The Murder Of 1886

CHAPTER 1

The chorus of the song "Home" by Edward Sharpe started playing when Gwen reached the countryside far from the smokes and fumes of the city of Glasgow. She hoped for a break from everything and a vacation seemed the best option. With the death of her brother and her best friend missing for weeks Gwen found that she could not take it anymore. She had been quite depressed the past month, tired of arranging her brother's funeral and trying to find any clues on why her friend Jane disappeared. In short her parents highly recommended this trip and here she was.

Gwen got out of the rented car, stretching. Driving from the airport while confusing the routes can be pretty tiring. There were some houses here and there but otherwise it was quite lonely. The house she rented was beautiful yet had an eerie feeling to it. The wind whistled like it was trying to warn her. She opened the boot of the car and took out the luggage and set it down. Locking it again she turned.

"Aaah" she screamed then clamped a hand to her mouth while the other was placed on her frantically beating heart. There stood, with a cloak over her head and wearing a ragged gown the looked like it hasn't been washed for months, an old woman.

"Who are you?" Gwen asked.

"Arundhati" she replied.

The woman, Arundhati, scrutinized her carefully and then said," You shouldn't be here, child. It's dangerous for young woman to live here especially in this house. Haven't you heard about the misfortune of the family that used to live here, eh, child?"

"No why, what happened?"

"A family was murdered in this very house. No one knows about it. We hear strange noises all the time. It is dangerous my child."

"When did this murder happen?"

"On august the 23rd 1886"

"Right" she said slowly "and you expect me not to stay here because of a murder that happened a long time ago?"

"No, strange things happen here especially in this house. Once you go in, once you get pulled into the darkness of this house then you're in grave danger. Beware of the spirit that lives here."

"Okay, thanks for telling me?" Uncertainty creeping into her voice, Gwen bends down to pick her trunk. She straightened to see thin air. No sign of the strange woman. And there's no way you could just disappear when the road stretches on for miles for everyone one to see.

"Bloody hell. "Shrugging her shoulders, Gwen pushed the thought of the woman and their confusing conversation to the back of her mind and climbed the stairs of the porch towards the front door. She opened the door and switched on the light.

To say that the house was horrible would have been the understatement of the century. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and stretched across rooms. It just added to the haunted look of the house. The door to the kitchen had a huge hole in it, looking as if someone broke it down with an axe. The window panes were broken and glass pieces littered the ground below the window sills. The kitchen was a wreck.

"Wonder how the rest of the house is like. This is going to take a lot of work. Wonder why this was the only place available." She muttered to herself. She didn't like the look of the house.

She climbed the rickety stairs to the rooms above. The rooms here didn't look all that bad. They looked relatively better than the rest of the house but trashed nonetheless. She opened the door of the largest room of the floor. What she saw surprised her. There was a beautiful piano directly in front of the largest window of the room. The sunlight streaking in through the window illuminated the instrument making it look almost majestic. There were many picture frames hanging on the wall on one side but the weird thing was that there were no pictures in them.

She frowned. She turned and nearly screamed for the second time that day. There was a big stain of red and brown that looked distinctly like ... blood. It was not there when she came in through the door. She had a sudden urge to puke. This must have been the spot where the murder took place. The same murder the old woman was talking about. She turned and stalked out of the room not wanting to stay there any longer. But she didn't want to believe that a murder did happen in this very house. She hoped that it was just her eyes playing tricks on her. That her heart had simply taken the story told by the woman seriously. Either way she didn't want to stay in this room much longer.

She turned the corner and ran down the stairs. She entered the living room and her eyes almost fell out of its sockets. The room was demolished. It looked like a cyclone hit it. An old set of television was upturned and the expensive set of couches was slashed around its middle with what might've been claws. The lamps were smashed and the glass pieces of the once magnificent chandelier littered the plush carpet. Papers from books that once must've graced the shelves looked torn and burned and were tossed in a heap. Someone had clearly been searching for something. But what it was she did not want to know.

The whole state of the house gave her an uneasy feeling. She placed her hands on her hips and sighed. Maybe if she rested she would be able to think clearly. She was tired due to the long drive. Meeting the old woman and hearing her story further drained her. She rubbed her hands over her face and prepared herself for a long night.

Sleep seemed to be the best idea. Besides some people were coming to help her set up the house tomorrow. She sighed. She was doing that a lot today, even more so after seeing the house. She trudged up the stairs and fell unto the bed in the master bedroom, falling asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

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