Her One Desire

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

"Wonder if that's her portrait?" Steve asked Sean as they looked through the windows of the Houser place. They had no trouble finding the house they just wished they could find a way inside to look around.

"You would think if that was her she'd take that with her," Sean replied puzzled Sarah Houser had left that painting hanging over the fireplace of what looked like the sitting room of the house.

"It's not her it must be her mother by the way you described her nose," Steve told him.

"Lets walk around the back and see if there's a way inside. I would like to take a closer look at the place. I wonder too why she didn't have cloths put over the furniture and paintings when she left town. And why didn't she take the portrait of her mother."

"Maybe she was never happy living here with her father and that was her reason for leaving town and never returning and not caring if this beautiful house and everything in it rotted away," Steve replied to Sean.

"Whoa someone's been inside," Steve said as they found a window pane busted out at the back of the house.

"Wonder if all the valuables she left are still here. Mrs. Morton and the others said she only took a few suitcases with her when she boarded the train."

"Shall we check so we can inform the sheriff that someone has broken into the house?"

"Yes I just hope they don't think it was any of us if we get caught inside," Sean replied. "But I do want to have a closer look at that painting."

Steve put pressure on the window and it rose without a problem allowing them to climb into what was the kitchen of the house.

"Look you can see foot prints in the dust looks as if either they kept returning or a lot of people have been entering this house and some lately since the dust hasn't covered over the tracks as they have some of the others," Sean said as they started looking around the kitchen. They noticed how several of the drawers were pulled out of place as if they'd been searched and never shoved back in. Someone was here looking for valuables or something else, he thought.

After looking over the kitchen they ventured into the a dinning room with a huge table that seated twenty people. The huge crystal chandelier that hung over the table once cleaned of all the dust would be beautiful, Sean thought as he looked up at it. "It was a shame someone would just leave this house to rot like they did."

Leaving the dinning room they soon found a library where most of the books were now scatter around on the floor. "Looks as if someone was looking for something here too," Steve commented. Even the drawers of the desk and their contents are scattered.

"I wonder what they were searching for."

"It's been a while since the boot prints here are just barely noticeable on the carpet. The dust has just about covered them over."

Sean walked over toward the fireplace to look at the dust covered painting of a man and a woman. "Wonder if this is Charles Houser and his wife? She doesn't look anything like the description of Sarah Houser, but the man has the nose people said his daughter had."

"Look here," Steve said handing Sean a miniature portrait of a woman. "Could this be Sarah Houser?"

"From what people described as to how she looked I'd say it was her. We could take it with us to ask around if anyone seen her in other towns on the way back to Brookton. I don't know about you but this house gives me the creeps it's as if she just walked out the door and never looked back," Sean said. "If I believed in ghost this house would be the perfect haunted house."