Note: First story on FictionPress. Yay, applaud me.

This was just a small descriptive piece I felt like writing.

THE OLD HOUSE

The rustic wrought iron gates lean drunkenly on their twisted and damaged hinges, groaning with age as the cool easterly winds breathed a whisper of life into the decrepit looking estate. All is quiet here but for the breeze, that seems to whisper of lives long past and memories long forgotten. My gaze shifts and settles on the bright colors of the vines and Patterson’s Curse that chokes what little life is left from a circle of hydrangeas, once the focal point of what was once the front lawn. As I get closer to the old house I notice the warped veranda is overgrown with weeds, the timbers frail and brittle, eaten away by termites; once so sturdy and reliable, the planks look like they could crumble away at the slightest pressure. The snaking wisteria and honeysuckle vines have grown thick around the veranda posts, hugging them tight, and in my mind it seems they have been strangled; and I involuntary shiver. The small, shriveled buds are weaved into the tangled mass, tightly shut and covered with dirty, bug-ridden webs, squashing all life from the brown, dry petals. As I look at the old house I note that the corrugated iron roof is twisted, as though a huge hand has crushed it, the layers of green paint peeling off in flakes and where the rain has pooled in the dips and crevices dark and stagnant water lies in the humid air. I move forward, attempting to swallow the dry, stubborn lump that has formed in my throat.

There is an eerie sense of foreboding in this place, but I shake away the feeling and continue on. The backyard looks the same as the front, weedy and rotten, neglected for many years and as I walk through the overgrown garden at the back of the house I notice an old swing. Still, after all these long years it clings by tenuous threads to the branch above, the chains are rusty and beginning to fail. I imagine what this garden must have looked like years before, when there was happiness here, so many years ago. There is an old pond in one corner of the yard, with moss and weeds growing over the rough rocks surrounding it. What is left of the water is dark and choked with a mass of tangled reeds and mud. Large emerald clusters of Chickweed have buried their thin roots deep into what is left of the fading, stark lawn near the edge of the pond, circling it, almost like it is guarding it for some reason. A crooked Oak tree towers over the house, its branches are frail and many of the exposed roots are long and gnarled like the arthritic fingers of an aged crone; again I shiver and look over my shoulder, it feels so sinister here…this place is having a strange effect on me. I’d better keep moving; I am not supposed to be here, but I wanted to …

Small stones crunch under my feet as I walk back from the eerie chill of the house behind me. There is a haze in the distance and as I approach the driveway gates again I notice a gleam of bronze in the afternoon sun. I quicken my pace and on closer inspection I find the brilliant glow is coming from a beautiful ornate letterbox with fine filigree lace work, its unique balance and poise is astonishing compared to the house itself. It has a fresh, crisp look about it, but how could this be? How could the letterbox be so clean and new looking, no one lives here anymore, haven’t for years and years so what’s going on here?

My imagination is running wild again, darkness descending around me as the sun dips behind the hill; the uneasy presence has returned. I feel lonely and afraid, my heart is pounding and I feel that something here is watching me, perhaps a ghost…

This whole experience has made me feel like a child again. A child’s imagination is a sinister place to be, you will never know what may leap out from the shadows and as my mother always used to say to me when I was afraid, “There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.”