Haunt | H.S [Editing]

Prologue

1934

One week. That's how long I have been living here.

I am still trying to adjust to the stillness of the house. It is proving hard to become accustomed to this new silence that envelops this corner of countryside. This tiny, barely existing hamlet of Youlgreave is desolate in winter, with no means of travel in snow or torrential rain. Everyone out here is effectively isolated, I'm isolated.

I made the move out of the polluted and vastly industrialised streets of Manchester and came here. The house is small and kept away from the other properties of Youlgreave, down a small track lined with ruins of gritstone dry stone walls. The cottage itself sits on the side of a fell, overlooking the chasm of the valley below, just beyond the reservoir - a dark mass of dirtied water that has gathered from the sheer slopes of the fells. It is a little unnerving observing this view from the small windows around the house. When the moon rises high and the sky is clear from clouds the endless pool of black appears daunting in the dimly cast light. Trees border the reservoir as they do the small front garden of my house.

The rooms still have a musty, damp stench about them - slightly more intense in the main bedroom on the first floor. My estate agent informed me that the property was last occupied two years ago, when the previous owner reportedly vanished, not leaving a single trace. I can't say that this didn't make me inquisitive, which was the main reason why I bought the house, wanting to indulge in this aura of mystery that came attached.

The only information I had received on the previous inhabitant was his name - Harry.

I couldn't do much with this name, not without a surname or possible middle names, therefore I still don't know who he is, despite my meticulous searching of the house for any evidence of his existence, yet I know he was here. I sometimes hope he will appear somewhere, at the top of the stairs maybe, or in the pantry on the ground floor and give me some form of clue - this man I have never met. I am completely wrapped in the idea of his disappearance.

I have taken to sitting in the armchair by the window in the living room, scouting the landscape below with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights - still unread - resting on my lap. I have always loved classics. Back in the city everyone had taken a fancy to new novels such as Brave New World but they had never appealed to me. Where people would look around bookshops for the latest read I would be in a charity shop, searching for old, second hand wares that would catch my attention.

I had found more books around the house, some appearing untouched, with thick layers of dust coating the discoloured pages. Wuthering Heights had been one. I often run my fingers over the spines of the books and think of this boy called Harry. These would have been his. Had he read each book, carefully turning the pages and becoming absorbed in the stories they had to tell? Had he sat in this armchair with a book on his lap whilst looking out into the wilderness too?

I turn and look into the flickers of the orange flames in the fireplace. The log house was already stacked full of wood when I arrived which provided me with more than enough to last through the winter months. I lift the cup of tea to my lips and return my gaze to the window, squinting through the darkness that had rapidly enclosed the valley.

The dark span of the reservoir comes into view first. Clouds that once capped the moon disperse, flooding the valley with a dim light. The white glow lasts for a few seconds before more clouds encase the moon once again. Darkness coats my view apart from a small source of white light beside the water of the lake.

I am taken by surprise, leaning forward to try and get a better look at the naturally impossible incandescence. I faintly make out the shape of a body - a human body. I rub my palm across the glass to try and get a clearer image. It is a person, a man, stood at the edge of the black pit of water. His entire body, clothes, face are paled.

I stare at his appearance. I can see a jacket draped over his shoulders, a shirt clad over his upper body and a pair of trousers covering his legs. His hair is a disarray of dark waves. I can decipher sheen on his body, as if he had just been swimming fully clothed, which seems odd in the middle of November.

The man stands unmoving and I contemplate walking down the path to the lake and asking him inside, but something stops me. It could be the partial transparency of his frame that doesn't display as real, a possible figment of my imagination. But, in a sheer moment of absolute clarity, the boy's head twists upwards and fixes directly on my window. I feel my breath hitch at the sudden action. I watch his mouth open, as if to speak, as he stares at me, then, he is gone - completely vanished into thin air.