The extremely peculiar case.

Everyone knows that to have a good story you need a place to begin and to finish so let us start with that, to start off this story of mine, I would have to go far back into my childhood. These are where the memories that are the most gruesome and horrid things that ever happened to me had to be locked far away in my mind where they would never be found again just so I could keep my sanity in check,

We all have memories that needed to be locked away for a variety of reasons, some may even not know that are such memories lying in they mind stuck there until a trigger moment happens and releases that lost memory, but anyway let’s began now that we have a place to start, so I bet your wondering “if the memories are locked in your mind are too be lost forever than how can you get them out or even know about them?” well dear reader that is a good point, but I can answer it by going like this once you unlock one memory the rest should come along soon after.

So, to pick a place to start to unwind this big string of yarn is to start off from the beginning beginning so when I was first born, let’s get into it and hang on tight this will be a long, wild and extremely peculiar case.

I was born in 1601, this was around the time where Captain Bartholomew Gosnold was the first Englishman to land on the New England coast, exploring and naming Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. Now although being born in a time where people lived in farms that were made out of wood would be okay for you because it would be like a warm cozy cabin in the winter every day, but to me and my family of 8 it was not so cozy, but actually really hard to live in, not only did we have the worry about the winter coming to kill all of our crop but we also had to worry about the winter killing us by hypothermia. And mind you it wasn’t a very big cabin at all. So, imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have to sleep in one room with five siblings, anyway like I said I was born in the 1600s into a family of 8 living in a cabin trying to survive every day, I will admit growing up there wasn’t only awful I mean it was all I knew nothing else, and people were really set in there way so what could I do, but let’s fast-forward to when I’m 16 years old and about to lose everything I ever loved. I was out running errands for my mother and father and I remember it took about 17 minutes by carriage but I was on foot so it took even longer I would believe around 48 minutes at least, I got what my mother asked of me though I forgot what item it was, but anyway I got back to the house after a while and I was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. That when I saw it the house on fire and none of my family out of it, I guess that’s why living in a house made out of wood isn’t very comfortable or safe. Going back now makes me want to cry although these are the side-affects of unlocking those lost memories it’s your brain trying to just protect you. Good thing I never needed protection so let’s proceed, over the past few weeks the big “Mason house fire” news died down and soon it became as though it never happened. I was crushed, every day I cried knowing they weren’t coming back and that I was now alone, while they were working on contacting my dad’s side of the family to see if they could come and get me to take me to their home I stayed in an orphanage, that is until my mom’s sister called the orphanage and asked about her taking me in, I guess the news spread all the way over to California and at the richest part too, I will say I was impressed at how much money they made, well I mean if you call making $11 dollars a week and $572 a year as a good amount of money then yes they made a really good amount of money.

Although I had never met them or even heard about them I was just happy about getting out of that hell they called an orphanage, I won’t get into it as I know many of you would like me too but all you need to know is, some lost memories should stay lost, for good, but off I was to a new place only a mere few days after my whole families death and I was already going to meet other people I didn’t even know on a whole other place I’ve never heard off before, this certainly was an extremely peculiar case, and it was only the start of my story.

Now I must have totally forgot to specify that I lived in Waterwidow, so I was going to have to go by horse drawn carriage, which took 20 days before I got there, needless to say I was not exactly happy when I got to my aunt’s place, when I got to the massive home, I meet my new family, I was first greeted by my cousins, and uncles and grandparents, but then, oh then, it came to the women of this massive home. My aunt, but as she told me to call her Miss Peacock, I was then given a tour of there “great house” literally the name, but it defiantly lived up its name.

I was introduced to all of my new family members and they all seemed really, well how do I put this, normal, like if someone asked me to define what normal was, they would be my first pick, so right after that realisation I felt extremely out of place there, and they made it known that I wasn’t one of them and never would be. Any mistake I made it was chalked up to because I had my dad’s poor genes and mom’s dumb mind, it upset me every time, but if I said anything about it then they would remind me that I was lucky to be living here, and that they could have left me an orphan, and if I liked they would drop back over there, well personal that didn’t seem like much a choice so I sat quietly for 9 years listening to their horribly lies about my parents who always only wanted the best for me and my brothers and sisters, and there they were just saying all these evil things about them, I use to often wonder why they even wanted to adopt me if they hated my mom and dad so much.

I mean why not just leave there to suffer, I soon found out why they wanted me, the morning was like any started off with my aunt yelling at me to get up and then in the same breath loving telling my cousins “Get up my sweet angels” then as she was leaving the room giving me the same disgusted look I have always received, not even trying to hide it now.

I would then get ready for dinner putting on my corset and bottom skirt then tying my strings, then helping my cousins put on there corsets and bottom skirts, then going down stairs to eat my food, and then go out to the front to play with my younger cousins, then go back inside deal with all the sarcastic remarks like “oh my dear Jasmine, its okay if you don’t understand how to fix a whole carriage you never broke in the first place, I mean believe me no one expects you to be that bright”, I was tired of it, but it was nothing like that two days later, I mean other than the rude awaking it was different, I got ready as usual, but when I got down stairs my aunt asked me to instead go to the study room and wait there for Francis who was the eldest of all the bothers, and one of my male cousins who I barely talked to but I followed her instructions anyway,

When I got to the big blue and white study room with book shelfs so tall, they touched the heavens, I sat down on one of the unnecessarily huge blood red chairs and waited there for what felt like 10 years, then the door finally opened and Miss Peacock, Mr Peacock and Francis came in and told me that they had very exciting news to tell the both of us,

We all waited in silence for a moment, just sitting there, waiting for what she was going to say next, and with a big smirk Miss Peacock who I know hated me the most looked me in eyes and said, “you two will be betrothed to each other in three weeks”, my jaw dropped and I immediately looked at my cousin to see his reaction,

He looked just as shocked, I shouted “but he is my cousin who is 16 years older than me, I don’t want to marry him” Miss Peacock looked at me with a frown, and said I had no choice, either this or I would be homeless and have to fend for myself, I didn’t know what else to do, I mean what could I do, so I accepted, and with tears in my eyes went back to my room only a couple week before the biggest day of my life, that would last the rest of my life.

The extremely peculiar case.

I bet now you want me to tell you all about how I was feeling those couple weeks, and what I did to escape the unwanted wedding, and in short, I didn’t do anything, I know this must be a bit of a shock but like I said before, what could I do? That’s right absolutely nothing, so when the day finally came, and the guest were here from all over, I just went along with it, I felt totally numb, I just felt nothing while the luxurious and lavish wedding went on, I wish I could at least tell you what I felt but to be honest, I just felt empty, so after the wedding happened everyone was led to the massive Ball Room that I think was a bit much, I mean who needs two chandeliers, one fountain and golden walls? Now you’d expect the bride to get much attention, but on the contrary, no one spoke to me, not even a second look, so I decided to walk over to the garden outside, as I was about to turn one hedge I heard my aunt talking to some guest, I listened in and heard her talking about my mom and dad again, I was about to just turn around and ignore her like I usually did, but then I heard “I’m just happy she isn’t as useless as her parents were, I’m actually really glad they died in that house, only thing is that there hideous daughter survived, happy she could be of use though.” At that moment I finally felt something, nothing I had ever felt before, pure and raw anger.

At that moment I knew what I needed to do, and no one was going to stop me at all, when the party was over I went over I quickly ran over to my now husband former cousin and said that his mother needed him straightaway, she had fallen and couldn’t get back up, he asked where she was and I pointed to where I had heard her and the other guest talking, he got up and ran faster than I thought was humanly possible to where I pointed, that was my chance, my one and only chance I picked up my long dress and ran for the door and quickly got through the opened gate passing all the remaining guest,

And went to the only place I knew, an old coffee store in the middle of the woods, it was run down and had been abandoned for many years, spider webs in every single corner and there was no roof at all just small planks of wood barely covering anything, the furniture was torn up and put in random spots all around the place. people deemed the place haunted so no one wanted to go near the decrepit store, I didn’t believe them, but I knew many people did so I knew I was safe there, when I had finally gotten to the coffee store, I just sat on one of the torn chairs, and there I was, I did everything to avoid being in this situation but at the end of the day I guess I was always meant to end up here.

As I sat there thinking about how I had gotten here the only thing that could have stopped this was the fire, if it had never happened my family would have been alive and I would be at home happy, not a torn-up chair with rust on it, In an abandoned coffee store after running away from my own forced wedding to my own cousin, okay, now I left out one detail about my house, there was a basement which is where the fire started, but the thing about the basement was that it was pure dirt, no I mean it, pure dirt, the walls the floor, everything, the only thing that wasn’t dirt was the ceiling, that was held up by a few pilers, but that was made of stone. So, there was nothing flammable or dangerous there except for some potatoes we were growing, so now my question was, what really happened to the basement that started that fire? Was there something dangerous we didn’t know about down there? Or, maybe one of my parents or siblings left something down there on accident? my mind began to race thinking up all these different situations that could have happen, but one situation was stuck on my mind, maybe it wasn’t an accident, maybe it was planned, I mean it made sense like why only when I was gone, how did it even start? Why the most unlikely place fire could have stared? That’s when it hit me my family’s death maybe wasn’t such an accident, it could have been planned, and at that moment I knew what my next mission was. To find out how to get to my childhood home and find out the truth, the real truth, and I was ready to do whatever it took to solve this extremely peculiar case of the Mason house fire.

I made up a plan that night and went to sleep on the hard and very uncomfortable chair, and to make matters worse it started to rain, so I was stuck out on the most hard, nauseating and uncomfortable chair ever, now about to be sopping wet, just great, in the morning I started the plan, I got up from the hard chair half-way dry by that point, and headed straight for my aunt’s house, when I got to the gates I remembered a secret way into the house without being seen, it was a narrow little pathway built just in case family members needed to get inside the house, but the gate won’t open for whatever reason, I wasn’t even meant to know about the pathway into the house, but I followed my silly aunt without her knowing and she led me right to it, look whose dumb now, when I got to the end of the secret not so secret pathway I went to side of the “great house” and got the spare key to the house that was under a flower pot with black and white dots on it, funny thing is it was also meant to be a secret, but oh well,

When I had finally gotten inside, I knew exactly where to go, I made a bee line to the study room with the unnecessarily huge blood red chair and began to look for the vault that held all of the money they ever made, I was able to get inside the study room unnoticed and began to look everywhere for the vault, but couldn’t find it until I looked up the tall book shelfs and saw it, at the highest point there it was a huge black meatal vault, my first thought was “these people are insane” I started to look for a way up and as I looked around I saw a huge ladder that I bet would have touched the sky if it were any longer and started to go towards it, I was one foot on the ladder when I heard someone coming down the hallway into the room I was in. I felt my heart leap out of my chest as I tried to find a place to hide, the door was halfway opened when I had finally found a place,

I quickly ran over to the unnecessarily huge blood red chair and dunked behind it waiting for my unavoidable doom, the door opened all the way and footsteps began to walk near to where I was hiding, and before I was sure that whoever it was had caught me, the pair of footsteps stopped and then someone had sat down on the huge chair, I exhaled a silent sigh of relief and tried to see who it was but I couldn’t see behind the chair, so I just tried listened closely to see if I could find out who it was by the sound of their voice. After a couple minutes another pair of footsteps came into the room and sat at the chair right in front, not forgetting to cross their legs in the process.

A couple of seconds went by in silence, until the person who I was crouching behind spoke “Well, you decided to call me here on such short notice, what is it you need? And aren’t you busy from the wedding your son just had yesterday?” he sounded very unpleased by the judge of his tone, then the person Infront of him finally spoke “Yes, I did invite you here on such short notice but last I’d checked business wasn’t going so well, so I figured, I needed you’re help, you clearly weren’t busy, so I called you here.” The women said with such a smug tone I knew exactly who it was, my horrid aunt, the man made a small grunt and my aunt continued “my son’s wife has run away, and I need your help” the man said in an annoyed tone “you know that I only execute people right” placing his elbow on the side of the chairs arm “exactly, I need you go and find her, then kill her” after saying that she then placed a photo on the big round table,

the person picked it up and said, “why do you want me to kill her?” my aunt uncrossed her legs and began “I housed that witch; I fed her for years! All I asked for was to not leave the house, do her chores and don’t ever embarrass this family! But instead of just going along with it for her family members who cared for her for so long and never said a bad word about her, she goes and does this just to spite us.” “Hump” the man said “okay then now my question is why her? Why not another woman?” my aunt laughed “why not her, she was useless and this was something she could have actually done that was helpful, plus he is the eldest and I want to keep the family blood line in the family and she was sadly family so she was somewhat perfect, but she had to ruin it and destroy our reputation. guest saw her running away, as if she was forced to live with us all these years, but anyway enough with this chitchat, what is your answer?” My heart stopped as he said “done”. I hate to admit it, but at that moment I had no idea what to do, so I just was there, crouching behind the huge chair, scared out of my mind, my aunt then cackled and began to say “good, I want conformation when you are done, just in case you start getting too soft a heart for the girl’” with that the man nodded and my aunt got up and left the room,

the man started to get up, but as soon as he touched the doorknob, he stopped and paused for a second before taking his hand off the doorknob and he started calling out my name, saying he knew I was there. But I stayed quiet, I mean, really, what else could I do? Just get out of my hiding spot, put my hands up and say “oh hi, I know you’re the person who is getting paid to execute me, but please let me go, although that will not benefit you in any way”.

but anyway, like I was saying, I stayed put like any sane person who didn’t want to die would, and it actually worked, the man made a small grunt but eventually left the room, but just to make sure he was truly gone, I stayed for a couple seconds, even after I had the door had closed.

And it really paid off, after sitting there and waiting for a second, I was about to get up and leave my hiding spot, until I heard the door open again and my aunt coming inside, with an upset look on her face. “What do you think you’re doing?

Why haven’t you left the room yet? Are you trying to steal from me?” she said not forgetting to add a little shriek at the end, it shocked me nearly to death, because, well, I nearly actually died. But with that the man actually left the room this time, with my aunt not far behind, and I could finally get out of that stupid hiding spot, but by that time my knees were already killing me, but I had to continue,

I got the ladder that could touch the sky if it were any longer and started to climb it, when I got to the top, but when I got there, I saw that the vault needed a code. I got down from the ladder and began to look for the code, I looked everywhere but couldn’t find it, until I came across a letter, it wasn’t signed, and I didn’t know the handwriting. But it stated, “once my eldest son gets married, I wish for him to have access to the family money at all times, so that one day he can past it down to his children and take responsibility for the rest of the family”.

then I realised that it wasn’t written down, the first son must know it by heart and can’t let anyone know, and with that I knew who it was, no other than my dear beloved meant-to-be-husband, or you could say cousin but these lines can get so blurry when money is involved, I knew I needed to talk to him as fast as possible to get home, it was now life or death. I began to think of all things that could happen to me if I went to see him in his room, I probably had a million conversations that I went through in that short span of minutes, I thought about kidnapping him or forcing him to talk, or just say sorry and telling him what his aunt has planned for me.

I decided that I should start off telling him about his mother’s plan to get me executed, and if he turned out be heartless that’s when I would use other methods to get him to talk and they weren’t going to be nearly as soft. I was really desperate and just wanted to avenge my family if it was planned, I made sure to be very careful as I got closer to his room, making sure I wasn’t seen by any family members. When I got there, I quietly went inside his room and it was actually really homely, flower pots on the windowsill and the room wasn’t big at all, it was Just stunning. he wasn’t there so I began to try to find a pose that would make it look like I meant business, but wasn’t going to hurt him while at the same time making it know that if I needed to I would. Now even one of these poses were hard to do never mind all three so as I was going side to side corner to corner, trying to find a place to do my pose, the door of the room came open and in walked Francis.

Now I’m sure he wasn’t pleased that I ran away from the wedding and lied to him but when he saw me, he his face looked even more upset, it looked like I had ruined his day just by him even looking at me, I started to sweat and get tongue tied I really wasn’t very prepared at all, he looked away from me and asked me to leave or he was calling his mom to come get me out, I begged him to sit down and hear me out, he sighed and asked “tell me honestly, do you truly think you deserve to have a chance to speak to me?” I looked at him and said it was really important and that I would leave right after, and gave him my word.

He walked inside shutting the door after him and sat on his bed looking deflated, “well, go on I don’t have much time” he said looking at the ground “well there is no easy way to say this but, I need you to tell me the code for the family vault so that I can have enough money to get out of California and go back to my childhood home to find out about the bizarre killing of my family and find out if it was a planned murder or not, and I just found out your mother is trying to get me killed and has hired someone to do so.”

After I had said that there was silence, he then finally spoke “are you serious? Not only did you put shame on my family, but humiliated me in the process, the whole family spoke about how I must have been so unlovable to have my wife run away not even a day after the wedding and now here you are, out of the blue, asking me the person who you ran away from to give you the code to my family’s money, no scratch that, all the money my family has because what? my mother is trying to kill you? First off, I don’t believe you,” with that he pulled a piece of pink rope and continued “the person who is trying to “kill” is now coming to this room as we speak.” I was mad he was going to get me killed for what, ruining a wedding that never should have happened?

I looked at him and then looked at his flower pots that were behind me through the mirror that was placed right behind me, , and started to come up with an idea, I said I was sorry and that he didn’t believe me and that I was scared and I wasn’t trying to ruin his families reputation as I spoke I didn’t forget to back up slowly to the windowsill, he then looked at the window and grabbed me “you’re not going anywhere” I let out an unintentional scream and then “BAM” I hit him over the head with the flower pot, that had blue stripes on it, when he fell on the floor unconscious I started to look for the code everywhere, I knew he kept a book he wrote everything in and I always thought it was weird but just passed it as a phase he would get over, but at this moment I hoped he hadn’t gotten over it , I opened every drawer but nothing so I started to think of places he could have hidden it, my first thought was the bed so I took everything off but nothing, my second thought was the couch but still nothing, I was starting to get desperate as I could now hear the footsteps getting closer, I looked over at my unconscious cousin and the broken flower pot and to my surprise there it was, a surprisingly small black book. I quickly got the book and opened the window.

I knew that his room was pretty close to the study room where the vault was and began to scale the treacherous walls to the window of the study room nearly getting caught a handful of times, when I had reached the study room window I quickly got inside and started to climb the huge ladder that I bet really would have touched the sky if it were longer and once I was on top I opened the book and started to look for the code everywhere, that’s when I saw a very weird poem, well at least it sounded like one, it went like this “As my 3rd wedding arrived and I was looking very good but instead of 6 cakes they sent me 8 and I was furious and sent 2 back”, “now I know this might be big leap” I thought in my sarcastically in my mind “but if I knew any better I think that weird poem is for the vault” and with that I began to put the numbers in the same order as the poem. Once I put the last number in the vault door opened almost immediately and no longer had the vault opened, when I heard the door leading into the room open, and someone yell “there she is on the top of the book shelfs, and the she’s managed to opened the vault!”

I quickly grabbed all the money I could get in 20 seconds and put it into the holes of my torn and somewhat dry dress and looked around for a way to escape, and that’s when an idea quickly came to me. I just sat there waiting for my so-called family members to climb up the ladder and once they got halfway up to the where I was, I pushed the ladder off the book shelf and grabbed on tight and as we went down, I saw the face of my wicked aunt and I will tell you now, that is a face I will never forget nor want to. The complete fear and regret in her eyes along with a pure and passionate hate for me as the ladder came crashing down.