Ch.2 Eggs, Bacon and a side of Answers, please

Rick pushed the scrambled eggs on his plate a bit as he looked up to watch his brother shovel a big forkful of pancake into his cavernous mouth… man this guy could put food away, it was no wonder he was captain of the wrestling team back in high school… it was both fascinating and disgusting all at once to watch his brother devour the stack of pancakes.

"So…" Peter spoke up after swallowing the big chuck of pancake "Out with it, you've got something on your mind, I can tell. You always get this constipated look on your face when something is bugging you"

"I do not look constipated!" Rick scoffed as he picked up his wadded napkin and tossed it over the table at his brother's pancakes "Look at yourself, you got a stream of maple syrup gliding down your chin"

"Cute, little brother" Peter remarked, flicking the napkin away from his food before fixing his younger brother with a more serious expression "But seriously, you were really quiet the whole way here… and usually, I can't get you to shut up"

"Eh…" Rick began, hesitant to say anything, even though he knew his brother was the best person to talk to about it "Didn't you say you had something to show me?"

"Oh yeah, that's right!" Peter exclaimed shortly, reaching for the messenger bag sitting beside him on the diner booth seat "I found some really cool information about this old mansion right on the edge of town… you know the one, the one everyone says is haunted and they just can't seem to get anyone to buy"

"I've heard about it, yeah…" Rick replied "My friends say that place is really spooky, just all kinds of bad vibes"

Peter nodded with a big smile "Well, I got permission to explore the place tonight and the historical society gave me all this really neat information about the mansion and the family who lived there… it's so weird, man…"

He pulled binder out of the messenger bag and put on the table, he flipped it open to reveal a lot of documents and printed out old pictures "The home belonged to the Bishop family back in the late 1800s, just before the turn of the century, I guess they were like this really well off family of horse breeders, you know? You couldn't get better horses than theirs and people were willing to spend a lot of money to get a Bishop horse"

Rick nodded "Alright, so where does the weirdness come in?"

Peter reached into the folder for one of the printed out photographs and slid it in front of Rick… and when Rick's eyes registered what he was seeing, he about shit himself… in the photograph was a family of a father, mother and apparently their daughter… whom looked startlingly familiar…

It was her… this was the girl he was continuously seeing in his dreams… he was sure it was her…

"So, this is the Bishop family, Edward, Arabella and their daughter Rosalyn… okay, now the family had this favorite horse breeder named Ethan that worked in the stables, I guess Mr. Bishop was just in total awe of this young man and sang his praises to everyone, just loved the guy… but anyway Ethan was in love with Rosalyn and she loved him too, the pair of them even talked Mr. Bishop is letting them get married after he saw how magnificent the newest foals were turning out, it totally set his mind at ease about letting this common born guy marry his daughter. He knew Ethan would take good care of her and the business, right? Well, here is where it gets strange… Mr. Bishop threw the two a huge engagement party, he wanted to make it known and clear to all the gentry that Ethan was being accepted as a Bishop and they would respect that or never see another Bishop horse again…"

"Okay?" Rick replied, his eyes wide as he gripped hard with both hands onto the edge of the table in front of him "What else? What happened?"

"That's just it, no one really knows… Ethan never showed up at the ball and after many of the guests had left, the entire Bishop family and the main staff all vanished… just… poof… as in thin air, none of the out of house staff could explain it, they said they never saw one single carriage leave the property after the last time they'd seen any of the Bishops" Peter explained "There was a huge investigation, but no one ever found anything that could explain the disappearances and no one ever heard anything from the Bishop family again… I mean, despite that staff say they never saw anyone leave… why abandon such a successful business anyway? It makes no sense… Rick, are you okay?"

Rick had the picture in his trembling hands and was gazing at the lovely visage of Rosalyn Bishop… his logical side trying to somehow explain it, like maybe he'd read about the Bishops before somewhere and forgot about it… but he knew he hadn't… none of this struck a bell for him, nothing but Rosalyn's face.