A Haunted House

The Groundskeeper

The Groundskeeper stared out at the darkening grounds of the mansion he had looked after for well over half a century. His old bones ached with a subtlety that only the creaking trees could understand, and he listened to the cold autumn wind whistle through the dry brittle leaves. His right eye had gone bad a long time ago, and the sight in his remaining one was already beginning to fail. But he had his shovel, and he smelled the twilight in the air. There was electricity in the winds tonight. Looking at his beloved grounds--the only thing he had been loyal to all this time--he remembered. There had been pain here. Pain and death. The ghosts were coming out to play.

He had heard the wailing first, long ago. Then the screams of the Lady in her room that dreaded night so long ago. He remembered the blood on his hands. His calloused fingers tightened around the shovel in his hand as he remembered the smell of the soil as his Lord had threatened him at pistol gunpoint to dig the grave. There was never any time for tears, and even after his Lord had moved away, he had stayed and kept the grounds. He had seen the hauntings; he had fought back the demons.

Now he stared out at the darkened grounds of the decaying mansion he had looked after for centuries. He surveyed the overgrown garden covered in ivy weeds. No matter how tirelessly he worked day and night, the weeds would not stop appearing. Like wildfire they spread, covering everything. They covered the stable and smothered his Lady's precious rose bushes. They blanketed the fields and enveloped the fountains.

Now he stands, pale spectral wisp of an old man, on the border of the garden to the mansion. Already the ivy weeds had begun creeping up the sides of the mansion. Alone with his shovel, it was all he could do to at least protect the grave of his Lady. Gripping his shovel, he digs at the weeds, and the sound echoes piercingly over the ivy-engulfed lands around him.