A seance at the Grange

Image: CJ Pixabay

I’m away from my laptop this week, so I’ve scheduled this snippet. I’ll catch up with comments next weekend. Have a great week, all.

***

The dining room door was slightly ajar. That would be his mother, Elizabeth – she liked him to listen to the chatter, gauge the tone of the evening before his big entrance. The voices were hushed, barely raised above a whisper. One male voice – a bass drone –  his mother’s choppy alto, then a twitter of sopranos he guessed were the spinster sisters, the unsuspecting guests of honour.

Beyond the door was Elizabeth’s world of candlelight and earnest conversation, the shy chink of wine glasses. Behind him was the entrance hall with its expanse of cracked floor tiles, the doors with their mottled brass plaques – billiard room, library, study – empty titles for unused spaces.

What his mother and the spinsters and the bass voiced man didn’t realise was that darkness was as full of colour and noise as daylight. If only they’d pay attention.

Somewhere upstairs a door thumped open and shut, caught in the draught from an open window. Goose bumps roughened his arms to shark skin. The dead were gathering around him, brushing against him, waiting for him to speak for them.

The grandfather clock struck, eight chimes that echoed in his chest.

“Matthew?”   

It was time.

***

Bit of practice writing around characters from the current WIP.

Matt is a sixteen-year-old psychic, he and his mother Elizabeth make money from wealthy, bereaved clients. And Matt usually calls his mother by her first name.

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