"Leo, we are here." His mother was the one knocking on his door.

Leo sat up groggily on his bed. He hadn't slept, of course he could never sleep in the middle of the fucking ocean, but he still felt the drowsiness usually associated with waking up. It had been almost an hour since the island had been first visible, and Leo had come down to rest in his room.

"Leo?" His mother called out again.

"Yeah, I'm coming. I'm coming." Hastily getting up from the bed, Leo went and opened the door. His mother had a somewhat worried look on her face, but she brightened up when she saw he was fine.

I wonder if she knows about the gold....

Certainly if she did, she hadn't ever mentioned it to him. Leo was beginning to think that Uncle Benjamin was the only one whom Grandfather had told about that.

"Come on, we are about to disembark." His mother was saying as she walked forward. Leo followed her up, and soon they came on the upper deck. The boat had been docked on a makeshift port on the island, and everyone else was already there.

William and Elizabeth were at the far end, near the exit, with Margaret. They were talking in hushed tones with each other, but Margaret nodded towards him with a smile when she saw him. Leo wondered whether her elder siblings were also aware of the gold. William was the eldest among the grandchildren of Herbert Cooper, being twenty four this year. Elizabeth was the second oldest at twenty two. Both of them had a royal aura and beauty about them. In fact her mother used to joke that Carrie must have excellent genes to be able to suppress his own genes so much. Even so William clearly resembled his father, both in gait, manner of talking and his face. As he was growing older, the resemblance was becoming almost uncanny. Elizabeth on the other hand was more graceful, with delicate features that hinted at both intelligence and charm. She carried herself with an elegance that often made people assume she was more reserved than she truly was.

Due to the proximity of their homes, Leo had grown up with all three of them and he saw William and Elizabeth as more his own brother and sister than cousins. William was a truly dependable person, especially in times of stress and Elizabeth possessed the same sharp wit that Margaret also had, just more developed.

Opposite to them stood the twins. Leo's mood soured immediately as he saw Henry leering first towards Elizabeth opposite him and then towards his mother as he saw her arrive.

"Looking good Auntie." He said with a wink.

"You two have grown up well." His mother said reservedly. It was quite clear that she didn't mean a single word she said.

Henry frowned and was about to say something, when Charles put a hand on his shoulder again to calm him down. Of course he didn't want an altercation with his aunt on the first day of the trip.

"We should start to disembark now that everyone is here." William said, stepping forward. He nodded towards Leo.

"And who died and made you leader eh Will?"

"Calm down Henry." This time Charles voice was quite forceful and Henry immediately stopped and turned away with a sulking look on his face.

"Of course I don't claim to be the leader." William said, as calm and composed as ever. He turned to Sophie and said, "Aunt Sophie, as the eldest here, we will follow your lead."

Leo saw that his mother had been taken aback at this, but she didn't let it show on her face for more than an instant and instead nodded. "Very well then children. We should make our way to the manor. I heard there are enough rooms for all of us there."

Saying so his mother moved forward, with Leo behind him. Margaret came behind Leo, followed by Elizabeth and William. The twins came at the very end. Charles was as gracious as ever outwardly, while Henry still had a sulking demeanour. However, even from this short altercation, Leo felt that Charles was much much more dangerous of the two.

The captain of the boat in which they had come nodded towards Sophie as they began exiting the boat.

"You'll be back next week then?" Leo could see the anxiousness in his mother as she asked this question.

"Yes ma'am."

"What if we have some emergency before that?"

"You can light a flare, but I am afraid that in most cases the flare signal won't be visible from the mainland due to how far this island is."

"Any boats or planes nearby?"

"None. Boats avoid this area and no aircraft goes over it. Especially after Dr. Cooper's death here."

Sophie nodded. Leo could see that the answers the captain gave only exacerbated his mother's anxiousness, but now that they were here it was too late to go back.

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"Very well, we will see you in seven days then." She said with a smile and then all of them began to disembark.

After everyone had gotten off the boat, the captain bowed towards them and then with a brief blast of the horn, the boat swiftly departed, heading back toward the mainland. Leo had the feeling that the captain wanted to leave this place as soon as he could. Even back in the mainland he had heard the legends regarding how cursed this island was, and that ghosts roamed through it. Of course all of that had seemed little more than superstition to Leo at the time, the kind of eerie tales told to children to make them wary of dark places. But standing on the edge of the rocky shore, with the boat receding into the distance, a strange chill crept down his spine. The air felt heavier here, and the island itself loomed over them with an unsettling presence.

The mansion of his Grandfather was huge. As the only man-made structure on the island, it towered over the nearby trees. Leo had heard that the mansion could be seen from any point on the island, no matter how low, thereby making it useful as a guide in case you were ever lost in the dense jungle around it. There was no possibility of being lost at that moment though, for a path snaked along from the shore through the forest, towards the large house.

Leo followed his mother as she took the first step on the path. There were weeds growing all over the road, but the road itself was still clearly visible. His mother deftly stepped over a couple of small tree trunks that had fallen on the path, calling out every time to warn the people behind her. Even though the path was wide enough, by unspoken agreement the group continued to move in single file, which made Leo quite worried.

If a killer jumps up, it's Mom and me who are first in line

But then he reasoned that a killer was as likely to jump out from behind or the sides than at front. It didn't do much to assuage his concerns, but it was something at least.

After about thirty minutes of walking, they finally came upon the huge iron gates of the mansion. His mother slowly stepped forward and gingerly touched the iron bars on the gate. William came up beside her and began inspecting the gate as well.

"Completely rusted." William said, wonderingly.

There was no sign of life anywhere, and no sign that the gate itself had been touched for a decade.

"So then there was no one on the island after all." Leo whispered to Margaret, who however shook her head.

"They may not be living here. Maybe they have a small hut in the jungle."

Leo chuckled to himself at how obstinate Margaret was with her theory. Meanwhile William pushed the main gate, which opened with a deafening screech. It seemed like a noise as loud as the blast of a bomb in that otherwise serene and silent environment. That's when Leo noticed that something else was also missing.

"Why are there no birds?" He wondered out loud, causing everyone to look at him.

Somewhat embarrassed at the sudden attention, Leo flushed and stammered out, "I mean we haven't heard any bird noises or animal noises for the last thirty minutes have we?"

"Is that what is concerning your stupid little brain?" Henry smirked.

"He is right." William said gravely, making Henry's smirk falter.

"In a forest as dense as this, there should definitely be a lot of animals or at least birds." Elizabeth spoke for the first time, thoughtfully tilting her head as she surveyed the sky. There were indeed no birds, not even pigeons, in the sky.

This unnerved everyone, even the snickering Henry, as a sense of foreboding descended on the group. There was an uncomfortable silence for so long that Leo thought the silence would swallow them all one by one.

"Anyway let's move inside." Sophie was the one who broke the silence and confidently strode in. At times like this, Leo greatly admired his mother's courage and her ability to defuse tense situations. Grinning, he followed behind, with Margaret in tow.

William shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and said with a small laugh, "We can't let the youngsters show more courage than us can we Beth." Elizabeth nodded with a smile and followed behind with William.

The twins, however, did not follow for a long time. Leo looked back once to see Charles whisper something in Henry's ear. Although he couldn't hear exactly what they were talking about, the smile on Henry's face chilled him to the bone.

Leo, Sophie and William were the first to reach the door. Margaret had fallen behind talking with Elizabeth, but they were just behind them when they reached the door. The twins were further back still, having just started to make their way through the door.

The door to the mansion was also massive, stretching almost to the height of two humans standing on top of one another. Unlike the main gate, this door was made completely of wood, and surprisingly hadn't decayed into nothing. Leo would have thought that any wood after this amount of time would be eaten up and destroyed by termites if nothing else. This door however shone brightly as if it had just been commissioned yesterday.

All three of them needed to push the door for it to slowly creak open. Once there was a small crack, the rest of the door opened naturally fully.

The first thing Leo noticed was the stench. The absolute horrible stench that assaulted his senses. It seemed that it was not just his nose but all his senses that were drowned in the unbearable stench of rotten meat.

Then he noticed the bodies.

His mother was even faster at identifying what it was that she was seeing, and fast as lightning, going back and closing the door before either him or William processed the scene inside completely.

"What..." It was the first time Leo had seen William truly frightened.

"What happened Auntie?" Elizabeth asked, at first curious but then becoming serious as she saw the look in the faces of all three of them.

His mother didn't answer immediately. Her chest was heaving as she tried to calm herself by taking long breaths.

"Dead bodies...." Leo croaked out somehow.

"What?" Elizabeth asked.

"There....are five corpses inside." William said, as he almost collapsed on the stairway.

The twins had caught up by now, and with this revelation all of them had been stunned into silence again.

"Explain clearly. What do you mean?" Elizabeth's voice trembled slightly as she asked.

"Very well, I will allow you to see. Not you Margaret." His mother stopped Margaret from approaching, much to the chagrin of the others. Then she stayed behind with her and motioned for the rest to continue. However as soon as Leo stepped forward, he felt his mother's hand on his shoulder.

"Nor you son. Seeing that one time is enough for a lifetime." She said softly, and this time Leo did not protest.

But the scene inside had already been burned into his memory, and Leo knew he would never really forget what he saw.

Inside the door was a large hall. The ceiling stretched out to the very top of the mansion, and there were two huge portraits on either side of the twisting stairways leading to the upstair rooms. However it was neither the portraits nor the ceiling that Leo would remember.

It would be the five chairs neatly arranged in the middle of the room.

Each of them having five rotting corpses.