. "This room probably doesn't have a light switch..."

She took a few more steps and tripped over what felt like a small table. There was a soft chuckle.

"Who's there!" she said, tensing up.

There was no verbal response but there was a soft rustling, like someone getting off the bed. Then soft cracks as whatever it was stretched. She froze as she heard it walk past her. There was a creak, then a small click. The door shut.

Eulalie counted to ten, listening carefully for creaking floorboards. The only things she could hear were the blood in her ears and heart in her chest. After realizing she was holding her breath, she released it and stumbled around his room until she found a light and turned it on.

'Empty' was the first word that came to mind. It had a desk, CD tower, and nightstand, like her room, but it didn't have the clothes, papers, and notebooks scattered the floor like her room did. It did have a bookshelf that covered half of one blankly white wall, a closet, and a daybed. Looking around she noticed that she didn't trip on a table, but that the wooden floor was raised about a foot in the middle of the room.

She spotted his bag by the desk and went over to it. His English book, along with what must have been his entire locker, was there. She pulled it out, then glanced around the room again. A few things stuck out to her.

For one, there was a box under his desk filled with an assortment of candles. All the books in his large bookshelf were old and written in what looked like another language. On a table with multiple levels, there were a bunch of unusual objects for a teenage boy to have. But the thing that unnerved her the most was the daybed. There was nothing wrong with it- it was a very nice daybed. But it did have wrinkles in it that looked like someone was just lying there.

Eulalie clasped the book to her chest and darted out of the room.

"Allan!" she screamed, "If you're home you better say something now or else!" She waited for a response, breathing deeply.

As before, nothing.

Eulalie made her way back to her room. Once inside, she turned on her light, lamp, and radio. She put the textbook from her brother's room on her desk, opened it, and groaned.

The Raven
By Edgar Allan Poe

She glanced at the other poem. It wasn't much better.

Eulalie gave in and began to read the poem aloud. "Once upon a midnight dreary (like tonight), while I pondered, weak and weary (like me), Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten love (like this)- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door." Here she glared at her bedroom door. " " 'Tis some visitor" I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door- only this and nothing more." " Eulalie continued to read in this fashion, forgetting her fears until verse seven.

"Back into the chamber turning, all my soul withing me burning. Soon again I heard... a tapping....somewhat louder than before..... "Surely," said I, "surely that is... is something.... at my window lattice; Let me see.... L-Let me see, then, what thereat is,... and this mystery explore-" "What is that noise?" Eulalie growled, slamming the book on her desk.

She stomped downstairs. It had to be Allan. She was going to give him a piece of her mind for leaving her alone, scaring her, and making that noise.

She reached the front door, ready to start at storm, and suddenly deflated. None of Allan's stuff was there, and the door was still locked. It was always possible that he came home, locked the door, then went to dry his clothes in the dryer. Possible, but not likely.

As Eulalie stood there wondering, she again heard the faint noise that had brought her downstairs in the first place. Upstairs, it was just a noise, but now she could make it out as bells.

Carolers? It was too miserable outside for there to be carolers. But just in case, she opened the door adn looked down the street. No one.

Eulalie closed the door and began to look around the house for the source of the sound. It was difficult because the house was old, made with bricks, really big (almost a mansion), and everyone who ever lived there had to do some sort of remodeling or addition. Despite all that, Eulalie had yet to find any secret passageways or pictures with moving eyes.

As she got closer to the source, she could make out the sound better. It was very merry. Despite the fact that the bells rang to one beat, it sounded like a song. Just that one tone, again, and again, and again.
It was all Eulalie could do to keep from dancing as she approached a door. She opened the door to find a set of stairs that went down. The basement. How could she forget this was the basement?

Eulalie quickly grabbed a flashlight. She didn't want a repeat of Allan's room. This time around she was going to catch the things that went bump in the night.

She went back to the door and turned on the flashlight. The basement's light switch was at the bottom of the steps. Eulalie tried to hear where the bells were coming from without listening to them. It was difficult, but it sounded as if they were somehow in a tunnel somewhere.

When Eulalie reached the bottom and turned on the light, the melody changed. She tilted her head. No, it wasn't the melody; it was the bells. The bells and the beat thy were on both changed. This time the melody was happy, pure joy. Like before, they made their own song and made Eulalie want to smile, jump, even cry. She felt so happy!

Trying to substitute her own song into her head, she creeped beside the wall, listening for the bells to get louder. It lead her to a wall statue. She placed her hand on the pedestal and felt faint vibrations. It was coming from inside the statue!

Eulalie stumbled around the statue trying to find some sort of radio or door. After finding nothing, she kicked the think. A door popped open in the front. At first she just stared, then she knelt down and looked in. As she did so, the bells changed again. This time it was a terrifying melody. Their shrieking tone was like a warning to her. "Go back! Turn around! Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave!"


Despite the feat she was now filled with, she crawled into the statue. The flashlight wasn't much help in the dark small tunnel. Not only were the bells getting louder, but they filled her head with the worst ideas. They included everything from face-eating demons to ghosts to a monster that combined the Ring and the Grudge.

When the song became too loud and horrifying to handle, it changed again. It sounded like old church bells- the ones people rang when someone died. It was such a solemn tune that Eulalie nearly passed out. Something about it scared her to death.

But she pushed forward. She had gotten so far- there was no way she was going to leave without any answers!

Soon the tunnel widened into an open room lit faintly by what seemed like orbs. As she stood up, she noticed a tall man with his back to her. He wore a dark suit and his hair, which was longer than most guys, appeared to be dripping black.

The man waved his arms like a conductor and the ringing stopped. The place became dead silent.

"These darn things are not very easy to control," he said, not turning to look at her. "They're like any instrument. Before you start playing, you have to tune it just right, only..." He brought his hand to his face and tilted his head. "They always 'reset' when I put them away."

Eulalie looked around the room. What was he talking about? The orbs? Who was this guy anyways?

"They love an audience," he said. Eulalie could hear the grin in his voice. When she looked back at him, she found she was held fast in his large dark eyes.

He turned back, and before Eulalie had a chance to blink, the room filled with the sound of bells, each ringing its own tune at once. It was a song to end all songs.

So many feelings and emotions filled her at once, she didn't know if she wanted to jump for joy or cower in a corner. Looking back at the man, she say that only his arms and hands moved. Otherwise he could have been a statue.

The songs filled the room, the tunes filled her head, and soon Eulalie last track of who she was, where she was, or what she was doing. The only things she knew were those four tunes in that one song.

Just when she almost lost herself completely, a pair of arms wrapped around her. A voice whispered in her ear. Everything went black.



"Eulalie! Eulalie! Are you alright? Wake up!"

Eulalie opened her eyes into Allan's large blue ones.

"GAAAAAAAAHHH! Allan! What are you doing?! *************(lol)**********************," she shrieked, pushing him away.

Her stopbrother gestured behind him, "You fell down the stairs. When I couldn't find you anywhere on the main floors, I got worried and started looking for you. Unless you're lying unconscious at the bottom of the basement stairs for some other reason-"

"Bells!" She blurted, "I heard bells adn came down here, there was a door in that statue, and a tunnel, and a room with a man an-"

"Man? What'd he look like?"

"He was really tall, wore a dark suit, had unique hair and big dark eyes. I don't think he was human!"

"Alright. Calm down, calm down," Allan said, feeling her head. "It was just a dream from a bad bump."

"But I don't feel any-"

"You're in denial... and stubborn... you're stubbornly in denial."

"But I was there! It really happened!" Eulalie protested.

"You were reading Edgar Allan Poe. You had a nightmare." He pulled her to her feet. "Now come on, let's get you to bed."

Eulalie kept trying to recount her tale but Allan wouldn't have any of it. She eventually gave up on him, but she didn't believe for second that it was all a dream.

Later Eulalie was laying in her dark room when she heard the door slam. What had kept her parents so long?

As she laid there she suddenly remembered a voice. It was faint, like a dream.

"Under the tolling of these bells, keeping time with this runic rhyme, I proclaim you mine."

Remembereing made her shiver a little. What was that supposed to mean? It was creepy, thinking about belonging to something like that.

Eulalie suddenly bolted up. She heard something. The soft sound of bells...