A Book of Shadows

The Curious Affair of The Palvine Residence

As I walked down Old Oakbourne Street my eyes turned to the large manor house almost silhouetted against the whiteish sky. An odd chilled wind echoed as a concealed whisper through the twilight air, piercing it like a mirror hitting the hard ground and shattering into a thousand glistening shards of nothingness. The Palvine Residence. It stood detached between the empty cross road and the old nursery with two huge gates standing open as if to welcome unknowing visitors into their confines. The gates themselves, I noticed as I came to halt adjacent to them were comprised of tall wrought iron bars standing proudly, though harshly bent and disfigured in places with thick brown rust infecting their flesh. It was strange, that place had always somehow scared me though I cannot recall its existence before I was thirteen, though it undoubtably must have been there, odd how the mind is so selective in what it remembers. But since Halloween, it'd particularly caught my notice: I had seen no movement from the house until that day but it came to my attention that, despite the fact that no lights were on, a singular small pumpkin had been left alight outside on the doorstep, beside it, a small bowl of what looked like sweets, though I hadn't had the courage to investigate further. I wondered who must've left them there.

This question had perplexed me so much over the next weeks that I had begun to ask around as to if anyone lived in the house or knew if the house even belonged to anyone and was directed to a quinquagenarian lady who'd spent the last fifty years living in a rather small cosy house with a lilac cream exterior and window frames the colour of melted butter. I was informed her name was Rita Pearlhall and that if anyone could tell me about the odd house on Old Oakbourne Street, it would be her. So it was for this reason that after school on an unusually warm day at the end of November, I arrived at the her door in my smartest black dress and jacket with a camera bag and note pad and told her that I was a local investigative journalist, a lie she had readily believed.

She had invited me into her home with an offer of biscuits and a hot chocolate if I'd like one, I obviously obliged. I followed her through the Cornish cream carpeted hallway and up the wide shallow staircase to a large brown door, behind which there was a loungelike room with three white sofas, an armchair, a coffee table and a bureau with serval odd items and photos on top of it. The walls of the room were perfect white with large windows that allowed the dying daylight to seep in. She'd invited me to sit down on the sofa furthest from the door and asked what I wished to investigate , to which I was not sure how to respond, so I began by asking if she'd noticed anything strange in the weather patterns to which shetold me that she had and the wind was very strong for this time in the season and swiftly moved onto the topic of comings and goings in the neighborhood to which she had responded " Well, there ain't been much going on round here recently, except crying since the girl at number 10 had her baby..." She trailed off "I really must pay her a visit sometime, which reminds me, I promised you hot chocolate didn't I" I smiled at her, she was a traditional cockney sparrow of a lady, lively bright green eyes and greying hair with a cheerful willing smile. She bustled off back down the stairs to where I assumed the kitchen was and disappeared from my view. It was at this point, against my better judgment that I decided to take a look around the room, gently spinning the old globe, at a loss for anything notable, so I continued to pour through Rita's things listening keenly for footsteps outside. It was then that my attention turned to the photos on the bureau, in old dusty frames holding moments, one was of what looked like a much younger Rita in a long white dress outside a church kissing a strangely handsome man with curlswho looked scarcely more than a teenager, another was of her holding a small baby what looked like thirty years ago and one was of her all in black with a hat and a handkerchiefwhich looked rather more recent. My heart skipped a beat as I suddenly heard heavy footsteps outside the door and quickly tried to rush back to my seat upon the sofa.