Dark Family Inheritance: Dark Family Tales, #1

By Kyla Cole

Immerse yourself in Dark Family Tales. Each season features 5 supernatural stories revolving around the Finn family. From ghosts to demons to witchcraft, their reunions are never boring.

 

 It begins with one stormy night (don't they always) that changes a little boy's perception of reality. But it takes him almost twenty years to learn the truth of why it happened in the first place. Everyone around him has their own story to tell and carries a piece of the puzzle. Can you figure it out before the end?

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gothic Bound
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393770312

Book preview

BOOK ONE:

DARK FAMILY INHERITANCE

" I’ve never been able to outgrow that fear

that something bad is going to happen

when it thunders."

COME BACK TO ME

TAP! TAP! DOUBLE TAP!

Please make it stop, I think to myself with a pillow over my face. It’s been raining for hours and it’s getting worse. Louder. Along with acres of unharvested corn swaying in the wind. Getting their tassels ripped off. I just want to go to sleep. Muddy water overflows the ditches on each side of the main country road. Guaranteeing my parents won’t drive out here to pick me up if I call.

Grandmother is downstairs making sure all the rattling windows are closed in her house. Well, if you want to call a thirty-plus bedroom mansion just a house. The temperature dramatically drops when she enters the foyer. Triggering tiny goosebumps to form down both her short-sleeve forearms. The source of the persistent icy draft appears to be coming from the main entryway. Mother nature bursts the front door wide open with handfuls of dead wet leaves and misty tears. She grabs hold of the knob prepared to battle the insane wind when lightning strikes one of her trees. Splitting it down the middle. Its deafening crackle vibrates the wooden floorboards beneath her slippered feet. But the damaged sides do not fall. Instead, the old oak tree remains upright, burning within. She becomes mesmerized by the sparkling embers popping out from the center.

Grandma? I whimper from the top of the staircase. Wearing my blue plaid button-up guest pajamas and prescription glasses. My thin mousy brown hair combed to one side. I had tried to fall asleep but the whistling wind sounds too much like someone screaming outside for help. Followed by pouring rain and now thunder. Ignoring all of it is too difficult for this seven-year-old. 

My young grandmother uses her whole slim body to close the door and sighs, It's just a storm. Go back to bed, sweetie.

Can I please sleep down there? I start begging. Convinced that the house is going to be sucked up in a tornado as seen in one of my favorite classic films ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Granted, the manor is built like a fortress but the top floor is more likely to sustain the most damage. I didn’t want to be laying in bed when the two-hundred-year-old ceiling comes crashing down. 

I already told you no. I'll be up there in a minute, Grandma points towards the direction of my guest room.

I inch closer to the oriental carpet runner tacked to the steps. Hoping to persuade grandma to change her mind. That woman is as stubborn as me. Why did I agree to a sleepover? I should’ve stopped my parents from going out on a date night. Or convinced my teenage sister, who hates my guts, to watch me. I wouldn’t be here. I’d be in my real bedroom tucked under protective dinosaur sheets. Grandma spots me from the corner of her eye and turns to give a full-on angry scowl. Waiting for me to do what she asked. Fine, I give up. I back away from the mahogany railing sulking. I hate being this scared of lousy weather. 

The upper west wing is a maze of hallways with hunter green vertical striped wallpaper and red movie theatre carpeting. Countless old brass light fixtures built into the walls. You can easily get lost unless you’re a member of our family. I’m halfway there when everything goes pitch black. A power outage has swallowed our rustic town known as Shelbyville into total darkness. There’s a part of me that wants to shoot down the stairs and cling to my grandmother's leg. But I’m fighting that urge with every slow-gliding step towards the guest room.

Jusssstinnnn, whispers a female from around the corner. I thought It was only me and grandma left in the house. For safety reasons, she sent the staff home early before the storm. Maybe one stayed behind. I don’t recognize the voice but she knows my name. Again the deep raspy tone calls out to me," Jusssstinnnn."

Grandma, I start to consider, she may have sprung up the servant staircase from the kitchen, I can't see you.

Come back to me, she murmurs.

Great, grandma probably wants me to come back downstairs with her. I follow the whisper into an empty moonlit hallway. Able to see my bare feet but not my flailing arms. Where is she? All the bedroom doors are closed. For a moment everything goes silent. Not the wind, the rain, nor my grandmother who is still downstairs searching for candles can be heard. Only the throbbing of my heartbeat that’s warning me to alter course. I wish I had trusted my instincts.

Justin, she says in a clearer tone because she’s right beside me. I lift my chin up at an antique portrait of Helena Grayson. A young, long raven hair beauty in a red dress pulled down over her shoulders. The oil paint captures