Is rated 12 and up because of references to murder and death.
*Contain's excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven".
CHAPTER 2
by Jane Thermopolis
As quickly as Mr. Colliver had given Lissa the raven, the raven had found its way out of the cage and was now flying all around the old wooden house, until it finally perched on the fireplace and stood as still as a statue.
Lissa slowly tip-toed over to the bird, trying her best not to make any sudden movements. This was a new experience for her, taking care of a highly intelligent bird, and she wanted to make sure it wouldn’t fly away. When she got about three feet away, the bird once again left its perch on the mantle and soared away from the den and into the kitchen.
Lissa was once again running around the house, reminded of the silly tag games she used to play when she was a child. She could get close to the raven, and almost touch it, but then it would suddenly move and fly off to another odd place in the house.
A mere twenty minutes later, the search started to look like a game of hide and seek. The raven would hide in high and small places that Lissa couldn’t get to, so she finally to give up. She wasn’t the type of person who usually liked to stop trying, but she figured that it wasn’t her bird anyway, so it really wasn’t her responsibility.
She went back into the den and settled into a leather easy chair with a book of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem and stories she had found in the library a couple days earlier. She looked at the old grandfather clock next to the tea table, and sighed. It was almost midnight, and she had not yet gone to sleep.
She flipped through the book and opened up to “The Raven”, one of her favorite pieces of literature. She smoothed out the dry page before beginning her reading.
*Once upon a midnight dreary…..
She looked over through the window on the side wall and saw the apple trees shaking off the light snow with the night wind. A ghostly white shadow from the moon hung over the small quaint pond where her family usually fished, creating an almost eerie feeling around the yard. She knew that after this night, she wouldn’t have to deal with these Massachusetts winters by herself. Her fiancée, Landon, was going to stay with her in the house for a month or two before they would permanently move to New York.
She looked back at the poem:
*As I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.
Then out of the corner of her mind, she heard a strange noise. But then again, she was reading “The Raven” right? Everyone’s read it, and everyone knows that the narrator starts to hear a noise.
She looked around the den and then tried to peak into the kitchen from the chair, but all she knew was that it was probably herself imagining things. She looked back at the book once again.
*While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“It is some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more.”
Lissa suddenly heard the noise again, a subtle screeching accompanied by the same throaty noise Mr. Colliver’s raven made.
Speaking of the raven, she wondered, where did it go?
She got up out of the chair and tucked the book under her arm, set out towards the unusual noise she kept on hearing, her white nightgown dragging across the hardwood floor. She finally followed the noise to the coat room, where she usually entered into the house on a daily basis. She heard the noise, but could only see shadows despite the small shafts of light wafting through the glass part of the back door. She slowly reached for light switch and flipped it, and the whole room was illuminated in a fluorescent glow. She knew she’d find the raven somewhere in this room.
Sitting on the brass door knob was the raven, looking very black compared to the primer that covered the walls in the coat room. It opened its beak and uttered a deafening screech, and started pecking at the lock right above the knob.
Lissa was afraid to touch the raven, for she knew that many wild birds carry terrible diseases that humans may get killed by. She looked into its eyes, and saw a sign of some sort of evil, and she found herself reaching toward it, as if stuck in some trance. Despite her beliefs, she patted the bird’s matted feathers, and suddenly, as if by instinct, the door opened and the bird flew outside.
She felt herself running, running as fast as her legs could carry her. She felt snowflakes land on the back of her neck and on her arms, but she still ran with the tenacity of a hunting lion. The whole time, she was staring at the raven, which was easily flying above all the tall trees and lamp posts lining Cherry Lane.
Lissa felt her legs finally give way, and she landed back first in a snow pile in front of a dark house. The Edgar Allan Poe book was still clutched in her hand, covered with melting flakes. She closed her eyes and focused on trying to breathe; in and out, in and out, in and out.
Little did she know, that the raven had purposely brought her to a specific house on Cherry Lane.
Little did she know that when she plopped down into the snow bank, a light had turned on inside the house.
Little did she know that the raven led her to Kelsey Manor.
Objective: make the reader feel more of that suspence, more – fear? Dark words painting dark images instead of screeching horror-style music. Running behind the raven – wonderful! What othe rlittle details can you add? Think: prose music.