The house was on the edge of town, next to the forest. One cloudy day when Marina came over, she thought one of the trees looked strange. Was it always so fluffy? As they got closer, a swarm of crows flew upwards, revealing the original green leaves. The sound of dozens of wings flapping at once was almost deafening. Vitalis did not look perturbed at all. Truth be told, nothing seemed to scare her.

"Grandmaaa!" She called out another time when they were playing in the backyard.

"What's wrong, Vivi?" Miss Garofița asked through the kitchen window.

"The tall man is in the forest again!" Vitalis said, full of indignation, pointing towards the tree-line while Marina hid behind her.

"Which one?"

"The one who stinks like eggs! He keeps trying to talk, but his mouth is full of dirt and sticks. He's freaking out Marina!"

"Well, why aren't you grabbing the hose and spraying him away like I taught you?"

"The hose isn't here, grandma!"

"Have you checked the shed?"

"Well... not yet..."

"What are you waiting for?"

Another time, while they were doing homework together in the living room, a strange noise kept coming from behind one of the doors. It sounded like scratching, like somebody dragging with their nails against the wood.

"What's that?" She asked.

"That's the basement door." Vitalis casually asked.

"W-What's that sound?"

"I don't know." She pouted. "Grandma says I'm not allowed there." and that was the end of the conversation.

When Miss Garofița appeared later with a tray of cut-up fruit, Vitalis told her about the noise. She had to tell her grandma everything, Marina witnessed it a lot. Miss Garofița just nodded and headed into the basement. Turns out the door wasn't even locked. Marina tried to peek, but all she saw was darkness.

The living room was so strange as a whole. The furniture was all dark wood and antique, many closets and drawers and display screens lining the walls. The sofa was large enough to be a bed and the wide coffee table in the middle allowed for narrow passages to move about. In a corner was a birdcage that reached the ceiling, full of canaries and budgies that sang all day. Some of them looked a little strange, though. One yellow little guy had eyes like a human, too big for its skull.

Marina's mom said Miss Garofița was a bit of a hoarder. In the living room alone there were books in every language, leather-bound collections and hand-drawn chapbooks, porcelain statuettes, oriental vases, and at least 50 ceramic teddy bears. They were allowed to play with them as long as they put them back in place!

Every visible inch of the wall was covered in either paintings or framed photographs. Miss Garofița used to have jet black hair. A smaller polaroid showed her as a little girl, together with very many people in what looked like a courtyard. Their teacher, Mrs Denisa, was in the photo too.

Some display cabinets could be opened whenever they wanted, and thus they were used as the doors to a doll's penthouse. Other cabinets would not budge at all. Inside they could see elaborate glass bottles filled with dark liquid, very old books, a wooden box with a lock, and a set of teeth in a glass case. They were wickedly sharp and jagged, eroded by old age.

"What's that?" Marina asked.

"Walker's teeth!" Vitalis said. "They all fell out, but grandma kept them. He only eats soft food."

"Oh, can I see Walker?"

"Grandma said no." and that was it.

Miss Garofița had many pets. Marina thought it was so cool, but her mom didn't. "How does she keep that house clean when she has an entire farm in it?" She scoffed. From what Marina had observed, all of her pets were very well behaved, even the cats. The only cat who did as she pleased was Bezea the Fifth, usually found sitting on her throne (a velvet pillow) in the living room. Marina could hear the dogs barking and talking to each-other in the yard, but they would be quiet when Miss Garofița passed by, wagging their tails and cuddling by her legs.

One time there was a cookout in the neighbourhood, and Marina's cousin Florin brought along his husky, Momo. They hoped he would be a good guard dog for the countryside, like an alarm system, but then he killed 5 of their grandmother's chickens. Didn't even eat them, just killed them for fun.

Miss Garofița was told this story when Florin and Momo arrived. The dog happily ran to Marina and almost toppled her over. Momo made a circle around the group, as if to greet everybody, jumping on some and booping others with his nose. He was about to greet Miss Garofița as well, whom he was meeting for the first time.

"You killed the chicken." She said in an accusatory way, narrowing her eyes at the dog.

Momo absolutely refused to go near Miss Garofița for the rest of the day, not even when Marina stood next to her and called him over.

She did stuff like that a lot.

But Miss Garofița was really nice, especially to kids! She gladly lended books, made food, gifted clothes. When Marina's mom was struggling with money after the divorce, Miss Garofița forced her to accept her help. She figured out she could hide things in Marina's backpack when she came over, instructing the girl to put them in the pantry at home or in mom's purse.

It was hard to say "no" to Miss Garofița. She somehow always knew exactly what to say. Oftentimes she wouldn't even need to speak. She would just look at you in such a way that made you want to crumble away in shame. Vitalis couldn't hold secrets even if she wanted to. She had to tell her grandma everything, especially around the house, around the forest, around the many pets.

Miss Garofița was... intimidating. She was a short and frail woman, with a soft mousy voice that Marina couldn't recall ever hearing raised. Yet it felt like Miss Garofița could rip your head off if she wanted to.

She heard other moms and grandmas at school share the same feelings, in hushed whispers. Something about a restaurant she never heard of. Marina would sometimes see Miss Garofița waiting to pick up Vitalis from school and see her with cold, unfriendly eyes. How are some adults able to exude arsenic into the air just by looking at you? When she would see little Vitalis coming towards her, a smile would soften her old features. It was like she was two people in one.

Another time a business lady came over to the house. Vitalis and Marina were playing in the greenhouse, singing jazzy songs with one of the plants, while Miss Garofița was lounging on a bench in the yard, reading a book. The woman let herself in. She wore a business suit and looked a little nervous. Marina saw Miss Garofița's expression turn hostile.

"Good afternoon, Miss Gavrilescu!" The woman said. "I'm here on behalf of Mr Sorescu, we talked on the phone. Not me, I mean you and him-"

Get to the point, Miss Garofița silently said, holding a page between her fingers.

"You have turned down our offer for the feline cryptid, but perhaps we could reach a compromise for the armoire?"

"Furniture is Mircea's business." She said, talking about Vitalis' uncle.

"Oh, yes, we know-"

"Then why are you here?"

"I was hoping to talk with you as well, Miss-"

"I'm busy." She continued reading. Miss Garofița was so rude sometimes, in ways Marina could never imagine she'd ever get away with.

"I, uh, I'm sorry if I bothered you, Miss."

"Are you?"

"What?"

"Are you sorry?"

"Uhhh..."

Marina watched through one of the windows of the greenhouse, where vines spilled out. She felt Vitalis join at her side.

"I-I'm sorry, is there something wrong, Miss?" The woman tried.

"With what?" Miss Garofița looked up at her.

"It's just... I don't know."

"Yeah, you don't seem to know a lot of things."

The woman furrowed her brows.

Miss Garofița bought and sold a lot of stuff, items and critters alike. Her house was kind of like her warehouse. The clients usually visited for business in the evening, but Marina sometimes caught glimpses of them during the day. There was an olive-skinned man with a ponytail that always brought very pretty things for Garofița's consideration, a bald old woman covered in tattoos all over, a man that looked like a sailor, eyes blue like a cloudy sky, an asian guy in a tailored vest that smelled funky, and many more.

"Did you see any of the... weirder things?" Marina's mother would cautiously ask her at dinner.

"Like what?" Marina asked.

"Like... spooky stuff?"

"A lot of stuff is spooky!"

"I know, I know, but, like, even more spooky than usual?"

"I don't think so!"

Marina's mom sighed. "Nevermind."

Marina heard that in her town there were werewolves and vampires. One of her classmates, Cristina Bisclavu, was apparently a werewolf, even though she had the thinnest hair out of all the girls and almost invisible eyebrows. The most exposure Marina got to the supernatural was in Miss Garofița's house.

"It's funny, isn't it?" Miss Garofița said one time while serving them mint tea. "Some people go all their lives seeing only one or two things out of the ordinary, while others can't catch a break. This town has mellowed down since I was a kid, it used to be way crazier."

"Miss, are fairies real?" Marina asked while munching on a cookie.

"Oh, they very much are. I am god-mother to one."

"Whaaat?"

"I had to be an impromptu midwife for her mother." She said with a little twitch in her eye. "Oh well, you can't always choose your friends. Another time I had to get into a dance competition to save a girl from marrying a fairy."

Miss Garofița said a lot of weird stuff. The smallest, most random things would bring back fantastical memories and concerning events she had been involved in. Her life was so cool!!

She said odd things just in general as well. One time she served her and Vitalis bowls of blackberries and raspberries with sugar. When asked if she was going to eat together with them, Miss Garofița said no, because "berries taste like poverty".

There were a lot of rules, for both Vitalis and Marina. They could not go in the dining room while Miss Garofița had clients over. The basement was an absolute no. They could not go in the forest by themselves, or at least without telling her. If they went and met with the big dog, they had to listen to it. Don't mess up Mr Spider's webs because that's rude. If the antique phone in the corner of the hallway rings, do not answer it. If they saw through the windows a gangly woman enter the yard without any sound, they had to ignore her and play quietly. If they heard noise coming from the well in the far back of the yard, the one with a heavy metal sheet on top - no they didn't.

For a week there was a voice coming from the basement, the voice of a boy around their age. It spoke Latin and it was so beautiful. The old man with the ponytail came over one night. He and Miss Garofița were carrying a large trash bag into his car's trunk. Marina knew because she saw them as she and her mom drove past with their own car. The voice stopped.

For the most part, all the rules were easy to follow, as they involved not doing anything. Don't acknowledge it, don't speak to it, don't go there, just stay put and safe. A lot of them were common sense.

But curiosity got the better of Marina. It kept gnawing at her, like Momo chewing Florin's furniture, insisting she go take a peek, go eavesdrop, go explore.

One day while Miss Garofița was working in the garden and Vitalis was using the downstairs bathroom, Marina sneaked up to the staircase leading to the second floor of the house, where the bedrooms were. She never went there without Vitalis, and it would always be a beeline to her door.

As she looked up, the top of the stairs and the hallways going left and right were cloaked in darkness. The faces of family photos and the icon of Mother Mary were hidden, only their collarbones visible from where she stood.

Marina's first step was very slow and hesitant, almost expecting a force field to stop her from advancing by herself into this strange and wonderful house. But it didn't, and she soon found herself at the top of the stairs.

She went the opposite way to Vitalis' bedroom, an area she never visited before. The blue and purple corridor ended with a small window that oversaw the town, the bright white sky making the place even darker by comparison. It was open, and the lace curtain swayed in the gentle breeze like a ghost. The only ghost Marina ever saw was her grandpa at his funeral. Her mom kept telling him to move on already, and he kept saying "I'm trying, woman!"

Marina walked on her tiptoes with her back hunched forward like a thief, glancing at the thick rug and the small sculpted tables. On one of them sat another teddy figurine, this one with a rain coat and a doily under it.

An open door led to what looked like an office, the desk piled high with papers and books in a system probably only Miss Garofița could understand. The next and last door was closed, old and dark mahogany with scratches at the bottom. Marina was reminded of Momo's destructive tendencies.

Upon closer inspection, the door was not fully shut, just pulled closed, the latch out of place. Marina pressed the door with her fingertips and slowly pushed it forward, listening to it brush against the carpet underneath.

Inside was a bedroom, as crowded as the living room. Through the cracked door she could see a huge and fluffy bed in the middle, with red and purple and pink, and a tapestry of a garden hung on the wall above. Close to Marina was a wooden closet with mirrors on the doors, and through them she could see another desk, also overrun with all sorts of things.

Blocked from view by the closet, on the floor, was what looked like a dog bed. It was wide, it could fit two Momos. There was something lying in it, but Marina had no idea what she was looking at. It looked like one of Momo's legs, but... made of bacon.

A sound like a nose full of gunk trying to breathe startled both Marina and the possessor of the leg. There was something on the bed, rising from underneath layers of blankets. One fell off to reveal a hairless, earless creature. It was covered in wrinkles like an old man, and she couldn't tell if its eyes were open or not. It made muffled, blubbering grunts, and its saggy lips flared around its snout as air got out. Was it barking?

"Who is there" She heard Miss Garofița's voice, but it sounded wrong. It came inside from the bedroom, and it was ragged and weirdly flat.

"H-Hello?"

"Vitalis Vitalis" The voice said with the tone of a question.

"No, it's, uhm, Marina..."

"What is it Who is there"

Marina felt very cold and stepped backwards, away from the door.

"What are you doing here?" Miss Garofița's voice came from behind Marina.

"A glimpse into the future"

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