House on a Hill - It could happen to anyone...

No two Victorian houses look exactly alike, but it would be hard to imagine any other house looking quite like this. Huge, ornate, violently asymmetrical, it was built from wood warped and darkened with age and wrought iron rusty from all the salt in the air. It might have been long-abandoned: it was difficult to imagine anyone still cared for the place. Cracked glass windows glowered out at an overgrown garden and at the unpaved road down a steep incline from the front gate.

It was the only house for miles, but once it came into view it dominated the landscape: three storeys, with an octagonal turret jabbing up into the dark sky above the shingles. An keen observer might have just made out a light, flickering, from a window in the room at the very top. Nobody came here on purpose, and the road was, of course, the wrong one.

The car's engine spluttered and died, and the driver pulled over the side of the road. There was silence for a few minutes--as the car's occupants wondered what to do next--and then, from over the hills that separating here from the sea, came the first rumble of thunder. It was getting later. Soon enough, someone would have to come out.

It's Rob and Louise Knight, newlyweds on their way to their honeymoon on the coast.
It's Penelope Clearview, a junior realtor working for a firm that has been buying up property in this area.
It's a group of college students, on a camping trip at the end of the school year.
It's a mother, moving interstate for a new career with her teenage children after a messy divorce.
Someone else.
Someone else.

Page created by: mules on 2020-09-11 03:09:33.

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