"...will be coming in for a landing very shortly. Please make sure your seat trays are up and your seats backs are in their upright position and locked. Thank you."

The words dragged me slowly out of the tentative sleep I'd been drifting through for the past...how long was this flight supposed to be? I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, slowly stretching. My neck hurt now from the awkward position I'd slipped into while asleep and I reached up, massaging it gently as I looked around. The cabin still looked sedate and almost dreamy. There weren't too many people around.

That still seemed kind of surreal to me, but I guess not all flights are jam-packed. Maybe there just weren't that many people flying back from Amsterdam to Portland, Oregon in the middle of the night. Rubbing the remains of sleep from my eyes, I sat up a little more fully and looked out the window. There were still just clouds out there, clouds and darkness, but the plane was headed down. It wouldn't be long before it was on the ground.

I'd been on more planes than I wanted to think about over the past year.

Thankfully, this was the last one! At least for awhile. Hopefully.

Flying still made me nervous. It just seemed like it was all too easy for something to go wrong in something as intricate and complex as a plane...but now I was just scaring myself. It was almost over. Then I could go home.

Home…

I had never even been home, at least not to this one. Not yet.

I settled in and waited.

It had been a long, strange year in Europe.

Mostly fun, sometimes annoying, sometimes frightening, but all in all a good time. Originally, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it, but...hey, how many college sophomores get a chance to spend a year studying abroad in freaking Europe?! My dorm mate said it best when I was still struggling with the decision…

You'd be a moron not to do this!

She'd been right, of course.

It had been quite the change from Portland, where I'd spent my first year of college. Maybe most importantly of all, in a way that I was only recently beginning to even grasp in the slightest, it was like...saying goodbye to my childhood. Sitting there on a plane as it landed in Portland, I didn't feel like an adult, not at all.

But I didn't feel like a kid anymore, either. Maybe not even a teenager. Ha, at twenty one, I'm sure I know what a lot of adults would have to say about that. And maybe I'm wrong. But probably what got me thinking on the whole subject was the fact that I never even got to say goodbye to our old house, because while I was away, in a very strange turn of events, my parents had inherited a mansion apparently out in the middle of nowhere.

When they'd first told me in a letter almost a year ago, right after I'd left, I didn't even know what to think. I thought it was a joke. But, no, it wasn't. Apparently, we had a great uncle Oscar, and he had died, and he had given us his house. His mansion, I guess. It was weird, I never thought I'd live in a mansion. But was it a mansion...or was that just my mom and dad putting on airs and calling it a mansion? They'd sent pictures, and it seemed big but…

Well, I guess I'd find out before too long.

The plane came to a stop and the pilot wished us all farewell and thanked us for flying Delta Airlines. I was just thankful that we'd made it there in one piece. I stood up, stretched, and felt my neck pop. That was a relief, at least. Reaching up, I grabbed my duffel-bag from the overhead compartment and then got into the single file line of the two dozen or so passengers that were getting off. It reminded me uncomfortably of elementary school.

As I stumbled into the bright lights of the terminal, I was half-expecting to see my parents, and maybe even Sam, waiting for me. Before leaving Amsterdam, I'd made a call to the new number. Of course no one answered, so I'd left a message pleading with my mom not to come get me. The late flight was the cheapest option, so I took it. My mom and dad hadn't exactly told me everything, but I got the feeling from them, (and from Sam's letters too), that money wasn't very easy to come by nowadays for them.

So of course that made me feel guilty for spending an entire year in Europe at their expense. But at the time, they'd said it wasn't a problem.

But, standing there in the wake of the deplaning passengers, I saw no one waiting for me in the vast, lonely terminal. Well, that was good at least. Sighing, feeling sluggish and dull, like my brain was wrapped in cotton or wool, I trudged along with my heavy duffel-bag, trying to get to the baggage claim without any trouble.

I still had a ways to go before actually getting home.

While we'd originally lived in Portland, now my parents lived all the way out in a small city called Boon County, which was about an hour's drive or so. At least I wouldn't have to be driving. Plus, I had enough money left in my pocket to catch a shuttle out to the city and a taxi from there once I was actually in Boon County. If my bag would ever show back up. I watched the bag thing make its slow, trundling trek.

A black suitcase went by.

A red suitcase.

Two blue duffel-bags.

I wondered what was in those or who they belonged to. I was the only one here right now...there it is! My own bag was coming slowly into view. I snagged it as it came back, then paused to check the paper attached to it.

Kaitlin Greenbriar
Portland, Oregon, United States
Flight #270
June 6, 1995

Yep, it was mine all right. Although I can't imagine there being a duplicate of it floating around. The bag, which all my friends I'd made in Europe declared hideous, was a tan-greenish color with a repeating pattern of what seemed to be broken televisions and the checkerboard pattern of taxi cabs...I think. I could never actually figure out what it was supposed to be, but I found it in a gift shop in Frankfurter and I just had to have it.

Grabbing the bag and hefting my duffel, I began to head outside. But as I made for the front exit, a row of silver payphones, gleaming in the bright white light of the terminal, caught me eye. Well, why not? I could spare a quarter and I know mom would be annoyed at being woken up, but she'd be more annoyed if I didn't wake her up to let her know I was safely back in the States. Of course she and dad might not be there.

They weren't very clear in their last letter, (neither was Sam,) but they said they might be going on some kind of...nature retreat or vacation or something. It had been vague and of course it was the letter I got right before I was to come home, so there was no time to write back and of course the two times I actually did call to chat and mom actually picked up, neither of us remembered to bring it up. But Sam should at least be there.

Where else would she be at this hour?

Glancing at the clock, I saw it was just past midnight, which officially made it June 7th...not that that really mattered.

I set my stuff down by the phones, fished a quarter out of my pocket, fed it into the machine and punched in the number I'd made myself memorize. It rang...and rang...and rang...after about ten rings, the answering machine finally clicked on.

Of course. Sam was probably asleep. She could sleep through an earthquake.

"Sam...Saaaaam...hello?..." I sighed. "Sam!"

No answer. She wasn't waking up. Great. Whatever. I hung up the phone, grabbed my bags and headed for the exit.

The shuttle made good time. Either that or it wasn't really an hours' ride out there. Either way, when I stepped off the shuttle and into the parking lot where a couple of taxis idled, it was just shy of being one in the morning.

I walked over to the nearest taxi and got in. The driver, a fiftyish man with a scruff of dark stubble, a floppy hat, and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth, glanced back from the magazine he'd been reading. "Where to, young lady?" he asked.

"One Arbor Hill," I replied, settling in.

"Pretty far out there," he replied, keying the ignition.

"Yep," I agreed.

As we took off, the storm clouds I'd noticed via brief flashes of lightning finally let loose with their promise of rain.

I didn't know if it was a good omen or a bad one.

I thought I'd be ready to sleep all night at this point, but as my watch ticked closer to one fifteen in the morning and the taxi bumped along Arbor Hill, I was wired. Maybe it was the elation of surviving not only another plane trip, but a boring drive on a shuttle and a taxi through a whole lot of darkness and rain. Or maybe I was just glad to be back home in the States. Europe was fun in a lot of different ways, but I missed home.

Probably what it was was that I was going to get to see this mansion for the first time in the flesh, with my own eyes, and well…

I love exploring!

We had only ever moved twice before this and each time I loved exploring every possible nook and cranny of the new places we lived. I thought it was something that would fade as I got older, a childish obsession, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to poking around this new place. Although, I have to admit, the pictures I'd seen of it so far made it look kind of creepy. Plus, it was raining and the middle of the night.

"Here we are," the taxi driver said as he pulled into the driveway. "You want some help with the bags?" he offered.

"No thanks," I replied.

"That'll be eight bucks even."

I fished out a five and three ones, then passed them to him, thanked him one more time and left the taxi, bags in hand.

I looked up at my parent's new home.

Although the dimensions were lost to me as the glow of the taxi's headlights faded, I got a sense of scale, standing there in the driveway, staring at it.

It was big.

Also, there were no cars in the driveway. Well...they were probably in the garage. I could see a single garage door, closed against the elements. To the left of the driveway and the garage, through a haze of rainy darkness thick with trees, (there were a lot of trees around), I could see lights on and a front door.

Holding my bags, I set off.

It was time to see this mansion for myself.