Wind howled through the blind eye windows, shuffling the accumulated dust upon the floor. Whispers of lonely voices low notes along the the stairs.
I was as haunted with grief as the house. A young couple disappeared one night, leaving the house abandoned. Rumours swirled: murder-suicide when love turned to hate; a mystery never solved.
To ease my own pain, I searched for answers to their disappearance. Gradually the holes dug to look for bodies had filled in. Without CSI and DNA, police had few tools. Telegraph alerts; posters; rewards.
I wandered the rooms, strangely un-vandalized and with breaking down furniture still in place. I could never enter the nursery without a grab at my heart. Post-partum depression – then just sadness – had gripped her heart too. Was that the answer?
I stood on a stool in the nursery and examined the beams – there was a spot where the wood was rubbed with a deep crease. Next to the empty cradle.
After cutting her down, did he leave – the empty house too much to bear? Or was his body hidden somewhere with hers – hidden in a place that only God would find?
word count: 199; words used: haunt; grief; disappear; abandon; murder; suicide; hate; mystery
Prompt 3 for mlmm Saturday Flash Splash #1 07.01.17
(c) Lorraine
Lorraine's frilly freudian slip 
January 9, 2017 at 4:23 pm
There was a place up in the country that we used to visit as children. The house was perhaps a summer home. But after a few years no one ever returned. One summer we went in to look at the old magazines, and though the electric had been off (maybe for the winter when not in use) there were a few things left in the small frig. A mystery there too. Now abandoned places…whole buildings (blocks sometimes) in cities just give me the creeps.
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January 9, 2017 at 4:56 pm
Some abandoned places attract me, others scare me. Whole blocks, especially!
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January 8, 2017 at 11:15 am
It’s such a haunting image, as you’ve noted in the comments. And yet fascinating too.
And your tale is wrought with the tension, the sense of unresolved mysteries and grief. The particular attention to the wood beam and rubbed crease – it incredibly sharp. Few words but it really makes the story.
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January 7, 2017 at 6:38 pm
Fascinating and interesting questions you leave us with. You wonder what became of him after. Perhaps lost in his own grief he died? Or left never looking back? I like the possibilities!
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January 7, 2017 at 11:03 pm
The place seems full of mystery, doesn’t it — we used to pass by it often, and I always felt sadness when we did.
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January 7, 2017 at 4:03 pm
Every line was so so sad…. We need stories like this, I think, to inspire us to love and to make sunshine for the world, when it lacks it.
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January 7, 2017 at 5:12 pm
I’m fighting a deep depression, so some of my stories lack sunshine, I’m afraid. We used to drive by the house on a regular basis, and it always gave me a sense of sadness and loneliness — not just because it was abandoned.
Thanks for reading.
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January 7, 2017 at 1:37 pm
Haunting
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January 7, 2017 at 8:54 pm
Thanks, Wendy. The house always drew my attention as we drove by as if it had a sad tale to tell.
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