The Grave Keeper's Cottage

By E.M. Duncan

When twelve-year-old Riley's parents move him and his identical twin brother, JJ, to a new house, it doesn't take him long to sense something's not right. Maybe because their strange house was once a grave keeper's cottage, sitting on the grounds of a cemetery. A cemetery whose last person was buried over 20

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emily Duncan
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218197254

E.M. Duncan

E.M. Duncan is a writer, reader, and lover of music and the outdoors. She Graduated from UMD with a Master's in Library Science in 2013 and a Bachelor's in English Lit in 2010. She has been writing stories her entire life.

Book preview

1

Can we open our eyes yet? my twin brother John-John asked.

We were in the backseat of our minivan, Roscoe. The trunk of the van was piled up with everything from our last apartment. Our parents had saved up enough for a down payment on a house, and Dad had a permanent job. My brother and I were excited because, for the first time ever, we were going to public school instead of being homeschooled.

As Dad swerved the van around a corner, a tasseled lampshade toppled out of an open box and a paperback copy of Stardust hit me in the head. Ow!

John-John half-opened one eye and nudged me in the ribs.

Not yet! Mom said.

For some reason we hadn’t yet figured out, our parents had wanted to keep our new home a surprise. It’s… unusual, Mom had said when she told us we were moving. But I just know you’re gonna love it. Something in her tone of voice made me think this was debatable, or she’d have shown us the glossy real estate pictures and pointed out that our bedrooms had a perfect view of the ocean.

Is there a basketball hoop in the yard? John-John had asked.

Wait and see. Mom had winked at me.

This journey had taken forever. I’d tried reading, but it always made me feel queasy in the van like my brain forgot which way was forward and which was backward. John-John had been flicking through a graphic comic book, but mostly he bounced a softball off various parts, counting the bounces until he dropped it. His highest score before Mom told us to close our eyes was fifty-seven.

Okay, open your eyes now. Mom sounded excited like this was the biggest adventure of her life, so John-John and I opened our eyes at the same time as Dad drove Roscoe along a bumpy gravel driveway and hit the brakes.

The house, if it could be called that, stood at an odd angle, like the wind had tried blowing it over and it had somehow remained upright—barely. It had a pointy roof, like a witch’s hat, shingled in wooden planks. The black chimney was bent and twisted, poking out from behind a section of the roof that sagged inward; it made me think of a talon or a horn, and not the unicorn kind. The sides of the house were painted dark yellow, like the sky we’d seen one time in Kansas when a tornado warning had come on the car radio.

I realized my mouth was open when Mom said, Well? What do you think, Riley?

I blinked. I was kinda thinking Dad would turn around, grin at us, and say, Surprise! Our house is actually down the road! but they were both smiling like it was Christmas morning and they knew exactly what was under the Christmas tree.

Umm… I managed. It’s pretty cool.

It’s a cottage, Mom said. It reminds me of the old fairy tales my grandma used to read to me when I was a little girl in Puerto Rico. Hansel and Gretel. You know.

We know, John-John and I said together. We had a habit of doing that as if we were telepathic or something.

Okay, I said, but didn’t that cottage belong to the witch who tried to eat the kids?

Mom shrugged. It’s only a story, Riley. A house is a house. No matter where it’s located.

What do you mean, ‘where it’s located’? I asked.

But they were already piling out of Roscoe, John-John stretching his limbs as though sitting in the back of a van for the best part of a day was pure torture. Which it probably was for my brother.

We were identical twins and had just turned twelve. We had the same dark brown hair, which we kept kinda long—Dad called it our surfer-dude look—the same brown eyes and tan skin, but we were different in every other aspect. Mom said she could always tell us apart when we were younger because I was the one sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by books while John-John kicked a ball up and down the yard. Plus, we always wore different color baseball caps—mine was always red, and John-John’s was blue.

I climbed out and looked around. Now I knew why Mom hadn’t shown us pictures. Our new home was right next to a graveyard.

First one inside gets to pick their room! John-John yelled.

Um, has anyone noticed the graveyard? I asked, but Dad was already unlocking the front door, and Mom and my brother were waiting to step inside.

The graveyard was on the other side of our driveway. There was an old, rusty fence that did nothing to hide the view of mossy gravestones and tall, reedy grass. It looked like no one had been in there in years. The trees around the house and the graveyard swayed in the breeze, making me shiver under my hoodie. Even the trees were old, with twisted, skeleton branches that seemed to claw at each other above the roof of the cottage. A bird cawed overhead, and I jumped. A crow.

Stupid bird, I muttered under my breath.

Riley! Dad yelled from inside. Vámonos! Come see your room.

I hurried inside and almost collided with him.

Whoa, horsey, slow your roll. He chuckled at his own joke. Your room is upstairs. Your mom and I will take the room down here.

I peeked inside the living room—it was small with a log fireplace built into the far wall. The floor creaked under my sneakers. I raced up the stairs, which were not like normal stairs; they were curved, twisted into a spiral, and had strange symbols carved into each step; even the banister looked like the twisted branches of the trees outside.

At the top of the stairs, I looked around. A short hallway split the upstairs level. I chose the first door on the right and opened it. The room was empty apart from a huge wooden bed frame with no mattress in it. It was way too big to fit through the doorway, so it must’ve been built inside the room. The same strange marks were carved into the bedposts, too. 

I traced my finger over them and realized that the bed had been left behind because it formed part of the wall like the house had been carved out of a huge tree trunk. Puzzled, I opened the window, shoving it up hard because it was stuck, and leaned out to look. Sure enough, the back of the house was a massive oak tree, the branches creeping up and over the roof.

I glanced right—I had a bird’s eye view of the graveyard.

Wow! I whispered. We hadn’t just moved into a cottage… we’d moved into a treehouse.

Out in the hall, I located my brother’s room on the left. He was already unpacking—man, he was fast! He didn’t have a tree bed, and his room didn’t overlook the graveyard, either. Did you see my room? I asked, wondering if I could make him switch.

Yeah. He didn’t even glance up. Dad said we’ll have to wait to buy a mattress big enough for it.

It’s part of a tree, I said, trying to sound excited.