4The dusty room was bathed in shadow, as if it was a painting on which black ink had been spilt. A creak of worn floorboards indicated the passage of some unseen foot.
Suddenly light exploded like a flare into the room, and someone walked in. Particles of dust rose and fell in the air currents stirred by a moving body.
Daniel slowly scanned the room. Seeing nothing out the ordinary he pointed the flash light at the old man. "What do you mean haunted?" he asked, incredulously. The old man laughed, although it sounded half cackle, half cough. "Yes, Mr Davis. Haunted."
The old man indicated that Daniel should come follow him. "Come downstairs and I'll tell you the story, son." Daniel walked out of the room and closed the door.
Night poured in, as if the abyss were alive. You could almost feel it breath, crushing the life steadily out of you.
A few lit candles were dotted around the living room and two old padded chairs.
"Do you believe in heaven and hell?" Asked the old man. Daniel answered; "Not really. Why, do you?" He laughed that hoarse laugh again. "Of course I don't believe in any of that rubbish! I don't believe in God or religions or anything like that. But I do believe in the soul. I believe in the human spirit." The old man took a sip out of the glass of water that was sat on the table beside him. Daniel's silence urged him to continue. "When I was a young man, not much older than you now, something awful happened here. Something horrible."
"What?" Asked Daniel.
"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Devenish had decided to have two family friends stay here on the account of them being rather lonely old people. One was a man the other a woman. Their names were Gerald McDonald and Catherine Brown. To cut a long story short, Mrs. Brown was murdered by Mr. McDonald."
The flickering lights in the living room barely contained the pitch black pushing against them.
"Mrs. Brown was a lovely lady. She wasn't particularly rich, but she was comfortable. Gerald McDonald was rich. He was a former executive of a small automobile company. He had come here to retire, and to die. He had cancer, you see." He took another sip of water. Daniel was silent, absorbing the story told to him up until now. "So was Mr. McDonald some kind of psychopath?" The old man smiled, and shook his head. "No he wasn't. That's why what he did was so shocking. If he had been insane, some of the responsibility for the murder could have been lifted off his shoulders. But Gerald was not mad, or unstable. He was cool, calculating and utterly ruthless."
Daniel interrupted. "But if he was a company executive officer, why did he kill Catherine? He was rich, after all." Darkness pressed closer, it had the whole mansion except this room under its grip. It wanted more.
"Because he didn't kill her for money. He killed her for love. You see, Catherine and Gerald were lovers." The old man sighed. "For awhile it went well, and they both were happy. But a new man came into Catherine's life. A man who showed her love, which was the one thing Gerald couldn't do or buy. He found out about her affair, and needless to say, he wasn't happy. He was furious. That night, he swore revenge. However, he was not rash or one to act immediately on an emotion. He planned, and had managed to arrange, at Catherine's displeasure, the stay here."
Rain had begun to fall outside, each pitter patter echoing loud in the almost quiet room.
"He wanted his revenge, and he got it. I won't go into details son, but it wasn't pretty when they found here. Due to his careful planning and devious mind, nobody ever suspected Gerald. He died, peacefully in his sleep eight months later here, on a later trip. By then he was very weak from cancer, but the ironic thing was that he died in the same room at the same time as Catherine did."
The darkness was silently screaming to get into the room. It fought endlessly with the light. The old man sat back slowly in his chair. Daniel thought for a second. A question had risen in his mind. "How do you know all of this?"
The old man grinned. "I know all of this, because I am Gerald McDonald."
The dark finally crashed into the room, swallowing everything.