The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

Chapter 1

    Melissa rose up through the layers of sleep like a cork discharging from a bottle of cheap fizzy wine. Gasping, her nightie clinging to her sticky torso, she emerged wide eyed into the half light of early morning, her heart pounding in her chest. Closing her eyes tightly, she took a deep, tremulous breath and lay perfectly still, struggling to remember a half forgotten dream that was like trying to clutch a feather from the air. How could the imprint of something you couldn’t recall make you feel so damnably wretched?
    Giving up on the maddeningly elusive answer, she opened her eyes and dared a glance at the clock, which announced in a shocking display of luminous green digits that it was 6.59 a.m. Only a matter of seconds before she had to get up. But she really didn’t feel like getting up. Not least because outside a thrill seeking wind roared through the valley, beating rain in waves against the windows and stone walls of the lodge, whistling coldly beneath the eaves. As the first beep of the alarm echoed in the room, it was silenced by a heavy fist. With a long sigh (miserable that she still could not recall what was making her feel so wretched), she tugged at the quilt and yanking it upwards she buried her head beneath it. Defiantly she squeezed her eyelids closed. Damn today, she decided, she would sleep through it and start afresh tomorrow.
    The door burst open and a pair of identical pyjama clad wildebeests launched themselves through the portal and landed on her bed, hooves and sharp knees forcing groans as air was pummeled from her crushed chest.
    “ Happy birthday,” they chorused with enough volume to be heard half way across Devon. Meli’s face contorted like a dried old sprout. White knuckled, her fingers clung to the quilt as though her childrens lives depended on it, not wanting to expose them to the sight of her hideously deformed features which, at the very least, would likely put them into therapy for life. So that was it. Today was the 5th May, the day she had been dreading every single day for the past year. There was no disturbing dream, no nightmare; she felt respectably depressed because it was her forty-first birthday. Because of the other thing.
    She inhaled sharply, fighting back the memories that now they had been released were like thousands of tiny demons attacking her with spears. Suddenly she didn ’t want to stay in bed, not with them. Gritting her teeth until she was sure that her gums must be on the verge of bleeding, she steeled herself to meet the day, determined that she wouldn’t let the world know that it had got the better of her, not again. The instant her fingers relaxed their hold, the quilt was ripped away, and she was blinking in the glare of the overhead light. Now, if her mood was 0.10 on the miserable-ometer scale on waking, the bold aroma of strong coffee that wafted around her nostrils, brought her up to 0.05.
    Her coffee appeared through the doorway, borne high on a tray balanced expertly on the palm of her husband’s hand. Depositing it on the bedside cabinet, he wrestled their ten year old twin sons, David and George from the bed, one stuffed under each arm. With the boys giggling and shrieking loudly, he secured them firmly to the carpet by the backs of their collars.
    “ Let mum breath,” Cal told them, grinning at his wife over their heads, only releasing them from his hold when he was reasonably confident that they had calmed down sufficiently to stop using her as a trampoline.
    “ Happy birthday Meli.” Leaning down he dropped a kiss on her cold lips. “How does it feel to be forty-one?” he whispered in her ear.
    Had he no mercy? She threw him a withering glare; one that she sincerely hoped conveyed an entire string of non-verbal sentiments to his doubly insensitive remarks. When he only laughed, she glanced away, realising that she had been duped. The day was just getting better by the minute, she fumed to herself. Squirming to a sitting position, she turned her attention to the tray with its steaming mug. But before she could mollify herself by grabbing her desperately needed coffee, Cal scooped a pile of cards from the tray and placed them in her groping fingers. Outsmarted, she cursed inwardly. She could almost taste the coffee on her tongue; still, she supposed she should at least give the impression of participating in her special day, even if only for the sake of her boys. She noted that her daughter hadn’t bothered to