"The Writer's Voice" Blogfest Entry (#54)

(For those of you doing the Dust It Off Bloghop, click here to go to my post!!)

Huge thanks to Cupid, Brenda, Krista, and Monica for hosting such a fun contest! For the details, click here on Cupid's blog. 

PHOBIC, a YA Horror

Query:

Fifteen year old Piper Crenshaw knows her house is strange. It’s never needed any repairs since it was built in the 1800’s, it has a staircase that leads to the ceiling and the lights flicker in response to things she says. The kids at school torment her because of her creepy house, but it’s a good thing they don’t know Piper’s real secret:  Her mother is in prison for murder.

Sick of being pestered, Piper opens a forbidden door in her house to prove she’s not afraid of where she lives. Soon she begins having flashbacks of the original residents from 1875, including a love affair between two young servants. Each vision pulls Piper deeper in, not only to their story, but into her house. She doesn’t realize how far the connection goes until her house gets axed by a bully during a prank, and the damage injures Piper instead.

Piper realizes her house isn’t haunted—it’s alive. To sever her link to it, she must unravel the clues in the flashbacks and uncover the truth about her mother’s crime, before she becomes part of her house for good.

First 250:

When I was six years old I found the man my mother murdered stuffed in a trap door under our kitchen. The smell gave him away.

Police swarmed the house, which—uncharacteristically—made no creaking groans of protest at having that many outsiders in it. It was almost like the house knew Mom’s secret and wanted her to get caught.

Now, nine years later, I hold my clarinet in my hands and stare past the music on my stand. I should practice, but I can’t concentrate. My scholarship audition—my chance to get out of this house next summer—is tomorrow, and I wish my mom could be there.

I didn’t mind that she wasn’t at district solo competition last year, when as a freshman I beat a senior. Or that Mom isn’t around to show me the kind of mom-stuff other girls learn. I’ve got my older brother, Joel, but he knows as much about putting makeup on as I do. And when I got my period I wasn’t about to ask him how to put in a tampon.

I still see traces of my mother everywhere I look. If I didn’t know she was in prison, I’d think she was the one haunting my house, offering hollow wails in the early hours of morning, that stretch when day is breaking but dark things still have time to creep.

It’s why I like to practice in her and Daddy’s bedroom. I like to think that even from prison, my mom can hear me play.