The Other Side of Silence
'There Was a Crooked House' (Pill
Hill Press)When Nicole is left White
House in her Aunt Esther's will she has mixed
feelings, thanks to an unfortunate childhood
experience. Will time have healed her wounds
when she finally goes back?
The
story has been published in 'There Was a
Crooked House' by Pill Hill Press, a small
indpendent press specialising in speculative
fiction anthologies. The book contains a
further twenty six stories inspired by the
title and/or the cover art, from a range of
new and established authors.
The
first thing she noticed was the silence.
No
voices, no breathy whine of asthmatic
Pekingese, no tinkle of Brahms and Chopin
from the ancient Bush radio, just the deep
hush of emptiness. It seemed odd, somehow.
Even though Mr Snodgrass, the family lawyer,
had written to tell her the house had been
cleared of her aunt's furniture she still
hadn't expected this echoing solitude. A home
without possessions was unnatural, like a
song without words.
Clocks.
That was what she remembered most. Aunt
Esther had loved clocks, collected them
avidly and filled her home with them until
there were two or three in every room. Even
the bathrooms, Nicole thought with a pang of
amusement. To a ten year old it had been
fascinating and terrifying in equal measure.
There was no escape from that slow, steady,
irrefutable marking of the passage of time.
Now she found she rather missed the ticking.
A
shaft of autumn sunlight burst through a
chink in the shutters, block-printing the
floorboards in strips of gold. Even the
carpets had been taken up and carried off;
Aunt Esther's will had been most specific on
the subject. Every last scrap was to be sold
and the proceeds given to the local church.
Nicole wasn't sure why. Her aunt had never
been religious, as far as she knew - but
perhaps when you were ninety-two and dying,
such things became more important to you.
Throwing
open the double doors to the dining room she
continued her tour. The house was huge,
bigger than she'd remembered, with ten
bedrooms and a servants' wing full of what
estate agents called the 'usual offices'.
Last time she hadn't seen much of that, only
the sitting room and her bedroom and the
cavernous kitchen, where fat Horace the
cook-cum-dogsbody had plied her with bits of
marzipan when no-one was looking. She'd spent
more time with him than the family, she
realised, especially after all the fuss.
Maman and Papa had been so very cross....
© 2011
Fiona Glass
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