Victoria’s story-The adventures of Poppy McLain

*This story is underneath my folder titled “Adventures of Poppy and others”. There are characters mentioned in this story that are connected to my “Eloise” stories. Most of my Eloise stories are under my folder titled “Some scary-ish stories” and some are under my folder titled “More origin stories!”. If you want to read those stories, you can! Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33”. Enjoy!*

In the year 1974, there were two sisters, sixteen year old Victoria and seventeen year old Veronica Donovan, who ventured to the abandoned town of Cambridge, the town of which had been dubbed the name of “Nightmare Hill”.

It was said that back in 1963, there was a woman named Eloise Blake who ran her own clothes boutique. She had no spouse and no children, but she did see one woman as her very own daughter, and that woman was none other than Leona Fitzgerald.

Leona was the only child Eloise loved, because most of the children who came to her boutique disrespected her clothes, her art, her everything. Eloise had run a boutique to make clothes for everyone of all ages, and it was the children who would always ruin what she did with their slimy, sticky hands and their greedy grabbing.

Children began to disappear at her boutique. It was said that Eloise was killing children and turning their skin into clothes, which was what the “new fabric clothes” were supposed to be made of. There was another legend which involved Leona. The story was that Leona had kidnapped a little girl named Esmèree Sabre, who was called “Esmè” by most, and turned her into the locked-up “Snake Princess”.

Both Eloise and Leona had died such unfavorable deaths. Eloise died with a tightly nailed bookcase crushing her completely at her boutique, and Leona had burned to death at her circus. Nobody knew how such things had happened, but their stories were certain to leave unpleasant dreams to anyone who heard of their tales.

Though they were only frightful fancies, that didn’t stop Victoria and Veronica from driving out to Nightmare Hill. Both Donovan girls had taken a keen interest in the paranormal ever since they could talk, and that deeply unnerved their mother and father, who thought that they would get hurt one day from going deep into what was unknown. No, their parents weren’t superstitious, but they feared that their daughters would find disturbing history of the past, and that other kids would pick on them.

Sure, some of the supposedly true ghost stories they read when they were younger and the abandoned places they went to when they got older had given them a scare, and sure, they didn’t have any friends, but what did it matter?

They had each other and the ghost stories for company.

………………………………………………

“Are we going to Leona’s circus or Eloise’s house first?” Victoria asked from the passenger seat. Though the worn-out homes were entertaining to look at, she’d very much rather actually go somewhere than stare at house after house after house.

“We’re heading right to Leona’s circus, then we’ll go to Eloise’s house!” Veronica beamed.

“Splendid.” Victoria said, still not taking her green eyes out of the window. She didn’t want to disturb Veronica when she was driving, so Victoria would busy herself with the window instead.

People back at home made jokes about how Victoria looked more human than Veronica, because Victoria had peach skin dotted with freckles, green eyes that sparkled like spring leaves covered with rain, and light-toned ginger hair that curled all around her head like a porcelain doll’s head of hair would.

Veronica, on the other hand, had long, straight black hair, crayon-white skin, and black eyes that matched her black hair. Where Victoria had more softness on her body, Veronica had harsh, jagged edges. Victoria was the one who looked more like their parents than Veronica, but if people listened, they would know that Veronica received the recessive genes of their family line, that not everyone had to look like a clear-cut copy of their parents.

Both girls always dressed in black, for bright colors hurt their eyes. Both girls loved the doom and gloom, and both were sisters in blood, heart, and soul.

Victoria couldn’t wait for what discoveries they would both make at Leona’s circus.

………………………………………………

“Finally, the moment you have been waiting for, the grand finale: We have arrived!” Veronica boomed, stopping the car in front of a decrepit, color-faded circus, the likes of which had seen better days.

Victoria opened the door of the car and excitedly ran up to the gates, the gates that no one had bothered to lock, that were so rusted with time that Victoria had to push, push, push, and-

“Are you going to wait for me?!” Veronica asked.

Well, it wasn’t like Victoria was going to go to the circus by herself anyway, but Veronica was taking ages to get out of the car, so she had to try her hand at pushing the gates open earlier.

“You were taking too long!” Victoria said, pushing open the gates one more time.

At that instance, the circus gates opened. Victoria grinned at a job well done, whilst Veronica shook her head and rolled her eyes, saying with a smile on her face:

“You have zero patience.”

“But at least we’re both in! Come now, let us discover the shadows hidden within!” Victoria laughed, nudging Veronica along.

Because while the hunt for ghosts wasn’t a real stroll through the flower fields, it wasn’t like they didn’t try to make it as fun as they could.

For every lost place had an untold story that needed to be dug out, to be fleshed out for one and all to see!

………………………………………………

At the circus, there were many mold-ridden rides and dirtied tents, but all in all, no ghosts.

Victoria wanted to leave, Veronica could see it from the flicker of boredom and agony in her eyes, but Veronica kept telling her to “have faith” and that “sometimes the ghosts take a long time to come out”.

Yes, they both went on ghost adventures, and yes, sometimes the ghosts did take an exceedingly long time to appear, but if Victoria didn’t see ghosts after a few minutes, then what was the point? The intention was to go somewhere haunted, not somewhere empty.

Just as Victoria was about to turn around and give up, a man’s over-eager voice cried out:

“Do not go, I have to put on a show!”

Both sisters stopped. The voice came from all around them in the air, there was no distinct point to where it was. They looked up, down, and all around, until that very same voice said right in front of them:

“Watch and learn!”

They watched as red and white smoke, the colors of the circus tents, began to swirl, sway, and transform into…

An elderly, brown-eyed man in a ringmaster uniform, complete with a top hat and all.

“Welcome, visitors! It is I, Hunter, the ringmaster of Nightmare Hill, ready to give you the performance of a lifetime!” Hunter grinned.

Wait…Hunter? But where in the legends was there a ringmaster named Hunter?

“I’ve never heard of you.” Victoria said, for she didn’t want to talk to a ghost that had zero significance! There had to be something more, something else, to what Hunter was telling them.

Hunter winked and said: “That’s why I’m here to give you such a fun day that you’ll think of for ages. What are your names? It’s been awhile since I’ve had any visitors.”

Victoria and Veronica exchanged looks, looks that said they had to get all into it, looks that told them both to seize the opportunity of speaking to a real live ghost!

“I’m Veronica, and this is my sister, Victoria. We’re looking for ghosts, do you have anything that you want to tell us?” Veronica asked. Veronica was the one who always introduced them both to the ghosts, Veronica knew how to get a conversation rolling.

“Certainly! Just come along and I’ll tell you everything!” Hunter said, gesturing them both to follow him.

The Donovan sisters, ever so pleased to have found their first ghost of the day, followed Hunter throughout the worn-out carnival. They didn’t think much of the gray smoke that began to form around them, that morphed and moved with twisted shapes. The circus was haunted, so stuff like that didn’t alarm them.

After many winding turns, Hunter opened the flap of a circus tent. Neither one of the girls expected what would be laid out before them…

“Behold! My very own circus freaks!” Hunter grinned, extending his arms out as though beams of light would shoot out of him at any moment.

Victoria’s jaw dropped when she saw that in the very circus tent, there was a little boy who seemed to be completely made of porcelain peering out of the brown-black rusted cage with big, petrified eyes as though he wanted to crawl away, a little girl in a blue cloak who had her eyes closed as though she were trying to search for an answer within herself, another little girl in a cage, only she was pale-skinned and had yellow snake-like eyes, a woman with scales all along her body and leathery wings upon her back who was trying and failing to burn down the cage that she was that she was trapped in with her flaming breath, and in another cage, a woman in an innocent-looking pink long-sleeve shirt with spider legs at the bottom of her body instead of human ones. She was the most monstrous looking of them all, and yet, she seemed to hold onto fleeting optimism, searching all around her cage for a key, for a way out.

And that red and white smoke. The red and white smoke that was only following them both in flurries had begun to grow around them, for it was so thick that white was obsolete and the smoke was only innard-red crimson. Just like before, Hunter was only a voice. A voice which said with firework-burst eagerness:

“I could always go for new additions!”

When the smoke cleared, the Donovan sisters were sharing a cage, and they felt their two front teeth poking at their tongue.

Hunter was beaming at them both from outside the cage, his white teeth holding hints of festering maggots. The more they looked at Hunter, the more they saw how deep his wrinkles went, how he looked like he was on the brink of death in any minute.

“If you have a penchant for the paranormal, then you’ll love being vampires! With just my magic, I turned you both into vampires, and now, you’ll stay with me forever! ENJOYYYY!” Hunter beamed.

He disappeared in a puff of that innard-crimson smoke, much like a magician would. In any other circumstance, Victoria would have laughed at how he sounded like a cheesy children’s commercial and how he changed them both into vampires so quickly, but the very thought of drinking blood was beginning to sound more appealing to her by the seconds, and if that was true…

“Do you think that we could ever escape out of here? Even if we find a way out, should we escape?” Victoria asked, hoping that Veronica would at least say something.

Victoria kept her eyes fixated out of the cage and into the circus, as though she could find an escape with just one glance. She didn’t see Veronica’s facial expression, but she did hear Veronica say:

“When we get out, we’ll go back home. We’ll keep this vampirism a secret. Okay?”

Victoria nodded. It was a nice little thought, but just how true was it? In only a day, their lives had changed for the worse.

But still, she let the hope blossom within her, flow around her decaying veins. She couldn’t afford to worry, not when she held onto her excitement for so long. They were just experiencing a setback, and they had to work together to get out.

They always did.