We ran alongside the frozen river despite our feet being completely numb. We ran into the woods, and if we'd slowed down we'd have noticed a couple other sets of footprints. The snow in the forest was even deeper than the snow in town or by the hole in the cliff face.

When we got to the frozen lake, what we saw was pretty normal; two small children were building a snowman. The girl's back was facing us and they both wore extensive winter attire; so much that not even an inch of their skin was visible; though we could see the boy's round, red face. When he saw us, he tapped the girl's arm and pointed at us.

When the girl turned around, my heart lurched when I realized she had no face; I could see right through to the back of her hood. "You came!" She squealed excitedly. I realized it was Janie.

"What the hell's goin' on here?" Charlie demanded.

"Come with us; Miss Cardinal'll explain everything!" The little girl exclaimed tugging on Charlie's wrist in the direction of the giant house. The boy ran ahead. "And we'll get you some nice warm clothes!" Janie exclaimed, then looked at me. "I told you to wear winter clothes."

"Wait..." I said. "How did you know what happened in my dream?"

She giggled. "I was there, silly!"

"What?"

"Never mind that; you two look like you're freezing to death! Don't worry; you'll be in nice warm clothes and blankets, next to the fire with some hot cocoa in no time!"

As confused as I was, I wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to not freeze to death.

There was no barbed wire around the house's yard, which had a thinner layer of snow than the rest of the forest; someone must've done some shoveling.

Janie and the little boy led us inside to an elegant, warm sitting room; I wanted desperately to stay right there, in the warm room. There was a girl about my age reading a book on the couch; she didn't seem to notice Charlie and I.

Janie continued to lead us as the little boy went to the fire place.

We went through a doorway into a hall. It was wide and long; there were several doors along the sides, and two staircases; one going upstairs, and one doing down. Along the wall, there were strange portraits; portraits of strange people; just to name a few, there was a pudgy toddler girl holding a large boulder above her head, a boy who couldn't have been older than ten, but was tall enough to rest his arm on the second-floor balcony of a building, and a boy and girl kissing; the boy was covered in insects, and the girl's hair was in messy dreadlocks down her back. There were many other portraits; most were simply indescribable.

Charlie and I followed Janie downstairs and knocked on the door at the bottom, yelling, "Miss Cardinal! They're here!"

Almost instantly, the door swung open, revealing an smiling old woman with tight gray braids and a lavender Victorian dress. "Richard and Charlie Pickering, I presume."

"Y-yeah." Charlie said.

"I am Headmistress Lynn Cardinal; you can just call me Miss Cardinal."

Right then, two people came behind me; the boy I'd seen in my dream last night, now wearing a navy suit with a turquoise silk shirt, and the girl I'd seen on the couch not two minutes ago; she had thick brown hair and wore a grey dress. She carried a stack of clothes. "Here you go; I hope they're the right size; mine and Raymond's clothes are the biggest clothes we have here, other than Miss Cardinal's; but anyway, here you go."

She thrust the clothes into my arms and walked away. Raymond stayed put, pursing his lips. "Those are my clothes, Ricky; you'd better pull them off."

I had no idea what he meant by that.

"You two can change in the first floor bathroom; it's the door on the left side of the hall when you come out of the back sitting room." Miss Cardinal said.

Charlie and I exchanged looks and shrugged. We went upstairs and found the bathroom no problem. I had to change in the shower while she could just change in the middle of the room.

The clothes I'd gotten were a button-down blue-grey plaid shirt, black blazer, white slacks, and black dress shoes. It was an incredibly dorky outfit that I would never pick out on my own, but hey, at least it was dry. I looked at my distorted reflection in the chrome faucet; the whole thing looked really weird with my green spiky hair. My muscles were packed tightly in the arms. The pants were too long; I had to roll them up several times, revealing the ankles of black knee-high socks.

"You descent?" I called to my sister.

"Yeah." She called back.

I pulled back the curtain and almost burst out laughing at what she was wearing: a light pink dress that went down to her knees before succumbing to about an inch of lace; there was a huge bow on her breasts; white lace covered the entire top portion, including the long cap sleeves; she had thick white stockings and a pair of bloomers that were long enough to see just by looking from my vantage point; her boots were shiny black and her left blog bad brown laces while her right had black.

"Don't laugh; you look ridiculous too." She crossed her arms.

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes. "Let's go out there so they can explain what the hell's going on."

When we stepped out of the bathroom and found five kids waiting for us, including Janie, Raymond, the girl with the thick brown hair and grey dress, the little boy who'd been playing with Janie outside, and another boy who looked around twelve and wore blue jeans with a bright pastel pink button-down shirt.

"C'mon!" Janie jumped- or at least her dress went up into the air then back down again rapidly. "We got the fire going, and Miss Cardinal's making a nice pot of cocoa!"

Charlie and I followed all of them to the back sitting room, where a welcoming fire made the whole room warmer. We all sat on the sofas around it.

"First things first." Raymond announced. "We must introduce ourselves to our guests."

"Right." Said the boy in the pink shirt. He turned to us. "I'm Sebasten."

"My name is Riley." The girl in the grey dress exclaimed. "I'm Raymond's girlfriend." Raymond blushed at this. Then Riley gestured to the last little boy, who looked about six. "That's George; he doesn't talk."

"Is he mute?" I remembered what the lady at the visitors center said about one of the boys being mute.

Sebasten gave a throaty chuckle and shook his head. "Of course not! His peculiarity just makes it impossible for him to actually speak. He talks to us through sign language." Sebasten had a very thick New York accent.

"His peculiarity?" Charlie repeated.

This time Janie decided to explain. "Whenever he opens his mouth, there's a loud, ear-splitting shriek that comes from his mouth."

To demonstrate, George opened his mouth a little and, sure enough, my eardrums almost ripped in half from the sound that came out; the pitch was so high it was unhuman, and the volume was so loud the whole house started to rumble. Everyone clapped their hands over their ears including me and Charlie. Luckily, George closed his mouth before anyone's ears could start bleeding.

"Thank you; that was quite enough." Raymond scolded the small boy.

"There's another girl here; her name is Phoebe." Riley said. "But she's asleep right now; she's nocturnal."

"Nocturnal?" I scratched my head. "As in... Sleeps during the day and is awake at night?"

All of the kids nodded rapidly except Raymond.

"We all have something that makes us peculiar; mine is invisibility, if you couldn't already tell." Janie giggled.

Sebasten furrowed his brows. "What's you guys' peculiarity? Is it your hair?"

"No; that's just dye." I said, running my hand through my hair.

"I'm normal, I'm pretty sure." Charlie said. "But if Ricky gets stabbed by something, it goes right through him like he's made of clay."

At this, Riley, George, and Sebasten all raised their eyebrows.

"I've never heard of anything like that before." Exclaimed Sebasten.

"That's crazy!" Riley added.

Raymond shook his head at Charlie and said, "you are peculiar, Charlie; Normals can't enter loops."

Charlie's jaw dropped and she looked down at her hands. "Wh-what? But I'm so... Ordinary."

"Some Peculiars seem that way at first." Raymond pointed out. "You don't always discover it right away. I couldn't give people dreams, visions, or fake memories until I was at least ten or eleven."

"And I wasn't born invisible." Janie piped up. "I started disappearing when I was four-and-a-half; just a little at a time."

"It's kinda like sexuality." Sebasten added. "Like how you don't really know if you're gay or straight right off the bat; you just have to wait and find out."

Raymond rolled his eyes dramatically. "I don't think they needed that to understand." Then he spoke more toward us, "don't mind him; he likes to brag that he's gay, even though no one cares."

I have to admit; growing up in a very conservative area, this made me slightly uncomfortable.

"Hey, I saw that!" Sebasten frowned angrily.

"What?" I said.

"That face you made!"

At that moment, Miss Cardinal walked in with eight steaming cups of hot cocoa. Everyone except Sebasten and I took a cup.

"What's it even to ya?" I exclaimed.

At this point, he looked so mad I was expecting steam to come out his ears.

Instead, he said, surprisingly calmly, "Miss Cardinal, I'd like to take a moment."

The old woman smiled. "Of course, darling; be back before lunch."

With that, Sebasten stood up, collected his coat off the coat rack, and marched outside.

"Wimp." I muttered.

"Oh, no, of course not!" Miss Cardinal had heard me. "See, Mister Evergreen finds trouble in controlling his temper, so to help calm him down, he sometimes goes into town and throws automobiles."

I gaped at her. "Automobiles? As in... Cars? He throws them?"

"Yup." Janie exclaimed. "Superhuman strength is his peculiarity."

_______________________

In case anyone was wondering: Sebasten's name is just Sebastian but spelled differently.

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