Horrorhaus
Excerpt
Jean finds herself having nightmares about an hag with a black shroud wrapped around her. She wakes up one morning at the end of her senior year in boarding school. She takes a shower and sees something strange and black through the frosted panes of the shower stall. When she screams, she finds that it is a real life burial shroud from several hundred years ago.
Her boyfriend, Rob, who is also attending the boarding school, comes to her room in the dorm to identify it. He apologizes for leaving it there by mistake the day before. Jenna Whitney, the college daughter of Dr. Whitney, the archaeologist in charge of the dig on which he is working part-time, gave it to him for safe-keeping. Someone has been trying to sabotage their excavation site at The Oldest House in St. Augustine, Florida.
Jean doesn’t have much time to figure out what is really going on as she dresses in a hurry for her job interview for the summer. She plans to also work at the Oldest House. In Rob’s backpack she finds mysterious pottery shards with inscriptions on the back of them talking about rubies. But just at that minute her two girlfriends arrive to drive into St. Augustine for job interviews.
Things get more mysterious when they stop for lunch at a lighthouse near the Oldest House and find an old man who does nothing except gawk at Jean and call her the “chosen one”. When Jean finally gets hired at the Oldest House and starts conducting tours, two little kids on the tour get lost almost at once in the house. Jean and the boys’ mother can hear the children, but they cannot see them for the longest time before the boys end up on the street outside.
Jean meets an old crone who sweeps floors in the Oldest House who tells her where to look for the missing boys. The old lady also tells Jean that she has been waiting for her for a long time. The Oldest House is calling to Jean and needs her to fulfill a special mission. Jean thinks the crone is crazy --- at first.
The mystery thickens when the Oldest House gets closed down by order of the police the next day because another little girl gets lost during a tour. The old crone tells Jean to lift a portrait over the fireplace of a woman in Spanish Renaissance dress, turn a lever, and follow the passageway inside the wall. The little girl is found. She is carrying the largest ruby that anyone has ever seen!
Rob takes Jean home to spend a few days with her parents in Ocala. While cleaning out the attic she stumbles upon an old Saratoga trunk. Buried at the bottom is another ruby that matches the one that the little girl found inside the walls of the Oldest House. Jean learns that the rubies belong to the legendary Cross of Granada, captured from the Moor by Isabelle and Ferdinand of Spain. Jean learns that the cross is buried somewhere inside the walls of Oldest House and why only she was born to find it. The house has a curse on it that only Jean can lift.
Jean finds herself having nightmares about an hag with a black shroud wrapped around her. She wakes up one morning at the end of her senior year in boarding school. She takes a shower and sees something strange and black through the frosted panes of the shower stall. When she screams, she finds that it is a real life burial shroud from several hundred years ago.
Her boyfriend, Rob, who is also attending the boarding school, comes to her room in the dorm to identify it. He apologizes for leaving it there by mistake the day before. Jenna Whitney, the college daughter of Dr. Whitney, the archaeologist in charge of the dig on which he is working part-time, gave it to him for safe-keeping. Someone has been trying to sabotage their excavation site at The Oldest House in St. Augustine, Florida.
Jean doesn’t have much time to figure out what is really going on as she dresses in a hurry for her job interview for the summer. She plans to also work at the Oldest House. In Rob’s backpack she finds mysterious pottery shards with inscriptions on the back of them talking about rubies. But just at that minute her two girlfriends arrive to drive into St. Augustine for job interviews.
Things get more mysterious when they stop for lunch at a lighthouse near the Oldest House and find an old man who does nothing except gawk at Jean and call her the “chosen one”. When Jean finally gets hired at the Oldest House and starts conducting tours, two little kids on the tour get lost almost at once in the house. Jean and the boys’ mother can hear the children, but they cannot see them for the longest time before the boys end up on the street outside.
Jean meets an old crone who sweeps floors in the Oldest House who tells her where to look for the missing boys. The old lady also tells Jean that she has been waiting for her for a long time. The Oldest House is calling to Jean and needs her to fulfill a special mission. Jean thinks the crone is crazy --- at first.
The mystery thickens when the Oldest House gets closed down by order of the police the next day because another little girl gets lost during a tour. The old crone tells Jean to lift a portrait over the fireplace of a woman in Spanish Renaissance dress, turn a lever, and follow the passageway inside the wall. The little girl is found. She is carrying the largest ruby that anyone has ever seen!
Rob takes Jean home to spend a few days with her parents in Ocala. While cleaning out the attic she stumbles upon an old Saratoga trunk. Buried at the bottom is another ruby that matches the one that the little girl found inside the walls of the Oldest House. Jean learns that the rubies belong to the legendary Cross of Granada, captured from the Moor by Isabelle and Ferdinand of Spain. Jean learns that the cross is buried somewhere inside the walls of Oldest House and why only she was born to find it. The house has a curse on it that only Jean can lift.
