Chapter 1

‘……in the night of the coven, the lights danced on the sky, watch the darkness take to flight.’

Maya Harris stood alone on the main pier in her hometown of Edgewater, Florida.

Her friends had walked ahead to the local tavern but Maya had stopped on the pier. She just didn’t feel like getting boozed tonight.

Maya had always been popular, even from a young age.

At grammar school, all the girls followed her around, played at her house and invited her to all their parties.

At junior high it was no different.

She was captain of the cheerleaders; she was dating the star quarterback of the school football team and she was a shoe-in for homecoming queen.

Maya was also an identical twin.

Her twin sister, Blythe, and her were almost impossible to tell apart, the same shoulder length jet-black hair, the same piercing green eyes, even the same dimple in their right cheek when they smiled.

In fact to anyone outside of their family, if the two were ever dressed alike and standing side by side, a person would be excused for thinking they were seeing double.

There was however, one main difference in the two.

Maya attended Edgewater Junior High, Blythe did not.

Ever since the day before junior high, Blythe was never seen.

She never came out of her bedroom and never allowed anyone in.

No one was exactly sure why though.

She just didn’t get up one morning and no one has ever seen her since.

Her friends and anyone who knew the family were told that she had gone missing, presumed dead, and her body never found.

They never had a funeral, people suggested it, but it was never done.

After all, she wasn’t dead, she was just ‘presumed dead.’

Only her mother, father and Maya knew the heartbreaking truth.

Everyday for the next year or so, her parents, and especially Maya had tried to get her out of her room, they had even brought in doctors, priests and psychiatrists.

Nothing worked, and Blythe also stopped talking.

Things needed were scribbled on notes left at her door.

If anything she requested was not delivered or the need for it was questioned, she would lock herself in her closet for as long as it would take to make her point.

Her family despaired over her but as nothing could be done, they eventually learnt to live with their reclusive family member.

Maya stood on the pier and felt extremely sorry for Blythe.

She had always had a nagging feeling that it was all her fault.

Blythe and her used to be like that, in tune with each other’s feelings, their thoughts, their mind.

But it had all filtered away after Blythe locked herself up.

Maya could remember their childhood.

Playing dolls and tea parties, and then as they got older, going to parties and talking about boys and clothes.

They were so close.

The wind picked up and Maya began to feel cold. Her friends were still in the tavern and she decided to go and tell them she was going to go home. She had to make a new cheer up by tomorrow’s practice anyway.

When Maya returned home, her parents were in the lounge watching TV.

‘Blythe?’ Maya asked them.

The question was becoming a family tradition.

Even though they all knew what the answer was going to be, they still all asked it whenever they returned to the house.

‘No dear. No word. Could you please check if there is a note tonight?’ her mother asked, looking tiredly up from her papers.

Maya and Blythe’s mother was an attorney for the local lawyers office and always had papers to read.

‘Sure.’ Maya bounded up the stairs, her athletic body gracefully taking two steps at a time.

That was another thing the two girls had shared.

The same tall, slim athletic body.

The perfect body envied by all the other girls.

Maya often wondered why though they were the same; her sister had never been as popular as Maya. Why had she had always stood out from the crowd when Blythe didn’t.

It had always puzzled Maya.

She also wondered what her sister looked like now.

It had been four years since she had seen her.

A tear slipped down her cheek.

Half of her whole was missing.

Maya reached her sisters door and saw that there was indeed a note on the floor to her bedroom.

She reached down and picked it up.