John Casey was getting back home after a short walk around the neighborhood. As he walked into the house, he found it strange that the lights were out. He flicked the switch on the wall to turn on the chandelier in the living room. Nothing. He went around, feeling his way down the hallway, flicking switches to no avail.

"Mary? Where are you?" he yelled.

No answer.

He called for Nora.

No answer.

By this point Mr. Casey was beginning to worry. He remembered of how he felt when he heard that his brother was missing. He couldn't let his family down.

"We should probably get out of here" breathed Stephen. "Like right now."

But Nora was curious. She was determined that whatever had caused her father to be traumatized in his early days was all either a hallucination, or some maniac determined to ruin other people's normal lives. And she was going to prove it. She took out her phone and tapped on the camera app, which was quickly becoming useless in the approaching darkness.

"No." Her voice shook when she said it, and it was then that she noticed that she was scared as well.

Chapter One: The Beginning

---------------------------- Fredericksville, Missouri, 1969 ---------------------------

Pale ochre light leaked out from half shut shades, lazily reflecting off the blackened brick walls of the ally to cast eerie, ever shifting patterns across the network of broken stones. She walked, or attempted to, as her legs begged to run, or at least jog through the horrid place to get into the suns fading light. Yet as frightened and quick as her little heart beat in her chest, she forcibly kept her pace to a quick step. This was not the first time walking through the scant, dirt encrusted area of town.

Aw. Thanks for picking A Mysterious Jar, friends. :) ~Anna

No one ever caught Liam reading, not really. He would take a book under his arm, sit in the rocking chair in the living room, and fall asleep with it. When he woke up, he seemed to know everything about it.

Entering the empty hall
extending far before my eyes
this place has been forgotten
dust is covering its ground.

Letting out a deep silent sigh
gently my eyelids fall
music starts to play, laughter fills the room
it’s time, the ball has just begun.

Opening myself up to the masquerade
gentlemen in black costumes
bowing to the floor, welcoming me in
ushering me to hurry up and find my man.

Masks covering their identities
couples dancing on my left and right

 Note- Not something I usually write, this was an assignment for class, but I had a lot of fun with it. 

Every time I saw them my heart turned cold. I filled with wrath at just the mention of them. More to the point, I hated him. The girl, I loved the girl, but him? I hated him.

The main villian of a 1920s, historical fiction novel. Enjoy!!

~~~~~~~~~

Can one man so easily become a persistent terror to whoever come across him?