Moon Diamond, Anna P [epub e reader TXT] 📗

Seamus just opened his mouth to say something when a crash echoed through the house. Seamus’ heart pounded quickly in his chest as he jumped up out of his chair. Wasn’t last night enough excitement? He had been through enough weird stuff to last him a lifetime.
Mariah did the same. They looked at each other and then simultaneously raced upstairs to see what had happened. They checked in every room, not finding anything unusual, until they reached Seamus’ bedroom.
“Oh my gosh,” said Mariah, which just about summed it up for Seamus. Drywall and plaster was everywhere, along with shards of glass and quite a few of Seamus’ possessions, shattered or dented on the floor.
Seamus himself had gone numb. How was all of this supposed to be repaired? Some of the things in his room were priceless to him, things that couldn’t be replaced.
A large tree branch had come through the wall and part of the window of Seamus’ bedroom, breaking through the wall and wrecking havoc on the room. There wasn’t even a tree close enough to his window to do all of this damage! There weren’t even many trees in the entire yard!
“What happened?” asked Seamus in a hushed voice as he looked out of the shattered window. The skies were blue, so a storm theory could be ruled out.
“I have no earthly idea.” said Mariah. “But the key word in this sentence is earthly. This isn’t something normal, Seamus, this is something weird. As in, fantasy book weird. We should get out of here. Seamus, are you listening to me?”
Seamus was not listening to her for, at that very moment, another crash sounded, this time from the lower floor. Without a word, the twins hurried downstairs.
The living room was in devastation. Seamus was frozen in shock. What was happening? As he thought this, they heard the back door open with the familiar slam of an old screen door, accompanied by the unmistakable scent of freshly picked basil, probably in a large quantity.
“Mom,” breathed Mariah. “We have to warn her!” She rushed out of the room towards the door, Seamus in hot pursuit.
“Mom! The strangest thing just happened! We were just sitting here and¾” Mariah cut off unexpectedly as Mrs. Snow turned her back on them as if she couldn’t hear or see them. Mariah walked up to her and poked her. Nothing happened.
“What is going on?” asked Mariah. “I mean, sometimes I’ve really wanted to poke her, but this is just scary.” Seamus shook his head. He had no idea what was going on either. They walked slowly into the kitchen.
Suddenly, Mariah screamed. Seamus looked over just in time to yank Mariah down to the ground as a tree branch shot through the window where Mariah had been standing only moments before.
That was when Seamus started to panic. Looking around wildly, he ran across the room to take a quick look out of the window. Just as he reached it, he heard Mariah scream his name. As he turned, he saw out of the corner of his eye a flash of brown, and then a sickening pain in his head accompanied by a bright light popping. Then nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Chapter Three
Seamus opened his eyes slowly and began to take in his surroundings. It was dark out, and the moon was full. He sat up and gingerly touched his head. It was then that he realized that he was sitting on grass. The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Those tree branches had crashed through wall and glass. How had he survived? Forget that, how was he outside and how was it already dark?
Mariah was his next thought. He got up as fast as a person could after being knocked out for a while and went to find her. His entire body felt like he had been beat up. It was near agony to just walk. He quickly checked himself and realized that he was completely covered in bruises. He touched his face and found it scratched and dirty. It was obvious where his injuries had come from, the question was, where did the tree brances come from?
It took him a few minutes to find Mariah as he was quite dizzy and had to walk in a strange combination of a limp and a stagger. He fell down three times before actually making it to where Mariah was, near the pine tree. The more he walked, the easier it was. It was almost as if his wounds were healing as he went…but that simply wasn’t possible.
Once he got to Mariah, he noticed that she seemed to be having, because she was walking in circles trying to go in a straight line when he found her.
“What happened?” he asked, as he got closer. “Are you okay?”
“Earthquake, magic, huge typhoon, or possibly avalanche or hurricane, dangerous winds…a combination of all of them put together.”
“Mariah, stop!” he said. He had a horrible feeling that perhaps Mariah had gone slightly insane while he was knocked out. “It can’t have been magic, please talk like you have a brain! We don’t live near the ocean, we aren’t in a mountainous region, we’re not near a fault line, and dangerous winds are the only thing that makes sense of what you said. And there wasn’t even a cloud in the sky. A tree probably just fell down.”
“Then how do you explain us being outside?” she asked.
“Er….”
“Exactly,” said Mariah, fiddling her necklace. “It has to be magic.”
“You stopped believing in Santa Claus in fifth grade.”
“That isn’t the only kind of magic,” said Mariah in scorn. “That’s little kid magic. Besides, how do you explain how Mom acted? She doesn’t just ignore us.”
“Either way ,magic isn’t real. I can’t explain Mom’s behavior, but there has to be another explanation. ”
“In this world it isn’t.”
Seamus looked at her, his fears confirmed. “So, what? There’s magic on Mars?”
Mariah didn’t answer, but continued pacing in circles.
“You didn’t believe in magic before.” Seamus persisted. “What makes you think it’s real now?”
“I didn’t say I believed in it,” she said. “It’s just the only thing that makes sense. Just trust me, Seamus, I just have a feeling.”
“Come on, let’s go inside. I don’t know what happened, and I’m not sure that I want to know. And please, please, please, please stop fiddling with that necklace and pacing. You’re driving me insane!”
He turned toward the coop to be surprised; it was considerably larger than it had been before. Confused, he thought that it must just be the fact that he was still awfully dizzy. He looked toward the barn. Another wave of shock hit him when he realized that the barn had doubled in size and it was now made of stone instead of barn siding. Plus, there was a corral with a roof leading from the house to the barn. Shaking his head to hopefully clear himself of these insane delusions, he started to walk back to their house.
Once he got closer, it became frighteningly clear that, though it seemed to be their house, as it was roughly the same size at the bottom and everything in the yard was the same, besides the buildings. Instead of white siding that was usually there, it was made of light grey stone and the doors were larger, wooden, and looked as if they belonged in a medieval castle. Somehow, as Seamus looked up, it seemed to have around ten floors instead of the two that Seamus was used to. Not to mention that the house didn’t appear damaged at all.
He must have hit his head harder than he had originally thought.
The bright full moon made the place look haunted and eerie. Mariah shivered next to him, and Seamus knew that it wasn’t from cold.
In the distance, they heard the howl of a wolf. He glanced at Mariah nervously. She must have known just as well as he did that there weren’t any wolves around their area; the closest thing was coyotes, and this was like no coyote that Seamus had ever heard. The sound was somehow deeper, not as yippy, and it held a trace of malevolence in it that made his hair stand on end.
“Let’s go in, hurry,” he said. Mariah nodded in agreement.
Nervously, Seamus reached to open the door, only to have it opened by two redheaded girls, who, quite obviously, were not his sisters. Even if they looked remotely like them, he knew that his sisters would almost rather die than wear what these girls were dressed in. Their dresses were chocolate brown with full skirts. Their hair was pulled back with matching chocolate colored headbands.
“Welcome to Walking Inn Circles,” said the first girl with longer hair.
“Would you like a room?” asked the second one.
Mariah and Seamus looked at each other, bewildered. “Umm, what do you mean?” asked Mariah.
“Walking Inn Circles. I-n-n. You know, as in ‘I’m going to stay at an inn tonight’ or ‘do you like the inn…’”
“Alright, Tatiana, they get it,” said the girl with longer hair, a little impatiently, then turned to Seamus and Mariah. “Walking Inn Circles is one of the most popular inns in the country, you must have heard of it before.”
“Umm, do you own this place?” asked Mariah.
“No, our sister does though. Her name is Lily,” said the longer haired girl.
“Okay, where exactly are we?”
Taylor looked at them strangely. “Why don’t you ask Lily?”
“Okay, can we talk to her soon, then?” Seamus was now really confused. Was this some sort of cruel joke?
“Do you have an appointment?” asked the shorter haired girl, called Tatiana.
“No, we don’t. Do we need one? Is she available now?” asked Seamus.
“Sorry, next time she’s available would