Pappa's Pretty Dolls

CHAPTER ONE.

Nova Sky Petree was your typical 16-year-old small town girl. Nova was a Junior at Wilmer Petree high school and carried a 4.6 grade point average without even trying. She was top of her class with her whole life ahead of her. Very popular her parents encouraged her to have her friends over as much as she wanted. The Petree home had become everyone in towns second home really.

Howard and Dana Petree were second parents to most of the teens in the high school. Everyone in the town of Ogalvee knew them and enjoyed their company as well. See however Howard was the Sherrif in Ogalvee and being such a small town had its advantages. At least 89% of the residents had been classmates of Howard and Dana, and 95% of the students had been to their house due to them being Nova's classmates, The simple life is what they had.

That weekend was the 'Ogalvee Fourth of July Celebration', which was marked with many events. There was a parade to kick things off and there was a giant town BBQ that followed. Everyone in town had this huge tailgating like BBQ where anyone could showcase their cooking.

This would be the first year that Nova would be taking off to meet up with her main group of friends to enjoy things independently, as Dana liked to put it. They had always been very guarded of Nova after they adopted her at just 5 months old. Though they had never said anything to her about it, there were stipulations to their having adopted her. So, they had crafted her life in a way that could keep her safe, or at least they whole heartedly thought.

Howard's thoughts behind letting her go on that Friday was that in 16 years nothing had gone wrong and se surely was capable of defending herself with how tall and athletic she had always been. So, he allowed her to go hang out with her friends and was not worried in the least when she kissed them goodbye, and they watched her walk out the door.

Nova put on the hoodie that she had grabbed before leaving the house. She was going to meet her 5 friends in the park before the start of the parade that morning. The walk around the outside of the neighborhood was the usual route but Nova wanted to get there as quickly as she could. That meant more time to hang out with everyone that weekend and she was excited to finally be allowed to join them. Nova decided to cut through the brush line at the back of their high school as to which opened up right into the park. She took her phone out as she entered the tree line and sent a text to a girlfriend of hers that read, 'BE THERE INNNNNN'.

Nova came to laying on a very hard surface on her back, instant pain shooting throughout her entire body. Upon trying to open her eyes she found that her lids were heavy as if held shut with ten pound weights. After a bit of a struggle, Nova opened her eyes to find that she could not see a thing. Holding her hand out before her she could not even see the possibility of her own hand being there. Nova only seen pitch black darkness all around her. A complete void of all light, a nothingness that had no end.

Fear began to bubble to the surface as Nova sat up in the hopes of seeing anything around her, to no avail. She began to hear her heartbeat in her ears and feel her pulse in the side of her neck. It was gradually picking up pace. Nova had started breathing at a heavier pace, as if she were at a slow jog or speed walk of sorts. And yet she was just sitting in the darkened abyss around her. The air around her felt damp and had a musty smell about it. The way that the woods would smell after a rain, or the way a basement smells after it has flooded and then dried.

Her mind was already clouded as if she had been drinking, it was exactly how she had felt when she drank at her friends birthday party just a few months before. She hadnt liked it then either. Her body felt heavy. her head was spinning when she was not actually moving at all. The only moving she was doing was when she would weave in one direction or the other, in a very over exaggerated way. She was finding it harder and harder to sit up on her own which was making the panic feel that much worse. The disorientation made it impossible for her to get her head about her enough to even move from the spot she woke up in. Though she was really trying to do just that.

A shiver came over her body as she was sitting there weaving and wobbling in the darkness.

'Hello, is there anyone there?' Nova spoke into the darkness.

Of course nobody answered her and she began to cry as she said,

'Please, if you're there can you please answer me? I don't want to be alone, please?"

There was nothing but silence and the echo of her own voice. Nova was soaked as if she had been swimming or something. It felt like it was getting colder as the silent minutes ticked by. The silence was deafening to Nova, a soul shaking eeriness accompanied that silence and nothing like that had ever happened to her. Up until that moment in fact, Nova had never even known of anything outside of what she had seen in movies. Thats what Nova felt she was in, a horror film or a nightmare. She had no clue what was in store for her.

Blindly running her hands across the gritty floor beneath her in search of anything was almost an instinct reaction to sitting in the silence. Then it occurred to her that she could be anywhere and clearly was open to anything grabbing her where she was at. So, she held one hand out into the pitch black dark and began to scoot forward using her other had to feel for an edge or danger in front of her.

Each inch that she moved forward made her dizzy and sick to her stomach. The shaky nauseous feeling was almost like when you have gotten way to much nicotine also known as Nic-Sick. Imagine finding yourself waking up in what seriously reminded Nova of a dark, dank, cave with no end or opening. Smelled of something that had not seen the light of day in a very long time and was meant for nothing good to happen in.

The darkness and blindness was throwing everything off and she was unsure of her own decisions. All she could focus upon was the fact that she could find some kind of safety in finding a wall to put her back up against. There was a change in smell in the direction she was headed, enough so that she had to cover her nose. As she moved forward the next few times she also moved to the left as to try and get away from it all.

From behind Nova there was a creaking sound that broke the deep silence. She jumped and screeched in terror as tears burst from her blind eyes as if a levy had broken.

"Who the hell is there?", she demanded into the dark.

Only her own echo again came back.

"I have a fucking knife!", she yelled through her tears.

Again only her echo returned. Nova again began shaking and crying while more quickly crawling forward in search of a wall or something to place herself against. After what seemed a lifetime of crawling forward and feeling dead cold air at her fingertips, then touched a hard surface. Nova crawled as fast as she could to the wall and turned to sit against it. Tears pouring from her eyes she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, tucking her head to sob uncontrollably.

Nova had continued to cry for quite some time when she once again heard the creaking, only louder than it had been before. Again, Nova screeched and tried backing up as if she were trying to back up right through the wall itself. Unable to do so she had actually caused herself to stand straight up against the wall with no intention on having tried to do it. It was almost torture to keep hearing the noise and yet nothing answered, and nothing followed except more deafening silence.

"Who is in here with me, my name is Nova what is yours? Please?", Nova begged through her terror and tears.

"I know there is someone here with me, please tell me who you are?", she begged barley understandable as she slid back down the wall to the floor. More tears than even before broke free from her lower lids and flooded her cheeks. Fear was controlling every single moment of whatever it was and she found it had to breath. Ya know that feeling that something had lodged in your throat and air could not even get through. That was happening to Nova only adding to the terror and panic. She began to feel dizzier than ever and before she could try and stop it she had fallen over having passed out cold.

Some twenty minutes later Nova again was pulling her body from the gritty cold floor and trying to make since of things that were never going to make any sense in the end. She immediately felt for the wall she had been against, and it was not there. Arms outstretched she felt around her in every direction, and it was not there at all. How was that even possible she thought as she once again began to cry in desperation? Her mind had begun to mess with her so badly that she even began to question if she had really found the wall and been sitting against it before. Had she dreamed all of that? Had she been dreaming all along?

Nova's mind was reeling from all of the confusion and disorientation that was going on within her head and thoughts. Unsure of what was a dream and what was real Nova truly had no clue rather she was actually going through all of it or if she had tripped and fallen maybe hit her head cutting through the woods. Maybe this was all just a dream that she was having while everything was actually ok, she thought. Nova was completely unaware just how wrong she was.

Little did Nova know, back at home her friends and parents were frantically searching for her. Nova had been missing for a day and a half already and there was no trace of her or any clues as to where she had gone. They were searching mainly along the main route that Nova always took to get to the park because nobody knew that she had chosen the quicker route that day. So, they were never going to find clues because the clues they needed were in that wood line that nobody knew about.

Neighbors, police, friends, family, even people from nearby towns were helping search for clues in the area. However, nobody was finding anything even remotely promising. Leaving Howard and Dana Petree to their worst case scenario thoughts. However, this was because only Howard and Dana knew about where Nova had come from and the reasons, she was brought to them 16 years before. They knew all too well that there were reasons to be concerned. Reasons to fear the worst was the flat truth of it.

When Howard and Dana were able to find themselves alone for long enough, Dana looked at him with tears in her eyes and asked,

"Howie, what do we do?".

He stared into those eyes that he had loved for so long and saw the true pain creeping to the surface and he had no answers. In that moment he wanted to tell her that it would all be ok but he knew he was unable to do so. He wraped his arms around her and said,

"My love, we will do exactly what we were instructed years ago and all will resolve before you know it."

Deep down he knew wherever their daughter was, it was absolutly due to her birth right. Her blood Grandfather was a powerful man with endless resources due to all of his deep government connections. He was stupid and knew that they had been being watched since Nova was about four years old. It had taken them three and a half years to find out where Nova was. Though it worried Howard and he had never told Dana. Trying not to cause her more worry or concern.

Howard believed what he had been told by Nova's mother all those years before. Dana had never actually sat with or met Novas mother. She had worked for Howard as an inturn at the government building outside of Ogalvee. Her father, Mr. Government had placed his daughter to keep her out of trouble and under the watchful eyes of his colleagues in the building. Mr. Government was a nickname that his daughter Abegail had given him because he was more government than father in their household and in Abegail's life. It was a nickname that was known throughout the entire building and widely yet secretly used by all the employees.

Abegail was only 15 years old when her father decided that he wanted her to take up a love for Government as he had. He thought putting her in that environment would start a fire in her soul for the thing he loved most. Well, Government was actually his second passion. For Mr. Government had a first passion that only his wife and daughter knew of. He was deeply obsessed with the beauty and perfection of his dolls at first. Then he took his obsession of the perfection to new heights when he started a garden of statues. Not just any statues, statues of little children doing things that children do.

Howard knew so much of the strange life of young Abegail, and it was hard to believe but he was sure that she was not making things up. There was one other person who had befriended young Abegail and that bwas a young man of just 25 named Thomas. The two secretly shared a love affair right below her fathers nose. To a point of Abegail becoming pregnant with Nova. Afraid of the outcome Thomas knowing Mr. Governments anger and power quickly quit his job and dissapeared. Leaving young Abegail to have to face her father and the prospect of being a single mother alone.

That was when she turned to Howard and told him of the delima she was facing. Scared for her, Howard toolk the information to his wife and Dana agreed to take the child as their own. More so because Dana had been unable to give Howard any children of their own. However, Dana was a very loving woman and felt bad for the situation that Abegail had found herself in. This was the start of the Petree's becoming Nova Sky's parents. Of course, everything was done in secret because Mr. Government would never allow someone, he did not know, to have his blood in their care. When he found out about the pregnancy at 25 weeks, he referred to the not yet born Nova, as only "The Chance Perfection", that Abegail had not been when she got passed 5 years old.

There was so much that Dana did not know because Howard had not told her. As he stood there holding the woman that he so dearly loved he knew that he was going to have to tell her everything and it made his stomach drop. That feeling you get when you are on a carnival ride, and it feels like it forgot to bring your guts and then they catch up to the rest of you.

"Dana my dear, I think we need to talk", He said as she looked up into his eyes.

She knew as soon as she looked into those eyes that whatever he wanted to tell her was going to be hard to hear. She could feel the sorrow in the gaze he cast upon her. So, she simply answered,

"Ok Howie".

Nova was getting colder by the minute and her stomach was beginning to growl. Hunger was now adding itself to the mix and Nova was breaking. Still ingulfed by the darkness that surrounded her Nova could not make sense of things in her own mind. She just could not figure out how she had moved away from the wall. Once more she put her hand out in front of her and again began to scoot on her knees across the grit on the floor. Pain started to become apparent to her as her adrenaline wore down.

Nova felt like she had when her father took her riding and the horse had thrown her off. Her muscles, her head, even her feet were sore. Tears were building and she stopped moving. She began to pray allowed,

"Please Lord help me".

Feeling like God would guide her she got to her feet and began to take small steps forward into the dark unknown before her. She was not feeling anything in front of her, so she started to step faster and faster. She got to a normal confident in her surroundings walk and caught her foot on something. Nova tried to get her hands out to stop the fall but whatever the thing that tripped her had been, it came up to about mid shin, so it took her legs out from under her quickly.

Unable to stop what was coming her way, Nova slammed to the floor hitting her face as she landed. There in the dark hell that she could not escape, Nova lay on her back holding her face in an attempt to Relieve the pain. Of course it did no good and then anger kicked in and she yelled,

"What the hell was that shit"?! followed by

"God Damn It"!

Without thinking Nova sat up scooted back toward whatever she had tripped on and stuck her hand out and grabbed it. What she grabbed was a shoe, a tennis shoe and it was not very big. Then there was a blast of a horrid smell to her nose that made her throw up immediately. It was a smell so rancid and horrifying that she could not even move. The gagging that it provoked was so powerful that it had paralyzed her. She had vomit coming up and snot pouring from her nose. Whatever or whoever this must have been was rotting and the smell had imbedded itself in her nose.

Not tears of her crying but tears poured from her eyes as she tried to stop the reaction to the smell. Nothing that nova was doing was helping to alleviate the issue. Then through the silence came an earth-shattering creak of steel hinges. Followed by a blinding light that exploded the darkness that had seemed to have been there forever.

For just a split second, Nova caught a glimpse of what was invading every sense that she had. Specifically, she saw the very blue and bloated face of a decomposing body. She let out a horrid Scream and again went blind. Not because the light had gone away but because it had been so long since her young eyes had even seen any light. It was so bright that her brain was so shocked that with no control of her own, her eye lids hammered closed. Similar to the way the metal wall comes down when some moron tries to rob a liquor store.

Even with her eyes closed Nova made a quick movement to get away from the blue and bloated face of the dead body. Unfortunately, that quick, blind, bold movement was right into that wall she was looking for. Upon hitting it with full forward motion she again hit her upper forehead and then hit the floor like a ton of bricks.