Owen Stark
The hero of our story, 12-year-old Owen has grown up in the Our Lady of Holy Melancholia Orphans’ Home, and was recently adopted by two great-uncles he never knew he had. A timid, obedient boy, Owen is trying very hard not to be impolite enough to notice how bizarre his new-found family is.
Ariadne Von Dorffle
Ariadne is the daughter of the local grocers, the Von Dorffle family, and the oldest of five siblings. A voracious reader of lurid dime novels, she’s determined to be just like the detectives she reads about. She intends to discover the truth about the mysterious happenings around town that have given rise to the legends about a town curse. She’s assisted by her super-intelligent and highly-trained — according to Ariadne — magpie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.