"We won! We won!" Mackenzie heard her mom yell even though she had music on loud on her headphones. The last time she heard yelling like that was at the 2019 World Cup when South Africa won the gold. She up from her conversation with her friend Gabi. She pulled her headphones back to let them hook around her neck. It was cold in the 2021 June months of Waterkloof.
Her dark blonde hair was in a neat long low ponytail with a left sided part. She wore navy ski-pants and her favorite navy blue Tommy Hilfigure shirt. Her long fringe hung over the corner of her eye as usual.
"What did we supposedly win that you're so happy about now?"she asked her mom frustrated and replied to Gabi's message with just a quick reply. She couldn't focus with all the commotion in the background. She tried to remember what the could have won but her mom doesn't typically sign up for contests.
"I saw an add for an all expenses paid trip to Italy. And we won, Mac! I didn't expect you to remember as it was just when you got your pony in Stage 3 of lockdown from the pandemic." Her mom had gotten her a horse because she worked hard and hadn't got a birthday gift in two years. Her parents always told her to wait for something she really wanted and she'd been asking since she was seven so her parents finally gave in.
She wasn't exited to go, it was just the start of her winter holiday and she wanted to practice for guitar and vocals, go riding every day and read or draw in peace. She was in grade nine in Pretoria High School for Girls with Gabi, her best friend. She was also planning on hanging out with her, Erin and Jane. She wanted to stay home, but she always wanted to go to Italy as well.
They were leaving in a week and the trip was for a week and two days. Her older brother Nick came running down the stairs again. He was seventeen and in matric, because he was put into school a year early. He had a vibrant social life wit his friends from rugby first team, waterpolo second team and debating first team. He also did choir and he had a girlfriend named Christie. They were friends from preschool.
He always said that they were hanging out there, he was rarely home with all his activities and when he was he was studying in his room. He stomped his way to the fridge and poured a glass of coke. "I'm gonna go hang at Christie's," he said and gulped down the coke in a mere matter of seconds. His dad gave him a shake of the head as if to say that he had done something wrong.
"I didn't do anything! Why can't I go?!"
"Your mom won the Italy trip and we have to go do some last minute things, we can't have you running off."
"Cancel your plans idiot, it's time to notice our existence for once." Mac was fed up with her brother being practically invisible. She hadn't had a good time with him in about a year. As soon as he could be outside when lockdown regulations let him he was out and about. Mac and Nick were really close as kids but they grew apart with age.
He was always busy. They knew he was incredible at analytics and data, but that also meant they encouraged him to study to get into a good university the next year.
"Why would we go if only the two of you could go? Mac has her dumb plans, I'm assuming. I don't want to go and you two probably want some alone time." He always put the pieces of his train of thought together in less than a blink of an eye.
"It's a family trip Nick, four people can go and we haven't had a proper family trip in about two years." Their mom was also sad that he was always hiding away in some situation with friends or sport.
Together they got more clothes to take along with them as it was winter in South Africa, but blasting summer in Italy. They were almost ready to go.
They sorted every little thing out in terms of transport, identification and they also heard where they were staying. It was a small house just on the outskirts of a small town known as Turin. They were all set for their flight the next morning at 8.45 a.m.
They packed the car and went to bed. They got up really early and drove off towards O.R. Tambo international airport. They checked in their luggage as soon as they got there and went through the various lines of people being checked for tickets and passports.
They got breakfast at the Mug and Bean nearest to the place they had to board their plane in just about an hour. Nick got bored of waiting at the Café and went to see how long it was until boarding started.
He came stomping back towards his family with a huge frown on his face. He threw himself down on the chair and said with the least amount of joy possibly to be heard at an airport in the holidays, "A three hour fucking delay, three hours of this!"
"Language, Nick!" his mom put him into his pace quickly.
"Sorry, mom, but still," he replied without a second of doubt.
They kept drinking drinks and browsing through the stores in the airport just to waste the time. At around 11 they went to go sit and wait at the boarding gates. They had 45 minutes until they were due to leave for their flight to Istanbul where the flight had a short layover before they went to Italy.
When the flight attendants called them to start boarding they got their hand luggage and stood is line with all the other South Africans that were going to spend their winter holiday in the wonderful European country of Italy.
In this plane there were two seats by the area passages and three seats in the middle area. Nick sat on the left across the isle from his family who took the three middle seats. They were ready and on their way to their holiday.
They had a ten hour flight to Istanbul. They played games and watched movies on their built-in screens. Mac couldn't relax. She felt off about something. She always felt like that when something bad was about to happen.
She got a tingling in her spine, a warm burn in her shoulder blades. The soles of her feet got cold and sensitive. She felt nervous every time she got this feeling because out of all the feelings she got, this one was the most real. Every time she felt this something horrible happened.
She got out her phone, it was connected to the plane's WiFi. She typed a quick message. 'It's happening again, the feeling. I don't know why tho.' She sent it to Gabi, she would always calm Mac down in these horrible situations.
Gabi replied quickly, " It's ok, it's probably nothing." She wasn't sure if it was nothing, but she tried to ignore it. The only thing that kept her from enjoying herself was a coincidental tingle. That wouldn't ruin her holiday for her.
The plane landed smoothly and they all slowly got off the plane. They had a one hour layover before the connecting flight. They went to the bathroom and got drinks, it was dark already. They sat and waited at the boarding gate for about twenty minuets before they got back onto the plane.
They had an hour and a half flight to the Milan Malpensa Airport. They all just relaxed, it was such a short flight that they could barely get a wink in before they had to get off again.
They got off the large plane and met outside. They were officially on their Italian holiday. The idea was that the company that they won the trip from would arrange for any trips or places they wanted to see outside of Turin.
They got into the pre-arranged shuttle with a driver named Fernando. He was fluent in Italian, French and English to name a few. He was interested in why we wanted to stay in that house.
"Well, we didn't have much of choice of where to live, Mac's dad said. "We won the trip."
The driver got tense which didn't sit right with them.
"Why do you ask?" Nick asked to clear the air.
"The legend of the Turin house is no joke. Assumed to be illegal immigrants, everyone who ever goes to live in that house disappears. No one actually knows or finds them."
Mac didn't believe this was a coincidence. Every single person who stayed in the old house in a remote, forested area of the outskirts of Turin had mysteriously disappeared.
When they got there, the outside looked bigger than she had expected based off the sizes of the rooms she had seen in the pictures. She felt some space was missing in the relatively large looking building.
They got their bags and went inside. Nick and Mackenzie gave each other the same worried look, the house was old with grayish stone walls with moss and vines starting to crawl up the base. The area was full of trees and overgrown bushes and grass. It was relaxing, but the shadows gave it a creepy vibe.
Once they entered they saw a large dining room, a library and a living room. Down the hall there was supposed to be one room and a bathroom and three upstairs with two bathrooms.
Nick said he didn't want to stay for the whole tour of the house and he ran upstairs to go pick out a room. The family continued to look at the kitchen and the living room.
"We have to leave, right now!. Nick came running down the stairs faster than usual.
"Why?" his dad asked.
"There are dead people in some of the rooms. Check the main bedroom."
The four people went to check the master bedroom down the hall. As they expected there were a man and woman dead in the bedroom on the bed. They were scared, but they saw a note on the bedside table.
'Don't tell anyone. Clean up. Get rid of the bodies.'... 'Or else'
They had to listen. It was obviously from the killer. They all spread out to go and find cleaning supplies. Mac went to the cleaning supply closet to go look for a mop. How the hell did a family trip turn into some kind of murder cleanup job?
She got there and out of the corner of her eye she saw a small red arrow. Why was it there? She looked in the exact direction that it pointed to and saw a small red dot. Mac walked to the dot on the wall cautiously. She didn't know why it was there so it could have been anything.
As she got closer she realized it wasn't just a dot, it was a small button. A split-second decision. Press the button and find out the secret or leave it be until someone else figures it out.
Her finger flies toward the red button, hidden in plain sight. Mackenzie hesitates, this button could change everything.
Four dead bodies, they can't be the next four. Seeing the four dead people in the house drove her mind into a state of panic. She presses the button. Whirring sounds and a clack from the wall next to the built in closet.
Mac's mind jumped to the little boy and girl and their parents. Mutilated and bloody. How and why? Who would do such a thing.
Once her mind came by she noticed that a piece of the wall had detached itself from the rest of it. It was like it it was on an axis to let something or someone through. Why was there a secret room in the so called haunted Turin house?