Piscine Merrow's Diary

Diary of Piscine Merrow

"TRUE DIRECTIONERS (and One Direction) ONLY!!!!!!"

## Entry 1

I still can't *believe* we're going to get to live in a mansion! A FREAKING MANSION!!! Can you believe it?! I can't!!

Okay, so at the last hotel we were staying at, Mom got a letter from Momma (our grandma. 'Our' as in Morgaine and me, I mean. Momma is Mom's mom. … Yeah.) that said that some great-great-aunt's-cousin's-best-friend-lady just passed away and left us some property. How nice is that? That she left us something, I mean. It's a little weird, though, since apparently Mom never met the lady.

Anyway, Gertrude (that's the dead lady's name, btw) left us this mansion on her family's property, which apparently hasn't been touched in years and is now just a bunch of big, dreary forest with a really big, really old house in the middle of a clearing. Apparently she grew up there as a kid, but has never been able to sell the place because of rumors that it's haunted or whatever. So, she just kind of decided to give it to us. Isn't that nice of her?

Even though Mom never met Aunt (?) Gertrude, she says she's been to the house for a family reunion once or twice, when she was about my age. She says it looks just like a castle, but a little bit more modern, and that it's big enough that I can have like three or four rooms (or a 'wing,' as Morgaine says) all to myself!

I'll finally be able to expand my One Direction collection. Things have been cramped in the keychain dollhouse Morgaine made for me. (We're always moving around, and I don't really have much space to add to my 1D collection in our car, so a while ago Morgaine took a Barbie dollhouse and a clear ball filled with seawater (from a gift shop on a beach somewhere. We've been to so many beaches, IDK.) and stuck the house in the ball with magic and then cast a spell on them so that I can go in there and basically live in the ball, decorating the house with all my One Direction merch. All I have to do to enter and leave the ball is knock on it, either from the outside or inside, three times. Seriously, isn't Morgaine the best sister *ever*?)

Right now, we've just gotten to this town just outside our new property, called 'New Salem.' Morgaine says it's no wonder Gertrude had trouble finding people to buy a 'rickety old Victorian' owned by several generations of witches with a town named *that* right next to it. I think she means this as some kind of reference to the Salem witch trials, but... Note to self: Look up 'Victorian' and 'rickety' (sp?)

OMG WE'RE GOING THROUGH THE BIG, DARK WOODS AROUND OUR NEW HOUSE AND I CAN ALREADY KIND OF SEE IT AND holy cheese it looks haunted. Have I mentioned that I don't like haunted things? I mean, sure, you wouldn't think a witch would be scared of anything (Morgaine says there's nothing for a witch to really be afraid of because we can make reality our (word for female dog. I really wish Morgaine didn't curse so much.), especially since witch-hunting isn't really a thing anymore.), but... Wow, this place looks creepy.

## Entry 2

Okay, so the house was abandoned, so of course it looked creepy. It was probably dumb of me to expect it not to be all boarded up and full of cobwebs and dust and bugs, right?

It actually really does look like a castle, though. It's on a hill, so it has a very nice view of New Salem. You can practically see the whole town from this parting in the trees that's perfectly across from the back terrace, from which you can see these two pointed tower-shapes sticking out on each side of the balcony above. The balcony's connected to this bedroom that's in the middle of the house.

On the way over, Morgaine and Mom made plans to fill half of the house with saltwater so that Dad and I could be comfortable. In the last two hotels, we've rented two separate suites so that they could practice spells for this in the one we weren't living in. Morgaine's the one who thought of it, 'cause this one time we messed up the hotel's piping system during our routine of filling the bathtub with seawater and had to move into another hotel across the street in the middle of the night before anyone found out. From what they had Dad and me walk into during these experiments, I'd say they succeeded.

Once we had pulled into the mansion's driveway, Mom had us all get out and go explore the house (giving Morgaine the key, of course.) Me and Morgaine went in and explored a lot. When I went outside for a minute to try and see what my side of the house looked like from outside, though, this random girl came up to me and said hi. She looked a lot like me, but with her blond hair in a whole ponytail and dark green streaks instead of pink. Her outfit was also a lot more punkish than mine, which was just a 1D shirt, a cute pink and black skirt, some Little Mermaid leggings, and sparkly red heels. She also had an earring that looked like the number 1. She said her name was Lexi-Rose Salem and that she lived a little while from here, and then just kind of walked away. I don't think the rest of my family even noticed her.

Anyway, the house looks even bigger on the inside! I swear, you could probably have all of New Salem move in here and still have room left over. And New Salem seems like a pretty big place.

Speaking of which, after we got done choosing our wings of the house (Morgaine and I each get like 3-4 rooms to ourselves, since the house is so big. I think I mentioned this already? Morgaine kind of chose them for me, though, since she and Mom already agreed that the water-filled half of the house would be on the side that doesn't have the garage. I've still got most of the third floor and an awesome view of the city, so it's fine. Morgaine pretty much gets the other side of the third floor, while Mom and Dad get the center master bedroom with the balcony because that's the only bedroom where the water and air sides meet.), Mom sent Morgaine and me into town to explore while she set up the half-water-house-filling-spell-thing. It actually wasn't too far a walk, especially since Morgaine flew us to the edge of the forest with the shovel she got for her birthday. (Did I pick a fantastic day to wear short heels or *what?*)

It turns out that New Salem is one of the most monster-friendly towns we've ever been to. Literally the first people Morgaine and I saw were this group of werewolf boys who whistled and panted at us as we passed them on the sidewalk. (Morgaine wasn't happy about this, by the way. She started kind of sputtering half-sentences like “Did they really just...? Oh my (bleep)ing lord, are they *seriously*...? Can they not *tell* you're only...?” before casting a spell that made some birds sitting on a phone line above where the boys were turning the corner start dropping... um, *presents* on the boys' heads.)

As we made our way further into town, we saw probably every kind of monster ever. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, sea creatures, cat girls, walking skeletons, and loads more I can't even name right now! Of course, I was all over the place the further we went. I felt like I was in Disney World or something.

Eventually we made it to this big, purple building that most of the people who looked our age were going in and out of. It had a sign that said 'Maul' at the front door. At first Morgaine thought it was some kind of indoor amusement park, but after we went in we figured out it was just a mall.

Morgaine kind of had to drag me from the entrance, as the place was so big that I just had to kind of stop and stare. I think she was taking me to this lit-up mall map a few feet from the door, but we kind of ended up bumping into this green girl in a plaid dress with a tie and and long, black and white hair. The bumping-into made her drop a shopping bag that had some shoe boxes in it.

I said I was sorry as she bent over to pick up the boxes, which I also did as she tried to apologize after saying “Oh my ghoul!” As we both reached for the last one, I realized that she didn't have a hand. I let out a little bit of a scream and backed away as she laughed and grabbed her hand, which had somehow crawled off behind her, and reattached it by some stitches. I only noticed then that her neck, wrists, elbows, ankles, and knees were stitched together.

After we had both apologized a couple of times, she said her name was Frankie Stein. I introduced myself and Morgaine, who also said sorry to Frankie and asked if she was okay before going off to look at the maul map. Frankie and me talked for a bit and then she asked if I wanted to come with her while she got a few things for school. I asked her where she went to school, and she told me all about this place called Monster High.

Apparently Monster High is this totally monster-friendly school where literally everybody is non-human. Frankie seems to really like it there. It sounds like fun!