The Many Adventures of Slinky and Severus.
If you follow an old road in a small town in England to its end, you will come to a long driveway. Well, not so much of a driveway, because it was doubted by the locals if a car had ever driven across it. Nevertheless, if you follow the driveway (that was more of an overgrown, meandering pathway) to its end, you will come to a house.
Though all of the locals knew there were people living there, no one in the town had ever been tempted to take that path, even when the property had been deserted. Not the schoolboys nor the postman nor the milkman had ever ventured that way. The house had been there since before they could remember, yet none could recall exactly what it looked like.
It was doubtful that the new occupants had ever touched the exterior of the Victorian-style house, nor grounds surrounding it. The graying paint of the house was pealing, the old shutters hung at odd angles, and the trees towered around it, obscuring the crumbling bricks of the chimney. The grounds, which had surely once been very grand, were as overrun as was possible, the roses and azaleas overgrowing their original beds, ivy growing up the backside of the house and obscuring the view from inside the lower windows. There was moss hanging from the towering trees, bird nests in the bushes, and under the trees that blocked the sunlight the grass had stopped growing, exposing gnarled roots of old oak trees. The old courtyard iron furniture that was left was covered in moss and ivy, as were the cherubs that guarded each side of the porch. Owls hooted at night from the decorative supports for the sagging porch.
However, if the exterior of the house could be labeled as in a state of disrepair, the inside was possibly deserving of condemnation. The furniture that existed was original to the house, and possibly had not been cleaned since its arrival through the front door. The house had once had electric lights, but they had long burned out and the occupants when they bothered used either candles or oil lamps. A tattered rug and cobwebs were what would greet a visitor in the entrance, if the house had ever had visitors. Possibly it had when it had been a home, in its days of grandeur and life and light, and when the occupants had been sociable, but those days had long passed from memory. A chandelier that had once sparkled beautifully as it peaked out of a high window now hung on to the ceiling by pure good fortune, and would surely soon fall to shatter on the tiled floor. The other rooms of the house, which stretched to three stories with a full sized attic, were in a similar state, one room was covered in vines, which had come creeping through a window and were now growing on the walls of the hall.
And yet, the house still was occupied, and what stories were told about the occupants! It was well known by the villagers somehow that the man who lived there was not sane, and many rumors of what he did were told. A pirate, a scientist, a murderer perhaps, the stories changed as they were told and as new and more exciting possibilities stirred in the minds of the otherwise down-to-earth townsfolk. Nothing was 'known' about the wife of the man, except they were certain that she had existed at some point, though whether she still did had quickly passed into myth or rumor. But they were sure she had once been.
There was only one who occupied the house who the villagers were sure of, the butler, who was the only one to be seen in the ten years the occupants had lived there. Actually, the other occupants had never been seen, since they had moved in during the dead of an early October night. The villagers had only realized it when a strange elderly man came to market early one morning, and he had come once a week since. His name was said to be Jacob, but no one could be sure where that had been heard, not that it seemed to matter. Once a week he came, and he bought flour, milk, eggs and sometimes meat or yeast. Still, in ten years no one had seen another occupant, and no one even realized there was another that was not ever rumored about, that had lived in the house at the end of the path all the years of the new occupants time there.
If you were brave enough to take that path, and you happened to arrive after the sun had set, you might see a flickering light shining in the highest window, which overlooked the old widow's walk.
If you could sum up your courage, to push open a stubborn front door over-grown with ivy, to walk across the dusty floor and up the creaking staircases, you would come to a hallway with pealing yellow wallpaper on the walls. If you looked both ways down the hallway, you would see an old window with sagging curtains on your right. But if you looked to your left, you would see a door standing slightly ajar.
It is through this door that the flickering light shines, illuminating both the ragged floor of the hall, and a small dark-haired child curled up on the floor, reading an ancient book in a slow, soft voice to a stuffed animal, who was the oldest and dearest of his friends.
Right, well. If you want to hear more, then reviews are necessary. Writing something no one is reading is not much fun, but I really want to continue this so please review. I beg you!