Issue #127
The house had stood at the top of the hill for over a century, built over a period of several years, the original owner taking great pains to make sure that every detail of the home was perfect. The gossip in town was that the rich doctor had gone out of his mind, sinking such money into a house in such frivolous fashion. As far as the people were concerned, it was just another person, determined to hold sway over them with the power of his money.
The house had no way of knowing any of this. It was only tasked with the caring for the family that lived within its walls.
The family would reside in the house for several generations, They were personable enough, or at least they tried to be. But eventually, the barely shielded hostility of the town drove them progressively further away from the local populace. Before long, they were living out the majority of their lives in the serene privacy of their hilltop home.
As the weather steered into winter, the family would huddle together to take what warmth they could from each other, and pray that they would be able to last until the spring. Their loyalty to each other was as strong as had ever been seen, and the house did all it could to help preserve them. It was a relationship that stayed strong for more years than anyone could keep track of.
Then, the pestilence began to seep into the house’s world.
It came in the form of the drifter, who had shown up one night, wandering in from the forests outside of town, and while the family had taken him in, the house didn’t trust him. There was a darkness that seemed to follow him, one that the house had not experienced before. The stranger was a restless sleeper, talking during dreams of such violence and anger, but no one in the family ever heard him. The house could do nothing but sit back and hope for the best.
It was one week to the day, after his arrival that the world crumbled into pieces.
Everything that the house had come to depend on took approximately one hour to bring to an end in one, sudden night of violence. The drifter moved on after killing everyone, was never caught or identified. Still, a vital essence of himself was left behind. It was as if a physical taint was left behind on the walls and floors and windows of the house. Standing there on the hill as a vessel for the newly dead, the house found itself starting to decay from the inside. There was no way to completely recover, as it had been just as much a victim of the random act of violence as the family.
For years after, the house remained vacant, a ghost itself, observing the world constantly changing around it, but living with nothing but the same sorrow within. The stains of the violence had not even been completely washed away, and served as constant reminders of how those it had cared about were ripped away. The harsh winters became the most desirable time of the year as that was when the desolation and death of the world around it came the closest to matching the darkness within.
A decade passed before a new family finally came to visit the house, to consider the possibility of purchasing it. As much as the house had despised being alone, it proved to be worse to see this impostor of a family traipsing around, making whatever absurd changes they felt like.There was nothing to be done, however, and before long it found itself having to grow accustomed to new people, new sounds and voices and laughter. There was a time when all of that would make the house feel warm, with it’s own worth and value. Now it just felt like a shell in which it now held the worthless dregs of society. It missed the ones it loved, the ones that had been so cruelly ripped away from it.
It was a year later when the house realized that the darkness which had been brought by the violent stranger, was still present, just under the surface. All it took was some work, and effort, before that dark entity could be released, and deposited into one of the members of the family. Once this was accomplished, the house would have the luxury of sitting back and watching it all unfold within its walls. Death found its way into the house again, this time by design, instead of random happening of chance.
In the end, it took the death of yet another family before the house was left alone, standing atop the hill in disrepair and discontent. The family it had once cared so deeply for seemed like a long forgotten memory, never achievable again. Each day seemed like another step towards the darkness below that it would soon merge with forever.
A cool, stark wind blew through the shattered windows, moaning as it made its way through the halls and crevices of the house. Few would dare to even gaze up at the house on the hill as it stood, bathed in scorn and wrath. The house would never be able to break free from the spite, from the desire to take in anyone it saw and show them the pain and suffering it had experienced at those hands so many years ago.
It had become a vehicle of destruction and pain. Anyone who made the mistake of entering through those now tattered doors would learn well enough the extent of the tarnished legacy of this place.
This house had become.
