3The Revenge of Holly Civia
Prologue
What's black and white and red all over? A newspaper. A zebra with sunburn. A white tiger with sunburn. A Dalmatian coming from a paint spill. My sister's bedroom walls. What's gray and red all over? The pavilion behind my house. Beneath all the new gray paint, there's blood. I hate the gray paint. But I can't change the paint color. My house is a historical landmark because some guy no one's ever heard of came up with an idea here. It was like after the Civil War or something. I don't know what was so special. His idea, whatever it was, didn't work. It took almost a year to just get permission to paint over the bloodstains the first time. Over the years, the government decided to just let us do it. So long as it stays the same color. It wasn't even there when the guy came up with the idea. We can't sell the house either. It's been handed down through the generations ever since my ancestors bought it from the failed inventor.
What I mean by saying `the first time' is that a lot of people have died in that pavilion. Every year in late July someone in my family dies in it. The first time I was five years old. I live in a small neighborhood, but I've never known everyone in it. I'm not a social person. Anyway, the people who lived behind us had some relatives over for a party. One guy got drunk and started shooting at a tree. I don't know how he got the gun. My mother came outside to sweep off the dust on the pavilion, like every night, and he shot her accidentally. She died right then and there because she was shot in the head. I was just inside the door when I heard her scream and watched her fall to the ground. I wasn't traumatized. I thought she'd fainted. So I walked down the hall to my father, told him that mommy was fainted, and went to my room. I wasn't traumatized until I heard my father scream and shout that she was dead. My older sister started wailing from her room across the hall, so naturally I started bawling too. Then the next year, just after my father had repainted the pavilion, he had a seizure out there. He was coughing up blood and died before the paramedics arrived.
The year after that, my sister and I were sent away over the summer. While we were gone, our guardian, Uncle Thomas, was strangled by his lunatic wife who had forgotten to take her depressant pills that morning. The next year, his wife, Aunt Lucille, shot herself in the head while visiting from the local high-security loony bin. All of this happened in the pavilion.
Then my Aunt Maria and Uncle John came. They brought their three daughters, Katie, Nancy, and Patty. They also brought our three orphaned cousins, Mike, Tim, and Henry. Uncle John refused to be afraid of that pavilion up until the day he died on it. My sister and I wouldn't go near it, but my cousins went there every day to play princesses and princes or make up one of those westerns where someone always ends up ties to a railroad track with the express train coming in.
But curses can't be broken by ignorance. First Katie died in the pavilion, then Nancy, and then Patty. Next came Mike, then Tim, then Henry, then Aunt Maria, and finally Uncle John. The next year, I turned seventeen and my sister, Dianne, died. Now I'm eighteen and I'm next. My friend Lisa is getting married right around the time everyone died. I can't leave and miss her wedding. She's nineteen already. I have to figure out the mystery before then. I also have to keep my fears to myself. Lisa is very sensitive, unlike myself, and she would blame my problem on herself for planning her wedding then. She'd also either change the date of the wedding or tell me to miss the wedding. I have to find that pavilion's secret, before it decides to get me.
By the way, my name is Natalie. Natalie Sophia Beck.
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